13 Jul 2006

Movie of Discovery Nearing Orbit

posted in: space | 0

Okay, this is cool. Astronomy Picture of the Day has an animated GIF of Discovery flying away from the spent solid rocket boosters, taken with cameras mounted on the boosters themselves.

There’s a smoother version of it, but with less supporting text, on NASA’s site. You can see some other videos, as well, including the external tank falling toward the atmosphere. Oh, and be sure you watch the one called “STS-121 Right Forward Solid Rocket Booster Video” for a rocket’s-eye view of the liftoff, followed by a long, graceful fall back into the ocean.

By the way, having spent last weekend at Readercon, I’m now really burrowing into work on Sunborn. I’ll post an update soon.

7 Jul 2006

New Manned Spacecraft Named Ares

posted in: writing | 0

According to Astronomy Magazine, NASA has announced a name for the replacement to the space shuttle:

As the space shuttle Discovery prepared for launch Friday, NASA announced the name of its replacement. The Crew Launch Vehicle, which will ferry astronauts to Earth orbit as early as 2011, is now called Ares I. The monstrous heavy-lift rocket, designed to loft cargo headed for the Moon later in the decade, is called Ares V.

Ares, the Greek word for Mars, is a nod to the agency’s vision of one day sending astronauts to the Red Planet. The numerical designations salute the Apollo-era Saturn I and Saturn V rockets, the first large U.S. launchers specifically designed for human spaceflight.

Ares. That’s way better than CLV. And I like the “I” and “V” designations in salute to the Saturn that took us to the moon, my favorite of all rockets. Pictures and more details at astronomy.com.

7 Jul 2006

Religion and Politics

posted in: public affairs, religion | 0

A friend emailed me a speech by Barack Obama, Senator from Illinois. It was his keynote speech to the Call to Renewal Conference sponsored recently by the Sojourners, a Christian organization. I found what he had to say rather important. He talked, in part, about the need for Democrats to speak meaningfully about the connection between progressive politics and religious faith, and also about the need for all sides to engage less in pigeon-holing and more in listening and genuine communication. He began:

During the 2004 U.S. Senate General Election I ran against a gentleman named Alan Keyes. Mr. Keyes is well-versed in the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson style of rhetoric that often labels progressives as both immoral and godless.

Indeed, Mr. Keyes announced towards the end of the campaign that, “Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama. Christ would not vote for Barack Obama because Barack Obama has behaved in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved…”

I was urged by some of my liberal supporters not to take this statement seriously, to essentially ignore it. To them, Mr. Keyes was an extremist, and his arguments not worth entertaining…

But perhaps Keyes’ arguments did need to be entertained, and discussed. And that, in part, is what the rest of Obama’s speech was about. He continued:

I think it’s time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.

And if we’re going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution…

[Conservative leaders] need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

Read or listen to the whole speech at obama.senate.gov.

6 Jul 2006

Discovery Flies on the Fourth!

posted in: space | 0

I haven’t been at my computer much the last couple of days, so I’m celebrating the Fourth of July online a little late. (For you folks from outside the U.S., that’s Independence Day, or the birthday celebration for the United States of America.)

This year my family went to see the Boston Pops do their traditional outdoor concert down by the Charles River—only we went on July 3 for the rehearsal performance, which was theoretically less crowded. It was a great time. Just one thing: no fireworks. Now, I love fireworks. But the best fireworks this Independence Day were about 1500 miles to the south of me—at Cape Canaveral. Here’s what they looked like:


Yes, Discovery is back in space! Let’s hear it for NASA and all the people who worked to make it happen. And let’s pray for a safe mission.

Now, that’s what I’m talkin’!

1 Jul 2006

Jim Baen (1943-2006)

posted in: farewells, science fiction, tributes, writing | 0

Jim Baen, founder and publisher of Baen Books, died on June 28 following a stroke from which he never awoke. He was a major figure in the science fiction field, and one whose influence has been felt in many ways. His death marks another sad milestone in the field.

I knew Jim only slightly. He bought my second short story, “Alien Persuasion,” for Galaxy Magazine, back in—actually, I’m not sure. I think it must have been 1975. My story was published at a time when Galaxy was in financial trouble, and it didn’t last too long beyond the appearance of my story. (That story was my first venture into the star rigger universe, and ultimately became the first part of my second novel, Star Rigger’s Way.) Jim Baen later went on to work with Tom Doherty at Ace Books, then at Tor Books. He finally became publisher of his own company, with Baen Books. My sympathies go out to all those at Baen Books, and his family and friends.

For a more complete and knowledgeable obituary, see David Drake’s web site.

30 Jun 2006

Guest Book Review: The Revealers

posted in: writing | 0

Today I introduce what I hope will be a continuing series of guest book reviews! The first entry is from my daughter Julia. The Revealers is a young adult novel by Doug Wilhelm, and it has gained a fair amount of attention in middle schools because of its theme: physical and psychological bullying among adolescent kids, especially in schools, mostly under the noses of teachers and administrators. Here’s the review…

The Revealers
by Doug Wilhelm
reviewed by Julia Carver

“This book was wonderful to read. There are hundreds of stories out there about people who get back at their bullies, but this book gives a wonderfully unusual angle on it. In this particular case, the middle-school kids getting bullied take a scientific approach, studying their tormenters to find out such useful information as why bullies bully, how bullies chose their victims, and, (drum roll please) how bullies can be stopped. I love reading stories like this, probably because I never got back at my bullies. I think that is why such stories are so popular – while a person is being bullied they don’t have the confidence to get a bit of their own back. By reading (or writing) books like these, they can do so in retrospect.”

Thank you, Julia. I might add that the author has created an online resource center for people who would like to know more about the subject, or who’d like to use the book in their schools to address the issue of bullying. He’s also turned it into a play, which has been performed in a couple of middle schools in Vermont.

29 Jun 2006

Stolen Flowers?

posted in: writing | 0

Today’s Boston Globe has a story that should chill the heart of anyone hoping to break into Hollywood by writing a screenplay.

Maybe you’ve seen last summer’s acclaimed movie Stolen Flowers, starring Bill Murray and directed by Jim Jarmusch. I saw it on DVD, and enjoyed it very much. But perhaps all is not as it seems, where the creative origin of the movie is concerned. So claims author Reed Martin, who is suing the film’s producers as well as his former agent, who Martin says shopped around his screenplay for years before abruptly and inexplicably dropping the project. The movie, according to Martin, bears way too many similarities to his screenplay to be a coincidence. According to the Globe:

“When Reed Martin saw “Broken Flowers,” he wasn’t laughing or applauding. Martin, a freelance journalist and adjunct professor of film marketing at New York University, left the theater with a knot in his stomach.

Virtually all the film’s characters, scenes, and sequencing were his creation, or slight variations thereof, Martin concluded, from the ex-girlfriend who talks to cats to the pink envelope that propels Murray’s odyssey.”

It’s not just an idle or frivolous claim, or so believes John Marder, a top Los Angeles attorney specializing in entertainment copyright and contract law, who filed suit on Martin’s behalf. Martin registered various early drafts of the screenplay with both the Writer’s Guild and the U.S. Copyright Office, so he should have plenty of evidence to support his claim.

This will be an interesting one to watch. But sobering, very sobering, if you were thinking of writing a screenplay on spec and shopping it around.

Tomorrow, something cheerier—my first guest book review!

P.S. If you liked the “N.S.A. Wiretapping” I mentioned in the entry below, there are more Walt Handelsman animations where that one came from. I especially liked “No Place Like Home.”

27 Jun 2006

Is It Live Or Is It Photoshop?

posted in: quirky, science, science fiction | 0

The following picture has been emailed to me twice now. Maybe some of you have seen it, too. The caption that came with the photo said, in part: “This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point.”

It’s a lovely picture, isn’t it? Don’t you envy the people who were up in the Arctic and saw this? Or wait—did they? Hmmm. What do you think? Is it real or not? Why?

Think about it. I’ll wait. And don’t do a web search on it—that’s cheating. See if you can figure it out from the internal evidence.

Tum-de-tum-te-dum-dum….

I think it’s staring you in the face.

What do you think?

(Don’t make it too complicated.)

I’ll be down below here where you’re ready to talk about it.

Hoom hom.

Okay, that’s long enough. Answer: It can’t be real. The moon is the same angular size as the sun when viewed from Earth–which is why we get beautiful solar eclipses when the moon moves in front of the sun. Its apparent size in the sky varies only slightly due to the eccentricity of its orbit around Earth.

Images are very powerful, aren’t they? And we’re all conditioned to believe that if they look real, they are.

Changing world.

P.S. Only after writing this did I do a search on the image and found that it has some interesting history. It’s a work of art called “Hideaway” by Inga Nielsen. You can read a bit about it at hoax-slayer.com, and see some of her other beautiful artwork. This one was even featured on June 20 on Astronomy Picture of the Day, which I look at regularly; but I guess I missed it that day.

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