kucinich

the best thing to come out of ohio in a long long time (except for me of course... hee hee) is dennis kucinich!

not only has he passed a resolution to impeach big dick cheney, but i also agree with a lot of what he says in this interview.

go dennis! woo hoo!

cerro grande!

yesterday i explored a main feature of La Serena... by bike. inland from the city lies a looming, steep, tall hill appropriately named cerro grande ("big hill").

en route....
rachel and the path up. i'll admit that i was pretty intimidated at this point, especially considering how difficult it was to gain any traction on the rocky dirt trail. i'd never done such an up hill climb on bike before. at this point we'd been riding for 30 minutes and i was already a bit fatigued.
nice view of the valley from pretty close to the top.

woohoo! we made it... just in time for lunch! :)

it was a sunny, yet hazy day. on a clear day you could see La Serena in the foreground, the beaches and all the way across the bay to coquimbo before losing a sense of distance to the vast horizon of ocean.
all geared up and ready to head back down.
the downhill was actually pretty scary. for some reason i had a very bad feeling.... but i managed to only skid once and we all arrived at the bottom safely... and quickly... without any falls or injuries!

weightlessness

one day i really hope to experience weightlessness. the zero gravity corp. is now making this possible for thousands of people... if theyre willing to pay $3,750! the zero-g corp. flies its passengers up to 32,000ft and performs the "parobolic flight" maneuver where they tip the nose up at a 45 degree angle then follow a parabolic trajectory up and over the curve... like a roller coaster without the wind or the harness... or that feeling you get in your stomach as youre driving over the little bumps on a country road. You're not achieving complete weightlessness in such a case, but you can definitely feel yourself lightening as your stomach "rises" (by the way, these country road bumps are way more common in ohio than they are in texas). the plane falls for about 30 seconds while all the passengers experience weightlessness... blocked from the forces of the wind thanks to the body of the plane.

stephen hawking, who has been in a wheel chair for almost 40 years due to lou gehrig's disease, just got to experience this feeling. i wanted to share this picture because i think it's super cute! i'm glad he could experience such a thing... and i hope that one day i do too!

to the moon!

NASA has been getting a lot of bad press lately, which i wont remind you of here, but i finally found something positive (thanks to the bad astronomer)! we're going back to the moon!

here is a cool animation from NASA about the constellation program trip to the moon:



if you have patience... load the high resolution version.

i'm pro-choice.

i thought i'd be less than subtle with the title of this blog, especially after the recent supreme court decision to ban abortion in the second trimester.

i share with you now a very personal account of how this decision affects the health of women: disgusted beyong belief... my views on abortion.... a must-read in my opinion.

i like trees. let's keep 'em!

so much for the top leaders of the US representing the american people. karl rove, george bush and dick cheney are such bastards in my mind. they act like big, defensive bullies that are ridiculously set in their ways. yesterday was earth day, but here's an article where rove gets defensive and dismissive with sheryl crow on the topic of global warming. why?

on a more positive note... here's an article where bill maher reminds us why we should treat every day like earth day! the earth is our home, the only home any human has every known, it provides food.... and it will until we destroy it.

homeless

this group produced little snippet documentaries about 6 homeless people from 6 different cities around the world.... really interesting... homeless

up, up, down, down, left, right...

if you know what the heck that means, then you played the nintendo game contra many many years ago! i spent many many hours playing this one. when you first turn the game on, you press a series of buttons... up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, etc (cant remember the rest).... and you get special weapons abilities... or something like that.

i just found this painting by david chung that i really liked....

then i looked for more of his stuff and realized this painting is contra-inspired and titled "up, up, down, down, left, right... WHAAAAA!!" cool stuff.

venus moon conjunction tonight!

tonight as the sky darkens, a bright and brilliant venus will shine to the upper left of waxing crescent, sliver moon. and if that wasnt enough.... the pleiades cluster (or the teeny tiny blue dipper, as i like to think of it) will be to the moon's lower right!

APOD link

enjoy!