Moon Phases

Do you own a monthly calendar? Check in the corners of the dates to see if it indicates the moon phase. Yes? Chances are it's wrong. I've noticed that roughly half (give or take 25%) of the calendars I've owned that had moon phases on them were wrong. If you want to know the actual real phases of the moon, check out the supremely accurate US Naval Observatory moon phase calculator, or for a simpler version StarDate Online's appears to be correct as well. The USNO also has the best sunrise/set calculator (as well as some additional info).

Top 10 Animal Geeks

Thanks to Jethereal for the link, it's the top ten animals in science. I wouldn't call them geeks as they were more of victims, but it's still interesting. :-P

Carl Sagan

Today is the 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's death. Sadly, I am too young to know much about him, but what I do know is that he was dedicated to increasing people's feeling of wonder at the universe, to creating an insatiable need for knowledge, and to keeping our minds always questioning. I hope as a science teacher I continue to keep that legacy alive.

Space, the computer's frontier

Holy shucking fit! I was trying to download some free things from the iTunes store, and it says my hard drive is full. My 70-Gig HD on my desktop. I don't download porn unlike some people I know. I don't download movies like others. I only have a 20-Gig iPod and I think I only own around 30 Gigs of music. Windows and Office and Warcraft III don't take up 40 Gigs. I'm going to run a defrag overnight, but that won't figure out the problem for me.

Help me out here folks. I've already gone and cleared out temp files. I went into my iTunes folder and there were a bunch of .tmp files there too that seem to have cleared up a couple freakin' GIGS of space. I am suspicious that it's a fucked up iTunes library, but I'm not sure how to fix it. I've seen visualization programs for the Mac that allow you to see how much disk space is allocated to different programs, is there one for the PC (Win XP)?

*grumble grumble* I didn't notice anything that looked like spyware when I ran the Task Manager, so I think I'm safe there. What else can I do to figure out (a) where my space's gone, and (b) how to stop gap in until I can figure it out?

Thanks in advance for any help.

ETA: Ugh, Disk Defragmenter says I can't run the defrag effectively b/c I now have only 6% of the disk free (5 Gigs) and it wants at least 15%. *grumble*

Google + NASA = Awesome!

NASA has agreed to give LOTS of data to Google, including "weather forecasting information, three-dimensional maps of the moon and Mars, and real-time tracking of the international space station and space shuttle flights so the pictures and data are available to anyone with an Internet connection."

I'm unclear about what's new to this. Google already has a lot of Moon and Mars data, and if they have elevation info for Mars they should already be able to do 3-D virtual fly-bys, despite Griffin saying it as a new thing. Perhaps this is just much more high-res data? Besides, everything NASA produces is public domain - except images of astronauts, and some research data has a proprietary period, and some probably is classifed, but everything else is freely available - so I'm not clear how this is anything Google couldn't get otherwise. Maybe it's just that it's being handed over smoothly and easily that's the issue. Or maybe Google's just taking advantage of the public domain rights, and Yahoo or anyone else could do this as well.

But yeah, we'll see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for awesomeness.

And another one...

Rules of the lab

1) If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
2) When you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly.
3) Experiments must be reproduceable, they should fail the same way each time.
4) First draw your curves, then plot your data.
5) Experience is directly proportional to equipment ruined.
6) Always keep a record of your data. It indicates that you have been working.
7) To do a lab really well, have your report done well in advance.
8) If you can't get the answer in the usual manner, start at the answer and derive the question.
9) In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
10) Do not believe in miracles--rely on them.
11) Team work is essential, it allows you to blame someone else.
12) All unmarked beakers contain fast-acting, extremely toxic poisons.
13) No experiment is a complete failure. At least it can serve as a negative example.
14) Any delicate and expensive piece of glassware will break before any use can be made of it.

Geeky Joke

Found online...

A computer programmer happens across a frog in the road. The frog pipes up, "I'm really a beautiful princess and if you kiss me, I'll stay with you for a week". The programmer shrugs his shoulders and puts the frog in his pocket.

A few minutes later, the frog says "OK, OK, if you kiss me, I'll give you great sex for a week". The programmer nods and puts the frog back in his pocket.

A few minutes later, "Turn me back into a princess and I'll give you great sex for a whole year!". The programmer smiles and walks on.

Finally, the frog says, "What's wrong with you? I've promised you great sex for a year from a beautiful princess and you won't even kiss a frog?"

"I'm a programmer," he replies. "I don't have time for sex ... But a talking frog is pretty neat."

I want a talking frog!