Starspotters - the less assholish version of Trainspotters

From Selby to Goole, and all over the UK, "trainspotter" assholes stand around scribbling their useless notes.

What they get out of their monotonous droning existence I have no idea. But in the USA, there's something a little different. It's people who, instead of using the night for fucking or watching TV or fucking while watching TV, gaze at the stars.

Shouting "There's one!" over a meteor, or grinning and saying, "You can see the Big Dipper real nice tonight," is just an eccentricity. But what makes these people less than idiots, is that they DO fight for something: the right to see the natural sky, free of "light pollution."

They protest against bright billboards and the use of garish lighting that spoils serenity. Of course, it'll be a losing battle. Urban sprawl means homes pulsing with light and highways and roads brightly lit in all directions.

An irony is that the story appears in the New York Times. Yes, in NYC most any solar event is diminished by the enormous amount of extra light in the sky. The moon can still be seen, but there's not as much contrast as in the country. The peaceful concentration of looking up at the sky is also marred by the sounds of planes, traffic and assholes driving along blasting their shitty rap music and salsa.

The Times does like to cover oddball stories like this. They want their Ivory Tower readers to know of potential places to vacation. They like ecology tales. They'll let the NY Post and the Daily News run a story warning that there's a homeless bum attacking Upper East Side women with piles of his own shit. The starry equivalent of trainspotters...now THAT is important news!