ps: I love my collaborators, I really do!

Ah crap, I gotta do that too.....

i lose hope for academia every time i watch people try and park in the university lot.

This is what happens when Republicans control all three branches of government.....

He never missed an election. Not a general, not a primary, not a special. Not a damn one. If there was a vote for dogcatcher, he showed up to vote for a dogcatcher. He cherished his right to vote and he used it. Oh did he use it. We should all do the same.

Had a discussion in class with my majors today about how being a good scientist meant not only being scientifically focused and careful, but also communicating well and not being an insufferable asshole. That last one is an aspect of "professional" that a lot of scientists seem to fail at....

(Oh and I'll leave it to @steinly0.bsky.social to choreograph the parts demonstrating binary star partner swapping during three body interactions....)

It helped that Student #2 (the guiding center) was a dual Astro/Dance major, so she had experience with choreography and motion. (I was probably the worst dance partner she ever had....).

I'm thinking this is a seed for an interesting joint Dance/Astro performance project on stellar dynamics!

5/5

And we were even able to recreate the effects of the frame rotating at Omega - Kappa/2 so that my orbit was a closed ellipse, and we could talk about spiral structure kinematics!

So much more fun than lecturing....

4/5

Me? I was the star, moving around Student #1 (the rotating observer) on a rosette orbit that Student #1 saw as me oscillating around Student #2 (the circular guiding center) at the epicyclic frequency. It worked! The students got it!

3/5

Student #1 stood at the center of the room, the observer. Student #2 walked slowly around them on a circular path, representing the guiding center. Student #1 rotated to follow Student #2, setting up the rotating frame of reference.

2/5

There is no way to avoid extension requests. None whatsoever.