It happens only once in a blue moon — and scientists say a blue moon is exactly what we’ll see in the skies this New Year’s Eve.

Don’t expect an azure glow over our lunar satellite, however. The term “blue moon” simply refers to the second full moon in a calendar month, something that hasn’t happened on a New Year’s Eve for nearly 20 years, NASA says.

“December 1990 ended with a blue moon, and many New Year’s Eve parties were themed by the event,” said Professor Philip Hiscock of the department of folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in Canada. “It was a lot of fun.”

Most months have just one full moon, because the 29.5-day cycle of the moon matches up pretty well with the length of calendar months. Occasionally, there will be two full moons in a month, something that happens about every 2½ years, NASA says.

But a blue moon on December 31 is rare.



Elvis Presley crooned about it when he sang the old Rodgers and Hart song “Blue Moon,” in which he stood alone without a dream in his heart or a love of his own.

He struck a more hopeful tone in another tune, singing about his love returning to his arms “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again.” He also covered Bill Monroe’s bluegrass classic, “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”

It is possible for the moon to have a cerulean hue, NASA says, but that’s sometimes caused by fine dirt circulating in the Earth’s atmosphere or the dark blue tone of the sky.

A blue moon hasn’t always meant the second full moon in a month. Hundreds of years ago, it simply meant “never” or “absurd,” Hiscock said.

“The phrase ‘blue moon’ has been around a long time, well over 400 years, but during that time its meaning has shifted,” he said. “I have counted six different meanings which have been carried by the term, and at least four of them are still current today. That makes discussion of the term a little complicated.”

When the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883, it put so much dust in the atmosphere that the moon actually appeared blue — an event so unusual that the term “once in a blue moon” was coined, according to NASA’s National Space Science Data Center. The effect lasted for almost two years, Hiscock said.

Full moons used to have 12 names, one for each month, such as “harvest moon,” NASA said. The term “blue moon” referred to the 13th full moon in a year.

The term acquired its current meaning in the 1940s, after the Farmer’s Almanac of Maine offered an astronomical definition of a blue moon “so convoluted that even professional astronomers struggled to understand it,” NASA wrote on its Web site.

A writer at Sky and Telescope magazine in the late 1940s tried to explain the almanac’s definition by saying it referred to the second full moon in a month.

“That was not correct, but at least it could be understood,” NASA wrote. “And thus the modern blue moon was born.”
cnn.com and photobucket.com

Firing revered coach Mike Leach could result in fan backlash, diminished respect and lost football games for Texas Tech.

It’s hard to imagine Mike Leach’s 10-year tenure at Texas Tech ending in a more fittingly bizarre fashion. The law school grad sent his lawyer to a courthouse in hopes of getting his suspension lifted, only to come back with a termination letter.

Leach’s one-of-a-kind persona was defined by defiance. Ultimately, it brought about his demise.

Leach, who went 84-43 and took his team to 10 straight bowl games, was ostensibly fired for his mistreatment of a player with a mild concussion, but don’t be fooled. The allegations by Adam James‘ family were a convenient excuse for school president Guy Bailey and athletic director Gerald Myers to rid themselves of a coach who, despite bringing the school considerable prestige, never fully earned their respect and butted heads with the administration for years (most notably in last winter’s contentious contract negotiations). When the school rushed to suspend him Monday, we all knew where this was headed.

By firing Leach “with cause” (we’ll have to wait and see whether that part holds up in the inevitable lawsuit to come), the school will get out paying him a potentially expensive buyout ($400,000 a year for the next four years). It may be about to lose far more than that, however, in canceled season tickets, diminished respect, and, quite possibly, many lost football games.

Not since Indiana fired controversial coach Bob Knight in 2000 has a major program abruptly cut ties with such a locally revered figure. (Ironic, considering Myers is the same guy who gave Knight his second chance.) The difference: Knight, by the end, had his share of detractors in Bloomington. He also had a long and well-documented history of degrading players and officials alike.

While Leach engendered minor controversies here and there throughout his tenure, there had been not a peep about any misconduct. But then came the allegations from prominent ex-football star and ESPN analyst Craig James claiming Leach had subjected his son to humiliating isolation on two occasions because of his injury. Disputes then ensued over the details and the motivation behind said allegations — ex-players rushed to the coach’s defense; James and his father were apparently bitter over his lack of playing time; the purported “electrical closet” turned out to be the size of a garage; a doctor swore Leach inflicted no harm — but it was apparent from the beginning that Tech either wasn’t buying it or wanted Leach gone regardless.

Reportedly, Leach could have avoided the whole fiasco simply by writing an apology to James. He refused. Leach was never a conformist. This time it cost him his job.

Craig James said the family went public with the allegations to “protect all the fine young men involved in Tech football.” Whether that meant getting Leach fired, we’ll never know, but now that it’s happened, the aftermath figures to be ugly.

Bailey and Myers now face the unenviable task of finding a new coach willing to follow in the footsteps of Tech’s own Urban Meyer. While Leach had only one truly transcendent season in Lubbock (2008, when the Red Raiders started 10-0 and beat No. 1 Texas), the fact that his program remained as consistent as it did was remarkable considering the gap it faced in almost every department compared with divisional rivals Texas and Oklahoma. He did it with his uniquely innovative offense and ability to turn hidden gems like Wes Welker, Kliff Kingsbury and Graham Harrell into record-setting stars.

Texas Tech never reached a BCS game under Leach, but it gained an unmistakable identity and untold national notoriety (even 60 Minutes came calling) thanks to Leach’s offensive schemes and unusual personality. (Is there any football fan in America who doesn’t know about Leach’s affinity for pirates or improbable relationship with Donald Trump?)

His successor will step into an environment where the fan base is now angry and divided and presumably skeptical of anyone short of a home-run hire. Arizona offensive coordinator Sonny Dykes is a former Leach assistant who’s also a legacy of Leach’s similarly beloved predecessor, Spike Dykes. So, too, is Baylor coach Art Briles. Houston coach Kevin Sumlin didn’t work for Leach, but runs his offense thanks to coordinator Dana Holgerson, a Leach descendent.

But all of them may be reticent to take the job out of either loyalty to Leach or alarm over the way he was treated. Myers, a basketball guy, doesn’t exactly paint the picture of a man willing to go to bat for his football coach, and all sorts of dirty details about the school figure to come out in Leach’s forthcoming lawsuit. Big-name coaches will likely think twice before signing on there. Just as Tech got Bob Knight, it may get a football Mike Davis.

The more intriguing question is, what becomes of Leach? Over the past few years, as his reputation finally morphed from that of a gimmick artist to a legitimately respected football coach, he sought desperately to get out of Lubbock, interviewing with Miami and Washington and entertaining other suitors. But no opportunity came to pass. To say he’s an “oddball” is putting it mildly, which likely made for some “unique” interviews.

Now, with the stigma of a job-ending scandal — one involving the particularly sensitive subject of concussions — he’s going to find it infinitely more difficult to land a cushy gig. Leach’s ego would likely welcome the opportunity to take his system to the pros as a coordinator, but the button-down NFL would seem even less welcoming. More realistically, some college mid-major is going to luck out and get an accomplished coach on the cheap, but only if it’s capable of viewing the James incident as an aberration and/or exaggeration.

As for Craig James, it’s hard to imagine his own career will remain unscathed. While it’s hard to criticize a father for looking out for his son, he’s put himself in a very uncomfortable situation. An ESPN analyst — a purportedly objective college football commentator — just got a prominent college football coach fired. Will viewers take him seriously now when he critiques a coach’s judgment? Will coaches of the games he’s covering even speak with him? ESPN won’t fire James for being a concerned parent, but it could certainly relegate him to Tuesday night MAC games for the foreseeable future.

He (and his poor son) would be wise to stay away from Lubbock. In the battle of Leach vs. James, there was little doubt as to which side Red Raiders fans fell. You’ll be able to tell from all the empty seats in AT&T Jones Stadium next fall.
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/stewart_mandel/12/30/leach-fired/index.html?cnn=yes#ixzz0bDTk83MG

With another holiday shopping season upon us, here is a look back at some of the consumer items of the early 20th century that had some gift givers and receivers radiating more than just smiles.



NUCLEAR FAMILY FUN: The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab drops the proverbial bomb on today’s kiddie microscope sets. It boasted more than 150 different experiments using four varieties of uranium ore (uranium is weakly radioactive), along with radioactive isotopes of lead, ruthenium and zinc, plus an array of detection instruments, including a Geiger counter. The kit was only available from 1951 to 1952, however, owing in part to its price tag ($50 then, or about $400 in 2008 dollars). Despite its panoply of unstable, radioactive materials, the Atomic Energy Lab did not seriously endanger the tykes who played with it—unlike other radioactive products from the first half of the 20th century. “The uranium ore in these kits was not very radioactive,” says Paul Frame, a health physicist at Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) and curator of the Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Collection. “In fact, these kits might have encouraged children to study science.”



QUITE A TESTI-MONIAL: Other, earlier items were not as harmless as Gilbert’s Atomic Lab. The Radiendocrinator, circa 1930, serves as one glaring example. Working off the assumption (or at least public perception) that radiation offered health benefits and sexual fitness, inventor William J. A. Bailey produced this classy leatherette case containing a small, gold-plated device shaped like a thick credit card. This handy size aided the Radiendocrinator’s placement near selected parts of the body, such as the testicles. Men were instructed to “wear [an] adaptor like any ‘athletic strap,’ (the cloth label in front). This puts the instrument under the scrotum as it should be. Wear at night. Radiate as directed.” Similar products existed for women, as well. ORAU’s Frame notes that the Radiendocrinator remained radioactive decades later; before publicly exhibiting it, he had to remove the radiation source—radium-soaked pieces of blotter paper—for safety reasons.

The true extent of how many people were exposed to and later developed radiation sickness from the Radiendocrinator and other products like it will never be known, says Gary Mansfield, a retired radiation health expert who worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. “Back then not a lot was known about many of the aspects of radiation and radioactivity; people were still figuring it out,” he says.

So how did Bailey, who proclaimed himself an avid user of his own products, fare? Learn his fate next.



ELIXIR OF HALF-LIFE: To be fair, it was not just trend-spotting commercialists like inventor William J. A. Bailey who got swept up in the radiation craze. “Physicians took off with the idea…they tried to use it for every disease under the sun,” says Ross Mullner, an associate professor of health policy and administration at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

One person who should not have followed his doctor’s advice was Eben Byers, a wealthy socialite and industrialist. After suffering an arm injury, and per a physician’s recommendation, Byers began imbibing radium-infused drinks, such as Radithor, shown here. (Modern-day sports drinks, with their Technicolor complexions, only look radioactive in comparison.) Marketed as “perpetual sunshine” in a bottle and as a “cure for the living dead,” Radithor instead led to Byers losing most of his jaw and having holes form in his skull. His death in 1932 at the age of 51 received significant media attention and largely ended the radium drink fad, Mullner says.

As for Bailey, he died of bladder cancer in 1949 at the age of 64. According to a 1993 Scientific American article, the self-titled “Doctor” Bailey “never agreed that small doses of radioactivity were harmful, and he asserted that his health and spirits were excellent almost to the end.”



WATCH OUT: Clock-makers circa 1920 turned to radium-laced, glow-in-the-dark paint to light up the dials on watch and clock faces. Companies often employed young women to paint the numerals and clock hands, even encouraging workers to lick the tips of their paintbrushes to keep them sharp. “There was a case at a plant in Ottawa [in Illinois], where a teacher of the girls would take a spatula of radium paint and eat it to prove it was safe,” says the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (U.I.C.) Mullner, who wrote the 1999 book Deadly Glow: The Radium Dial Worker Tragedy. Once in the body, radium chemically acts like calcium—the elements share the same column in the periodic table—and is deposited in bones. The unfortunate women suffered symptoms such as skin ulcerations and anemia, and years later many came down with various cancers. Five female victims who had worked at an Orange, N.J., facility sued their employer, the United States Radium Corporation; the company settled in 1928. This infamous “Radium Girls” case prompted the passing of occupational safety laws and helped alert the general public to the possible dangers of radioactivity. The tragedy in turn spurred scientific research into the risks of radiation exposure and the defining of acceptable occupational limits.

Nowadays, many illuminated watch dials get their glow from electricity, courtesy of batteries, although “radioluminescent” dials are still produced for deep-sea diving watches, for instance. Instead of radium, however, an isotope of hydrogen called tritium is used, and the overall radiation exposure to the wearer is insignificant.



HOT CHOCOLATE: We all love our sweets, making chocolate a classic gift for almost any occasion. A German company called Burk & Braun apparently sought to improve on the popularity of its products by sprinkling radium into its cocoa. This chocolate bar was sold in Germany between 1931 and 1936 and was supposedly marketed for its rejuvenating abilities. Many companies, food-makers included, often splashed the word “radium” on their products for its buzz factor, rather like “turbo” or “platinum” has shown up on more recent consumer items.



PLATE WARMER: This handsome dishware, part of the Fiesta line originally introduced by the Homer Laughlin China Co. in 1936, had a special ingredient in its glaze: uranium. The “brilliant red” hue seen in the plate (pictured) contained particularly high levels of uranium oxide. For decades, ceramic manufacturers relied on uranium to impart a rich coloring to their products, including floor tiles and pottery, but the element has not been used in domestic dishware for more than 20 years. A 2001 Nuclear Regulatory Commission report (pdf) pooled data on radiation exposure from uranium-containing dinnerware; even in the higher estimates the exposures were no worse than the federal occupational exposure limit. The Fiesta line, sans uranium, continues to be sold today, and vintage Fiesta dinnerware items are a popular collectors’ item.

FOR THAT RADIANT LOOK: In the 1920s and 1930s radioactive elements also made their way into many cosmetic products. “People at the time thought radium was healthful and would make them beautiful,” the U.I.C.’s Mullner says. Tho-Radia, a face cream and powder, boasted a double whammy of radioactivity in the form of both thorium and radium. The face cream contained half a gram of thorium chloride and 0.25 milligram of radium in a 100-gram sample, according to a study published in 2007 in Current Oncology. The formula was patented in France in 1932. Until 2003, historians had assumed that the advertised inventor of this formula, a Dr. Alfred Curie, was merely an invention of the manufacturer, probably fabricated to cash in on the famous Curie name. Although no relation to the Nobel laureates Marie or Pierre Curie, who discovered radium in 1898, Alfred Curie apparently was a genuine French physician; whether he had any role in concocting Tho-Radia remains unknown.
scientificamerican.com