Since the Governor and the Legislature are playing games, it looks like that on Monday I get to have an unpaid mandatory vacation!
Things to do on furlough:
1. watch grass grow
2. watch TV
I've considered finding new employment in a new city all together, since I haven't exactly warmed to Harrisburg and I'm fairly tired of the mid-state having been here the better part of a decade, but I'm not quite ready to uproot and I started doing something new at work. Plus I have no idea where I'd live, or where I'd be comfortable living since I don't drive and that limits where I can move to. I already get looked at like I'm an alien here.
The notice I got in the mail says I can get unemployment. Or I could flip burgers with snotty teenagers at the McDonalds in the Uptown Shopping Center. Anyway, we'll see what Monday brings.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Friday, May 18, 2007
Total Pwnage
I wonder if we'll start getting more open reporting in the city of Harrisburg. Spring Mugging Season is probably well underway, but you wouldn't know it reading the Patriot News.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
New Blogger Template
Ok, so I'm going to give this new one a shot. I'm not married to it, and thankfully, I saved the old template so if I dislike this one, I'll be switching back.
However I had the old template for most of this blog's life, so...I might end up going back to the old.
However I had the old template for most of this blog's life, so...I might end up going back to the old.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
heh
Thank you, Lord, for calling Your servant home. And if you could see it upon yourself to not let him come back, that'd be great. Kthxbye, Amen.
Thank you, Lord, for calling Your servant home. And if you could see it upon yourself to not let him come back, that'd be great. Kthxbye, Amen.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
City Council
There's way too much that's been said on this and I'm not going to add anymore. However, after reading that Brad Kopinski's #1 Concern for Harrisburg was "the relationship between council and the Mayor," I decided he was not getting my vote.
Now don't get me wrong, the council and the mayor have the World's Suckiest Passive Aggressive Relationship. They're like spouses who should divorce but won't. The spats on HBG20 are classic. But in a city that went broke last year and had to sell everything but the kitchen sink, I think there's a lot more -- and a lot more deeper issues going on then just "the relationship between council and the Mayor."
Show me something a little less shallow!
There's way too much that's been said on this and I'm not going to add anymore. However, after reading that Brad Kopinski's #1 Concern for Harrisburg was "the relationship between council and the Mayor," I decided he was not getting my vote.
Now don't get me wrong, the council and the mayor have the World's Suckiest Passive Aggressive Relationship. They're like spouses who should divorce but won't. The spats on HBG20 are classic. But in a city that went broke last year and had to sell everything but the kitchen sink, I think there's a lot more -- and a lot more deeper issues going on then just "the relationship between council and the Mayor."
Show me something a little less shallow!
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Great News for Sci Fi and Astronomy Geeks!
Gliese 581 is an unassuming red dwarf star. Situated in the constellation Libra and just over 20 light years from our home system, it is located in the northeast part of Constellation Libra, the Scales -- northeast of Delta Librae, north of Gamma Librae and Graffias (Beta Scorpii), and southwest of Epsilon (Yed Posterior) and Delta (Yed Prior) Ophiuchi, and Mu, Epsilon, and Alpha (Unukalhai) Serpentis. It's too dim to see by the unaided eye.
It's your average red-dwarf star. Red dwarf stars are tiny. They glow red. They're cool. And they're numerous. And sometimes they're belligerant - sometimes they have a tendancy to shoot off superflares that more then dwarf their dimunitive magnitudes and sizes. In the star system closest to our own, Alpha Centauri, the component that 's currently closest to our solar system is Proxima Centauri. It's a red dwarf. And too dim to see.
Gliese 581, or HO Librae, is not as unassuming as it seems. In 2005, researchs discovered it wasn't a lonely little red dwarf star. A planet orbits the tiny star at an impossibly close distance, whipping around its parent sun every 5.366 days. It's probably not a nice place, and not much is known about it. But it is known that it is 17 times the mass of Earth, or about the mass of Neptune, and it probably is about as hot as Mercury (the planet, not the element.)
Gliese 581 has one more world. This one's a lot more exciting.
Exciting, huh?
Now this planet COULD be like Earth. It could have oceans and continents. But it'd be significantly different. For one thing, it whips around its parent star every 13 days. At that distance from its star it may be tidally locked--- it may not even rotate on its axis, or may be in resonance with the larger planet that orbits sunward. This means that, like Mercury, its day may be longer then its year (which would look bizarre from the surface...at times the sun would move BACKWARDS in the sky.) Red light may not be conducive for photosynthesis as we know it. However the timing of this discovery is pretty cool as the current issue of Astrobiology Journal has a series of articles about the potential habitability of worlds orbiting M-type stars. Plants may be black in color on such a world, responding to the infrared.
You'll also feel pretty heavy here. Olds88 did the math. At the surface gravity would be 2.2 times the gravity on Earth. Falls would be deadly for a human, who would be in great discomfort. And mountains would likely be lower and it's likely oceans would be far more extensive.
All speculation, of course.
For the record, I'm not an astronomer. I'm a budding sci-fi writer and long time fan. But I like my stories to have some basis in science, so I educated myself all about this and have done so for years, plus I've had a long time interest in the stars and potentially getting off this rock and going on to see other rocks. I wish the Greys would come for me some days. I'd even tolerate the probings.
And also for the record, Olds88 broke the story on the site. In fact, the second I saw it in my Google News, I came right here prepared to gush about it, and he had already done so. He deserves big kudos. Plus he also worked out some of the math (as linked above) and also deserves Kudos.
At any rate, Gliese 581 c was #1. At present, the COROT telescope is scanning the skies and next year Lords of Kobol willing, NASA will send up the Kepler Telescope that will scan the skies and look for worlds like the one discovered recently. And ten years down the line, both the ESA and NASA are both planning space-based telescopes that may actually image these worlds. I'm excited.
This isn't an excuse, of course, to not fix the world we're already on. Our world is unique---to us. There's only one planet with Humanity on it. But we may just learn that there's not just one world with life on it, and Earth is not all that unique to the Universe in the grand scheme of things.
And also for what it's worth, I think this could revitalize the moribund space industry here on Earth. Imagine, a universe full of worlds that support life. Even life somewhat (biochemically) like us. Imagine that it could inspire more and more kids to study science and math, and with a Democratic administration, encourage them to. It's a good time to be a nerd.
But Can We Go There?
Well? Can we?
Anything's possible. Although at present, there's no real way to go faster then light like in the movies or on the television, Miguel Alcubierre's work notwithstanding.
Just to show my nerd cred, I actually bought a book titled The Starflight Handbook. I'm always inventing new universes and writing stories (or parts of stories, committement to one thing is a problem of mine) and I figured I wanted some science to research.
One of the more intriguing ideas (and a great way to rid the Earth of nuclear weapons) was Project Orion (note that NASA has a current Project Orion---they are not the same thing.) Project Orion, or Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, could be built soon. During the engineering study in the 1960s, it was speculated it could be built in the 1970s. The project died, having been managed by too many agencies and the military, and so on, in much the way that many government projects die. However it has its flaws (mainly, the use of nuclear explosions to propel the ship) The top speed that a Project Orion starship could make is likely 10 percent of the speed of light. Meaning, it would take a ship about 200 years to reach this potentially habitable world, which would mean we'd have to send a generation ship or a genetically diverse group in suspended animation. And that brings up all sorts of other issues!
There's still a group of people that want to use Orion-type ships to explore the solar system.
NASA's got some ideas too.
At any rate, anything's possible. We have the capability to save our world, and perhaps in a few generations, send a colony or two to others outside of our own solar system. And our perception of the universe may have changed today with Gliese 581 c, orbiting a tiny red dwarf star only 20 light years away.
Gliese 581 is an unassuming red dwarf star. Situated in the constellation Libra and just over 20 light years from our home system, it is located in the northeast part of Constellation Libra, the Scales -- northeast of Delta Librae, north of Gamma Librae and Graffias (Beta Scorpii), and southwest of Epsilon (Yed Posterior) and Delta (Yed Prior) Ophiuchi, and Mu, Epsilon, and Alpha (Unukalhai) Serpentis. It's too dim to see by the unaided eye.
It's your average red-dwarf star. Red dwarf stars are tiny. They glow red. They're cool. And they're numerous. And sometimes they're belligerant - sometimes they have a tendancy to shoot off superflares that more then dwarf their dimunitive magnitudes and sizes. In the star system closest to our own, Alpha Centauri, the component that 's currently closest to our solar system is Proxima Centauri. It's a red dwarf. And too dim to see.
Gliese 581, or HO Librae, is not as unassuming as it seems. In 2005, researchs discovered it wasn't a lonely little red dwarf star. A planet orbits the tiny star at an impossibly close distance, whipping around its parent sun every 5.366 days. It's probably not a nice place, and not much is known about it. But it is known that it is 17 times the mass of Earth, or about the mass of Neptune, and it probably is about as hot as Mercury (the planet, not the element.)
Gliese 581 has one more world. This one's a lot more exciting.
European astronomers have spotted what they say is the most Earth-like planet yet outside our solar system, with balmy temperatures that could support water and, potentially, life.
They have not directly seen the planet, orbiting a red dwarf star called Gliese 581. But measurements of the star suggest that a planet not much larger than the Earth is pulling on it, the researchers say in a letter to the editor of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
"This one is the first one that is at the same time probably rocky, with water, and in a zone close to the star where the water could exist in liquid form," said Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, who led the study.
"We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius (32 to 104 degrees F), and water would thus be liquid."
Exciting, huh?
The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.
Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.
However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.
Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.
Now this planet COULD be like Earth. It could have oceans and continents. But it'd be significantly different. For one thing, it whips around its parent star every 13 days. At that distance from its star it may be tidally locked--- it may not even rotate on its axis, or may be in resonance with the larger planet that orbits sunward. This means that, like Mercury, its day may be longer then its year (which would look bizarre from the surface...at times the sun would move BACKWARDS in the sky.) Red light may not be conducive for photosynthesis as we know it. However the timing of this discovery is pretty cool as the current issue of Astrobiology Journal has a series of articles about the potential habitability of worlds orbiting M-type stars. Plants may be black in color on such a world, responding to the infrared.
You'll also feel pretty heavy here. Olds88 did the math. At the surface gravity would be 2.2 times the gravity on Earth. Falls would be deadly for a human, who would be in great discomfort. And mountains would likely be lower and it's likely oceans would be far more extensive.
All speculation, of course.
For the record, I'm not an astronomer. I'm a budding sci-fi writer and long time fan. But I like my stories to have some basis in science, so I educated myself all about this and have done so for years, plus I've had a long time interest in the stars and potentially getting off this rock and going on to see other rocks. I wish the Greys would come for me some days. I'd even tolerate the probings.
And also for the record, Olds88 broke the story on the site. In fact, the second I saw it in my Google News, I came right here prepared to gush about it, and he had already done so. He deserves big kudos. Plus he also worked out some of the math (as linked above) and also deserves Kudos.
At any rate, Gliese 581 c was #1. At present, the COROT telescope is scanning the skies and next year Lords of Kobol willing, NASA will send up the Kepler Telescope that will scan the skies and look for worlds like the one discovered recently. And ten years down the line, both the ESA and NASA are both planning space-based telescopes that may actually image these worlds. I'm excited.
This isn't an excuse, of course, to not fix the world we're already on. Our world is unique---to us. There's only one planet with Humanity on it. But we may just learn that there's not just one world with life on it, and Earth is not all that unique to the Universe in the grand scheme of things.
And also for what it's worth, I think this could revitalize the moribund space industry here on Earth. Imagine, a universe full of worlds that support life. Even life somewhat (biochemically) like us. Imagine that it could inspire more and more kids to study science and math, and with a Democratic administration, encourage them to. It's a good time to be a nerd.
But Can We Go There?
Well? Can we?
Anything's possible. Although at present, there's no real way to go faster then light like in the movies or on the television, Miguel Alcubierre's work notwithstanding.
Just to show my nerd cred, I actually bought a book titled The Starflight Handbook. I'm always inventing new universes and writing stories (or parts of stories, committement to one thing is a problem of mine) and I figured I wanted some science to research.
One of the more intriguing ideas (and a great way to rid the Earth of nuclear weapons) was Project Orion (note that NASA has a current Project Orion---they are not the same thing.) Project Orion, or Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, could be built soon. During the engineering study in the 1960s, it was speculated it could be built in the 1970s. The project died, having been managed by too many agencies and the military, and so on, in much the way that many government projects die. However it has its flaws (mainly, the use of nuclear explosions to propel the ship) The top speed that a Project Orion starship could make is likely 10 percent of the speed of light. Meaning, it would take a ship about 200 years to reach this potentially habitable world, which would mean we'd have to send a generation ship or a genetically diverse group in suspended animation. And that brings up all sorts of other issues!
There's still a group of people that want to use Orion-type ships to explore the solar system.
NASA's got some ideas too.
At any rate, anything's possible. We have the capability to save our world, and perhaps in a few generations, send a colony or two to others outside of our own solar system. And our perception of the universe may have changed today with Gliese 581 c, orbiting a tiny red dwarf star only 20 light years away.
Monday, April 16, 2007
taxes
Well, looks like the days of the fat refund check are over.
Well, if I had listened to the advice and opened an IRA and contributed heavily to it, and paid more to my Student Loans, I'd have a fat refund check.
Lesson learned. Enjoy your $54 this year, IRS. You'll be paying me in the future, the way it should be. Heh.
Well, looks like the days of the fat refund check are over.
Well, if I had listened to the advice and opened an IRA and contributed heavily to it, and paid more to my Student Loans, I'd have a fat refund check.
Lesson learned. Enjoy your $54 this year, IRS. You'll be paying me in the future, the way it should be. Heh.
VA Tech
It's occured to me, watching this, that there will be calls for gun control.
And it's also occured to me, knowing some facts, that everyone in Switzerland has a gun. Yet they do not go around shooting up their college campuses and inner cities and banks and homes.
So it's occured to me, quite cynically, that it isn't the guns. It's us. Think on that awhile.
It's occured to me, watching this, that there will be calls for gun control.
And it's also occured to me, knowing some facts, that everyone in Switzerland has a gun. Yet they do not go around shooting up their college campuses and inner cities and banks and homes.
So it's occured to me, quite cynically, that it isn't the guns. It's us. Think on that awhile.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Sunday, April 1, 2007
the little space telescope that might see the Twelve Colonies
No I'm only kidding about the Twelve Colonies part, which are fiction. But the space probe is real and it's called COROT.
Inexpensive as space telescopes go, COROT was launched after Christmas, 2006.
COROT's not so little mission:
We should start to see data from COROT come back soon.
NASA has a similar mission planned called Kepler.
Kepler's launch is planned for October of 2008. I'm very excited about all of this. Kepler will be powerful enough to detect earth sized worlds...and possibly other Earth-like planets. So maybe, they will discover Kobol.
No I'm only kidding about the Twelve Colonies part, which are fiction. But the space probe is real and it's called COROT.
Inexpensive as space telescopes go, COROT was launched after Christmas, 2006.
COROT's not so little mission:
The COROT instrument will make it possible, with a method called stellar seismology, to probe the inner structure of the stars, as well as to detect many extrasolar planets, by observing the periodic micro-eclipses occurring when these bodies transit in front of their parent star.
By its high photometric performances and its observing runs covering five months without interruption, the COROT experiment aims to be a pioneer mission in the discovery of telluric extrasolar planets, bodies with properties comparable to those of the rocky planets of the solar system. Its launch was successful on december 27th, 2006.
We should start to see data from COROT come back soon.
NASA has a similar mission planned called Kepler.
Kepler's launch is planned for October of 2008. I'm very excited about all of this. Kepler will be powerful enough to detect earth sized worlds...and possibly other Earth-like planets. So maybe, they will discover Kobol.
global warming
you know, given that Harrisburg is 400 feet above mean sea level, and the oceans might rise 3 feet or 33 feet depending on which person you talk to (real science at the IPCC says 3 feet by 2100, catastrophists and fearmongers say more then 30 feet by, um, 2040 or 2015, I dunno, they keep changing the year), I might want to rewrite my dream of moving someplace tropical like Florida.
Plus, Global warming means we won't have winter here anymore! I hate winter!
Would you like to know more? Here's some links
IPCC
Real Climate
Both sites are heavy on the science. Unfortunately, sites that are not heavy on the science tend to veer into the "It's the End of the World everybody run around with your hands in the air" type of rhetoric, and I won't link to them here.
Nor will I link to Crapuweather's crappy response to this, as they insist the earth isn't warming despite the fact that all observations are to the contrary.
you know, given that Harrisburg is 400 feet above mean sea level, and the oceans might rise 3 feet or 33 feet depending on which person you talk to (real science at the IPCC says 3 feet by 2100, catastrophists and fearmongers say more then 30 feet by, um, 2040 or 2015, I dunno, they keep changing the year), I might want to rewrite my dream of moving someplace tropical like Florida.
Plus, Global warming means we won't have winter here anymore! I hate winter!
Would you like to know more? Here's some links
IPCC
Real Climate
Both sites are heavy on the science. Unfortunately, sites that are not heavy on the science tend to veer into the "It's the End of the World everybody run around with your hands in the air" type of rhetoric, and I won't link to them here.
Nor will I link to Crapuweather's crappy response to this, as they insist the earth isn't warming despite the fact that all observations are to the contrary.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Progressives Behaving Badly
Progressives Behaving Badly
Link: Link Here
Tony Snow, for what it's worth, is the mouthpiece of a pretty horrid Administration. But this post at DKos is full of "progressives" and "reality based people" behaving like Freepers.
It really is too bad.
And diaries like this and others are why black people avoid that place. Yes if you're not an athiest you're an unintelligent delusional person. I read it on Daily Kos so it must be true (that's sarcasm by the way.)
Like I said, it really is too bad. I'm debating changing my involvement there and looking for a new blog community to hang out at. Even though I already paid through the nose for the convention this summer...maybe I'll try to change it from within.
Link: Link Here
Tony Snow, for what it's worth, is the mouthpiece of a pretty horrid Administration. But this post at DKos is full of "progressives" and "reality based people" behaving like Freepers.
It really is too bad.
And diaries like this and others are why black people avoid that place. Yes if you're not an athiest you're an unintelligent delusional person. I read it on Daily Kos so it must be true (that's sarcasm by the way.)
Like I said, it really is too bad. I'm debating changing my involvement there and looking for a new blog community to hang out at. Even though I already paid through the nose for the convention this summer...maybe I'll try to change it from within.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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