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Today would have been physicist Richard Feynman’s 95th birthday.

I can’t think of a better way to observe this day than to listen to him talk, or to read his first memoir, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.

This is a long video — about 50 minutes. It’s well worth the time to watch it all.

The BBC has a great big chart of man’s exploration of the solar system. The chart is packed pretty densely with information, but it’s worth studying.

Click the image to see the full chart.

Via the Rachel Maddow Show, here’s an ad called Déjà Vu:

Tired of reruns yet?

Really, you can never have too much of the Earth from space:

View full-screen, highest resolution, as usual…

YouTube video of Space Shuttle Endeavor’s last flight. Voices are mostly from pilots of the chase planes.

I guess this flyover is the Space Shuttle equivalent of a ticker-tape parade for earlier heroes of flight.

Watch it full screen, if possible, at the highest available resolution.

This is time-lapse footage of Earth as seen from the International Space Station. I think the flashes of lightning from earthly thunderstorms are particularly interesting.

Watch it full screen, if possible, at the highest possible resolution.

(Very similar video, with different music, is here.)

Video of a Space Shuttle launch (with sound) from cameras on the solid rocket boosters. (I posted something similar a while ago. This video has multiple angles, and occasional explanatory text messages.)

Watch it full screen, if you can.

Cartoonist Don Asmussen has perfectly captured the tone of our current political discourse:

(Click the image to see the full cartoon.)

Years ago, when I first heard about plans to “colorize” some old movies, I was very curious about the process, but opposed it for “artistic” reasons.

In the meantime, I’ve seen a handful of colorized movies, and I think my artistic objections were justified.

But just a few days ago, I got this photo in email:

(Click for a larger image.)

Mygrapefruit is a photo retoucher who also colorizes old photos. This seems to bring Abraham Lincoln back to life on this, his 203^rd birthday.

Many years ago, someone at work noticed that I was reading David Copperfield.

He asked, “Are you being punished for something?”

Another person in the room overheard this. Entirely by coincidence, that person was reading the same book at the same time.

The two of us said, almost in unison, “Oh, you don’t know…”

The great Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago today.

I thank his hovering spirit for Nicholas Nickleby, for A Christmas Carol, for A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, and especially for his greatest novel, David Copperfield.

There are other Dickens books I haven’t yet read. I should get busy and read them, before someone says to me, “Oh, you don’t know…”

Thirty-eight years ago today, at 10:00 PM, I started work at my first full-time job at the Ohio State University.

I was a custodial worker. I spent a long time last night trying to remember dozens of people I worked with back then.

It was my intention to work there for a few years to pay my way through school, but things don’t always turn out as we imagine.

Thirty years and twenty-five days after I started, I retired from Ohio State. Happily, I had moved up the employment ladder in the meantime. I retired with a job title of “Senior Systems Programmer.”

As it happens, retirement is the career I was born for.

One year from today will be Inauguration Day. President Obama will begin his second term, if we’re lucky.

Here’s Vice President Joe Biden shaking hands with a Democratic fat cat at a fundraiser here in Columbus, Ohio, last Thursday:

I’m the fat cat.

(I wonder if a girdle would help…)

Etta James has passed away. Yet she is immortal:

Rob Reiner, on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher:

Jon Huntsman is the only candidate in that whole group that believes when an apple falls from a tree, it hits the ground.

Actually, I think Mitt Romney secretly believes that, too. But he would never dare to say it out loud.

Update: Three days after Reiner made this observation, Huntsman dropped out of the race. A man with his views has no place in the modern Republican Party.

In keeping with the season, here’s an a capella version of the Hallelujah Chorus: