It’s official, this year Ramadan begins on Thursday, June 18 — or, if I understand it correctly, when the crescent moon is sighted on Wednesday evening, the exact timing of which varies by location. Observant Muslims will abstain from eating or drinking from sunrise (3:45am here on Eastern Daylight Time) until sunset (8:31pm).
Best wishes to those in the Balloon Juice community who observe this month (and please excuse me if I’ve made any inadvertant errors here)!
***********
Apart from preparations/observance, what’s on the agenda for the day?
xenos
No fasting for me, but best regards to those who do. Ramadan during midsummer, when above the 50th parallel, can’t be easy.
On a related note, is there a good explanation in English on the nets regarding great circle routes when calculating how to pray toward Mecca? I had friends in Canada who would pray to the northeast, which is not intuitive.
Cervantes
Droll!
MattF
@xenos: My guess is that you need a map centered on Mecca, probably a (conformal) stereographic projection. Then a straight line from some point to Mecca will be an arc of a great circle, and you can figure out the angle from the map.
satby
Thanks for the top video Anne Laurie, I’m going to use it to wish several friends Happy Ramadan on FB.
We all used to fast in one small office I worked at so that it would be a bit easier on one colleague, but that wasn’t a great hardship on the rest of us because it was only work hours. Just from that small experience I have a lot of respect for the observant who follow the fast, because it’s tough. Though I hear the dinners after sundown are really something.
Schlemazel
There is a Middle Eastern restaurant that we eat at near us and every year the erect a big tent in most of their parking lot along with several charcoal grills to handle the post sundown traffic they get. They are open their regular hours which must make fasting even more difficult for the people working there, but the place does not really get hopping till dark during Ramadan.
gbbalto
@xenos: Just that any flat map will be distorted. A globe and a piece of string is all you need…
ThresherK
On the whole Rachel Dolezal contretemps:
Mike Huckabee infamously said “In high school, I’d maybe say ‘coach, I’m feeling my feminine side today” to shower in the girls’ locker room”. This is not an outlier, and comes from a political faction who understands little about trans people and care even less.
Who’ll be the first respectable (sic) right-winger to say “After that white woman getting all these great things from pretending to be black, I’d maybe have put on blackface to drink from the Coloreds-only water fountain*”?
(*My first impulse was “sign up for all that welfare”. Let me know if my twisted sense of humor has gone too far, even for this site.)
Steeplejack
@xenos:
Dunno about the calculations, but there are Mecca (Qibla) compass applications available for iPhone and Android that orient the faithful for prayers. Don’t see why those wouldn’t work.
OzarkHillbilly
Glug glug…. The National Weather Service:
WAVES OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS ARE EXPECTED TO OCCUR ACROSS THE WATCH AREA THROUGH FRIDAY DUE TO A VERY MOIST AIR MASS IN PLACE ACROSS THE REGION…A STALLED FRONT AND THE REMNANTS OF TROPICAL STORM BILL. THESE THUNDERSTORMS ARE EXPECTED TO BE VERY EFFICIENT RAINFALL PRODUCERS WITH POTENTIALLY EXTENSIVE FLOODING. WIDESPREAD RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF 4 TO 7 INCHES CAN BE EXPECTED THROUGH LATE FRIDAY AFTERNOON WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS.
The ground is already saturated from daily rains going back to last week. I just took a gander at my rain gauge: 3 1/2 inches last night. I feel like Noah.
PurpleGirl
I once asked a Muslim man I worked with “why don’t the people who kept using and developing al-gebra and kept astronomical records when Europe stopped, not use those tools for calculating when the crescent moon would happen.” His answer to me was “that by tying Ramadan to the sighting of the crescent moon, they could delay it’s start by a day or so and thus delay the fast.”
WereBear
@ThresherK: The whole right wing attitude towards victims of oppression is so dismissive and cruel. Huckabee himself had no interest at all in the victims of the recent Duggar scandal. All his sympathy was with the perpetrator.
And it’s fine for him, isn’t it? At the top of the rich/white/male pile as he is? All you people complaining should just be rich/white/male too!
So I just don’t take them very seriously. They’re pretty damn scummy.
Steeplejack
I am not a Muslim, but I am getting into the almanac-obsessive geezer stage of life, and something seemed screwy about the sunrise (Suhoor) times on that chart from RamadanMonth.com linked above. Sunrise in New York was at 5:25 today, so the 3:45 Suhoor time given for tomorrow seemed suspect. I looked at another site and found that 3:45 is the time for Fajr, the beginning of morning prayers. Those run until Suhoor (sunrise)—given as 5:24 for New York tomorrow—and I’m sure no one eats during prayers. Fajr must be calculated in some specifically religious way, because it doesn’t match up, as I thought it might, with the beginning of astronomical twilight, which is at 3:19 a.m. tomorrow in New York.
I await illumination from our Muslim friend Amir Khalid. (Apologies if that sounds too Colbertian.)
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Just the opposite here. Hot and dry and no change, although we might have thunderstorms on Friday. Since I laid sod, I have to water and we are on a tiered system.
raven
@JPL: They did backfill our foundation, scaped the yard and put down grass seed. We can get a waiver from the city for watering a new lawn. Maybe you should check.
WereBear
Ramadan Kareem! to all our Muslim friends.
Baud
@WereBear:
Ditto.
Baud
@raven:
Georgia has water use controls?
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: The next 5 days have rain and thunderstorms here too. Friday has the lowest probability, but still scattered storms. I feel like I’m getting moldy.
But the humidity dropped with the temperature a bit, so that’s something.
JPL
@Baud: The state has an odd/even system. I’m not sure about the rest of the state but Fulton Cty has a tiered billing system that kicks in late spring. It’s easy to go from 20 a month to 100 a month or higher when you water outside a lot.
I am getting up early in order to water when it’s still dark.
raven
@Baud: Oh big time. We’ve had some serious drought years and they have been in place for a while.
ATLANTA | Five years after Georgia legislators enacted the Water Stewardship Act in the midst of the last major drought, the agency tasked with implementing it is releasing regulations, and some industries warn they could have major economic consequences.
Environmentalists are hailing them as an overdue tool for encouraging conservation of a valuable resource.
There are water wars with Florida and Alabama.
MattF
@Steeplejack: FYI, the ‘official’ definition of sunrise and sunset (according to the “Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac,” which is the 700-page tome from which all such questions are answered)
WereBear
@MattF: Oh, that’s cleared things right up!
/snark
Steeplejack
@MattF:
Thanks, but that was not the issue. I am aware of all almanac traditions! The question is how the almanac-y stuff relates to Muslim observances.
MattF
@WereBear: There’s also a section on the ‘Visibility of the Crescent Moon’, that notes that “under optimal conditions the crescent moon is sighted 15.4 hours after the astronomical new moon.” With a reference to an article in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Volume 29, pages 511-523.
Baud
@JPL: @raven:
Didn’t know that. It always seems like you’re getting pummeled with storms.
JPL
@Baud: The weather pattern shifted recently and the temps are in the high nineties with no end in sight. I think the average is suppose to be 89.
WereBear
@MattF: I think the simpler the better in terms of religious observance. After all, you need to cover the requirements of folks who might not have an astronomer handy.
Baud
@JPL:
Senator Inhofe is not impressed.
JPL
@raven: What type of seed? I haven’t had much luck with seed. The sod in back is starting to root and grow so I can water every other day soon. Unfortunately, the patches in front are taking longer. I can probably get a waiver but I’m taking my chances.
MattF
@Baud: Senator Snowball had no comment.
PurpleGirl
@WereBear: Hence the answer I got from my Muslim co-worker… sighting is sighting and if the skies are cloudy/overcast/whatever, you don’t start Ramadan until you SEE the crescent moon.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
I’m sorry, but that’s waaay beyond my technical knowledge.
raven
@JPL: Ugh, my wife asked me the same thing. The dude told me but I forgot. We don’t have much choice since about half of the area is going to be underfoot whenever they start back up.
raven
@Baud: Shockingly these idiots are taking the long view. Lake Lanier supplies metro Atlanta and is the headwaters for Chattahoochee, Flint, and Apalachicola basin and it was really close to being empty a few years back.
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
The simple question: when do you start fasting in the morning (if you do)?
Amir Khalid
@PurpleGirl: That’s funny. The devout people I know don’t see anything to gain by delaying the onset of Ramadhan. My own opinion has always been that calculating the date in advance makes more sense than sighting, which is always subject to on-the-ground weather issues. Nowadays, the astronomers can do the calculation well in advance.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
As the beginning of the time window for dawn prayers.
Baud
@PurpleGirl:
How long before wingnuts propose to blow up the moon in order to stop Sharia law?
OzarkHillbilly
The vast Left Wing Conspiracy claims another victim:
Colt Defense, America’s best-known gun maker files for bankruptcy protection
Today Colt*, tomorrow the NRA.
*Sadly, this is just a restructuring of balance sheets, not the end of manufacturing of Bushmasters and other such useless high capacity firearms
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
So what time is that for Kuala Lumpur?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
How the hell does one not make a profit making guns in this day and age?
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Best wishes to you, Amir.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Some of your fellow Missourians shared a campsite with my kids out in Yosemite and when they left, hooked my kids up with a ton of food and some wine. They also whispered how nice it was to spend time with liberals. Do you have to whisper such things in MO? Anyway, my son was very grateful and texted me that fried spam on a cold morning is delicious. I think food always tastes better when you’re camping.
I think they’re having a great time hiking during the day and then hanging out by the fire at night playing music.
Patricia Kayden
@ThresherK: I’m curious as to what great things Ms. Dolezal got from pretending to be Black. I need to get those things myself as an actual Black woman.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: The guns have been very profitable. My quick scan told me it was other issues.
bemused
When the Jeb Bush-Jimmy Fallon slow jam clip was aired on msnbc last evening, I had to wonder if Jeb and his team knew the master debator joke was in the script and approved it.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense:
Me? I’m the guy with “Black Lives Matter” on the back of his truck.(still got all my glass). I’m the guy who shuts down gun nut conversations in barber shops with inconvenient facts. (‘You know how long it takes me to change a clip?’ he asks. ‘Long enough to disarm Jared Loughner.’ I reply) I turn down invitations to church. I….
Needless to say, I don’t have many friends out here, people just kind of leave me alone.
OzarkHillbilly
How long before John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Tom Cotton introduce legislation for building one of these here?
Vladimir Putin opens Russian ‘military Disneyland’ Patriot Park
Chris
@Steeplejack:
So blind people don’t have to fast AT ALL! Seems a fair compensation for being blind.
I love loopholes.
Chris
@Baud:
“That’s no moon…”
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: Inside a national park, I guess. Make use of all the empty space that’s now taken up by scenery and wildlife.
Steeplejack
@Chris:
Hey, it’s PurpleGirl raising the “visual sighting” angle, not me.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: Now, see, that’s what I thought. There are tools to do the calculations for any point of time and place. And since summer days are so long, that when Ramadan fell in the summer, you’d not want to delay the fasting but to get into the month and just do it. I have/had no way of knowing if the fellow (he was the organization’s chief financial officer) was joking or not but he seemed serious. {shrugs}
ThresherK (GPad)
@Patricia Kayden: I have no idea what she gained. The TWiB episode talks a lot about how someone might delude themselves into doing this.
I’m just trying to eyepoke the conservative waaaahmbulance that says, as of late, that PCness has mades straight white males (usually Christian, often of means) into the only persecuted class in America.
chopper
@WereBear:
how’s “i know it when i see it”?
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Want me to get their names? Sounds like y’all could use a nice meet up.
Also, too you must be a big guy because I could never get away with saying those things.
rikyrah
from TOD:
http://theobamadiary.com/2015/06/16/capitalism-tops-even-racism-in-this-racist-ass-country/
MomSense
@rikyrah:
I was so pissed when I read what Sanders said in that interview. He can kiss my white working class ass.
Germy Shoemangler
Announcing an announcement!
Cobert channels Trump
MattF
@rikyrah: It’s been so long since actual left-wing ideology has leaked into public discourse that it took me a moment to recover. Yeah, I guess Sanders thinks that once you’ve ‘fixed’ capitalism, racism will go away by itself. Not true, IMO, but still, hearing leftist reasoning expounded in public is worth noting.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense:
I’m not, at 5-8, 150 was my fighting weight. I’ve packed on a few more lbs since I had to stop working (OK OK, I’m fat- 190). I have been told that I can be an intimidating person, but I’m not a ‘tough guy’ (I have known some tough mfer’s, I’m not one) so I’m at a loss what that is about.
You’d be surprised at the things a woman can do and say that a man would get shot for. Despite what you read on line, there is a line that the vast majority of the male population won’t cross. I once watched a 5-2 105 lb women fillet a 6-2 210 lb man out in the middle of the woods like she would a 4th grader in one of her classes, and he reacted just as meekly as that 4th grader would.
Cervantes
@rikyrah, quoting:
Still not seeing it.
Cervantes
@Patricia Kayden:
Never met her.
Do you think it’s possible she is ill in some way and that the self-identification met some sort of deep and unfulfilled psychic need? Or does all this sound like hokum?
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t know about that when it comes to gun fetishists. I made a perfectly reasonable comment about background checks and then had weeks of trucks with Gadsen flag stickers doing drive bys.
Decided not to say anything else until I move to a godless, urban center.
muddy
@Patricia Kayden: She got a better looking, more flattering hairstyle. Which, ironically, probably took a lot of upkeep to make it do something it was not born to do.
muddy
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t know about that. I’ve had issues with a couple of neighbors and the cops who I called out to help me where they were all bullying me in a serious way – I know good and well that if a man lived in this house that shit would not have happened.
My sister often sighs over how her husband doesn’t do this or that, I said that sitting there breathing he was keeping her from having men scream into her face.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense:YMMV, but they say that “silence is golden”. ;-) There are things I haven’t done or said simply because of what I know some of those A-holes are capable of putting my wife thru. She doesn’t need that.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: @muddy:
I read OzarkHillbilly’s comment and thought “tell that to MomSense and muddy!” It only took two/four more comments, respectively, to get to your replies.
OzarkHillbilly
@muddy: As a rule, cops don’t like getting involved in neighbor to neighbor disputes. They look at it as “he said he said she said” and just want nothing to do with it. My business rep had to shoot a guy because cops wouldn’t do what they should have from the beginning (both Jim and his wife got shot in that incident) There are assholes in the world, and most people just want them to go away.
I’ve got no good ideas for you, just the standard ones you’ve already heard a dozen times before.
muddy
@WaterGirl: My manner is very much like my father’s. People always found him a little curmudgeonly but very charming, and also to be respected and taken seriously. I get people saying I am being a bitch and an overly demanding nutjob for the exact same speech and behavior.
It’s bullshit.
My son is in his 30’s, he is treated the way my father was. But he SO gets it, because he saw that stuff happen all the time to me when he was a little kid and it was just the 2 of us. If he lived nearby there would be no way these horrible neighbors did this shit to me. Nor even the cops.
I think a lot of times decent men don’t really get this, as the shitty ones dial it back in their presence. It’s like thinking getting catcalled is about an uninvited compliment, when generally it is really disgusting and often kind of threatening.
You don’t hear/see that? It’s because they don’t do it in front of you, it’s not that it doesn’t happen.
OzarkHillbilly
@muddy:
To which my oldest sis always said, “Yes I am. Is that a problem?”
Pogonip
Have a happy, Amir! And anyone else concerne!
LongHairedWeirdo
If I heard correctly, “fast” isn’t the entire thing here. I’ve seen references that suggest that you’re not supposed to drink even water during the Ramadan fast, and that if you’re just dried-the-hell-out, and take a drink, you’re supposed to make up the day later. (I wonder if that means you can also eat as well, since the fast is broken, or are you still supposed to maintain all the discipline you can?)
It’s a pretty heavy load they undertake.
WaterGirl
@muddy: You are so right. About all of it.
muddy
@OzarkHillbilly: Cops were quite happy to intervene – against me.
This last time a cop I hadn’t seen before came out, he was fine and behaved professionally. Altho on this occasion I said when I called up that I had 6 witnesses, and 2 of them were men. Who knows how it would have gone if it were just me. I’m hoping he has replaced one of the other assholes.
One set of bad neighbors is gone. The other is supposed to be gone on 7-16. Many on the street are just holding their breath waiting for the day.
ruemara
@Cervantes: that’s too bad. Because it’s there.
PurpleGirl
OT — Raven: What is the little poem you often post when someone has lost a pet? I’d google it for myself if I could remember some of the exact words. Thanks in advance for your response.
OzarkHillbilly
@muddy:
Heh. I was involved in a situation with my ex and her current husband, it involved a lot of anonymous threatening phone calls, (as well as some not so anonymous threats) etc which I dutifully reported to the cops just so I’d have a record of it all. At one point I became privy to some info concerning my ex, drugs, and my youngest son, and being the evil ex I was unsure how to proceed with the info. So I went to the local chief of police who had been at least sympathetic to my situation, and asked the best way to proceed. He told me what he thought I should do.
15 mins later I got a phone message from my ex’s husband threatening my parents with all kinds of evil dastardly deeds. He was so stupid he would knowingly record his threats to me.
Anyway, I didn’t bother with the cops after that.
WaterGirl
@muddy: You just know when you’re being treated differently because you’re female and I’m not sure it’s possible to really explain why or how. But it’s maddening!
So glad your icky/bad/creepy neighbors will be gone. Just one more month… Hopefully the stress of moving won’t have them decide to go out in style!
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl:
We who choose to surround ourselves
with lives even more temporary than our
own, live within a fragile circle;
easily and often breached.
Unable to accept its awful gaps,
we would still live no other way.
We cherish memory as the only
certain immortality, never fully
understanding the necessary plan.
— Irving Townsend
Germy Shoemangler
@muddy: How were your neighbors bad? What did they do?
Sorry if I’m making you repeat the details, I haven’t read previous threads where you discussed them.
muddy
@Germy Shoemangler: To make a very long story short, threatened to kill my dogs.
Germy Shoemangler
@muddy: why?
Brachiator
@MattF:
Is Sanders a “capitalism is the root of all evil” kind of guy?
muddy
1st neighbor got in trouble for abusing their dog, I reported it after not getting anywhere talking to them. I don’t know whether they assumed I called then, or if the cops told them. They went on abusing the dog. I went and gave it water one day, and they told the cops I tried to steal their dog. I did not.
Now I am on psycho shit-list. One of my dogs jumped the fence, and when I was pursuing her (not on their property) they went ape-shit because I was the dog law-breaker now (leash law). Threatened to kill my dog, because all these dog problems going on for months past were due to my loose dog now.
Asshole has a fake deer in the yard to practice with a bow. Only it has a point for a head on top of the neck because he doesn’t shoot at it where you would to hunt (behind front leg), but rather shot the head off in bits. Psycho practice not hunting practice. After the threats, cop says to me, “They say they don’t have any weapons.” Well alrighty then, “they say”.
When he pulls up, cop starts off bellowing at me to shut my mouth and go inside my house. I’m still getting the dog, so I don’t. I’m not yelling at anyone, there is nothing to “shut up”. I was having trouble breathing etc because I have heart failure, I am purple and gasping in the street. Defibrillator clearly visible. Now the cop changes his mind and says I am not to go inside. I tell the cop I need to sit down on the steps in the shade. I head to my front steps 20 ft away. Cop gets angry that I have turned my back to him, says No, I can’t go sit down. I tell him my issue and say I really need to sit so I can listen properly. He says I am having no problem talking, am I? So I sat down on the pavement. He didn’t like that either.
That was the first episode with the 1st asshole. This other dick down the street started up once he had seen it go down a few times like this, I guess he knew it would work for him too. And it did. So many more details and stories, a couple of years worth.
muddy
@Brachiator: I’ve been voting for him for decades and that has never been my impression.
Germy Shoemangler
@muddy: How horrible! Well, good thing they’re moving. Maybe some pacifist unitarians will move in. That’d be a good replacement.
muddy
@Germy Shoemangler: The 1st psycho house was empty for a year, and just last week sold to a young family with 2 little kids and a baby. Nice sounds coming across the street now!
Although my older dog has been a little concerned over a baby crying. “Mom! The baby! Mom! Go help the baby!” He has had to learn that babies just cry sometimes. I tried to explain to him that babies cry like he barks, it’s their voice. He listened attentively but I don’t know if got it. ;-)
Perhaps you would like this old Balloon Juice post concerning pets. You can see why I laughed when they said I was trying to steal their dog – if I had meant to steal it, they would not have known I was involved. But I tried to be civilized and talk to them and the popo. That was my mistake.
PurpleGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: Thank you for this. I want to post it on the FB page of a cat shelter I support in NE Connecticut. Either the shelter or one of its fosters have lost kittens recently — often an abandoned kitten someone has found — and I hope this will make a bunch of people feel better.
fuckwit
Kareem? Why not Curry?
Cervantes
@ruemara:
Whatever evidence you see that indicates Bernie Sanders is a white supremacist, it has eluded me for decades.
If it matters, show me. If not, then so be it.