Wit, Wisdom, and Whimsy. (your mileage may vary)
July 5, 2010
It’s a mad, mad, mad world, Islam…
July 4, 2010
geek, Humor Picard, star trek, STNG, what would picard do Leave a comment
July 4, 2010
I doubt it’s the heat, but I suppose it could be the humidity…
via Queer Visalia
July 3, 2010
geek, Humor iPad, iPhone, Scotty, Simon Pegg, star trek 1 Comment
“Hello, ambulance? I’M SHRINKING!”
Simon Pegg, actor. (“Scotty”, new Star Trek movie)
July 3, 2010
I wonder if this will stir up anything? You know how those Christians get when you suggest something they believe isn’t really what happened.
July 2, 2010
Gay, News, Personal Leave a comment
We’re growing steadily across California, and now the country. Who knows where we’ll pop up next?
via Queer Networks
July 2, 2010
geek glamour, ISS, NASA, space toilet Leave a comment
Scheduled maintenance of the toilet on the International Space Station. Even NASA geek has some shitty moments! 😉
Tip ‘o the flush to Twitpic via @Astro_Wheels
July 2, 2010
geek Apollo 16, John Young, one sixth gravity, The Moon Leave a comment
Astronaut John W. Young, commander of the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission, leaps from the lunar surface as he salutes the United States flag at the Descartes landing site during the first Apollo 16 extravehicular activity, in April, 1972. (Try that at 1G while wearing a hundred pounds or so of spacesuit!) Astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr., lunar module pilot, took this picture. The Lunar Module “Orion” is on the left. The Lunar Roving Vehicle is parked beside Orion and the object behind Young (in the shadow of the Lunar Module) is the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph. Stone Mountain dominates the background of this lunar scene.
Image Credit: NASA
July 2, 2010
geek extrasolar planets, sun-like stars, visible light Leave a comment
In an interesting “battle” of definitions, this is either the first visible light image of a planet orbiting a nearby star, 1RXS J160929.1-210524, or the third.
This is an image taken in 2005, of a planet called 2M1207b. It’s about 5 times Jupiter’s mass, and is orbiting a blue dwarf star 230 light years away. Some don’t consider the blue dwarf to be a “Sun-like” star, so the quibble about ‘first planet seen in visible light orbiting a nearby star’. The image was taken using Chile’s Very Large Telescope.
This image of Fomalhautb was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, a star hotter and more massive than the Sun. Taken in 2004, a confirming photo was taken in 2006. It took two years of study after the second photo to confirm the planet was really a planet and not something simply in the same frame, not related to the star.
In the first image above, star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 is 500 light years from Earth, and was photographed using Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, in 2008. It wins the “first planet orbiting a sun-like star using a ground based telescope” designation, and “third planet orbiting a nearby star seen in visible light”.
Whatever the “details”, and regardless of how the press correctly or erroneously hypes it, it’s still another great moment in geek (and science!)
For a deeper explanation, by someone actually involved in the field, see Bad Astronomy Blog. Don’t worry, it’s not all science “greek” incomprehensible stuff, astronomer Phil Plait makes it understandable to the general reader. Go see!
JimmieJoe / KC6YRU 
The Boys Made A Pitch, Just The Wrong One!
July 3, 2010
Jim Reeves commentary, Personal cute mormon boys, Latter Day Saints, missionaries, Mormon 4 Comments
Not them, but close
I’ve been hoping to meet a couple of cute missionary boys for a while, when I would be both awake and have the time to talk with them for a bit. Usually they wake me up, or catch me as I’m heading out the door, and I can’t chat with them. Tonight the stars were aligned just right!
I was tinkering around with my iPhone, playing with the GPS/mapping software, and was standing at the curb at the corner of my property. The map program that comes with the iPhone was showing me standing right at the edge of my property line, exactly where I was actually standing! I had always assumed there would be a noticeable error when zoomed down to street level, but danged if it didn’t have me exactly where I was! I walked back to the back of the property, and the same thing occurred. The map’s little blue dot was smack on the property line. I’m impressed. I walked back out to the street to check against the satellite map, and was tinkering with it when two white-shirted Mormon boys rode up on their bikes.
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