The Galileo Project

The International Year of Astronomy may be over but the celebrations of Galileo continue. This Sunday, January 31, at 4pm, The Friends of Chamber Music present Tafelmusik -- The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres at the Folly Theater, 300 W 12th St., Kansas City, Mo. This concert will include NASA/Hubble Space Telescope images, live narration, and even some music by Galileo's father, the famed lutenist and music theorist Vincenzo Galilei.

In addition to the music and images, there will be a lecture beginning at 2:30 on "The Life and Inventions of Galileo," featuring facsimile copies of first edition books by Galileo courtesy of Linda Hall Library.

For more information check out http://www.chambermusic.org/Default.aspx?tabid=137

For tickets go to http://www.chambermusic.org/Default.aspx?tabid=194&CategoryID=2&List=1&SortField=ProductNumber%2cProductName&Level=1&ProductID=49

Meet the Beagle All Over Again

Let's take a moment for a quick entry now, to tell you about what's going on at the Beagle.

First, 2009 is a big year for science. In the event that you've somehow missed it, it is not only the International Year of Science, but the International Year of Astronomy. There are a lot of important anniversaries that fall in 2009, and we're hoping to add our efforts to those of the friends of science around the world.

Secondly, if you're already a Facebook user, you can now join the Beagle Society group on Facebook. We're posting upcoming events to the group, and trying to get everything in place there so that you can be updated on all the latest happenings with the Beagle as you would be with your long-lost high school friends. You can also comment on our Wall, upload photos, and do all of those Facebook things that you enjoy the most. The Facebook updates will not replace the regular email updates, but we're hoping to extend our reach with a little bit of additional publicity in a different medium.

John and Carol will be at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in the next few weeks, looking for what's best and brightest, or at least, what's interesting and affordable, from the world of minerals, rocks, fossils, beads and the like. The trip to Tucson is something of a busman's holiday, but it allows them to get out of town for a bit, and, as the colloquial wisdom has it, a change is as good as a rest...

Our online store is growing rapidly, and will eventually include everything that you will find in our physical store. You can visit it here at HMS Beagle Online. We're adding descriptions to items as rapidly as possible, but unfortunately there's no easy way to describe 10,000 items (give or take) from the two-line truncated descriptions in our point-of-sale system. Our goal is for the site to be an effective surrogate for an in-store visit. For those of you wondering, we chose to use PayPal as our primary payment means in the interests of everyone's security. PayPal has a proven track record in conjunction with eBay, and we're sure that a lot of you already have PayPal accounts. Of course, if you're still cautious about paying in this way, we'll also accept your payments through the post or in person, and you can select the Walk-In delivery option if you want to shop online and then come to collect your purchases, or the site will automatically quote you rates for UPS or US Postal Service shipping. If you haven't already taken a look, please do, and let us know what else you might like to see there.

And finally (though we're somewhat late in expressing this), we want to extend our warmest thanks to everyone who has supported the Beagle in 2008. Thanks to you, we have had what could in these economic climes be considered a good year, and January has also shaped up thus far to be on a par with our expectations. We have a lot of exciting things planned for 2009, and hope that we can continue to rely on your patronage and support. As always, if you have any questions, please drop us a line or post in the comments.

Best wishes to everyone for an educational and enrichment-filled 2009!

Announcing a Guest Blogger...

Starting next month we will have out first guest blogger through a special arrangement, through space and time, with the University of Padua, a Tuscan physicist, the father of modern observational astronomy, Galileo Bonaiuti de' Galilei. Sr. de'Galilei will be posting to our blog during the International Year of Astronomy. Blog readers may post questions and comments to Sr. de'Galilei and ask him about his work in mathematics, mechanics and astronomy. Sr. de'Galilei will be blogging about his recent and on-going work and his methods as well as any discoveries he might make.

In addition, we expect in February to have another guest blogger. This person shares a birthday with Abrahan Lincoln and with our own Carol Kuhns. Watch here for more information

==JFK==