Here are a few summary statistics of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data is from worldometers (worldwide data) and the NYT (U.S. and Arizona data). These plots will be updated approximately daily, at least until the pandemic is over. Click on the … Continue reading
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1. The Ubiquity of $\pi$ or, Life, the Universe, and Everything: A Simple Statement of Fact $\pi$ is everywhere you look. It is even the case that there is $\pi$ in the sky. We need $\pi$ in order to live … Continue reading
Snow on Flagstaff’s San Francisco Peaks, and a picture of the 61-inch telescope at the U.S. Naval Observatory — Flagstaff Station. Click on an image to enlarge; right-click to open the full-resolution version in a new tab. Canon G3 X, … Continue reading
The Moon illuminates a snowy scene (my back yard) in the pre-dawn darkness. This is an 80 second exposure at 35mm f/3.2 and ISO 125. The yellow-gold color on the background trees is from low-pressure sodium streetlights on the next … Continue reading
Here are a few images from goofing around yesterday evening with the NOFS 61-inch telescope, dome, and twilight. Images were taken with a Canon G3 X at ISO 125 on 2019-02-07 MST. Click on an image to enlarge; right-click to … Continue reading
When you wake up, get up. When you get up, do something. —one of my favorite quotes, from Viola Babbitt Wake up. Sit with the cat for a bit. Because Cat Time. “Is necessary, hooman. Sit.” Wait for cat to … Continue reading
An always delightfully engaging friend asks of the Hive Mind on Facebook: What is the first wildlife you remember encountering in the actual wild (wild is broadly meant here–not a zoo)? Maybe don’t count squirrels. Or maybe do. I’m pretty … Continue reading
I took these from up on the catwalk of the U.S. Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station‘s 61-inch astrometric telescope in Flagstaff, on the evening of 2018-04-17. In all, I got 43 decent exposures, from which I picked four that I liked … Continue reading
A driverless car hit a woman who was walking her bicycle across a street at night. Numerous articles, some less useful than others, but also some more helpful to a better understanding, describe this incident. For example, in order of … Continue reading
For the umpteen-gazillionth time, here is a known fact: America has more mass shootings — more gun murders — than any other country on Earth, because America has more guns per person than any other country on Earth[3,6,8,11,10,12,13,15]. Our mass … Continue reading
Trigger warning: I am about to use facts. If you are a conservative, the following will be foreign to your way of thinking and therefore will induce apoplexy. You should probably stop reading NOW. Looky there, my pay check has … Continue reading
Hey, Roy Moore, Here are the numbers (WaPo, NYT, and all manner of Fake News): Jones……671,151 Moore……650,436 write-in….22,819 military…..8,700 You lost. It was not a fair contest, since you Republicans prevented thousands upon thousands of those people from exercising their constitutional … Continue reading
Here is one man’s poem. His poetry is not easy to listen to. It is poetry, which means shining a light on uncomfortable things, dark things, things which are hard to look at. But we are human, most of us, … Continue reading
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