Astronomy

New York Times: Found: 2 Planetary Systems. Result: Astronomers Stunned., by John Noble Wilford.

Link via Garret.

Today’s trip to the USA

I’ve been traveling today – I went to see Glen Canyon, Grand Canyon and New Mexico.

Glen Canyon

I read Glen Canyon: Images of a lost world by Tad Nichols. André gave it to me for Christmas.

It is a wonderful, beautiful book. Nichols used to visit Glen Canyon with two friends for several years, right before the dam was built and Glen Canyon was lost. The book contains many black-and-white photos from Glen Canyon and its side Canyons, many of which Nichols and his friends named.

From looking at the pictures and reading the book, I got the impression that Glen Canyon was one of the most beautiful places on earth, and it’s incredibly sad it has been destroyed by the dam.

Gary Ladd writes in the afterword:

“I think it is nearly impossible for those of us who arrived after 1963 to comprehend how much Tad, Frank and Katie’s canyon meant to them. However, I am beginning to understand because today a second wave of loss sweeps Glen Canyon and slickrock country everywhere as a flood of visitors and deluge of regulations inundate the sweeping stone landscapes. It’s no longer possible to enjoy the freedoms of Glen Canyon or any formerly obscure and winsome canyon. It is history. […]

There is, though, one deeply consoling fact: Glen Canyon will return. We know it will because we know that dams far more massive and far greater than Glen Canyon Dam have swamped Glen Canyon before. It has happened at least twice in the last million years when volcanoes erupted in western Grand Canyon, backing water up as far as Moab, Utah. Lake Powell, like all lakes, natural or man-made, is ephemeral. In due course, Glen Canyon will breathe again. It cannot be otherwise.”

Grand Canyon

I visited Grand Canyon and New Mexico on the internet, at photo.net.

Phil Greenspun, creator of the photos, went rafting through the Grand Canyon in 1999 and took a bunch of photos, some of which reminded me of the photos of Glen Canyon. Scroll down the page to Out of the Canyon and into a Slot Canyon.

New Mexico

Greenspun toured the land of enchantment in 1994, and some of the photos are quite spectacular, e.g. those of Chaco Culture National Historic Park or the Great Sand Dunes National Monument (yes, that’s in Colorado, but it’s on the New Mexico page anyway.), or Santa Fe. (Did you know that by law, structures in the center of Santa Fe must be built from adobe?)

Wow, Garret, you really live in a beautiful place!

Update: Garret informs us that “there are actually two or three building ‘styles’ allowed in santa fe city. pueblo, territorial, and (i believe) northern new mexico. each has a distinct look, yet all must be made to look like the historical adobe forebears of the style. and, as i’ve said before, everyone must adapt. mcdonald’s, burger king, walmart … they’re all adobe. […] municipalities don’t have to accept neon nightmares.”

Souds a bit like Celle, André’s home town. It’s famous for its Fachwerk buildings (‘half-timbered houses’, says the dictionary), and even McDonald’s has one with a brass plate instead of their usual neon sign (here’s a photo of McDonald’s in Celle).

Lunar eclipse

Yes, Sheila, yesterday’s photos are of the lunar eclipse. I meant to write a short note in English, but forgot. Sorry!

The first, top left photo was taken just as the moon started to enter the earth’s shadow. The bottom right photo shows the last bit of the moon before it was completely covered, and from the poor quality you can see that the sky was almost completely overcast by then. We couldn’t see the eclipse itself at all.

Sheila links to Lunar eclipse offers spectacular show. Well, maybe it did, but certainly not here in Bonn, because it got cloudy before the moon was completely covered by the earth’s shadow.

By the way, the clouds went away after midnight – two or three hours too late!

Okay, off to work now…

Weblogs

Thanks to Craig, I have discovered Cabinet, another cool weblog. So far, I’ve only checked this year’s entries, but it looks pretty interesting so far. Their tag line is “It isn’t whether or not it’s real, it’s just that it’s true.”

I also discovered WebsMostLinked on Cabinet, a site that monitors close to a million of websites and ranks them by the number of links they receive. So if you’re already at the top of the HotList, check your site at WebsMostLinked!

Finster ist der Mond… und der Himmel

Seit einer knappen Stunde verfolge ich nebenbei die Verfinsterung des Mondes. Leider sind die Bedingungen nicht die besten: Weil es so kalt ist, gucke ich nur aus dem Wohnzimmerfenster. Und hier, mitten in der Stadt, gibt es natürlich auch eine Menge Hintergrundbeleuchtung. Außerdem ist es irgendwie diesig oder nebelig, so daß man nicht viel vom Mond sieht.

Bei der ersten Aufnahme um 19:47 Uhr (oben links) war es noch einigermaßen klar, von ein paar Wolken abgesehen. Die beiden nächsten Fotos entstanden um 20:01 Uhr (oben rechts) und 20:19 Uhr (unten links), da wurde es schon schlechter.

Und kurz bevor der Mond ganz verfinstert war (um 21:41 Uhr, unten rechts), war auch der Himmel fast ganz verfinstert…

Jetzt sieht man überhaupt nichts mehr. Mal sehen, ob es innerhalb der nächsten Stunde noch aufklart, so daß wir wenigstens noch einen Blick auf den verfinsterten Mond werfen können.

Update: Sieht nicht gut aus. Jetzt ist es ganz bewölkt. Kein Wunder, denn für morgen vormittag ist hier Schnee(regen) angekündigt.

Bilder von der Mondfinsternis gibt’s aber z.B. hier auf Astronomie.de.

Mondfinsternis

Heute abend ist Mondfinsternis. Jörg hatte gestern den passenden Link: Lunares Schattenspiel zur ‘echten’ Jahrtausendwende (bei Telepolis).

Also, heute abend zwischen 20:50 Uhr und 21:52 Uhr (Kernschattenphase) auf klaren Himmel hoffen und in selbigen schauen!

Manila Newbies

This is a useful page: Admin: Page Adresses.

Link via Manila Newbies Mailinglist.

And another article about weblogs

U.S. News: Blogging burgeons as a form of Web expression, by Holly J. Morris.

“Say this three times fast: A ‘blog’ is a blob of blurbs. It’s short for ‘weblog,’ and like many newly coined technology terms, blog serves as both verb and noun. Though some bloggers will disagree, a blog is a frequently updated Web page consisting of brief, dated entries, with new ones pushing the old to the bottom of the page. Most catalog the author’s chronological musings and are often a mix of personal journal entries and links to whatever caught the blogger’s fancy.”

Link via the Curmudgeon.

Cinema

Have you read “Bridget Jones’s Diary”? I have, and I think it was really fun, so I’m looking forward to the movie, which starrs Renée Zellweger (Bridget) and Hugh Grant (Daniel Cleaver).

Here’s an inofficial website, Singletons of the World Unite… everything you wanted to know about the making of Bridget Jones’s Diary the movie, with a weblog-style news page.

The film is going to be released in April, and I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer before it’s coming to Germany.

Lego

I just found a link to the Lego Brick-o-lizer in a magazine. Sounds like a cool idea: The demo version (online) allows you to load a picture into the Brick-o-lizer, and it converts it to a Lego mosaic. You can then print out the instructions to build the mosaic. The full version also allows you to order exactly those Lego bricks you will need to actually build your mosaic.

The whole thing has two disadvantages. First: You have to accept Cookies in order for the site to work. And second: “The LEGO Brick-o-Lizer is not available for use on Macintosh browsers at this time.” I wonder what kind of fancy technology they use that doesn’t work on a Mac. So I can’t play with it.

But maybe you want to try it out?

Yet another article about weblogs

New York Times: Invasion of the ‘Blog’: A Parallel Web of Personal Journals, by David F. Gallagher.

“The concept is simple enough. Create a Web page. Update it regularly with brief personal reflections or witty commentary, sprinkled with links to other pages. Put new entries at the top of the page, pushing older ones down. Voilà, you’ve got yourself a Web log.

That may not sound like the recipe for a social movement. But in the past two years, thousands of people have started their own Web logs, crating a vast sprawl of sites that, to the uninitiated, might feel like a parallel Web universe.”

Link via Schockwellenreiter, who found it on Arturs Weblog (German).

FAQs ohne Ende

Auf der Suche nach FAQs zu einem bestimmten Thema? Vielleicht kann www.faq-index.de weiterhelfen. Die FAQs sind in Kategorien sortiert. Hier findet man auch z.B. auch FAQs zu Tinnitus, Hörspielen oder Schülerverbindungen.

Link via mein Papi (per Telefon! ).

Und falls die gesuchten FAQs dort nicht zu haben sind, lohnt ein Blick auf www.faq-now.de.

Link via FAQ-Index.

Weblog Awards

A couple of days ago, Garret posted a link to the First Annual Weblog Awards, or the 2001 bloggies for short. This is the latest feature on Nikolai Nolan’s Fairvue central.

While I like the idea in general, I’m not sure whether a contest like this really makes sense. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that the so-called a-list bloggers will win most of the awards since they have the most readers, maybe except for the ‘geographical awards’ which are for non-US blogs.

The category I like best is the ‘best-kept-secret weblog’. Kept-secret blogs are all blogs that are not on the Weblogs.com Hotlist at the time of submitting. (Therefore, my weblog is not considered secret.)

I hope many voters think the famous blogs will get enough votes anyway, and vote for less-known blogs instead.

However, I have to admit that I’m curious about the results nonetheless.

Ein denkwürdiger Tag

Der Schockwellenreiter ist auf den Internet Explorer umgestiegen. (Ob jemand seine Beschwerden über lineheights etc. vermissen wird? )

In einem allerdings stimme ich mit Jörg überein: Ich warte auch sehnlichst auf die Mac-Version von Opera. Ich habe den Browser bis vor einem Jahr auf meinem alten PC (486er) benutzt – einfach klasse!

Macros

Scott is playing around with macros in Manila and has gone one step further than just linking to others:

Look at this page. And look at this one.

I wonder why both got his background. Maybe that’s because his background is a graphic, while mine is just a color, and graphics “overrule” colors?!

Sunset

Garret had a beautiful one yesterday.

Diese Woche in der Zeit

Lehrermangel:

Ein Königreich für einen Lehrer, von Roland Kirbach und Martin Spiewak. “Aus dem Nichts taucht ein neuer Schrecken auf im Land der Schulmisere: Lehrermangel. Jetzt jagen die Kultusminister einander Pädagogen ab.”

“Eine fünftägige bundesweite Telefonaktion wurde gestartet, bis die Hamburger Schulbehörde vor Weihnachten einen Lehrer für Mathematik und Physik fand.”

Wenn der Wahnsinn Schule macht. “Wer neue Lehrer einstellen will, bleibt im bürokratischen Gestrüpp hängen. Ein Erfahrungsbericht von Friedrich Mahlmann.”

“Zunächst tun wir einfach mal so, als gäbe es den gesunden Menschenverstand auch im öffentlichen Dienst, und fragen: Warum werden Lehrer eigentlich nur zu Beginn eines Schuljahres – im Ausnahmefall zu Beginn eines Schulhalbjahres – eingestellt? Krank dagegen werden Lehrer auch zwischendurch, pensioniert ebenfalls, und wenn sie weiblich sind, fragt die Mutterschaft auch nicht nach dem Dienstplan. Nichtsdestotrotz sagen die Politiker: Unterrichtsausfall gibt es nicht!”

Die Suche nach der Elite, von Michael Schwelien. “In Amerika ist die Abwerbung von Lehrern alltäglich.”

“Es sind goldene Zeiten angebrochen für die Lehrer in den Vereinigten Staaten. Überall herrscht Lehrermangel. Besonders stark ist er in den Großstädten und im Süden und Westen des Landes. Eine Folge der Vollbeschäftigung, die in den vergangenen Jahren auf den wirtschaftlichen Boom folgte. Die Industrie konnte nicht genügend Naturwissenschaftler, Mathematiker und Techniker finden und suchte sie deshalb in den Schulen. Da Lehrer in Amerika nicht Beamte auf Lebenszeit sind, sondern normale Anstellungsverträge haben, sind sie auf dem Arbeitsmarkt ebenso beweglich wie jeder andere Arbeitnehmer auch.”

Schule: Schulen im Netz, von Ulf Schönert. “Die deutschen Lehranstalten haben das Internet jahrelang verschlafen – doch jetzt sind sie drin.”

“Seit sieben Jahren setzt die kleine Hamburger Grundschule Computer im Unterricht ein, seit zwei Jahren auch das Internet – in allen Fächern und Klassenstufen. Wenn die Klassenlehrerin Conni Kastel morgens den Unterrichtsraum betritt, schaltet sie als Erstes den Rechner an. Schon die ABC-Schützen lernen Lesen und Schreiben am Bildschirm. Eltern schreiben Entschuldigungen per E-Mail, wenn die Kinder krank sind; die Schüler verschicken Mails oder SMS-Nachrichten an Freunde aus anderen Schulen. ‘Wenn der PC nur eine halbe Stunde in der Woche läuft, bekommt er einen Sonderstatus’, sagt Kastel. ‘Wir wollen ihn aber in den Alltag integrieren.’ “

Erinnern: Der Duft der Babys, von Hugo Rupp. “Gerüche gehen direkt ins Gehirn. Ein ganz besonderer geht dort nie wieder raus.”

Der Artikel hat mich an eine Geschichte von Al erinnert: Babies. “Babies smell…well, like babies. Nothing else like it. G*d puts the smell of babies on them so that grownups will nuzzle them and hold them and cuddle them. A lot. It works.”

Books and education

Yesterday, Craig wrote:

“When I reflect on my formal education I can think of three things that stuck with me–three things that I actually use on a daily basis. First, the ability to solve simple math problems, in my head.[…]

Second, I learned to touch type. […] I took the typing class because it was easy and there was no homework. Now, there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t reflect on my good fortune for having taken that class.

Third, I acquired a love of reading and books. Reading, in my youth, was a type of rebellion. I could sample the exotic and forbidden. I was introduced to philosophy and critical thinking. I learned to ask questions–questions that often had no answer. I was able to travel and explore the world. That youthful rebellion became an obsession and a habit that lead me to my lifes vocation. I’m a bookbinder and book conservator. A good part of my career has been spent either in libraries or in the service of libraries. I have spent my life studying the book, its history, form, structure, design, content and influences. And the more I discover and learn, the more I find there is to know. How lucky can I be?”

Right on, Craig! I totally agree with you!

Books are the most important media for me. Like Craig said, they allow you to travel and learn a lot about the world. I don’t need a TV if I have access to a library.

Books, books, books

Talking about reading and books: The day before yesterday, Garret wrote:

“i’m one of those strange people who laughs out loud while reading books in the bookstore. young mothers pull their children away … as if that’s a socially unacceptable way of reading a book. books are a sort of religion for me, but they’re certainly not a cloister. i’m pulled so thoroughly in to the world of that book, the real world melts away and i’m transported in a fashion much more satisfying than any movie or video.”

Except for the laughing in the bookstore part, this is also true for me. André and I got so many books for Christmas, we have to get some new books shelves soon…

Inspired by Craig, I took a picture of our bookshelves in the living room. We each have more books (science, computer) near our desks; the ones in the picture are fiction, philosophy and popular science. We also store our books on cooking and traveling on different shelves and have one reserved for large books that don’t fit onto the normal shelves.

For dessert, a link to a great article in the Washingtion Post: Biography of a Bookstore.

Link via BookNotes.