Because the AP says so blog.

Page-one headline of the Tribune today, exactly as written: UN blesses U.S. plan to shift power to Iraq. I’ve seen this style usage before in this newspaper, and it makes me wonder -- why no periods for UN but periods for U.S.? Maybe the issue of periods for the United Nations was the subject of months of heated debate, culminating in a resolution in the General Assembly banning the use of periods in the abbreviation, which it called a “neocolonial practice.” Then the Tribune, in the spirit of international cooperation and harmony, decided to go along with the UN usage.

More likely, it reflects a mandate of the AP Stylebook. My copy is in my office, so I can’t look it up just now, but I suspect that’s the reason. AP says periods for U.S., none for UN. If so, it’s an example of a foolish consistency on the part of the Tribune. It looks silly in that head. Devotion to the AP way of doing things can reach silly levels among some editors.

I can also report that (and this will be the last time I mention it) according to today’s paper, that about 1000 people showed up at the Adler Planetarium yesterday morning to see the Transit of Venus. I figure that represents the hard-core astro-buffs. Lazy duffers like myself, who knew about the event, but didn’t go, probably represented 100 times as many people in the metro area. If that assumption is true -- and it’s only speculation -- that would mean 100,000 people out of 9.1 million or so in the metro area understood what was going on, celestially speaking. Nice to be part of a knowledgeable elite, especially if you don’t have to get out of bed early to be part of it.

Summertime, and the blogging is easy.

Not really, since it’s late and the day was entirely too busy. My magazine has disappeared, but I still have plenty to do in the trade journalism mills. Still, it’s better, much better, than looking for a job.

I’d say that the odds are slim that I’ll see the Transit of Venus tomorrow. Since I’m not equipped for it here at home, I’d have to get up at about four a.m., drive downtown to the Adler Planetarium, and use their equipment. Other people will be doing this, though I’d be surprised if vast numbers, or even a small crowd, will be on the shore of Lake Michigan to witness the event. Chicago’s position on the Earth means that the Transit will be about four-fifths done by the time the Sun rises tomorrow.

I tell myself I should go. Capt. Cook and his men went all the way around the world in wooden ships to see the Transit. But they were made of sterner stuff, for sure. Not only that, they got shore leave in Tahiti. I’d just have to go to my office after it was over.

Declining Winter blog.

Warm(ish) weather ahead. Here we are at the butt end of February, and I hear that temps on Saturday and Sunday -- when they matter the most -- will be in the 50s F. Winter, of course, isn't remotely over. It's in a declining mode, and this weekend might represent protospring, but winter will be back, maybe with a vengeance. One of the wickedest ice and snow storms I remember here in Chicago was in early March 1998, and all the people I know who grew up here have stories about Easter-season snows. But at least snow at this time of year has a way disappearing in a few days.

Even now there's little snow on the ground. Melted snow in February leaves ugliness in its wake. Brown grass, mud, bare trees, naked bushes, exposed and blowing garbage, plastic bags and dog turds.

Political signs are sprouting near the roads like the dandelions we're going to get in about two months (the Illinois primary is in the middle of March). The first one I saw along my route, at the beginning of the week, campaigns for a man running for a subcircuit judgeship here in Cook County. Maybe this year I'll be a good Citizen of the Republic and educate myself about the candidates for these too-important minor offices. (Pause.) Nah.

Walked home late several times this week, well after dark. Not too cold, but the sky still has that winter clarity -- and excellent winter constellations -- Orion, Canis Major/Minor, Taurus, etc. Ursa Major and Cassiopeia in opposition, defending their turf on either side of Polaris. Plus a waxing crescent Moon, Venus as the Evening Star, and I think Jupiter off to the east. Or maybe it's a slow-moving UFO. According to a planetarium show I attended years ago, the UFO Jimmy Carter supposedly saw was actually Venus. If you stare at a bright celestial object long enough, it looks like it's moving, a little. This optical illusion you can confirm by, well, staring at a bright celestial object long enough.

The sky is good for inspiring idle speculation, though most people don't need any help in that regard. But it can make you think along certain lines. Or not. Once I saw a Gahan Wilson (I think it was him) one-panel cartoon featuring a gnarled old man standing on a balcony in front of a brilliant nighttime sky. "Oh, yeah?" he said, looking up at the sky. "You don't make me feel insignificant."

Cernan Space Blog.

Last Thursday, Lilly went on a field trip with her Montessori class to the Cernan Space Center, which is part of Triton College in River Grove, Illinois, which is northeast of where we live. I told her she had been there before, and she denied it — the name certainly didn’t mean anything to her. But afterwards she said she did remember it.

It was a long time ago for her — last fall. We went because I had read about it, but had never been. It has a small collection of items on display, including an Apollo test capsule (all the real capsules are in bigger-budget museums, I’m sure) and one of Eugene Cernan's space suits, from Apollo X; he was also on Apollo XVII, and walked on the Moon. He grew up in the vicinity of River Grove, and so got his name affixed to the facility, as a hometown astronaut.

It's a nice little planetarium, with stadium seating. The older ones don't have that, making viewers crane their necks sometimes. The show we saw that afternoon was for children, ages 3-8 supposedly, and it wasn't bad. Lilly seemed to like it, especially the pictures of the nine planets. Previously, I had encouraged her to draw pictures of the planets, with some success. Pluto is still a planet, according to Triton College. Good deal.

From about 1970 to about 1974 I went to the planetarium at San Antonio College once a month. Instead of a taped presentation, those were narrated live — all sorts of space subjects, including annual favorites like “What Was the Star of Bethlehem?” and shows with local color, “The Sky on the Night the Alamo Fell.” In those days, they didn't have any shows for small fry. No kids under six allowed, I remember. If you were an older kid, you went in and watched the same show as the adults.

Planetariums (-ia) are another venue that shouldn’t be limited to youthful audiences. While I don’t visit one every month any more (though I might start again someday, to take my daughters), I occasionally still visit them, especially when I’m in another town. Unfortunately, the quality of the scripts often doesn’t live up to the marvel of the planetarium itself, with its blank dome enlivened by pinpoints of light from a pockmarked machine that looks like no other kind of machine.

One especially bad show I recall was years ago in Memphis. “There are many neat things in the sky,” was the theme of the show, “and we’re going to talk about them more or less at random. And we’re going to assume you don’t know a damn thing about astronomy.”

In Hong Kong, on the other hand, I saw a terrific show that didn’t involve astronomy at all. It was about putting out the Kuwait oil well fires in 1991, presented at the Star Theatre of the Hong Kong Space Museum, located prominently at the southern tip of Kowloon. An overhead dome works well for that story: blazing wells all around you, across a wide spread of desert. But the scriptwriter did more than make a spectacle out it. There was narration and pics of the Gulf War leading up to the Iraqi arson, and then an intelligent discussion of how the engineers went about capping these wells, and how they did it faster than anticipated, and what some of the lingering environmental unknowns were.

It was in English, by the way; shows alternated between English and Cantonese, but there were earplugs that offered other languages as well, such as Mandarin and Japanese. It was a fine planetarium all around.