Where Personal and Professional Life Collide...

So there was a "Forward on Climate Change" march in Washington. You may or may not have seen coverage on the news (my folks caught some on ABC last night).

It was a march to call on President Obama to walk the walk, now that he's talked the talk, and DO something about the damage we're doing to our world, starting with an executive order to refuse the Keystone pipeline access to the US.

"We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science -- and act before it's too late." - President Barack Obama, 2013 State of the Union Address
They had hoped for 20,000 people to show up, in sub-freezing temperatures. The conservative estimate on-site was 35,000 (with upward swings to 45,000). That's 4x the number of people who showed up for the first rally. I saw young kids with their parents, I saw people in wheelchairs, I saw folk well into their 70's and 80's.  I saw, slightly paraphrasing the words of one of the First Nation speakers, "red cousins and black cousins, yellow cousins and white cousins, here today as one family."

We heard from local and national activists, we heard from politicians and Wall Street investors who see no money in the "old way" of doing things but are urging investment in alternative energies as the smart money, and we heard incredibly moving speeches from those representatives of the First Nations in Canada, talking about the damage already done, both environmentally and legally.  We marched on the White House, sometimes chanting, sometimes singing (why can no-one ever remember the last verse of "This Land is Our Land?"), sometimes talking amongst ourselves, sharing stories and plans, hopes and fears.

And polar bears.

There wasn't much media coverage - we weren't radicals, or dangerous, or particularly media-worthy, I guess.  Just a portion of the population who've looked around and thought "no.  this can't go on.  This cannot continue."  Because it's not about what we'll leave to our grandchildren any more, some thing in the distant near future.  It's today.  It's yesterday.

Once we've strip-mined and polluted the earth, killed off half the eco-system and turned the rest toxic...what then, humanity? Because for all that we explore space, hoping to find new life - and new homes - out there, there's nobody saying "oh sure, you shat in your own house, come live in ours now!"

I mean - would you?

Mainly because 3.5 hours was the amount of sleep I got last night, after crashing from my post-Mars tension/excitement/celebration. I woke up at 6am, as usual, and had what I termed a Science Hangover - which, considering all I had to drink last night was a few sips of a Celebratory Scotch - is not far from the truth.

So after a valiant attempt to get out of bed failed utterly, I gave in and crashed again for another 2 hours.

And I woke up again still grinning, thinking "MARS! We're on FUCKING MARS!"

Yes, I know it's 'only' a robot, not a manned probe. But this is how it goes - we send machines out to test the wilderness, send back the things we need to know, leave our calling card, and then ponder our next step.

We may not be able to fix things here - too many people with too many differing agendas, all screaming and scrambling for the lead. But out there? Out there, at least for now, it's about Knowing. Finding. Learning. All of us, no matter our color or creeds, focused on discovery.

And the hope that maybe, some day, we'll be able to become real grownups, citizens of the universe.


In the meanwhile, I will drink my coffee, and try to get back on some sort of Monday Schedule...

Ladies and gents and writers of all ages, your bit of Cool News for the Day, via NPR:
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Here's the story: About 13 miles from this spindle of rock, there's a bigger island, called Lord Howe Island.

On Howe, there used to be an insect, famous for being big. It's a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large — as big as a human hand — that the Europeans labeled it a "tree lobster" because of its size and hard, lobsterlike exoskeleton. It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Local fishermen used to put them on fishing hooks and use them as bait.

Then one day in 1918, a supply ship, the S.S. Makambo from Britain, ran aground at Lord Howe Island and had to be evacuated. One passenger drowned. The rest were put ashore. It took nine days to repair the Makambo, and during that time, some black rats managed to get from the ship to the island, where they instantly discovered a delicious new rat food: giant stick insects. Two years later, the rats were everywhere and the tree lobsters were gone.

Totally gone. After 1920, there wasn't a single sighting. By 1960, the Lord Howe stick insect, Dryococelus australis, was presumed extinct.

There was a rumor, though.

Link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years?

I was going to post this morning about the Scotch tasting we went to last night.

I was going to mention that this Friday's Practical Meerkat is up.

I was going to mention that I'm interviewed on I SHOULD BE WRITING.


Instead this morning we woke to the news of the massive earthquake in Japan. As The Guy is a seismologist, this sort of changed the tone of the day - by 7:30 he was on the phone with his workplace, trying to track down people, canceling meetings and rounding up experts to throw to the media wolves (he got thrown too, I'm told).

We both know people in that area of Japan. We know people in the paths of the expected tsunamis. I have heard from most of my friends, by now, and they are all well... but I am once again reminded how small and dangerous this world is. Small and dangerous and beautiful, too.


Be gentle with yourselves. Be kind to others. And this weekend, celebrate being alive.


[and, if publicly-appropriate, come back and share how you did it!]

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

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


Washington, DC - December 9, 2008

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

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

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

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

The full text and related information can be read here:
http://tinyurl.com/54vb2q

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

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

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



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

( the pros, the cons, the decision )


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

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

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

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

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

Or maybe I need more coffee. Yeah.



And a bonus photo, for those interested:

Coke bottle shown actual size.

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

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

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


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



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

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


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

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

ASTRONOMERS FIND RING OF DARK MATTER WITH HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

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