Here ya go.
Feb 102017
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Feb 102017
Last year I made mention of two short phrases that for as long as I can remember have always stirred uncomfortableness in me… “come and see” and “come with me now.” Neither is inherently a statement that should cause unease, but they nevertheless do in me. There is another such phrase, one I’d long forgotten. In the 1935 movie “Bride of Frankenstein, the new character of Dr. Pretorious convinces Dr. Frankenstein – who had sworn off his life-creation experiments as a blasphemous and bad idea – to get back on the job. Dr. Pretorious at one point offers a toast to their project… “Here’s to a new world of gods and monsters.”
A modified version of that line, “Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters,” has been used in some of the promotional material for the forthcoming “Universal Monster Cinematic Universe,” which is to kick off with this summers “The Mummy.” (It was apparently supposed to have kicked off with “Dracula Untold” a few years ago, but since it kinda bombed…)
Anyway, “a new world of gods and monsters” is a phrase that, like “come and see,” kinda sets my teeth on edge. What’s interesting: I hadn’t thought of “a new world of gods and monsters” in *years* until I saw it revived for “The Mummy.” And yet, now that I am well into a series of interlinked stories set in the universe of “Mass Disappearance” and “Going to Gimli,” being perhaps halfway through what might be a full-up novel, “Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters” would be a fantastic tagline. And while I doubt that the makers of “Bride of Frankenstein” had H.P. Lovecraft in mind when they wrote that line, it fits well into his Cthulhu mythos as well.
My stories, without intending it, would actually almost seem to bridge the Frankenstein and Lovecraft worlds. The world is something that Lovecraft would have recognized, apart from the technology; but the gods and monsters are, unlike HPL’s incomprehensibly powerful beings from Beyond, largely the results of mankinds own efforts, intentional and otherwise.
I have no doubt that there are other such small phrases that have similar impacts upon my tiny little mind. There are some that have virtually the opposite… rather than inspiring vague nameless dread, “ashes of our fathers” inspires pride. Of course, for that to happen, one has to know the fuller context of the phrase, and even then it may well be that emotional links depend on a wide range of circumstances. Had I not seen “Bride of Frankenstein” until five years ago, or never heard of “Come and see” until it was used in season one of “Sleepy Hollow,” they might have no more impact on me than “Yes We Can” or “I Like Ike” or “Make America Great Again.”
So: what have y’all got? What little snippet of religious text, literature, lyrics, poetry, etc. can you hear and immediately feel a sense of dread that seems excessive to the small little phrase?
There’s also always “BWOOP BWOOP Pull. Up. BWOOP BWOOP Pull. Up.” Hearing that in a movie never fails to give me the willies.
Feb 082017
From the standpoint of solar irradiation, the recently announced Proxima b planet seemed to be in the “life zone.” Small problem: while the total amount of sunlight falling on the planet approximates the amount Earth gets, it also gets other stuff far more abundantly than Earth does. In particular… nasty stuff. Stuff that would trash an Earthly atmosphere in a geological blink of an eye. In short: every two hours Proxima would send a storm of X-Rays and ultraviolet from superflares blasting into the atmosphere of Proxima b, ionizing the oxygen and accelerating its escape into space. It’s estimated that the oxygen atmosphere would last about 10 million years.
NASA Redefines Life Zones for Alien Planets –“Nixes Earth-Sized Planet of Our Closest Neighbor Red Dwarf Star Proxima Centauri”
Bummer.
Seems red dwarfs, the most common stars out there, are likely not going to be terribly good places to find Earthlike worlds. It *may* be that roughly Earthlike worlds might be found further out from the stars, Of course they would be frozen iceballs… unless they were in close enough orbit to massive companions, gas giants perhaps, that tidal forcing would pump enough energy into their cores to keep them warm. This would present its own set of troubles, such as being tidally locked to the gas giant, and common and likely astonishing earthquakes.
Feb 082017
A sizable tornado hit the NASA-Michoud facility near New Orleans yesterday. Few injuries are reported, but there is reported to be some substantial damage. The old ET-GVTA test article from the Shuttle program was reportedly “blown to bits.”
Feb 082017
Richard Hatch, “Apollo” from the original Battlestar Galactica, has died at the age of 71 from pancreatic cancer.
Hmmmph.
Kinda like Carrie Fisher, I just can’t imagine him being that old. Like Carrie Fisher, he was sorta fixed in place in the late 1970’s.
Feb 072017
In December of 1948, American media outlets reported that Defense Secretary Forrestal had announced that the US wanted a space station for military purposes. The US had, in fact, been working on space for military applications since the end of World War II with both the US Navy and US Air Force studying space launch systems as early as 1944. However, the 1948 space station was most likely just a talking point, something that the Pentagon would *like* to have for any of a number of military purposes. So far as I’m aware, no actual designs produced by relevant government or corporate design bureaus have come to light. Still, the lack of anything firm to base an artists impression on didn’t slow down the media; a number of newspaper and magazine artists impressions were produced. Many of them, such as the one below (from the December 31, 1948, Washington Daily News, via an EBay auction), demonstrate a substantial lack of understanding of, well, *everything*. They tended to be a weird mishmash of Flash Gordon sci-fantasy with the V-2 and similar exotic and half-comprehended technologies.
Note that this cartoonish “space station” seems to have it all… radar, giant cannon barrels and a square mirror to reflect sunlight to set the enemy alight. This, of course, would not work.
Feb 052017
My first idiot thought was “this is what dancing in zero gravity will look like.” Then I actually put some thought into it and realized “no, it won’t.” Not even a little bit. The majority of the moves here are reaction-driven… airflow pushing differentially on the body due to the aerodynamic configuration of the moment. In zero-g, this sort of airflow would promptly cause the subject to get sucked into the fan inlet or blown out the hole into space; if there’s no or minimal airflow, the dancer might still make the moves, but there’ll be little in the way of actually spinning and tumbling, and none in the way of swooping around. To make that happen a dancer would have to be equipped with some form of reaction control system. *Possibly * (but unwisely) done with compressed gas jets at the hands and feet; the environmental control system would have to compress the atmosphere just as fast as the dancer releases thrust-gas, or else the environment will begin to overpressurize. Another solution would be to have fan-based thrusters at hands and feet. Maybe a backpack turbocompressor. Any case would doubtless be noisy as hell. Power consumption for the fans, reaction mass consumption for the cold gas system would all be quite high. Substantial risk of banging into stuff or losing control and spinning dangerously fast. Those are all very good points. But, consider this: the dancer would get to fly around like Iron Man.
Feb 042017
I defy anyone who remembers the seventies to remember them fondly *and* accurately after seeing these mens fashion abominations. I suspect that the combination of stresses – Viet Nam, massive cultural shifts, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviets, hippies – drove the population temporarily insane.
Note: dates are in the filenames. Pics are after the break to protect sensitive eyes from these horrifying visions from the dim, dark past.
Feb 042017
SpaceX Falcon 9 Rockets Prone To Cracks According To Government Watchdogs
Well, crap. Seems the blades of the turbopumps crack more than they should… to the point where NASA has apparently said that they form an unacceptable risk for manned launches. Additionally, it’s reported that neither SpaceX nor Boeing will be able to lunch astronauts into orbit in 2018… meaning the US will need to rely on the good graces of the Russians for that much longer.
Feb 032017
Especially when it comes to standing on soapboxes and ranting about politics:
