HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE.

That's the quintessence of existential philosophy, if one excuses the oxymoron, as summarized by Jean-Paul Sartre.  There might be something to it all the same.

Now comes America's Newspaper of Record, perhaps with special knowledge of the ways of the Almighty, calling the roll of the damned.  "In Lieu Of Hell, Unbelieving Introverts Will Be Sent To A Business Networking Event That Lasts Forever."

A TALE OF THREE MAPS.

Michael Li of the Brennan Center looks at what might be serious shifts in the balance of power in Congress as well as the electoral vote should current population changes accurately anticipate the 2030 Census.  The Brennan Center report offers an interactive map.  I did a screen capture.

Those estimates have the fretful psephologists, such as Politico's Andrew Howard, fretting.

Democrats could face a gloomy Electoral College atmosphere next decade, according to new population estimates released Tuesday that show red-leaning states like Texas and Florida making major gains and California as a big loser.

By combining the census bureau’s new state population estimates for 2025 with previous years’ data, experts quickly projected the number of House seats — and Electoral College votes — states will gain or lose after the 2030 Census in the process known as reapportionment. And while those projections differ slightly, they all had bad news for Democrats: GOP-leaning states will gain electoral power and Democratic-leaning states will lose it if the trends continue.

Such maps presume no change in the size of the House of Representatives and no change to state allocations of electoral votes.  Such tweaks are less important than the change in regional balances of power.

IN WAR, YOU HAVE TO PERFORM ALL THE TIME.

I have confessed, previously, to enjoying (perhaps a little too much) Special Forces: World's Toughest Test, which just kicked off with eighteen celebrities, a few of whom I had prior knowledge of, rappelling from a helicopter "behind enemy lines" and then having to go to a hut to draw supplies, which they then had to schlep, uphill.

THE NEWSPAPER OF RECORD FILES A DESPATCH FROM HELL.

Satan: 'I've Made A Huge Mistake'

Surveying the hundreds of thousands gathered for Charlie Kirk's memorial service, along with the millions watching across the globe, a despondent Satan declared that he had "made a huge mistake."

"Well, this isn't going like I planned at all," sighed Satan, as churches once again were filled to overflowing around the nation. "Listen to all that worship. How are even more people praising God in the face of death? Ugh. I've really screwed the pooch this time."

At publishing time, an enraged Satan had learned that thousands more souls had slipped out of his grasp.

So mote it be.

A PLANETARY GROUP PHOTO.

I read the news today, oh boy.

Josh Dury photograph retrieved from Yahoo News.

You don't just put a wide-angle lens on a camera on a tripod and hope for the best.

A photographer is thought to have become the first person to capture all seven planets and Earth in one picture.

The rare image was made possible because a “great planetary parade” is taking place this week for the first time since 1982 – when cameras were not advanced enough to capture them all.

The panorama was taken from Somerset’s Mendip Hills on Saturday by Josh Dury, 27, an award-winning astronomical photographer dubbed the “Starman”.

Mr Dury said: “It is made of nine images, revealing Saturn, Mercury and Neptune.

“They were very tricky to spot. I used multiple image analysis and astronomy apps to confirm their location.

“As this was taken with a wide-angle lens, the nine images stitched to a panorama and a HDR blend of one of the frames to reveal Saturn, Neptune and Mercury. These three planets are not easy to see at all.”

The Royal Astronomical Society said that spacecraft, such as Voyager, had captured all the planets in the sky at once, but it was not aware of anyone taking such an image from Earth.

Mercury is generally the most difficult to spot, although on occasion it's higher above the visible horizon than Venus.  Getting Neptune requires a telescope, as generally does Uranus, although I claim to have caught it on camera not far from Mars.

THE GAME IS AFOOT IN PITTSBURGH.

In the past ten years or so, I have seen remakes of Sherlock Holmes with Dr. Watson being a veteran of the Afghan wars of the Elizabethan era (Sherlock);  with Sherlock Holmes banished to New York to get sober, assisted by Dr Joan Watson (Elementary); and now CBS has Holmes and Moriarty taking a fatal plunge that Dr John Watson survives, and once he recovers he has a bequest to set up a hard cases medical clinic in Pittsburgh.  TV Fanatic contributor Joshua Pleming notes, "It also doesn’t hurt that the network has given viewers the tall drink of water, Morris Chestnut."  He continues,

The story itself seems pretty cut and dry. Holmes left Watson a bunch of money so the doctor could return to medicine. It’s all very straightforward, which is exactly what Sherlock Holmes is NOT known for.

The show worked hard in the pilot to establish that nothing is as it seems. I don’t even want to make assumptions because I’ll be dead wrong, but something is definitely afoot.

Is a Scotland Yard guy in league with Moriarty?  Only the Shadow knows.  Oh, sorry, wrong mystery series reference.  And television might be able to portray the price of ambition.  "Every show, from Nurse Jackie to Grey’s Anatomy, proves that the cost of a successful healthcare career is a volatile love life."  The One Chicago series generalizes that to first responders generally.

At CBR, Joshua Patton quips, "Watson Series Premiere Review: The Holmes Inspired Drama Is Basically Sherlock House."  That might not be surprising.

Hugh Laurie's surly doctor solved medical mysteries for eight seasons, and series creator David Shorn said House was inspired by Sherlock Holmes.  Watson brings things full circle, from using the protagonist's surname as the title to his medical deductions, so comparison is inevitable. Of course, that series is not the most important source of inspiration. Of the mixture of elements that make up Watson, that which is inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic character amounts to about a seven percent solution. Now in the public domain, the series is free to borrow, remix and ignore whatever elements it wants. Rather than a traditional mystery procedural, the show centers on John Watson's life as a doctor. He's also without his more famous companion, though given how "Pilot" ends, that may not be for very long.

None of which comes as a surprise: Conan Doyle was a medical student who credited one of his professors for stressing the usefulness of observation in diagnosis.

The pilot show fails to impress TV Pulse contributor Jennifer Griffin (not to be confused with the eponymous Fox News diplomacy correspondent).  "The problem is Watson is neither sufficiently coherent in tone, nor unique in execution, to carry the weight of its own premise."

The next show will air on February 16, as pitchers and catchers are reporting.

WERE THERE ROAD-RUNNER CUTS IN THE MEAT CHILLER?

Coyote found hiding in Humboldt Park Aldi’s refrigerated section.  This one did not take a tumble into the Grand Canyon.  "The coyote did not appear to be injured, but it was placed in the care of Flint Creek Wildlife. Their personnel will assess the coyote before releasing it back into the wild."  Meep! Meep!

THE JOKES PRACTICALLY WRITE THEMSELVES.

Wind Blowing Out of Uranus Makes It Hard to Probe.  No, that's not scatological humor incoming, rather, it's bad luck, with a solar flare travelling much faster than Voyager hitting Uranus about when Voyager passed.

[Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Jamie] Jasinksi reexamined the data collected by Voyager 2 during its 1986 flyby and found that the probe had examined Uranus shortly after an intense solar wind event, which saw a huge surge of charged particles blast its way from the Sun.

The event compressed the planet's magnetosphere, they found, causing it to deform into a significantly asymmetrical shape that appeared to lack plasma.

"We postulate that such a compression of the magnetosphere could increase energetic electron fluxes within the radiation belts and empty the magnetosphere of its plasma temporarily," the researchers wrote in their paper.

Even if Voyager 2 had come to visit a mere week earlier, the researchers suggest, it would have found a far more recognizable magnetosphere, like those surrounding other planets in our solar system, including Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.

"Owing to the variation of the solar wind at Uranus, we suggest that there may be two magnetospheric cycles during solar minimum," the researchers suggested, referring to the calmest period of the Sun's 11-year solar cycle.

Intriguingly, Uranus' two most distant moons Titania and Oberon may be orbiting the planet outside the magnetosphere, which could give astronomers an unprecedented look at their subsurface oceans without any electromagnetic interference.

In short, we shouldn't draw any definitive conclusions from NASA's flyby almost 40 years ago.

I wonder if the auroras were spectacular, or if ionized particles require some sort of atmosphere.  It's not, though, as if there's a space probe standing by to do a Uranian fly-by in the next year or so, or if their luck avoiding a solar storm would be any better.

If I recall correctly, the two early Voyagers took advantage of alignments of the outer planets that made fly-bys of all of them practicable.  Thanks to the long orbits, those alignments are rare.

EXISTENCE EXISTS.

If the known universe as we understand it began with a Big Bang, what was before that?

There is no way of knowing that, although the opportunities for speculation, whether aided by prayer or by strong drink, proliferate.

Perhaps, particularly as very deep space anomalies come to the attention of researchers, and researchers look for ways to model those refractory phenomena, perhaps the good old principle of parsimony is there, deep in the math.  "What if the universe had no beginning?"

In the realm of physics, quantum mechanics and general relativity have provided powerful frameworks for understanding the universe. However, these theories have limitations—particularly when describing extreme conditions, like those at the centers of black holes or the beginning of the universe, where gravity becomes extremely strong. Traditional physics considers space and time as continuous, allowing for the possibility of infinitely small points. This, however, leads to mathematical breakdowns at singularities like the Big Bang, where traditional equations produce infinite densities and fail to work.

That's going to be interesting, a theory that squares the existence of black holes, for which we have evidence, with a universe that has always existed, with hints of something much like a big bang.

BRACING SKEGNESS.

It appears as if the younger Royals are in the beach-going spirit.

Buckingham Palace confirm that the Princess of Wales herself took the photo somewhere in Norfolk.

There aren't that many beach days along the North Sea, as residents of the Upper Lakes will understand.

WIN AND KEEP PLAYING.

I did not see this coming.  "Jordan Love leads Packers upset, sends Cowboys into a long, miserable offseason."

The Packers are the first No. 7 seed to win an NFL playoff game. That means the Cowboys are the first team to lose to a No. 7 seed in the playoffs.

The Packers took that opening kickoff and drove 75 yards for a touchdown. After that, the Cowboys pressed the entire game and never made it competitive. That led to a blowout win that we'll be talking about for months, maybe years.

The Packers currently have the longest unbeaten streak at AT&T Stadium, and that includes regular-season and playoff games with the Cowboys and a Super Bowl.  I'll let the sports pundits chew over those Deeper Implications.  The Packers led 27-0 after a pick-six, 34-10 after the Cowboys did the two-for-one at the half, and 48-16 and the special teams and defense did their job down the stretch.  The reserves got meaningful playoff minutes in the fourth quarter, when the Cowboys had to use a lot of clock to score those touchdowns, and the special teams, by recovering the onside kicks, made sure the Cowboys had to go the length of the field while using up the clock even if the reserves couldn't tally any first downs on offense.  There was also this.

No Cowboys players in the pic 💀 pic.twitter.com/RS7FusqN7N

— NFL Stats (@NFL_Stats) January 15, 2024

The Packers will play in Santa Clara on Saturday evening.

WINTER BREAK THROUGHOUT THE YEARS.

The "Looking Back" from the December 20 MidWeek included several vignettes.  In 1923, the gossip columnists were attempting to marry off the Prince of Wales, the once and future King Edward VIII.  "London hints the Prince of Wales’ taste in girls is not so good. Girls should use flavored lipstick."  Scandal, abdication, and a niece on the throne for seventy years were yet to come.

TURF THE MALCONTENTS OUT.

Special Forces is airing again on Fox, opposite the first half of Monday Night Football.  I liked the first season.

I confess to enjoying a new reality show, Special Forces, in which real veterans of special operations put assorted celebrities, most of whom are a little too old for ordinary boot camp, through a few drills.  It's cathartic, in particular, to hear lines like "You can go back to your luxurious houses and your Instagram followers and feel sorry for yourself" or "Your personal assistant isn't here to help out."  And yes, if you neglect to keep your water bottle (no longer a canteen?) topped off or put your gear in the pack without first putting it in waterproof bags, there are consequences.

That first season was in the heat of the Jordanian desert, this season it's alpine and winter training in New Zealand.  Reality comes quickly for some of the participants.  There's an instructive lesson about strength requirements that might generalize to fire and police departments.   "[Tara] Reid began to complain that it wasn't fair for her to carry the same weighted backpack as others because she was older and had back problems. Reid was ultimately given the option to accept it or quit, and she did the latter."  It's only her kit, which better include several changes of clothes.  What, dear reader, is the over-under on somebody being disciplined for not properly packing, let alone bringing along, the full complement of spare socks and shirts?  It's not as if they're each schlepping a few parts of a mountain howitzer or a grenade launcher the way a real mountain unit would.

FORTUNATELY, THE WEATHER COOPERATED.

Game Day in Lincoln, Nebraska, has long been a thing, and it used to be a bigger thing when Nebraska lined up against Kansas or Oklahoma or Colorado when regional rivalries involved the same conference.  Rutgers or Oregon in, maybe not the same thing.

The largest crowd ever recorded at their stadium, though, was to watch women play volleyball.  Stadium announcer Paul Sunderland said what happened was a Big ****in' Deal.

“That match in Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska, has to go down as one of the seismic, most important events in the history of the sport, not only in the United States, but in the world.

“It not only was remarkable, but it was beautifully executed and produced by the folks at the University of Nebraska. That was an ode to the sport of volleyball in the state of Nebraska, a tribute to the Nebraska volleyball program, historically built under Terry Pettit. That tradition of success has been continued by John Cook, and I venture to say that only in Nebraska could this marker of 92,003 have been put down.”

Kudos, indeed, to Cook’s program for having the courage to dream big with an enterprise that entailed significant risk. After all, the university could have been left with egg on its face if it had rained on August 30.

I saw a lot of comments from die-hard fans noting that the level of play in the Cornhuskers’ lopsided three-set victory over Nebraska-Omaha out of the low-major Summit League wasn’t so hot, and that the event would have been substantially better if Nebraska had played against a ranked opponent.

Hogwash.

This wasn’t about the volleyball. It was about spectacle.

When folks used to go to the circus once a year, did they nitpick that the third dancing bear in Ring 2 was out of step? Did they debate whether the daring trapeze artist might have over-rotated a bit on his quadruple somersault?

The proverbial “squash match” between programs on vastly different competitive planes was ideal in this situation. The point was to send the crowd home happy with a victory by women in red, and satisfied that they had been part of a shared communal fan experience that turned out to be a really big deal.

The bulk of the folks in the stands were there not for the steak, but the sizzle. The lure was setting a world record while perhaps witnessing a women’s college volleyball match for the first time. The Cornhuskers found a way to satisfy casuals in an environment of fractured mainstream media that makes cultivating them more difficult than ever.

As far as I know, no trapeze artist has ever executed a quadruple somersault, except into the net: the triple to a catch is hard enough. But I digress.  A non-conference match with sufficient rooting interest from the visiting team might be promotion enough.

What's more interesting is the back story behind the event.

The impetus for this whole production? A rivalry, of course. Last September, nearly 500 miles away in Madison, Wisconsin, the Badgers -- Nebraska's biggest nemesis and the team that beat it in the 2021 national championship -- moved a match to the Kohl Center and drew a crowd of 16,833, breaking Nebraska's attendance record for a regular-season match.

Of all the things that captivate Nebraska sports fans, it's their attendance records. A few years ago, when the football team's six-decades-long sellout streak was in jeopardy, boosters and corporate sponsors bought unsold tickets to keep the record going. Nebraska volleyball hasn't had to worry about that; eight of the top nine crowds in NCAA volleyball history are matches that have involved the Huskers.

But the Badgers' one-upping the record nagged at Nebraska fans, who sent a flurry of emails to coach John Cook urging him to take his team somewhere to reclaim their record. After the season, he plotted. He initially pondered Pinnacle Bank Arena, Nebraska's basketball venue. It wasn't big enough.

After a couple of conversations, Alberts told Cook there was one place they could go: Memorial Stadium.

Wisconsin? Dear reader, might you wonder if something is off? College volleyball means Long Beach State or Stanford or UCLA or the University of Spoiled Children, doesn't it?

CAN YOU PRONOUNCE CAIRO?

I'm referring to the one in Illinois, which I have passed through.  I have also passed through East Dubuque, Savanna, Nauvoo, and Quincy; but not all as part of the same road trip.  A Chicago writer did so, searching for something to say about the longest stretch of the Father of Waters all in one state. "Illinois is little associated with the river’s lore — not as much as Missouri, which produced Mark Twain, or Mississippi, which produced the Delta blues, or Louisiana, where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, just past New Orleans."  He initially planned to hire a pontoon boat, but no rental agency wanted to risk having to retrieve a broken-down one somewhere south of Cahokia, or if it got away all the way to Memphis.  Along the way, he finds the grave of a circus elephant, struck by lightning, and suggests Nauvoo is "both a holy city and a tourist trap."

NO, THESE ARE NOT EPISODES FROM THE X FILES.

A Rockford radio station has a penchant for stories of the odd, such as a wrecked train that might have figured in the ending of The Fugitive, recent movie version.  "Most of the time when production companies are filming scenes on location, it is in populated areas, so once they are done they have to clean up their mess. Well, apparently for "The Fugitive" trainwreck footage they were in the middle of nowhere, so they just left every in place."  There might be some truth to that story.

A more recent finding, not so much.  "It was discovered in Galt, Illinois which is in the southwestern part of the state. They found it on a farm near some silos and by some trees. It was built on 1924."

Galt is in northwestern Illinois, not far from Sterling, and not that far from Rockford, and there is a simpler explanation than the story offers.  "No one is exactly sure how the antique train got onto the property. In this picture, there appears to be some sort of railroad tracks. The engine is just sitting on them so apparently, they aren't used for transporting goods. I'm guessing that is part of the way they moved it."

That relic came from Northwestern Steel and Wire in Sterling.  The company recycled steel on an industrial scale, with electric furnaces of up to 400 tons capacity.  The existence of those furnaces inspired what might have been my best research paper, and the company was of ferroequinological interest because a number of steam locomotives that showed up consigned to scrap found a second life as intraplant switchers, until the early 1980s.  A number of them were purchased for preservation and shoved onto that siding in Galt, pending relocation.  Somewhere in my boxes of slides are a couple snaps I took from a nearby road.

The kettles, other than the one the radio guys found, have since been moved.  One is in Sterling and another, inoperable, at Illinois Railway Museum.  The one the radio guys stumbled upon is the one that has not yet found a home.  "Five were traded to a scrapper for a classier steamer that had been stored there since 1970. A few are on display in small towns, and at least one is privately owned and rusting on a siding while the owner figures out what to do with it."  Case closed.

HONORING THE PAUPERS.

The most direct drive from DeKalb to the Fox Cities of Wisconsin or Green Bay follows generally the old Northern Illinois Railroad to Belvidere, thence cross country through Clinton Junction to the east side of Janesville, there picking up the ancestral Galena and Chicago Union line by way of Watertown, Clyman Junction, Juneau, and Waupun, where it's either U.S. 151 to Fond du Lac or again generally following an old Milwaukee Road line into Oshkosh.  That routing is country driving through Illinois, one of Wisconsin's Cheddarbahnen from Janesville to just south of Juneau, and the stretch of state highway 26 between 151 at Waupun and Interstate 41 at Oshkosh is a popular truckers bypass as well as home to a notorious speed trap in Rosendale.

The country driving between Juneau and Waupun has a number of things to provoke thought.  My first time trying that routing, I saw what looked like a small military cemetery on the north edge of Juneau.

Although the markers had that institutional sameness, up close they were different, and the grounds were in rough shape compared to what I've seen of military cemeteries.  The old Galena and Chicago right of way is behind the trees east of the road.  Yes, dear reader, what became the Chicago and North Western got to the Fox Cities the long way around first.

MAKE KALININGRAD KÖNIGSBERG AGAIN!

Last fall, it was all in fun.

The Czechs were tweaking the Russians at the time.

Now come some cheeky Czechs also cracking wise.  "A petition is now circulating to pry Kaliningrad from Russia’s hands, with one Russian news site reportedly taking the suggestion seriously."

For now it's all in fun, but is poking a hungry bear wise?  "'After a successful referendum, 97.9% of Kaliningrad residents decided to merge with the Czech Republic and rename Kaliningrad to Královec,' the account tweeted."

The Poles didn't even bother with a referendum.  "The city once known as Königsberg is now Krolewiec, at least in Polish government documents."  Outside the Beltway's James Joyner doesn't see anything of import here.  "Renaming a city in another country, though, just seems silly—almost as silly as the Russians caring what the Poles call Kaliningrad."  Will the Czechs accept the Polish spelling, or insist on their own?

A FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL WEEKEND.

The story, and the mayor's lament, sound familiar.

[The mayor] said young criminals were carrying out their acts without any fear of the consequences.

"It has been described as real-life Grand Theft Auto. These kids can effectively do whatever they want with no fear of consequence."

The system of juvenile detention was unable to rehabilitate young offenders, [he] said.

"If we are going to put a child into juvenile detention - and no one wants to see that but at times it is necessary - they have to fix the environment that it comes from.

"That is the parents and the grandparents as well. They need to be looked after so everyone is educated.

"A we need more police on the ground and we need safe places for these children to go."

That could be a dispatch from Chicago or Philadelphia or Kenosha on a bad day, but it's not.

THE ULTIMATE PRIVILEGE CHECK.

I confess to enjoying a new reality show, Special Forces, in which real veterans of special operations put assorted celebrities, most of whom are a little too old for ordinary boot camp, through a few drills.  It's cathartic, in particular, to hear lines like "You can go back to your luxurious houses and your Instagram followers and feel sorry for yourself" or "Your personal assistant isn't here to help out."  And yes, if you neglect to keep your water bottle (no longer a canteen?) topped off or put your gear in the pack without first putting it in waterproof bags, there are consequences.