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• While putting our Christmas decorations up a couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that I only hear the word "stocking" in connection with Christmas these days. Does anyone actually wear stockings anymore?
• Well, the best Christmas present we telescope freaks could ask for is a successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, now scheduled to ( Read more... )

During my reasearch into how SARS2 mRNA vaccines operate, a very odd notion occurred to me: Can zinc ions interfere with vaccines?

It's an important question for Carol and me. At the advice of ( Read more... )

My Irish grandmother Sade was a very funny woman, and if I have ( Read more... )

A year or so ago, a stray thought popped into my head as I crossed a large parking lot to get to one of the few remaining indoor malls in the Phoenix area. I stopped. I looked around. I looked around again. And damn, that stray thought was right:

Cars appear to be made almost entirely in four colors: black, white, silver, and red.

Up and down my ( Read more... )

I've read dozens of short items online recently saying how ( Read more... )

A year or so ago, Carol and I were driving somewhere, and we passed a bus stop shelter with an ad for condos on one side:

The Gildersleeve
Bespoke Apartment Homes
Starting at $200,000

Huh? What the hell did that mean? (I made up the word ( Read more... )

Halloween. Wow. It seemed like the Fourth of July was just a few weeks ago. Then Carol and I walked into Wal-Mart. We live on a street with only a few kids, and if memory serves we ended up eating most of last year's candy ourselves. So we bought a couple of bags of stuff we wouldn't mind finishing, if it comes to that.

And it will.

At Wal-Mart ( ( Read more... )

• Sandia Labs has invented a way to extract metals from coal ash, including rare-earth metals used in batteries and electronics. Furthermore, they do this using food-grade citric acid, which is relatively benign from an environmental standpoint. The treatment makes the coal ash residue much less toxic, and thus easier to dispose of.
• It took a few ( Read more... )