Patrick Chiles's Blog, page 25
September 12, 2012
Near Misses and Dodged Bullets
Interesting goings-on in our night sky recently – check out this amateur video of something big hitting something even bigger: Mysterious Impact Flash on Jupiter. Now, understand I use the “amateur” term carefully. There’s a huge global network of astronomers out there who do this stuff purely for fun and personal interest. Some of the [...]
September 11, 2012
A Bite of the Apple
As if Amazon hasn’t given me enough gizmos, gadgetry, and geedunk to spend money on, now we have Apple’s annual festival of brand snobbery product event tomorrow. OK, that was a little snarky. Admittedly I’m just jealous of all those people who can afford Macbooks. iPhones aren’t out of reach, but my employer already has [...]
Remembrance
(“A Day Such As This”, originally posted 9/11/2011) Of the seasons, I’ve always enjoyed Autumn the most. It probably has a lot to do with growing up down South in a home with unreliable air conditioning – by Labor Day each year I was desperate for relief. Now living in Ohio, I was surprised at [...]
September 9, 2012
Weird Science
Quantum physics is not something I claim to even remotely understand, not that it stops me from trying. One aspect that I do get, however, is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. It stipulates that we can never know how subatomic particles actually behave, because the very act of observing them affects their behavior. This makes sense to [...]
September 6, 2012
Fired Up
Being a gadget freak, I’m always eager to hear about the latest whiz-bang computing devices. Alas, I’m only limited by the power of money. If only the kids didn’t like living in a house and eating food so much…and those braces? Meh. C’mon boys, wouldn’t you rather Dad got an iPad? And if a frog [...]
August 27, 2012
One Giant Leap for Narcissim
I was going to update my previous post on Neil Armstrong with this story, but decided not to sully the memory of a great man by pointing out the appalling conceit of a not-so-great man. Via Breitbart: To Honor Neil Armstrong, Obama Posts Photo of Himself You read that right. By way of commemorating the [...]
August 25, 2012
The Eagle Has Wings
Neil Armstrong has passed away. He’d not been well, having recently undergone heart surgery. He was, of course, pretty much at the top of my list of boyhood heroes. And he was certainly the most reclusive of the Apollo veterans, famously avoiding the media spotlight. It’s been speculated that his quiet, taciturn personality was a [...]
August 11, 2012
Rise of the Cheesehead Republicans
And I mean that in the nicest way possible. I’ve been to Wisconsin several times and actually like it there. There was this little German inn across the highway from Volk Field that had mouth-watering Reubens and cheese curds. Mmm, cheese curds… What were we talking about, again? Oh, yeah. Politics (shudder). The last couple [...]
August 8, 2012
Twits from Spaaace!!!
It’s not often you find two examples of towering space-related jackassery in the same day (at least in the places where I hang out – if you’re into UFO hunting then your mileage may vary). But thanks to a couple of long-retired government officials, we are treated to a smorgasbord of hot steaming BS. Yet [...]
August 7, 2012
Paging Dr. Strangelove
On the heels of the Hiroshima anniversary, Business Insider posts a couple of stories about nukes, missiles, and defenses against such. Both are scary in their own way. How a bullying general and internet porno cost the Army control of the Missile Defense Agency; a study in leadership failure. Hint: stars on your shoulder still [...]
