Dust of Snow
by Robert Frost

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

I've always heard that no two snowflakes are alike, and now there's a scientist that proves it. Ken Libbrecht peers into a microscope to study how snow crystals are formed and ponders the age-old question of why no two snowflakes are alike.

The guy is a total geek, astrophysicist and chairman of the physics department at the California Institute of Technology. If you want to delve further into the topic, he's founded a website SnowCrystals.com. It has become popular with snowflake enthusiasts, science teachers, mathematicians who want to model snowflakes, and the U.S. Postal Service, which turned one of his wintry images into a stamp.

Here's a shot of all those different hexagonal crystals piling up in the LipsYard driveway this morning.

No two candidates for President are alike, and the subset diminished by one today as former "Law and Order" star Fred Thompson withdrew from the Republican primary. (Not to mention the prospect of a really hot First Lady.)

I can see it now, "Tonight, on a very special 'Law and Order,' D.A. Arthur Branch wakes up and says he just had the wierdest dream, that he had run for President of the United States."

Actually, I think I've had dreams that have lasted longer than Fred's run. Maybe he just saw the writing on the wall; that no matter who gets the GOP nomination doesn't stand a chance and decided to cut his losses.