It's not rocket science
Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Dream of battled fields no more.
Days of danger, nights of waking.
-Sir Walter Scott
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.”
-Gen. George S. Patton
Pass, you shall not!
The Zombie Apocalypse has begun! Patient Zero appeared yesterday in Miami. Here’s a choice quote from the USA Today story:
Witnesses said that a woman saw two men fighting and flagged down a police officer, who came upon a naked man mauling the other man. The newspaper quoted witnesses as saying that the officer ordered the naked man to back away, and when he ignored the demand, the officer shot him. Witnesses said that the naked man continued his attack after being shot once, and the officer shot him several more times.
More here. No word on whether it required a head shot to bring him down. Because we all know it has to be a head shot for zombies.
Hope everyone’s stocked up on hollow points and Twinkies, ’cause it looks like it’s time to nut up or shut up.
SpaceX has got it goin’ on, ya’ll. This is just the second orbital flight of their Dragon capsule, and darned if they didn’t berth with the Space Station!
As our illustrious Vice President Jar-Jar Biden might say: “This is a big #@$&%! deal”. Just another example of what private citizens can do when they’re allowed to make money and follow their passions.
Viva Capitalism!
UPDATE: Archive videos from NASA TV here.
UPDATED UPDATE: Really, really excited about this? You can take a class in space hotel design this summer. Beats Medieval French Poetry or Transgender Victim Studies…
Congratulations to SpaceX!
After a last-half-second abort on Saturday, they fixed their little problem and lit the candle early this morning. Their launch window to ISS was instantaneous, so this is quite a big deal that they could pull it off on just the second try. It also speaks well of Falcon 9’s reliability (and repair ability).
They have a lot of on-orbit tests to do before NASA will let it anywhere near the space station, but this is a very good start.
I’m saving up $$ for my ticket!
So I’m driving home from work the other day, with my usual wait at the traffic light along runway 10L/28R here in Columbus. Being a professional airplane geek (i.e. stupid enough to work in the business instead of doing something that makes real money), I of course spend that time watching the departing airliners stacked up behind the hold-short. This day, something unusual caught my eye, namely this unwieldy-looking hump on a Southwest bird:
The last time I saw one of these was on a different 737, one that my employer was preparing to sell, and we had been tasked with running the test flights for a brand new satellite antenna housing. That’s what that hump is, though I see how it could be mistaken for a luggage container like you’d put on top of the old Griswold family station wagon. Or maybe a carrier for Mitt Romney’s dog. Continue reading “Flying the Hump”
OK, not really.
This is pretty weird, though. I found it yesterday on NASASpaceFlight‘s discussion forums, just before the moderator pulled it (it’s a pretty serious website, and the subscriber-only forums are mostly populated by real rocket scientists who don’t take kindly to pseudo-scientific twaddle). And I intentionally linked to the Paranoid News version just because they appear to keep things pretty tongue-in-cheek.
This “declassified NSA document” at first looked fake-y to me, though I’m a rank amateur. I figured it was a spoof site, but then backed up to just the “nsa.gov” site and started searching for the file. What gave me pause is that it took several iterations to finally sort through all the rubbish to find it on my own. Why is that significant? Well, have you ever tried a document search on a government website? I do all the time at work for FAA and NTSB references, and their search engines are freaking horrible. You have to wade through pages and pages of unrelated garbage to finally get what you’re looking for.
I’ve no idea at all if this is for real, an intentional red herring (just to see who’s paying attention), or part of some internal thought exercise. The latter seems the most likely to me: gov’t agencies, especially intel and defense, go through all kinds of extreme worst-case drills all the time. These frequently get misreported as some kind of diabolical plot by rogue operators, when in reality they’re just stretching their mental muscles.
Via the Fantastical Andrew Fox: a far-reaching essay on the current state of literature (I’d say “publishing” but it’s so much more than that), where it’s going, and what it means for us ink-stained wretches who slave over our keyboards. It’s a long read but well worth it.
A couple of quick excerpts:
For the overwhelming majority of midlist writers, those without a history of best-selling books and those without a pre-existing “platform” of fame and public recognition, traditional publication by a large publishing house will be (and, for the most part, already is) a fading dream, a “winning the lottery” type of event. Most of us are simply going to have to do a whole lot more of the business end of things ourselves, if we hope to attain any presence in the literary marketplace. By the business end, I mean publicity, reader outreach, editing, and book design.
. . .
I think many writers enjoy helping other writers. I think this is so because writers were readers before they ever became writers, and thus learned to cherish other writers, and because writing is a solitary, lonely business and many writers hunger for a community of their fellow enthusiasts. I think as it becomes more and more crucial for us to assume greater responsibilities for the business side of our writing careers, it behooves the more successful among us to help our less fortunate, less resource-endowed fellow writers to pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps. Because we will benefit as readers and potentially as business people, and because creating community is a source of joy and fulfillment.
Yes. In a sense we’re all in competition with each other, but I don’t think most of us see it that way. Readers are always looking for good books, and they’re always looking for that one that hits the perfect notes – the one that makes the reader think “I must have this book”. Might be something of mine, then again it might not be. More power to ’em. Every single “name” writer I’ve been in contact with has been tremendously helpful, and I fully intend to follow in their footsteps. This is a tough business to break into, though it’s admittedly easier with e-publishing to a certain point…once your work’s out there, it’s all you, buddy. Be prepared to endure the slings and arrows, because we each stand or fall on our own talents.
Kirk vs. Picard? Lame.
Starfleet vs. Galactic Empire? Small ball.
Yoda vs. Aliens? Now that’s something I’d pay to see:
From now on we’ll just leave it at “Death Watch”, hmmkay?
First up: The Wall Street Journal – which generally knows a thing or two about business & legal matters – weighs in on the DOJ suit against Apple and the “Agency 5” (which is not, by the way, the name of an opening act for The Osmonds’ 1973 tour). Continue reading “Publishing Death Watch, Pt. Whatever”
The Chiles Files 