at
.
,
teaching Introduction to Astronomy (GEO 154)
Click below to visit:
 My Music Pages
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My Quotes Page
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My La Salle Home Page
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My Astronomy Page
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My MySpace Profile - Used mostly for following bands
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 My Facebook Profile - Used for linking to family and friends |
 My LinkedIn Profile - Used for professional contacts |
My photo albums on Webshots.com
My listings on eBay
Shameless Acts of Nepotism:
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Anybody in the market for stained glass should check out
Creative Glassworks
The artist, Kirk Reber, specializes in architectural stained and leaded glass. He does great work. (He also happens to be my cousin, but don't hold that against him! |
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| If you prefer auditory art to visual, check out the exquisite vocal harmonies of The Chromatics, an a cappella group that proves that not all scientists are total geeks. If you live in the DC area, you can catch them live. If not, you can buy their CDs, (Committed, Mixed Messages, First Light, and their great Christmas CD, Unwrapped) from their website or from A-Cappella.com. And if you're a science teacher, or are just into songs about astronomy, be sure to get the AstroCappella 2.0 CD. It's got all the songs which were on the first AstroCappella CD (now sold out), plus more, with enhanced multimedia and educational materials. The first CD was available free to educators (thanks to a generous grant), but the new one, alas, must be paid for. The songs from the first disc are still available on their website as free MP3s (but the new ones are not), along with associated educational materials. |
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Turning to the culinary arts (don't I know a lot of artistic folk for
a techie?), if you're interested in a great pub-dining experience, check out
The Standard Tap
at 2nd and Poplar in Philadelphia. The food is fantastic, and while I can't personally
comment on the beer, I hear that's pretty good, too. But you don't have to take my word
for it, they've been getting rave reviews from the Inquirer's Magazine, Weekend, Lifestyle,
and (of course) Food
sections. (Just about every word of the previous sentence used to be a link to a different
review, but, alas, they are no longer available online).
They have also been praised by the
City Paper
(and got a mention in their
article on local beers), and
Jack Curtin, and have good ratings on the
Citysearch and
Phillytown
websites.
If that's not enough, Philadelphia Magazine chose them as
"Best Bar Food on a Beer Budget"
in their Best of Philly 2000 issue;
"Best Bar Food"
and
"Best Neighborhood Bar"
in 2002, put them at the head of the
"Best Bar Trend: Bars With Real Food"
in 2004, and in 2008 gave them "Best Gastropub" and "Best Bartender", and ranked them #11 in their top 50 restaurants. So how can you go wrong?
I know the chef/co-owner
personally, and have been friends with one of the (former) bartenders for longer than I care to admit (she mostly works in the office these days).
Also, check out their new place in Fishtown, Johnny Brenda's, at Frankford & Girard. The bar has been around for a long time, but Paul and Bill took it over in 2003. They made Philadelphia Magazine's Best of Philly the next year, as part of the aforementioned "Best Bar Trend" and also for "Best French Fries". (And who doesn't need some good french fries?) They also now have live music, and made "Best Small Concert Venue" in 2007. |
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Note: The above are personal endorsements and not advertisements. No money or other consideration has been received in exchange for placing them on this site. So you can be absolutely sure that the opinions expressed above are 100% unbiased and have not been at all influenced by the fact that the proprietors of these businesses are my friends and relations.
Friends and Family:
As long as I'm plugging other web pages. While the folks below might not always want to confess any association with me, if they're honest they have no choice, and I still count them among my friends and relations. These guys aren't selling anything, so if you have nothing better to do, you can check out their web sites:
- Padi Boyd at NASA GSFC. She's also one of the Chromatics (see above).
- Janet Houser at Harvard/Smithsonian CFA.
- John Saponara et famille. John is one of the elite group of 3 physics majors (myself included) that La Salle turned out in 1983.
- The O'Dea Zoo - Dan O'Dea and family. Another old friend from La Salle days.
- Mark Montana a LMCO colleague
- Stephanie Gates (no relation to Bill), another LMCO colleague, and family.
- Chris Crumlish, another friend from La Salle, passed away in January, 2006. A tribute to him can be found here.
E-Prints Available:
- gr-qc/9510014
- Simulations of Nonaxisymmetric Instability in a Rotating Star: A Comparison Between Eulerian and Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics, by S. C. Smith, J. L. Houser, and J. M. Centrella, ApJ 458, 296 (1995).
- gr-qc/9409057
- Gravitational Radiation from Nonaxisymmetric Instability in a Rotating Star, by J. L. Houser, J. M. Centrella, and S. C. Smith, PRL 72, 1314 (1994).
- gr-qc/9409051
- A Three-Dimensional Hydrodynamics Code for Modelling Sources of Gravitational Radiation, by S. C. Smith, J. M. Centrella, and S. P. Clancy, ApJSupp 94, 789 (1994).
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