A Meerkat's Bolthole

Mmm. Spring rolls, check. They were sort of improvised around available ingredients, but then what in my grimoire isn't?

And while I was having dinner, this came in over the wire. Velly innnnteresting...


Washington, DC - December 9, 2008

Obama Space Team Seeks Public Comment on Space Solar Power White Paper Submitted by Space Frontier Foundation

The Space Frontier Foundation pointed out that President-elect Obama's transition team has published for public comment a white paper entitled Space Solar Power (SSP) - A Solution for Energy Independence & Climate Change. The paper was prepared and submitted by the Space Frontier Foundation and other citizen space advocates, and calls for the new Administration to make development of Space Solar Power a national priority.

The SSP white paper was among the first ten released by the Obama transition team. It is the first and only space-related white paper released by the transition team to date. With 140 comments thus far, it is already among the top five most-discussed of the 20-some white papers on Change.gov.

Foundation Chairman Berin Szoka called upon all Americans to join the discussion about Space Solar Power at Change.gov: "For over twenty years, the Space Frontier Foundation has championed Space Solar Power as a world-changing technology that could do more to improve life here on Earth than any space program or commercial space venture ever. We applaud the Obama transition team's interest in developing Space Solar Power as a clean energy source that could significantly reduce U.S. dependence on strategically vulnerable energy sources."
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The full text and related information can be read here:
http://tinyurl.com/54vb2q

Hrm. No *poof* yet. Unless it kicked us all into an alternate dimension/universe? *checks newspaper* Nope, alas, looks like the same old one (and if the alternate universe is exactly like the old one only with a few pinprick differences I'm just not going to give it the satisfaction of noticing, okay?)

Reminder: if you missed it in your end-of-the-world jitters I posted an excerpt from BLOOD FROM STONE yesterday.. And I have a new darling from that book:

"The fact that Chang had even thought to think about that impressed Wren – she supposed it came with the job, to think like a criminal. Danny did the same thing. Funny, really. She was a criminal, and she didn’t think like one."



So, last night, having actually remembered the new season's starting, I watched "Fringe."
And?
And...I dunno.

( the pros, the cons, the decision )


Woke at 5 this morning, surprisingly un-tired. I guess I've recovered from my post-Trip meltdown. Managed to get the household stuff sorted before the sun was up. That's just Wrong, y'know? Today is all about short fiction. "Cold Iron Cross" is going down, man! Meanwhile I have started eying potatoes and lamb and bottles of red wine, and there's that red garlic in the pantry too... I think there's stew in the near future. Wow, all this energy. Must be autumn. Yay!

Writing. Laundry. E-mail. A couple of phone calls. More writing. Excitement R us.

My morning reading: Mental Mirrors: Special Cells in the Brain Mimic The Actions and Intentions of Others, Forming the Basis of Empathy and Social Connections (adapted from MIRRORING PEOPLE: THE NEW SCIENCE OF HOW WE CONNECT WITH OTHERS, by Marco Iacoboni, FS&G, on-sale next month). I'm not sure if this is just something I already knew, or the author is really good at explaining the topic (I suspect a little of both) but a lot of it seems "well, yeah, obviously" to me. Not uninteresting, but obvious. However, the combination of the article and some people-watching I was doing last night is making me wonder about the nature of competitive conversationalism a la nature vs nurture. If you show awareness/interest by involuntarily mirroring the confederate, is it the lack of mirror neurons that prevents you from doing that? Or is it also a learned social dominance game-trait? In other words, is the person who runs roughshod over you and refuses to return social cues missing mirror neurons in some capacity or another (a sliding scale from 'rude' to 'low-functioning autism,' for example), or can you have a full compliment of mirror neurons and still not acknowledge* the other person/people in the equation, either intentionally or through lack of what we like to call social skills?

It would be nice to say "oh, so-and-so can't help it, they're chemical that way," but I've always thought it was a bit of a cop-out. Maybe I'm wrong, and the cold and conversationally abusive among us need more help than Miss Manners can provide...

*not in the 'cut direct" way, since that's a reaction itself, but as though the person wasn't even there.

Or maybe I need more coffee. Yeah.



And a bonus photo, for those interested:

Coke bottle shown actual size.

Eclipses manage to combine the ultimate tedium of science with the ultimate total wow of science. All at once. And I can see it all out my office window, while staying all warm and comfy. Yay for amateur geeking!

first, the warning sign: When you turn on the tv and with your back to it, hear the squeal of tires and think "oh, "To Catch a Thief!" without even looking...

you've probably seen the movie a few times too many, yeah.


Anyway. Down in NYC the American Museum of Natural History has a temporary exhibit (through the end of the year) called 'Mythic Creatures.' As you might imagine, it features mythological creatures and their relation (or not) to actual creatures. I found the text was trying too hard to be "these are NOT REAL!" even to the point of overlooking some interesting correlations between culture, myth, and nature, but they had a lot of interesting material, some fascinating taped interviews (including one that referenced myth as being not the opposite of history, but the companion of it [paraphrased]). Also, some very cool exhibits, including this dragon:



That head's about 3/4 suri-sized, for scale.

I think they're charging too much for what is, at best, an hour's worth of browsing, but it's a tax deduction and a good cause. And it's cool stuff. If you're in the area, I'd say it's worth checking out, especially since the exhibit empties out into the dinosaur displays, so you can compare the dragon's forearms (hoobah!)to some actual dinosaur reconstructions...


on the tv front: Bones. Yay! Bones is back! Bones is still cute and fun and totally my guilty pleasure. And then House -- I really enjoyed it, and wish they'd waited longer before bringing back the kids, but will reserve judgement until I actually see next week's episode. And then I watched Cane, which I really really wanted to like because, dude. Jimmy Smits. But it's too much a mellerdrama for my taste, I suspect. Pity. It's so very very pretty.

And on Thursday, CSI returns. I am prepared to once again have my heart eaten with a spoon.

ASTRONOMERS FIND RING OF DARK MATTER WITH HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a ghostly ring of dark matter that formed long ago during a titanic collision between two galaxy clusters. Dark matter makes up most of the universe's material. Ordinary matter, which makes up stars and planets, comprises only a small percent of the universe's matter. The ring's discovery is among the strongest evidence yet that dark matter exists.

Over in matociquala's LJ, a discussion is going on about hemispheric domination (are you left-brained or right-brained). This led me into a contemplation of another brain function: multitasking.

Unlike Bear, I tend not to get fascinated by the details of why -- once I figure it out, I'm more interested in how the results play out in realtime.

For example, right now I am watching a movie (Shakespeare in Love), writing this post, composing [mentally] a scathing e-mail that will never be sent to someone who needs a flaming iron shoved up his arse, and writing a totally kickass scene in DOWN INTO DARKNESS that requires me to have three different scenes playing out in real time, at three different locations, all tied to each other in almost perfect synchronization [and it's a fricking brilliant scene, if I do say so myself. Blood! Angst! Wisecracks! Woobie!].

Because I'm so spread out, things like typos will creep in. And my inability to stay in tense is well-known [and yes, I do it in speech too. I have been accused of being a time-traveler dropped once too often on my head, but that's another story and there I am going into parenthetical asides again]

Clearly, if I want to write sans typos, and save myself revisions later, I should focus on only one thing at a time.

I tried that. I couldn't function. Not only that I couldn't create [I couldn't] but I could. Not. Function. It's just how I'm hardwired.

But many of my favorite people [and my therapist will doubtless have things to say about my tendency to fall for single-focused types, but oh well] are NOT multi-taskers. Perfectly nice people, mostly, and just as or more effective than I am -- it's just a different kind of wiring.

So it made me wonder

a) how LJ (as a randomly self-selected sampling) skews: multi-task vs tight-focus workers
b) how sample (a) skews to left or right brain hemispheres. (the test is here

Come on, fess up.... I'll be over there in the corner, making P.B. bleed.

because we're living SF


Seriously. I read about things like this when I was ten, and was mesmerized. Now, if I choose to spend my $$ in that direction, my next laptop can BE what I read about. Hell, my cell phone already is.



Still no aliens, though. Or.... are there?

*looks around suspiciously*