Where science and tech meet creativity.

I’ll Fly Away

I’ll Fly Away

For the past week, I’ve had the Alison Krauss & Gilian Welch song, “I’ll Fly Away,” stuck in my head. This fabulous song is one that I hope someone will remember to play when I die, but… beyond that… I’m wondering what my...
IAU, I’m lost within you

IAU, I’m lost within you

This morning I woke up in Beijing. This wasn’t entirely surprising since I’d fallen asleep at about 32,000 ft on AA187, inbound to PEK from ORD. Nonetheless, no matter how much you know logically that you are soon to be somewhere very foreign, the reality...
Kindness at 30,000ft

Kindness at 30,000ft

Earlier today I wrote on Google+ that there are day’s when you run head first into the tail-end of the probability distribution. Today was one of those days, and now that it’s over and I’m laying in bed typing, I can happily say I got to see both...

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...
Universal Education

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,...

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...