This was cool - it also led me to download Celestia

Google helps you kill time with 100,000 Stars experiment

This was really cool last night - Mars is also relatively close to the earth - a very red jewel almost opposite the Venus/Jupiter conversion in the early evening.

ScienceCasts: An Alignment of Planets

Wonderful, sneaky devil Trent Reznor has never been one to release just a single version of an album, and his “beautiful and disturbing” score for David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake is no different

Trent Reznor Unleashes Free Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Tracks

This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court. In his first two decades on the bench, Justice Thomas has established himself as the original Constitution's greatest defender against elite efforts at social engineering. His stances for limited government and individual freedom make him the left's lightning rod and the tea party's intellectual godfather. And he is only halfway through the 40 years he may sit on the high court.

Yoo's partisanship is annoying. I have great respect for Thomas although I sometimes disagree with his perspectives, he is a valuable voice on the court, particularly when it comes to the protection of the constitutional rights of adults.

Twenty Years of Justice Thomas

Many Americans seem convinced that their housing market will remain in the doldrums indefinitely. Conversely, the rapid recovery of China’s economy from the global financial crisis has led many to believe that real estate in the Middle Kingdom is a one-way bet. In fact, property is the most cyclical of assets. Housing booms crater, while depressed real estate markets eventually recover. Part One of this paper aims to describe a typical real estate cycle through its various stages. In particular, I try to identify the characteristic features of the cyclical peaks and troughs.

Part Two applies this understanding of the real estate cycle to the world’s two most important property markets, namely those of China and the United States.

Between Errors of Optimism and Pessimism – Observations on the Real Estate Cycle in the United States and China

The creation of a "micro entity" encourages the individual inventor to get back into the patent game by reducing the fees required for filing an application.

This is a nice idea but I think its a political move intended as an answer to critics who point out that "first to file" systems in other countries have reduced participation by individual inventors in favor of large corporate entities. Nevertheless, its useful for potential startup founders to be aware of these rules.

The America Invents Act and the individual inventor

Starting this weekend, the closest supernova found in at least 25 years will be visible from your backyard with just binoculars or a small telescope. The exploding white dwarf star is currently brightening in the Pinwheel Galaxy, nestled, from our perspective, within the Big Dipper.

How to See a Supernova This Weekend From Your Backyard

The eclipse will actually begin when the moon enters the faint outer portion, or penumbra, of the Earth's shadow a little over an hour before it begins moving into the umbra. The penumbra, however, is all but invisible to the eye until the moon becomes deeply immersed in it. Sharp-eyed viewers may get their first glimpse of the penumbra as a faint smudge on the left part of the moon's disk at or around 6:15 UT (on Dec. 21) which corresponds to 1:15 a.m. Eastern Time or 10:15 p.m. Pacific Time (on Dec. 20).
The most noticeable part of this eclipse will come when the moon begins to enter the Earth's dark inner shadow (called the umbra). A small scallop of darkness will begin to appear on the moon's left edge at 6:33 UT (on Dec. 21) corresponding to 1:33 a.m. EST or 10:33 p.m. PST (on Dec. 20).

The moon is expected to take 3 hours and 28 minutes to pass completely through the umbra.
The total phase of the eclipse will last 72 minutes beginning at 7:41 UT (on Dec. 21), corresponding to 2:41 a.m. EST or 11:41 p.m. PST (on Dec. 20).

At the moment of mid-totality (8:17 UT/3:17 a.m. EST/12:17 a.m. PST), the moon will stand directly overhead from a point in the North Pacific Ocean about 800 miles (1,300 km) west of La Paz, Mexico.
The moon will pass entirely out of the Earth's umbra at 10:01 UT/5:01 a.m. EST/2:01 a.m. PST and the last evidence of the penumbra should vanish about 15 or 20 minutes later.

Amazing Spectacle: Total Lunar Eclipse Monday Night

Intel is quite clearly serious about offering competition to ARM in the embedded market, and has just announced a new Atom processor series that offers a unique selling point: an integral FPGA processor. Billed as 'the first configurable Intel Atom-based processor,' the Atom E600C series combines an Intel Atom 'Tunnel Creek' chip with an Altera Field Programmable Gate Array — offering, the company claims, significantly more flexibility for ODMs and OEMs.

By adding in the FPGA, customers are able to make fundamental changes at a hardware level without having to go through a hardware revision cycle - which means lowered development costs and faster time to market.

I've been waiting for this for 10 years. I think this kind of solution may be useful in PCs for accelerating graphics work and other math intensive PC tasks.

Intel Launches Atom CPU With Integrated FPGA

Already blogged but this link has both memos. The FISA one is substantially less provocative than the one about the bill of rights not applying to military operations on domestic soil.

Obama unseals Bush-era wiretap memos