Up, Up and … Home

On January 13, 2005 I joined the American Airlines “AAdvantage” frequent flier program. The podcast I was part of, “Slacker Astronomy,” had taken off, and I had been invited to go to AAS in Washington DC and AAPT in Anchorage, Alaska to give talks 2 weeks apart. This was something...

Universal Education

Here in the USA (or I should say there, since I’m currently in France), education tends to be somewhat nationalistic. It has to be. Teachers are tied to state and federal learning standards and if students don’t learn what is specifically listed in those standards, and specifically tested along those...

Of travel and sleep deprivation

For the past several days I’ve been watching discussions on the AAVSO discussion list about sleep deprivation. Many of these good folks are good observers who try and combine a night time hobby with a day time job. Live lives of of sleep deprivation and broken circadian rhythms. Over the course of a...

There be Dragons (& Voorwerps)

It’s 2 weeks to Dragon*Con and I’m going a bit insane. As I mentioned in my last post, a group of us are getting ready to launch a comic book at Dragon*Con. As I’ve twittered, there is a fundraiser for cancer research the night before Dragon*Con. What I haven’t mentioned is after a...

Cape Town – You need to experience it

I think I need to change the theme of this blog from astronomy and academics to astronomy, academics and travel. I have to admit, somewhere in the past couple months I went from traveling a lot to traveling too much. I have acquired opinions about the wheels on luggage and the distribution of electrical...

Monday Must Haves 1: Must Haves for the Rabid Traveler

Okay, so this is a bit off topic, but … There are a series of questions I keep getting, “How do you stay connected while you travel?” “What is your recording set up?” “What books do you…?” “How do you…?” So, I’m going to (in a desperate...