Back home, cats and all. Work can resume on various projects.
Mar 312012
Mar 302012
Mar 302012
All yesterday I was seriously impaired due to my left eye being out of service, due, apparently, to every last speck of pollen in the region jumping up and down on it. Can’t wait to get back to the desert!
Mar 282012
At first…
New ‘life in space’ hope after billions of ‘habitable planets’ found in Milky Way
But then…
A total of nine super-Earths – planets with masses between one and 10 times that of Earth – were found. Two were located within the habitable zones of the stars Gliese 581 and Gliese 667 C.
First off, a “super Earth” is not necessarily a “habitable planet.” In fact… almost certainly *not.* Second, that’s kind of a small sample size…
Still, it’s looking more and more like this might be a crowded galaxy.
Mar 282012
Seems the cute lil’ 6’3″ darlin’ was a literary genius of the highest caliber.
The Last Tweets Of Obama’s ‘@NO_LIMIT_NIGGA’ Trayvon Martin
I have no idea what truly happened that night between Martin and Zimmerman. But the image that Martin himself made an effort to put across matches up well with the image that Zimmerman is describing as the guy who attacked him: thug.
Oh, and:
Trayvon Martin protest leads to ransacking Walgreens
[youtube TyrkBY2Im5w]
And…
That last link comes complete with no context whatsoever. No clue just what the hell is going on. So can we assume that MSNBC, with Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton, will lead the charge to demand an investigation and some arrests?
Mar 272012
A Lockheed artists impression of the L-1011 jetliner. Notice something a little amiss?
UPDATE:
Interesting set of errors that commenters compiled. But what originally jumped out at me was the incredibly small cockpit canopy. I don’t know if this was an error on the artists part (if so, rather a big and blatant one), or if this was some sort of editorial choice. By making the cockpit look small, the aircraft looks large. To me, the aircraft shown in the painting looks to be the size of the A380, if not larger.
Mar 272012
While roaming the Mall on Sunday, I saw a number of planes fly behind the Washington Monument. They were banking hard… I guess the flightpath out of Reagan National would naturally cause jetliners to fly too close to downtown D.C., and they have to bank in a hurry so’s Homeland Security doesn’t shoot ’em down. Or something like that…
Anyway, all the way from the NASM to the Monument, the sky was overcast. That made some of the jetliners pretty spectral, and put a gray cast over everything. It’s interesting to see how the colors in the stone pop out when a little bit of Fade Correction is added to the photos.
Perhaps interestingly, the skies opened up and the sun came out right as I was passing the monument.
Mar 262012
I suspect someone’ll get it right off.
Mar 262012
Yesterday on the way out of the NASM I noticed a plexiglas donation box. That wasn’t by itself noteworthy. It was loaded with non-American money… which, for something as world-famous as the NASM, was not noteworthy. What caused me to pause was the face of Chairman Mao staring out at me. Yikes.
Mar 252012
My luggage finally showed up this morning, so I was (belatedly) able to go out and do the one day of touristing I’d planned on doing. of course the first stop was the National Air and Space Museum. I’ve been to it numerous times in the past, and it doesn’t change much from decade to decade… but going to D.C. and not visiting the NASM is like going to Jerusalem and not visiting the Sexateria. It just isn’t done.
Took a bit short of a thousand photos today. Three cheers for digital photography and portable hard drives. After wandering the Mall and some museums, I’m plumb tuckered. I suppose I’ll post some of the photos after I’ve had a chance to go through ’em, but for now my next big project is of course research… the whole point of this exercise.
So until I get to go through the photos, please enjoy this LINK to a series of photos documenting a cat fight. Without video it’s hard to say, but this looks like play fighting to me. If Lockheed could make a jet fighter that was as nimble as these fellers, the US would never again be threatened.