This cool search engine displays the results in Flash as a map.  When you hover over the pages, which are connected by logic lines, details appear for that link.  Many, many sophisticated options here.

http://www.kartoo.com/

Emily over at I Don't Think generously offered to craft book thongs for her readers recently.

Berta is always looking for a new book marker for her books because Abby likes to remove them and hide them.  Actually, I've seen books laying about that have torn bits of napkin in them since there is nothing else around to use as a marker when Berta is done reading.

Now, myself, I tend to memorize the page number of the book I'm on, so I don't use bookmarkers so often, but I see the general need.  But when I saw Emily's offer on her site to create book thongs (actually, I was drawn in by the "thong" idea"), I jumped right on board.

Here you can see the lovely book thong that Emily made to my specifications just for Berta.  It has a green dragonfly charm on it, which is the creature of choice for Berta gifts (some think it's the cow, but that's quite over, if you've ever seen our kitchen). 

Berta was admiring the craftsmanship when I showed it to her.  I wondered how the knots got so tight up against the charms.  I realize that the loose ends are supposed to dangle out of the top and bottom of the book, but I wonder if some technological improvement could be made to allow the thong to become longer or shorter, or to better attach itself to the book.  Hmm...  I'll have to experiment.

Anyway, here's a big thanks to Em for the thong!

In a desperate plea to find more applealing radio content than daytime soaps, I've recently taken to listening to Rush Limbaugh on the Big Talker 1210.

One thing that you have to understand is that Rush is all about entertainment.  I mean, he's a radio personality.  He doesn't really exist as a political pundit.  He makes commentary on how he sees things from a decidedly conservative viewpoint.  In this vein, I can't help but think his naive views are vocalized to elicit a reaction from his audience.

I think there are two types of people that must listen to Rush.  First, there are the conservative sympathizers.  I think this group is much smaller in number than one might initially believe.  I mean, wouldn't listening to someone with your own views be like listening your yourself talk?  I guess some conservatives need their egos stroked or need to have their opinions broadcast to feel validated.

The second group, probably in greater number, is the leftist Democrat  group.  I think these guys listen just to hear what flaky right-wing crap Rush has to say next.  But ok, that's my theory on his audience.

During the part of the show I caught today, Rush was blabbering about how he doesn't really believe that half of america hates Bush.  That if the election was today, Bush would win in a landslide against Kerry.  Well, duh.

Before I get onto the Bush/Kerry election thing, let me attack Rush for a minute, because it's fun.  Rush is an odd dude.  He'll read the polls out of various organizations all talking about how americans generally, by half, don't like Bush, and those people would simply vote for any reasonable Democratic candidate set in front of them.  And then he'll say, "I don't believe it."  Well, Rush, your disbelief isn't a fantastic counter-argument to the many well-respected polls that you quote.

He gets some guy to come on as a guest and say exactly what would strengthen his position the most.  This guest is a democrat that is going to vote for Bush because, as he says, the American people don't have all of teh information needed to make a good decision in their voting.  Um.  Ok.  What information do you have that we don't?  Please tell us.  Or you can just let Rush agree with you and begin his rant, completely skirting the facts.

Of course Bush would win against Kerry if the election was today.  Nobody knows who Kerry is.  Kerry is trying hard right now (as any Democratic candidate should) to get himself nominated as the supported Democratic candidate.  He's not out talking to Republican voters about his agenda, because that's not currently his goal.  With the support of the DNC, Kerry can put good money toward swaying those Republican votes his way.

Besides that, Bush is the sitting president.  He has a huge advantage in the election, because most people abhor change.  Unless Democrats can convince voters that change is good for our country, they'll have a hard time overcoming the well-funded Bush machine.

Here are some things that I don't like about Bush:

• His education plans don't look like they work.  Look at Texas, where a student who graduated with honors from a "no child left behind" high school doesn't even make a passing grade on a basic college entry exam.  The system seems flawed.
• Do I have to mention the economy?  Bush may have created a huge workforce by forming the DHS, which should amount to a lot of tax money spent domestically, but even with the tax cuts (which sucked, by the way) we aren't very well off.
• Adding religious proclamations to a governmental document that primarily guarantees rights, in a government that was primarily forged to exscape religious persecution is wrong, and reveals the lack of political knowledge that we should require of a president.  I don't care what you think about gay marriage, you may not take away someone else's right to it because of your (primarily) religious beliefs.
• I would say that Bush's policies on the environment sucked, but he doesn't have any.  That's pretty bad, though, huh?
• He likes war.  He won't admit it, but he does.  He likes the idea of two US bases in Iraq.  He likes the idea of hostilities in Israel.  And the whole time he has little concern over the hundreds of US soldiers that have died fighting a war that America, as far as I can tell, didn't need to fight.
• Jobs.  Jobs will win this election.  The candidate that offers the most appropriate way to close the cheap foreign labor market will win this election.  Guaranteed.

It's intersting comparing Rush and Bush on the whole Iraq issue.  Bush would have us attack Iraq, a country with nothing to offer us, of no threat to us, in spite of plenty of UN-provided evidence of being no threat.  Rush would have us re-elect Bush in spite of the numbers of people in polls proclaiming their hate for the war, and their disappointment with the economy, and their need for a change.  Weird, those Republicans.

Man, I hate going off on political ideas here.  I'm just irritated by Rush.  But like I said, that's kind of his point.

I have been meaning to add this picture to the site for a while, but haven't done it for no good reason.  With the telescope Berta got me for Christmas I set up shop in the front yard and started looking at the sky.

During my expedition, I came across Jupiter with its stormy lines and many moons.  The planet was clear enough in view that if you waited for the atmosphere to mellow out, you could make out a couple of red lines across its face.  Even more interesting is that if you back away from the planet, you can see many more of its moons.  There sure are a lot of them.

Another exciting thing was the discovery of Saturn, with very clear but very tiny rings.  Saturn was very small overall, which is why I say the rings look tiny, but they must be fairly large if you can make them out even when the image of Saturn itself is that small.

I took a few pictures of the moon by putting my digital camera up to the eyepiece and shooting.  Many different settings were used to try to get the pictures to come out right.  The main problem was that the camera wanted to use the flash (because the light detector seems to be a separate component from what the camera sees through the lens) but the moon was so bright that it flashed out the picture every time.  But manually adjusting the settings of the camera, I was able to get this picture, which is very green.  I later cleaned up the picture a bit in Photoshop, but an extended nighttime power outage (that'll teach me to save, yeah right) killed all of that work.  So you're stuck with this not-so-impressive shot.

You can see these things in pictures in books, but there really isn't anything like looking at them through a telescope.  It's all right there, live.  In my last Philosophy class we were talking about Copernicus and his odd ideas.  While I'm thiking of it, here's a thought that could blow your mind:

It's 1543.  In about 50 years, Gallileo will be born, and after he grows up a bit, will build the first practical telescope.  Copernicus is hanging out at a church, watching the planets move around in the sky.  The Church told him to, because everyone back then was interested in astrology.  The Church wanted a better way to predict when these planets (actually, back then they thought the planets were moving stars, hence the name "planet", which means "wanderer") would move to certain places in the sky. 

Well, it was a widely accepted fact that the sun went around the Earth, as did all of the stars and the moon.  These five planets (they couldn't see the distant ones, yet) were the only things that didn't fit into the whole worldview (posited by Aristotle, by-and-by).  So Copernicus woke up one evening and got the idea that maybe the Earth was moving around the sun, and so were these five weird stars.  And he scared himself because, well, that idea was just insane.

Unfortunately, with this thought in mind Copernicus ended up devising a more accurate way of predicting planetary movement, and threw the whole world into a tizzy over their fundamental beliefs.  Seriously- The whole world didn't know what to do because of these new thoughts.

So if you ever wonder why it's important to look at the stars now and then, there you go.

It's funny- People's main arguments at the time to Copernican theory were things like, "Why don't we fall off if we're moving around the sun?"   Well, that seems reasonable.  And besides that, how do you prove that the Earth goes around the sun?  Really.  Prove it.  Can you see it happen?  All of those nice little computerized simulations are just that - simulations.  They don't prove anything.  It's just the wild guesses of a couple of religious mathematicians that say anything about the Earth going around the sun.

I mentioned in my philosophy class that the answer to the question is "star parallax".  Basically described, you look at distant stars at various points in the year, and they move in relation to each other.  If you plot out these differences, you can figure out that it's the Earth that is moving.

Anyway, I went through all of this maddeningly interesting stuff to get to the point of talking about Christian Girl.  I had mentioned early in this particular class that Copernicus couldn't have used a telescope to draw his conclusions because of the birth of Galileo being so many years afterward.  Apparently, it never occured to this person that you can see planets without a telescope.

Yes.  Go out in your yard on a clear night (say 11pm) and look up.  See the brightest thing up there?  That's not a star.  That's Jupiter.

It's awe-inspiring, isn't it?

You really get the sense that there is always going to be something bigger than anything you can think of.  You really get that sense when you're looking in a telescope and see all of it first-hand.

Anyway, to get back into the usual geekery...  This newfound re-interest in astronomy has me drooling over stuff at Scopetronix.  They have a couple of things that particularly interest me including a gadget that is going to become essential to my use of the telescope.  It's a compass/level.  It fits into the telescope like an eyepiece and allows you to level the whole system and aim it North so that the telescope computer can find things accurately.  This is a real problem I've been having so far.  When I pack the scope into its case, I can put this thing into the tube as a plug, which includes a pack of dessicant and some air-holes to help remove any moisture that might be inside.  Overall, it's a very well thought-out doo-dad.

They have some other more expensive items there that interst me, too, of course.  There is a solar filter, which would let me look at the sun and see sun spots.  And they have some more powerful eyepieces, like a 6mm Plossl, and a Barlow lens or two.  I would also like to have a camera mount for the scope, since I have a switch on the tube that will let me redirect the image away from the eyepiece to a second viewing position, which is designed to house a camera.  I need a mount that works with my camera, though, since all cameras are different.  I think I want to use my digital camera, since I don't do anything with 35mm film any more, and my APS camera has a weird lens mount.

There is this software called AstroStack that lets you take several blurry pictures and merge them into one crisp one.  That's pretty cool, since most of the stuff I've taken through the telescope (ok, all of it) so far has been really blurry.  I'll have to download it and see how well it works.

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