Getting immersed in your topic is usually a great idea… … and in the past couple of years, a number of different technologies have emerged that let you record and view 360-degree “immersive” videos. Here’s a nice example from David Hsieh: This is…
So… what’s the story here? Why did all of the NASA missions land on the side facing the Earth? It struck me the other day: ALL of the NASA landings on the Moon were all on the side of the Moon facing towards the earth. Why did they neglect the other…
A while ago we had a… post about whether or not one could see the Farallon Islands from the shore (they’re 27 miles to the west off the coast from San Francisco)… We answered that yes, you could see them, but your eyes would have to be 489 feet in …
On January 1st, the moon was glorious on the horizon… … there it was… a beautiful slender crescent that hung in the western night sky just after sunset. Not my photo, but very similar to what I saw on Jan 1, 2017. P/C NASAI spent a bit of time i…
SearchResearch is often a process… You start with an observation–maybe you notice that something doesn’t quite fit, or maybe there’s a missing bit, or a strange misalignment. I often write these observations in my notes, and when I have a bit of t…
As I read, I take notes. I take so many notes that by the end of the year, I have a few hundred pages of them. Some of those notes are questions that I’ve read about, or small curiosities that have occurred to me as I read. I try to frame those curio…
Where should things go?Ann Folsom wrote in asking how to find a good (best?) place for your collection of possibly historically useful artifacts. I condensed her questions in these two: 1. How do you find the “best” place for your collection of art…
Where should things go? Regular Reader Ann Folsom wrote in with a great question that I wanted to share as a SearchResearch Challenge, especially at this holiday time of the year. Her excellent question: Some of us are in the position of downsizing o…
Is this story for real? We’ve even talked before about how hard this task is. Perhaps this is why people keep coming to librarians and asking these questions. They really want to find that story again, and they can’t figure out how to do it. But we’…
Life sometimes intervenes. Sigh. This week’s answer is a bit delayed because I’m living with a bit of sinusitis, which is basically an infection of the sinuses (which has the side-effect of making it tough to think through the writing process). Natur…
The winning teams, whose members have been named FIA Innovation Fellows, will share in up to $10,000 per team in stipends and expenses to carry out projects aimed at using virtual and augmented reality to address real-world challenges. Altogether, these four teams include 16 students and 5 faculty mentors from 8 UMD colleges and schools. The teams plan to consult with several FIA and outside partners during the course of their work.
One of the most common things a librarian gets asked… … is a question of the form: “Can you find this story (that I barely remember) for me?” We’ve even talked before about how hard this task is. Perhaps this is why people keep coming to librari…
Mercury is magical, but it leaves a legacy… Apparently I wasn’t the only kid to play with liquid metal mercury. Many folks about my age (including the ageless RegularReader JonTheUnknown) have spent time pouring mercury back and forth between our ha…
Mercury is pure metal magic. When I was a kid, we used to occasionally play with small beads of mercury when one of the kids would break a thermometer. Nobody told us it was toxic, so we’d roll small beads of it back and forth in our hands, amazed at …
About those islands… Our Challenge this week was to find out about the Greek island of Delos and the reported appearance of a new-ish island near Santorini. Delos: Right in the middle of the Aegean.I had a couple of Challenge questions about Greek …