A room with a view

A few weeks ago I was at an all-day retreat for the Staff Council (I represent Astronomy and McDonald Observatory staff) at the football stadium. We got to use some of the luxury boxes as break-out rooms, so I snapped a photo.

Peekaboo

More fun with screen captures

As promised, here are the screen caps from another Simpsons take on Tudor history this season. The plot of this one was basically The Simpsons' take on "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" with Selma as Elizabeth I, Homer as Sir Walter Raleigh and Marge as Bess Throckmorton.

Fun with screen captures

First, two shots from "Cosmos" showing how my main interests in life - Astronomy/Science and Tudor History - can sometimes combine in interesting ways.





In this episode, Sagan is in a hall in Cambridge and you can sometimes see the portraits on the wall behind him, including a giant one of Henry VIII (top) and one with Mary I (bottom). The episode would have been filmed sometime in the late 1970s, so I'm not sure if these portraits are in the same place now. The one of Mary I looks like the portrait done by Antonio Mor, which is now in the Prado in Spain, I believe. However, it is possible (or even probable) that this is a copy. The painting of Henry is one of many of that same style, so I'm not sure which particular one it may be.

There also appears to have been a Tudor thing going on at "The Simpsons" lately. They did a great send-up of Henry VIII a few years back, but in a recent episode, Homer decides to help Bart build a matchstick Westminster Abbey and has some weird dreams when he falls asleep trying to finish it. Because it was Westminster Abbey, Henry VII got a mention, even though Homer accidentally carves an effigy of Henry VI (and it really was Henry VI when they briefly showed it - I was impressed!), but I couldn't resist a screen shot of Homer on his tomb (I guess Elizabeth of York didn't make it into Homer's dream):



And Anne of Cleves (the only of Henry VIII's wives to be buried at the Abbey) and Chaucer float along to talk to Homer:



They could have gone with some better known Tudor-era figures - Mary I, Elizabeth I or Mary Queen of Scots, but instead we get mentions of Henry VII, an image of Henry VI and a talking Anne of Cleves. Interesting!

There was also some Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh stuff in another episode this season, so I'll have to grab some screen caps from that as well.

Pigs in Space!

pigsinspace.jpg
Originally uploaded by Rhubarble

The original "spam in a can" - a drawing for a pig capsule from the "To The Moon" exhibit currently over at the LBJ Library

Here's my Flickr set from the exhibit (including a few photos from the rest of the library, which I hadn't been to in a long time!)

Also comes in white!!

A nice snarky variation on the everyday "Wash Me!".

This might just be my new favorite LOLcat ...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

New camera!

A side-by-side comparison of my 2003 Canon point-and-shoot and my new 2009 Canon point-and-shoot (model SD780IS) that Dad bought me for my birthday (thank you again!). Finally I have a camera I can throw in my purse and not feel like I'm lugging around a lead weight!

We are Wizards

I've been hearing about We are Wizards (a documentary about Harry Potter fandom) for a while now and thanks to Hulu, I was finally able to watch it. And, if you're in the US, you can watch it too!

I had two 'double-take' moments while watching it. The first was pretty early in the film when I realized that the footage from a live PotterCast they used was the one I attended! The second was while watching the segments with Brad Neely and I recognized that he was driving around my hometown of Austin, Texas. It's still a bit weird for me to see places or people I know on TV or in movies... which happens a lot more often than I would expect.

Darwin cake!

Last Thursday was the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, so the Austin Skeptics Society celebrated accordingly. The cake was courtesy of Taysia and the Darwin finger puppet is mine (from the Darwin exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in NY in 2006).