Biology, Paleontology, Geologic Time

The Biological Taxonomic Hierarchy: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Species.
Mnemonic: "Kick President Carter (Clinton) Out, For Gosh Sakes" -- Thanks to Perri!

See http://www.burgess-shale.bc.ca for the official website of the Yoho-Burgess Shale Foundation, located in Field, BC.
The periods of the Paleozoic Era, most recent to oldest: Permian, Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian, Mississippian), Devonian, Silurian, Ordovician, Cambrian. Mnemonic: "President Carter (Pretty Mean) Digs Shale Oil Carefully".
The periods of the Mesozoic just have to be memorized: Cretaceous (known as the "K" period), Jurassic, Triassic (most recent to oldest).
The epochs of the Tertiary Period (Cenozoic Era), most recent to oldest: Pliocene, Miocene, Oligocene, Eocene, Paleocene. Mnemonic: "Pretty Mean Old Evil People". The Pliocene and Miocene are grouped together into the Neogene and the other three are grouped together into the Paleogene (subperiods or superepochs).

Previous supercontinents: Pangea, Rhodinia, Columbia (evidence for Columbia was recently discovered in 2002-2003 in the Columbia River area of the USA and Canada, i.e., Washington and British Columbia).

I've wanted to mention Google maps (http://maps.google.com) for some time, and this seems like the best place to put this, since it relates to geography (July 1, 2005). Compare to Mapquest: http://www.mapquest.com, which has been around for much longer. However, they stopped offering their larger map views sometime between 2002 and 2005. Update! I've learned as of August 2005, that Mapquest will give you a big map if you enable cookies. If you set your anti-cookie setting too high, you get the small map. I think it's at the "high" setting at which Mapquest gives you only a small map. The devious little guys!
Google Earth: http://earth.google.com (out as of early July 2005). Installation required. Compare to Microsoft "Terraserver": http://terraserver.microsoft.com -- out for years; no installation required.. (July 10, 2005).
In honor of 36 years since the Apollo 11 Moon landing on July 20, 1969: http://moon.google.com (July 20, 2005). Zoom in all the way! Shouldn't that be green? No mars.google.com up yet...
Here's the "Earthcam" page: http://EarthCam.com. You can see real-time pictures from places all around the world! (July 30, 2005)

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The Space Program
See Space News: http://www.space.com.
The National Space Society:  http://www.nss.org/ (formerly the L5 Society and the National Space Institute, which merged ca. 1987) - this is the best one to which to belong.
The Planetary Society: http://www.planetary.org/ - this is the one to which Carl Sagan lenttt his name.
Here's a free-market, non-government space effort, The Artemis Project: http://www.asi.org/.
Here is an article from "Access To Energy" about other efforts, competing for the X-prize (article posted June 22, 2003 - broken link repaired Feb 7, 2004)

An essay by myself: How to plant an interstellar colony. (posted Dec 22, 2005)

Photos of Space Ship One on the occasion that it performed the first non-government space flight on June 21, 2004:
http://www.richard-seaman.com/Aircraft/AirShows/SpaceShipOne2004/

I read in the March 2003 Analog (http://www.analogsf.com), that the distribution of hydrogen in the universe is not uniform, but collects in streaks or veins. It would be easiest for an interstellar Bussard ramship to follow these "veins" of hydrogen. Here's a picture. I'm not sure if this is a true representation of the actual location of the veins, or not.

Last updated Dec 22, Aug 28, 21, 8, July 30, 20, 10, 1, May 23, 2005,
Aug 8, 4, July 6, March 14, Feb 7, 2004, Dec 29, 14, 7, Nov 17, Jun 22, May 17, April 12, 10, April 2, 2003.