And a marathon it was running from 12:00 noon until 10:00pm; I didn’t get there at the absolute beginning and didn’t stay until the absolute end, but did manage to get in about 8 hours of quality time with some very fine musicians playing a varied and interesting fare of post-modern music. Continue Reading
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Book III of Herodotus The Histories is titled: Persian Conquest of Egypt, Samos, King Dareios of Persia, and Herodotus covers a lot of ground here – continuing on his Egypt theme of Book II. Continue Reading
This is somewhat, but not too terribly technical. It is extremely interesting and thought provoking.
The orbit of Triton (red) is opposite in direction and tilted −23° compared to a typical moon’s orbit (green) in the plane of Neptune’s equator [image credit: Wikipedia]
Triton is the seventh largest moon in the solar system. Not only that, it has over 99% of the mass of all Neptune’s moons combined. Its retrograde orbit makes it unique among the large moons of the solar system, and it is also the coldest known planetary body at -235° C (-391° F).
Turning to the orbit numbers, and looking at Triton’s closest ‘inner’ (nearer to Uranus) neighbour Proteus and the next two ‘outer’ moons, we find these values (in days):
1.122d Proteus
5.877d Triton
360.13d Nereid
1879.08d Halimede
We’ll treat Proteus and Triton as a pair, and the same for Nereid and Halimede.
Nereid is over fifteen times further from Uranus than Triton is, so hardly a neighbour at all.
Looking…
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What a night, what a wonderful night!
We played a house concert tonight at a house with absolutely phenomenal acoustics. It was a lot of fun! And then we checked out the moon. It was a great party! I wrote the program notes and played guitar on the second half. The notes will give you a good idea of the concert:
I got a motorcycle. It’s a Triumph Bonneville T100, 2014 new off the lot. It’s a lot of fun to ride so I took it for a spin down to Gillespie Dam. It was a blast.
Book 2 (or Book II in Roman numerals (??!) which is how the contents of my translation are listed which is weird because as far as I know, Ancient Greeks didn’t use Roman Numerals…) but anyhow, the second book of a total of nine books of Herodotus the Histories concerns itself entirely of his visit(s) to Egypt, their Geography, their Customs, their History, their Tales – a kind of ancient travelogue. Continue Reading
At first I didn’t take much notice, and I should have taken notice and didn’t and soon had my regrets for not being observant and… mindful. A new building was going up in my work neighborhood – I couldn’t help but notice the place is relatively gigantic and I walk in that area every single day at my lunch hour. For some reason, I just didn’t pay attention. Continue Reading
We’ve had a wonderful spring here in Phoenix, Arizona – cool by our standards and it even rained here for the first time in recorded history earlier this month. But now the sun is back and it is beautiful. I can’t say I like every single hot day here, but all in all I like the heat. And I like the sun.
It was rumored, in fact hoped, that the Philae lander might wake up from its slumbers when summer approached. If you recall, the Philae lander is the first ever probe to make a soft landing on a comet, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Continue Reading
Wow. It’s been awhile; I’ve been on the road; I’ve been consumed with duties; life. Life is like that. Don’t we all know. I have been planning an architectural blog and it is coming. But in the madness, the confusion of just too much, I return to Rumi. Rumi rocks. He speaks to us through the centuries, but somehow particularly to Americans, his vision is especially pointed. We Americans with our monogamy (isn’t cheating a form of serial polygamy; and with a 50% divorce rate who’s to say?) , our illusion of “having it all figured out”, our systems, our sadness and our violence. Rumi. There is more to life than we might allow. So. Here is a Rumi poem I especially like considering the tone I have set. WARNING: It is at least to be rated X but not triple X for adult themes and sexuality. It is one of my favorites. Continue Reading
We had an uncommon wind and rain storm yesterday here in Phoenix, Arizona. It was unexpected and wonderful in the sense that it made everything look different because it defied our expectations. About this time of year, usually, it is just starting to get warm and even hot during the noon-time day hours. For some reason, many people dread the oncoming heat. So a breezy rainstorm, though uncommon, was welcome.