Best Wedding Clothes

I am not usually a fan of wedding clothing, but this deserves special mention. The link takes you to cayusa's Flickr photstream, and a photo apparently from a science fiction convention called Dragon Con.

Jill and I need to get costumes like this for this upcoming Hallowe'en!

Digital Photo Processing

Perhaps some of you are getting the idea that I am finding excuses not to blog about our summer vacation, possibly because you might believe that the task of combing through nearly 7 thousand photographs to illustrate our five weeks (in two parts) is such a daunting task. You would be correct.

In the meantime, as a leadup, and coutesy of Mike, I am providing some before and after comparisons of photos taken with Mike's Nikon at the recent Geek Dinner -- the raw images which I posted earlier, and those same images after Mike took them and did some digital processing.

The white balance and color tweaks were done in Lightroom 2. Noise reduction and smoothing was done in Photoshop.

Do-Ming and Jill - unprocessed. Check out the good looking guy on the left.

Do-Ming and Jill - enhanced. Now you can tell that the better looking one is actually on the right.

Corwin and Ben - unprocessed. Just a couple of geeky kids.

Corwin and Ben - enhanced. Now you see the true nature of the NDS-induced zombies.

Mark and Glen - unprocessed. Apparently just a couple of regular guys.

Mark and Glen - enhanced. Now you can see the guy on the left is an Evil Genius, and the one on the right is hiding a Green Lantern insignia.


Again, courtesy of Mike, here are a couple of links on the digital workflow process from Luminous Landscape and Nikonians.

Just a reminder for when you try these techniques out on your own photos -- since these processes make changes to the image file, you should always make a copy of the image, and only work with the copy. That way, you keep your original file intact.

Batman and Sons - Rivalry

I've been a fan of superhero comics since before I was able to read. Sometimes, however, it is good to take a fresh look at the various mythos, as the dark cat has done over on LiveJournal.

Scans_Daily, also on LiveJournal, has a post of the dark cat's work in progress, Batman and Sons - Rivalry. (Scroll down after the page opens).

This is just laugh-out-loud funny, and I hope the dark cat completes this soon.

Thanks to Glen for providing the initial link.

More about the Large Hadron Collider

First, the dvice.com website offers 30 incredible photos of the inside of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. [Thanks to Mike, who provided the link.]

The Montreal Gazette has a pretty good FAQ-type summary of LHC activities. And we learn that there are approximately 20 Montrealers working on the project. We also learn that the accelerator tunnel is about the size of a Montreal Metro (subway) tunnel.

UPDATE INSERTED Sep 14 - Michio Kaku of CUNY in an article in the Wall Street Journal expresses a certain amount of bitterness about the canceled Superconducting Super Collider (SCSC) project from the 1990s: "...As a consequence, Congress guaranteed that leadership in advanced physics would pass from the U.S. to Europe." However, a few sentences later he goes on to say "...While the LHC is outside U.S. jurisdiction, many of its key components come from America...", highlighting the current international nature of high energy physics research. [Note - the SCSC would have reached 40 TeV; the LHC can only reach 14 TeV].

How could I not blog about this next item? Katherine McAlpine aka "AlpineKat" is a news coordinator with the ATLAS Project at the LHC. She created the LHC Rap, the most current internet sensation (at least among geeks) which explains what the Large Hadron Collider is all about:



In the interview transcript which is linked above, McAlpine talks about LHC end-of-the-world scenarios.

I feel compelled to point out, for those who were disappointed that the end of the world did not come on September 10, that on that date only one circulating beam in the LHC got turned on. Sometime later, possibly this weekend or next week, they will turn on the second beam that circulates in the opposite direction. Once they are certain that everything works, and more importantly, that they understand the detectors, then the LHC experiment will move to the next step. That is actually the point at which the doomsayers need to be worried, because then the LHC will bring both beams together, and allow the particles in the two counter-rotating beams to collide. It is those high energy collisions that are the reason for the LHC's existence. It is in observing these collisions that physicists will gain insight into the first instants of the Big Bang. It is also these collisions that should be feared by those who believe in the end of the world.

An article by Ronald Bailey in ReasonOnLine provides an excellent summary of the so-called safety issues around the high energy collisions in the LHC:

While the LHC safety report goes through a number of scenarios, its chief point is that the energies produced in the LHC are "far below those of the highest-energy cosmic-ray collisions that are observed regularly on Earth." In fact, cosmic rays produced by phenomena in the universe "conduct" more than 10 million LHC-like experiments per second. If such energies actually produced vacuum bubbles, microscopic black holes, magnetic monopoles, or strangelets that could destroy planets and stars, physicists wouldn't be here to perform experiments in the LHC now.

With all that said, click here for a live webcam view from the LHC facility itself.

Thank you and good night.

Tech Support Solutions - Turn it OFF!

I know a number of people named Michael -- Michael the Writer, who occasionally collaborates with Jill and who we see on Tuesday nights with the Usual Suspects; Mike the Geek, who is the source of all my daily interesting internet links each day; and Michael the Lawyer, from whom I occasionally hear when his computer breaks.

Perhaps this is unfair. In a previous (business) life, I was part of a company which in the early 80s shared space with Michael's law firm. At that time, Michael acquired a disk based Olivetti word processor which I played with. This machine was beyond cutting edge at the time, when the most sophisticated personal computers one could buy were Apple II's or Commmodore 64s. It was sleek and black and expensive and it could store everything you typed. Of course I fell in love with it immediately. I managed to find the CP/M operating system on one of the operating disks, and I figured out how to bypass the word processor app load and get a CP/M prompt. But, in those stone-knife-and-bearskin days before the internet, I couldn't find out enough additional information to do something really useful -- like maybe compile Space Invaders to run on the Olivetti instead of the much less interesting word processing app.

Fast forward twenty years plus. Nowadays, Michael, like the rest of us, uses a reasonably state of the art Intel-based system running Windows XP, with video tweaked to be a little more than most lawyers would need -- because, dammit, Space Invaders just needs to be run at odd moments. His network also includes a very sweet Mac machine, but that one isn't part of this story.

I got a call from Michael on Tuesday detailing his latest problem -- a message on his screen that said "Not Optimum Mode. Recommended mode: 1280x1024 60Hz". Apparently, this problem had come up suddenly, no obvious cause. Well, Windows is like that -- things sometimes happen without any obvious cause. I didn't take this all that seriously -- based on the message, I expected that a simple right click on the desktop to reset the properties would fix this. I had Michael try this, but it wasn't successful. Michael is a lot better than the woman with whom I once spent a half hour on the phone, unsuccessfully trying to get her to "click on the start button". Remote tech support isn't my thing.

Fortunately, it was Tuesday, so I left the family among the Usual Suspects that evening and did a short hike over to Michael and Liz's house to check on the patient. (Have I mentioned Liz, yet? Liz isn't Catholic, but if she were, I am certain she would be in line for sainthood based on her having put up with Michael since the early 80s).

[Reader to insert virtual smiley face here, to make it clear that this particular cheap shot is basically humorous rather than malicious.]

After seeing the patient, it became obvious that it was not the computer, but the monitor itself that was generating the error message. More importantly, from an operational perspective, the computer was unresponsive -- my plan to right click the desktop to change the properties wouldn't work, because there was no desktop. On reboot, it would go to a black screen, with the monitor-generated message displayed. I tried a few things, including shutting down and restarting everything, and the more time consuming task of doing a repair of XP. During the repair process, the lower resolution screens were displayed, but afterwards, the normal screen display did not come up. Also, booting into Safe Mode didn't work either.

Based on some tech forum chatter which I was able to read from the Mac system, I started leaning toward the idea that possibly the monitor was faulty. With no clue, and no further ideas, I gave up and left for the night. Just to make things complete, Michael mentioned that he had some court documents he needed to prepare by the weekend.

On Wednesday, I went back. The first thing I tried was to unplug the power cord from the back of the monitor. I could also have unplugged the power cord for the monitor from the power bar, but being decrepit and fat, it is easier to do things that don't involve bending over and/or crouching.

When I plugged the monitor back in after a couple of minutes, and then restarted the computer, the restart went flawlessly. Everything came back -- Windows displayed the login screen, and I did the mental equivalent of run around with arms upraised shouting "IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!".

So, important lesson -- peripherals can maintain erroneous electrical states even with the power shut off. If the intent is to shut it off to force a reset, consider unplugging it as well. That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.

At home, I have to try this with the twin-disk external drive that has been failing the format command since Monday night (although it is perfectly happy with a Quick Format).

Still remaining to do -- go back to see Michael to explain, yet again, why it is important to run an antivirus update (and a scan!) at least once a week. And to do a critical files backup. Honestly, the man does criminal law, and does pretty well at it. You'd think that he could follow some simple instructions. Look at me -- I follow simple instructions quite well. Ask anyone...

Geek Dinner

We held the Periodic Geek Dinner at the Great Khan Mongolian Grill at the Pacific Mall last Friday, Sep 5.

In the leadup to this, Mike suggested a number of choices, and then proposed that we assemble at a Boston Pizza. Since we had been discussing the Mongolian Grill, or the Keg as possible dinner locations, I questioned this choice. This caused a long e-mail thread to propagate,and the end result was that the group decided on the Mongolian Grill, but the one at the Pacific Mall which up to this point I hadn't even known about, rather than the more familiar location on Don Mills Road.

Afterward, Mike admitted that he had provided an acceptable but not very good solution in order to force the group to decide on something better.

This is an interesting approach and could work just as easily on gathering business requirements from undecided users. I've been in this situation, on the receiving end. The users took everything that had been documented from the previous session, decided it wasn't adequate, and changed it. The only problem was that my users kept doing this in every subsequent session rather than finalizing on a solution.

As a group, we were much more effective this time in reaching a consensus.

Jill, Corwin, and I did some looking around in the mall before heading over to the restaurant. I took some pictures, but the photographic star of the evening was Mike's Nikon D60, the first DSLR that I've had an opportunity to get hands-on with. [Note - Mike says he got the camera and most of the associated gear used -- guess that means I need to check out Craigslist a lot more often.]


While I had come with the family, Mike, Aldo, and Glen had come by themselves. For Corwin, the high point of the arrangements was that Mark brought his son Benjamin. We had originally expected Dave and Marianna to be there as well, but (at least some of us) were sorry to hear that Dave was sick. Some of the rest of us were amused by the story of Dave being upset earlier that day. In a chat session, when told that Dave was sick and wouldn't make it that night, Mark had responded by saying, "Man, you suck! And you'd better be sick for the whole weekend!" We are nothing if not mutually supportive, but word was that Dave had been upset by the "you suck!" part. Those of us inclined to be that way giggled a bit when told this story.


The food was all right, since you can't really go wrong with the Mongolian Grill chain. The remaing photos from this point forward in this entry were taken with Mike's camera. The actual photographer would have been Mark, Aldo, or Mike (assuming anyone cares about photo credits).



Ben and Corwin, of course, ignored the crazy adults and did kid stuff. Mark describes this as a "DS induced zombie pic". Corwin was introduced to a DS game called Viva Pinata, based on the television cartoon.


The funniest part of the night occurred when we were discussing Vista, and its failings. In the discussion, Mike admitted to owning a machine that still ran Windows 2000. Aldo looked at him, and in a voice tinged with just the right amount of incredulity, said "Dude. That's ancient!"

OK, so it was geek humour, and ya had to be there. Anyway, for the record, I too still own a machine that runs Win2K. It keeps telling me that the hard drive is about to die, but (knock on wood) it hasn't done it for the last two years.

Our evening ended when the restaurant closed. Since it hadn't been too busy, they had kindly let us stay until closing time. A good gathering, lots of fun. We need to do it again, so that some people can demonstrate to some other people that they don't suck.

LHC online - we're still here

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located on the border between Switzerland and France, came online at 04:38 Eastern time on the morning of September 10. Here is a brief excerpt from the New York Times article which was filed from Batavia, Illinois at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory:

Once upon a time the United States ruled particle physics. For the last two decades, Fermilab’s Tevatron, which hurls protons and their mirror opposites, antiprotons, together at energies of a trillion electron volts apiece, was the world’s largest particle machine.

By year’s end, when the CERN collider has revved up to five trillion electron volts, the Fermilab machine will be a distant second. Electron volts are the currency of choice in physics for both mass and energy. The more you have, the closer and hotter you can punch back in time toward the Big Bang.

Prior to startup, there had been kooky concerns, unfortunately echoed by a less than scientifically literate press, about the possibility of Dire Things Happening. These included the creation of one or more mini black holes in the LHC that would then proceed to swallow the Earth; formation of a nugget of "strange matter" which would convert everything that touched it to strange matter as well; or (my favourite) the LHC would trigger another Big Bang and obliterate the Universe. Yesterday at work, I weighed the odds of the world ending overnight, versus doing the much less interesting updates for the Wednesday morning status meeting, and I chose in favour of doing the updates.

A good thing, too, as none of the disaster scenarios happened. As pointed out by the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) and independent physicists, cosmic rays collide with particles in the upper atmosphere with much higher energies than the LHC is capable of producing. Had any of these disaster scenarios been likely, we would already have been swallowed.

For physicists, the LHC represents an opportunity, perhaps best summarized by Christopher Potter of McGill University in the Globe and Mail's article:

"This is what our entire careers have been building up to: It's the one chance in our generation to answer the biggest questions of science."

That's an inspiring thought to begin a new era in physics research.

More FanExpo

When Corwin and I went to FanExpo on Saturday the 23rd to see Buzz Aldrin's public presentation, we stayed for the whole afternoon after it was over.


It may not have been obvious, but my son is a Star Wars fanboy, so the above photo-op, right next to the recruitment centre for the Rebel Legion and the 501st Clone Trooper battalion was a no-brainer for us.


I started going to science fiction conventions when I was a teenager, but never met anyone like the lovely young woman who allowed me to take her photo. Corwin says that the costume comes from the Kingdom Hearts video game. Clearly, my focus on books for all these years may have been the wrong thing :-)

Corwin's reason for going to FanExpo was, of course, gaming. He managed to get in several games of Halo 2 on an X-Box 360 gaming network that had been set up there, as well as some time on a Wii. I like the Wii's interactive capabilities and peripherals. Not sure that it is going to be the next game system in the family, though.

UPDATE - Mike pointed out that the woman in the photo is cosplaying as a character called Yoko from Gainax's latest anime series, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Corwin did not remember the encounter, but did so as soon as he was reminded of the sniper rifle. (Note - I expect his priorities to change radically over the next two to three years). He clarified his statement, which I misunderstood, that it was the woman's companion (not in the picture) who was cosplaying as Sora from Kingdom Hearts.

I meet Buzz Aldrin

I had a chance to hang out with Buzz Aldrin last weekend at Fan Expo. On July 20, 1969, I was not quite 11 years old when I watched on a black and white TV in Wonowon as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to set foot on another world.

I didn't plan on doing this. Earlier this year, recognizing that my next birthday is my 50th, Jill decided that a VIP pass to the Fan Expo celebrity event with Dr. Aldrin might be a good early birthday present. She was right.

I arrived last Friday before 6pm for the autograph session scheuled to begin at 7pm. I was one of hundreds in the main Fan Expo room in the South Building of the Toronto Convention Centre. By virtue of arriving early and waiting for an hour and a half until the autograph session started, late, I was one of the first 25 or 30 in line. When it was my turn, I shook Dr. Aldrin's hand and told him I had been waiting 39 years to congratulate him on his feat. He autographed for me a large print of himself standing on the moon, similar to the image below, a shot taken by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission.


The second event was a photo op. They staged it in front of a green screen. However,with no prior instructions provided, I had not realized that they were going to do this and had worn a shirt with green stripes in it. They took the shot and added the moon in as background. However, because of my green shirt, you can see the moon through my torso. And just above my belt, there is something that looks suspiciously like a fingerprint.


By the end of the photo session, I had been waiting in line over two and a half hours, and I had spent a total of 30 seconds or less with Dr, Aldrin. But, as I said to Jill, how often in your life do you get to approach a living legend?

The VIP Q&A session took place across the street in a pub. It included a complimentary dinner (sandwiches, salad, some indifferent meatballs and pasta -- the functional equivalent of rubber chicken). I managed four or five more minutes with him, although my supposed one-on-one was shared with two strangers named Anthony and Stephen. Not my choice or theirs -- we were arbitrarily grouped by one of the organizers, who redeemed himself by taking photos.


Buzz Aldrin got his doctorate from MIT for his work on orbital rendezvous. He later went on to do much more interesting work on cycler orbits. I had wanted to ask about any follow-up work that he might have done, but there was no real opportunity for a more technical chat.

Next day, Saturday, was Dr. Aldrin's presentation. I went with Corwin, and we stood with the rest of the audience to give him a standing ovation when he entered the room. Corwin fidgeted through the second half of the talk, but I did manage to get him and Dr. Aldrin in the same photo.


Dr. Aldrin provided a brief retrospective of his life and career. He expressed his concern that the earliest delivery date for the Ares/Constellation launchers in 2015 combined with the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2010 will result in a period when the US will only have access to space through its international partners. He hopes that the US space program will develop an alternate solution that will reach operational readiness sooner than 2015.

He also spoke of his wish that there might be a 40th anniversary reunion of the Apollo 11 crew and support group. My thought is that this is a neat idea, but if something like this is organized, it would be a convention involving potentially hundreds or thousands of people.

The organizers cut short the public question and answer session after two or three questions.

And that was how I got to meet Buzz Aldrin.

Not 3 regular readers -- 4!

After yesterday's post, I got an e-mail from someone I hadn't heard from for years, pointing out that I have one more regular reader than I think I do. That is very cool. So, WT from western Canada -- thanks for the e-mail, and hope you continue to enjoy these occasional maunderings!

Upcoming -- I need to blog about the great 2008 Cross Country Road trip and the second year that the Usual Suspects occupied Lake Herridge.

Tesseracts 12

Jill and our friend Michael sold a story to Tesseracts 12, edited by Claude Lalumiere. The story is a fantasy, set in medieval Japan.

Among the Tuesday night group of the Usual Suspects, Dave also sold a story. As you can see from Dave's post, all of this happened in late winter/early spring -- months ago. If I wasn't such a casual blogger, you would have known about this earlier.

Tesseracts 12 will be out in September/October this year, likely in time for the World fantasy Convention. Please BUY THE BOOK when it comes out!

Are we there yet?

Yes, I know the blog has been a posting disaster. With no new updates in the last eight months, I am not surprised that all my regular readers (all three of you) have given up. But this is the week that we'll work on catching up, I promise!

Snowstorm

Up until November, Corwin had been pretty sad with the expectation that for the third winter in a row, there would be no snow.

All this changed with the first major storm of the winter which happened at the end of November. Instead of melting, a lot of the snow remained.

The second major storm of the winter started with warm moist air in Texas. By Saturday December 15 the moisture laden air had reached us and had collided with an arctic air mass to produce whiteout blizzard conditions, lasting until Sunday. The storm brought near record snowfalls to Toronto.

As expected, the city ground to a halt. Fortunately, the current mayor is too smart to panic and call in the army like the last one did back in Jan 1999.

Starting Sunday morning, we were out shoveling the driveway.



We were out again in the mid afternoon, when the accumulated snowfall for the last few hours made it look like we had done nothing in the morning.

This photo of Corwin is very festive, with the red and green Christmas colours and the snow. He had to be convinced to stand still for the shot, and then minutes afterward, tried to bean me with a snowball. Snowballs and parental victims are why winters exist...

By early evening, the snow had mostly ended and there was only a centimeter or two of accumulation to shovel. To our great surprise, the snowplows came by before midnight -- under the previous mayor, it would have been days. But the passing of the plows also required a final trip out, to shovel off the comber of packed snow in front of the driveway.

All the snow had to go somewhere, since it is illegal to push it onto the road. In our case, we put it onto the lawn, onto an ever-growing snowbank. But the downside to having a snowbank taller than you are is that it becomes really hard to toss more snow on top of it.

As with all things, excessive snow is a relative concept. My sources in Northern B.C. tell me that there's a half metre of snow on the ground for a few weeks now, and nearly two and a half metres up in the mountains.

The same storm that dumped on us also did the same on our friends in the Ottawa Valley. Here is the view from Bob and Elaine's front door.

For the record, I am bored of shoveling snow. Make it stop.

Christmas Medley

From YouTube - I am a sucker for a capella groups. This one is called Straight No Chaser, and their version of The Twelve Days of Christmas caused me to rediscover Toto's Africa, a hit song of 1983. What can I say, I am a bit behind the times...



Updated Dec 16, 2008 because the youtube link kept failing.
Update Feb 18, 2009 - if the link above fails, search for "Straight No Chaser" on Youtube.

How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take In A Fight?

The last three months have been pretty busy so this is just lightweight stuff until I get some time to do a few updates.

22

Check your own ability to handle a swarm of rabid yard apes here.

(Original link provided by Mark via Facebook.)

Comet Holmes Becomes Visible

An obscure periodic comet -- Comet Holmes, designated 17P, suddenly brightened by about a factor of one million starting on Wednesday morning, October 24. From about magnitude 18, so dim that only a large telescope at an observatory would be able to detect it, the comet brightened within hours to magnitude 3, visible with the naked eye, even in the skyglow of a major city like Yokohama -- or Toronto, if the cloud cover would just go away.

A constellation schematic of Perseus and a telescopic finder chart are avilable for observers.

P17/Holmes currently has the appearance of a bright yellow star in the constellation Perseus, comparable in apparent brightness to the other major stars in that grouping. The unusual brightening was probably due to material outgassed from the comet nucleus -- very strange given that perihelion passage (closest approach to the sun) happened a few months ago, and the comet is heading back outwards. The comet itself is part of the Jupiter family of comets -- its perihelion falls outside the Earth's orbit, 2.2 AU from the sun. Its aphelion point is way out around the orbit of Jupiter.

In three of my most favourite places -- northern BC, Lake Herridge in northern Ontario, or rural Newfoundland -- the comet should be quite visible under near ideal conditions -- at least if the sky were cloud free. Clouds in fall/winter are definitely a problem. The advent of Comet McNaught back in January was a complete non-starter for us here -- every night that McNaught would have been visible was a night where it was cloudy in Toronto. But hopefully, we will have better luck with P17/Holmes.

Space Update - Chinese Moon Mission and a Historic First for Women in Space

Today, China launched a lunar probe, an orbiter called Chang'E 1 which is designed to orbit the Moon and gather data. The spacecraft is named after the moon goddess.

Chang'E 1 is the second lunar mission launched from Asia this year, intensifying the Asian space race to send human explorers to the Moon. Earlier this month, Japan launched the SELENE mission, the largest and most ambitious lunar exploration spacecraft since the American Apollo and Soviet Luna programs. And next year, India is expected to send their Chandraayan probe.

Also today, the astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery, mission STS-120, spent their first full day in space. They launched yesterday from Cape Canaveral to deliver the Harmony module to the International Space Station.

Discovery, commanded by Pamela Melroy, is scheduled to dock at the International Space Station tomorrow. The current ISS crew, Expedition 16, is commanded by Peggy Whitson. And that is the historic first -- two female mission commanders in space at the same time.

Doctor Robert Bussard Passes Away

Dr. Robert W. Bussard -- physicist, nuclear fusion researcher, inventor of the Bussard ramjet -- passed away last Sunday morning, October 7. The Power and Control blog has further details.

Dr. Bussard invented the idea of the interstellar ramjet in 1960 -- a concept of using magnetic "scoop fields" to collect interstellar hydrogen, which would subsequently be compressed and burned in a nuclear fusion reaction to produce thrust. This idea worked its way into popular culture via novels such as Poul Anderson's Tau Zero (early 1970s), Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series (1980s), and even on Star Trek (late 1980s to 1990s).

In the last years of his life, Dr. Bussard worked on prototype nuclear fusion reactors using inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC). This work was done for the US DoD and the US Navy. When his funding ran out, he gave a talk at Google which became famous over the internet. A copy of his Google talk may also be obtained via a peer to peer network with an application such as uTorrent.

I have watched Dr. Bussard's presentation a number of times over the last year. It is both compelling and inspiring -- a succinct synthesis of the science behind nuclear fusion, as well as Bussard's own research into the development of an IEC fusion reactor. Bussard acknowledges that IEC devices represent a completely different direction than the large, expensive, tokamak-based devices which are the mainstream of current international nuclear fusion research.

The IEC research is based on physics known since the early half of the twentieth century. If fully realized, Dr. Bussard's work promises to effectively end humanity's reliance on fossil fuels. More importantly, it would make possible space drives capable of moving a spacecraft from Earth to Mars in a week or Earth to Titan in 70 days. Such a drive could also be the first stage acceleration system to get a Bussard ramjet starship to the threshold speed where its scoop fields would be able to pull in enough hydrogen to achieve ignition.

Happy Sputnik Day!

Fifty years ago today, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik One, the first satellite. The launch was part of the scientific activity for the International Geophysical Year. Conducted using an R7 launcher, originally intended to carry nuclear warheads, the presence of Sputnik One in the sky sent the world a message, one possibly unintended by the Soviets.
Sputnik was a complete surprise in the West, and the failure of the first two Vanguard launch attempts by the United States created the so-called "Sputnik Crisis" and the idea of the "Missile Gap". The response to Sputnik in America included bringing science and technology education front and centre. For instance, Sputnik did what the Scopes Monkey Trial could not -- it caused all laws restricting the teaching of the Darwinian theory of evolution to be repealed.

Fifty years on, the Soviet Union is no more -- ironically, the same American response to being second best in the race to put the first satellite into space caused a massive economic, social, and technological shift. The shift contributed to the moon landings a decade later, laid the groundwork for the laser and the computer chip revolutions, and likely led to the economic collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. In other words, Sputnik, and the world reaction to it, is one of the root causes of the world we live in today.

Sputnik is no longer in orbit -- it re-entered the atmosphere and burned up within three months after its launch. But the world that resulted from the Sputnik launch is still here, and still moving forward.

Happy Fiftieth Birthday, Sputnik!

Avast! Jill Be Sellin' A Pirate Story!

Arrr Mateys! Just in time fer International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Which is today -- September 19!

Jill sold a story ("The Sweet Realm") to Shimmer Magazine, for their special upcoming Pirate Issue. The Shimmery folks in charge at Shimmer have made it known that the issue will be out on November 1, but may be available at the World Fantasy Convention at the end of October for those of you who are going.

Jill's story can be downloaded from the Shimmer Magazine website. Please show your support by buying a copy of the magazine when it comes out! Shimmer's pre-order page is here.

Arrr Mateys! Jill hopes you enjoy the story. Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!