Governors Island

New York City recently (re) acquired rights to Governors Island, which is a small, unpopulated, and mostly undeveloped enclave used as a US Coast Guard station for some decades. It is now being turned into.... well, no one is quite sure yet, but so far a lot of people are enjoying taking the free bike-friendly ferry service from Manhattan and Brooklyn to it on weekends for some traffic-free biking and exploring.





Governors Island Preservation web site.

This link goes to a full set of photos taken by me on Saturday.

Moon Shots

Last week I took my telescope upstairs and got my first shots through a camera mount I've had for over a year and never got a chance to try out. It basically allows you to attach any camera (pocket sized.. 35mm / SLR.. as long as it has a standard screw tripod attachment) to the telescope and have the lens point right into the 'scope eyepiece. It's incredibly tricky to align it correctly and focus (there's TWO things to focus -- by the time you've got it mostly right the subject has wandered off the frame due to the Earth's rotation...)

There's at least one or two good ones, though... Click on the photo to see the rest.

(I also like the inadvertent "porthole effect" that you get from the edge of the eyepiece appearing inside the shot frame in some of them -- almost makes it look like you're looking at it through the window of a space ship...)

Lubbock

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love."

- Butch Hancock, Musician, the Flatlanders

Polly Wants a MacArthur Fellowship Grant

Do you buy this? Does anybody have a link to the full documentary (or some literature that would flesh out these claims?)

David Gregory's Head is Two Feet Wide

This is a screen grab of David Gregory interviewing John Kerry (who is neither a small nor a small-headed man) on yesterday's Meet The Press. How is it possible for someone's head to appear dramatically larger than that of another person's, which is sitting four feet in the foreground? Is this some sort of blue-screen shenanigan, in that the interview may have been done by the participants remotely?