The Right End of the Telescope

I really didn't know what to do with all of the Obama campaign stickers I have been given during all of the debate party's and phone-banking meetings at my house in the last few months...
So, I decided to cover my cheap 4" reflector telescope with them... it kinda looks cool in my opinion. Even though it is not exactly a precise, expensive scientific/optical instrument, it has done a relatively good job of showing several of Jupiter's moons (and the "Great Red Spot"), the mountains and craters of our moon, and the reddish orb of our occasionally close neighbor Mars in exquisite detail. It has provided many evenings of awe for my son and I and friends, marveling at the clockwork of our solar system, and the beauty beyond our world.

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The Continuing Rise of the Machines

Funny things, PCs. My $400 laptop runs circles around my $2300 Sony Vaio (2.8 GHz P4, 1GB RAM) because it is 5 years "younger." Amazing shit. I bought a little USB HDTV ATSC receiver and enjoy beautiful over-the-air HD broadcasts on my laptop... for shits and grins, I plugged it in to my Sony, and it was as if I'd asked it to solve Pi to 3 million decimal places! LOL! It did a decent, albeit, hitchy job of displaying standard definition channels, but HD? Nope. Ah, Moore's law continues, no longer is it clock cycles, but it will be again, and then it will be architecture change again (multiple cores for now), ad infinitum ... until we accidentally build SkyNet. I'm guessing in 10 years, a run-of-the-mill PC will have the computational power of some of the "supercomputers" of today. I know, not a stretch. I'm just trying to get my head around the software that will be inevitably written to bog down that much CPU/Memory horsepower, because those damn d...

Pleading for the future...

"I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men." - Clarence Darrow. Keith Olbermann again cuts through the bullshit and talks about what many of us fear... and how to prevent it. If only we'd listen to reason. I know, what a concept. Yes, of course he's a partisan!! How the hell could you not be in this starkly obvious election? This election is hopefully not a premature referendum on the maturity of the proverbial hearts of men.

Happy Days! Opie, Richie, Fonzie, and Andy for Obama

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die This video is simple sweet nostalgia for me! I grew up watching the Andy Griffith Show , an innocent and sweet black and white (double meaning I was of course unaware of at the time) show about simple times, and apparently devoid of the undercurrent of racism and the raging debate of Vietnam occurring in our country at the time ... or so it seemed. The morality plays within most of the episodes often, at least, subtly touched on the issues of the day and all the while simultaneously and deftly, taught tolerance, and held up to, albeit good natured, ridicule the intolerance and destructive division occurring in our country at the time. In a way that only sweet southern gentility could have pulled off. Floyd the Barber would approve this message. For me personally, The Andy Griffith Show was a serendipitous coincidence and weird connection to Hollywood because it's make-believe town of Mayberry , North Carolina was modeled after my father...

Furious Indifference.

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