We're going to a BBQ at a friends house. He lives in Lakewood, where you can still exercise your God given right to set off "Safe & Sane" fireworks right in your own front yard.

Oh... and, for the occasion, I'm making a red, white, and blue Jello mold! :cheers:

Today's also the fourth anniversary of Spring River Farm! My very first farmer's market was 4th of July weekend four years ago.

I've got ast least one delivery, then probably going to a friend's big gay pool party for an hour or so, then Zeke's for bbq (left my leftovers out of the fridge last night, dang), then Ratatouille at the El Cap, then CBS Radford for fireworks. The iPod is fully loaded with patriotic favorites, plus a fireworks friendly half-hour mix!

Yankee doodles!

I just went to see Ratatouille. :) Now I'm going to have my grill party for one. Wheee!

Great. My account's $16 in the negative. So much for going to the store...

Happy America Day to you all.

.....but especially to the Americans.

We walked up the overpass at La Veta, which is the highest point for miles that isn't a building. Some other locals showed as well. We could see tons of local shows and backyard pyro, all along the horizon. Disneyland's fireworks were visible, but all red, probably due to smoke and distance (not far enough away for a red shift ;) ). Fun!

Sounds like a cool spot to watch from. Did something similar my summer in Kodiak though there was only one show to see. But it was surreal to see when so completely isolated as where we were.

On another (much geekier) note, red shift has nothing to do with distance -- it is the principal behind very local radar guns used by police -- but rather the velocity at which something is moving away from you. So, since you and Disneyland were not moving in relation to each other, there'd be no red shift regardless of how far away Disneyland was. Told it you was a geekier note.

I tried to tell her about red shift.

I belive what CP was seing is the way the smoke from the fireworks blocks the wave lengths of other colors. Red is able to get through.

Also, what is interesting about red shifts is that they appear to be quantized and this has interesting implications for the study of the universe. This suggests that the red shift may be caused by something other than the expansion of the universe, at least in part. This could be a loss of energy of light rays as they travel, or a decrease in the speed of light through discrete levels. Maybe there is some other explanation.

Several well-studied galaxies, including M51 and NGC 2903, exhibited two distinct redshifts. Velocity breaks, or discontinuities, occurred at the nuclei of these galaxies. Even more fascinating was the observation that the jump in redshift between the spiral arms always tended to be around 72 kilometers per second, no matter which galaxy was considered. Later studies indicated that velocity breaks could also occur at intervals that were 1/2, 1/3, or 1/6 of the original 72 km per second value.

That is what you told her, right GD? ;)

The Tifft research (with Arp's follow up) that you're quoting is generally regarded as bunk these days (and really never had much support to begin with), a product of bad modeling and finding significance below the level of measurement, and has been pretty thoroughly stomped on by the many more thorough surveys done since the mid-80s which finds no support for quantized redshift.

Though it is fun watching geocentrists cling to this research since one of its implications would that the earth is at the center of the universe. Another is that the Big Bang theory of cosmology is wrong.

So if that is what he told her, I hope he followed up with the additional research done over the last 20 years. (It's July 5th now so a complete derail is ok, right?)