This is Vince Needham's personal page.
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Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!

Darwin Day

This February 12th was the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Join us in the celebration of Darwin Day, recognizing the enormous benefits that science has contributed to humanity through human curiosity and ingenuity. You might celebrate by reading the Origin of Species.

To the left you will find links to all of my various pages. My old personal page was a hodgepodge of eclectic content; I've created a few new pages to try to compartmentalize and organize that creative chaos. The most popular content here is my genealogical work and my Boy Scout Space Exporation merit badge presentation. Those sites and any other new and exciting content will get showcased in the paragraphs directly below this introduction.

Cricket Still Jacobs Tubbs

Genealogy

The Needham genealogy was updated on 20 January 2007. There are quite a lot of changes, which are outlined on the introductory page of the site. Besides updating the lineage, there are three new photo galleries and a variety of other added documents.

The Simmons family tree has finally received its long-promised update as of 20 June 2007. The big news here is the discovery that Daniel Boone is my sixth-great-uncle. The Boone line is a well-researched one, so many new families have been added to the database.

I've discovered that I'm an eighth cousin of the new President of the United States, Barack Obama. His mother, from Kansas, was a Dunham and descended of Jonathan Singletary/Dunham (1639-1724). I've also learned of a similar relationships to the Bushes, by way of John Prescott (1604-1681), and to Richard Nixon on both sides of the family through Henry Howland (father of Pilgrim John Howland) and Martha Strode (a grandparent of Daniel Boone). I'll get all the details posted to the family sites soon.

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon

Space Exploration

Every April Kansas State University hosts a Boy Scout merit badge conference, where local experts counsel Scouts concerning a variety of topics. I've counseled the Space Exploration merit badge for several years now. The first half of the class includes a PowerPoint presentation focusing on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. After that, we go out and launch model rockets (usually into the teeth of a strong Kansas spring breeze!).

Several of my presentations are archived here. The requirements were finally updated last year, but since the Vision for Space Exploration is revolutionizing our approach to space travel, I'll be rather freely interpreting things to stay current.

On Newspapers

  • The dead-tree edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is dead.
  • "When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won't break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren't in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie."
    Clay Shirky
    Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

What I'm Reading

  • The Yosemite, John Muir, Century, 1912
  • On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, John Murray, 1859

Last updated on Friday, 08-May-2009