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FreeWill: Up In The Sky
Nov. 26th, 2015 01:11 pmSagittarius Horoscope for week of November 26, 2015
From the dawn of civilization until 1995, humans cataloged about 900 comets in our solar system. But since then, we have expanded that tally by over 3,000. Most of the recent discoveries have been made not by professional astronomers, but by laypersons, including two 13-year-olds. They have used the Internet to access images from the SOHO satellite placed in orbit by NASA and the European Space Agency. After analyzing the astrological omens, I expect you Sagittarians to enjoy a similar run of amateur success. So trust your rookie instincts. Feed your innocent curiosity. Ride your raw enthusiasm.
I don't so much need to see what's "new" but find what's "lost".
FreeWill Pulls Firmaments From Voids
Nov. 12th, 2014 07:52 pmSagittarius Horoscope for week of November 13, 2014
Ancient people knew about Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn because all of those planets are visible to the naked eye. From the second millennium B.C. until the late 20th century, only three additional planets were found: Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. (Pluto was later reclassified as a dwarf planet, however.) Then in 1992, astronomers began to locate planets orbiting other stars. On one spectacular day in February of 2014, NASA announced it had identified 715 new planets. I foresee a similar uptick for you in the next seven months, Sagittarius. Your rate of discoveries is about to zoom.
Have we run out of names for gods?
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Recapsulation and Foreshadowing, Maybe?
Dec. 31st, 2013 03:15 pmThe man out of old Earth's past
has the key to the next and the last.
But you won't solve this riddle
till the end is the middle,
and terran sands disappear with a blast.
has the key to the next and the last.
But you won't solve this riddle
till the end is the middle,
and terran sands disappear with a blast.
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The Ultimate F
Aug. 24th, 2013 10:49 pmSpace. The Final Everything.
This month NASA announced their latest Astronaut candidates (they won't earn their wings till they go to space)...and gave some insight into the qualifications for the position.
Applicants must have a Bachelor's Degree or better in a "hard science", plus three years of experience in their field. (Of course, I don't meet either because I only made it to Associate's...and have zero experience in my own field!)
But let's go to an alternative continuity to another version of Stephen Bierce. His parents were more successful and more affluent (Jane made the Times Best Seller List, for a possibility) so he got to finish secondary education with a Bachelor's in Astrophysics, then went into the military (probably Air Force, tho' perhaps his mother's cousin the commander of a Top Gun Tomcat squadron could have lobbied him for Navy) for two tours. Maybe he'd have seen action in the former Yugoslavia or the Shock-And-Awe phases of Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Then, he'd apply for NASA...
...And even now, still be waiting, as it nominally takes TEN YEARS for an application to go through all the checks and cross checks. And furthermore, the odds of success are a measly 0.2%. One in 500.
Some "Space Age" this is.
This month NASA announced their latest Astronaut candidates (they won't earn their wings till they go to space)...and gave some insight into the qualifications for the position.
Applicants must have a Bachelor's Degree or better in a "hard science", plus three years of experience in their field. (Of course, I don't meet either because I only made it to Associate's...and have zero experience in my own field!)
But let's go to an alternative continuity to another version of Stephen Bierce. His parents were more successful and more affluent (Jane made the Times Best Seller List, for a possibility) so he got to finish secondary education with a Bachelor's in Astrophysics, then went into the military (probably Air Force, tho' perhaps his mother's cousin the commander of a Top Gun Tomcat squadron could have lobbied him for Navy) for two tours. Maybe he'd have seen action in the former Yugoslavia or the Shock-And-Awe phases of Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Then, he'd apply for NASA...
...And even now, still be waiting, as it nominally takes TEN YEARS for an application to go through all the checks and cross checks. And furthermore, the odds of success are a measly 0.2%. One in 500.
Some "Space Age" this is.
#2) Binge-Read A Webcomic.
In my case, it was Star Blazers: The Bolar Wars Extended.
In my case, it was Star Blazers: The Bolar Wars Extended.
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Keep A Hard Hat Ready. Freewill Speaks
Jul. 26th, 2012 03:17 amSagittarius Horoscope for week of July 26, 2012
After consulting the astrological omens, I've concluded that during the next three weeks, you will deserve the following titles: 1. Most Likely to Benefit from Serendipitous Adventures; 2. Most Likely to Exclaim "Aha!"; 3. Most Likely to Thrive While Wandering in Wild Frontiers and Exotic Locales; 4. Most Likely to Have a Wish Come True If This Wish Is Made in the Presence of a Falling Star. You might want to wait to fully embody that fourth title until the period between August 9 and 14, when the Perseids meteor shower will be gracing the night skies with up to 170 streaks per hour. The peak flow will come on August 12 and 13.
The wild frontiers and exotic locales aren't likely, at least for a while.
Reading this, I was reminded that a whole genre of music was invented not by the performance but by the description of said performance, when a reviewer wrote that Jimi Hendrix' guitar play was like "heavy metal falling from the sky". Maybe this means, I might discover something completely new to human experience, even if I don't do it myself.
After consulting the astrological omens, I've concluded that during the next three weeks, you will deserve the following titles: 1. Most Likely to Benefit from Serendipitous Adventures; 2. Most Likely to Exclaim "Aha!"; 3. Most Likely to Thrive While Wandering in Wild Frontiers and Exotic Locales; 4. Most Likely to Have a Wish Come True If This Wish Is Made in the Presence of a Falling Star. You might want to wait to fully embody that fourth title until the period between August 9 and 14, when the Perseids meteor shower will be gracing the night skies with up to 170 streaks per hour. The peak flow will come on August 12 and 13.
The wild frontiers and exotic locales aren't likely, at least for a while.
Reading this, I was reminded that a whole genre of music was invented not by the performance but by the description of said performance, when a reviewer wrote that Jimi Hendrix' guitar play was like "heavy metal falling from the sky". Maybe this means, I might discover something completely new to human experience, even if I don't do it myself.
SPACE: 1969
Jun. 2nd, 2012 09:29 pm
The Orion ship design, as rendered for the companion book to Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series. If I built it as a 1/72nd scale model, the result would be over six feet long.
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I went to the library's annual book sale and got a hardback copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which I'll probably spend the summer reading and re-reading.
What piqued my immediate interest are diagrams of the three main hypothetical starship designs of the Sixties and Seventies: Orion, Daedalus, and the Bussard Ramscoop. I'd first learned about Orion from The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo, a book I got when I was a Freshman in college--some twenty-five years after the program's cancellation following the imposition of the Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty. The Orion program centered around a rocket whose thrust was generated by atomic bomb blasts. The U.S. Air Force had already succeeded in tests with a scale model powered by conventional explosives and had started spadework on a full-size vehicle when they were ordered to drop it and move on to other things.
The full-sized ship would have been over 100 meters long, probably weighed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand tons, and have a likely crew of 35 people. And, if the program had contined, manned missions to the planets and possibly even beyond the Solar system would have begun by 1970.
Now I'm thinking about building a model of the ship and plotting out a low-budget movie asking the question: "What if an Orion had been built and secretly launched out of the Solar system then? Where could the ship be now?"
What piqued my immediate interest are diagrams of the three main hypothetical starship designs of the Sixties and Seventies: Orion, Daedalus, and the Bussard Ramscoop. I'd first learned about Orion from The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo, a book I got when I was a Freshman in college--some twenty-five years after the program's cancellation following the imposition of the Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty. The Orion program centered around a rocket whose thrust was generated by atomic bomb blasts. The U.S. Air Force had already succeeded in tests with a scale model powered by conventional explosives and had started spadework on a full-size vehicle when they were ordered to drop it and move on to other things.
The full-sized ship would have been over 100 meters long, probably weighed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand tons, and have a likely crew of 35 people. And, if the program had contined, manned missions to the planets and possibly even beyond the Solar system would have begun by 1970.
Now I'm thinking about building a model of the ship and plotting out a low-budget movie asking the question: "What if an Orion had been built and secretly launched out of the Solar system then? Where could the ship be now?"
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Writer's Block: I'm Doing Science!
Apr. 7th, 2012 04:00 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Liquid fueled rocketry. The only way off this hunka junk.
Liquid fueled rocketry. The only way off this hunka junk.
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[Error: unknown template qotd]
Based on episodes seen, probably Picard. I had to give up DS9 and VOYAGER before they finished, didn't want to see ENTERPRISE (the ship was supposed to sink and Pike was supposed to end up in a metal box on life-support...AND THEY NEVER DELIVERED?!), missed NEMESIS and haven't seen any reason to care about the reboot. So I can't say that my opinion matters. The field is too small and so is the sample size.
Maybe I'll build a starship for Sparks McGee.
Based on episodes seen, probably Picard. I had to give up DS9 and VOYAGER before they finished, didn't want to see ENTERPRISE (the ship was supposed to sink and Pike was supposed to end up in a metal box on life-support...AND THEY NEVER DELIVERED?!), missed NEMESIS and haven't seen any reason to care about the reboot. So I can't say that my opinion matters. The field is too small and so is the sample size.
Maybe I'll build a starship for Sparks McGee.
Writer's Block: Out of this world
Dec. 7th, 2011 12:46 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Depends on where it is. I halfway expect the first liveable planet discovered outside the Solar System to be dubbed Vulcan.
I play around with the concept frequently, as a budding science-fiction writer and space wargamer. The reality is that whoever is going to colonize a world is going to be the ones who name it.
Depends on where it is. I halfway expect the first liveable planet discovered outside the Solar System to be dubbed Vulcan.
I play around with the concept frequently, as a budding science-fiction writer and space wargamer. The reality is that whoever is going to colonize a world is going to be the ones who name it.
You Are HERE
Oct. 1st, 2011 01:21 am
*Arrow pointing to the southeast side of the Milky Way Galaxy*
And this is just the Local Group. The graphic shown here is just the first step of a much larger and grander mapping of the Known Cosmos. It wouldn't surprise me if there existed an Earthlike planet for everybody now living on Earth, if not in the Milky Way then in the Local Group, because we are talking about billions and trillions of star systems.
Adventures In Re-Imagination #4
Sep. 29th, 2011 02:15 pmCOVENTRY
Original premise: Based on the Heinlein "Future History" novellas. In 2012, a radical social ultraconservative man name of Nehmiah Scudder gets elected to the Presidency of the United States. He then suspends the Constitution, enacts the New Crusade to nationalize the Protestant and Evangelist Churches, and begins the totalitarian American Inquisition genocide against Catholicism, Orthodox Churches and non-Christian faiths. As First Prophet he rules America for decades, even after his own physical death. It isn't until well into the 22nd Century that his regime is overthrown and the United States is restored.
American society is radically different after the Second Revolution and subsequent Reconstruction. Two generations later, a young man named David MacKinnon is convicted of the crime of Simple Assault and given a choice of medical treatment or exile. He chooses exile, and is sent to Coventry. Coventry is an open-air megaprison in a reservation that had belonged to a Native American tribe that was exterminated by the Scudder regime. Now it's ruled by the misfits of American society, divided into three realms: New America (basically a parody of lawful order administered by organized crime lords), the Free State (run by fascists and skinheads) and the Angels (the remnants of the Scudder ideology). David, who had hoped to find a peaceful and solitary place to homestead, immediately gets into trouble in New America and is busted out of Death Row by Fader Magee, a professional thief. The New Americans are organizing with the Free State, whom they had been at war with up to then, in an attempt to break out of Coventry and start a rebellion in the greater U.S. Upon learning the news, Fader reveals to Magee that he is a spy for the Secret Service, and the two of them try to get out of Coventry themselves to warn the Army. They succeed, but only through the most hazardous of circumstances. MacKinnon is paroled for "good behavior".
Reimagined: The discoveries of possible inhabitable planets in other star systems and of faster-than-light space travel lead to the idea of exploratory and colonization missions beyond the Solar System. However, the first FTL space travel system available is too bulky and energy-dependent for practical multi-use starships at the moment--what is possible is a device that accelerates single-use, disposable craft on one-way journeys from Earth to the new planets. The governments of Earth decide that the best way to proceed with colonization is to send convicts out to the new planets as the vanguard and force them to do the grunt work of building the colonies. Coventry is selected as one of the colonies.
MacKinnon arrives at Coventry to find that the convicts have invented their own starship drive and have been building warships to attack Earth. He and Fader hijack one and there is an interstellar chase. Can they make it back to Earth before a nuclear war breaks out in the heavens?
Original premise: Based on the Heinlein "Future History" novellas. In 2012, a radical social ultraconservative man name of Nehmiah Scudder gets elected to the Presidency of the United States. He then suspends the Constitution, enacts the New Crusade to nationalize the Protestant and Evangelist Churches, and begins the totalitarian American Inquisition genocide against Catholicism, Orthodox Churches and non-Christian faiths. As First Prophet he rules America for decades, even after his own physical death. It isn't until well into the 22nd Century that his regime is overthrown and the United States is restored.
American society is radically different after the Second Revolution and subsequent Reconstruction. Two generations later, a young man named David MacKinnon is convicted of the crime of Simple Assault and given a choice of medical treatment or exile. He chooses exile, and is sent to Coventry. Coventry is an open-air megaprison in a reservation that had belonged to a Native American tribe that was exterminated by the Scudder regime. Now it's ruled by the misfits of American society, divided into three realms: New America (basically a parody of lawful order administered by organized crime lords), the Free State (run by fascists and skinheads) and the Angels (the remnants of the Scudder ideology). David, who had hoped to find a peaceful and solitary place to homestead, immediately gets into trouble in New America and is busted out of Death Row by Fader Magee, a professional thief. The New Americans are organizing with the Free State, whom they had been at war with up to then, in an attempt to break out of Coventry and start a rebellion in the greater U.S. Upon learning the news, Fader reveals to Magee that he is a spy for the Secret Service, and the two of them try to get out of Coventry themselves to warn the Army. They succeed, but only through the most hazardous of circumstances. MacKinnon is paroled for "good behavior".
Reimagined: The discoveries of possible inhabitable planets in other star systems and of faster-than-light space travel lead to the idea of exploratory and colonization missions beyond the Solar System. However, the first FTL space travel system available is too bulky and energy-dependent for practical multi-use starships at the moment--what is possible is a device that accelerates single-use, disposable craft on one-way journeys from Earth to the new planets. The governments of Earth decide that the best way to proceed with colonization is to send convicts out to the new planets as the vanguard and force them to do the grunt work of building the colonies. Coventry is selected as one of the colonies.
MacKinnon arrives at Coventry to find that the convicts have invented their own starship drive and have been building warships to attack Earth. He and Fader hijack one and there is an interstellar chase. Can they make it back to Earth before a nuclear war breaks out in the heavens?
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Writer's Block: Lucas for a day
Sep. 16th, 2011 02:31 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
I used to be a bigger Star Wars fan than I am now. I still haven't seen the movies set between Phantom Menace and A New Hope, nor much of Clone Wars, nor any of the Ewoks TV movies, nor have I read any of the novels or side-story comics.
I'm afraid if I tried to ask a question about the setting, a bigger fan would point me to an answer. And I also realize that I don't even want to win this contest, as I don't have a Blu-Ray player, and so can't use the prize! :(
I used to be a bigger Star Wars fan than I am now. I still haven't seen the movies set between Phantom Menace and A New Hope, nor much of Clone Wars, nor any of the Ewoks TV movies, nor have I read any of the novels or side-story comics.
I'm afraid if I tried to ask a question about the setting, a bigger fan would point me to an answer. And I also realize that I don't even want to win this contest, as I don't have a Blu-Ray player, and so can't use the prize! :(
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Cowboys And Aliens
Aug. 1st, 2011 05:33 pmWhat I said on Facebook last night: --A typical DOCTOR WHO plotline with a typical DREAMWORKS budget. Meaning that the aliens are rendered to the point that they don't have to be portrayed by Shakespearean-trained human cast members, and that the dog is a real one and not a chrome puppet. (Not that I have a problem with chrome puppet dogs, per se.)
Further thoughts:
Emma is a Time Lady. She "regenerated", tho' it was a far more powerful regeneration than most of the ones we've seen, although the Master's in the FOX Doctor Who TV movie comes close. She is somewhat telepathic and can speak any language she needs to. Fanfic, anyone?
Harrison Ford rocked a role that John Wayne would have probably gotten if this movie was made fifty years ago. Hmm. Can we have a Western movie in which Ford and Jeff Bridges play archrivals?
I feel sorry for the designers of the alien villain race. I'm sure they felt the need to outdo the dozens of villain species (no pun intended) going back over dozens of movies. But do their features make biological, structural sense? To me, they didn't.
Further thoughts:
Emma is a Time Lady. She "regenerated", tho' it was a far more powerful regeneration than most of the ones we've seen, although the Master's in the FOX Doctor Who TV movie comes close. She is somewhat telepathic and can speak any language she needs to. Fanfic, anyone?
Harrison Ford rocked a role that John Wayne would have probably gotten if this movie was made fifty years ago. Hmm. Can we have a Western movie in which Ford and Jeff Bridges play archrivals?
I feel sorry for the designers of the alien villain race. I'm sure they felt the need to outdo the dozens of villain species (no pun intended) going back over dozens of movies. But do their features make biological, structural sense? To me, they didn't.
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Writer's Block: Merlin revisited
May. 17th, 2011 02:13 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
What I've always said I'd do if I had the power of God--build dozens of life-supporting planets across the cosmos and drop a lot of people from here on them so as to prevent future wars and conflicts here.
What I've always said I'd do if I had the power of God--build dozens of life-supporting planets across the cosmos and drop a lot of people from here on them so as to prevent future wars and conflicts here.
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Writer's Block: See you on the dark side
May. 2nd, 2011 12:07 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
You bet your sweet @$$ I'd go! Space Cadet for life am I.
You bet your sweet @$$ I'd go! Space Cadet for life am I.
