The Galileoscope is a $15 kit that allows you to build a refracting telescope. I ordered mine in mid-May and it arrived Tuesday of last week. The first thing I noticed is that it’s made of fairly lightweight plastic. What did I expect for $15?

The next think I noticed is that the included instructions are just bad. They refer to parts of the telescope without actually telling you what they look like. I’ve never actually used a telescope before, so I was just guessing on putting it together.

President Obama would like us all to believe that there are only two choices on healthcare: his plan and the current situation. In fact, he beats this straw man up whenever possible.

His position is that if you are against his plan, then you must be in support of the current system. This is incorrect. One can, in fact, be against Obama’s plan and the current plan.

One argument made by conservatives and libertarians against universal health coverage is that governments are incapable of controlling costs. This is incorrect.

Before we dive into that, however, let’s work through a couple of definitions. When discussing health care, many people (especially pundits and politicians) refer to “cost” when they mean “spend”. “Cost” refers to price at an individual level, whether for a person or a procedure. “Spend” is an aggregate amount of the costs of all the procedures for a population.

The web is on fire this afternoon with the news that Amazon is buying Zappos. The deal is reportedly worth more than $800 million in cash and stock.

From the Zappos perspective, the deal makes a lot of sense, at least in the short term. I expect the recession has been hard on Zappos, and things probably haven’t been comfortable there since before their layoffs last November. The backing of a behemoth like Amazon would certainly be welcomed. And as long as they are allowed to operate as an independent entity (which will certainly change at some point), the day-to-day impact should be reasonable.

On May 15th, I placed an order for the equipment needed to attached my Nikon D200 to the Galileoscope I ordered the same day. I received an email two days later that the parts were backordered, but should be available in a couple of weeks. I wasn’t too worried about it, as the Galileoscope hadn’t even started shipping yet and I doubted I would receive it until sometime in July.

Yesterday, the Galileoscope arrived. I had not received the parts from Adorama yet, so I logged into my account to check the status. All it said was that it’s backordered as of May 17th. There was no projected ship date.

© Copyright 2009 Brian Duffy – All Rights Reserved.

I loved Angela’s Ashes. It is a fantastic book. Beautiful and touching. Sad, but uplifting.

The wife and I took a four day-three night cruise on Carnival recently to celebrate our first anniversary. We sailed from the Port of Miami, spent a day in the Bahamas, and then took a circular route back. I’ll post more pictures from the trip later, but in the meantime, here are some pictures of the towel animals that were left for us each night.

First Night – Pig

Second Night – Cat

Third Night – Monkey

With the MLB All-Star Game upon us, and football season still weeks away, let’s take a look at the ten best baseball movies.

With the California budget a science fiction flick, horror film, and comedy all rolled into one, I thought I’d take a look at some of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s greatest movies.

Warning: Some spoilers follow, but it’s not like any of these are new movies!

© Copyright 2009 Nate Beeler – All Rights Reserved.
Used with permission.