Chicago's Millenium park is stunning. I managed to get this night shot to turn out fairly well, looking northwest. 

Nanobacteria

Every age thinks it's attained the ultimate understanding of how the
world works on some level. I can't find the quote right now from
1890, where a scientist declared that physics was a dead field. At
any rate, work on nanobacteria may prove interesting when it
plays out. Is it alive, or is it a crystal? They are implicated in
kidney stones and ovarian cancer.

British Library Images

The British Library is providing access to a database of their images, complete with keyword search. via Neat New Stuff.

Bertrand Russell - The Problems of Philosophy

Bertrand Russell has an engaging writing style that is very accessible. As a philosopher and thinker of the twentieth century a wide variety of his works can be found, such as the excellent History
of Western Philosophy

But to the point, I ran across an online version of The Problems of Philosophy, which I assume must be out of copyright judging from its publication date of 1912.

Buon giorno

I have lots of pictures of herculaneum and pompeii, but sadly nothing
here to plug the camera into. It was pretty interesting and not very
busy, althought things are a little chilly. We almost had herculaneum
to ourselves. Pompeii is huge. When I can put up some pictures I'll
have something more interesting to say.

Neaby Quasar?

A recent conference paper has revealed a quasar with a huge redshift, normally taken to indicate great distance and age, in the middle of a nearby spiral galaxy. If indeed the quasar is located nearby, as they assert, that will certainly have some major repercussions to established theory, I would think. I had thought that quasars were believed to be the most distant objects in the universe, because their high redshifts indicate high receeding speed, and thus distance. Will this affect estimates of elapsed time since the big bang? Maybe this is determined throught the cosmic microwave background, I'm not sure.

Maybe the quasar is moving away from us at high speed, but for reasons other than that which had been previously assumed. Apparently there is some correlation between quasars and other galaxy locations, so it will be interesting to see what comes of this.

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The Observatory at Chichen Itza