FPOA Star-b-q (Shallow Thoughts)

FPOA Star-b-q

Hiking up to the top of Fremont Peak before the FPOA Star-b-q started, we saw the Ghost and the Darkness, squirrel style. A couple of ground squirrels hidden in the tall grass startled as we walked by, and whisked off through the grass, occasionally twitching a tail-tip up above the tops of the grasses but otherwise mostly invisible.

Down in the parking lots, there were some interesting ant or wasp-like insects: furry scarlet head, black thorax, furry scarlet abdomen. The wings were black, too, and they could fly at least a little. No idea what they were.

Learned a new word reading scoops on the way down: Anecdotage, that advanced age where all one does is relate stories about "the good, old days."

Turned out Jeff Moore was the speaker at FPOA. He always gives good talks, but this one was especially good: interpretation of the Mars Rover geologic results so far. Some of his slides showed terrestrial scenes (mostly Death Valley) for comparison with the Martian geologic features, and he mentioned that the terrestrial slides were easy to tell because they were the ones with the pocketknife showing (for scale). So the following morning, I got inspired to whip up a few counterexamples.

Tags: science, astronomy
[ 10:00 Jul 18, 2004    More science/astro | permalink to this entry | ]