Sextillion Stars News Flash— The number of stars in our universe has just tripled— we now have 300 sextillion of them. That's 3 followed by 23 zeros or 3 x 1023— but I'm sure this number will soon double so it's exactly Avogadro's Number 6.022 x 1023— named after an Italian physicist. I recall Professor Benjamin Widom's Quantum Mechanics lecture at Cornell— "Avogadro's Number is the largest you'll ever encounter in your life!"— number of molecules in a gram-mole of oxygen, water, or any element. Soon we'll have Avogadro's number of stars in a drop of cosmic milk— in a bowl drunk by a gigantic god. No wonder we live in the Milky Way and in jest I told my 6-year old niece years ago, that our galaxy was made by some Cow God not realizing that in Egypt the Cow Goddess was Hathor and in India, Aditi, Mother of the gods. That's why the cows are sacred in India still roaming the streets of Bangalore while they're the Silicon Valley of Asia. My friend Rudy has recurring dreams of bulls and cows chasing him off a cliff and even did a "Photoshop Phobia Project" that when he was 12, riding a bike across a meadow, bulls charged and he climbed up a tree for half an hour until they left. But now I give him a new interpretation— "The cows are really gods telling you Wake up! Wake up!— This universe is your Mind's making in waking, dream, and sleep. When you realize that— gone are all fears and you'll shout Holy Cow!"         — Peter Y. Chou              Mountain View, 12-3-2010

"Supernova Blast Bonaza" (NASA/JPL/Hubble) "Cow on Streets in India" (Ishtars Gate) Rudy's "Photoshop Phobia Project"