According to this press release from the University of Cambridge, Lucky Imaging is now taking astronomical pictures that are clearer than those produced by Hubble, and at 1/50,000th the cost. The system uses ground-based cameras combined with inexpensive software. “These are the sharpest images ever taken either from the ground or from spaceand yet we […]

The holiday weekend was full. On Friday night Kathy and I journeyed to Santa Fe for Carl’s birthday party. Next morning, following breakfast at Melinda’s of Lamy (eggs baked atop spinach, brie, havarti, and cream), we journeyed to Snow Bear at Taos Ski Valley for a weekend with our friends Pat and Scott. We drank […]

” . . . in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that’s supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy […]

So why is it that a couple of my favorite TV series are about drugs? The Wire is my current candidate for best dramatic series ever. Covering the entire spectrum of people concerned with the distribution and sale of narcotics (the cops, the gangsters, the courts, and the neighborhood), The Wire is essentially about poisoned […]