Posted by barb on Mar 20, 2005 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts 
Spring arrived this morning at 7:33 AM EST.
I’ve noticed Spring creeping up over the past couple weeks. The sun has been coming up before I leave for work. Friday I opened the windows in the house for a little while, and heard birds singing in our backyard. For the past half hour I’ve been hearing distant rumblings (thunder, maybe?) and the sky has gotten very dark. A thunderstorm would be the best way to welcome Spring!
Tags: comfort
Posted by barb on Mar 14, 2005 in
Cute Pets,
Pictures They don’t usually go in…
Tags: pets
Posted by barb on Mar 12, 2005 in
Around DC,
Pictures Andrew spied one of the Pandamania Pandas a few months ago in the lobby of a nearby office building. We were finally able to take a picture of it today on our way home from the movies.
This is the “Clean Panda” that was outside RFK Stadium and that we saw on our 9th panda-hunting trip.
Tags: life in the city
Posted by barb on Mar 8, 2005 in
Pictures We had the focus group meeting all day today. I didn’t give my presentations until this afternoon, though I think they went fairly well. The one on dark energy really sparked a lot of conversation. My presentation on Constellation-X wasn’t as good, but that’s because it was far more technical than the dark energy presentation. That, and dark energy is intrinsically more interesting.
Jim is still digesting the discussions that we had with the teachers, but overall I think the day was a success. Even if we don’t directly use the suggestions that we got, we have some starting points to jump off from.
Tags: work
Posted by barb on Mar 7, 2005 in
Pictures Jim and I drove up to Penn State today — we’re holding that focus group for the Beyond Einstein education materials tomorrow with a group of PA high school teachers tomorrow.
Jim spied this banner in the Engineering and Earth Sciences Building, where we met with some of the organizers of the focus group. He called it a monument to geek-dom:
After dinner, we walked back to the Nittany Lion Inn, where we were staying, and I spotted the famous nittany lion statue on the way. I snuck back out later, and got this picture:
Also tried my hand at an “arty” picture of the sundial outside the Inn — I wanted to go back during daylight and snap a picture, but forgot.
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 5, 2005 in
Around DC,
Pictures After the DCIFF sessions, Andrew and I stopped at the Shops at 2000 Penn to browse at Tower and grab dinner. While there, Andrew spied this Mickey statue:
Turns out 75 Mickey statues were made for Mickey Mouse’s 75th anniversary. Those Mickeys are going to be in DC from March 19-April 30. Yay! The statue we spied is a 76th Mickey that will be on display with the others.
The Shops also had on display some cool kites for the Smithsonian Kite Festival, coming up on April 2.
Tags: life in the city
I gave the talk last night at the UMD Observatory, titled X-ray Astronomy: Frequently Asked Questions.
The forecast called for snow and icy conditions, which probably kept a lot of people from the observatory. The group was small — about ten people were there for the talk. I had planned for several children to be in the audience, and feared that with only the one there, my talk might be at too low a level. However, at the end, three people asked questions, which suggests that it was at an accessible level. Overall a good experience for me, and hopefully for the attendees as well.
Felicia came with, and gave her talk, too, as shown in the picture below.
She also went down to the telescopes, and adjusted the pointing on one:
And checked out some of the astronomy posters there:
Tags: build-a-bear, grad life, science
Posted by barb on Feb 11, 2005 in
Crafty Me,
Pictures Tonight I took the “Stained Glass Garden Stepping Stone” class through Fairfax Community Education. The class was actually taught at the Stained Glass Works, a shop and studio in Centreville. It was fun and easy, and if the end product didn’t weigh so much, I might consider making them as gifts for friends and family.
Tags: crafts
Posted by barb on Jan 28, 2005 in
Pictures,
Science Musings Tonight, at the grocery store, I picked up a box of the store brand cereal. Before I could get it into the cart, Andrew pointed out that it had constellations on the back, so we looked a bit closer. There was a star chart with a few constellations, a couple “facts” about the night sky, and a game matching the constellations to information about the constellation. Cool, right?
Well, Andrew noticed a small typo immediately:
Don’t see it? Sagittarius is spelled with two ‘t’s. Okay, no big deal — it’s just a small typo. Oh, and they repeated this typo in the answers to the constellation matching game!
But then there was another one:
“A great way to learn about the night sky is to get a start chart”…hum, I think they meant star chart, not start chart. Well, okay. This was the store brand, afterall. They’re entitled to a couple typos for the greatly reduced price, right?
Maybe, but this mistake is just too big to excuse:
That’s right, the naked eye can see a whole galaxy that’s closer than the nearest star!
Clearly this was just the omission of the word “million” (2.5 million light years away), but even discount cereal boxes need to have some level of accountablility.
You can check out the back of the box
Tags: oddness, science
Posted by barb on Jan 24, 2005 in
Pictures,
Technical Details The picture in my new banner is one that I took of a leafy sea dragon at the National Aquarium in Baltimore in July 2003 at the Seahorses: Beyond Imagination exhibit (which has since moved on to the Tennessee Aquarium). Obviously I Photoshopped it a bit — I didn’t want to use a flash in the dimly-lit exhibit hall, so the original picture is rather dim, but recognizable.
Tags: admin