Sunday, 20 April 2025

Category » The Universe

Happy 131st Birthday and a Bit, Albert Einstein!

There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was much faster than light;
She set out one day,
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.

Unfortunately, we weren’t fast enough to post an announcement on Einstein’s actual birthday (March 14). Nevertheless, on behalf of all the bright young ladies and gentlemen here assembled, MuseBlog thanks him.


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Happy Pi Day!

That’s today, March 14 (3/14 in American date notation) — only two decimal places, but any excuse for a party, we say. How are you celebrating?


Boston/Cambridge Kokonvention, March 13, 2010

It starts at 11:30 a.m. blog time (12:30 Boston time). No doubt the Kokonventioneers will find a way to report in during the proceedings; in any case, we’re sure to hear from them eventually.
 
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Happy 58th Birthday, Douglas Adams

March 11, 1952, saw the birth of the man who gave the universe, among many other things, the spaceship Heart of Gold, Marvin the Paranoid Android, the Campaign for Real Time, and the Total Perspective Vortex.


Chess: peary moppins vs. Keiffer

Keiffer has been playing White and peary Black a lot lately, so this game mixes things up a little.
 
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Chess: bookgirl_me vs. cromwell — 1-0

Two undefeated players (by our count, cromwell has won 1 standard game and 1 Capablanca Chess game on the blog; bookgirl_me has won 1 standard game, 1 Capablanca game, and 1 game of Turbo Chess). As usual, we’ve assigned the black pieces to the person who requested the game.

bookgirl_me, as White, moves first.
 
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Happy 67th Birthday, George Harrison!

(25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001)
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Psychology

By overwhelming demand.


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2010 Winter Olympics

Sorry to have started this thread so late — things have been a little busy here in GAPA-land.


Hot Topics, v. 2010.2

This thread is a place for careful, clear, respectful discussions of difficult topics. It is not a place for having two-fisted no-holds-barred discussions.

MBers should be able to express their opinions without attacking others personally, and be able to listen to people who disagree with them without feeling personally attacked.

Easier said than done, of course. But MuseBlog is a good place to practice trying.

Continued from version 2010.1.


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Chess: Pax the Hamster vs. Ducky

Pax, White; Ducky, Black.

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Happy 201st Birthday, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin!

Two remarkable people, born thousands of miles apart on the same day in 1809.


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Chess: Cromwell vs. Ducky — 1-0

White: Cromwell. Black: Ducky. Go to it!
 
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Space, v. 2010

Many of your favorite books, movies, and TV series take place there. Meanwhile, in the here and now, America’s space program is about to make a sharp change of course. This seems a good time to talk about what James T. Kirk called “the final frontier.”

[Note: We had an earlier space thread in 2008.]


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Chess Game: Keiffer vs. Errata

White: Keiffer. Black: Errata. May the better player win!
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Quotations, v. 2010.1

Continued from Quotations, 2009.4.


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Attention, Would-Be North Carolina Kokonventioneers!

Two parents (Koppar’s and Tesseract’s) have reported in, and we are putting them in touch with each other to plan the Kokon.

Are any others still missing? (Ahoy, kiwimuncher!) If so, please have them write to the GAPAs (gapa @ musefanpage.com) soon.


Things We Like and/or Don’t Like, v. 2010.1

Requested by Alice, who points out that we haven’t had a thread like this for a long time. (There may be some overlap with “Rants and Complaints,” “Good News,” “Guilty Pleasures,” and “Things of Which We Are Unreasonably Fond,” however.)


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Good News

By popular request, here’s an antidote to the Rants and Complaints thread: a place to talk about things you’re happy about. We could all use a little good news.


Hot Topics, v. 2010.1

This thread is a place for careful, clear, respectful discussions of difficult topics. It is not a place for having two-fisted no-holds-barred discussions.

MBers should be able to express their opinions without attacking others personally, and be able to listen to people who disagree with them without feeling personally attacked.

Easier said than done, of course. But MuseBlog is a good place to practice trying.

Continued from version 2009.5.


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Books and Reading 2010

Continued from 2009.


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Happy Eleventy-Eighth Birthday, J. R. R. Tolkien!

The author of The Lord of the Rings would have been 118 years old today (January 3, 2010).

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

“He [Bilbo Baggins] used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,’ he used to say. ‘You step onto the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.'”
–Frodo, in The Fellowship of the Ring


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Roma Aeterna

By popular request, a thread for discussing the enduring influence of ancient Rome


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Mathematics

Not “Math and Math Geeks” this time around. This thread is math with di gnity.


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Happy Winter 2009-10, Everybody!

Winter officially began in the Northern Hemisphere (summer in the Southern Hemisphere) today at 17:47 Universal Time or 11:47 a.m. MuseBlog Time (which happens to coincide with Central Time, in honor of Muse‘s home base in Chicago).


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