I’ll keep this short: I decided to give my boring computer background a makeover.
Naturally, this space dork grabbed some of his favorite images of the universe and cut them down to 1920×1200.
Below is a gallery of space things you, too, can use as computer backgrounds for your widescreen monitor.
Enjoy!
Want to hear something crazy? The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago is hosting a contest called Month at the Museum 2 for one lucky roommate to live, breathe and eat science within their walls for 30 days and 30 nights.
The winner would serve as the face of MSI Chicago during the day. At night, it’s nerd vs. museum: Submarines, spacesuits, Apollo 8, airplanes, a fairy castle, plastinates, tornadoes, a coal mine and even a little town. For their troubles? $10,000 and a pile of gadgets.
Two months ago I applied, and the craziness has now reached fever-pitch: I’m one of six of MATM2 finalists.
The museum whittled the competition down from about 1,000 talented, charismatic and very nerdy people who applied, but they now want your feedback.
If you think MSI needs a lot of Dave Mosher in its life, please vote once per day, now through Oct. 3, 2011 at MonthAtTheMuseum.org I’ll be at the museum the morning of Oct. 5, where they’ll announce the winner during a live event.
It literally takes seconds to cast a vote, but if you’re like me you may forget. So I’ve crafted these daily calendar reminder buttons to help you out — one click and you’re good to go:
Note: User of other calendar software? Save this .ics file to your computer and open it.
At every footrace for charity, street promotion or anywhere else free clothing flies off card tables, you find them: Mountains of T-shirts multiple sizes too big for most people to wear.
Last week, for instance, I strolled into a room to collect my free Andrea Bocelli concert ticket and T-shirt. No mediums or smalls in sight. Just box upon box of large, XL and XXL. Being the scrawny lad I am, I left disappointed.
Why does this happen every single time?
I’m not here to poke fun at those struggling with a larger-than-desirable figure. Au contraire. I’m simply posing a question that has, apparently, stumped the brightest minds of this planet since the T-shirt screamed into popularity in the late 19th century (thanks, Europe).
The human race has done well up to this point. We’ve already solved the how-to-board-the-airplane-quickly problem, the my-table-is-wobbly problem and other civilization-crushing conundrums. Surely, then, some grand theorem exists that could save T-shirts from the waste bin?
Nope. I’ve searched the scientific literature far and wide, and nothing is to be found.
Hurricane Irene spat horizontal rain at New York City like pellets shot from a million bee-bee guns. She also blew 65 mph gusts of wind through the streets. That fatty storm (which was 500 miles wide at one point) even left about 650 downed trees in her wake ’round these parts.
From the vantage of a bike ride through three NYC borroughs, however, the city seems to have emerged mostly unscathed. Sans a few unlucky cars (see below).
In the days before Irene’s landfall, Kendra and I nested hardcore in our sixth-floor Queens apartment. We stocked up the refrigerator and pantry, busted out the candles and even did that apocalypse-ready maneuver of filling up the bathtub with water.
Along with our stranded special guest Lou Woodley of Nature (Irene swallowed up her hopes of returning to England Saturday night), we hunkered down with some hurricane cocktails and a Harry Potter marathon.
That night we felt ready. Yet even with reports of Irene’s weakening, the rain spraying the windows and the wind howling through unseen cracks didn’t make for restless sleeping.
Our anxiety peaked around 4:00am this morning. That’s when Brookhaven National Laboratory’s automated emergency system called Kendra’s phone and told her about some tornadoes on Long Island. Yay.
You can prepare for excessive rain, horrific gusts of wind, no electricity and no water, but tornadoes? Not so much. You can only run like hell, half-asleep and half-naked, toward a basement and hope the building doesn’t collapse on you or impale you with broken window glass and debris.
Alas, we finally did fall asleep and awoke this morning to a bit of sunshine. A glance at an uplifting weather report later, curiosity bested us. We hopped on our bikes and pedaled around to survey the damage.
The third time is a charm, the saying goes.
I hope so.
I’m in Detroit for Kendra’s high school reunion, but it didn’t stop me from squeezing out a bit of writing. Below is my third raw and unedited submission to Longshot Magazine, whose ordained theme for this issue is debt. The previous two stories I sent in perished during editorial review: one about the New Horizons spacecraft (for the hustle-themed issue) and the next about the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (for the comeback issue).
This time I stepped away from science and did a little in-family reporting on my last name. Which may or may not be Mosher, thanks to our gambling-rich bloodline.
I want to be skeptical that the core story is true, but something tells me that it is.
Anyway, enjoy. As an added bonus, I’ve posted the conversation I had with my father.
You have 30 days to squeeze every ounce of awesome out of one of the biggest, baddest museums on Earth.
What would you do?
That’s what the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago asked hopefuls for the institution’s second and final “Month at the Museum” contest.
Being the über-curious and outgoing science reporter that I am, I couldn’t resist. My (hopefully) dark horse entry galloped into the stable of applications before the gates closed yesterday.
One part of the application called for a 60-second video showing off you + your creativity. For the $0.00 production above, I braved grumpy security guards, dodged speeding trains, fought sleep and turned my back on the last-ever space shuttle launch.
But 60 seconds wasn’t nearly enough time for this starry-eyed applicant.