Since I was just talking about scale and space in the comments, I thought I should also pop in this little number I saw today on the site of absolutely-damn-great SF writer Walter Jon Williams. (If it were me, I would have worked O Fortuna into the soundtrack–but then, if it were me it wouldn’t look nearly as good as… Read more →
Month: March 2010
A Thought On News Content
I smiled cynically at the news this morning that around 55% of the editorial content in newspapers–actually the results are only for Aussie papers, but I’m willing to believe they’re representative of The West in general–is actually repurposed PR. I say cynically for two reasons: 1) because the article has a tone of shock, as if this fact weren’t something… Read more →
Home Sweet Blasted Clean Void
What you’re looking at there is something called The Local Cavity–although in this case “local” takes on a meaning somewhat larger than in typical conversation. It’s essentially a 300-light-year in diameter hole in space. Maybe ‘hole’ is stretching it a bit, since it’s not so much that it’s empty, as that it’s WAY less full than the average across the… Read more →
A Horror Movie Waiting To Happen
That’s an image from the “Blood Falls”, a five-story, blood-red waterfall that pours very slowly–the falls are frozen, and so flow slowy–out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys. That multi-coloured bump in the lower left is a tent, if that helps you get an idea of scale The falls were first observed around a hundred years ago,… Read more →
A Man And His Pipe
I noticed today that I seem to have missed International Pipe Smoking Day a couple of weeks back. I had meant to observe it this year, as an excuse to use the pipe I acquired a few years back, that’s been sitting unused ever since… but I guess I’m just not a pipe type guy (or possibly just not a… Read more →
Aside
If these are really the 10 most absurd scientific papers from last year then published hard science has nothing, absurditywise, on published humanities. (I’d actually be interested in reading the results of “Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?”)
Birthday Present
Well, my big birthday present actually materialized today, so I guess I have to finally draw this year’s festivities to a close–I managed to stretch it out pretty well, but didn’t quite make it to a week. And what was that “big present” you may be asking–well, it’s the result of a collaboration between Dr. Wife and my best pal.… Read more →
Book wear
Yeah, there are a few shirts at Out Of Print that I would totally wear… but there’s only one Immediate Must Buy. I wish it were black, or at least something dark, but there is no denying the power of Bulgarkov and his book. And hey, good cause. Read more →
Aside
Yes, I would buy a generic metal album, if the vocals (and narration?) were done by Christopher Lee. I find it quite warming to see yet another affirmation that (and I mean this in the most inclusive and positive sense possible) Lee is just a big ol’ geek.
Aside
Very busy this week on birthday-related activities. Regular schedule to resume soon. In the meantime, here are a couple of cool simulations to play with, since that seems to be something I’m interested in this week. First, a physics tool to simulate cloth as a grid of constrained points. Second, a quite cool fire simulation–I especially like making words and images out of wood and then setting them ablaze.
Matters of Gravity
What you’re looking at there is the sad and beautiful story of the death of two stars, and the casting of two other survivors into the darkness. I’ve been sitting here playing with the My Solar System gravity simulator since reading about it in Discovery–it’s a cool educational toy for modelling interaction of bodies under gravity. You can use it… Read more →
Aside
Just as a follow-up to that last post, I noticed this morning some recent research which essentially proves that women find the same man more attractive if they see him sitting in an expensive car, than in a less expensive one. Men don’t care about what car a woman is in. (Fortunately for the women of Canada, I use my beat-up, high mileage Focus to help mask the blinding brilliance of my attractiveness.)
