Photo of the Day July 9, 2010March 18, 2017 Today I promised tax fairness. But because the day got away from me, I offer you instead . . . FRIENDFACTOR As suggested yesterday, Friendfactor is a brand new way to help your LGBT friends, relatives, or colleagues – or even just Charles and me – attain the same first-class citizenship you enjoy. RICOCHET Sid/Diane: ‘Aren’t guns GREAT? Turn the sound up – you can hear the bullet head back. Watch in full screen to see it better. The target is a steel plate. You can hear the ping of the hit, and then the bullet comes back and hits the ground just in front of his position. This is a very, very lucky sportsman.’ HUBBLE TRUBBLE Matt: ‘One issue with the slide show. Yes they are amazing pictures. But how did Hubble fly out of our galaxy and point itself backwards to take a picture of the Milky Way? slide #28. If it has a motor to do that then I am selling my BOREF. WheelTug – we have competition. I have trouble digesting these photos as true representations of anything. They publish them along with ‘photos’ of our own galaxy. That’s not possible, so the whole pile of ‘evidence’ is suspect to me. These look like covers of Isaac Asimov novels, not true pictures of space.’ ☞ I had that same question! Someone started to explain it to me, but it involved a lot of arm-flailing in the form of double-helixes or something as we gazed up at the galaxy and I was afraid I might get injured. Can one of you explain it better? Richard Vroman: ‘Your Hubble link inspired me to send this link to NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. I look at it first thing every day for inspiration. It’s all succinctly explained by professional astronomers. Newcomers can browse a huge library of previous posts. It just might be good enough to convince the Tea Baggers that government is worthwhile after all. If this isn’t awe inspiring, nothing is.’ Monday, or soon: tax fairness.