Paths Not Taken /
Recently, I found my accordion file of ideas for what to do after graduating from college. Apparently I had a lot of them.
There were some real treasures in there. Including, in the "Acronyms" pocket, my initial application to be a Special Agent with the Secret Service (USSS).
I never pursued that one.
(...or did I?)
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But the true scope of my youthful planning is evidenced by the last pocket. Which was, needless to say, conspicuously empty.
Astronomy Fans Are Awesome /
In other exciting news -- for those who missed the various announcements over on Facebook -- The League's sky chart has gone multilingual thanks to the efforts of several international space enthusiasts. Only 6000 or so translations to go before the whole planet can follow along!
In the meantime, though, four has a nice symmetry to it.
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English (original post)
Italian (posted on Il blog della Curiosona)
Spanish (posted on Cosmo Noticias)
Polish (posted on Kocham Kosmos)
Ta-da! /
Hey, guess what? The new & improved League site is finally good to go! Possibly at the expense of my nervous system, but totally worth it.
So go ahead: read posts that are actually aligned! click links with impunity! admire the new logo!
And if you are the nostalgic type, take a moment to bid farewell to the original League design, which I literally cut-and-pasted at my kitchen table late one night in March 2012.
Adieu, old friend.
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One-Track Mind /
Remember The Anti-Coloring Book®? A "draw-from-your-imagination" collection of open-ended prompts designed to spark the boundless creativity of children?
Yeah, well, I found my old copy. See if you can spot a theme.
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Guys & Dolls /
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Meanwhile, on the Interwebs... /
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As a member of the Young Astronauts club back in 1988, I pretty much assumed that building model rockets, visiting an observatory, and tasting freeze-dried ice cream were about as far as my cosmic inclinations would ever take me.
So I am both bewildered and thrilled to announce that The League's "sometimes-humorous but mostly-accurate" guide to the sky is today's Astronomy Picture of the Day over on the NASA-affiliated APOD site! The honor of being featured alongside galaxies and nebulae is, astonishingly, even cooler than those special lunch line passes of yore.
This NASAchievement caps a recent, inexplicable flurry of social media-fueled interest in The League that inundated me with so many Facebook notifications that I was sure I'd been hacked. To all my new fans: I'm sorry I thought you were robots. It's awesome that you're real, and thanks for joining the party!
NB: Original "Astronomy 101" post -- and links to its various translations (!) -- are here.
