Perseids against the Milky Way, Sigh

The Perseids are reliable, regular shooting stars, a meteor shower that shows up nights in late July every year.  I didn’t see the Perseids this year myself because Baltimore’s skies are a rich carnelian haze that hold nothing much and certainly not meteorites.  And Heather didn’t see them because, she thinks, of light pollution.  To […]

Us, From Far Away

This is a photograph — meaning, it’s real — taken from 114 million miles away on the far side of the sun.  The brightest little dot in the lower left is the earth.  The less bright dot near it is our moon.  Click on it:  it almost makes you cry.

Monty Python Goes to Gladiator School

I’ve always wanted to enroll in gladiator school. I once took a course in fencing, but it seemed far too precise and finicky and I hated the drills. I’d prefer to bash it out like Russell Crowe does. The next best thing to attending gladiator school is watching Terry Jones, one of the guys from […]

Abstruse Goose: Creation

Probably not God’s fault, but very few people understand that business of hidden dimensions in string theory. http://abstrusegoose.com/235

The Tomb She Calls a Museum

Love hurts, especially when you are 3000 years old and dressed in rags. Thank you musician Josh Ritter and puppeteer Liam Hurley for the best mummy video I have ever seen.