8 April 2024 — 0834 mdt

Daybreak digest: the eclipse, Tim Sheehy, Gaza

By James Conner

The partial solar eclipse in Kalispell. The sun is up, the sky is partly cloudy, and the eclipse begins at 1142 MDT. Here’s NASA’s summary of the event:

There may be holes in the clouds, so don’t give up on getting a glimpse of the eclipse.

I do not trust eclipse glasses or very dark welding glass to protect my eyes during a partial eclipse. Instead, I’m using a pinhole to project the sun and the moon’s bite into it onto a flat white surface.

If you have a digital camera that can shoot in aperture priority mode, you can use to measure, roughly, the diminution of the sun’s intensity. Place a gray card, or unbleached cardboard, square to the sunbeam. Set your tripod mounted camera at a 45° angle to the card. Choose an ISO and aperture that makes the full range of shutter speeds available. Take slightly defocused images of the card at regular intervals. The differences in shutter speed will correlate to the differences in solar intensity.

Montana Republican Tim Sheehy’s senate campaign is in a heap of trouble. Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Sheehy was providing inconsistent — indeed downright contradictory — accounts of how a bullet (probably a pistol bullet) became lodged in his right arm. Today, the Post reports that Vote Vets has produced a 30-second digital add raising additional questions. Here’s the ad:

I may have more on Sheehy’s misfortunes later today. My sense is that in his service in Afghanistan, something occurred that was at variance with his reputation as a straight arrow, and that might have placed him in legal jeopardy.

Israel withdraws a division from Gaza. That leaves just one IDF brigade (several thousand men) in southern Gaza, a force large enough to perform police functions but not large enough to take on an estimated 8,000 Hamas fighters holed up in tunnels next to the border with Egypt. That probably delays by weeks the götterdämmerung invasion of Rafah that Israel claims finally will destroy Hamas. Let’s hope so, and hope that the cataclysmic final battle never occurs.

Now is the time for Israel to expedite humanitarian aid for Gaza, which needs food, water, fuel, sanitary facilities, new schools, homes, and hospitals, and massive economic redevelopment.