The Mount Wilson observatory that Hubble famously used survived the recent wildfire. Interesting pictures at Wired.
Lots of people on furlough. I was thinking it would be good to augment these days of the week shirts with an eighth saying FURLOUGH. You can support some local state employees by visiting their Cafepress store. I recommend the coffee mug.
If things get bad you, might want to read Getting Even, about workplace justice. Or take a trip to Reno. Or rent a timeshare week from me at Jensen Beach and snorkel during low tide at nearby Bathtub Reef.
In techie news, the author of Showstopper wrote a Technology review article about whether it's wise for Google to develop an operating system. The "Good enough" revolution (reminds me of James Bach's "satisficing" idea), and the "new literacy" are also discussed.
Both Spectrum and Wired have articles about the Beatles and RockBand, but I recommend the Spectrum article for getting into what was required to make it work, and for you old timers, a nice column by Bob Lucky, a profile of the Stanford prof who came up with the iPhone ocarina app, and bad news for you face-recognition folks..
Finally, tomorrow Wired is paying a guy to fly in Jetblue every day for a month, and write about it. Hmm.
