Beautiful, But a Bit Bothersome

Over at Astronomy Picture of the Day they have this beautiful picture of the Cosmic Microwave Background - Beautiful.

They point out that the dipole nature of the colors you see are due to us moving "600 kilometers per second relative" to it. See that's bothersome to me. To me it implies that there is a preferred "stationary" frame of reference. Such a thing is contrary to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.

(For those versed in the theory, Yes, "contrary" is too strong a word. But certainly there is an implied preferred frame which is not supposed to exist.)

Everythings Great, Go About Your Business

See it's like this.

The Vice President of the United States says "The Recovery Act is doing more, faster and more efficiently and more effectively than most people expected," and that the accomplishments over the past 100 days provide proof of promises kept when he and President Obama began rolling out the plan earlier this year. here for full story.

But see there's this problem...

The fact is that SOMEBODY did expect more, the President. See his folks put out data on how much better things would be (one could argue promised the improvement), and then it turned out worse than their worst projections for what would have happened without the orgy of spending. Here's the data.



Bummer for the Veep.

Spectacular Einstein "Ring" Image

This image just blows me away.

If you want a description of why there are so many blue image that seem to form a circle around the center of this image go to the description at Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Hugs...

Bucket List Item #6

Of the things I want to see with my own eyes...

Mt Rushmore (not necessarily at night).

Bucket List Item #5

No photo for this one. I want to see a baseball game in every Major League Park in the same year. This is number one on my "Once I'm Retired" list. I've even figured out the sequence to make the driving doable in a reasonable time. The hard part will be finding a time in the schedule when everybody's in town such that resequencing is not too great, then getting tickets (I hate to think about the scalper prices for a few of those places, but that won't stop me).

OK, I changed my mind, here's the home park... Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres

... Hey, I think that's me in the left field lower grandstand!

Bucket List Item #4

So here's the fourth thing I really want to see with my own eyes before I die.

Yellowstone National Park.

Bucket List Item #3

... that I want to see with my own eyes...

The Great Wall of China.