Comic-Con in pictures

I might do a full Comic-Con report, but until that mythical time allow me to share with you a brief summary of the glorious experience:

From Comic Con 2010

From Comic Con 2010

From Comic Con 2010

From Comic Con 2010

From Comic Con 2010

From Comic Con 2010

From Comic Con 2010

Pretties

Once again, I have been remiss in updating this page with pretty space images. Time to rectify that situation.

Last week's total solar eclipse, as viewed from Patagonia and presented on Astronomy Picture of the Day:

City lights and moonlight glinting off the Mediterranean as seen from the International Space Station:

Saturn in the quarter phase from the Cassini spacecraft:

A beautiful star-forming region from ESO's La Silla Observatory:

Have a great weekend!

Stream of consciousness

For the second summer in a row, I had the opportunity to present the planetarium show at the RH Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park. As always, the questions from the kiddies hearten me. I just wish we could find a surefire way to keep them asking such insightful and free questions as they get older.

The open letter from Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert to LeBron James is one of the most amazing pieces of writing I've ever seen. Is it the height of professionalism? No. But then again, neither is letting your team and fans know that you're dumping them on national television. It'll sure be easy to cheer against the Heat next year.

Speaking of heat, May Gray and June Gloom have turned into Misty July. Haven't seen the sun in awhile, not that I'm complaining!

The Comic-Con schedule is slowing coming out. Getting excited!

Now I'm at the point in the summer when I am officially freaking out that I haven't done enough work to prep for the fall semester. Vacation... bah!

I have been going through an introductory chemistry book as review, and I've found some interesting uses of terms that I want to discuss with the chemistry faculty. The term "nature" is used instead of "Earth, one atmospheric pressure, room temperature", so sometimes the authors say that something does NOT occur in nature but I know that we witness it in space. Also, "air" = "O₂", but air is mostly N₂ so I find this disturbing. And we wonder why our students have so many misconceptions!