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A Sister Of The Blogger--Lynnora Dot Com.

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( Meme Directory Part I )

( Regular Haunts (So I Can Access Them With A Laptop Or Alternative Methods) )

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Рекламировать для порнографических вебсайтов не позволен здесь. Любые которые показывают вверх будут уничтожены.

Spammer comments will not be allowed on my Journal. Such comments will be removed on first offense. Repeat offenders or sockpuppet comments (or spam comments involving pornography, politics or drugs) will be Banned and reported to LJ authorities.

I went to the library's annual book sale and got a hardback copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which I'll probably spend the summer reading and re-reading.

What piqued my immediate interest are diagrams of the three main hypothetical starship designs of the Sixties and Seventies: Orion, Daedalus, and the Bussard Ramscoop. I'd first learned about Orion from The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo, a book I got when I was a Freshman in college--some twenty-five years after the program's cancellation following the imposition of the Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty. The Orion program centered around a rocket whose thrust was generated by atomic bomb blasts. The U.S. Air Force had already succeeded in tests with a scale model powered by conventional explosives and had started spadework on a full-size vehicle when they were ordered to drop it and move on to other things.

The full-sized ship would have been over 100 meters long, probably weighed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand tons, and have a likely crew of 35 people. And, if the program had contined, manned missions to the planets and possibly even beyond the Solar system would have begun by 1970.

Now I'm thinking about building a model of the ship and plotting out a low-budget movie asking the question: "What if an Orion had been built and secretly launched out of the Solar system then? Where could the ship be now?"

Repeating my previous Donna Summer video embeds:

( From Here To Outer Space )

( Probably Her Most Epic Hit )

( The Flipside, including 'Heaven Knows', which was a hit in its own right )

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of May 17, 2012

In the coming weeks, you will have an excellent chance to develop more skill in the art of high gossip. High gossip has almost nothing in common with the mindless prattle that erodes reputations and fosters cynicism. It's not driven by envy, pettiness, or schadenfreude. When you engage in high gossip, you spread uplifting whispers and inspirational hearsay; you speculate about people's talents and call attention to their successes; you conspire to awaken generosity of spirit and practical idealism. High gossip is a righteous approach to chatting about the human zoo. It might not flow as easily as the cheap and shabby kind -- at least at first -- but it lasts a whole lot longer and creates connections that help keep your mental hygiene sparkling clean.

Dad also found Mum's stashed copies of my sister Lynn's short-lived tabloid paper The Ponderer, of which Mum, brother Dana, and other talents including Matt Mikas and David Klein were contributors.

* The Criminal Minds finale was done as if they had a possibility of the show being cancelled. I don't think it is being cancelled, but unfortunately they jumped a lot of shark this season and I'm not as loyal a fan as I used to be.

* This place, that seemed so cozy and even cramped when Mum was around, is so much larger and colder now that she's gone.

* I now have the hard drive from Mum's computer in an external case just like I arranged for Kong's hard drive. Overday I'll show it to my mother's writer buddy and see if she's interested in finishing Jane's last book.

* Dad found a Wal*Mart gift card in Mum's purse. I took it over there to see if they would still honor it. Turns out they would--but Mum spent most of it and it's only worth $1.13 now. Golly, what's the most special thing I could possibly buy there for a dollar?

Dr. Scribbles is working on a device to move the planets of the Solar system to new orbits. To prove it, he'll set Mercury so its new orbit perpetually eclipses the Institute and puts all those fools "where the sun don't shine".

Yesterday was the first Mother's Day I spent without her in eleven years...and the start of however many I'll have without her till my own dying day. Our church service for her was Saturday, and we had a good sized crowd there for her.

There's still so much to do.

A few minutes ago her health insurance provider sent a robocall here asking for her. I'm afraid that they won't give up doing that soon, and it makes me a little angry.

A long time ago, in this journal, I related that I had a dream that I got to see a little of an alternative version of myself...another life being lived. That version of me had a different birthday, a different history, and many things I don't.

In a few hours, that other self will be celebrating Mother's Day with his wife and kids.

Of course, I have no way of knowing if his version of Jane is there with him, still alive.

I'm looking at a long dark teatime of the soul overmorrow.

Depends on him-me of course. I'd probably take him-me to the NASCAR park in Sevierville and let him drive karts and show him why I didn't become a race car driver like he dreamed.

I'm sure I'd have a lot of explaining to do.

And, with as much persuasion as I could muster, I'd tell him to take up Algebra as early as he could get it. That way he could avoid taking years of the wrong math and science classes and actually graduate high school.

I was wondering where Mum's Kobo e-reader was so this morning I got Dad to find it. It turned out that he had set it on his dresser without knowing what it was.

Tonight I finally figured out what I did wrong when it came to uploading Mum's books on it. Now they work.

It would have made her so proud and happy to see her own books on its screen. But she never got the chance.

I'm going to have a lot of times like this, I think.

Radiolab did a very good program on Artificial Intelligence; I heard it overday.

As I'm sure I said before, there is little in the way of problems that an AI could solve better than a human being as yet. Tho' I was thinking of one possibility.

Suppose a Cleverbot-variety AI were to go through your existing canon of social media output. Every face, space, tweet and blog. Every text, pic and vid. And then it would find "keys" in that content and ask you about them. Perhaps get to to think about why you say what you say. Maybe find your psychological or social "blind spots" and help you work through them.

Tennessee passed a law a couple years ago to extortcollect use taxes from Amazon.com due to sales to Tennessee residents. I got my statement for 2011 the other day, and thus was pointed to the state website to settle the matter.

https://apps.tn.gov/usetax

How much do I owe? 8¢. And I have to pay using something I don't have now...A CREDIT CARD! (All my Amazon purchases came from gift card revenue.)

This benefits the banks more than it does the state, or even the people the law is supposed to help (small Tennessee shopkeepers). Sheesh.

HERE IS GREENWOOD.

They say a pix is worth a dozen tweets.

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of May 3, 2012

Seventeenth-century physicians sometimes advised their patients to consume tobacco as a way to alleviate a number of different maladies, from toothaches to arthritis. A few doctors continued recommending cigarettes as health aids into the 1950s. This bit of history may be useful to keep in mind, Sagittarius. You're in a phase when you're likely to have success in hunting down remedies for complaints of both a physical and psychological nature. But you should be cautious about relying on conventional wisdom, just in case some of it resembles the idea that cigarettes are good for you. And always double check to make sure that the cures aren't worse than what they are supposed to fix.

Longtime readers here know I hate tobacco. And that I also hate the mass marketing of prescription drugs. I do see modern medicine through at least a little skepticism, if not cynicism.

Blue Gender. Too many central characters were killed off or went rogue, and it hit a tipping point to "why should I care what happens from here?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNKg8Ex4Xr0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoOhnrjdYOc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt2mbGP6vFI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx6_-urg5fo

Three of these four Eighties classics played over the Muzak in recent days, and I just have to give the credit/blame to Mum's ghost. I'm linking rather than embedding just because I have too much other stuff to do.

Or put another way, do I have any right to be depressed that I don't seem particularly depressed? Of course, I'm not happy, but I feel bizarrely calm and level and grounded. Given my history, I'm wondering if I should be worried. Have I done too much of a job internalizing and intellectualizing my emotions?