Unexpected Benefits From NASA

To more people than I’d like , the $17 Billion or so the United States spends on NASA each year seems like wasted money or an unneeded luxury. It’s money that could be better spent elsewhere — if not by prolonging our Iraq occupation by two months, it could be used to fund SCHIP [...]

Grateful – 12/30/2007

For the past month or so I had been suffering from the winter blues, but I’ve noticed that my mood has lightened up in the last week. While it would be fun to say it’s the extra minute or so of day since the solstice, I think it’s more than that. So I’ll swirl explanations [...]

New FGI Discusssions: December 31, 2007

This week the Free Government Information (http://freegovinfo.info)
volunteers posted these stories:
+ New CRS Report on Data Mining – Daniel
+ Happy 75th to UCLA! – Daniel
+ GovernmentDocs.org provides enhanced access to FOIA documents – Jim A.
+ How many government websites are there? – Jim A.
+ Most fed data is un-Googleable – Jim A.
+ Boston Public Library Digitization [...]

Another lovely spiral

I’ve been classifying a lot of galaxies for the GalaxyZoo project. Sometimes there is a really nice galaxy like this one.

Could WordPress be helping my old blog?

Probably a coincidence, but I’ve gotten more comments on the Blogger version of Alaskan Librarian since I moved my blog here to WordPress than I’ve gotten in months. Are people discovering my blog on WordPress and then hopping over to Blogger to comment? Doesn’t seem likely. But then where is the Blogger traffic coming from?

The Reese’s of Podcasting

For those of us who grew up in the 1970/80’s, we know that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are two great tastes that taste great together.
That is how I felt about show 130 of the Engaging Brand. The Engaging Brand podcast is hosted by Anna Farmery, someone I’ve really come to respect for her ability to [...]

Canadian Analysis on Afghanistan

The Government of Canada recently published some briefing papers on Afghanistan that I thought would be of interest to people looking for another perspective. This being Canada, the publications are available in both English and French:
PRB 07-16E. –Afghanistan – history and system of government, [by] Michael Dewing. 9 October 2007. 4p. (317 KB). Adobe Acrobat.
URL: [...]

Congressional Research Service Looks Back at Space Race

The fine folks at the nonprofit Opencrs.com have liberated this Congressional Research Service Report on US space efforts since the launch of Sputnik back in 1957:

U.S. Civilian Space Policy Priorities: Reflections 50 Years After Sputnik
The “space age” began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union (USSR) launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. Some [...]

Merry Christmas/Happy Growing Days

To all my Christian friends and colleagues out in the blogosphere, a very Merry Christmas to you all! Let us celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace and make his teachings more than empty words in our lives. Let us strive to make Paul’s words in Galatians 5:22-23 a reality for us and an [...]

Hotel Mauna Kea (parody)

Hotel Mauna Kea (parody)

Here’s a HI-Larious video about the ups and downs of being a visiting astronomy at the observatories at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea.