Rick Sanchez Owned Joe the Plummer

I found a video where CNN's Rick Sanchez lays into "Joe the Plummer" so hard you can hear the disgust in his voice. You can tell that he does not like this guy or anything he stands for.

Sorry, Galileo, Move Over

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope. When I was in school I was taught that the first person to use a telescope to observe the moon and make maps of it was Galileo. Today, I found out that he wasn't the first. I found out from Old Moon Map Corrects History that:

Thomas Harriot made the first drawing of the moon after looking through a telescope several months before Galileo, in July 1609.

The article seems to point out that Harriot achieved this first because he had financial backing that Galileo did not. In fact, while Harriot purchased his telescope, Galileo had to figure out the optics, re-invent the technology, and build his own telescope. Stands to reason that it would take Galileo longer. However, Harriot made such maps of the moon that we now know that no one made better maps for decades afterward. The reason we know about Galileo is that he widely published his results and Harriot did not. I don't know why. It would be interesting to find out.