PALO ALTO, CA - Last night I was working late at my office when I heard a radio newscaster remark that, "It will NOT be necessary to wear any form of eye protection to see tonight's lunar eclipse, as Earth's shadow will merely be blocking out the normal light reflected off the Moon."

I sat there at my desk dumbfounded, shaking my head in utter disbelief that anyone might actually be that clueless.
Later on, as the lunar eclipse was just about to occur, I went outside to have a look.

I strolled down the sidewalk and sat on the small window ledge of a gallery, near the corner of my block. The moon was clearly visible in the east. Earth's shadow was just beginning to make it's way slowly across the moon, darkening and warming the bright and cool light to a deep red. The curvature of our planet's shadow falling across the lunar surface also rendered it much more dimensionally spherical than its normal limn. It looked way cool as it hung there like a drop of blood in the night sky.

Every now and then a pedestrian would stop to ask what I was staring at.

"Oh yeah, that Moon thing's tonight, huh?" they would say, before walking on. A couple of young women, on their way to one of the nearby bars, ended up sitting down beside me to watch. Sure enough, before long one of them spoke up to ask in a concerned voice if it was really safe to look directly at it.

I responded dryly, "You've probably heard experts repeatedly warn against staring directly at the Moon."

Several passersby who stopped only long enough to glance up at it commented on how "slow and boring" it all was.

Watching this play out over about a half an hour I couldn't help but think how out-of step with the times such sublime spectacles of nature have become.. After all, this type of homemade phenomenon lacks the requisite flying logos, corporate sponsorship breaks, and overly dramatic musical accompanyment that the Nintendo generation's short attention spans demand. Our ancient ancestors were evidently awed by such goings on in the sky. Frightened too, though probably not due to fear of possible retinal damage. Nowadays the poor ol' Moon simply gets dissed for lacking production values.

Perhaps if the Moon had recently floated a successful IPO, primeslotted a memorable shockmercial, or even argued politics nightly with the more conservative Mars, it might have a better shot at gaining back some of its lost viewer share. That, or maybe it could simply offer to make one of its attention deficit viewers an instant millionaire...

- Jim Leftwich, Orbit Interaction