Just my little corner of the Interweb
I was not on my game tonight. Neither was Fred. Not much to say besides “ouch.”
Fred: “How many beats does an eighth note get in this piece?”
Me: “Uhhhh.”
Fred: “You know this.”
Me: “Yeah, I should. My brain seems to have turned off.”
It went downhill from there.
2/5 stars
Standard action film, but with vampires instead of terrorists or random super-villain.
4/5 stars
This movie was based on the life of Frank Hopkins, a Pony Express courier and long distance horse race legend. he and his horse, Hidalgo, travel to Saudi Arabia to participate in a race across the desert. Most participants laugh at his horse, a wild Mustang, from their purebred Arabian mounts. Hopkins finds himself not just fighting to win the race (and survive the race) but caught up in Arabian politics.
I quite enjoyed the movie. While I knew that Hopkins had to survive. I was still caught up in the action.
Funny comment from couple behind us: “They really used a lot of horses in this movie.” Duh. Really?
3/5 stars
Campy, silly, and over-the top. But that’s on purpose, so it makes it all the better. It’s a fun 2 hours.
Edited by Richard Dawkins
This is a collection of articles published during 2002 on they topics of physics, astronomy, computer science, geology, environmental science, etc. Andrew had told me that previous editions were quite biology-heavy, but this one had several astronomy articles, so I started tithe this one.
The astronomy articles spanned quite a range of topics:
For the most part I enjoyed the articles in the book, even the non-astronomy ones :-). “What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie” by Gary Taubes sheds light on why the Atkins diet has been scorned by science funding agencies (pressure to promote the low-fat diet) and why it merits further study. “Memory Faults and Fixes” by Elizabeth F. Luftus discusses research into memory, reporting on research that shows how easy it is to alter humans’ memories.
There were a few articles I didn’t particularly enjoy, like “Terminal Ice” by Ian Frazier, which seemed to stretch out into forever. However, that’s to be expected in a large collection like this, and certainly I enjoyed more of the articles than not.
by Vernor Vinge
Wow! This is epic sci-fi writing at it’s best — I have to put it up on my list with Poul Anderson’s Starfarers.
The novel opens with the explosive creation of a destructive “higher power”. Out of the explosion, the Olsndots escape with their two children, Jefri and Johanna, and the children of everyone at the station in cold sleep. They are forced to land on an unknown planet, and in a skirmish with the medieval natives of the planet the Olsndot adults are killed and Jefri and Johanna are separated.
Across the galaxy, Ravna Bergsndot is working as an archivist on Relay. The galaxy is hearing reports of the new “higher power”, now called The Blight because of it’s destructive ways. Ravna receives a communication from Jefri — communication from a starship present at the creation of The Blight. Her bosses are very interested in getting their hands on the records of the starship in hopes of finding a way to defeat The Blight.
Ravan is enlisted for this rescue, along with two Skroderiders — a plant-like race made intelligent and mobile by wheeled wagons with technology beyond that of much of the galaxy (including the Skroderiders). Also along for the mission is Pham Nuwen, a human cobbled together from the remains of members of an ancient failed mission frozen in a junk yard near Relay.
This epic novel follows the trials of Johanna and Jefri, embroiled in the politics of a medieval world, and of the rescuers in their ill-fated trek to save the children and the spacecraft.
I shared results from my fits to spectra for MCG-6-30-15, IC4329A, and PG0052+251. But more exciting than that is a re-presentation of some data I shared at our last meeting. I shouldn’t really say much other than that we think we’re seeing behavior that no one has seen before in AGN. I’ve got a list of things to do, and then we’re going to submit those results as a letter to ApJ.
Yay!
I tried out a couple new horns on Sunday — a Yamaha YAS475 and a Jupiter 869SG — but I confess that I couldn’t tell much difference between the two. Part of that is certainly because they both feel a lot different from my old Buescher sax from the 1920s. The old horns had the keys all in a line, where the new ones are made to be a bit more ergonomic. The keys are basically all in the same place, but just different enough to be confusing (kind of like using a natural keyboard after learning to type on a standard one).
Tonight I played a couple duets with Fred on the Jupiter sax, and liked it quite a bit, despite occasional slip ups because the keys weren’t where I was expecting them. I decided on the Jupiter because, since I couldn’t tell a difference by playing the two of them, it was the one I liked the looks of better (and it was a couple hundred less than the Yamaha). I bought it on my way out of the store! Yay!
I have a web page dedicated to my nephew who died of SIDS in 1996 when he was just 4 months and 21 days old. Because of this page, I have received several e-mails telling me about an effort to make a SIDS stamp, which would be similar to the breast cancer stamp. It would cost a few cents more than the regular first class stamp rate, and those extra cents would go directly to SIDS research.
They are asking that you do not send letters directly to the post office, because once an investigation into a stamp request is rejected, there is a one year period where the stamp will not be considered again. Instead, they would like to collect letters, and send them all together to show how much support there is for such a stamp. Check out the above link to see how to address a letter and where to send it.
Read on to see a draft of the letter I’ll be sending.
4/5 stars
We’ve been meaning to see this one for a couple months now, so we found a theater still showing it, and headed out this afternoon.
It was quite good — definitely deserving of the Oscar nominations it received (unlike Lost in Translation, imho). At it’s simplest, it is a love story. Inman (Jude Law) is separated from his love (though they don’t really know it until they’ve separated), Ada, by the Civil War “draft”. We follow his wanderings, after being wounded and deserting the military hospital, to return to Cold Mountain, where Ada is coping with life without her father on a large farm.
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