Did You See That?

Although my location afforded only a 70%ish view, a solar eclipse is pretty incredible. It was especially great since I forgot to get glasses and conveniently have a science teacher for a neighbor.

Before I went out to casually ask how things were looking, I Googled NASA coverage of the event. The first link took me to the live stream on their Facebook page. Wow. Scientists talking with floating emojis surrounding them. Pretty exciting and distracting. They cut to views of the eclipse in various states that were experiencing the “total” effect. I thought it was pretty cool when the locusts all started chirping when it got dark, but that’s how I am. I just wish they’d have kept a live feed of the eclipse from anywhere instead of having us look at NASA people talking about it. HELLO?  Split screen, NASA, aren’t you guys rocket scientists?

While the scientists were talking, I glanced down at the flood of FB comments. Wow. Lots of folks were talking and… Geez. Anything can become hostile. This was religion vs. science. One side, and I am serious, said that Jesus would be coming during the eclipse. Maybe he did. We just couldn’t see him with our dark glasses on. Scientists were talking about orbits and calculations. Which we pretty much know already and if we don’t we pretend we do. A very few rational people tried to intervene by admiring “nature” and what it was showing us. Those people were completely ignored. It was amazing. Folks were trolling the solar eclipse.

And this is why we can’t have nice things.