5.15.2006

Random points about different things

This is why Paul Shirley gets paid to blog. Pretty funny.

About restaurants -- Qdoba definitely gets a thumb's up (from multiple folks, besides me) -- it is yummy and as close to good Mexican food as you can get in State College, but it is no Zazu's. Funny -- Zazu's is a Mom & Pop, Qdoba's a chain. Why is it we get nothing but chain restaurants?

Went to Bellefonte Elementary School today with a grad student, and we met every single K-5 class (four per grade, two at a time) for a brief presentation on astronomy. Both of us were really impressed with some of the questions, even from the youngest students. Richard recently asked me for an example of some of the good questions that we get, and I couldn't remember one, so here are a few from today before I forget them:

1) What causes galaxies to collide like that?

2) If we moved the Hubble Telescope farther from the Earth, could we take better images of the 10th planet?

3) Why do some of the galaxies in the Deep Field look so yellow?

4) Is there more than one universe?

The question wasn't phrased well, but a third grader said something about her sister telling her that we can only see about 10% of what is in the Milky Way -- I honestly think she was asking about dark matter!

There was one group where we couldn't get a single student to ask even one question, but all of the others did, and there were many good ones, which kept the program interesting.

I learned a new joke while we were at the school, too -- What did one strawberry say to the other strawberry? If you had listened to me in the first place, we would never be in this jam!

Just watched the NBA MVP get knocked to the floor after a shot attempt, no whistle blown! Are you as amazed as I am?

Done with this core dump -- on to a more focused topic.

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