• There are a number of different definitions of a blue moon, the most accepted being the 13th full moon in a year, occurring once every two to three years. The Farmers’ Almanac follows the rule of the extra (fourth) full moon in a season, and the definition of the blue moon as the second full moon in one month stems from a 1946 interpretation error, revealed in the May 2009 issue of Sky & Telescope. (In case you missed the May issue, here’s the article.)

• The moon before the blue moon is called a betrayer moon, because it was seen as coming ahead of its appropriate time (the blue moon was one appearing at the right time, then?) and thus confusing the clergy when they were trying to determine the dates for Lent and Easter, which apparently were based on the dates of the full moon.

• An interesting list of the traditional English names (e) for full moons, based on the Gregorian calendar, followed by the Native American (na) names, based on an older method of dating full moon according to seasons:

January: old moon (e), wolf moon (na)
February: wolf moon (e), snow moon (na)
March: lenten moon (e), worm moon (na)
April: egg moon (e), pink moon (na)
May: milk moon (e), flower moon (na)
June: flower moon (e), strawberry moon (na)
July: hay moon (e), buck moon (na)
August: grain moon (e), sturgeon moon (na)
September: corn moon (e), harvest moon (na)
October: harvest moon (e), hunter’s moon (na)
November: hunter’s moon (e), beaver moon (na)
December: oak moon (e), cold moon (na)

• Finally, here is a handy equation you can use to calculate the dates of future full moons (all full moons, not just blue moons):

where d is the number of days since 1 January 2000 00:00:00 in the time scale known as Terrestial Time. For Universal Time (world clock time) add the following approximate correction to d:

days

and where N is an integer number of full moons, starting with 0 for the first full moon of the year 2000. The true time of a full moon may differ from this approximation by up to about 14.5 hours as a result of the non-circularity of the moon’s orbit.

The next time the blue moon will fall on New Year’s Eve is 2028, at which time there will also be a full lunar eclipse! Whoa! (I did not calculate this myself, although I feel like we should test this equation to make sure mathematician Jean Meeus is correct.)

It was actually quite beautiful as it takes place in Rome and the characters are whisking themselves to all the gorgeous historical buildings with all of their statues and fountains.  Also, I’m sure it was factually accurate so all of the information that Dr. Langdon spouts regarding Catholic and architectural history is an education in itself!  Not only that, but they show the Vatican Archives! (I’m sure its real and not a replicated set)  Now, the best part of this movie is in the beginning when they show the Large Hadron Collider in all its glory.  I had no idea that this movie was going to be such a treat with all of my favorite things, including a great soundtrack.  So in the beginning they show all the scientists busy at their LHC computers in a crisis about how and when to “harvest” some stuff which turns out to be antimatter.  Antimatter looks pretty cool in the movie – all glowy and powerful – but what is it exactly?  I have no idea.  So  I’m doing a little research…

Turns out CERN (home of the LHC) has an Antimatter Academy.  Their site has tons of information about it and I am still trying to understand it and its implications.  Antimatter is definitely the way of the future.

“We have been shooting beams of energy into these pipes since last week and they have gotten about half way around this big ass circle we built.  We’re using some really expensive and sensitive equipment to track the particles moving around in there and so far, nothing has broken.  Pretty soon we’re going to start shooting particles into another tube going the opposite direction and in about a week we should be able to see these particles getting into some head-on collisions.”

So there is your update, not too exciting yet.  Even if I don’t understand the specifics of what they are talking about I love reading bulletins that talk about such things as: “beams dumped just upstream of  the experiment cavern.” and “particles produced by the impact of the protons on the tertiary collimators left their tracks in the calorimeters and the muon chambers of the experiment.”

And here’s a bonus if you are interested in learning the facts about a baguette being the guilty party in the LHC’s emergency shut down.

Playing with my niece Violet in the verdant landscape outside my dream house, its a beautiful sunny day.  Out of the corner of my eye I spot a Moose trotting towards us! I say “Holy shit, its a fucking moose!” (keep in mind, I don’t cuss like that in my waking life, only in my dreams).  Knowing what I do about moose I grab Violet and take off running, trying to be quiet and stealthy but I can see the moose tracking us so I tell Violet to be really quiet and we hide underneath some bushes.  But I can hear old moose creeping up with his heavy hooves and I know I’m about to get trampled to death. And then I wake up.

After a couple other bad dreams I can’t seem to relax and I’m just laying there all tense and stressed out.  And then I remembered what I learned about lucid dreaming…  So I put myself back in the dream and imagine it happening all over again.  Except this time I yell at the moose “Hey Moose! You can’t terrorize me here! This is MY dream motherfucker!”

And then I slept peacefully for the rest of the night.  If you ever have bad dreams you should try it out!

I just left a smart-ass (if slightly illogical) comment on the Daily Galaxy Image of the Day, a photo of the HGC 87 galaxy group. In addition to making myself laugh, this has the added benefit of putting a link to our blog on their comments section!

I also came across this article while reading about the LHC which I find wholly incredible and exciting.  In case you don’t feel like reading the article, its about the very real possibility of creating unlimited energy for the world without the toxic waste that comes with electric and nuclear plants.  I feel like this should have been figured out a long time ago and it probably would have if greed did not exist.  I’m sure that technology in this area has been held back because people have been making way too much money on oil and energy in general.  Anyways, this new “National Ignition Facility”, which is in California (high five!) and starts up in 2010 and is also based on a theory (which they must have proven at some point to get the 3.5 billion start up cost).  The theory: “scientists will use the world’s most powerful laser to create 192 separate beams of light that will be directed at a bead of frozen hydrogen in a violent burst lasting five billionths of a second…the intense beams produce a powerful shockwave that crunches the fuel pellet at a million miles an hour, generating temperatures of around 100,000,000C. Under such extreme conditions, which are found only in the core of stars, the hydrogen atoms will fuse, producing helium and vast amounts of energy.”  Woah.

Perhaps I need to give the SG women a few more episodes to develop, but so far, the women who have emerged as the three main female characters are somewhat stereotypical. First, there is Chloe, the dead senator’s daughter, who spent half the pilot running around hysterically blaming Dr. Rush for her father’s death. I know she lost her father, but she’s supposed to be a strong, independent future politician, not some whiny girl crying in the arms of that soldier. Then there’s the medic, who, as it has already been implied, was probably leaving the military because of an affair with an officer, and who keeps claiming throughout the pilot that she’s not qualified to handle the medical emergencies on the ship, and every shot of her shows her looking all sad and forlorn at the suffering of her patients. Isn’t she supposed to be a seasoned battle medic? Finally, there’s the women who appears to be in some sort of administration role, I don’t know her name, we’ll call her that bossy lady. She does nothing but meddle and try to throw her weight around with the soldiers, the best word to describe her is “catty.” None of these women have inspired me yet, and not one of them has done anything to break out of the classic roles women typically play in the very male dominated science-fiction-action-military-space-cliff-hanger genre. (I do have to make an exception for the scientist woman in SG-1 (yes, the one with MacGyver) who is both a soldier and a geeky scientist, but that’s a different series.)

Now, contrast these women to three I have selected from the wide variety of female roles in Battelstar Galactica. Sure, there is Colonel Tigh’s wife, who is a harpy, but for the most part, BSG has some pretty strong female characters. First, Laura Rosselin, who has stepped into the leadership role of president, and even though she struggles, the show has avoided the oh-so-easy conflict of people not respecting her authority because she’s a woman. And she keeps her cancer battle private; the strength to suffer in silence is usually one attributed to men. Next, the blonde cylon lady. Although she is not exactly likable, she is an incredibly complex character, aspiring simultaneously for love, a baby, power, and control. She fights her battles not only with the obvious tactic of sex appeal, but also with brute strength and psychological manipulation. Without any of the classic female-villian backstabbing and scheming, she is easily the most sinister anti-hero in the show so far (I’m only on season 2.5) Finally (best for last!) Kara Thrace. She is tough and tomboyish, without being butch, despite the whole cigar-smoking, card-playing, boxing-glove-wearing attitude. She makes mistakes with men, she cares what people think but acts like she doesn’t, she is often conflicted about where her loyalties lie…in short, she acts more like a real female than most female TV show characters ever do. And I’ll admit, I want her to hook up with Lee Adama, but at the rate she keeps hooking up with other men, she might not – and if she doesn’t it is okay, her character is complete and compelling enough to stand on its own, unlike so many female roles which exist for the sole purpose of coupling with the lead male.

I am by no means giving up on SG-U. But I do expect some of these female roles to emerge as slightly more complex if I am to become really attached to them. This is, I believe, one of the primary reasons why shows like this have predominantly male following. If there is no one for a smart, science-fiction-savvy woman to relate to, if all the women follow the overdone generalized female roles – mainly as a plot catalyst for one of the more dominant male roles – we are much less likely to be won over as fans.