Cheryl gave me an XM Satellite Radio player for my birthday and it’s been one of those gifts that keep on giving. It was pretty easy to install in the car, the only trouble was running the wire from the antenna (placed on the roof near the back hatch) to the dash area. It has quite a few news, sports, and talk stations but I was mainly interested in it for the music and it thankfully that makes up the majority of the stations. The last thing I want to hear is some blowhard like Limbaugh giving his force-fed opinions to a bunch of ditto-heads or Stern salivating over the latest bimbo.

Gravity has been one of the bigger mysteries to man. Isaac Newton’s attempts to understand it spawned a new branch of mathematics and a better understanding of mechanics. Einstein explored it in his unified field theory and warned others to stay away from such a tough problem.

One concept that is interesting is “What is the speed of gravity?”. In a thought experiment, if something very massive suddenly appeared in the vicinity of Pluto’s orbit, would it take four hours for the Sun’s gravity to have an effect on its motion (four hours is the amount of time light takes to get to Pluto from the Sun) or would it be near instantaneous? The Sun’s field is already “there” but the Sun is also affected by the gravity of the planet – it is a two-way interaction – which is the basis of some of the string theories that try to explain how these fields are “communicated”.

Memorial Day is a day to remember the sacrifices that the men and women in our armed forces make for our liberty. Since April 1775, the soldiers of America have fought and died for an abstract but important concept of “liberty”. At the time of those initial revolutionary battles the concept was not so abstract to the people as they had directly experienced being under a government that did not provide basic freedoms or due process for its citizens. A revolution was fought and won and a few years later an important document was written to guarantee that these hard-won freedoms would endure.

NASA is providing a free and interesting computer program called the WorldWind. It allows easy viewing and zooming in on satellite images. It also has features to show effects of climate and humans on the earth as well as allowing some 3D rendering. The effect is kind of like flying around the earth and zooming in on things. Some of the fun is seeing how your town looks from space.

I remember going to Disneyland with the family in the early 60′s. We had a lot of fun – the old mine train ride that went (slowly) around the desert area with geysers and then went through the cave – and the classic jungle boat ride with the corny jokes told by the “captain”. The park was only a few years old at the time and it’s now celebrating it’s 50th year in operation.

We were taking a drive around the neighborhood today and noticed a strange phenomena in a field under an oak tree. There were a lot of white something-or-others attached to the plant stalks. Cheryl thought it looked like a bunch of styrofoam in the field. I got out of the car and walked up to one of the plants and realized it was ice attached to the plant stalks!

From the we need this like a hole in the head department, a service that used to offer commercial pet cloning: Genetic Savings and Clone. The first taker was a lady in Dallas that paid $50,000 for a clone of her cat. It makes perfect sense that the first case was from Dallas. I can picture her at the Junior League meeting, telling her colleague, “Well Buffy, I guess your cat will have to be content with being stuffed.”

We experienced something yesterday that was reminiscent of that old song from the 80′s, “Who Can it Be Now?”. We heard this subtle noise at the door and thought somebody might be knocking. We went to the door and were surprised to find it was Sherlock, the golden retriever from across the street.

He was waiting patiently at the door, wanting to visit and to get a treat. You have to be careful giving him a treat, though, as he gets pretty eager.

This tower is about four miles from our house and is the favored roosting place for the neigborhood buzzards. They fly over to the tower just before dark and settle in for the night. There were at least 100 of them on the tower when this picture was taken and probably more by dark.

They got a little startled when I walked over to the fence to take this picture and some of them flew off and landed back on the tower, as shown in the picture. Their wingspan is huge and you can hear the whoosh when they’re flapping. It’s quite a deal when a bunch of them are flying back to the roost and you can hear them flying overhead.

The Geminids meteor shower should put on a good show Monday night (12/13/04), so check it out if you can. It will appear to emanate from the Gemini constellation which is to the left of the familiar Orion constellation. Around 10:00 pm CST Gemini will be to the east-northeast, about 30 degrees up in the sky. See the star map below as a guide to viewing.

Saturn is also visible just below Gemini. It’s at a good angle to view the rings if you have a good scope.