Blackletter

The Battlestar Galactica People Have Ruined The Public Perception of What Science Fiction Really Is.

2010-10-08T14:14:00.002-04:00

That's about it

NSFW & RIP

2008-06-23T05:09:00.001-04:00

Wax Ecstatic

2008-02-03T11:20:00.000-05:00

Water is analytical and adaptive. Water helps me think. So my coffee-addled brain was in the shower this morning, grasping for clues about this cosmic machine we call the universe.

As our societies begin to meld into one due to technological innovations in transportation and centers of wealth and comfort which draw the masses, so do our religions. People have noticed the similarities between Christianity and Eastern religions such as Buddhism. They've also questioned the boundaries between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. That's not to mention the near identicalities between Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Hinduism.

Karl Jung hypothesized that the "Other Side" which fits into all religions is an archetypal world, where those who are spiritually intune will pull symbols and facets of existence which they then translate to fit their culture. And then cultures hang onto these archetypes dearly as the mode of self-perpetuation throughout the cosmos.

So taking an overview of everything that everyone believes, what is true? Logic would dictate that a Creator does exist, as the natural order of the cosmos is to devolve into chaos. There must be some kind of caretaker(s), some kind of orchestration. Logically, if this being is infinite and above our ken, then this being would also transcend gender. Is s/he benevolent, apathetic or malevolent? Let's consider this later.

The Urantia Papers, a collection of writings with a curious origin that are so bizarre and difficult to understand that many people have discounted them, state that there is a benevolent creator who basically "broke" him/herself into many different pieces, descending in magnificense, in order to be caretakers over creation from the highest to the lowest spectrums of existence. "Broke" is a very bad word, because the papers state that the Creator is still whole. It's kind of like a mirror that breaks into small pieces; it's still a mirror, but all the little shards are different pieces. And each of these smaller pieces have their own personalities, depending on how they were "broken" off.
This idea fits well with the fact that many cultures had a pantheon of deities - some good, some bad, and some which seemed inbetween. We could say that in existence there are many deities- but judging from the fact that some will lead us astray, there are very few who are worthy of worship and reverence. In fact, many would argue that only the Creator is worthy of worship. Others would say that the Creator would designate which lower deities are worthy of our worship and loyalty, such as Christ. The Urantia book says that Christ is also called "Michael" and that he's more than an Archangel; he's soon to be the Universe Sovereign over this universe, which is one of seven in existence - which is a growing existence.

I don't mean to elevate the Urantia book over other religious texts, but I do think it has plenty of merit and needs to be paid more attention. It's logical and makes a LOT of sense, although I must admit that there are parts which are hard for many people to understand. That in and of itself says something, though.

Okay, so if we can establish that the universe is like some cosmic machine with many caretakers, what are the parts of this machine?

Personally, I think this is where other archetypal ideas kick in. Karma would be an example of a "tool" or "cog" (which makes it sound less grandiose, although not meant to) in the "machine" that is the universe. It creates balance. Harmony and existance require balance in order to continue. This is a theme that many Asian philosphies perpetuate. However, as many Celtic and Druidic schools of thought believe, learning requires unbalance or disbalance (this many not be a real word). So while tools like karma bring balance to the universe, they may bring disbalance to the individual - who needs such a learning tool in the first place so that the individual may ascend through the universe (from this life to the next, and then through all the stages in the life beyond), utilizing learning to attain balance and thus becoming a "helper" within the universe. The Urantia book states a similar concept, saying that with a kind of "infusion" from the creator, we may become on the same level as the deities who were created to be perfect - humans would attain such a level through learning. This is not the same as the train of thought that says "humans are gods." This is to say that, through arduous training, humans can ascend to a level where they can be in a position of authority in order to "help" God look after the universe on a grand scale - but still not on the level of being worthy of worship. So it's like God is the Corporation CEO, and each "helper" is a manager, foreman, or executive - depending on the rank.

That's not to say that we can't be "helpers" now, in the level that we're at - all it takes is just being good to each other.

I realize that I may not be correct on certain points, and some of this is taking other religous views and putting them into a relative context. I know you have a lot of different ideas too, Alex. So I post this with the understanding that it's open to debate. I'm posting this because I felt moved to do so. My opinions are based on logic and observation.

And coffee highs. :)

Underwater marine cables - or an illustration of the recent outage

2008-02-02T08:54:00.000-05:00

Here's an illustration of the sea bed and all the cable laid out between here and there. You can trace along the cable to find the areas that have experienced the largest outages due to natural disaster cable cutting and also the recent anchor accident off the coast of india and the area.

Here's a larger image for your wall :)

Find the right person for the job! 100 necessary HR articles

2008-02-02T08:14:00.000-05:00

Check out these informative articles on Human Resources Management.

As a human resources professional, you know that you’ve got to continually research job market statistics, the demographics of recent college graduates and new online technologies designed to help job seekers and HR departments find their perfect match. To help you make sense of all the paperwork, new studies and overwhelming number of job sites, we’ve put together the HR professional’s holy grail of resources. Packed full of resourceful guides, posts and more, you’ll find tips on everything from recruiting and interviewing to developing your own career.

A Good Reason for the Space Elevator

2008-01-31T20:29:00.000-05:00

So if we got a space elevator, wouldn't it stand to reason that we could get rid of those awful, huge, inefficient engines that get strapped to our noble penguin spacecraft?

Just think of it: the space shuttle could be lifted into space instead of struggling to fight gravity.

While Wikipedia states that this structure would have a counter mass beyond http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator), I am curious as to why we simply couldn't manipulate physics to our advantage instead of using a counter mass. Of course, dammit Jim, I'm a writer and not an astrophysicist. In effect, " Vehicles can then climb the tether and reach orbit without the use of rocket propulsion. Such a structure could theoretically permit delivery of cargo and people to orbit at a fraction of the cost of launching payloads by rocket, and without the substantial environmental harm caused by some rocket fuels." So the working theory is that we need a counter mass. My idea was that it would be like a broken roller coaster that just ended in space. We could shoot all kinds of things out into space. (!)

Needless to say, the space elevator is not seen as the most innovative mode of future transport, as we haven't discovered materials that are strong and light enough. While every newsworthy source claims this is true, what about all those UFO shows we see on the Discovery Channel? We've apparantly reverse-engineered some captured spacecraft and even experimented with their soft-yet-strong metal compositions. Are these shows for real, or just taunting us in our love of extra-terrestrial conspiracies?

Speaking of extra-terrestrial technology, it's out there; more appropriately, it's here, but we either reject the technology or don't realize its out-of-this world origins.

Take carbon fiber for example. Yes, we can find those materials on Earth, but no one's really questioned how it's just popped up on the scene. Same thing with our technology not leaping exponentially, but boundlessly.

As for rejecting alien technology, it goes like this: alien technology is reverse engineered and often applied to consumer products. Many of the executives of technology manufacturing facilities must consider these products... and these products often spark their fascination with UFOs. For example, there was once a helmet created which you placed over your head in order to watch a movie; according to the description, the picture was 3D crystal clear, as close to virtual immersion as you could get. And the sound was not piped directly to your ears but rather vibrated through some of the more specific bone structures in one's skull. And the reason this amazing product was nixed: the committee decided that people don't like to place helmets over their heads when watching a movie.

As much as I'd love to give you an article reference for the above paragraph, the truth is that I heard it first hand from an exec I know, but I don't want to be a serious dork like that alien from Aqua Teen Hunger Force who's all like "My DAD owns a DEALERSHIP." And while no one wants to put on a helmet when they take their hot date to a movie, I wonder if this sort of product has been considered for the gaming world. They'd LOVE something like that. When I heard this story, it was before MMORPGs like WOW really hit the fan. But do not despair, fellow nerds... the technology is out there.

So where was I... oh yes! Escaping gravity and shooting things into space!

Perhaps as we humans (and some of us posing as humans) begin to physically evolve, we'll have the ability to escape gravity fields and effect physical objects so that they may escape gravity fields as well.

Back in Black, like really Black

2008-01-17T06:39:00.000-05:00

Scientists have created the blackest material on Earth that absorbs more than 99.9% of light and say it could one day be used to block defence signals or create highly efficient solar panels.

The substance was created from carbon nanotubes by Professor Pulickel Ajayan, of Rice University in Houston, and team whose work will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Nano Letters.

Read the full story here.

Are Whales Smarter Than We Are?

2008-01-16T05:30:00.000-05:00

Call me Ishmael for making conjectures unflattering to humankind, but could Moby Dick have been smarter than captain Ahab? Melville certainly seemed to think so. Moby clipped off one of the captain's legs and then, years later, in a brilliant move of cetacean jujitsu, drowned poor Ahab by towing him into the abyss by the harpoon rope tangled around Ahab's remaining leg. "From Hell's heart I stab at thee!" Gulp.

We humans pride ourselves on our big brains. We never seem to tire of bragging about how our supreme intelligence empowers us to lord over all other animals on the planet. Yet the biological facts don't quite square with Homo sapiens' arrogance. The fact is, people do not have the largest brains on the planet, either in absolute size or in proportion to body size. Whales, not people, have the biggest brains of any animal on earth.

Read the rest of the story here.

How Much Time Does The Sun Have Left?

2007-12-15T08:08:00.000-05:00

It is speculated that the sun is 4.57 billion years old. The earth in comparison is thought to be between 4.04 & 4.54 billion years old. It is thought that about 4.59 billion years ago, the rapid collapse of a hydrogen molecular cloud led to the formation of a third generation T Tauri Population I star, the Sun. The nascent star assumed a nearly circular orbit about 26,000 light-years from the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy.

The Sun is about halfway through its main-sequence evolution, during which nuclear fusion reactions in its core fuse hydrogen into helium. Each second, more than 4 million tonnes of matter are converted into energy within the Sun's core, producing neutrinos and solar radiation; at this rate, the Sun will have so far converted around 100 Earth-masses of matter into energy. The Sun will spend a total of approximately 10 billion years as a main sequence star.

Let's see, that gives about 5 and a half billion years to find another source of life, just in case anything goes wrong.

Robot ThemE Park!

2007-11-14T05:58:00.000-05:00

Call it WestWorld Lives! South Korea officials today said they hope to build two robot theme parks for $1.6 billion by 2013.

On the Korea.com Web site officials said they consider robotics to be one of South Korea's key growth industries, emphasizing "service robots" that can clean homes and offer up entertainment. The robotics industry has grown about 40% a year since 2003, officials said.

(continued) - I love robots.

The Original Gingers

2007-10-30T06:43:00.000-04:00

Analysis of a pigmentation gene in Neandertals suggests that the extinct hominids had humanlike skin color patterns.

When you think of Neandertals, freckles probably aren't the first facial features that come to mind.

But, a new analysis of genetic material from the remains of two Neandertals indicates that some members of the ancient hominid population may well have been pale-skinned redheads.

An international team of researchers reached that conclusion after studying a segment of the gene MC1R that controls melanin, which is responsible for skin and hair color.

Take a minute and read through the whole article at sciam.com

Nature's Teachings on the Ultimate Sticky

2007-10-17T07:33:00.000-04:00

Everyone uses post-it notes, Scotch tape or packing tape and all of these things are wonderful, but there's something better… animal adhesives!

Geckos, tree frogs with tacky toes and the ability to leap from tree to tree without falling and walking across the ceiling is always fun. Don't you wish you could?

The people who make sticky things for us humans have always been trying to one up nature, but now have come to the conclusion that "hey, maybe we should use nature instead of trying to beat it!"

The idea of Velcro was inspired by the sweater-grabbing burdock seed, the feet of Gecko bristle with millions of fibers called setae that branch and self clean as they are being used. Zebra mussels aren't even safe, the glue that holds them to the rocks has been imitated as well.

Scientists are more inspired by clingy toed tree frogs and insects now and have created a new adhesive that can become 30 times stickier when needed and it peels off easily if you want to change it. It's not as sticky as traditional Scotch tape but the concept itself could lead to custom-strength tapes that peel off without losing their sticky.

Scientists have taken some of the concepts of nature to develop this, for example the new tape has narrow, oil filled channels right underneath the surface. They look like honeycombs like on a tree frogs toe and also like bush crickets. Gecko feet are hairy but tree frogs and insects release a viscous fluid onto their adhesive pads. Viscous is sticky with a glue like texture and tends to coat things.

The grooves work just like speed bumps in the way they slow down the growth of cracks caused when adhesive reaches its stretching point and wants to break. The fluid that's added helps slow down the effects of rupture-causing forces on the grooves because of the similarity to capillaries (small blood vessels).

PDMS or polydimethyl siloxane had micro-scale tubes carved into a layer, which on its own doesn't stick very well. The carved channels or pockets are then filled with silicone oil. They put the film between two plates of flat material and pulled the top plate to test the sticky. From what I understand it increased the sticky by about 3000 percent! Of course that was on tubes 710 microns wide.

In order for them to make this so that the tape would come off without losing the sticky they used a second layer filled with air instead of oil. When the oil is on the bottom it sticks, when you flip it it comes off. This can be reused up to 25 times so far. This is the first time that they know of that anyone has used this method to create stickiness.

It also helped scientists to finally understand why tree frogs and insects pads consist of this layered make-up.

However, the top bio-inspired adhesive so far is Gecko Tape which cleans itself and prolongs the life of the sticky.

Long Live The Sticky!

Read the original article in its entirety here.

Neptune-sized planet GJ436b - a site for life?

2007-10-15T13:15:00.000-04:00

I'll put the bottom line up top: there is no compelling evidence for life beyond Earth. No life of any kind. And I'm not just talking about the little grey guys that some people erroneously believe have saucer-sailed to Earth to barnstorm the suburbs or paw your privates.

When I say "no life", that includes even the humblest microbes, even alien pond scum. As far as we know, the visible universe - despite its ten thousand million million million star systems - is a stupefyingly vast and sterile wasteland.

But our generation may be the last to think this might be true. That's because scientists have initiated a three-horse race to find proof that life could be a cosmic pandemic. Researchers are pursuing a trio of strategies for uncovering extraterrestrials, whether big or small, brainy or brutish. At a recent gathering in Puerto Rico, audaciously entitled Bioastronomy 2007, academics from around the world trotted out their favourites.

Read the rest here.

BMW Hydrogen 7

2007-10-09T07:58:00.000-04:00

Hydrogen is a chemical element represented by the symbol H and an atomic number of 1. At standard temperature and pressure it is a colorless, odorless, nonmetallic, tasteless, highly flammable diatomic gas (H2). With an atomic mass of 1.00794 g/mol, hydrogen is the lightest element.

It is the simplest of the elements.

To learn more, check out the rest of the wikipedia entry.

Which brings me to the reason we're talking Hydrogen. The new BMW Hydrogen 7.

Here's a little blurb from the BMW USA site.

Our long-term EfficientDynamics strategy can be summed up with one vehicle: the BMW Hydrogen 7. As the world's first luxury performance sedan with hydrogen drive, it runs on the most plentiful element in the world and emits virtually nothing but water vapor. And because the infrastructure for refueling a hydrogen internal combustion engine is not yet complete, the V-12 engine also runs on gasoline at the push of a button, though emissions will result. But all it takes is the power of the Hydrogen 7's 12-cylinder, 260 horsepower engine to prove the capability of our EfficientDynamics. The BMW Hydrogen 7 is not available for purchase at this time, but is considered to be a milestone in bringing forward hydrogen as the sustainable fuel for individual transportation.

Check out the rest of the info from the website.

Cog & The Attributes That Lead to Human Intelligence

2007-10-07T10:35:00.000-04:00

Humanoid intelligence requires humanoid interactions with the world states MIT's Cog developers. Four intertwined attributes are believed to be the factors that give the result of human intelligence:

developmental organization
social interaction
embodiment and physical coupling
multimodal integration

In the past development and research focused on all involved mechanism carrying the reasoning / behaviour / learning description with them internally and explicitly. Around 1986 there was a realization by Rosenschein & Kaelbling that mechanism and description did not have to be coupled. This breakthrough though has been largely ignored. AI has been led away from its original goals of building complex, versatile, intelligent systems and pushed towards the construction of systems capable of performing only within limited problem domains and in extremely constrained environmental conditions.

Development creates the framework for establishing more complex skills and competencies.
Social interaction lets humans use other humans to learn, gain assistance and be taught.
Embodiment and physical coupling allows the human to use the world around them as a tool to organize and manipulate knowledge.
Integration allows humans to use experience to maximize the accuracy of complementary sensory and motor systems within.

SOURCE: Alternative Essences of Intelligence from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.

Avoiding flighty anthropomorphism, you can consider Cog to be a set of sensors and actuators which tries to approximate the sensory and motor dynamics of a human body. Except for legs and a flexible spine, the major degrees of motor freedom in the trunk, head, and arms are all there. Sight exists, in the form of video cameras. Hearing and touch are on the drawing board. Proprioception in the form of joint position and torque is already in place; a vestibular system is on the way. Hands are being built as you read this, and a system for vocalization is also in the works. Cog is a single hardware platform which seeks to bring together each of the many subfields of Artificial Intelligence into one unified, coherent, functional whole.

If you have a few months, jump on over to the official Cog research site by MIT and start digging through all of these beautiful ideas. Not only will you have the full spectrum of research on Artificial Intelligence from some of the top researchers in the field, you can also use their reference lists on each publication to find some very interesting reading.

I swear, I won't be able to finish my current reading list by the time I die, I'm really going to need an extension please.

For a better understanding of the history of Cog, this particular AI project, review Cog: A History in Pictures.

Walk The Dog

2007-09-24T08:57:00.000-04:00

You can always up it one happiness level for a dog. Lucy and I went out just now and had a great walk, compared to how she felt last night.

She's caught a virus or something, a little bug in the system. The roomate said she kept him up all night last night.

She was sulking on the couch this morning, not feeling good but a little better. I walked over to the counter and picked up the leash, she stood up. She didn't barrell uncontrollably across the room this time, it was slow and careful, like the wobbly world was being a bit inhospitable at the moment.

She came over, her tail wagging faster now, and sat down waiting for the click. Now she never sits down and can stay down when she's excited about a walk. That's how you can tell she was a little slower today.

Once we got outside however, that all changed. She sat there and waited for me to lock the door and then when I let the leash loose she strolled ahead a bit and sniffed the air. I really think it was that first sniff that did it. As soon as she smelled what was going on outside, she was completely alert.

She did a little leap and took off, following the regular walking route, got up to a nice trot and didn't slow down the whole way. I think it made her feel better, happiness is good medicine.

The Southern Drawl: Is It Spreading?

2007-09-23T15:17:00.000-04:00

Some Linguists Say 'Yes' as More Northerners Move South, but Others See Stiff Resistance to 'Y'all' (includes typical picture of southern actors)

The High Frontier, Redux

2007-08-13T06:45:00.000-04:00

A very thought out essay on humans and space colonization. Very good read. When you hear a Science Fiction writer addressing the concerns that the rest of us tend to ignore about space colonization and the realities involved then you know it's probably going to take a while... if it ever happens. Unless...

You're 12 years old!

2007-07-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday! I can't believe you're 12. I remember when I was 12, Woods School in Mooresville, NC. I think my homeroom teacher was Ms. Goode. She was also my Social Studies teacher. I hope I'm remembering that right.

Summer, you need to go ahead and start writing things down in your journal or whatever it is that you use to remember your memories with. At some point later in life, probably not earlier because young people don't look back, you will probably want to take a minute and look back and see what you were doing or who was president or maybe what you got for your birthday. I wish I had started earlier :)

That's the whole reason I even have this website. It's basically for me to go back and see what I was doing at a certain time in my life.

Anyway, Happy Birthday. I'm not with you right now, but I'm with you.

Europa Best Place to Test the DEPTHX

2007-05-01T07:13:00.000-04:00

What would you need to explore an ocean on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons? It's hundreds of millions of miles away, and the ocean lies under a sheet of ice at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) thick. You'd probably need a spacecraft to land on the ice, a way to drill through the ice, and a submersible vehicle to explore the ocean and relate findings back to Earth.

This submersible vehicle is a project occupying the efforts of Dr. Bill Stone, CEO of Stone Aerospace in Austin, Texas. Stone and his colleagues have developed a prototype autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) called Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX) for remote exploration and are currently testing it in a large underwater cave. In this article, we will examine this revolutionary AUV, its mission and how it fits into the larger scheme of extraterrestrial exploration

The Slow Blade Penetrates the Shield

2007-03-14T07:08:00.000-04:00

How Liquid Body Armor Works (excerpt + link)

by Tracy V. Wilson for howstuffworks.com

The basic idea behind body armor hasn't changed very much in the past few thousand years. First, armor stops weapons or projectiles from reaching a person's body. Second, it diffuses the weapon's energy so that the final impact causes less damage. While it's not effective in every situation, armor can generally help protect people from serious injury or death, especially against the right weaponry.

Over the years, people have had to develop stronger and more advanced armor to protect against increasingly sophisticated weapons. However, in spite of these improvements, modern body armor still has some of the same shortcomings as ancient forms of armor. Whether it's made from metal plates or layers of fabric, armor is often heavy and bulky. Many types are rigid, so they're impractical for use on arms, legs and necks. For this reason, medieval suits of plate armor had gaps and joints to allow people to move around, and the body armor used today often protects only the head and torso. Continued here.

Motes & Ad Hoc Networking

2007-03-10T08:44:00.000-05:00

You may have heard about a computing concept known as motes. This concept is also called smart dust and wireless sensing networks. At one point, just about every issue of Popular Science, Discover and Wired today contains a blurb about some new application of the mote idea.

For example, the military plans to use them to gather information on battlefields, and engineers plan to mix them into concrete and use them to internally monitor the health of buildings... (more)

I love the Howstuffworks website! Type in anything in the search, they've got it. Not sure how acurate, but you can at least get a starting place for researching.

Email Of The Future...

2007-03-10T08:17:00.000-05:00

The reach of the spooky quantum link called entanglement keeps getting longer. A team has transmitted entangled photons some 144 kilometers (89 miles) between La Palma and Tenerife, two of Spain's Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco. Physicist Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna, the group's leader, presented the results to his colleagues this week at the American Physical Society conference.

The distance achieved is 10 times farther than entangled photons have ever flown through the air. When two photons or other particles are in this state, what happens to one determines the fate of the other, no matter how far apart they are. Zeilinger compares the phenomenon with throwing a pair of dice that land on matching numbers every time.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Civilizations Are Creatures

2006-08-01T05:42:00.000-04:00

Civilizations Are Creatures

Civilizations are creatures. They are organisms that live very long and that spread very wide over the surface of the earth. Civilizations are beings that consume energy and produce ideas. These ideas materialize as cities, institutions, laws, art, books, and memories. A civilization may persist for thousands of years, evolving constantly. Compared to fleshy animals, or even the wet tissue of the human mind, civilizations are the fastest changing organisms on the planet.

Today’s civilizations differ from those in the past by their greater degrees of complexity and their greater speed of transformation. Over time civilizations have progressed from amoebae-like blobs with few strands of intelligence to complex multi-nucleated creatures with many spans of adaptive learning. Western civilization today possess an embryonic memory. It is called a library.

read the complete story here

Cameron, Welcome Aboard the Ship of Life

2006-07-21T05:46:00.000-04:00

Everyone meet my nephew Cameron, he's the only one in the family besides me to be born with that trademark Barnette red hair.

Cameron, when you're older I'll take you to Alexander County so you can see where all the red hair came from!

Happy Birthday Summer!

2006-07-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

11 Years old!

SPACE: Fiction Vs. Fact

2006-06-24T11:45:00.000-04:00

For decades now, eyes and sky have met to witness the buzzing of our world by Unidentified Flying Objects, termed UFOs or simply flying saucers. Extraterrestrials have come a long way to purportedly share the friendly skies with us.

UFOs and alien visitors are part of our culture -- a far-out phenomenon when judged against those "low life" wonders Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster.

And after all those years, as the saying goes, UFOs remain a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Why so? For one, the field is fraught with hucksterism. It's also replete with blurry photos and awful video. But then there are also well-intentioned and puzzled witnesses.

Read More

_ _ _ _ _ _

After having read through this I went my usual way through the bookmarks and found this related article on Space.com -- It's an article about the top Ten Alien Encounters Debunked. It's pretty neat except for the hellish interface you have to deal with on their website.

SPACE: If at first you don't succeed...

2006-05-05T15:48:00.000-04:00

Leaders of two private space ventures that suffered failures vowed today to try, try again. Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society based in Pasadena, California, said that they are proceeding with a privately-backed Cosmos 2 solar sail effort.

The earlier Cosmos 1 sail was launched skyward on June 21 of last year atop a Russian sub-launched Volna rocket. But the submarine-launched booster’s first stage shut off, with the mission failing some 83 seconds into flight, Friedman told attendees of the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) that began today.

Continued Here.

FAMILY: The Best Little Theater In Town (cont)

2006-05-03T09:10:00.000-04:00

My Summer's first big musical! Of course she's got her combat boots and her soloist bouquet...

I'm so PROUD. Everyone did a great job, for a middle school I was pretty impressed. I worked for a theatre company here in Charlotte for over 10 years and I've only been on stage twice in my life, I'm more of a technical participant. My daughter was a natural, and when I say that I mean, the two times I got on stage, all I wanted was to get off the stage. She was all over it and as comfortable as if she were at home watching TV.

I'll never know myself, but I'm glad she understands it.

FAMILY: The Best Little Theater In Town

2006-05-03T08:15:00.000-04:00

More show shots - Mommy Stacie and little sister Caitlyn, a shot of the stage and another of Summer and crew on stage.

SPACE: Tourism Rules Released by U.S. Government

2006-01-03T05:55:00.000-05:00

I read this today on the Philoneist website:

Space Tourism Rules Released By U.S. Government

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a 120+ page guide with proposed rules for the crew and passengers of space travelling vehicles, but not for the craft themselves. As not to interfere with the burgeoning space tourism industry, the "phased approach" of regulations signed into law by President Bush will begin next June with these regulations going into effect. Other safety legislation cannot be enforced for a period of eight years, which will only be mandated if fatalities, injuries, or specific space-craft failures occur. The set of proposed rules states, "This means that the FAA has to wait for harm to occur or almost occur before it can impose restrictions, even against foreseeable harm."

Here's the full story <link>

Here's the Official Document <link>

SCIENCE: Hurricanes Are Getting Stronger!

2005-09-16T06:57:00.000-04:00

link

Story:

The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years, even though the total number of hurricanes has dropped since the 1990s, according to a study by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The shift occurred as global sea surface temperatures have increased over the same period. The research appears in the September 16 issue of Science.

-- After watching Katrina, this isn't news to me, it seems like they are getting more intense.

U.S. HISTORY: Walking on the Moon

2005-07-20T06:46:00.000-04:00

In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing.

Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites

Excellent tribute...

Happy Birthday Summer!

2005-07-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

Summer when I was 10 I listened to 8-tracks of Rush and Devo. I had 45's of the Who and ACDC.

This was also the year that MTV broadcast music videos for the first time in history on TV, 24 hours a day. Keep in mind that NOTHING was 24 hours back then. NOTHING. What a terrible world it was.

Greece, where Democracy was born, became a part of Europe. The first recognized cases of AIDS are documented the year I turned 10.

Simon and Garfunkel perform The Concert in Central Park, a free concert in New York in front of approximately a half a million people. (Great music if it's raining).

I love you.

QUOTE: Marianne Williamson

2005-06-09T23:56:00.000-04:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." --Marianne Williamson

SCIENCE: Scientists Haven't Seen War Of The Worlds I Guess

2005-06-06T08:20:00.000-04:00

Mars has been mankind’s obsession for a long time now. It’s been the subject of thousands of science-fiction novels, movies, comics, scientific papers and the list could go on. Yet, the secrets of our mysterious neighbor are about to be revealed.

NASA has just announced its plans to send a robotic probe towards the red planet, scheduled to touch down in the Martian polar region during May 2008.

The stationary-type probe, code named Phoenix Mars, will have the mission of analyzing the soil of our neighboring planet, by digging into the frozen terrain and scooping up soil samples. For this, it has been fitted with various scientific instruments, including a panoramic camera and a specially designed robotic arm, which may actually prove to be out first means of contact with other life forms.

(cont)

DESIGN: Help, Aliens Destroyed My Website!

2005-04-15T01:44:00.001-04:00

Well, the truth is, I'm redesigning ReDesignTime.com :)

I threw the first one together based on a piece of stock photo. Just to be completely different, the new look is all from scratch...

I'm using the same concept as the styled out Tutto Mondo. Not that it will look similar, I just mean that I am building it with as minimal color as possible and then BLAM, a splash here and there of some really awesome and monumental color from a homemade color scheme off of some scanned photo or something. I've got this shirt I really like but don't wear much that has these great colors in the patterns, maybe I should sample that.
_ _ _ _ _

{preview}
_ _ _ _ _

SCIENCE: Seeking Earth's Counterparts

2005-04-10T11:40:00.000-04:00

Gene Roddenberry's classic television series "Star Trek" was based on the premise the Milky Way galaxy held many planets that resembled Earth so closely they naturally gave rise to alien civilizations - the most famous being the Vulcans and Klingons.

The problem for astronomers, exobiologists and interested lay people thus far is there has been no tangible evidence whatsoever that such planets exist, let alone extraterrestrial civilizations.

SCIENCE: Mars Rover Gets an Extension

2005-04-09T08:55:00.000-04:00

Story 1

The new extension, which covers the costs of running mission control and analyzing images and data, could mean the rovers would operate in three separate Earth-years (early 2004 into 2006) if they continue to operate.

Also, since I've neglected Science and in particularly anything space related here some more news about what's going on:

_ _ _

Story 2: Shuttle astronauts ready to fly

As she prepares to return a crew of astronauts to space, shuttle commander Eileen Collins said Thursday her crew won't fly if NASA doesn't meet a task force's safety recommendations.

_ _ _

That's all for now, more later :)

MUSIC: Trent Reznor's Studio Pic

2005-04-08T08:48:00.000-04:00

SCIENCE: Full Stem Ahead

2005-04-04T03:10:00.000-04:00

In many ways, 9-year-old Jacob Sontag is much like his fourth grade classmates. He loves reading, watching movies, and listening to music, and he's well liked by a large circle of friends. However, Jacob is not a typical boy. He has Canavan disease, a rare neurodegenerative disorder that has gradually depleted the myelin, or electrical insulation, in his brain and confined him to a wheelchair. Jacob and his family are looking to a controversial experimental approach to cure him someday.

Full Stem Ahead: Science News Online, April 2, 2005

LITERATURE: Dickens to Dahl: the classic reads

2005-03-31T07:36:00.000-05:00

(An article from the Guardian Unlimited, a nice list to start with for your family's reading education)

This list is not intended to be definitive. It is merely a jumping-off point, a place to start exploring the world of books. In recent years publishing for children has become a growth area. The shelves of bookshops - but not, alas, our cash-starved libraries - are stuffed with new titles and classics. Where to begin? How to choose? We hope that this list will help you and your children and teenagers plunge in and develop your own taste and own likes and dislikes.
Guardian Unlimited Books | Special Reports | Dickens to Dahl: the classic reads

SCIENCE: Hans Bethe

2005-03-08T02:25:00.000-05:00

Hans Bethe, who discovered the violent force behind sunlight, helped devise the atom bomb and eventually cried out against the military excesses of the cold war, died late Sunday. He was 98, among the last of the giants who inaugurated the nuclear age.

{link}

SPACE: Cassini Spacecraft on the Move

2005-02-25T07:07:00.000-05:00

Cassini Spacecraft Continues Making New Discoveries

NASA's Cassini spacecraft continues making new and exciting discoveries. New findings include wandering and rubble-pile moons; new and clumpy Saturn rings; splintering storms and a dynamic magnetosphere.

"For the last seven months it has been a nonstop, science-packed mission. It has been a whirlwind, and already we have many new results," said Dr. Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Weak, linear density waves caused in Saturn's rings by the small moons Atlas and Pan have yielded more reliable calculations of their masses. The masses imply the moons are very porous, perhaps constructed like rubble piles. They are similar to the moons that shepherd Saturn's F ring, Prometheus and Pandora.

SCIENCE: Close Call? (Space Explosion)

2005-02-19T10:01:00.000-05:00

Huge 'star-quake' rocks Milky Way

Astronomers say they have been stunned by the amount of energy released in a star explosion on the far side of our galaxy, 50,000 light-years away. The flash of radiation on 27 December was so powerful that it bounced off the Moon and lit up the Earth's atmosphere. The blast occurred on the surface of an exotic kind of star - a super-magnetic neutron star called SGR 1806-20. If the explosion had been within just 10 light-years, Earth could have suffered a mass extinction, it is said.

"We figure that it's probably the biggest explosion observed by humans within our galaxy since Johannes Kepler saw his supernova in 1604," Dr Rob Fender, of Southampton University, UK, told the BBC News website. One calculation has the giant flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashing about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. We have observed an object only 20km across, on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a 10th of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years," said Dr Fender.

Fast turn
The event overwhelmed detectors on space-borne telescopes, such as the recently launched Swift observatory. This facility was put above the Earth to detect and analyse gamma-ray bursts - very intense but fleeting flashes of radiation. The giant flare it and other instruments caught in December has left scientists scrabbling for superlatives.

Twenty institutes from around the world have joined the investigation and two teams are to report their findings in a forthcoming issue of the journal Nature. The light detected from the giant flare was far brighter in gamma-rays than visible light or X-rays. Research teams say the event can be traced to the magnetar SGR 1806-20. This remarkable super-dense object is a neutron star - it is composed entirely of neutrons and is the remnant collapsed core of a once giant star. Now, though, this remnant is just 20km across and spins so fast it completes one revolution every 7.5 seconds.

"It has this super-strong magnetic field and this produces some kind of structure which has undergone a rearrangement - it's an event that is sometimes characterised as a 'star-quake', a neutron star equivalent of an earthquake," explained Dr Fender. "It's the only possible way we can think of releasing so much energy." Continued glow SGR 1806-20 is sited in the southern constellation Sagittarius. Its distance puts it beyond the centre of the Milky Way and a safe distance from Earth.

"Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and would possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Dr Bryan Gaensler, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who is the lead author on one of the forthcoming Nature papers.

"Fortunately there are no magnetars anywhere near us." The initial burst of high-energy radiation subsided quickly but there continues to be an afterglow at longer radio wavelengths.
This radio emission persists as the shockwave from the explosion moves out through space, ploughing through nearby gas and exciting matter to extraordinary energies. "We may go on observing this radio source for much of this year," Dr Fender said.

This work is being done at several centres around the globe, including at the UK's Multi-Element Radio-Linked Interferometer Network (Merlin) and the Joint Institute for VLBI (Very Long Baseline for Interferometry) in Europe - both large networks of linked radio telescopes.

New Spacesuits!

2005-01-27T09:23:00.000-05:00

Future explorers on the Moon and Mars could be outfitted in lightweight, high-tech spacesuits that offer far more flexibility than the bulky suits that are currently in use.

Earthquakes Rearranging Earth's Map

2005-01-18T09:35:00.000-05:00

Sumatra's catastrophic December 26 earthquake flattened cities and shifted landscapes in seconds with the force of a million atom bombs. Within hours, ferocious waves had turned the Indian Ocean into a cauldron of death and debris.

But the geologic circumstances that set up the worst natural disaster in a century were much longer in the making. How long?

Try 300 million years. Maybe twice that long.

{read more}

Tricentennial

2005-01-18T08:31:00.000-05:00

The last post about creationism reminded me of this poem I had read in a sci-fi collection entitled, "2076: The American Tricentennial" published by Pyramid and edited by Edward Bryant


He has broken loose

Our recombinant man
Heir of X-1776
Self-regenerating like a newt
Hyper immunoresponsive
A prototypal homo futurus
Commemorating Asilomar
When creation passed
from God to man

Bound by that prime directive
Containment
We made him purposely flawed
Genetically sabotaged
With extreme sensitivity to UV radiation
To hydro-carbon pollutants
Where else could he possibly survive
Or want to
But in that pristine artificial ecosystem
Of our laboratory
And Adam gifted with a new Eden
A microcosmic recreation
Of that fresh green breast
Of our lost new world

Delivered from his glass cocoon
A stranger vexed and tormented
By the nightmarish incoherence
The failure of this strange land
Of forgotten promise
A postulating always healing Frankenstein
Gasping
Cough wracked parody
Of once and future man
Slouching down the dark alleys
Of our ashen cities
Until he is caught
I fear the incorruptibility
Of the vision we programmed him with
The impossible dreams
He may resurrect
The futile hope...

What'll they think of next?

2005-01-18T08:08:00.000-05:00

link

A Pennsylvania school district Wednesday rejected charges that plans to include references to an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution in high school biology classes would be illegal. The Dover Area School District near Harrisburg is the first in the United States to introduce "Intelligent Design," a theory that the natural world is so complex it must have been made by an intelligent being, rather than occurring by chance, as held by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Well, this sparked my curiosity. I decided to do a little research on the Creationism that these people are promoting. Now even though what I found was interesting and makes for a good angle to speckle some sci-fi stories with I also found that they just couldn't help throwing the god thing in there with it.

On the other hand they did offer information on all possible forms of creationism which I thought was nice of them. For example, they break it down into two types of Creationism: The first is called Biblical Creation and the second one Scientific Creation.

Biblical Creation: Using Bible texts to defend creation theory. A few primary texts include: Genesis, chapters 1 to 12 - from the 6 days of Creation till the Great Flood (1700 years later), then until just after the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of the nations.

Exodus 20:11 (in the middle of the Ten Commandments, this verse states in part: "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day...." Also, Luke 17:26-27 (or Matt. 24:37-39) "And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all." (This statement by Christ shows that He considered the Great Flood to be a real historical event, one of Divine judgment of humankind.) And I Corinthians 15:45, which compares Adam (as a literal person) to Christ as the "last Adam."

Scientific Creation: Yes, we often use science - completely independent of any Bible references - to contend that "creation science" is a plausible scientific theory. Many persons laugh at this notion at the outset but please be advised that informed creationists usually beat evolutionists in debates. We are the ones who have science on our side.

(Of course then they throw this in:) The majority of modern scientists, just like the rest of the human race, are unrepentant sinners. As such they do not want to face God. Humans often hide rather than face judgment. (Evolution provides a great hiding place.)

Creationists can show evolution's frauds and deceptions time after time, after time but it will remain an uphill battle to get the truth out regarding our origins as made (unique from the animals and) "in the image of God" and human responsibility for our sins

Here are the different versions of Creation Science:

The Gap Theory ~ This contends that there could be a multi-billion years long gap between Genesis 1:1 and verses 1:2 & 1:3

Day-Age Theory ~ Proponents for this version of creation science abound. Since evolutionists contend that the Earth must be millions or (in recent decades) even billions of years old some Bible supporters have tried to work this into the Genesis account

Young Earth Creation Theory ~ 6 Earth days; about 6000 years ago. This planet is owned; we're fooling ourselves if we collectively assume otherwise. Judgment (in the Great Flood) came before and it will come again. So repent. …Proponents believe that there is still no good scientific evidence supporting the notion that the Earth is even 1 million years old, let alone a theorized billions of years old. How many "missing links" have later turned out to be frauds or trumped up exceptions? Exceptions that mostly served to get grant monies and recognition for the researchers involved, the true advancement of science be damned. Is evolution's main aim in fact to propose a weak god or none at all, in place of an unerring Creator behind the universe?

Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Space God!

2004-07-20T13:42:00.000-04:00

You know the whole Girlie Man comment by Arnold (link died, I think some people forget that the internet is a knowledge base, I don't think you're supposed to delete things but that's just me.)

Well the email goes as follows:

Me: See, this comment that Arnold made is more than just calling some guys girlie men, he's in friggin san fran, I bet there's some pissed off homosexuals. article - not dead, but forgotten, thanks insidebayarea.com (dumbasses).

LNMental: church and state should be separate and politics and entertainment should also be

Scott: Don't forget entertainment and church. John Travolta thinks aliens built our planet.

Me: huh?!

Scott: 75 million years ago, there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu who was in charge of 76 planets in our sector of the galaxy, including planet Earth, whose name at that time was Teegeeack.

All of the planets Xenu controlled were over-populated by, on average, 178 billion people. Social problems dictated that Xenu rid his sector of the galaxy of this overpopulation problem, so he developed a plan.

Xenu sent out Tax Audit demands to all these billions of people.

As each one entered the audit centers for the income tax inspections, the people were seized, held down and injected with a mixture of alcohol and glycol, and frozen. Then, all 13.5 trillion of these frozen people were put into spaceships that looked exactly like DC8 airplanes, except that the spaceships had rocket engines instead of propellers.

Xenu's entire fleet of DC8-like spaceships then flew to planet Earth, where the frozen people were dumped in and around volcanoes in the Canary Islands and the Hawaiian Islands. When Xenu's Air Force had finished dumping the bodies into the volcanoes, hydrogen bombs were dropped into the volcanoes and the frozen space aliens were destroyed.

Pictoral Example:

Tom Cruise thinks the aliens are still haunting him.

(I didn't make any of this up BTW!)

...And here is where I first learned about The Church of Scientology...

Happy Birthday Summer Isabella!

2004-07-15T21:11:00.000-04:00

Summer's 9th Birthday.

Love Daddy.

Infinite Night Person

2004-07-14T23:33:00.000-04:00

Chapter one

. . : : Out of my head, asshole : : . .

In the course at the end, served death and old memories, I ate unceremoniously. It was the end of it really. The time where I was supposed to sit here and think about all I had done with my life and all the stuff I still had to do.

I'm a bit rebellious and was determined not to do that, to just take the hit and get it over with. But here I am, thinking back, maybe because of the drugs, who knows. They tend to have an overpowering effect when there's no reason to fight them.

Constance. The first recap in the head, the first thing I went back to. Where was she now? That's a whole other life I don't remember much of. I walked away from that for this? Oh shit. see, I'm travelling back. I just wanted it to be over and here we go with the recap.

"Sir, don't fight it, it's easier if you just let go."

I act like I don't hear these fools, ever since I got here, no comment. A complete mute. Have you ever tried not to talk before? It's super hard. I am way to young to be this quiet. It's not in my nature at all, and they are sitting there thinking, "I wonder what he's thinking about.." or can they get that info also?

See, this is why all this crap started in the first place. Get the fuck out of my head! I want to say it so bad. They'd probably just laugh at me anyway. Fuckers! Bastards. Invaders...

Whoa, what just happened? Where am I now? I feel like I haven't moved really, but here I am outside in the woods. You never can tell anymore where you really are. Inside the machine, any reality is the real one. It's all your perspective and who's in charge of the ambience. Who's got there finger on the damn skunk button cause that's what the hell I smell. Load up some friggin pine needles or something. Why is it so hard to get environments right for these people. Just because they've never experienced the real planet before doesn't mean it's not documented somewhere. Get a clue.

A Bit of Titan on Earth

2004-05-19T11:05:00.000-04:00

Link While the Cassini spacecraft has been flying toward Saturn, chemists on Earth have been making plastic pollution like that raining through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon, Titan.

Scientists suspect that organic solids have been falling from Titan's sky for billions of years and might be compounds that set the stage for the next chemical step toward life. They collaborate in University of Arizona laboratory experiments that will help Cassini scientists interpret Titan data and plan a future mission that would deploy an organic chemistry lab to Titan's surface.

Why Bother Moving an Asteroid?

2004-05-17T13:54:00.000-04:00

Thank you for the opportunity today to discuss a bold new proposal to demonstrate altering the orbit of an asteroid. I represent the B612 foundation, a group of astronomers, engineers, and astronauts, concerned about the issue of asteroid impacts. Recent developments have now give n us the potential to defend the Earth against these natural disasters. To develop this capability we have proposed a spacecraft mission to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015.

Link. (to my favorite website)

The Illustrated Spaceman (Ray Bradbury)

2004-05-17T13:01:00.000-04:00

Link: "Looking at it in a very practical way, we are spending roughly a billion dollars a day at this time for armaments, for war, for conflicts, for doubt, for hatred at times. If we take one day each year, and spend the money of that one day on space travel, we can do it. So 364 days for armaments, and one day for rockets, for our destiny on the moon, and for our future civilization of freedom and a new democracy on Mars. "

Possible Test For String Theory

2004-05-14T15:59:00.000-04:00

story link

Scientists studying the Big Bang say that it is possible that string theory may one day be tested experimentally via measurements of the Big Bang’s afterglow.

Richard Easther, assistant professor of physics at Yale University will discuss the possibility at a meeting at Stanford University Wednesday, May 12, titled “Beyond Einstein: From the Big Bang to Black Holes.”

40 Miles up and counting! X PRIZE

2004-05-14T03:41:00.000-04:00

Space Ship One makes third powered flight!

Church For Internet Junkie Porn Surfers To Redeem Themselves Once An Hour

2004-05-13T02:34:00.000-04:00

The Virtual Vicar, The Latest Tool in Internet Conversion Techniques was created to try and snatch younger converts for the church community.

"But while it may initially feel like a game, it is far more important than that to its creators, the Christian website Ship of Fools, and its sponsor, the Methodist Church. It is a recognition that relying on traditional ways of attracting congregations is risky. Unless methods can be found of reaching out to new people, the fear for churches is that one day they will simply cease to exist."

The WebMinister even has the ability to SMITE disruptive outside non-christian visitors who might cause trouble ;)

Enjoy!

Mexican Air Force Films UFO's

2004-05-12T21:21:00.000-04:00

11 UfO's were filmed by the Mexican Air Force Tuesday.

Charged with Planetary Destiny

2004-05-10T09:24:00.000-04:00

RedNova is my favorite Space news site.

When will defending the planet mean simply calling on the "Ace Asteroid Mining and Moving Company" to nudge asteroid gently out of the way?

RedNova News: Charged with Planetary Destiny