Here and Now ran a great segment on NPR yesterday about The 31st National Cowboy Poetry Gathering happening in Nevada. They played an interview recorded at last years gathering of a cattle rancher who “comes from a long line of cowboy poets.” His name is Gaul Steiger and he spoke about how his grandfather was a well-known poet […]
Oh my gosh, it’s just too cold! Too cold to go outside anyway – even just to warm up your car. FOWLS says it’s -16°C (2°F) and it feels every bit of it. Luckily there’s almost no wind. The skies are clear; it’s actually very pretty outside despite the cold. –Super clear, calm skies, Jupiter […]
A fierce winter storm passed over the Midwest yesterday and has since made its way to New England. News reports are saying that the blizzard is one of the worst in a long time for the North East but luckily here in Columbus, we escaped with only a few inches. It was enough to make […]
Back in 2011, a political movement (the Occupy movement) was spawned whose goal was to address the income and wealth inequality among the US population (which eventually spread worldwide). Their slogan was “We are the 99%,” referring to the fact that a large amount of the wealth was concentrated in 1% of the population; data from […]
A Quick Note on Probability… Yesterday, I posted my virus simulation computer program that loosely demonstrates how viruses replicate and mutate. In real life, what makes a virus a virus is its particular genetic code, either DNA or RNA. This code can get altered by radiation damaging the code for example, or a mistake in […]
Viruses… The biological kind, not the computer kind. A few weeks ago I finished reading The Hot Zone by Richard Preston and have been terrified ever since. It really made me realize the hype the media was making over the recent Ebola virus outbreak was actually somewhat justified. The Filovirus family, for which the Ebola […]
Comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2 I braved the cold last night to get an image of comet Lovejoy since it won’t be back for another 8,000 years! This will be this brightest comet in years and I was able to easily see it with binoculars even with my horribly light-polluted skies. I began capturing images just like […]
My alarm was set for 4:30am this morning in order to catch the 3rd attempt of the SpaceX Dragon/Falcon 9 launch. This was the 5th ISS resupply mission. While I’ve watched others, this one was special because SpaceX was trying something revolutionary. Normally, the 1st stage of a rocket uses its fuel, then is discarded basically in […]
Who hasn’t had an awe-inspiring moment while watching a sunrise? Who hasn’t felt a sense of something a little more when experiencing a sunset? Or stood in amazement witnessing the power of a thunderstorm with the thunder reverberating off their chest and watching one billion volts of raw energy scorch its way through the air? Or […]
Astronomy / astrophotography can be done, even indoors! I caught Venus and Mercury peaking through the trees just before sunset. Snapped this pic with my phone through some binoculars… inside, through the window! It’s too cold to go outside!