Scarlett Letters

1) Readercon has overturned the decision to ban harasser Rene Walling for only two years and has instead banned him for life, as they should have done to begin with. Their announcement and apology is professional, thorough, and completely appropriate, and my respect for the concom is enormous.

2) Last night, NASA successfully landed a rover the size of a Mini Cooper on the surface of Mars using an innovative system designed to protect the vehicle and allow it to start working immediately. I watched the whole thing online via the NASA web site. The sheer excitement about the event across the country was wonderful to behold, and watching the eruption of joy in the control room when a safe landing was confirmed was uplifting. I love that an enormous crowd filled Times Square to watch the event and chanted "Science! Science! Science!" in response to the success. These are things that give me hope for the future. Follow Curiosity on Twitter.

3) Lest we forget, Opportunity still roves the surface of Mars doing important science, five years after it first landed.

4) The trailer for the upcoming season of Doctor Who fills me with delight, even in the wake of last season's plot holes, logic problems, and irredeemable gaffes. I'll be there against all reason. I loves me the Doctor.

5) I am not sure what else to put here for a fifth thing. Ideas anybody? Questions for me? Thoughts?

Meteorologists say it's going to be a wild winter in the Pacific Northwest this year. Oh joy. On the other hand, it might be the perfect excuse for me to buy a new winter coat. My old one is black and shapeless. Its main attributes are that it is warm and waterproof, certainly key advantages for this part of the world, but I admit to wanting something with a leeeetle bit more style. This idea also does not square with my hopes to be more frugal this year. Must find a happy medium.

NPR (with an excellent graphic), The New York Times, and everyone else on Earth is reporting the discovery of a new Goldilocks planet, Gliese 581-G. To be noted in the NY Times story, the planet, like all the others in that system, keeps the same face to the star all the time. This makes me skeptical of the fooforah being raised about the possibility of extraterrestrial life developing there. At the same time, aliens will be alien for a host of reasons, including different the rotation/revolution rates of their planets. I guess time and investigation will tell. Who knows what's possible, after all?

jackwilliambell and I are talking about taking his grandson out to a corn maze, possibly this weekend. I hope we get to do it. I love this sort of fall activity. I don't know why.

It looks like I may be visiting back east this spring. My brother is brewing Big Plans that may require my presence, a requirement I'd be delighted to fulfill. More news as things develop.

Work has been...challenging this week. At the same time, I have proved to myself that I have the resources to meet said challenges. That's reassuring.

Bless me, LJ, for I have neglected thee. It's been three or maybe four days since last I posted. I am refining typing with one hand and a thumb to, if not a fine art, then at least to a fairly utilitarian skill. Beats the hell out of typing one-handed.

What have I been doing with my time? Well, let's see.

Science!: On Wednesday evening I had an entertaining and tasty dinner with irrationalrobot, wordknitter, miniBot, and Gnat. Afterwards, irrationalrobot, oldmangrumpus and I headed to the Theodor Jacobsen Observatory at the University of Washington to peer through its 118-year-old steampunk dream of a telescope and listen to a lecture about the Apollo space program. Sadly I have no photographs of the telescope (darn! Guess I'll just have to go back!). The thing is beautiful--large and slim and tapered, perfectly counterbalanced--with its clockwork counterweight system for tracking stars. I got to wind up the mechanism, which runs for 90 minutes at a time, and to view Saturn through its restored objective. What a wonderful experience! I'll have to plan a field trip back with folks when I'm at full operating capacity again to share.

Movie: jackwilliambell not only cooked me a wonderful steak dinner on Friday evening (with a mushroom, shallot, and pepper marinade to die for), but took me and his grandson R to see "How to Train Your Dragon" yesterday morning. The film was completely charming, extremely well-written, and featured some of the best character animation I've seen in a while. The story is your basic hero's journey, but it's done with both humor and compassion for its characters, and I was far more impressed with it than I expected to be. Lots of fun and really pretty fine storytelling.

Afterwards, we trolled through Daiso, where I purchased a little disply case that, upon returning home, I discovered to my dismay had a giant crack in it. We also made a stop at Costco, where I picked enough cat food, calcium, and light bulbs to last until Apocalypse.

In news of living single-handedly, I report that some paper plates can resist the onslaught of almost any food placed upon them. Plastic flatware isn't always as strong as one would hope. There are some things for which only ceramic dishware will do. Laundry is relatively easy to do one-handed; clipping cat claws is really, really not. Surprisingly, squeezing toothpaste from a tube is a pain in the butt with only one hand; tooth brushing is easy. And Spanky? Still too heavy to lift with one arm.

And now it's Sunday. I plan to do more freelance, shower, catch up on "Chuck" and "Doctor Who" and try to relax a bit.

In other news, irrationalrobot dreams of me in a funny and sadly accurate way. You'll be amused, really.

Scene: Local 7-11. I'm at the counter to pay. My purchases: 2 cans of cat food, one candy bar, latest issue of National Geographic sporting the headline and subhead, "Are We Alone? Searching the heavens for another Earth."

Attendant: (Picks up Nat Geo and examines) Another Earth? I don't think so.

Me: Really?

Attendant: Well, it's not in the Bible.

Me: So you don't think that in all the solar systems in all the galaxies in the universe there isn't another planet like ours?

Attendant: Well, maybe but God made 'em all and He's in charge. (Or something to this effect. His position was that God wrote the Bible and if it's not in there, it ain't so.)

Me: Well, that may be true. But maybe He hasn't seen fit to tell us everything.

Attendant: (laughs) Maybe so, maybe so.

The whole exchange was good natured and friendly. I've been a customer there for years and we know each other's faces. But I was so surprised by this exchange that I've been just sort of mulling it over ever since I left the place. I'm proud of myself that I didn't turn the conversation into a "Does God exist?" debate, or a "Is the Bible the infallible word of God" discussion because that would just have been counter-productive. I was able to provoke some thought without challenging this man's whole world view (and by extension his self-image and identity, which I really believe is a big part of the culture wars...on which more another time). It stayed respectful and pleasant. Win-win in my book.

Yeah, there really are people in the world who see it this way. I just so rarely encounter them here in the PNW that it took me off guard.

Let's take a moment: We're living in the future. We have an International Space Station in orbit. Didn't we used to write books about this possibility? Wanna see it come together? Courtesy of a friend WINOLJ: Watch the Space Station assemble. A lovely animation--and it's science fact!

I have to thank dianora2 for her delightful post tonight, which was filled with linky goodness and much pop culture squeeage. If you don't feel like clicking over there, here are a couple of the bits she shared most pleasing to me:

Milky Way galaxy 'tastes of raspberries': Raspberries and rum, apparently. See? If the religious right wanted to prove there's a God, they'd totally tell everyone that the universe tastes sweet and will make you a little tipsy. That's my kinda God right there. ::grin::

Can I ever love The X Files again?: A fan ponders whether or not the disastrous series finale and the most recent movie have forever poisoned the waters. I know exactly how he feels. Every now and then I pop an early-series X Files DVD into the player and feel that warm, lovely paranoia that Chris Carter created so well. It hurts to think about what came later.

The season finale of "Chuck" tonight made me happy as a clam. I recognized what was going on in the final sequence so that when Chuck uttered his last lines, I scared the cat with my outburst of laughter. I hope the series is renewed for next season. It's just terrific.

In other news, it appears that Seattle is about to be invaded by penguins. I have already written for an application and notified a number of artists of my acquaintance. Yes, I wish to be a penguin...or at least create a penguin to represent me.

On the subject of my little revolution of one, I wrote to the Fremont Universe blog, to Joel Connelly, and have mentioned it to several folks. A number of people have linked to the idea, mentioning it in their LJs. I also mentioned it on Facebook. With few exceptions, people seem to dig the idea. The question is: How to get businesses to buy into the idea. It has already been suggested that local business won't be willing to cut into its already razor-thin profit margin. Honestly, I'm not all that concerned about the short term. Local businesses who remember that my money--what little I have--is still legal tender even if I have less than usual will continue to get my enthusiastic business at full price when I return to work. Those who don't are likely to see less of me.

Spent the afternoon with brumbjorn and selinker enjoying the Pacific Science Center's exhibit on GPS technology and geocaching (using Entertainment Book coupons to help keep it affordable). It actually mimics the experience of geocaching very well and is a great deal of fun. It's a little text-heavy for this sort of interactive thing, but it's still entertaining. We spent some truly quality time in the butterfly house. (As brumbjorn said, if you go in there in a bad mood, there's no way you can leave without feeling better.) I smashed some coins (and am ready for trading!). We had lunch at T.S. McHugh's and then headed out.

Lots of walking, talking and catching up. I must sleep now, for I am beat.

Did anyone else feel the shaking? 5:24 AM--I have a couple of necklaces dangling from my bedroom mirror that started to knock against the mirror frame and I felt the bed shaking (that's why I'm awake). I've checked the earthquake tracking site but haven't seen a report yet.

ETA: Found it! The quake was near Mount Constitution in the San Juans. See the instrumental shaking record here.

ETA 2: Here's more. Mag 4.6 at a depth of 35 kilometers.

...and the theory is that it's ice. See pictures here at PC World. Would that not be cool (no pun intended)?

Shuttle Discovery launched this morning (link goes to MSN Video), sending back pictures of, among other things, the shuttle and its large fuel tank separating (link goes to MSN Video)--which I'd never seen before. What an amazing perspective. With the addition of the Harmony module to the space station, enabling the European and Japanese modules to connect to each other, the station will really be an international base. Very exciting stuff.

Picked this up off of a Doctor Who community, about a physicist who's working toward bending light to travel through time. We've met the Time Lords and they are us?