Category: Travel
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Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 1
The Road to Oz is the fifth of L. Frank Baum's immortal Oz series, published in 1909. Like its predecessor Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, it follows Dorothy on another difficult journey to Oz with a group of entertaining companions. Sure, by this point it's a formula, but it's a winning formula and Road…
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Another Slice of Pi
As I was saying before I was interrupted, I'm going to be a guest at Pi-Con this weekend. Pi-Con is a science fiction convention in Enfield, Connecticut (just south of Springfield, Massachusetts). They've got me scheduled for a lot of events. See for yourself: 8/26/2011 8:00 PM — "Honey! The aliens are attacking again" 8/27/2011…
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Off the Launch Pad, Day 4
Instead of going to class in our beloved basement lecture hall, on Thursday morning the Launch Pad workshop members got some fresh air and sunshine. We drove out to Vedauwoo Rocks east of Laramie for a three-mile hike. It was quite pretty. The rocks are ancient granite, cracked and eroded into mysterious almost-familiar shapes. Around…
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Off the Launch Pad, Day 3
We reconvened in the familar windowless basement lecture hall on Wednesday, to hear Dr. Mike Brotherton give us a long and detailed lecture on Newton's laws, Kepler's laws and how combining them gives us the basics of orbital mechanics. We also discussed Lagrange points and transfer orbits, all good crunchy stuff. After the lunch break…
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Off the Launch Pad, Day 1
Today was the first session of this year's Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. I'll give my impressions in roughly chronological order. Laramie itself is a nice place, somewhere on the borderline between "town" and "city." The University sprawls across the eastern side of town, there's an immense railroad yard…
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Ozblogging: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Part 4
Elemental Trouble From the Valley of Voe our heroes climb another long staircase up to the land of the Gargoyles. Along the way they have a couple of odd encounters. The first is when they pass a rift in the wall which looks out over another cavern, and a very strange place it is. The…
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Moby Blogging
Lately I've been reading Moby Dick to my nearly-eight-years-old son as a bedtime story. This statement will probably produce one of three reactions: 1. How awful to force that on him!2. Isn't he a little young for that?3. Well, I'm sure it'll put him to sleep in a hurry! Let me tackle them in order.…
The Cambias Digression 