Looney Toons: Back in Action

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.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing (2003)

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:

• “At Home in the Heavens” by Tim Appenzeller covered the state of the search for extra-solar planets
• “Astronomy’s New Stars” by Timothy Ferris discussed some of the contributions to astronomy by amateur astronomers
• “A New View of Our Universe” by Dennis Overbye talked about the state of cosmology and the concept of the multiverse
• “The Very Best Telescope” by William Speed Weed discussed a new optical interferometer

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.

A Fire Upon the Deep

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.

Meeting with Kim and Chris

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!

Lesson 03/10/2004

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!

SIDS Stamp effort

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.

Read more…

Cold Mountain

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.

Swift Display

I remembered to bring my camera today, so I dragged JD over to Building 7 to look at the new Swift display that I put together. It’s supposed to be a light box display, but I hadn’t been able to figure out how to turn the lights on.

The display is on a walkway around a high bay area, on the second floor. We followed the wires from the display down the wall under the walkway. To figure out where it went from there, we went downstairs, and followed them straight into a wall. Oops. JD counted the steps to the door so that we could try to figure out which room the cords went into from the hallway outside of the high bay. Unfortunately, they went into a closed room, since this wasn’t our building, we didn’t feel like we could just walk in.

Someone in the hall suggested that we talk to the facilities manager in the building. Well, that would be too easy, plus we didn’t know his name. Fortunately this random person did know his name, and we went to hunt John down. (Actually, his office was right across from the room where the wires disappears…convenient.)

Sadly, John didn’t know how to turn the light boxes on, either. He led us into the room where the cords disappeared, and at the other end of the cords, we found a plethora of circuit breakers. Of course, none of them were labeled.

John did claim to know someone who would know how to turn on the boxes, but was unable to find him. I took a few pictures of the display, anyhow, since the display is bright enough to see without the lights on (unlike the Cobe display that preceeded it).

John called me later in the afternoon to tell me that he’d found out how to turn them on. Sixteen new light bulbs ought to do it. Apparently, they are always on.

Here’s the whole display:

Panels #1 and 2

Panels #3 and 4

Panels #5 and 6

Panels #7 and 8

Naughty kitten

I heard a creaking in the hall behind me as I was working from home this afternoon….

…and this is what I saw when I went to investigate.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

3/5 stars

Typical Terminator movie. Not much else to say.