The International Date Line can really mess with your head. When we flew to Okinawa from Travis AFB in California, we took off on a Tuesday and landed at Okinawa's Kadena AFB about 18 hours later, but it was Thursday. Wednesday just magically vanished and we felt we were missing something. But returning to the US we took off from Kadena at 11 on a Saturday morning and landed at Travis at 10:30 on the same Saturday morning. I felt like a time traveler, with a very intense sensation of jet lag. Weird.
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I like globes better than maps as they give an accurate representation of the way the planet looks, with the countries the correct relative size, but even that can be a little deceptive. We look at a globe and think, Wow! Look at all that water! Indeed, more than 70% of the planet's surface is covered in water but relative to the planet's size there is very little water. If you scale the Earth down to a 12" sphere, the total amount of water, including oceans, rivers, lakes, and underground aquifers would equal less than a half an ounce, not much more than to cover it with a thin film. Strange but true, if I can believe the Vsauce channel on YouTube , which I think I can. It agrees with USGS images I've seen depicting the relative amount of water we have on this ball of dirt.
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I apologize to Uncle Ken for being such a "Scourge" but I am sometimes perplexed. His lofty prose soars betwixt artistic license and objective reality and it's not easy for me to always discern where one ends and the other begins. Ah, well; it keeps me on my toes.
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And how 'bout that Trump? What a brilliant tactician! In less than hour the other day he completely diverted all attention from North Korea, Venezuela, the Russians, and made great progress in unifying the country, Congress, and the media. Mostly against him, but never mind, his great brain and silver tongued eloquence is sure to put a good light, the best light, on everything.
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Happy eclipse chasing, Uncle Ken.
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