Tag Archives: space
When it rains on Friday…
Outside the window, raindrops drip from the wet branches of the redbud tree. A twig heavily laden with lichen balances precariously on a redbud limb. Brown and yellow leaves still cling to their connections, pulled loose by falling water occasionally. The green leaves of a wild privet bush stand out from the rust-coloured background of autumn.
For the past few weeks, I have changed from a person devoted to the art of dance to a person devoted to the art/science of the home tinkerer.
In this tinkerer’s mini-adventure, I have encountered new characters in my life, who my mother has noted are temporary online acquaintances which may or may not have my best interests at heart. Sometimes, even I am amazed of the faith I readily give to people that this interactive TV screen connects me to.
I, the tinkerer, am working on a desktop prototype of a yard art sculpture that can be a work of art by itself.
I had formed a small group — Team Tree Trunk — to work on this prototype, enlisting the artistic input of my wife and the mechanical engineering input from a friend who, unfortunately, is dealing with a dying father and I haven’t bothered for her input on this project.
Thus, I have been left to write the computer code and create this desktop prototype primarily on my own, hoping my wife can help finish the decorating of the piece from her creative/logical/computer engineering thought set.
Over the past week or so, I’ve attended virtual hangouts/meetings/panels with other tinkerers, commonly called Makers these days but just as easily called inventors, scientists, and other members of the creative class of citizens. You could call them knowledge workers or data analysts, too.
Is it a special skill or talent that turns one into a Maker?
What level of curiosity belongs to the Maker classification? Is a person who is curious about a favourite actor’s life a Maker? Is a sports fan a Maker? Is a member of the political chattering class a Maker?
Should the word Maker even be capitalised? It certainly takes capital to be a Maker rather than just a Thinker/Dreamer.
As I finish up this Robot Hacks project, I wonder what in this whole Maker Movement will make my dream come true — a permanent colony on Mars (or the Moon) in the next 13,321 days.
Cool as they are already, it’s great that people want to use 3D printers to make game pieces, Valentine’s Day flowers, holiday ornaments, keychains, tablet PC cases and book lights.
After all, we like to surround ourselves with evidence of our individuality.
My goals are not your goals. My goals are not my goals. My goals belong to the universe, coaxing our sets of states of energy, fractal spinoffs from the local star, to branch out into the solar system with more than our electromechanical observation platforms.
We want a whole generation on this planet to subconsciously devote their attention to extraplanetary settlement. It doesn’t happen by force or coercion. It happens through encouraging people to use their imaginations, with subtle hints that exploring the cosmos is a great use of their imaginations.
Kind of like mass marketing direct mail campaigns — we don’t expect 100% replies — if 1-3% respond, and buy the product or buy into the product’s lifestyle, we’ve accomplished our goals.
One to three percent of the global population devoting one to three percent of global resources toward space exploration? That would be awesome!
Now, on to getting people excited about putting their imaginations into action, regardless of age or socioeconomic status. I don’t expect myself to like everything they create but I’m willing to give them the impetus to do so.
Lebanese looking for lunar green cheese?
Sauron or Saturn?
13,325 days/sols to go
While bouncing around in my laboratory/playground, I sometimes forget about the larger goal of Moon/Mars settlement, a mere 13,325 days/sols to go.
We are making a lot of progress in that area and, for my colleagues, I thank you — planet Earth — for providing us the resources and means to make intentional space exploration possible.
After all, waiting around for a large comet to hit our celestial sphere and send chunks out of Earth’s gravitational field is beyond virtuous patience.
Let us give praise to those who focus on the longterm, putting aside the daily distractions that wish to make mountains out of political footballs.
We maintain more than one storyline, a few that give hope to the destitute and desperate, a few that produce more wealth for the wealthy, all in the plans to spread life-as-we-know-it as soon as viably possible, rather than as soon as feasibly feeble.
Now, back to the story subplot currently in progress…the development of robots by a small group of hackers thinking inside and outside of Pandora’s Box.
Guin in the glen by the den
The harvesters sucked up tonne after tonne of Martian soil, dehydrating the clumps and analysing samples for potential mineral processing, storing valuable water for use by the colonists.
Guin hugged Shadowgrass tighter.
She had not known had much missing him had put an ache inside her which had turned her muscles to stone.
“Mom, how did you keep the ISSA Net from knowing your location? It’s virtually impossible!”
Guin looked at her son in wonder and awe.
At little over two years of age, almost three, Shadowgrass was already a man in many ways. He knew so much more than she did, building vast complex networks of memories and calculative intuition circuitry across the solar system, she was surprised when he asked her a question for which he didn’t know the answer or hadn’t developed a strong hypothesis to support or debate what he knew she was about to say.
“You really don’t know?”
He shook his head.
Was it really a black hole she and Lee had passed through?
It WAS something, something that had changed their relationship, enjoining them in ways that physical intimacy could not explain.
Guin sent a thought to Lee that the ISSA Net could not trace. Lee laughed in his thoughts and agreed — the unknown was more fun than the known.
“Well, sweetheart, I don’t have an answer for you.”
“I still want to get revenge on Collapsaricus!”
” I know you do but we don’t know what it was or where it went.”
“But we do! An astronomer is tracking a high-speed change in the flow of dust on another spiral arm of the galaxy. He thinks it might be disturbance caused by Collapsaricus.”
“Let’s not worry about it right now. Instead, why don’t you tell me about your new friend. She seems interesting.”
“She is. I’ve examined my set of thoughts and determined through testable theories that I’m experiencing what you and Dad described as the time you first fell in love with each other.”
“That’s wonderful! Isn’t love grand?”
He nodded his head.
Guin watched the clouds of dust billowing out from behind the harvesters. She wanted to rush back to the lab and catch up on her work but holding Shadowgrass felt so good. She had missed too much of his growing up for her to lose any more precious moments with her son.
She sighed and put her chin on his shoulder.
What if Shadowgrass’ new girlfriend wanted to move back to Earth? Would he go with her? What if they had children? Would Guin want to see them, spend time with them, return to a planet that had nurtured her and encouraged her to explore Mars? What did Lee think? And where was Bai?
Happiness is global…no, make that galactic!
The love letter I can never deliver
Dear —,
I wish I could give you this love letter. I wish, even more, that I could give you my love.
Instead, these words are all I have, here with you in my thoughts while on Pandora radio plays Quartet For Guitar & Strings No. 11 In B Major, MS 38, by Paganini, Niccolo.
I have held you in my arms in front of crowds, seen your stage smile, wanting it just for myself, wanting you all to myself, to sit quietly on a cold night, you and I on the sofa, warming by the fireplace.
Wants and wishes do not put food on the table.
I have not explored your body like a lover but I have held the body of a confident dancer, a complementary/complimentary follower who back leads, who, for fleeting moments, gave me confidence.
For you, I lost thirty pounds.
For you, I jogged and ran, my feet and ankles aching, so I could be a lighter, stronger dance partner.
I do not know what you see in me, what in your thoughts you think of me.
Do I want to know? I don’t know.
Before I met you, I was unwilling to hunt and kill animals for food, thinking that the relationship with my wife was never strong enough to justify exchanging one life for the sake of another.
After I met you, I grew into the idea of a man who was willing to say that yes, I am a man who has the right to judge the value of a set of states of energy not part of our species, trapping or killing animals that had invaded the home “nest.”
What that means to you, I cannot say.
And while writing this, my wife interrupted me to say she couldn’t work on the computer in the living room because the cats wanted to sit on her lap; I took them to bed with me for a few minutes, letting them fall asleep on my chest before gently sliding them off and covering them with a fleece blanket so I could return to writing this love letter to you.
Yes, life is like that.
Now, Soundgarden’s “Pretty Noose” plays on Pandora radio. Whoa! Puts me in the wrong mood. Type to change “stations.”
Where were we?
Better yet, where are we?
You do not know I love you. Is that love?
You and I both know how to love the world but does that mean the world knows or cares or loves us in return?
Can I continue to hold your hands, to look you in the eyes, my thoughts tortured by idea of life after my first marriage?
Did I not get married in the sight of God in front of friends and family, “for richer or poorer… in sickness or health… till death do us part”?
Just because my wife doesn’t make me feel like a man doesn’t mean our marriage is wrong, does it? Is the lack of physical desire for my wife sufficient grounds for divorce? Does the omnipresent effervescent entity of a universe we call God recognise any human-based sets of states of energy we call thoughts, let alone reasoning for phrases like “irreconcilable differences”?
Marriage is not just about physical desire.
I’ve never been much of a touchy-feely person.
You helped change that. I’m not as afraid to let another person inside the shell of my personal space as I was before I met you.
But it gets more complicated because I am not only in love with you but I am in love with [one of] your best friend[s], repeating a cycle that has told me (and which you already know in yourself to be true) I have always loved more than one person at a time. Again, does that person know I love her?
Is this all I get in a relationship — a few hours a week with the women I love?
If the love is not reciprocated, then what is going on inside me and why do I torture myself so much that I would rather die today than face another tomorrow?
I don’t know if I can look in your eyes again or hold your warm hands in mine one more time.
I want to be more than your dance partner.
What do I do?
Do you see why I cannot give this love letter to you?
Instead, it exists here as a theoretical proposition written as an imaginary blog entry.
I don’t know much but I know I can post blog entries and live to see another day, the safety of my old life unchanged, as steadily unhappy as ever, comfortably numb.
The past is not indicative of the future but it’s a pretty decent fortuneteller, all things considered.
When I was ten, my ten-year old girlfriend died. When I was eleven, my eleven-year old girlfriend moved away. When I opened my heart again at sixteen, my fifteen-year old girlfriend broke my heart and my twenty-three year old married homeroom teacher, whose husband had abused her, invited me to her house by myself to comfort me in my loss, shaking the very foundation of my understanding of the role of authority and age in the thoughts and actions of love.
Perhaps I take love too seriously? Or is it too traditional? Perhaps my fear is too great to give another woman my love outside of marriage?
Perhaps I’m crazy.
There’s no one I can trust with these words so what better hiding place than the Internet to put them?
Yeah, I’m crazy like that.
I’ve talked about you too much to my wife. She finally said to me, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” hinting that I’ve spoken too much of you to her lately.
The fact that I raced 90+ miles an hour on the freeway last night to get one glimpse of you before your costume party finished was also the wrong message to my wife, also, even though I told my wife that it was for her to see how you looked in your outfit. Hey, I barely talked to you. I danced with no one.
Well, I’ve said most everything in my thoughts I wanted to put down here so that, if nothing else, I’ve got a record of words to give a fictional character.
If I never hold you again, if I never look in your eyes, the loss is mine.
I have lived in quiet for so many years now, pursuing the peace and solace of a hermit’s life I sought when my ten-year old girlfriend died that I never expected to meet someone like you who would light a fire inside me to overcome mediocrity for something exhilarating, the exhibitionist’s life on the dance floor perfecting his moves to entertain crowds the way he used to love to make people laugh, smile and clap, gladly overcoming fear, trepidation and personal space issues for the thrill of extemporaneous stage performances.
I don’t know if I can keep on living with the only excuse I can make to see you is when you teach me how to dance with my wife.
I appreciate you giving me the space to walk through these thoughts in public knowing, as we both do, that you still love your last boyfriend and always will.
Do I want to be your dance partner? Yes. But I feel I cannot. I let my guard down to let you in my personal space so we could show good chemistry on the dance floor and, in doing so, I fell in love with you. I don’t blame you. It just happened.
In my thoughts, I lead a swinger’s life. But I didn’t marry a swinger, I married a monogamist.
To become a fully-devoted swinger, I would have to divorce my wife. To divorce my wife, I would have to renounce my subcultural teachings of a life devoted to a monotheistic religion.
It’s not impossible to mate my thoughts with my actions so that I’m no longer a mental hypocrite.
But to do so would mean there’s a permanent divide between myself and my family, between myself and the ancestors who fought for the idea of a subculture that formed the governing body we call the United States of America which depended, in part, on the brothers of the Masonic Lodge who do not allow atheists as members.
So, regardless of how you feel about me, I have the future of my thoughts to consider.
Am I merely a set of states of energy that happens to exist concurrently with sets of states of energy that use the artificial constructs of memes to justify aligning the conditions of their existence for the sake of governments and religions…
OR am I a set of states of energy that belongs to the solar system and wants to overcome the past in order to make a future in his likeness which includes breaking away from old subcultural traditions to establish colonies on the Moon, Mars and beyond?
You see, it’s not just my love for you at stake.
But because of you, I’m willing to consider the option, to consider the possibilities that the only reason our species exists is to send a living blob out of our solar system to land on one or more habitable celestial bodies in our galaxy, thanks to my knowing and loving you.
You see, the very survival of life as we know it depends on what you and I think of us.
I don’t just want to be your dance partner.
Because of you, I want the whole universe.
If that’s not love, I don’t know what love is.
That’s why these words belong to the whole Internet, not just between us.
Yours truly,
Rick
Sailing away
Today, the Solar Sailplane Sailor Solicitors announced their plans for a new way to experience flight.
A helium balloon will quickly raise you and 15 of your closest mates to heights rarely attained, save by Red Bull Stratos daredevils, and then, as the balloon bursts, you will begin an around-[most part of]the-world flight in a solar-powered plane designed to gently carry you through stratospheric atmospheric conditions, landing you hundreds if not thousands of kilometers from your launch location.
Lunch will be served during the flight but water closet facilities will not be provided. Please be prepared to account for this inconsistent discrepancy in travel comfort.
For those willing to spend a little less money but take on greater risk, we’re offering a one-time deal for you to participate in test flights, your return to Earth guaranteed but your bodily condition not.
Hurry! Seating is limited!
NOTE: Due to the inherent danger involved, travel insurance is unavailable. We highly recommend planning funeral arrangements in advance.
treetrunkdings 