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On July 27, the moon is set to glide through Earth's shadow to create a red total lunar eclipse for one hour and 43 minutes -- the longest such eclipse of the young century. Viewers in the United States will have to watch the eclipse online as they're on the wrong side of the world. "Folks in western Africa, part of Europe, the Middle East and India will only have to look up to the sky to catch the deep-copper-toned totality in person," reports The Washington Post. From the report: "What makes the upcoming one special is that it occurs at nearly the same time as the year's second-most-distant lunar apogee (the monthly moment when the moon is most distant from Earth) and the moon passes almost smack through the center of Earth's shadow," astronomer Geoff Chester of the Naval Observatory said. He continued: "This will make it the longest-duration total lunar eclipse of the century. It's also cool that [the eclipse] occurs on the night that Mars reaches opposition, so (for people on the other side of the world) you'll have a red moon six degrees north of the Red Planet." All eclipses belong to eclipse families called saros. In this case, this eclipse is part of Saros 139, and it is No. 38 in a family of 71 that started June 10, 1351. This saros will last until July 24, 2613, per NASA. While technically this will be the longest eclipse of the century, the two previous lunar eclipses in this series -- July 16, 2000 (No. 37, Saros 139) and July 6, 1982 (No. 36, Saros 139) -- lasted longer than this one. In fact, the July 16, 2000, lunar eclipse lasted about three minutes longer. But remember, astronomers count the year 2000 as part of the last century.

Throughout the Eastern time zone, according to NASA and the U.S. Naval Observatory, the lunar eclipse (penumbral phase) starts at 1:14 p.m. and partiality occurs at 2:24 p.m. Totality starts at 3:30 p.m., with the maximum totality at 4:21 p.m. Totality will end at 5:13 p.m., and the partial eclipse ends at 6:19 p.m. Everything is over by 7:28 p.m. Unfortunately, the moon will not have risen anywhere in the United States for viewing during this window. If you're not able to watch it locally, you can tune to the Weather Channel app, the website Slooh, or TimeandDate.com. The NBC News streaming network is also showing the eclipse at 4 p.m. on July 27.

An anonymous reader writes "While living in Paris, Ben Franklin was struck by how many hours of daylight were being wasted to sleep during the summer months. He wrote an open letter to a Parisian journal lamenting the wasted expenditures on candlewax, and presented his back-of-the-quillpad estimates of the cost savings if the entire population arose an hour or two earlier. However, Franklin did not specifically mention moving the clocks ahead; instead, he suggested official means for enforcement (rationing the sale of candlewax to families) and encouragement (ringing church bells at sunrise). The clock-shifting technique which we know and love was credited to the New Zealander George Vernon Hudson, who proposed it in 1895. DST was first widely adopted by warring countries during World War I as a way of conserving coal needed for military purposes. This launched a debate over DST's usefulness that continues to the present day (particularly by people stumbling about in their bathrooms). Of course, Franklin is also associated with other questionable ideas, including bifocals, lightning rods, electric current flowing from the positive to negative terminal, leaking official documents to fan opposition, and an independent United States of America." New research suggests the daylight saving time change will lead to lower productivity tomorrow as the lost sleep makes workers more likely to slack (PDF).

SustainableJeroen writes "On Sunday morning at 08:30 local time — that's less than an hour away — the World Solar Challenge will start in Darwin, Australia. The first solar racing car and its support fleet will depart Darwin to traverse the 3000+ km to Adelaide through the Australian outback. It will be followed at two-minute intervals by 36 other racing teams, from twenty countries from all over the world. The qualification round, held on Saturday, saw Solar Team Twente secure the first starting position in the race, closely followed by Nuon Solar Team and Michigan University. The top ten times in the qualification round were within eleven seconds of each other, and while driving one lap around a race track is very different from driving 3000 km on a public motorway, it does show that the top cars are quite close in performance. With the top cars and teams being very, very close to each other, it's sure to be a very exciting race. The fastest teams are expected to reach the official finish line just outside Adelaide late Wednesday or early Thursday (local time), after which the teams will continue on for the traditional dive in the fountain at Victoria Square in Adelaide."

misof writes "Roughly a thousand teams from all around the globe have already registered for IPSC 2010, which takes place on Sunday, June 6. $3,000 in prize money (courtesy of Facebook, Inc.) is waiting for the best few of them. Participation is free and the contest is open to everybody. IPSC is what you could call a programming contest with a twist. Over the years, the problems always push the boundary and go beyond the usual stuff you see in a programming contest. For example, in past few years the contestants have had to understand how arithmetic in computers differs from that in mathematics, produce a sequence of cache requests that generates many page faults, solve a logic puzzle given as a Flash game, and recognize images to evaluate a rock-paper-scissors game."

An anonymous reader writes "Lawrence Lessig, the foundational voice of the free culture movement, will deliver a talk on fair use, politics, and online video from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You'll be able to tune in to a live webcast. The lecture by Lawrence Lessig will last 45 minutes, and will be followed by a 30 minute interactive Q & A session. The event will be moderated by Elizabeth Stark of the Open Video Alliance. Questions can be submitted using the hashtag #wireside. This is a talk about copyright in a digital age, and the role (and importance) of a doctrine like 'fair use.' Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video. As a medium, online video will be most powerful when it is fluid, like a conversation. Like the rest of the internet, online video must be designed to encourage participation, not just passive consumption. Tune in here on February 25th, 6:00pm US Eastern time (see more time zones), or check out our screening events in cities across the world."

Dolmen asks: "In few days I will live my 10.000th day. My last 'common' birthday was no fun at all, so I'm preparing something special this time. I'm wondering what special uncommon date you, as geeks, did already/plan to celebrate. What did you do for those special dates that most ignore?" Hey, this is kinda cool. Maybe I'll do something special for my 10-Gigasecond day, due to occur sometime in December, 2002. What about the rest of you?