When I suspect someone is trying to play mind games with me, messing with my head, I don’t like it. Nicholas Carr, author of What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains: The Shallows, believes it is far worse than just mind games. The digital world can actually cause organic changes in the structure of [...]
It’s officially summer now, and the trees have pretty much done with their annual growth spurts. The car was due to go on the operating table at The Glass Doctor to get a windshieldectomy, courtesy of a flying rock from our last trip to the lake, so I drove to the auto hospital and took [...]
This spectacular galaxy, designated Messier 51 and popularly called the Whirlpool Galaxy, is probably one of the most photographed celestial objects. I remotely snapped it about a year ago using a telescope located in a mountain valley near Rodeo, NM. The image below is my second attempt at processing that data, partly to determine if [...]
Are classical music lovers a dying breed? I have no idea of course, but I do know that all over the country all-classical FM radio stations are changing their broadcasting format from classical to contemporary rock or (even worse) talk-talk-talk. I understand that many cities now have no classical music stations. KFUO-FM in St. Louis, [...]
Galaxy Messier M66. Go here for details. Well, maybe not the last. The outfit that rents remote-controlled time on several telescopes is closing down. Details at the Lightbuckets site, at least while the web site is still online. I first used their equipment on June 5, 2010, and since then I have accumulated lots of [...]
That is the title of a book I am reading by Frederick Kempe. It triggered memories of my inexplicable recall to Army active duty in the fall of 1961. I knew I was part of a largely symbolic recall of reservists because of the Berlin Crisis, but that’s where my knowledge stopped. I had little [...]
Larry opines in a recent email (and if the link doesn’t work, blame Larry): Aw, you just have to hear this: Der Bingle The song was an early effort by Irving Berlin. What appealed to me was the relaxed and cordial back-and-forth conversation between Crosby and Jolson, between verses. This song takes me back to [...]
Imagine a cane pole with a young boy on one end and a yard or so of line tied to the other, the line leading to a grasshopper impaled on a fishhook. A wandering creek lined with trees yielding mottled shade under a hot Kansas sun completes the scene. Can’t imagine that? Well, I can. [...]
I don’t know if that’s true or not, but contributor Linda seems to think so, drawing once again on her former life with parents and siblings. And on her memory, which just may have a few holes in it. Shakespeare was a black blur thrown furiously across the front yard almost into the street. Actually [...]
Here is a colorful, even garish, image of the Flame Nebula with the Horsehead Nebula lurking behind. I’ve had fun with this one, because it has led me up a few more steps on the Photoshop learning curve. These nebulae are part of the wintertime Orion constellation scene. If you want to know more about [...]
