asrabkin: (Default)
ASR ([personal profile] asrabkin) wrote2017-08-21 11:38 am
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Nebraska and the eclipse

Sophie and I are in Lincoln, Nebraska. We got here this past Friday and have been visiting with Kate-my-ex and her partner Brett -- they are both faculty at Doane university, a small liberal arts college.

This weekend, we went to the Strategic Air Power museum (formerly the SAC museum). It was an interesting collection. They have a lot of airplanes -- including a B52 and a B-36, which normally don't fit in museums. They have a few interesting artifacts -- the original Red Phone, Curtis LeMay's desk, etc. What they don't have is a coherent story or much in the way of description of the life and work of SAC -- nothing about how things worked or what people did all day, or much about the doctrine and technology underpinning the aircraft. I thought it was worth visiting but if you don't know a fair bit about what you're seeing it might be disappointing.

In astronomical news, the moon is about to occult the sun. (AKA, the Great American solar eclipse is about to start!) Weather conditions are moderate -- some light clouds but the sun is shining through them okay. So we should see quite a bit if things get no worse in the next 90 minutes.
diapasoun: (Default)

[personal profile] diapasoun 2017-08-22 04:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Did you get to see much interesting with the eclipse?

That always seems like a big problem with museums: seeing them as a haphazard collection of Stuff(TM), instead of a space that tells a story with objects....