Okay I've been terrible about putting enough time into my writing per week, and less noticeably to my readers, not much exercise either. However I did buy a telescope to get me started. It's a Celestron Astromaster 76EQ Reflector which should be enough to get me started. Unfortunately the weather has not been very cooperative, as it is either ( Read more... )

I'll claim to have been busy as a reason for the long silence. That is staying on top of all my course work, which is somewhat unusual for me, and filling my spare time playing Europa Universalis III with the Magna Mundi mod, as the sweet laptop I got for my course is the first computer I owned that can run it (and with gusto). Unfortunately, I do ( Read more... )

Anticipation ( Read more... )

I was debating someone with anarcho-primitivist leanings, so decided to post my reply, as it pertains to the critique of technology in a general sense.

( Posted verbatim )

Thomas Malthus has really come back into style, although an argument could be made that he never really was unfashionable given our collective fascination with doomsday scenarios. The public prominence of issues like climate change and oil supplies are probably responsible for this, although unrelated issues like economic recession and swine flu ( Read more... )

I've certainly spent alot of time using computers since my family first got one back in 1992 when the first wave of the information revolution hit the public. In the intervening 16 years, I've used a succession of desktops, but never really a laptop (or a Mac). Currently I'm on karenjeane's work laptop - a brand new and very spiffy MacBook Pro. I'm not ( Read more... )

We've been watching the stars since our evolutionary ancestors could first appreciate the twinkling points of light in sky during the primeval night. Evidence suggests that humans have been studying the stars as astronomers since 4000 BC. By all accounts, it was only a matter of time before we found what we were looking for up there - the promise ( Read more... )

Besides condemning Taiwan again for its moves towards independence, the annual session of China's parliment also announced something more useful - that they are going to put a probe on the moon before the year is out, although they didn't specify a precise date. Since putting a man into space in 2003, China's space program has been both surprising ( Read more... )

It seems that researchers at Manchester University have come up with a scientific explanation for the "beer goggle" effect. For those of you who are unfamiliar with beer goggles, it is when a "person you would normally find unattractive appears less 'visually offensive'" after you consume some alcohol. The researchers actually created a ( Read more... )

Well taking back some of my grumbles about the current moonshot, NASA is apparently planning to build a permanent base on the moon after they return in 2020. For the first time in human history, we will have established an offworld outpost of any kind. Permanent habitation in space is only a fairly recent phenomenon, starting with the Russian space ( Read more... )