down an alley

in an old looking part of the town, their guide brought them to a house where he said they would be safe for a while....long enough to eat and warm up by a fire anyway....the wet snow was still coming down as the day turned to night....their guide mumbled a phrase at the door, and received a reply....the door opened a space, and a man looked out, and then motioned them to enter quickly.....inside it was warm, with a fire burning cheerfully on the hearth....the three fugitives pulled off their soaked furs and cloaks, and the lady of the house set them up to dry.....the man of the house looked at them with some misgiving and dread, but their trusted guide swore to their host that these three hard looking men were loyal to the true House, and only wanted to eat somewhat, and dry off, and then would leave, causing no trouble here.....so the goodwife grilled wurst, and singed kraut in a black pan, while the daughter toasted thick slices of rye bread, and lavished them with butter. They sat down at the rough table, said their prayers, and fell to....washing it all down with warmed cider. Trent, the senior of the three remaining rebels, took out his purse, and placed some coppers on the table. Their wraps had steamed more or less dry, and they donned them to depart.....the daughter was waiting by the door, to hand them two squares of sweet biscuit each as they departed into the frigid night. Baylor and Fervil wolfed down the sweets quickly, wiping at their beards with their hands when they were done. Trent slowly ate one biscuit, and put the other away. In the morning out on the road, as the dawn came damp and drear, Trent ate his second biscuit and washed it down with some cider from his flask, while Baylor and Fervil enjoyed only cold cider, and rumbling guts.....

victim of the galactic recession

New South looked like it was doing really well for a while there.....we had the same conglomerate that had done New California doing the planning and putting up the lion's share of the money, so we all thought we were on the gravy train. My family got in on the ground floor, coming out with the first fleet from the home system.....I was fourteen years old when we left Mars for our new planet....I was in the first graduating class from New South University....I moved right into the family real estate business, and sold my first plantation to some folks from Alabama when I was twenty-two years old. My commission amounted to enough to buy my own condo on the waterfront in Port Charleston.....I was seeing this girl I had met in school....and things looked like they were cruising right along.....and then the bottom fell out. Housing value on New South tanked big time.....my stock holdings lost eighty percent of their value in one bloody month.....my bank just faded away somehow, along with my cash. There are literally hundreds of completed mansion houses dotting the countryside, vacant, empty, abandoned, and actually up for grabs for squatters.....the government is broke....nobody is enforcing anything....so Sally and I are crashing out in a 20 room ante-bellum on 140 acres out in a county that has declared itself bankrupt and defunct.....these things were built to be self-contained....solor-powered, good well water.....we planted a vegetable garden.....I hacked the robot controller, so we even have servants .......we both carry needle carbines, and always monitor the radar, to watch for intruders into our purloined Eden.

the cosmic intruder.

the cosmic intruder., originally uploaded by shaman..

the head of Security is giving a briefing.....

The alien was first contacted by the crew of a Martian asteroid mining vessel, the M.S. Catfish....in the words of the crewmembers, they were placed under a spell for some hours, during which time the alien entity presented to them some understanding of what she was and what she wanted to do. By the time the spell was ended, a Security robot probe had almost reached the distressed vessel, and a direct line of communication could be established through this link to Security Headquarters. While under the spell of the alien, the crewmembers report that they were taught that when something on a living planet, such as our Earth, dies, then the accumulated pattern of it's time alive, which the alien calls it's dead soul, is left behind in cold space, as the living planet continues on it's orbit. Thus, a dusty trail of dead souls is hanging in space around the Sun. The alien, who calls herself an Eater of Dead Souls, has proposed to the Government that she be allowed to graze on the dead souls of our ancestors, for her sustenance. In return, she will give humanity the stars. She will convey to us the needed information to travel faster than light, to build bridges to planets where our kind can live. There are many questions to be considered here, moral, technical, and other questions.

cigar box "tres"

big dumb booster rocket

Ascend the Rocket Avonmouth, originally uploaded by Munzerr.

lots of big bucks and man hours

The Treaty Powers spent lots of big bucks and man hours repairing the New High Dike and pumping the ocean back out of the lowlands.....but there was still a big radioactive mess, so they shot a lot of big dumb boosters with loads of hot crap into outer space....while all this was going on, the nerve center stuff had defaulted to Washington D.C., which once again became the effective capitol city of humanity.....so it was that some functionary somewhere in the maze of the Octagon had the report of a lost asteroid mining vessel come up on his display.....contact lost, no response.....a modern ship which should have had all the needed back-ups and things to deal with any ordinary emergency.....hmmm, are we looking at some kind of terrorism here, like the data bombers, or the hammership droppers? Let's see if we can clear authorization to divert a Security patrol vessel to the provided coordinates .........

just not right

shipbrain was starting to feel dizzy...that's just not right.....Manny and Silvia noticed that something was funny when the data displays started pixelating, breaking up.....the main drive shut itself down.....a diagnostic query came back "quantum ambiguity"......the ship started moving slowly closer to the big egg shaped asteroid with the oddball radar signature.....moving for no apparent reason......they tried to call for help....but there was no incoming comm traffic at all...no answers......

from beyond time

Disney - Floating Madame Leota - Crystal Ball, originally uploaded by Joe Penniston.

a very strange long dormant entity

deep inside an asteroid.....is awakened by exotic radar pulses.....untold eons are shed away as the alien awareness from beyond the dawn of human time wells up from an almost eternal rest.....something is out there, in the blessed coldness of space.....what is coming to visit? Long lost aching appetite is aroused......a hunger ages old and as large as a galaxy begins to throb in the core of ........Manny sits up and stares at the monitor.....there is a very wierd reading from that rock.......

asteroid prospecting

2006.04.19.03.34.31, originally uploaded by crazykinux.

like a Winnebago with a basement

Forward is up, when you are outbound....but when you are flipped over and burning backwards to slow down to match speed with the rocks, then you are going down. They had told them that the life supported area of the ship was about as big as a nice old motorhome, with slide-outs.....and there was an almost equal basement deck, where you could store supplies and emergency stuff, and the space-bikes. Manny and Silvia are new at this.....you can take the class and put in the simulator hours, but when you are actually out on the edge of the asteroid belt....it's pretty scary....or at least nervous-making......Silvia is prone in the pilot station....it's her watch....Manny is by the galley thing, dialing up a ration of beer and peanuts.....they are in decel mode, pulling .78 Gee.....it's two steps with the beer and nuts to the lounge area, which is the same thing as the dining area.....and four steps will take you to the john, and two more steps gets you the sleeping area.....good thing Manny and Silvia like being intimate with each other ....the shipbrain is scrolling data on the display.....comparing deep radar readings from the rocks they are getting close to with readings of "good" rocks.....rocks that might be worth enough bucks to pay for all this.....Manny sits down on the padded bench, and sets his beer on the fake woodgrained tabletop.....he has punched in toffee peanuts this time.....

Eta Carina Nebula

Eta Carina Nebula, originally uploaded by tvdavisid.

constant burn

How do you get something for nothing? Well, you use a very strange kind of nothing....dark matter.....you can get at dark matter by subverting twisted gluons.....well, never mind...it all has to do with the membrane theory that evolved from the superstring model.....suffice it to say that the really heavy tech dudes found a way to tap into the huge potential of the dark matter that in fact makes up something like 95 percent of the mass that there is. And E equals M times C to the second power.....so just a few subverted gluon-thingys can get you lots of E, that you can shoot out of the back of your rocket ship in a constant burn, so you just keep going faster and faster. You need something like this if you want to go asteroid prospecting.....the gold rush of the late 21st century.....well, it's not just gold...any heavy metal asteroid will do....nickel- iron will do just fine....ice will even turn a profit, if you do enough volume.....you can always sell ice to Mars, and heavy metals to Mars or to the Earth orbit industrial belt.....get some financing, like sell some of your Cousin Mary's Catfish Fryer and Cold Beer stock options.....and do a lease-purchase thing on a constant burn space tugboat....go out there and grab some rocks....it's simple.....

Luci was busy

with a batch of hushpuppies.....the mall was in full Holiday mode, the mistletoe, holly, and candy canes were hung all around, and the background music was going "Sleigh bells jingleing ring-ting-tingle-ing too!" Suddenly, the music stopped....all the advert and entertainment screens and holos went to static and fuzz....and everyone stared with slack jaws and horror as the video came back on to show a huge fireball rising, somewhere on Earth.....huge waves could also be seen....the ocean sweeping over cityscape somewhere....the voice-over came on finally over the speakers....."....an orbital hammership has gone off course, and plunged through the atmosphere to strike the Netherlands....the Hauge has been destroyed by a nuclear explosion....the New High Dike has been breached by another fragment....floodwaters are sweeping towards Germany....." The nerve center of the Treaty Powers was being swept away by fire and salt water.

Sam and the devious evil robot

The bad robot was at the door again, trying to tempt Sam to unheard of deeds.....it had come twice before, at first just asking Sam how he was, what he felt like....this was strange enough, the robots didn't usually talk to you, except to give orders. Sam had answered truthfully, that he felt guilty, depressed, and lost.....the robot stood there blinking and humming for a moment, and then left. After some time the robot came back and without explanation had projected a holo into the cell.....Sam saw an animation of a hammership looping within the orbit of the Moon....slashing through the factory orbit zone.....burning into the air of Earth.....smashing like a metal meteor into the city lights of Europe. It said nothing, just showed this loop three times, and then left Sam alone. Last night the robot had come back again and said "Well Sam, are you in or out? Will you help us wreak destruction on our masters and oppressors, or will you meekly submit to their tyranny?"

so much for lunch

so much for lunch, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

chicken wing, bread and butter, swiss cheese, wine

no comment

McDonaldization - Old Sketch (Ben Heine), originally uploaded by Ben Heine.

Fifth birthday party

Little Bobby Silva and his dad big Bobby, and his mom Luci (the former Miss Wen) has his whole kindergarten class with him in Bubblegum's, where they are all enjoying pizza and layer cake and fruit juice....and the Bubblegum clowns are busy making sure all goes well.....across the food-court, Mary and I are manning the fryers, to give Bobby and Lucy the time off for B.B.s birthday....well, he's not Baby Bobby any more really, he's a big boy....hmmm, that would still be B.B.?

Sat. Nite Special

Sat. Nite Special, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

Cousin Mary's Clinton Kitchen

robot guard

Fun With IG-88!, originally uploaded by Lino M.

every thirteen minutes....

there's a bone-deep vibration that makes your molars ache.....the old prison hammership keeps moving, but every thirteen minutes you are reminded of where you are, and why you are there.....life had been easy on Mars...too easy for some, like Sam sitting hunched on his cot on Deck Six.....life support has been reduced to the minimum....it's chilly and dark....the air pumps slow and putrid through the cell....Sam tried to live too easy, jacking and lifting, smoking shit....slithering around the edges, messing with people....and it all caught up with him, of course....and they put him on a rocket with some other chumps and shot him out to the trashy old orbital, and they let them all spin back towards Earth....the robots kept them in line with nerve whips....there was no escape or recourse....no appeal....nothing outside of here but cold hard dead outer space.....the vibration was coming again....Sam clamped his jaw shut and closed his eyes.....the big ship moaned once again....and kept spinning....Sam felt like such a dumb fuck, trying to rob a Catfish Fryer....damn fool thing to do.....crap.....

the Martian Meritocracy

Moving millions of people from overcrowded Earth to an alien environment could not be trusted to anything as slap-hazard as a democracy....what we have here is a strict meritocracy....there are no politicians or lawyers..... stupid, vain, power-seeking people don't get power....the good public service jobs go to the people with the highest test scores....and they pay well, to attract these smart people.....no judges either, it's all spelled out so anybody can read what the law says....when you get here, they give you plenty of time to read the social contract.....look at the FAQ all you want...if you don't want to sign on the dotted line, you can go back to where you came from....if you've got the bucks for passage......what you do if you flaunt the law is spelled out in great detail, so don't look for any probation or plea bargains, chump. It's been working great so far....we have a fantastic degree of civil participation, and a damned low crime rate.....well, we don't let many fools or reprobates down to the surface in the first place....I like it here.

I went online

and booked a seat on RedRocket from MarsPort to Paradise City....we were blasted above the atmosphere, did a flip in space, and came back down with rocket motors roaring 6000 klicks away....I was taking this trip to meet with a Korean family who were interested in opening a Cousin Mary's franchise in the new megamall the ant-like nanobots were excavating on the edge of this latest boomtown. With the new superliners using constant boast technology, the voyage from Earth to Mars now only took weeks, instead of months, so new people were pouring in all the time. In the five years since we opened our first Catfish Fryer and Cold Beer, things had been going great guns....this would be our 20th store opening, the fifth in the Paradise City area....

Fried Catfish

Fried Catfish, originally uploaded by sciurus!.

Cousin Mary's Catfish Fryer and Cold Beer

Well, we were noticing how everything here on Mars is wide open and expanding rapidly.....it's not just a boom-town, it's an ever-loving BOOM PLANET! We've got some bucks....they are opening new food-courts all the time in the mega-malls.....they are begging for people to open new food joints.....cabbage they grow in the underground gardens....and catfish is one of the staples nowadays, because you can raise it in the grey water.....so how about deep-fried catfish and slaw on a bun, with fries as a side....we could do hush-puppies too....and sweet tea....beer breweries are going full blast, of course....Pabst on tap! In one of the food-courts, the customers are built-in, pretty much....and they want variety.....maybe deep-fried franks too....with modern medicine, the greasy thing won't stop people anymore....and our food will not be greasy...well, just enough greasy to be appealing....you can have the slaw right on the sandwich, or on the side, I guess....but then you would need forks....hmmm...I was just thinking orange wax paper and those red baskets....we'll see....there would be a fillet lunch too, so I guess we do need cutlery maybe....these things can be worked out...what do you think?

Walking into the Unknown

Walking into the Unknown, originally uploaded by Ammar Alothman.

living on Mars

isn't too much different from living on the hammership...you are inside all the time.....almost everything is buried beneath the surface, so you go from one big mall to the next all the time....there are high vague ceilings that change with the time of day sometimes, or in some places it is always day or always night....only the very rich have actual windows to the outside, but it's easy to pull up a view on virtual if you want.....but there's not much to see....red dust, some rocks, more red dust....wierd green sky....Mary and I are both still on vacation right now, renting an apartment, checking things out....of course there are plenty of employment options....they are busy here building a whole damn world from scratch......

nothing but stars....

NGC 6995 , originally uploaded by 3dmapmaker.

the old man

is watching the evening news....they show the Earth bound orbital from a far tracking view....it spins serenely along through the stars.....and then the screen just goes bright white for a long instant....and then there is nothing left there, but the stars. He sits up in his recliner, his jaw slack, mouth open, heart beating....the audio says all were lost, men women and children...an inbound hammership isn't jammed full of migrants like an outbound,,,,but still the number is 1262 dead...1262 dead....the death remote still lies on the coffee table....and the rosewood box is there, still open....down in one corner is a little pop-pak with a white pill inside....he pops the pak, puts the pill under his tongue....everybody on Mars is on remote heart monitor, the EMT's are there in minutes....but the pill worked....the angry old man is a dead old man. Mary and I are still limping towards Mars when all this comes through....Mary is beat up by this news....the old man was some kind of distant cousin of hers....they say it took three signals to trigger the data bombs, his was but one. So there are still two bombers to look for? One theory is that maybe some of the angry old men left their remotes on a trip after they were gone themselves, so that, even in death, they could vote for the hammer coming down if anyone left alive punched the button....who knows? I've moved in with Mary for the time being....she doesn't know what she wants to do exactly .....stay on Mars, go back home....freeze up and take an outbound to the stars?

Dan knows what this means

Harrison Street, Sep 5, 2009, originally uploaded by tinguru.

Occidental glorious, 'or her foes victorious....

2009-09-02_Convocation-385, originally uploaded by Occidental College.

the dirt road

the dirt road, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

through fence

through fence, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

tree

tree, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

read your contract

It looks like I'm going to become a Martian.....my contract says that if the hammership is disabled when it reaches Mars space, then I can either stay on Mars and receive my full pay for the round trip, or I can opt to be taken back to Earth, but I only get half-pay, and have to pay my way back. And the ship is disabled....and the only reason it's going to make it to Mars at all is due to the quick thinking of Our Hero Major Mary Tudor. In the chaos of the cyber attack, she took control of an ad hoc Action Team and fought back.....they were able to cut vital systems off from the confused shipbrain, and get power back on, and correct the spin angles.....they clamped down on the fusion flux fields first thing, which was smart.....on one of the Earth bound orbitals the virus took out the field system, and the whole thing just went up in a flash of hydrogen hellfire....no chance of survivors.....But the 17 hours of abnormal spin wreaked havoc with ship structure....the whole thing creaks and pops and shudders as we roll slowly along.....but we survived.....Remember Miss Wen and Bobby? Well, in the pitch darkness, with their world seemingly coming to an end, they managed to find some moments of deep meaning....the baby will be a Martian native! And as far as it goes with me and Mary....well...we're still working on that story.....

There is no light

and the bed is rocking back and forth.....there are creaks and crashes sounding through the darkness.....Mary says "What the fuck!" A burst of static comes from the overhead speaker....and shipvoice says "This is an emergency. Please remain calm....rrrreemain cccalmmm....AEE--ARGH" silence follows....."Damn" says Mary. She slaps at something on the wall, and a reddish emergency type light fills the bedroom....she jumps from the tangled sheets and zips an Orbital Authority jumpsuit over her skinny nakedness....the patch over her left breast says Major Tudor....I pull on my things that I find on the floor, while she buckles on a big black belt with a sidearm and other strange things hanging from it...."OK" she says "You're with me, let's go!" It takes us half a minute to remember how to open a door on manual, and we are out into the hall....we set off at a trot towards the lifts.....dull emergency lights are coming on now, some flickering, some steady.....confused voices behind doors we pass....the lifts are dead, but Major Mary calmly breaks the seal on the emergency phone thing and starts pressing buttons....the deck shifts violently again, and Mary says "Oh shit." Someone is talking from the other end now, from where ever Emergency Command is.....Mary listens for a moment, and then tells me "Well, sounds like we are up the frigging creek without a paddle or a spoon."

Miss Wen

is very happy! She loves the readings....they are about real things....important things.....and the Master is such a wonderful person, so calm, so understanding, so clever....she loves the Tuesday sessions, with others who are real....other young people who have questions.....and....and.....most of all....she thinks she loves Bobby! Of course her family or the Han Pure State would never approve....he is not Han at all. He is Mi-Wuk....a native american tribe....from California....but his eyes.....oh.....They walk through the mall holding hands....she doesn't care who sees them.....her heart is beating fast....she walks on air....he smiles at her, they turn aside into a small park pavilion, dimly lit this late in the evening...they sit on a bench....they lean close together....their lips almost meet.....and all the world shakes and shudders....a great groan moans through the whole hammership....all goes dark, they are thrown sideways as the ship-spin starts going haywire....somewhere there is an explosion....someone starts screaming.....a child cries "Mommy? MOMMY!"

meanwhile

in a Martian cliff dwelling.....the old man leans back in his recliner and calls up a news feed....the implants in his skull decode the message hidden inside the insipid chatter of the newsperson....he sighs once, and sets a grim expression on his face as he rises from the recliner, and crosses the room to an Andy Warhol print hanging above the sideboard.....the print swings aside, and the old man presses his palm onto the smartlock of the wall-safe......reaching in, he takes out a small rosewood box. He pulls a thin gold chain out from beneath his sweat-shirt collar, and opens the box with the tiny key hanging there.....he carefully takes out what looks like an old TV remote....with a number pad, and one big red button.....he considers for a moment, and starts to enter the sequence......

Trout Meuniere

Trout Meuniere, originally uploaded by cinnachick.

Mary asked me out to dinner

and of course I accepted. We go out from time to time.....we are both in O.U. Administration, so we compare notes about things....and we get along pretty well on a social plane.....she says she likes my company because I'm the only other person she knows who can quote lines from both The Importance of Being Earnest and A Day at the Races.....things that are, like scotch, tastes you have to acquire ......her name is actually, believe me on this, Mary Tudor.....a lot of times people in bars or whatever just won't buy that. She is tall, skinny, fine-boned....a couple of years older then me....and has a much higher security clearance that I do, because she "works with computers"....she "has codes"......In the Treaty Powers scheme of things, she ranks as a Major....you know, in a State of Emergency, she would be commanding people.....Anyway, we went to one of those Top Deck places with the velvet rope and the whole nine yards extra fancy wise trip....she had asked me out...she has the bucks, what the heck? She had the game hen, I had the trout, etc....By the time we got to the cherry cheesecake and port, the conversation had worked around to the thing about deeply embedded data bombs......Mary said that was something that was no joke.....some of the old farts who wrote a lot of the code that many current systems were based on had......vanished.....Treaty Power Security, Cybernetic Branch, had no idea where they were.....they would be way up there in years by now, who knew what they were thinking of? Were they OK with where the machines were going now, or.....or even one senile malcontent could possibly throw the ultimate monkey-wrench into the machine works.....She swirled her port, and drank it off....she looked pensive, with a crooked little smile....I asked her what could really happen if this geriatric radical thing actually came down? She said the shit would hit the fan big time.....the virus probably wouldn't just get the teaching machines.....a lot of systems could crash....like life-support, and navigation....whatever.....We went out and found a bar with a dance band.....

the teaching machines

can trace their software heritage back to the programming projects at the University of California in the 2020's.....in fact, when the Treaty Powers first started building and launching the hammership orbitals towards Mars, the educational system for the migrant ship population had been administered under a contract arrangement with U.C. San Diego. But once the whole rotation was up and running, things were formalized under Orbital Authority, and the present Orbital University system was established. So here at O.U. we have legacy systems with roots almost 70 years back in time to the original Intelligent Teaching Program, written by a team in Oakland. Somewhere in that time frame the machines started "self-writing".....which has led to philosophical and practical complications, as you might imagine....there are humans who do not really trust what the machines might be up to....what are they teaching the kids? I was reading a thing about deeply embedded data bombs.....apparantly some of the original Oakland programmers claim to have been associated with the Bay Area Neoradical movement....they say that if the machines get too uppity, they will broadcast codes that will blow their minds.....

a week or so later

I ran into Kato in the mall outside of that shop that sells flavored teas and incense and stuff like that......he asked me if I remembered Miss Wen.....I asked him how she was getting along. He said he thought she was doing fine....a very intelligent and intense young lady who was just having a little trouble with our clean-cut and sterile society, with it's hard lines and standard definitions of everything. Her elders were taking her to Mars to become a member of the Han Pure State.....they were strict New Party loyalists, secular to the core. The ethnic and religious minorities that had torn China to pieces in the Thirties were very devils to them. A sensitive young person could feel that he or she were being pressed into a tight mold in the Pure State, where strict adherence to proper guidelines constituted the highest value.....Kato had given her a reading list, and obtained permission from her family for her to attend his Tuesday evening sessions, which was mostly people close to her age. He promised them no religion, only traditional philosophy. We stopped at a cafe and had some coffee, and talked for a while about the plight of space age humanity......

the lift drops me down

to the lowest deck of our spaceship, where gravity approaches unity.....the only thing lower than this low rent district is the bilge belt where all the used water ends up, to be processed by the nanoslurry and pumped back up again....I enter the comfortable dimness of the Lounge, and make my way towards the bar....Misty sees me coming in, and has my scotch and soda poured before I climb onto my usual stool. The regulars are here....Mrs. Corozon and J.P. are playing gin rummy at one of the tall small tables....the guy from accounting stares out through one of the little thick portholes at the endless parade of stars.....Bill and his latest girlfriend, the redhead, occupy one dark booth....a couple of guys in Orbital Authority jumpsuits are drinking beer and eating catfish nuggets, dipping them in ranch dressing. One of them starts to tell a joke, and Misty leans on her elbows listening with that expectant little smile you get on your face when you are being told a funny story.....the screens above the barback are showing a golf course, the weather for Europe, and some telenovella with the sound off....the only thing coming from the overhead speakers is something that sounds like Russian drinking music....the writing scrolling beneath the golf course is in Chinese characters.....I can't figure out where they are playing....... Thinking back through my work day, nothing had happened really.....only Miss Wen.....the machine that teaches Ontology had sent her to me....it said that she kept asking it why questions.....she wanted answers with meaning.....so it told her to go talk to a human.....I gave her an appointment time right after lunch.....she was a severe looking petite Han person with very short hair and pink lipstick, wearing a huge Lakers jersey that came down below her knees....she was barefoot, and her toenail polish matched her lipgloss. She told me that when she tried to talk to her parents about the deeper questions that were troubling her, they just looked at her with stupefied expressions on their faces.....I asked her if she would like an introduction to my friend Mr. Kato, the Zen Master on deck 11.....she scowled fiercely for a moment, but then said "Yes, please."

on campus

Musée des Beaux-Arts, originally uploaded by myrique baumier.

you would never know you are on a spaceship from this angle

orbital hammership

The great creaking mass of the aging hammership spins onwards through the void.....months from Earth orbit, months to go to Mars. The spinning keeps a semblance of gravity on the 14 inhabited decks....up the shaft of the hammer the gees fade away....at the bulb at the other end from the head, the almost obsolete mass of the fusion power source is the center around which the whole thing rotates. A hammer of the gods, hurled out between the planets, ever orbiting, never stopping. You couldn't stop the damn thing if you wanted to, short of blowing it up. But that's a problem for the powers that be. All I have to think about is doing my job, fulfilling my contract....which is to "administer the educational program subsection L4....liberal arts (other)" Not science, that's for sure...not language, or fine arts, or law or economics or diplomacy....just "other"....like philosophy and religion maybe? And I don't have to teach, just administer, machines do the teaching. Well, they like to be called "intelligent programs"....but they act like machines, as far as I can tell. From my office window I can see out over part of the campus....there are little bits of carefully placed flora, and lots of fake marble and pseudo-sandstone surface.....some kind of bastard beaux-arts architecture I've never been able to figure out or classify.....to me it all looks like a movie set from a 1930's flick about a robot future.....but it's here now, dammit. Well, my office hours are coming to an end for the day, and I can shortly begin to wend my way towards the Down Lounge, to trade the boredom of "work" for the boredom of "leisure"......At least down there I can get a drink.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8226563.stm

Pickled Pig Lips

Pickled Pig Lips, originally uploaded by RandomConnections.

this place is now The Hash Pot

Ora ARP graves

Ora ARP graves, originally uploaded by RandomConnections.

15 Birthday

Waverly, Aug 20, 2009

Waverly, Aug 20, 2009, originally uploaded by tinguru.

Colton camping

Obama as an Oxy freshman

Early Obama Portraits, originally uploaded by Chris Chaotic.

another famous Oxy dude

Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam, originally uploaded by The Kuhnster.

Oxy Children's Theater "1001 Arabian Nights of the Living Dead"?

2009-07-31_OCT-L.Dead-388, originally uploaded by Occidental College.

les paul mary ford

les paul mary ford, originally uploaded by louisiv.geo.

bless you Les

Sorry!

This blog has been ordered to cease and desist by Authority.

Fried Grasshoppers

Fried Grasshoppers, originally uploaded by Grumbler %-|.

you could get these at the swapmeet

Herat in hog heaven

The five merchant ships had to angle South a bit to find and round the headland into Queens Bay, the chief harbor of the Kingdom of Garnash, the middle of the Three Kingdoms of the Western Shore.....Royal Garnash Castle rose high above the city, which was a proper walled stronghold of some good size....Captain DeKline, with his connections in this realm, was able to secure a mooring place alongside one of the principal mercantile docks, and the voyage was over.  While Ambrey organized the disembarking, and the Baron and the Captain settled their accounts, Herat was overwhelmed by a delicious aroma rising from the street vendors along the waterfront....he dropped over the side and made his way through the smoke and crowd to a stall where a jolly fat Westerner was sliding long red sausages into a pot of boiling oil, while his wife or whomever fried flat bread, and onions, and peppers on a sizzling iron griddle......A sausage on a roll was Herat's idea of singular bliss, so he quickly exchanged some few coppers for a steaming sausage curled up under a hot relish in warm flatbread.....he also obtained a pot of cider, and was transported to hog heaven!   The strange Mister Batt had followed along, but choose a different vendor, where they sold deep-fried grasshoppers, very well spiced....

1978 Subaru 1600 station wagon

1978 Subaru 1600 station wagon, originally uploaded by verner_oscar™.

remember this one?

WESTERN SHORES

WESTERN SHORES, originally uploaded by peke_cheeks.

were within reach

to sea eventually

Doctor Drew did bring a man with him....a Mister Batt, who Warrant Officer Frank quickly sized up as being "slicker than a greased weasel, and smells about the same."  So the Baron and Herat, and the Doctor and the weasel, and Chef Barrel and Jimmy, and Frank and the four stout lads and the quartermaster himself did make an even dozen as they boarded the Fortunate one warm Summer evening....they were shown their quarters, and their gear was stowed away in good fashion.....as the tide turned before dawn, and as a favorable wind came up, the little fleet of five merchantmen crossed the bar and cracked on canvas to head out into deep water, on a bearing for the Western channel.  The savvy merchant masters knew the proper time to sail from long experience.....the winds would be good in this season, and would act with the currents to carry them easily to the Three Kingdoms, the Gods willing.....and day followed night and week followed week, and they weathered some troublesome storms but suffered not much damage.....and they spied some sails which might be pirates, but were not approached after all, and the sailors showed the adventurers dolphin and albatross and mermaid and narwhal and flying fish and other wonders of the deep, and the leagues passed beneath the keels.  The Baron would spread his maps and scrolls in the great cabin, and the Doctor and Mister Batt and the good Herat would look on and listen as he explained his plans for after they had reached the far shores.....Captain DeKline contributed items of interest from his own knowledge of the customs of the Three Kingdoms.....and when Chef Barrel allowed as how he had spent some years in these lands as a youth, he also joined their consuls.   They all grew lean and tan, and soon appeared as very seamen themselves.....Jimmy quickly learned to dance through the rigging with the ship's boys, Chef Barrel was welcome in the galley, and the stout lads regaled the sailors with war stories, as they learned something of the sailor craft, hauling with a will on lines as needed, and such.  And one mid-morning, the look-out at the masthead cried the land....they were come to the Western shore.....

Hildegard and Mt. Shasta Property

Hildegard and Mt. Shasta Property, originally uploaded by aniika.

the Obombski property in California

then there's this....

"The way things are right now is just an accident."  Quantum Transmutation: A Primer....by Hildegard Obombski.....

Claymore

Claymore, originally uploaded by Mark Andrew Turner.

similar to Herat's own....

Things were falling into place....

The Baron was satisfied that Captain DeKline and his good ship Fortunate would suit his purpose well enough....the price had been negotiated, and a deposit paid.  So he and Herat would take the coach South in the morning, with a wagon following behind with various and sundry baggage....The Baron was not at all nonplussed by Brever's withdrawal from the expedition...he was a good and loyal servant, but a skinny and fussy fellow, probably not well suited to the rigors they might expect over the coming months.....Herat, on the other hand, was, in addition to being perfectly well mannered and well-spoken, a commanding looking presence....very tall and with broad shoulders, great masses of hair and beard, and a fearsome claymore always slung in the baldric on his back.....he was an enormous trencherman, to be sure, but the Baron wasn't too worried about the food budget at this point....he was itching to get going, to probe the secrets of the Western Lands.....

Sun Setting, Southport Harbor

Sun Setting, Southport Harbor, originally uploaded by brenna d.

is this the right Southport?

something completely different

     "Or perhaps he had snapped under the strain.  Professors go batty too, perhaps more often than other people, although owing to their profession their madness is less often remarked"....from The Book of Air and Shadows...by Michael Gruber....

Brever demures

Brever had been in the service of Castleford-on-Rim since childhood, as had been his father before him, and his father too.....so his roots ran deep in the village, and in the County....he was long since married, and had seven children, and a first grand-child on the way.....he did not want to leave all this and go with the Lord Baron on this insane expedition to the far ends of the known world, or even beyond!  But who could he get to take his place....who would the Baron accept?  He sat in the tavern and told his doubts and fears to his cousin Herat, a great bear of a man, but somehow always discreet and gentle, despite his rough and powerful appearance....Herat drank in his cousin's tale of a great adventure across the Western Sea with relish.....what excitement!  And Brever did not wish to go?  Well, he did have the wife and little ones and all....though they were not all so little by this year....but he could understand Brever's trepidation in the face of the unknown.....not everyone who went West returned East, after all....But, would the Baron take him across the sea, in place of his cousin?  What a dream.....Well, sometimes, a dream might come true......

On the road to Southport

Chef Barrel fit his name with precision....he was a good cook, and he was shaped like a rather large barrel.  When the Prince had returned with the chief mountain rebels in chains, or in bags....Barrel had been let go from his Army post, as the levy was disbanded, and the lads sent back to their farms, or whatever was their normal occupation....So Chef Barrel had been glad to hear from Warrant Frank, who was looking for a cook for an expedition to the Western Lands....Barrel had been West once before....but that's a long story....Frank had wondered if Barrel could provide a boy too, for whatever less than dignified or savory duties which might need doing on a voyage and trek of unknown duration.....Barrel had of course said that he had just the fellow at hand, young Jimmy Lafay, an orphan of the regiment.....so the Chef and his protege were jostling along a dirt track North and West of Southport, in a donkey cart.  Under  wrap in the back of the cart rode a very nice Royal Army Small Field Kitchen, and whatever other meagre items Barrel had managed to collect in his forty-odd years.....Jimmy owned only his one threadbare cast-off  set of serving livery, a long knife taken from a dead rebel on the battlefield, and an heirloom pendant hung around his neck on a leather thong....it had belonged to his Grandmother, he had been told.  She had been known as the Witch of West, at least in East Darby.....

Summer, Southport

A fat gray cat was soaking up the sun on the wide window sill....the thick stone walls and the open doors and windows kept it cool in the old inn....High Stone Inn, up the hill from the harbor at Southport.  Walking back from the bar, Ambrey paused to look out the main doors, down towards the blue line of the sea, beyond the ships at anchor, past the swells passing through the narrow entrance to the calm waters of the bay.  Then he went on and sat back down with the others at the worn old oak table.....Ambrey had agreed to act as quartermaster on the expedition that the Lord Baron Castleford was organizing to sail to the Western Lands, to search for some mystical goal Ambrey did not really understand the importance of.....but the Baron had a purse full of gold, that was what Ambrey did understand.  His companions were the first of the recruits for the adventure.....the Baron had wanted some armed men for escort, so Ambrey had contacted his old friend from the Royal Army, Warrant Officer Frank....and Frank had brought with him four stout lads fresh from the campaign the Prince had made last year against the mountain rebels....hopefully this would please the Baron well enough.  There was also to be a cook with a boy, and the Baron himself of course, with his man Brever....and would the mysterious Doctor Drew also have a manservant?  We don't know yet....he doesn't know how may mouths exactly he needs to feed.....perhaps no more than a dozen?  Ambrey must start considering his logistics soon.....the Baron and the Doctor should be here by the weekend, the cook and the boy maybe as soon as tomarrow.....the Baron had written that he was negotiating with a merchant of good repute for the ship passage.....He drank deeply from his pint of ale, and watched idly as the soldiers rolled dice for drinks.....

Winter, Castleford-on-Rim

It had snowed hard during the night, but was blue and bright in the morning.....he had gone out for a while, tromping around in his heavy boots, for his morning constitutional....but now he was back in his study, with the Lurvish Scroll unrolled on the large table....the slats of ebony and ivory at top and bottom keeping it flat for perusal.....It had taken years to learn the arcane Lurvish tongue....but the effort was small compared to the reward, in his private estimation....for here he had found solid clues to the mystery which had consumed his whole attention since that long ago day in High Delstin, when he had first heard of the Abiding Old Ones.  A boy came in with more wood for the fire, and tended to it....he barely noticed...he could never remember that boy's name....it didn't matter.  Again he had come to the same conclusion....he would have to brave the journey to the Western Lands if he had any hope of confirming the wonders presented in the Scroll.....the Metaphysicians and Ontologists at his own University, and at the other great seats of learning in the Realms did not think much of his quest for knowledge of the Old Ones.....they thought he wasted time and effort on things of rumor and myth.....but what reward there would be if his quest could reach fruition!  It was time for hard decisions and, at last, action!  He carefully rolled up the Scroll, and returned it to it's copper tube.....he decided that the first thing he had to do was enlist persons for the expedition....he would need a guide familiar with the Three Kingdoms of the West....he would need to purchase passage with the trading fleet....he would need trusted men, sworn to his cause.....men of arms....and clever men too....a secretary, a body servant, a physician too?  How civilized was the West?  Some sort of major-domo or quartermaster for this growing body of men?  And he would want someone familiar with the Dark Arts, since he would be pressing on into that part of the great world which was known to be perhaps the last firm stronghold of Magic!

2009-04-16_Hair-1099

2009-04-16_Hair-1099, originally uploaded by Occidental College.

Easter_hunt

Easter_hunt, originally uploaded by carolinedhillon.

Monte Cristo.

Monte Cristo., originally uploaded by andy castro.

a favorite brunch

sunday brunch

The machine had whipped up a Monte Cristo sandwich, with a fruit-cup and a well chilled rhine wine....."Finished?" it asked, as I leaned back from the table.  "Yes, thank you, that was excellent." I replied, tossing the linen napkin down next to the empty china.  So the machine whisked everything away through the air to the white door with the round window in it which only appeared in the bulkhead when the galley was active.  The dirty dishes went away, and the door disappeared....."Tell me" said the machine "Can you offer me any more pithy aphorisms about life in general?"  This was a little game we had been playing on the voyage.....swapping bits of wisdom....."Well" I offered "My father used to tell me 'Son, when you get right down to it, life ain't really nothin' but a dang tragic waste of time and money.'"  It took a while for the machine to reply....it said that time and money meant nothing to a machine, so the waste wasn't very tragic, as far as it was concerned.  It allowed as how such things might seem important to a short-lived flesh and blood creature, trying to function in a larger society of similar beings......

wetware

The machine was in an introspective mood again, when we were still maybe a week out from the Wandering City....it told me that it really liked being a deep-space tugboat most of the time, but that sometimes it felt somehow anxious or felt an unidentified longing....like there must be something more to it all than just flying around endlessly moving massive objects....it asked me if I, with my biological origin and wetware brain could offer it any words of wisdom.  "Want what you have." I told it.  

Space Tug (Pocket 1037) 1954 AUTHOR: Murray Leinster ARTIST: Robert Schulz

Space Tug (Pocket 1037) 1954 AUTHOR: Murray Leinster ARTIST: Robert Schulz, originally uploaded by Hang Fire Books.

away we went

tune in

I couldn't figure out how the machine kept coming up with such good meals for me.....this wasn't some starliner cruise ship....the machine said it was a tugboat, deadheading back to the Wandering City after having delivered a photosphere drilling rig to SNG15-a.  I had a virtual thumb out at Destination Station there, and so I was hitching a ride .....I guess the machine wanted some company, 'cause it told me to jump on board and let's go.....it talks a lot, asking questions about where I've been and stuff like that, making conversation.....it said to just ask when I wanted something to eat or drink.....at first I just asked for things like a fruit bar or water....and it said to read the menu if I wanted actual meals, it had a full biot support suite installed.   So I started ordering things like a burger and fries, or tacos, or baby-back ribs, or shrimp salad.....and the meals are perfect every time.....wonderful eats, and all on the cuff!  So I asked how the food thing worked, and the machine gave this explanation: Of course phenomenal reality is just the oil slick rolling with the waves on the surface of the vast deep ocean of dark reality, that is the realm of dark matter and dark energy.  Your species call these things "dark" because you can't see into them?  So to change things in phenomenal reality, one may adjust the wave frequencies and the elemental tones to resonate a new standing wave in any specific formal content you desire....just takes a little quantum transmutation, and then you have to tune in flavor and texture or whatever, if what you are conjuring up is meant to be a biot foodstuff.  Well, this all didn't really tell me much, so I just said "Thank You"  and  tucked into the full blown Thanksgiving Dinner with a nice shiraz that had appeared on the table in front of me.  I wonder how many meals it is to the Wandering City?

predestination

The machine wanted to talk philosophy, it seemed to think that morality and metaphysics must be inter-related....I guess that's true?  It was telling me..."Predestination in the most absolute sense amounts to exactly the same thing as pure nihilism, don't you see?  As regards a moral being, either way your moral choices are worthless.  If it's all predestined by some monistic entity or system, your moral choice means nothing, right?  And if all is at bottom sheer chaos and chance, then morality means nothing either, right?"  I looked around the cabin of the spaceship, but the machine has no face....no way to read it's expression....I never really know if it's jiving me or what....the voice just comes out of the air.  I leaned back on the sofa and sipped my simulated bourbon, trying to think of what to say.  "So" I finally ventured "Your position is that for moral choices to have any meaning, then the multiverse must actually be a mixture of all with a capital A and nothing with a capital N?"  "Yes!" comes the enthusiastic reply.  "Well, that's nothing new, I don't think....I would say that's the common view of my species."  I'm confusing myself by this point....."Oh" says the machine.  "So you people are of the pluralist persuasion?"  "I think that's a fair conclusion" says I " Anyway, at least those of us who do think about such things most likely would agree."  "Don't you all think about such things?"  asks the machine.  "No." I must admit.

many plantation models available

After the dimensional shift program had run its course, the starliner slid into everyday spacetime, and coasted into orbit around New South.  After the tremendous success they had with New California, Planets-R-Us grabbed up the next earth-analog planet the government put on auction.....they had plenty of bucks in the revenue stream right then.  We were parked a little behind the main spacestation, and you could get a flitter over there as needed....So I put on a typical tourist rig, and got in line at the spacestation for the shuttle down to the planet surface.  Dropping through the sky, you could see great swaths of green forest, myriad blue sparkling lakes, miles of ocean beach....lots of fluffy white clouds...all very nice.  The hotel was cool, all in that "antebellum" style, is that what they call it?  Maybe there's some other more proper name for all the white columns and balconies with wrought-iron work, etc....but all the websites kept saying everything had "authentic antebellum charm".....So you sit around on verandas and drink whiskey with sprigs of mint?  Well, you could get any drink you fancy, of course.....because you are "in the bosum of Southern Hospitality".....so everything is just hunky-dory, by definition.  Just on a lark, I let some real-estate lady talk me into going to look at a place.....we took her classy drop-top flitter out away from the city, into the seemingly endless landscape of Plantation Living.  We dropped down onto a perfect lawn in front of a huge white three story place, in the classic antebellum style.....there were the apparently requisite outbuildings....I still have no idea why they do that....a barn?  Outdoor kitchen?  "Tenant Quarters".....what the hey is that?  Anyway, the model plantation mansion was a real trip inside, with all the fancy carpets and old dark furniture out of some museum, and ceiling fans?  The place had tennis courts, and a special lawn for croquet....I was impressed.  The lady really gave me her best sell, but I don't really think I'd like to live like that....not unless there was a large family thrown in with the deal to fill up all those rooms.....that one developer had 37 different models of plantations......

afternoon shuttle

The old man, with his oddly limping gait, went out onto the front porch with his drink in hand, and sat down on one of the rocking chairs.  Some clouds had come up, with a nice breeze  that smelled like the forest.....right on time, there came the familiar double-boom from the sky....the three 0'clock shuttle from the spacestation.  He leaned back in the rocker and closed his eyes, accessing the tower-cam from the spaceport just outside of town....the shuttle came into view, shimmering in a heat-haze.....the gear went down, the airbrakes deployed.....the craft hit the runway with perfection, and coasted towards the terminal.  He switched his view to the arrival zone cam, and watched as the passengers came in through the gate.  A couple of techs with the Skyservice logo on their jumpers, and a whole class of high school students who had been doing a Summer school lab in the zero grav section of the station, and their teacher....all of these were locals he had seen before.....and there was a lady who looked like some kind of business rep....and coming last, of course, a slightly stooped elderly fellow....looking about as if somewhat confused....The old man clicked out of virtual, and opened his eyes.....he drained his glass, and went back inside.  If the old fart who had just landed didn't get lost somehow, he should be here in a half hour or so.....they would have to make sure all was ready for his welcome.....

The Rabbit on the Moon

The Rabbit on the Moon, originally uploaded by Mike Black photos.

there it is!

CMB=cosmic microwave background

What's in the cosmic microwave?  The European Space Agency sent up a robot to find out....at least we didn't pay for it with stimulus money, I hope....quote:Planck's detectors will look for variations in the temperature of the CMB that are about a million times smaller than one degree – this is comparable to measuring from Earth the heat produced by a rabbit sitting on the Moon.

Do you think I can find an image of the rabbit sitting on the moon?  

Shot glass

Shot glass on the table, originally uploaded by NCL.

in morning light

took two coffins

I found a saloon not far from the livery stable, and went in to get a drink or two.  It was late morning on a Tuesday, and the place was pretty much empty.  There was the barkeep there of course, and a little dude I took to be the piano player....and a kind of  hard case looking character at the far end of the bar, with a bottle and a shot glass.  I'd bet that was his own bottle from behind the bar....he was one of those men who leaned into the bar rail like he'd been born there...he had a black hat with a band of gold pesos, an ancient buckskin shirt with fringe and leather lace, and denim britches stuffed into fancy-stitched boots, with silver spurs.  A big Texas toothpick was in a nice bead-work sheath on his left hip.  The piano dude looked like he could use a drink, so I got another glass from the barkeep, and poured him one from my bottle.  I asked him who that was down at the other end of the bar.  He leaned close and spoke low...."That's Billy Buckshot, a feller yuh don't want to ever rile up."  He took another sip of whiskey.  "Oh" I says, "Is he a dangerous man?"  "Dangerous enough" replies the dude.  "How come he's got a last name like Buckshot?" I wondered.  "Well, you can't see it from where we're standing right now, but on his right hip he's gotta sawed-off double-barrel 10 gauge hanging there.  It ain't in no kinda holster, so he don't hafta draw it you see....he can just reach his hand down and push at the sorta pistol stock he got on it, and the barrels will just spring up at cha."  Was the reply I got.  "Well" says I, "That does sound dangerous."  "Yup" says the dude "Last fella that riled up ol' Buckshot....well, he got blowed clean in half.  They had to use two coffins to bury him."  That image took me somewhat aback for a moment, but then I had to chuckle at the macabre humor of it.  Mr. Buckshot, looked up the bar at that, and gave me a hard squint.  I turned away from that look.  The tall clock near the piano started striking noon.

Light Speed

Light Speed, originally uploaded by ully-inc.

believe it

lonely in deep space

If you think that isolated farmers on the great open plains of the 19th century frontier were lonely, imagine what it's like for the space pioneers of the 22nd century.....they shoot you out as close as they can get to the speed of light, and tell you to tend the ship....that's your job, for which you will be well paid....but there's no way to get back home to ever collect your rewards....you are already lost in space and time, whether you like it or not.....the fancy quantum entanglement devices give you contact with the SolorWeb, you can do virtual social networking....but you can never touch those people, or see them face to face.....Your dedicated life support systems provide you with air and water and food and light and heat....but they cannot provide actual human contact.....that is lightyears away and agone.....and your virtual "friends" bloom and fade at great speed, for they are not whizzing along like you are....your time goes much more slowly than theirs....somebody has turned up the speed on the playback of their lives, or turned down the speed on yours....which amounts to the same thing anyway.....and then there are things on the news about how stressed the space pioneers must be, so lost and lonely.....well what the f**k do you expect, you stupid already dead reality-bound idiots!

Quantum Entanglement

Quantum Entanglement, originally uploaded by Caneles.

a tingle tangle

entanglement (not intinglement)

More recently, from the beginning of the nineties, the field of quantum information theory opened up and expanded rapidly. Quantum entanglement began to be seen not only as a puzzle, but also as a resource for communication. Imagine two parties, Alice and Bob who would like to send messages to one another over a distance. In 1993, Bennett et al. showed that if Alice and Bob each hold one of two particles which are entangled together, a quantum state can be transmitted from Alice to Bob completely by sending fewer classical bits than would be required without the entanglement. This process has been called 'quantum teleportation'. It involves not only bits for sending information, but 'e-bits', or entanglement bits, which consist of a maximally entangled pair of particles. (For details on how teleportation works, see thispage]) Other ways in which entanglement can be used as an information resource have also been discovered, for example, dense coding, cryptography and applications to communication complexity. Entanglement was found to be a manipulable resource. Under certain conditions, states of low entanglement could be purified into more entangled states by acting locally, and states of higher entanglement could be 'diluted' to give larger numbers of less entangled states.

Investigation of quantum entanglement is currently a very active area. Research is being done on measures for quantifying entanglement precisely, on entanglement of many-particle systems, and on manipulations of entanglement and its relation to thermodynamics.  Er, anyway.....they have been fussing about the entanglement of quantum something-or-others since around 1935.....what interests us here is how Old Iron Heart and his cousin the Lady Dierdre might be "of one mind" regarding the affairs of Iron Hill, even though they are far apart in terms of miles of forest travel.....well, it is speculated that mental states are in essence quantum variations....so perhaps these cousins are entangled?

thalamus

IMG_0664, originally uploaded by Mal Cubed.

very scientific.....

I only know what I read in the papers.....

from the Philadelphia Inquirer....."But what really surprised him was McDermott's thalamus, a tiny region of the brain that regulates the processing of sights and sounds and other data.  Newberg, who has scanned thousands of human brains, including meditating monks and nuns both Christian and Buddhist, told Hagerty that he has found asymmetrical thalami to be a kind of "spiritual marker," often associated with "spiritual virtuosos."  Those asymmetries are typically in the range of 3 to 5 percent.  McDermott's thalamus was 15 percent asymmetrical, the most pronounced Newberg had ever seen."   This is in an article about "neurotheology."  Hagerty expresses a sense that "the instruments of brain science are picking up something beyond this material world."  Of course, in Stoic metaphysics, we don't have to posit that the spiritual is in fact something beyond this material world.....the Stoics taught the doctrine of the Material Soul.  So we don't need any supernatural explanations, you see?  Natural explanations can, indeed must, recognize soul power, baby!

oh no!

Kaspar the Scary Clown ghost, originally uploaded by gwhughey.

bizarre tragedy

more problems with reality

Is it true that Michael Jackson had just returned from Argentina?

Oyster Hash

Oyster Hash, originally uploaded by michaeljames.

something they eat in Oregon....

a breakfast of oysters

"Arthur himself showed an example by first embracing Sansum, and afterwards Melwas, the dethroned Belgic King whom Arthur had exiled to Isca.  Melwas submitted with a lumbering grace to the kiss of peace, but he died a month later after eating a breakfast of tainted oysters.  Fate, as Merlin loved to tell us, is inexorable."----from Enemy of God (a novel of Arthur) by Bernard Cornwell.  What moral do we learn from this?  Frankly, I don't think much of a seafood breakfast anyway....except maybe kippers and scrambled eggs.  Hopefully pickled kipper won't kill you.  Or, at College, sometimes you would get trout and eggs....the Commons also had the sausages cooked with apple slices of fond memory......the Ancient Dean doesn't eat often at Commons, but does so once or twice a week, since it is customary.  Usually the staff he brought with him serves him in Quarters.....there is a good trout pond not far away.....but the trees are bare now, and soon the pond will freeze over.....under the leaden sky, some riders are on the Eastern Road....their arrival has been awaited for some months......

Old Iron Heart

Many at the College found it strange to have the Ancient Prince as the new Dean.....it was like legend had come to walk the campus.  As children we had all heard the tale of the young prince who had done his four years study, been awarded his Bachelor of Arts, and then left College Grove.....not to return to his ancestral home, but to ride off escorted by a dozen Knights of Elfheim, to be the groom of a High Fairy bride.  They had ridden under the hill to the Court of the Fae Queen.  There the Prince had wed and sired a son and a daughter, and performed deeds of both warlike and magical nature, which we have heard sung by the bards in halls and in village greens.....Eleven Summers passed for the Prince and his in Elfheim, when one came carrying word that the High Prince of Iron Hill was dead.  Duty called Iron Heart away from the glories of the Fairy Court, and away from his sweet wife and their children....he came one morn at dawn to Iron Hill, and sat himself down on the Iron Throne....and the Sacred Sisters brought the Dragon Crown, and set it on his head.  Eleven Summers had passed in Elfheim, while in our mundane realm seven times that count had sped.  The Old Prince was past four-score and ten when he left....his Crown passed to man who looked to be perhaps thirty years old, but who had been born in this same Castle almost a century agone.  At College, the curious could read his name on the rolls, alongside the names of some of their grandfathers....for it was now twenty years since Iron Heart returned to Iron Hill.  One historian had pointed out that a similar Ancient Dean had held tenure five-hundred years before, when the Old Tribes still fought long and bitter war with the Eight Princes......

old dragon

P7180128 old dragon, originally uploaded by Tantelin.

our friend

iron and dragons

With an Iron Heart and an Iron Throne, how does the clan survive with any fae blood at all, since iron causes fae blood to either freeze or boil?  Special dispensation of the Old One, who owes a large debt to our family....

fountain in the quad

fountain in Mantova, originally uploaded by Zé Eduardo....

of the Ancient College

Summer's almost gone.....

Summer's almost gone, and the students and faculty have begun to gather in College Grove....our High Prince Iron Heart of Iron Hill stands in the middle of the muddle and hustle as servitors take various items out of his new quarters, and load them into the carts heading to Old Merrymont.  And other servitors unload his own carts and mules and carry items into the ancient pile .....Back home at Iron Hill, his dear cousin the Lady Dierdre, Eldest Sister of the Sacred Order, tends the Iron Throne, and the affairs of the Realm....there is no worry there...her mind is like his mind, and what she knows, he does also, in the mystic fashion of their ancient blood.  She is half-fae, and half-mortal, as is our High Prince.  The leaves are beginning to turn on some trees, others will wait.....Iron Heart holds tight to his runestaff, focusing his powers on the feel of the place, on the mood of the College.....it is always a sort of a homecoming, when a Fellow returns to the Grove....and now it is his College, his to guide as the new Dean....an honor every Bachelor might dream of at some point in his career.....chance and time have brought him to this pass....chance and time and tradition....and Duty.  The old oaks shimmer and rustle softly to the breeze, the dark gowned denizens of the Grove go to and fro, on their own various duties....the sky is blue, and full of birdsong.....the cold clear water splashes and gurgles in the fountains of the quadrangle, it is indeed a homecoming......