Welcome to my home page. My professional card and curriculum vitae are available from the download page. I have recently been doing a lot of public speaking. If you would like me to speak to your class, peers, or astronomy club about issues in astronomy and physics and the teaching of astronomy and physics, please contact me. A publicity/introduction bio is available from the download page.

What can I tell you about myself? Well, I am learning how to produce podcasts and I plan to experiment with them for instructional and outreach purposes and for publicizing activities at Lucile Miller Observatory. I have developed an intense interest in Celtic music. Thanks to the Celtic Woman concert I saw on PBS, I have also discovered the music of Clannad and other traditional Irish music. I have even taken up the bodhrán, the traditional Irish drum, and the tin whistle. I have a background in percussion but learning the bodhrán is challenging because it requires an entirely new technique. I have also taken up middle eastern drumming with an emphasis on the frame drum. It is simple to play but with the proper technique, sounds amazingly complicated.

I am currently working on two projects. The first is a new introductory astronomy textbook built around critical thinking and inquiry. The book can, hopefully, be used at either the high school or college level. It will be a radically different approach for either level. I've selected Learning Critical Thinking Through Astronomy as a working title. More information about this project is available on the LCTTA page.

The second project is an attempt to bring geometric algebra and geometric calculus into the introductory physics classroom as a replacement for traditional vector algebra. This will be a very gradual project, but may be surprisingly easy to do locally. I have no illusions about rapidly changing things elsewhere though.

My first book, Fundamental Ephemeris Computations, was published in 2000 by, and is available from, Willmann-Bell, Inc. It is a combination textbook and reference book for anyone who needs to know how to produce astronomical ephemerides using the JPL development ephemeris data files. Note that on Amazon.com, the reviews on my book's page are not actually for my book. Repeated appeals to Amazon.com to fix the problem have been fruitless. Parts of the book are in need of revision, but I am awaiting publication of some important reference information before starting that project.