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Critters Funny Stuff Gadgetology

Man’s best friend(s)

Romana and K-9I’m not the most social animal in the world, but a quick inventory of the Twitter accounts I follow has revealed that nearly half of them are robots operating on or near other planets. I just like the company of cats (on this planet) and robots (on other planets). (I also like dogs on this planet, just for the record. Soviet-era Russia launching live dogs into orbit and never bothering to return them home in one piece: not OK. Poor Laika.)

I’m sure psychoanalysts would have a field day with that.… Read more

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Home Base Music

Shooting stars and sh…tuff

whooshI spent a lot of time this weekend outside, trying to see the Peresid meteor shower. I was only rewarded with about four sightings, even though I live out in the sticks and can see the Milky Way across the night sky, but one of them looked like it was about to leave a mark. Whew. Exhilarating stuff. Two things brought my meteor-gazing to a halt: the clouds creeping in, and my own Canis Major and Canis Minor deciding that it’s playtime since I was outside.

Many years ago, I wrote and recorded a piece of music that I called Perseids for no readily apparent reason, and I can now report that it fits the experience rather well.

[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/music/percyy.mp3]

(More sonorous synthesized sounds can be found here.)

Speaking of music, I’ve spent recent weeks delving into the works of Erik Satie. It’s been a while since I “adopted” a classical composer wholesale, but it’s not unknown – in my music directory, Rachmaninoff is right above Radiohead, and Rimsky-Korsakov can be spotted between R.E.M. and the Rolling Stones, probably squirming in his seat the whole time. Actually, what’s happened in the past is that I’ve adopted a lot of Russian composers, totally by coincidence; it wasn’t like I scoured the classical section looking for someone with a vaguely Russian sounding name that I hadn’t heard of before. Apparently I’ve been bumping into Satie for quite a while without realizing it. Contemplative, quitely troubled stuff. That fits the experience of being me rather well at the moment too.… Read more

Categories
Serious Stuff

Mars, bringer of WOW

Displaying curiosityPonder this for a moment.

From a distance of a few hundred million kilometers vs. the distance from NYC to London, there will be less of a delay in seeing whether or not the new Mars rover lands safely than in seeing the Olympics in the United States (which are delayed by hours).

In both cases, it’s a hell of a long time to wait to see who won.

My money’s on Curiosity.… Read more