A Leap Year Manual for Young Ladies, Spinsters & Widows.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Unfortunately,  in the US many effective medicines end up being banned because they have psychoactive properties. Let’s hope this can escape that puritanical nonsense.

This series, entitled Shelf Life will explore the incredible collections of the AMNH and the scientists who use the 33,000,000 objects catalogued there to learn about the world and universe around them.

Shelf Life Episode 1 – 33 Million Things

Shelf Life Episode 2 – Turtles and Taxonomy

A great week to see the comet, even in a city-

-with the help of Orion, who has graciously been nice enough to keep his belt pointed at our green visitor for the next few days. (see chart below)
Just after dark (and until midnight in most of the Northern Hemisphere) you can follow the 3 stars to see the faint fuzzy object. In rural areas free from light pollution you should be able to see it with the naked eye. In cities you may need binoculars but it should be visible.

This wonderful and HUGE sculpture of one of R. Crumb’s “Keep on Truckin’ ” characters is almost exactly half-way between where I live and where Bob Crumb lived on Oak ST. in the Haight.
 The owner told me he picked it up at a furniture/antique store (maybe ‘Apartment’ on 18th?) and is fortunate to have a big enough space to display it to the public.
It was originally in The Spaghetti Factory in North Beach.

“Paco Rabanne’s starkly geometrical plastic swimsuits employ contemporary materials with a classic simplicity, conjuring up timeless images. Rabanne’s modern male-female approach is most apparent in air-conditioned outfit, above right, designed to show and shield a fair lady. The girl in the center wears a bolero of disks emblazoned with concentric circles, suggesting the armor of Attic warriors. The lass on her left, peering through one of Poco’s opulent optics, shielded by breastplates that further delineate a common interest of ancient and modern times…”

A great selection of more of the above fashion layout may be perused here:

http://flashbak.com/swinging-1966-fashion-spreads-26843/

A lovely planet, at least while it lasts…

This is a fun little game that lets you play God and create planetary systems and see if they’re stable enough to last 500 years.
This one made it but because I used mostly Earth-sized bodies the point score was not that high.

To create up to twelve planets, just click anywhere near the central star. Planet types can be selected on the left in order of increasing mass: Earth, Super-Earth, Ice giant, Giant planet, Brown dwarf, or Dwarf star. Each planet is gravitationally attracted not only to the central Sun-like star, but to other planets. Points are awarded, with bonus factors applied for increasingly crowded and habitable systems. The game ends after 500 years or when a planet is gravitationally expelled. Many exoplanetary systems are being discovered in recent years, and Super Planet Crash demonstrates why some remain stable. As you might suspect after playing Super Planet Crash a few times, there is reason to believe that our own Solar Systemhas lost planets during its formation.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150112.html