Here’s today’s picture of a butterfly. The rollicking Wilbercon around Ireland is over, and I’m now in Dublin for Worldcon. I’d love to post my con schedule, but I can’t because I don’t have one.  I’m not on programming, go figure. Whether I’m on a panel or not doesn’t signify, but it would be nice […]

This is Kenmore Stone Circle, dating from the Bronze Age.  Human remains were found underneath the central stone. One of us said, “This is what Stonehenge would look like if England had leprechauns.”

This is the Leviathan, at 72 inches the largest telescope in the world from 1845 to 1917, over seventy years.  She was built by William Parsons, the third earl of Rosse, on his substantial estate at Birr Castle.  He subsequently used Leviathan to investigate nebulas, which he discovered were not vague blobby things in the […]

Here is Newgrange, a 5200-year-old tumulus constructed during the New Stone Age.  It is younger than Carnac, just a little older than the oldest bits of Stonehenge, and much older than the Pyramids. The huge megaliths that make up most of the structure, and which corbel 20 meters upward in the burial chamber, were brought […]