House of the rising Moonglum

Looks like the Shuttle is back in service if just for a little while. This is of course a mission to the space station, but they are also testing out some tools to try to make the shuttle a bit safer. Unfortunately it is not a construction mission as all progress on the station has been canceled in favor of going to the moon and mars. Positive spin, that obviates the need for the shuttle, which is expensive and dangerous. Negative spin, we actually have a space shuttle, and everything else is just vaporware until I see it flying. I had my hopes up far too long on the Venture Star to have any faith in new space ship designs until I see hardware.

Stupidest comment of the launch… ‘”Liftoff of space shuttle Discovery, beginning America’s new journey to the moon, Mars and beyond,” said George Diller, the voice of shuttle launch control.’ But the shuttle can’t go out of low earth orbit. *sigh* In fact keeping it running goes against that program, unless they start testing technologies for those missions on the space station. (Which addmitedly they are. One of the big purposes of the station is life sciences. How do people live for long periods in space, that sort of thing.)

And finally, I really like that CNN doesn’t charge for their video any more. Watching the shuttle launch on their web site was awesome.

Or at least so claims a new US report. Apparently a report just came out that claims that insurgents are infiltrating the Iraqi military because the US screening procedure has a hard time telling useful recruits from your average hoodlum. The think that the Iraqis might do a better job. Really?! I am shocked and amazed. Two thoughts: It took them this long to figure it out? And, my God, I hope that they follow up on this report and actually let the Iraqis do the entrance interviews themselves. There are obviously some problems with that (stemming from sectarian issues) but over all I could see that as leading to an improvement in the capabilities of the police force which would only be a good thing.

I recently finished two more books, The Magician’s nephew and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Or, as I like to call them, Genesis and the Gospel according to C.S. Lewis. Reading them while reading the bible was pretty interesting. I knew they had religious undertones, but I didn’t realize that they were in parts simple retellings of bible stories. I assume that everyone else has read these books at one point or another, so I won’t bother with a review or anything, I’ll just give some impressions. I have never actually read the books before, so I had a number of expectations that were blown away.

First, I didn’t realize that the Magician’s Nephew was written long after The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. Reading them in chronological order rather than publication order was rather revealing. For example, I am used to science fiction and fantasy being more about story and details, than about mood. These stories were clearly placed to set mood and get feeling across. Once those had been taken care of, telling certain bible stories was next. Cohesion in plot and character motivation took a back seat. The professor in the Lion the witch and the wardrobe was a very different person from the nephew in the earlier book. In addition to the professor’s changing personality there seemed to be a number of plot holes that you could drive a truck through.

It was also interesting that he spent a couple days in Narnia while the kids were there for a lifetime. That really shocked me. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I guess I thought that the rest of the books would be repeated trips while they were the rulers of Narnia. Now I am really curious to see what happens in the other books. (After I read Harry Potter I guess.)

The final big thing is that I am now used to modern KidLit. Between Harry Potter and Ember, I expect a certain level of writing in my KidLit books. The Narnia books seem to either be written for a younger audience, or just aren’t written as well.

Having said all that, I really did enjoy the books. In particular I found the creation myth to be a really interesting spin on Genesis. Putting elements of Jesus in to the Creator was a really neat way to give a level of compassion to the creation story. And I will certainly read the rest because I am interested to see what else they do, and if they actually do pull together all the plot holes. Clearly some of the stuff in the last book (the first one chronologically) was setting up things that happened later. It will be interesting to see how that pans out. And also, if Aslan created the universe, who’s rules does he bow to? Who is this emperor across the sea? I will be excited to read more and find out. Especially since the books don’t take that long to read.

Death Star Subwoofer. Bid quick, and don’t forget your ticket to the UK to pick it up. For scale, notice that Papasan Chair base that it is sitting on.

You know… she always seemed like a reasonable person to me. And now she is having the FTC investigate how sex got into GRAND THEFT AUTO III!!!! Holy mother of jumping frog legs! It’s GTA!!! The game where you shoot old ladies for cash, machinegun crowds of people for fun, buy hookers to regain your health and then beat them up to get your money back. And she is concerned that there might be some explicit sex in the game???

Excuse me while I go rip my eyeballs out.

In an interesting turn of events a study was just completed which seems to indicated that studies have a high degree of failure. They looked at a large number of JAMA studies and pointed out that the results of about a third were later contradicted or modified. I don’t find this particulartly shocking because the whole point of science is that it builds on itself. However, to see this in action over the course of a decade in a medical journal is a bit eyeopening about how much of an art science really is.

I am a Hedgehog. I like my nose.
I like to put it in the air to sniff.
With it a smell of yummy food will I whiff.
It also lets me know where my people are.
Really well when they are near, but also when they are far.
Sometimes my people put food where I must climb a stair,
When I stick my sniffer up I smell the food in the air.
But that food is not good, to it I give the boot,
because what good is a sniffer, if you can’t use it to root.

I could be wrong, but it looks like he made it through another day! Congrats to my brother on a truly impressive run of poker!

So, as some of you may or may not know, my brother is currently playing in the World Series of Poker. It is a pretty insane event with thousands of people showing up from all over the world. Well, it looks like he made it through the first day. In fact, the Trib ended up doing a whole page on him! In addition to that, they published some excerpts from John Bebow’s blog who is following his progress this week. Pretty crazy! Here’s hoping he makes it another day.

So, when I fly in or out of New York I am delayed. Pretty much always. When I am waiting in Chicago they announce it as delays from Newark or LaGuardia. When I am waiting in NY they announce it as delays from the tower. I personally blame New York. In any case, I normally fly ATA since I like to be on vacation. They like to shut the doors as soon as everyone is on the plane. There have been a few times that this has been really cool and I have arrived up to half an hour early. Most of the time this means we sit on the tarmac for a while though. This last time I took Continental instead because they were cheaper.

The bad thing about Continental is that their seats are closer together than ATA’s. (The Seat Pitch is claimed to be the same, but my Dimension A happens to be 28″ which is 2″ longer than the minimum required by the airlines. I fit on ATA, but not on continental. ATA must have thinner seats. I also think continental’s seats pivot lower allowing the jerk in front of you to have more leverage to slam your knees.)

The advantage is that they try to not board the plane until they need to. This means that it looks like the plane leaves later, but you spend less time on the tarmac. That is really nice. This last time they claimed a delay of over an hour, but got us on after only half an hour. Then we waited on the tarmac. I was going to get all pissy about sitting around, but this time they claimed a weather delay. I wasn’t buying it until we took off. Looking out the window was amazing. God was pissed. You could actually watch the thunderheads form. While we were going up to our flight path the captain kept making hard hard banks to go around the cumulonimbi. I no longer felt bad about waiting for our brief window of opportunity on the ground.

I also now take back everything bad I said about The Day After Tomorrow. New York, you had better watch out.

Well it looks like Bush will get his chance to place a new justice on the bench. Given the scrutiny this decision will take I’m not too worried though. But man, if he tries to nominate Ashcroft I am going to cry.

And just after such a great minority opinion as well. Speaking of which, I have been so busy lately that I haven’t had a chance to write on that ruling. I’m sure that a million of my friends have, so I don’t really need to, but man. I’ve been thinking of buying a house lately, and let me tell you, it sure is reassuring to know that if I drop a huge percentage of my life’s work into said house that is can be taken from me at the whim of the mayor. And don’t think that Chicago’s mayor wouldn’t do it if it pleased him. Mr. tear down Miggs field in the middle of the night is probably loving this ruling. At least congress is doing something about it. There is one upside to having a republican congress. Personal property is still at least somewhat sacred to them. (Not enough for my libertarian friends, but there you go.)