Sluggy Doctor
I’m amused that, in my opinion, that caricature doesn’t look much like Tennant, yet I knew immediately who it was supposed to be before reading the dialogue 🙂
Because it was hard, you fools
By an odd coincidence, I’ve had to deal with the “No, we didn’t land on the Moon!” claim three times in the last few days. My views on it ought to be pretty obvious: if you really want a conspiracy theory, there are far more plausible ones than that.
My current favorite argument against the Hoax: There were thousands, if not millions, of Very Very Smart people involved in the Apollo program. Either they were in on the secret or they weren’t; if they were in on the secret, then it wasn’t much of a secret, really. It’s like the “we test unusual stuff at Groom Lake” secret – the details may be foggy, but the whole world knows that it’s a government testing base.
If they weren’t on the secret, then you have all these Smart People being well paid to develop what they honestly believe will be a moon rocket – to the tune of several billion dollars. These people all think they succeeded, and they aren’t idiots – they would have noticed things like “Hey, there’s not enough radiation shielding in our design.” So, since all these people think we have a moon rocket, and we spent the money to make it, why just go ahead and make the landing? Hmmm?
As an aside – the Soviet Union at the time definitely had the technological ability to detect whether we really went or not – they were quite close to managing it themselves. If we didn’t really go, the Russians of the late 1960’s really didn’t have much motivation to help us cover it up. Unless you believe that the One World Government was already up and running by then, and the Soviet space establishment was also ordered to lie; in which case, I will choose to bow out of the discussion at this point and move on to another World of Warcraft post of some kind. Circy’s level 60 now! Woo!
The essential Moon Hoax links:
Quick and simple: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
In-depth and pretty: http://www.clavius.org/
Start Me Up
Sometimes, people post things on the Internet that just plain make me feel glad to be living in a world where someone spent the time to make them up.
The “Lions In Kenya” and “Shirley Bassey Getting the Party Started” videos are two examples. Here’s another:
I successfully stayed up all night on Saturday night. We decided that our level 56-ers needed to hit 58 This Weekend, which we reached about 6 am. It was nice to know that I can still do that… a year of 10pm bedtimes had left me doubtful. Still, I had to down several Tums, as one of the tricks my body uses to try to get me to go to bed is surges of stomach acid. Also, I was kind of out of it the next day; so, I’ve learned from this that I can do it, but not easily.
Found a website that generates an automatically updated stat block I can use for my characters, like so…
Too bad that the servers are now far too overloaded with requests to actually function properly. (This one won’t update, it’s static.)
Local TV re-ran the Special Edition “Trouble With Tribbles” this weekend, so last night I dug out the “Trials And Tribble-ations” DS9 episode for Starr, who’d never seen it. Great fun! And then it hit me… there’s no way in heck that J.J. Abrams’ Lt. Uhura will be running around in that red minidress. Not in a 2008 feature film. I weep.
Tweets for Today
- 09:29 Too much Food Network last night. Dreamed that pastry chefs were building meiran’s new car out of layer cake, fondant, and icing. #
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Ex Libris
Now that I have cleared out some books, and indeed started another stack to go, I feel less guilty about picking up a few more.
Reading right now:
Storm Front, by Jim Butcher
A little something madwriter suggested to me
Wanting to pick up ASAP:
In the Serpent’s Coils, by Tiffany Trent
Benighted, by Kit Whitfield
Wizards at War, by Diane Duane
The Sagan Diary, by John Scalzi
The Empty Chair, by Diane Duane
I’ve had books 2 and 3 of Butcher’s Dresden Files for over a year. Now that I have book 1, I feel I can finally start reading through, though after all these years I’ve finally learned to break up reading a series with other books by other authors. Having met Tiffany two Technicons ago, I figure it’s high time to read Coils; and cjmr knows why I’m planning to read Benighted. With A Wizard of Mars coming out, I need to catch up on my Young Wizards; and I can finally wrap up the story of my favorite literary Romulan Commander with Empty Chair (out for over a year, and I somehow never noticed).
I’ll save comments on madwriter‘s offering for some other entry sometime 🙂
More thoughts: I’m not sure I’ve bought many new books over the last year. Most of these have been on the shelves for a while. I think I needed to convince myself that it was okay to spend the money again, as long as I don’t let my living space collapse under the accumulated weight. Also, I’m pleased about how many of these authors I’ve gotten to speak to, even briefly and electronically. I love the 21st century. Lastly, I’m depressed by the difficulty of finding a science book section in B.Dalton’s or Waldenbooks. It’s not like I can’t get the individual books I’m interested in from Amazon or have Jesse down here order them for me, but I wish I lived in a country that wanted to read about science.
Tweets for Today
- 19:08 Fairly keen WoW amateur video here: tinyurl.com/22yxnf Not your average game machinima, either. #
- 20:00 I’m really missing Junkyard Wars. I want to watch one of those without having to download it. Preferably with Cathy Rogers hosting. #
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More Illumination
Really, I can’t bear to watch this “UFO Files” program for another second.
Yes, I do indeed love the idea of flying saucers and extraterrestrial visitors, for the same reason I dig Atlantis and telekinesis; because it would be cool. But can I please have more than second-hand stories and photographs of indistinct blobs? Could I please please have some indisputable proof, something that could be used to convince almost anyone?
Sagan said “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and I’m not going to argue with the man. I’m not here to debunk anyone. I want to hear the story that shakes the world. But it’s going to take more than “I knew someone who had a friend who worked with a guy who swears he saw stuff in a government document of some kind.”
Little one
This weekend was exhausting. Amazing, but exhausting.
We had a lot of cleaning to do before our guests arrived this weekend. Starr did a lot of it, but I tried to pull my weight. We established Friday’s high point when I received a panicked call at work letting me know that Midori had pulled the gerbil cage from the bookshelf and smashed it. Starr finally managed to catch two traumatized but unharmed gerbils, and I screwed the replacement cage to the bookcase… so there, cat.
Why all the kerfuffle? Well, we had a rather special little boy and his parents coming by. Owen is observant, intelligent, cheerful, and energetic; and Starr gave birth to him four years ago, giving him up to a couple in a much better position at the time to give him a stable home.
I hadn’t really been aware of “open adoption” before. The idea is that the adoptive parents keep the birth mother in their life, trading phone calls, email, and pictures, and even getting together when possible. Owen has grown up thinking of Starr as a relative who loves him a lot, and I suppose that one day, when he asks very specific questions, he’ll get straight answers.
The idea sounds good; an extra close relative in a child’s life has to be a bonus, and when he’s a teenager trying to figure out who he is, he’ll have immediate answers to many of the questions I imagine an adopted child might ask. On the other hand, I can see how the relationships involved might need more work on everyone’s part than normal. On the gripping hand, I have some experience of my own with unusual relationships, and I feel the effort’s well worth making. I suppose time will tell how it all works out.
More importantly for the time being, Owen was a joy to meet. I’m spoiled by precocious kids like him and Bethany… perhaps it has just as much to do with the parents’ determination to raise him as something more than a yard ape. His parents were pretty awesome too; we got along from the beginning, and it only got better when Paul and I started Mac geeking together. Starr reported later that they thought I was a pretty decent guy.
(Actually, they called me ‘grounded’. Is there anyone here who knows me who’d have picked the adjective ‘grounded’ to describe me?)
I greatly enjoyed the day and a half of time with Owen and Paul and Susan; Starr’s mom joined us as well. However, all that time of socializing and trying to keep up with a 4-year-old drained me dry. I took a somewhat unwilling nap on Sunday afternoon, and craved a quiet night of WoW afterwards. Wouldn’t have missed it though, and Starr’s center returned to her after a week of pure frantic. At least next weekend ought to be a bit quieter.
A bit.
