Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Having A Little Fun Online

One of my favorite websites, one of the few I visit daily, is NASA- sponsored Spaceweather.com. I have great memories of northern lights, and nearly every day a new picture of some is posted, filling in a hole in my actual recent experiences. I learned why they have different colors, pink meaning the waves descend lower through the atmosphere to where nitrogen is more abundant.  They also show pictures of sunspots, comets, solar flares, earth from space. Warnings of anticipated CMEs are posted. This is where I first learned such a thing as sprites existed and why, not to mention pictures of this rare event. What's not to love?

A couple of days ago, they ran a picture of a full moon along with notice of the pending "Supermoon". Or should I say, "warning"?  After all, the headline started with "Watch Out For..."

I had to write them back. Of course I had to.

I started with the usual love-your-site niceties, followed by the usual read-you-daily ones. But that came after the subject line of "Dumb Headline".

I got around to wondering why they needed us to "watch out for" the supermoon? I mean, I got  the idea that it was a phenomenon, worthy of a look or two. But... "Watch Out..."?

Why? What was it going to do? Attack? Go bouncy-bouncy across the landscape? Turn us all into werewolves? Turn the full-moon loonies even loonier?

Or maybe, against all the known laws of physics, was it going to keep approaching, smashing into this planet? And if so, why bother to watch out for it? It's not as if we could do anything about it should that happen, except maybe spend a last few minutes fighting with the rest of the world for cell tower time to contact our loved ones for a final "Good-bye".

Off my email went, into cyberspace. Steve and I got a chuckle from it, figuring it would be ignored like 99% of similar emails to folks who have no clue who I am and probably care about the same amount.

But I had a reason to turn on the laptop a bit later, and found an email reply in my inbox. They changed the headline!

What's not to love?

No comments: