The World's Greatest Chrysanthemums

On the Sunday before Thanksgiving we saw the end of the Chrysanthemum festival at Longwood Gardens. 

That is more than 1000 chrysanthemums trained into this globe shape.  They said they make two of them each year just in case.  It takes 17 months to grow it.

It was at the entrance to the gardens.

 I snuck in a picture of this bird of paradise, they are always in such perfect shape.

Obviously my favorite ones were purple.

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Egyptian artifacts and mummies at the University of Pennsylvania

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Mayan Artifacts at the University of Pennsylvania

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As red as they get

The japanese maple is at or just past it's most red and glorious this fall.  I don't think it can get any redder from now it may be time to lose its leaves.  I love the red of this tree, it's practically purple (or wine or burgundy or cordovan...).

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Latest Irises ever

Lynn rescued these Irises that had started budding in the Fall and we definitely not going to finish in time with the weather we are having.



She cut them and put them in water indoors and these are the second and third blooms.  I like having a memory of Spring as winter begins.

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Dumb whiteboard is smart

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Fall flowers fine foliage

Asters are a big favorite of butterflies, moths and bees.

I think this one is called Jupiter's Beard but I am not sure.

Hopefully these new purple coneflowers will spread.

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WHASUP license was probably hilarious in its day

I am sure this WHASUP license plate was hilarious and topical in its day.  Probably around the time the ribbon magnets were put on.  Now that you have read this you will all go around yelling WHASUP! at each other again for know good reason.

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PROPP License looks pretty real to me

This SUV with Delaware PROPP license plate looks pretty real to me.

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The Honest Hypocrite among the galaxies

The volunteer galaxy classifiers at Galaxy Zoo have found a galaxies that look like every letter of the alphabet.  My Galaxies let's you write any phrase in galaxies!  Here is the Honest Hypocrite in galaxies.

Go try it yourself.

(via Space.com,  I am also a proud member of Galaxy Zoo)

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Doctorow and Stross discuss Revenge of the Nerds at Makerbot in Brooklyn

Amid tens of tiny author heads at Makerbot industries in Brooklyn, Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross talk about their "new" book, Revenge of the Nerds.

The book is really an updated version of two short stories about life after the Singularity with an additional story to tie up loose ends.  

Although I had to drive all the way to Brooklyn, I was still excited to see them because I had never seen Charles Stross in person before and I really like his work.  Cory Doctorow, I have seen at Philcon and at a book reading in San Francisco.

Cory seemed more comfortable speaking than Charlie though once Charlie got rolling he presented himself as almost scarily well read.  Cory also appears to have thought a lot about the implications of the technology and the Singularity lampooned in the book.

Questions from the crowd were generally earnest questions about whether their really will be a technological singularity, the philosophical implications of mind uploading.  It was more of a question and answer session than discussion.

So when Cory got a question about uploading and he went into the discussion of where identity lies and the old story that if I cut off you hand and replace it are you still you and then you progress further until you replace the whole person. It's the classic combination of Zeno's paradox and the question of when a pile of sans becomes a grain of sand.  

Charlie answered a question a bout Gnosticism which he originally heard as Narcissism.  The question was better with Narcissism.  He of course started talking about an Apollonian vs. Dionesyan view of thought, in the mind or in the senses.  I did not yell out that I refuse your false dichotomy.   While Charlie was stuck in a Cartesian duelist view of the world, Cory was stuck in a deconstructionist reductionist view of consciousness.

I did like how both Cory and Charlie tried to relate their work to its contradictory philosophical origins in Christian philosophy of original sin and post-Enlightenment thought on ever increasing progress.

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SINGING in the rain

This SINGING license plate cleverly uses the I for first instead of the letter I to make their license.  No ones involved.

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Not so recently read books - I liked them all.

Read these a while ago, so now they are coming off the sidebar list.  They were all terrific.  I recommend each one.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
Starbound by Joe Haldeman
Godlike Machines edited by Jonathan Strahan
The Host: A Novel by Stephenie Meyer
The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

These were ones I was going to read, and of course it is so long ago that I did.

The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America's Pastime by Jason TurbowEngineering Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan
Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang
Powers, Vol. 13: Z by Brian Michael Bendis, Michael Avon Oeming
Fables Vol. 14: Witches by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham
Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love by Chris Roberson, Chrissie Zullo

I also recommend these as well.

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I side 87% with Barack Obama - take the quiz yourself.

You can find the link to my results and a chance to take the quiz yourself at the following link.

http://www.isidewith.com/results/12091462

Howard posted this so I tried it.  Now to look up who some of the less famous candidates are.

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An unproductive Fielder at bat.

All of this ended in a strikeout.

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Cabrera and Fielder vs. the Orioles.

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Jesus and crab dogs at the ballpark

I found Jesus at the ballpark and I believe is His message.

 Crab with Macaroni and Cheese on a hot dog at the baseball game.  It was really surprisingly good.

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A house made of LEGOs

MovotoBlog has a calculator to let you determine how many Lego bricks it would take to build your own home. 

It's not the millions of bricks and the time it would take to assemble them so much as it is the $1 million it would cost to buy them.  Maybe we should use Duplo(tm) blocks.

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Hawaiian Observatories on Mauna Kea from the plane

These are my two best shots of the observatories on Mauna Kea from the plane.  
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I especially like the second one because we were in position to have Mauna Loa in the background.

We didn't get to climb either one, and really only got glimpses of either through the clouds except on our last day when it was very clear.

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Monk Seal and Green Turtle at Black Sand beach in Hawaii

These two endangered creatures were sunning themselves on the black sand beach on the big island of Hawaii.

We kept a safe distance but the telephoto lens on my iPhone let me get these close ups.  

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Halemaʻumaʻu Vent in the crater of Kīlauea Volcano

Halemaʻumaʻu Vent in the crater of Kīlauea Volcano during the day.  the caldera is huge.  

We were pretty much just inside the rim of a volcano.    We also got pictures at night where the glow of the lava deep in the vent illuminated the vented cloud above.

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