The hen house

The poor hens.

The fort and smokehouse. It is snowing again.

Maps in Books

Many times when I look at the maps of great fantasy novels, I do feel a bit let down. My undergrad degree was geography, with my primary track being urban geography (and transportation geography), and physical geography (and meteorology) as my secondary track.

Many of these maps are not possible in the natural world, and if they were formed by magic, the weather patterns must be dictated by magic also, because in a natural system, there are patterns that could be very beneficial to a plot.

Not only that, there are patterns to the distribution of settlements, many of them related to the land itself, but most of them relative to each other. These patterns influence the relative importance of every locale.

In many novels, there are vast spaces, slow transportation, yet little difference in the culture and language from one end to the other.

In other words--authors, I can give you good, smart, meaningful maps, that will be as realistic as the language you have worked so hard to invent.

That is all, my rant is over

“Muy A Gusto” Salsa

“Muy A Gusto” Salsa

Ingredients

·         2 cans (14.5 oz. each) Hunt’s Tomato Sauce

·         1 can (14.5 oz) Hunts Petite Diced Tomato (or 4 or 5 fresh tomatoes, diced)

·         4 cloves Garlic

·         ¼ cup Balsamic Vinegar

·         2 Tablespoons Lime Juice

·         1 Medium Sweet Onion (Walla-Walla or Vidalia)

·         3 Jalapeño peppers (or, if you like it HOT, 2 Jalapeños and 1 or more Habañeros)

·         ¼ teaspoon ground cloves

·         1 teaspoon ground cumin

·         1 bunch fresh Cilantro

·         Pinch of ground sage

·         Pinch of mace

·         1 teaspoon instant Beef Bullion granules

·         Salt and pepper

Prep:

Remove stems and seeds from peppers and finely dice 2 Jalapeños. Reserve the other pepper(s). (it makes it a bit easier if you have some latex gloves to wear while chopping).

Crush the cloves of garlic.

Finely dice the onion.

Finely chop the cilantro.

Empty one can tomato sauce in food processor or blender, add the garlic and reserved pepper(s). blend until smooth.

Assembly:

Empty all ingredients into mixing bowl and stir well.

If salsa has too much bitterness, add a little more salt (I usually add about a teaspoon)

--Russel Maxwell

Alaska Permanent Fund

It was recently announced that the Alaska Permenant Fund grew to $40,300,000,000. I found the following comments on the Anchorage Daily News website...

 

"Alaska's PF is rated the 17th largest in the world at $40.3 billion.  Norway's is #2 at $571 billion.  Both are funded by oil.  Both countries have produced around 20 billion barrels since each struck big oil in 1968.  Alaska made its first deposit to the PF in 1977; Norway made its first deposit to it fund in (ready for this?) 1996.

Norway's fund contributes $20 billion a year to its national budget.  Alaska's budget (operating and capital combined) is less than half that amount."

"But look on the bright side...

BP, XOM and COP take the rest of our money and invest it in places like Angola, Trinidad and Russia, where they make triple digit returns with it!

Those filthy socialists in Norway might have 'free healthcare' and 'the highest standard of living in the world' according the the Human Development Index, but we have street bums, one of the highest rates of sexual abuse in the country AND a very small and over-stuffed oligarchy of CEO's, Vice Presidents and directors making obscene amounts of money via stock option bonuses at these 3 companies.

Take that, stupid socialists!"

http://www.swfinstitute.org/fund-rankings/

So some helium walks into a bar...

Or, rather than walks, floats; for helium, at room temperature, is a gas, and thus has no legs with which to walk, and, due to its lighter-than-air nature, does not sink to the ground. The bartender himself is confused, for not only is helium invisible to the naked eye in the absence of another object to contain it, should quickly dissipate. Furthermore, a cloud of helium, lacking any sort of motor system, is at the mercy of atmospheric currents and cannot enter a bar under its own power. It should not have been capable of opening the door to the bar. Even if it could, hypothetically, propel itself in such a manner, the lack of any semblance of a nervous system would make meaningful coordination difficult, if not possible. And, if the cloud of helium has no nervous system, how can it think to enter a bar? How can it be self-conscious enough to know that it desires a drink? To question it is to question the nature of the self itself. What is the self? Is the self the physical body? But when the body is wounded, and, say, a limb is lost, the removed tissue is no longer considered part of the self. Is the self the consciousness? Yet nobody denies that an individual is no longer himself when he sleeps. Is the self a spiritual force, invisible and nebulous like the helium which provokes these questions? No scientific, empirical evidence of such exists; it is the domain of scholars, priests, and mortals who chase the shadows of the unknown. Who could say? It is a question that mankind has struggled to solve since the dawn of time without success.

The bartender is facing an existential crisis when he recalls the bar's policy towards noble gases and his psyche is once again put at ease. "You're going to have to leave, we don't serve your kind here," he says, grunting at the mass of atoms.

The helium doesn't react.
(note:I didn't write this, I just thought it was funny).

Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)

Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) by Don McLean

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.

Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the strangers that you've met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they're not listening still.
Perhaps they never will...

Get the MP3 here

Remembering Challenger

It has been 25 years, but I will always remember the moment when I first heard about the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy.

I wanted to be an astronaut. I was an eager follower of anything to do with the space program, and NASA. I had written to NASA and received lots of information about the Space Shuttle program, including a ticket to attend the launch of the Columbia the previous month while we were vacationing in Florida (that launch was scrubbed at T-14 seconds).

I was sick that day with the flu, and because we didn't have a TV, I was listening to the radio to try to listen to the launch.  The station was playing a commercial, and they interrupted to say that, "The Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center a few seconds ago..." I felt elated, yet wishing I could be there, "...and there has obviously been a major malfunction."

Huh? What did that mean?

Another announcer cut in, "The Space Shuttle exploded. Oh my God!"

Suddenly it was as if the rug was pulled out from under my feet. I called my dad and interrupted his work, and he couldn't really talk. Yet I wanted to talk about it, and I was at home by myself, so I paced the floor and cried and called everyone I could think of who might be home.

Within days, people started telling NASA jokes that were sometimes morbid, sometimes crass, but tried to cover our national uncertainty with something less horrific. After the Columbia broke apart on re-entry many of those same jokes were bandied about as a new generation saw their hopes in the space program tested.

The last time humans walked on the surface of the moon, I was a very small child. Yet, we have not gone back since. From one administration to the next, our national vision for the space program changes direction. Challenger was rushed to launch, with the warnings about the o-rings becoming brittle in freezing temps ignored.

Our current space program needs more direction than it has. Today we have space tourism, and more satellite launches. One administration wants to land people on Mars, another wants to land on an asteroid. Yet we founder as to what our Space Mission should be.

NASA has lost its place in our National Psyche, Space has dropped out of our National Dream.

The Apollo program was a very real response to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and it captivated our nation. The Shuttle program captivated us too, on a slightly smaller scale.

Yet on that January morning, 25 years ago, our national dream of space exploration took a major blow as millions of people witnessed the death of 7 brave Americans, in a tragedy that we now know was easily avoidable.

America needs a new dream for space. Not just America--our entire world needs a new goal to push towards. In 2001 we were supposed to be sending people to the outer planets. And if our progress continued at the same pace it did in the 1960's we would be there.

How are we going to get to Star Trek-like exploration, if we can't even figure out what to do next?

Flickr link

My Flickr Photostream has lots of photos and more to be added soon

There once was a fellow named Wright...

There once was a fellow named Wright,
Who could travel much faster than light.
He started one day
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.