For everything - turn turn turn

Sun rising between stones
Originally uploaded by KimM-O.

Time for the sun to swing back to the south again, bringing light to my friends Beatrice in Argentina and Miche in New Zealand and Den in Australia, though we're still in "sun slow" on the analemma, so it'll be awhile before my days seem much shorter, or theirs much longer.

Still, here we are again, marking a point on the trip we take every year, swinging round and around the sun, living in the endless pattern.

Pin the tail on the city

Tehran and Milad Tower (HDR)
Originally uploaded by arash_rk.

In response to a general question about how many people in the west (more specifically, Americans on twitter who turned their icons green) could even find Tehran on an unlabeled map, my friend Rick came up with a challenge meme, of a sort, suggesting folks start with a fully zoomed out, unlabeled google map, then zoom in toward Iran until you think you can click on exactly where Tehran is, then click, and announce what city you ended up on, if not Tehran. (If you ended up right on Tehran? Woohoo!)

So, where did you end up? If it was Tehran, how close did you zoom in before you could be precise?

Where do you come from, and what's your geography background like, or your knowledge of central Asia?

I ended up about 100 km northeast of Tehran, from just far enough above the surface that what I thought was city was bare rock.

on my honor I will try

Thanks to my friend Lisa for pointing me at these badges.

(Admittedly, I only claimed the kid science one because these weren't available when I was little.)

FOR SCIENCE! ... and for beauty

This looks so completely CGI I can hardly blame people for assuming it's not real:



Yes, this is on youtube, it might go down some day. Unlike NASA, the Japanese space agency JAXA retains rights to its images. But they don't seem to enforce that too hard.

I don't really expect I'll get to see the earth rise from the moon, I'm old enough now that I'll likely be dead before the general public gets to visit. But I'm still glad we're interested enough in pure science to explore it, and I'm glad there are people who record it on video and share it for us for the sake of beauty alone.

longitude and latitude -- basic school video

very very very basic explanation of longitude and latitude:

nice time-eating little map puzzle

Lara, James and the US Map puzzle
Originally uploaded by rcleetus.

US Map Puzzle -- Drag the states into their proper places using the Great Lakes as a placement guide.