Customer Service Announcement - Fraudulent Charges on a Credit Card

Well, I can now say (not too proudly) that I have been a victim of a fraudulent credit card charge...

Here's the story so far:

Yesterday I logged on to my bank account to check my balance... something I'm pretty anal about since I only get paid at the beginning of the month so sometimes the funds get a little low at the end of the month. The charges that I expected to be there were, along with an extra one for $12.95 that I didn't recognize from "LITTLEFORK TECHNOLOGY". Since I don't use my debit card for much beyond food and gas, I was suspicious and started to Google around. And here is a thread that I found that pretty much confirmed my fears. The question still remains how our card numbers were stolen, but hopefully someone will eventually hear back from an investigating bank.

I called Bank of America yesterday, but we couldn't do anything until the charge actually posted. So this morning I called them again and they handled it quickly and graciously. I didn't even have to ask for them to cancel the number and send me out a new card, they automatically did it. If an

yone else comes across this post because they were curious about a mysterious charge from Littlefork Technology (or any of the other "businesses" listed in the thread above), call your bank and report it ASAP. I'll update with any additional information I come up with about these charges!

Happy Valentine's Day

The above is one of my all-time favorite images from Mars. It's actually only one of several objects on Mars that are heart-shaped, but for some reason this one reminds me the most of the cartoon hearts we used to draw on the little boxes we made in school for everyone to drop in those little boxed cards in. (I always like to adorn mine with sequins -- which aren't as sparkly after you get glue all over them -- and beads.)

So, Happy Valentine's Day, where ever in the solar system you may be.

Dang... the Universe is most certainly NOT fair

I was going to write up a short blog entry about the death of Barbaro, and then Molly Ivins went and lost her battle (and it was probably a fight to the very last breath) with her third round of breast cancer. I hope that Molly Ivins wouldn't mind that I'm memorializing her with a horse ... I have a feeling she would have been pleased.

Both were some of the best ever at what they did and both got a bad roll of the dice and left us too soon. And we are all left to wonder about the amazing things that they still had left to accomplish (although, granted, with Barbaro, a lot of that would have been making little Barbaros).

Molly Ivins was a thoroughbred of wit, and she will be sorely missed.

Texas Observer's obituary for Molly Ivins

Interesting weather the last few days

So, it started with rain, which then became floods, and now it is freezing rain, sleet and snow.

Overnight Friday into Saturday morning we got quite a round of thunderstorms and very heavy rains (on pretty well saturated ground). After going to breakfast we drove around to all the low spots on the roads around the house and pretty much all of them were under water. The creek that is just down the road from us was higher than we've ever seen... the monitor on it says that the normal level lately was about 5 ft, but Saturday night it peaked at 34 ft. Thankfully we're up on a hill. If we have water in the house, Houston is in the drink...

By Monday, the cold air that was wreaking havoc in the middle of the country had worked its way down to Texas and combined with the moisture from the Pacific to give us freezing rain. We already had the day off from work for Martin Luther King Day, which was good, since ice and Texans in cars don't mix well. The forecasts last night looked bad, so the University (and all the school districts) canceled work and classes for today (Tuesday). Good thing too, since sleet, snow pellets and honest-to-goodness SNOW has been falling all day. We're in a little bit of a lull right now, but it looks like more is on the way. I'm personally hoping for more of the snow, since 1) it's a lot safer than the ice and 2) it's so pretty!

We've been taking photos and I'll have some up on Flickr once I get a chance to upload them. The satellite internet is a little slow from home today since the receiver is covered in ice!

Awesome ads and a good idea to boot

The above are two of the ads from the Girl Scouts Girls Go Tech campaign, and my particular favorites (I especially like the radio version of "Twinkle"). Click on the small versions to go to the full sized images at the AdCouncil website.

I was a Girl Scout (actually, a Brownie) for about all of two seconds in the late 1970s in Houston... which of course was long enough to sell cookies ... yuuummmmm.... thin mints.....

But, I digress. The goal of this campaign it to encourage interest in math and science in young girls, and even more importantly, to keep that interest alive in them as they grow older. The website isn't too in depth, but it does have a few good resources for encouraging girls in technology, math and science.

I've seen a huge variety of girls in the past 11 years that I've been doing astronomy education and outreach. Some are smart, confident and don't mind showing off what they know and others are shy and need enouragement to answer questions. I've seen three-year-olds able to recognize the moon through a telescope and I've seen teens that don't know the difference between a solar system, a galaxy and the Universe. And I've seen everything in between. But, I'm somewhat encouraged because I'm seeing more and more of the smart, confident type and I see more and more female undergrads and grad students coming into astronomy. I think the past few graduate classes we've admitted at UT are close to 50/50 male/female. I don't know as much about other fields, but at least astronomy seems to be making a little progress.

There isn't really any grand point to this post, I just wanted to link to those neat ads and ramble a little about something that I care about (for obvious reasons) - girls and women in science.

Happy New Year!

Well, that pretty much says it all, but I'll go ahead and say it again... Happy New Year! Here's looking forward to a good one!

Carl Sagan

Ten years ago, we got the news that Carl Sagan had died of pneumonia, a side effect of his long battle with cancer. It felt almost like I had lost a friend, even though I had only once briefly been within two feet of him and had only been in the same room with him three times.

It's hard for me to make an eloquent summary of how Sagan impacted my life, so I'll just ramble about some of my favorite Carl Sagan books and shows.

I have had an interest in science, and astronomy in particular, for most of my life and "Cosmos" came along at a good time to nurture that. I remember seeing "Cosmos" when it was originally on (I was about 8 years old) and I still enjoy watching it today on TV and DVD. Even though some of the graphics have been updated, it is amazing how well the original information holds up after 25+ years. To this day I'm fascinated by Hypatia of Alexandria and her famous library because of that show. I kept hearing Sagan's voice the first time I saw the Rosetta stone at the British Museum, sounding out the letters of Ptolemy's name as he described how it was used to decipher Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs. The cartoon of the evolution of life from single-celled organisms to us was my introduction to the topic. The Cosmic Calendar, with the Big Bang at January 1 and human life at the final minutes of December 31 first showed me the awe of deep time. And how many people my age first knew what a googol was because of this show and not because of a search engine with the same name (although a different spelling)?

I first read "Contact" when I was 14 years old and a freshman in high school. At the time I wasn't absolutely sure what I wanted to do with my life, and after a side-track of wanting to be an astronaut I ended up studying astronomy in college. I didn't end up going all the way to a PhD, but I did get my Bachelor's degree in astronomy and I still work in the field doing educational support and public outreach at the University of Texas.

My final semester in college, I took a brilliant class called "Pseudoscience and the Paranormal" taught by one of our Physics professors and shortly after, Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World" came along, which only strengthened and reinforced my ability to use my "skeptical toolbox". My favorite chapter is "The Dragon In My Garage". It precisely sums up the extent that people will go to hold on to beliefs. It reminds me of one of my favorite Sagan quotes: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". "Evidence" being the operative word.

It is hard to believe that it has been ten years since Sagan's death, and I wish he had lived longer to see the amazing developments in astronomy. But I'd like to think that he lives on in a way through the many people he has inspired over the years.

You can see other memories and thoughts on the life and work of Carl Sagan at Joel's Humanistic Blog at the Carl Sagan Memorial blog-a-thon.

The Beauty of Solar Burps

Part of my job is working with a solar telescope and talking about the sun with school kids, so I tend to keep up with solar activity. The sun has a roughly 11-year cycle where it goes from essentially no activity (meaning sunspots, flares, CMEs, etc.) to a bunch of activity and then back down to none. Right now we're at about the bottom, although activity is starting to creep back up and this week a large sunspot has produced several flares and CMEs. The cool thing about these eruptions is that when that energy impacts the Earth's atmosphere, it produces aurorae. Folks in more northerly areas are reporting and photographing some beautiful Northern Lights this week, and some have submitted the photos to the aurora gallery at one of my favorite websites, spaceweather.com.

Being in Texas, it is rare for us to see aurorae, but with particularly large explosions they can be seen. They are usually a red glow on the northern horizon (in my experience), not the rich variety of colors seen at more northern latitudes. Someday I'm going to be father north at the right time to see some!

The little movie at top is from the SOHO spacecraft, which monitors for solar activity everyday. This is the flare from December 14th and is at 195 Angstroms (the sun doesn't actually look green at that wavelength, it's just colored that way in the computer... that wavelength is in the ultraviolet and cannot be seen with the human eye).

Amazing Mars

You know, since I'm in astronomy for a living and there are all kinds of amazing images and discoveries coming in everyday, you'd think I would have been blogging about astronomy more. And since I love science in general, you'd think I'd be blogging about all science more too! Well, hopefully this post will be the first of many more to come of things that catch my eye.

Mars is currently being studied by five spacecraft, and until recently it was six (since Mars Global Surveyor seems to have gone bye-bye), so there has been no shortage of incredible images and science coming from the Red Planet recently. Of course, there was the water announcement last week, for starters. Then there are the rovers Spirit and Opportunity that keep on roving and sending back amazing pictures. And the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which has the highest resolution camera ever to photograph Mars onboard. Mars Odyssey is the fifth spacecraft for those keeping count.

The picture up top is the latest release from the Reconnaissance Orbiter. In addition to the incredible details and the interesting science from the image, it's just plain pretty to look at.

No dragons were harmed in the making of these sausages...

Or, in Monty Python parlance, Welsh Dragon sausages without so much dragon in them (or spam, for that matter).

From the BBC:

Trading standards said Black Mountains Smokery in Powys must also include the type of meat used in the sausages - pork - to meet labelling regulations. ... Jon Carthew said: "I don't think any of our customers actually believe that we use dragon meat in our sausages.

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