Tuesday, March 24, 2009
You say Orion, I say "OAR-ee-on"
Power Line, with an assist from Iowahawk, has some great fun with Barack Obama's poor knowledge of the constellations. Don't miss the linked video if you have not seen it already.
I do have a question, though: Is Orion visible, or easily visible, from Hawaii? I did a little hunting around for star charts but could not find one that proved to me that Orion was prominent in Hawaii (which is fairly close to the equator). My guess is that it hovers around the horizon in the boreal winter and therefore might not dominate the sky the way it does in, say, Minnesota or Iowa.
And I'm fairly sure Orion is not visible from Indonesia.
Point is, you tend to learn these things at a certain age. If I had gotten to college without having spent hours gazing at the Adirondack sky while my grandmother pointed out constellations, I might not know about Oareeon either.
MORE: An astrophysicist corrects me in the comments, proving that I have no idea how to read a star chart. Orion is visible in Indonesia and Hawaii. Sometimes I marvel at the impressive and varied skills of the TH readership. As a group, I am quite sure I would prefer you guys running the country to the crowd we have, the Harvard faculty, or the first 10,000 names in the Boston phonebook.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
23 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Mar 24, 01:55:00 AM:
Hard to believe I'm defending the guy, but: we all know a few words which we have no idea how to pronounce correctly, for the simple reason that we've only ever encountered them in print, we've never heard anybody actually say them. Bay-nul or bah-nahl? Rib-buld or rye-bald? You can think of a couple.
By 
Stephen, at
Tue Mar 24, 02:13:00 AM:
At the school that BHO attended, they make you memorize the tongue-twisting names of Hawaiian royalty, for example Kaahumanu(wife of King Kamehameha I)and Liliuokalani (last queen of Hawaii who composed "Aloha Oe"). Hawaiian-educated children are taught to smoothly say "humuhumunukunukuapuaa", the fish with a name longer than its body, but never learn the constellations familiar to Mainlanders. So, haole boys, condescend all you like. Bet you'd stumble over a few street names when you visit Oahu.
That said, Punahou students do have to read the Odyssey, in which Orion makes an appearance. And one of my favorite movies of the last ten years was Men In Black, in which "Orion's belt" was the MacGuffin. But I guess neither made an impression on our President.
By Unknown, at
Tue Mar 24, 02:51:00 AM:
Orion is close to the celestial equator and is visible from both the North and South Hemispheres: I personally have observed Orion from telescopes on the Big Island of Hawaii, AND in Chile, which is much further south than Indonesia.
Call me an astronomy geek (Princeton Physics '76).
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Mar 24, 08:21:00 AM:
Someone claiming to have a degree from Harvard should have encountered the word Orion at some point in their life and learned it.
This is also a president who has talked about going back to the moon and to mars. Surely a NASA briefing along the way would have mentioned Orion/Ares.
By , at
Tue Mar 24, 09:57:00 AM:
If it were Bush, they'd be all over him for it, and for giggling his 'gallows humor' about the economy, or the quip about the Special Olympics.
He's human, and bound to make mistakes and I have a hard time faulting him for the list above, as I could easily see myself make the same mistakes.
But no one is walking around saying I'm the smartest suavest guy on the this big ball either.
FWIW, I couldn't pick three constellations out in the best night sky.
By GreenmanTim, at
Tue Mar 24, 09:58:00 AM:
Orion, like all of those northern constellations visible in the southern hemisphere, appears to be standing on his head when viewed from those latitudes. Incidently, the pointer stars of the Big Dipper, which lies quite low on the horizon when it is visible from around the Tropic of Capricorn from which vantage point I have viewed it, send the stargazer down below the curve of the Earth in a fruitless quest for Polaris...
You need dark skies, a good mentor or a motivated interest in self education to grow up stargazing. Most of us, regardless of education or background, have seldom never seen the sky in its unecumbered glory. For that, you need remote places without lights or clouds.
By , at
Tue Mar 24, 10:31:00 AM:
If he had watched Men in Black, he would have known how to pronounce Orion.
By Georg Felis, at
Tue Mar 24, 11:37:00 AM:
If we run the country, does that mean we can quit paying taxes? That seems to be a pre-req now....
By , at
Tue Mar 24, 11:45:00 AM:
When I went outside to look at Orion last night I saw a constellation just above it that looked like a bus. Never noticed it before.
By , at
Tue Mar 24, 01:06:00 PM:
Dan Quayle was ridiculed forever for spelling the English version of potato"e". Dubya for his enunciation of nuclear. Everyone should give Bambi another pass and praise his magnificant education and intelligence!!! So educated in fact, he is capable of saving the world's financial system inherited by his administration. Unfortunately this is not a bad dream.
By Escort81, at
Tue Mar 24, 01:26:00 PM:
This comment has been removed by the author.
By Escort81, at
Tue Mar 24, 01:37:00 PM:
Sara, you are only a geek if you took Freshman Honors Physics at Princeton and received an "A" -- at the time, it was considered to be one of the most difficult undergrad courses in the country.
Anyway, wasn't Tommy Lee Jones a Harvard roommate of Al Gore? How could President Obama have missed MIB? Does he not like Philly-born actor Will Smith?
By Viking Kaj, at
Tue Mar 24, 02:21:00 PM:
Hey, isn't this really pronounced "Ωρίων" ?
I thought you ivy leaguers were supposed to get a classical education...
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Mar 24, 02:59:00 PM:
a constellation just above it that looked like a bus.
That's no constellation, that's a low earth orbit Unicorn dispenser.
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Mar 24, 08:23:00 PM:
Viking Kaj -- Send me an email. I believe I've lost your current address and I have something for you.
By , at
Tue Mar 24, 10:05:00 PM:
The constellation above Orion right now is Gemini. I always though Gemini looks like a coupe with it's doors open.
BTW, how many people say ORY-gun when speaking of the state between Washington and California? Not ORY-gone, OREH-gun, or OREH-gone.
By , at
Tue Mar 24, 10:15:00 PM:
You guys need to go visit www.heavens-above.com. It'll let you place yourself in any city and show you what the sky looks like at any time (future, past, etc.).
Also, it tells you when you can see the space station/shuttle/HST and other orbiting objects.
It's a great site.
By , at
Tue Mar 24, 10:41:00 PM:
My mispronunciation was corrected in the 3rd grade.
Orion is visible from everywhere on earth and much nearer overhead from Hawaii than from the continental US. The northernmost belt star (delta Orionis) is currently almost on the celestial equator.
By Will Howard, at
Wed Mar 25, 07:08:00 AM:
Orion ("Ore-EYE-on"is how I pronounce it)is indeed visible in both hemispheres. Because it contains or aids the location of several stars useful in celestial navigation (bright enough to be visible during twilight hours while a horizon is also visible), it's important to navigators. Well, was, before GPS.
I live in Australia now and I still haven't gotten used to seeing Orion "upside-down."
By , at
Wed Mar 25, 10:17:00 AM:
I'd like to know how widely Obama's mispronounciation has been reported and ridiculed. I remember the glee with which lefties in the media cackled about "nucular."
By , at
Wed Mar 25, 04:09:00 PM:
Its just like those dorks calling the planet URANUS AND PRONOUNCING IT AS UR IN US like what you do in the bathroom
By , at
Wed Mar 25, 07:59:00 PM:
Are there any Chicagoans reading this? I hear that there is a Chicago newscaster named Orion, pronounced Oree-on. If true, stop ragging on Obama about this - but you can certainly go on about the journalistic double standard. Jimmy Carter calls himself a "nukular" engineer and it's just an accent; W says "nukular" and he's an idiot.
By Neil Sinhababu, at
Thu Mar 26, 08:07:00 PM:
I'm in Singapore, which is 1 degree north of the Equator, and I see Orion often.
