Randomization

I wrote about some history a week ago as I am currently into a podcast called "The Rest is History." It's a couple of British guys that host it and they do a really good job. One thing I like about it is that each episode is about 45-60 minutes and they will often go over time. I recently listened to their one about Custer, which started as a three part series but each week they came back with more info and it turned into about eleven episode going past Custer and to the death of many of the big name first nations we know of (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, etc.) One thing that struck me, that I never thought about, was the timeline. I always thing that for America, there was independence, the extermination of the first nations, and the civil war. But Custer fought in the Civil War. People he attacked were still alive in WW2. All of that stuff is remarkably recent and more intertwined than most realize. Plus there are a lot of things that get left out of general histories, esp...

Gene Simmons. Yeah. He's in the news again. This time talking about whether or not Rap music should be in the Rock 'n Roll hall of fame. He makes two points: 1. It's not my music, I don't like it, it's just spoken word over a beat, and 2. It's not Rock music so why is it in the Rock and Roll hall of fame. Regular listeners of this blog probably know where I stand on these. For number one: Fuck you, Gene. I don't like your band. but I'll still admit they've done enough influencing to be in the hall. For number two: I mostly agree with you, but I see that the Rock 'n Roll hall of fame has morphed into just straight music hall of fame. And, as Chuck D said in a reply, that's what the nRoll part is for. Plus we'd have to dig into the conversation of what counts as Rock and/or Roll and where to draw the line and I don't want to touch that with a ten foot stick (Rap counts as rock music, Gwar belongs in the folk hall of fame). My daughter a...

I've ran out of new music and don't feel like listening to old music so I swung back over to podcasts this week. I'll skip the bitching about how Apple has separate apps for music and podcasts and just talk about what I've been listening to. I've listened to three historical events/items so far but each has been 4-5 hour long episodes so they have gone into detail. The first was about the Iranian revolution in 1979. My wife is Iranian and her great grandparents were part of the regime that was booted out. So, it was good to listen about it and it also made me aware of many things I wasn't aware about. For example, the government is based on the Qur'an so women get a lot of freedoms taken out, but it doesn't say they can't be doctors. So there are lots of doctors. It also says you can't be gay, so that is punishable by death. But it doesn't say you can't have a sex change. Now, there's way more to it than what was int he episodes, but ...

I little while ago I wrote a post about re-reading the Rama series of books. I'm a fairly quick reader, but I tend to take long breaks at random times. This means that in the long run, it can take me a long time to read a book if I walk away from it for awhile. So, this week, I decided to pry myself away from the shitty news cycle and finished up the second book and started the third. It starts about nine months after the previous books when the main character has her baby and an alien space ship. She also remembers some things from the past nine much, such as recording a video for her daughter she will never see again that is left on Earth and then rewinding the tape......in the 2200's. This made me giggle a little. Tape still has it's uses, but it's mostly for long term storage. Not a record to be send by radio waves type use. The Rama books do pretty good on this front. They are more about explaining the advanced nature of the alien ship than they are about human tec...

I have, in the past, been late when writing blog. My memory isn't great for stuff like that until the day after. My brother, Pilot, seems to be much better. He hasn't missed a Tuesday and has even posted a few times that weren't his turn. Imagine my surprise when he didn't post this week on his day. He eventually posted his late post and indicated he was sick. Poor little guy. Now, as I said above, I've done the same thing without being sick, so I don't want to judge him. Things happen and it's not the end of the world that he missed. But, imagine my shock when I found his princess diary and it told the real story! Let's listen in with our eyes below! -- Jan 20/202 5 6 Dear Diary, OMG! What a crazy day I've had. I woke up this morning, as usual, and had my breakfast. Rhonda was out back practicing her Kung Fu skills with Bruce Lee's ghost and the kids were still locked up in the basement. Ahsoka ran over to me and said "Hey, pops! Let's ...

I've talked about wanting to write more in previous posts. As it sits, I've basically just done nothing. I've got a single chapter of a story and it's not good. One of the issues is that I'm really not good at writing dialogue or what people are doing. I'm more of a technical writer. I got inspired a little back by the first Rama book cause it's mostly just a description of a world and very little dialogue or character development. But I already posted about that. The other day it hit me though. I have an idea for a large world. I enjoy building a world more than I do telling stories that happen in it. I also would like to get into technical writing more, but I have no experience at the moment. So, why not write scientific papers on the creatures and places of that world? It would be good experience and then I'd have some sort of portfolio. Of course, there are issues with this. Namely, I've never fully read a scientific paper, just snippets. So, whe...

The Kardashev scale is a method of classifying civilizational technology level. It is entirely based on the amount of energy consumed from different sources. If a species can use 100% of their planetary energy, then they are a level 1 civilization. Once they can use 100% of a star, they are level 2. Level three is reached by using 100% of a galaxy. Mankind currently sits around a 0.7 on the scale, which means we can harness and use 70% of the earths energy. I feel that's a little high since we are so geothermally untapped, but much smarter people than me came to that number. I do wonder if we will ever hit level one or if we could just skip to level two. The depths of the oceans and the interior of the planet are so difficult to get to that space travel becomes easier. We technically have all the technology we need to be able to create robots that min mercury and create solar panels and other robots. It would be a lot of money, but the tech is there. Mining to through the Earth...