15 Jun 2007

More Flying Stories

posted in: Flying, quirky, technology | 0

I love flying stories, don’t you? Not a day goes by that I don’t think about how much I’d like to get back to flying, if only I had the time and the money. Well, someday. Meanwhile, though, here are a couple of items that crossed my path recently.

Remember those personal flyers that populated science fiction for decades, and seemed inevitable that we would all own? George Jetson had one, why not us, right? Well, NASA is sponsoring research on it. Here’s a glimpse of our future Personal Air Vehicles.


Those personal aircraft, of course, will be very sedate and safe. (Heh-heh, we hope.) Here are a few videos and image collections of flying experiences that are anything but:

  • Video of an amazing landing of an F-15 in what any sane person would call an unflyable condition. Note: you need to get past the first couple of minutes before it really gets interesting at the end. Do watch it to the end. (Are we sure it wasn’t Starbuck flying this thing?)
  • Photos of planes landing at the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong
  • A very brief video of a 747 landing in a crosswind at Kai Tak
  • You want crosswind landings? Here are some Boeing test pilots landing 777s and 747s in high crosswind tests. I’ve lost track of the original email that had supporting details, but apparently they do these tests at an out of the way place in South America, where they not only get nasty crosswinds, but it won’t be so embarrassing if they bend some airplanes!

Now that’s flying.

“Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.” —David Lloyd George

25 May 2007

More Cool Science

posted in: quirky, science, technology | 0

New Scientist has a bunch of interesting mini-articles in today’s newsletter. And if you follow these links, you’ll see a lot of other interesting articles listed in the sidebars. Take a few minutes to browse; there’s some cool stuff.

Here’s a sampling:

Here’s one that’s more sobering than cool, but it deserves reading: Taking stock of Earth’s dwindling mineral wealth. (This one you can only read a partial of unless you’re a subscriber, but the partial is pretty interesting in itself.)

“Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.”
—Robert A. Heinlein

11 Apr 2007

Writing Blues

posted in: personal news, quirky, Sunborn, writing | 0

You know, sometimes rewriting can be kind of fun, and sometimes it really sucks. Currently, I am in the latter phase, trying to redraft the opening section of Sunborn in a way that will grab new readers, as opposed to smoothly moving returning Chaos Chronicles readers back into the story. I’ve been working on a new version for a few weeks now, and ran one attempt past my writing group tonight. While there was some disagreement among the group about what worked and what didn’t, there was nevertheless general agreement that it’s not there yet. I’m still waiting to hear what my editor thinks, but I suspect he’ll agree. I told him that trying to restructure the opening felt like trying to fit bricks into a Mason jar. That’s still pretty much what it feels like.

Rrrrr. I shoulda’ been a cat herder.

10 Apr 2007

Saturn—Curiouser and Curiouser

posted in: quirky, science, science fiction, space, writing | 0

So, I don’t pretend to really know what’s going on out there at Saturn, but the images coming back from Cassini really are telling a strange tale. On the one hand, we have Saturn’s north pole:

which is clearly a hex-wrench socket of alien design, though we don’t know its function with certainty (could be to open up the planet, could be to adjust its orbit, could be something even more fiendish).

And then we have Saturn’s south pole, which at first glance appears to be the place where you stick a Saturn-sized inflation needle to maintain internal pressure with, presumably, a giant bicycle pump:

But a closer look reveals that the south pole is…well, you decide:

Now you just tell me that’s not an eye. The window onto the soul of Saturn. And if it’s not related to a whale’s eye, I’ll eat my hat.

Who says the space program doesn’t pay its own way with dividends of new knowledge. Remember Senator Proxmire? If he’d had his way, we wouldn’t know any of this stuff.

By the way, these photos are all from JPL and NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. I love those guys, don’t you?

28 Mar 2007

By Saturn’s Hexagon!

posted in: quirky, science, science fiction | 0

At last—a new oath for space opera heroes! And a really cool feature on Saturn’s north pole—an enormous hexagonal feature, viewable in the infrared, that rotates along with the planet’s rotation. Check out the Saturn hexagon at JPL’s web site, including motion picture images from the Cassini spacecraft. (Thanks, Charlza, for the link.)

There are the usual typical scientific attempts by scientists to explain the phenomenon (atmospheric vortexes, dynamical patterns, blah-blah-blah). Nobody even mentions the most obvious explanation:

It’s a giant hex-wrench socket left by aliens! They’re storing the brains of abductees in the center of Saturn!

My God, what else might they be doing???

6 Mar 2007

Jet-Man, and Daisy the Goose

posted in: Flying, quirky, science, technology | 0

Two interesting videos crossed my radar today, both involving flying. One is about a man who has found a way to become a jet bird, and the other is a goose who thinks she’s human.

Jet-Man is Yves Rossy, from Switzerland. When I first saw the email from my friend Keith, I thought it was going to be someone wearing the latest version of the Buck Rogers jet pack that’s good for hovering around a parking lot but not too much else. But no—this is a guy who straps himself into a set of jet-powered wings and pushes himself out of an airplane like a skydiver…and then spends five minutes zooming and soaring like Rodan, or maybe the Jetsons. Watch the video—it’s pretty amazing. He has a web site, but it’s all in French, so I wasn’t able to read any of the background info. (You can watch the video there, too, if you have trouble at the other link.)

And then…there’s Daisy, the Canada goose. Daisy imprinted on a guy named Dan Steffan, and she likes to go flying with him—he in his speedboat, and she flying alongside. When she gets tired of flying, she perches next to his beagle Sam and enjoys the ride. (That dog sure reminds me of our dear departed beagle Sam!)

Edit Oct 2013: Something made me revisit this story, and I learned to my sadness that both Daisy and Dan Steffan are gone from this world. You can view the whole story here.

2 Mar 2007

Strange Golf Toy, and the God Particle

posted in: quirky, science, technology | 0

I don’t play golf. But I got a phone call yesterday from a software developer I once worked with, a voice-recognition wiz who created a very compact little program called Voice Lookup for Pocket PCs. (When I say I worked with him, I mean that I wrote the user’s guide for him, not that I had anything to do with developing the software.) He’s been working on this software for years, making about as much money as the average beginning fiction writer (of for that matter, the average veteran fiction writer, which is to say, not much). But a new product is about to appear, featuring his “talk to the chip” software—a golf cap that contains embedded GPS equipment, microphone, speakers, and voice-recognition capability.

A golf cap with GPS, you say? Yes, and its purpose isn’t to keep you from getting lost on the links; it’s to put a little advisor in your ear, which can tell you exactly how far you are from the hole, or from the water hazard! I’m not making this up! You can read about it at http://www.skykapllc.com. (Click Products to get the low-down.)

Meanwhile, in other news, scientists may at last be on the trail of the “God particle”—also known as the Higgs boson. You can read about that at the New Scientist.

16 Feb 2007

Fun in the Ice

posted in: personal news, quirky | 0

It’s been a funny winter, here in the Boston area. Here it is, mid-February, and we still haven’t had a proper snowfall. On the other hand, yesterday was a carnival of sleet, sleet mixed with snow, and freezing sleet. Last night and today, everything was ice—including the snowplow ridges at the ends of the driveways. Ours was no treat to get out of, but we were better off than a neighbor who decided to drive over the ridge.

Here is the result, caught by my cell phone camera.

27 Jun 2006

Is It Live Or Is It Photoshop?

posted in: quirky, science, science fiction | 0

The following picture has been emailed to me twice now. Maybe some of you have seen it, too. The caption that came with the photo said, in part: “This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point.”

It’s a lovely picture, isn’t it? Don’t you envy the people who were up in the Arctic and saw this? Or wait—did they? Hmmm. What do you think? Is it real or not? Why?

Think about it. I’ll wait. And don’t do a web search on it—that’s cheating. See if you can figure it out from the internal evidence.

Tum-de-tum-te-dum-dum….

I think it’s staring you in the face.

What do you think?

(Don’t make it too complicated.)

I’ll be down below here where you’re ready to talk about it.

Hoom hom.

Okay, that’s long enough. Answer: It can’t be real. The moon is the same angular size as the sun when viewed from Earth–which is why we get beautiful solar eclipses when the moon moves in front of the sun. Its apparent size in the sky varies only slightly due to the eccentricity of its orbit around Earth.

Images are very powerful, aren’t they? And we’re all conditioned to believe that if they look real, they are.

Changing world.

P.S. Only after writing this did I do a search on the image and found that it has some interesting history. It’s a work of art called “Hideaway” by Inga Nielsen. You can read a bit about it at hoax-slayer.com, and see some of her other beautiful artwork. This one was even featured on June 20 on Astronomy Picture of the Day, which I look at regularly; but I guess I missed it that day.

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