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Happy Birthday, Christopher Reeve.

You can send a free birthday card for which an anonymous donor will contribute $1 a piece to the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, which is an organization “committed to funding research that develops treatments and cures for paralysis caused by spinal cord injury and other central nervous system disorders.”

You may have caught the new IKEA ad campaign, unböring. You may have even seen the “Lamp” commercial and the “Kinky Parents” commercial. Apparently, “Lamp” was directed by Spike Jonze who you may remember from such films as Being John Malkovich and the wacky music video with Christopher “Cowbell” Walken.

Happy fall! Here are the things I’d like to do this season, in no particular order:

• See Blast II: Shockwave
• Go to a Ben Folds concert
• Host a Halloween party
• Go apple-picking
• See a drive-in movie in Maine — I hear there’s a theater somewhere in that state
• Rent a convertible for a weekend drive
• See the leaves change color in New England
• See high school students put their hearts into performing

Along with the new design, I’ve activated my XML RSS feed so you can syndicate Several Species if you so desire, I’ve fixed my archives so they match the rest of the site, I’ve added the TrackBack feature (which allows those of you with your own weblogs/journals to add a link to your discussions on my pages), and linked to my PayPal donation (anything donated goes right to paying off my student loans) and Amazon.com wish list websites.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled content.

UPDATE: Added an RSS 1.0 feed to the already existent 0.91 version.

I was posting this as a comment on Barb‘s website, but the comment just kept getting longer so I decided to give it its own home here on Several Species.

Barb pointed out an article that contained one of NASA‘s red and blue “photographs.” While the article made her think of death, I thought of beauty. Also, when I grow up, I want to be an astrophysicist.

I really like all the NASA photos that they’ve put out in the last few years. But I’m always dismayed when thinking about it, realizing that they are all things I (or any human) will ever be able to see with my own eyes.

Even if humans are able to travel to far off galaxies to get a glimpse of these wonders, they will never look as beautiful as the NASA photos. The NASA telescopes are creating the colors in the photos based on frequencies of light not visible to the human eye. Never will we see these beautiful red and blue nebulae; their actual “colors” are well beyond our ability to see. It’s sad.

If we were somehow able to see infrared, x-ray, gamma rays as we do see the colors of the “visible spectrum,” what would they look like? What is redder than red? What is bluer than blue?

Here are some good things I have to look forward to in the coming months, in no particular order:

• Ben Folds is coming to town. And I have tickets to see him.
• Becca will be visiting and there will be fun and Thai food (and research, so she says).
• I’ll be working at marching band shows during the fall.
• I should be getting a raise in November or so, after working with the Company for six months.

Last night, I tuned into MTV to catch the season premiere of The Real World 12: Las Vegas. From the looks of it, it’s going to be as good as the New Orleans season was. Maybe they should just limit this show to southern cities. New York and Chicago just didn’t do it for me.

For all you Joss Whedon sickos, I mean psychos, I mean fans… here is the official weblog (more of a journal, of course) for the new series, Firefly.

(This was stolen from Leia‘s bright and sunny weblog.) Come join the party! You’re evited to the War on Iraq! Bring your own anti-ballistic missiles!

… with this comic strip. Wait, I’m at work, I’m not reading comics… Never mind, ignore this entry.