The Desert Mermaid

Still getting used to my new Space Place schedule,* but by god I'm having a great time. Got to play with the dome theater today--you know, the big motion-sick domes that can give you some great night sky tours. You can tour the solar system and get 3D From Space views of all the planets and moons and little space greebles and a few of the stars floating around out there, or you can do sky views from any of the aforementioned things. Or you can show their orbits. And while they default to real time, you can run them to any length of time. You can mark all the constellations and then charge hundreds of thousands of years into the future till they've scrambled into unrecognizable scribbles, or you can head out to Rigel and render them unrecognizable thataway.** Or you can stand on Mars and watch Phobos and Deimos do their weird little zigzag, or watch Jupiter change phases from Europa.

And then I found a bug.

I wanted to see how the Earth looked from Tranquility Base, and how its phases might change over the course of the month. SO I set up the simulation, cranked the digital dial, and--

--the Earth started moving.

Not, like, the wiggly changes you'd expect. Darn thing was cruising from horizon to horizon. I don't know how much you nerds know about tide-locking, but, uh, it's not supposed to do that. It's supposed to hang in the sky and change phases. We have whole lessons devoted to how the Moon faces the Earth, dangit. And now I'd gone and broken the moon.

Naturally, as this was like Day 3 of me using the dome, I figured this was a user error. SO I asked The Boss about it, and he did everything right, and--god dammit, the Earth was still moving.

It took us a while to figure out why. Finally we realized that the dial we were using to speed up time also moved us around on the surface of the Moon. The other dials, like the daily one I used when watching Mars's moons or Jupiter's phases, leave you in one place, but the yearly one sends the viewer's location just zooming all over the place.

"I think you found a bug!" The Boss said. "I'll talk to the computer guy about this!"

"I HOPE it's a bug," I said. "I really don't want to have broken it."

Really, though, I'm sort of stupidly pleased that knowing a bit about astronomy actually made me savvy to the problem. Plus, we managed to finagle a way around it so I still got to see the Earth phases. And now it's Somebody Else's Problem, so I'm left with nothing but smugness. Good times.


*For example, I keep forgetting when it's Tuesday, so my torn_world updates have suffered. Sorry, Ellen!

**An experience that holds sentimental value for me after reading all those sci-fi books where the seasoned space captains lament that they're so far from Earth they don't even have constellations anymore.

Tonight's Cosmos was especially excellent. The stuff about panspermia was the most fun (bouncing bacteria!) and always gets my recently re-revved sci-fi brain sparking,* but I also liked that the inevitable exhortation to not be so bloody shortsighted with our own species ended on an optimistic note. Sure there are stubbornly obtuse people refusing to think more broadly, but I like to think that they're a small minority. And, of course, I'm trying to do what I can to help, too.

Hope this is the sort of stuff I get to talk about at Space Place. Got a tour of it the other day. I think I'm gonna have FUN working there. If I get to basically tell kids how awesome the universe is, well, I'll be helping the next generation NOT to be so obtuse. I think that's a goal worth going for.


*DOCTORS PLOT SOLUTION, Y'ALL. THIS BOOK IS STILL GETTING WROTE.

What I Learned Since The Winter Solstice

• The Cooking Hypothesis suggests that the invention of cooking precipitated a rapid evolutionary change in humans, allowing them to more efficiently process nutrients and, of course, growing bigger brains. I always said cooking was an important part of humanity, dangit!


• Nancy Kerrigan was filmed right after being attacked sobbing and asking "Why? Why?"--and a lot of people thought she was being a wimp or a drama queen because she was only bruised. Dude, it still hurts, but quite apart from that, when you get attacked, it's probably TERRIFYING and it HURTS YOUR FEELINGS.


• The difference between triple axels, triple spins, triple lutzes, etc., has to do with where you push off from and what direction you're facing and okay fine I've already forgotten.


• Flavoring sodas is a lot like brewing tea. Really sugary tea.


• But brown sugar makes them taste rather bitter.


• Also, soda-brewing is similar to making beer, except you don't let the yeast go far enough to make alcohol.


• Furthermore, there is a lot of argument over just what the "cream" in "cream soda" refers to. Vanilla? Adding cream to the soda? Or cream of tartar? It's a HISTORY MYSTERY.


• In tangentially-related soda discoveries, SodaStream is a company fraught with political tensions and controversy.


• Cloth pads and panty liners are surprisingly expensive, but also surprisingly worth it.


• There is a constellation in the Southern Hemisphere called "The Poop." Yes, it refers to a ship's stern (poop deck), BUT STILL. HURRRR.


• There are, naturally, all sorts of recipes for Ent-Draught on the internet.


• Mainlining Atop The Fourth Wall has taught me something I always rather thought: I have terrible comic-reading comprehension. I do okay with some, mostly in comic strip form, but it takes me a long time to parse each page, way longer than it takes to read straight prose, so if I'm going to read a comic, I have to be committed. And even then I have trouble regarding them critically.*


• I did learn, however, that lots of people find it extremely difficult to keep comic continuity straight. Comic writers, for instance. Case in point: Donna Troy.


• The director of Tremors is Ron Underwood, who got his start in the film industry making educational shorts for Barr Films--such as one of my favorite Rifftrax-featured shorts, Library World.


• My mom, who watched very little TV as a kid, nevertheless has strong opinions about what Mr. Peabody's voice sounds like.


• Mork & Mindy was a spinoff of Happy Days.  Clearly, I never watched either of them.


• Getting feedback on your novel can be a mixed bag. You get excited that you can make it better, but frustrated when you can't tell if the feedback makes sense.


• Publishing a serial story online gets more difficult with each installment because there's a lot to keep track of. BUT DAMMIT IT'S STILL POSSIBLE.


• You can unclog standard drain clogs with the use of science fair volcano technology.


• After you turn into the left-turn-lane, it's legal to drive 500 freaking feet in that lane. Which is almost a whole block even here in Salt Lake City.


• The Beautiful Creatures movie might be adapted from a novel of the same name, but don't let that fool you. It is clearly a remake of The Touch of Satan.


• The first female-directed movie ever to gross more than $1 billion is Frozen. Which is awesome, but dang, it took a while to get there. Let's hope this is a good precedent!

*Interestingly, though, I read a lot of Archie comics as a kid. It fascinated me the same way 1950s Educational Shorts fascinate me--it shows some weird whitebread cultural ideal that somehow I can't look away from.

So they've found that there's water in Martian soil, but that it'll take some processing to actually get to it. Well, that'll be handy once we get up there and start to HOLY SHIT WAIT A SECOND.

MOISTURE FARMERS. The water is eventually going to have to be extracted by MOISTURE FARMERS.

That's right. We are one step closer to living in a Star Wars universe.

God DAMN, science is good.

Mom and I went to see Phil Plait give a guest lecture at the planetarium this evening!*

His topic was asteroids, since, you know, they keep trying to slam into us, and that is unsafe. He's an entertaining lecturer. His critiques on Deep Impact vs Armageddon always make me happy. And then he passed out a big chunk of iron meteor for us to take a look at, which was awfully brave of him.

The Q&A was brief--blessedly so, because Utah audiences are ASSHOLES. The first dude was a wise guy who as far as I could tell was trying to wedge in a plug for Budweiser. The second guy got hold of the microphone and immediately went stark raving Time Cube Guy:

GUY: My question is about how important it is that everyone read my website.
PLAIT: Uh huh ... ?
GUY: For example, homeopathy. It's a thing. You address it, and I have problems with something about the way you do. Have a tortured metaphor about Big Gulps! There are people being KILLED!
PLAIT: Um ...
GUY: Also, I don't want to be offensive, but let's start dissing Mormons!
AUDIENCE: DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION, DUDE?
PLAIT: *recovering* These are complex issues that I can't address in such a short time frame and thank you for coming good-bye ...
GUY: WHARRGARBL
PLANETARIUM DIRECTOR: Phil Plait, everyone! Now get the hell out of this theater, there's a movie showing in fifteen minutes.

At that point the audience burst into Crazy Guy Drowning Applause, and I dashed down to the front to act as a diversion. I had a legitimate reason--since I was in the very last seat in the nosebleed section, I was now Keeper Of The Meteor. So I jumped on the dais, handed it back to him ("Here's your meteor! It smells like money now!" "I know, right? Weird, huh?"), then went out to wait for him to sign my book.

It is funny to meet and chat with someone with whom you have a celebrity relationship. After all, you feel you know that person quite well, since you read their blog and books and things. It's easy to forget that they are unaware of you. You're all like HI PALBERT LET US GO OUT FOR BURGERS AND THEN WATCH MST3K LIKE WE ALWAYS DO IN MY HEAD and they're thinking, Damn I wonder how long till I can go to bed. I hope Wharrgarbl Guy doesn't corner me again. Next!

So instead of launching into a discussion of GAMMA RAY BURSTS AMIRITE BUDDY? I just asked him what the correct pronunciation of "Pleiades" is and a quick question about a moon for one of my stories.

He did like that my name was Amelia, though. I forgot that there's an Amelia in Doctor Who. No matter how awkward the setting, man, nerds can always bond.


*Once we had straightened out that the Bad Astronomer is not, in fact, a bad astronomer and would be quite fun to listen to.

That's a lot of planets.

I'm starting to wonder if we might actually find alien life while I'm still around to witness it. Sure, we probably won't GET to it, but then I never really thought we'd be spotting planets at this point, anyway. It would be amazing to check out some other lifeforms even if they're just little one-celled wonders, but I'd be pleased just to know for sure that it's out there. It seems statistically absurd that at least ONE other planet wouldn't have something growin' on it.

Hey, I can dream.

So the Neil Armstrong display we had at work is already down, leaving behind a rather hollow feeling.

At first I was a little surprised: I didn't think I'd be quite so broken up about his death.* But the moment I got the news, it brought home, in ways that XKCD chart could not, that at this point the most astounding thing we've ever done is something in the past. Neil didn't open a floodgate. It was just a blip.

On the one hand, I'm perversely glad--he lived his whole life as a unique, mind-boggling explorer. Moonwalkers aren't exactly commonplace, so he kept a distinction in life and death that we might not have perceived had we continued traveling there and established permanent bases or an amusement park WITH BLACKJACK! AND HOOKERS! or something.**

But on the other hand, I really hope his death does for others what it did for me--reminds us that if we don't do something soon, we are going to run out of people who can remember standing on ANOTHER FUCKING PLANET. And we need people who know, in the way only experience can teach you, that IT CAN BE DONE. I don't want to lose that certainty. I don't want to have to start over.

So I toast you: Neil and the other three vanished Moon Men, and another toast to the eight we still have. You guys know it's possible. Keep reminding us.


*Possibly because I wasn't entiredly convinced he could die. The other Apollo dudes were, y'know, dudes, but I've been under the subconscious impression that the Apollo 11 guys were selected because they were indestructible.

**Of course, even now some of his distinction has waned rather patheticlally. I went to work on August 25th and kept telling people "Neil Armstrong died!" and everyone under 40 replied with "Aww, after all this steroid scandal, too!"

MY SISTER while watching the Curiosity landing: The guy in the red over there is feeling stupid because he forgot it was Blue Shirt Day at NASA. "Oh, wait, that was TODAY?!"

MOM: Nah, he's just the expendable guy. They always have one in case anything goes wrong.


... Yeah, so we've corrupted Mom. I kinda like it.

A day late, but gimme a break—yesterday was as bonkers as Monday. Anyway, here’s …

What I Learned Since The Winter Solstice

• Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had lupus.
• In other WTF music deaths, Melvin Franklin, the awesome bass singer from my favorite band, died of necrotizing fasciitis—the FLESH-EATING VIRUS.
• The platypus’s bill is electrosensitive.
• Quinoa comes in all the colors!
• Friendship bracelets work on the same knot-tying principles as macramé, except for some reason they’re a lot more fun.
• Gliese 436b is an ice planet with a surface temperature of 800˚F. Yes, that means it’s a planet of hot ice.
• Gallbladder surgery can be avoided with magic purple stuff!
• If you watch enough of them, it’s possible to date old western movies to within three years of their release.
• Scientists have spliced spider genes into goats, making spidergoats whose milk can be processed into spider silk. And the spiders aren’t even radioactive.
• Even turning into a skid won’t always save your car from blunt force trauma.
• Wearing a seatbelt can save you from a lot of injury, but it may give you a purple boob if your car has a front-end impact.
• There are three timelines in the Zelda universe, splitting with Ocarina of Time. In one, Ganon got the Triforce and was defeated by grown-ass Link. In another, little Link tipped everyone off to Ganon’s shenanigans (shenaniganons?) and Ganon didn’t get to become the King of Evil. In the third, Link failed and the sages had to seal Ganon into the Sacred Realm.
• The receptionist from Monsters, Inc. has a MEAN older brother.
• The brain-eating amoebas are IN YOUR TAPWATER RIGHT NOW. RUN.
• Contadina sauce is the best for pizza.
• Writing a synopsis for your own book is never easy.
• Bomber jackets can be amazingly warm.
• People seriously believe that monitoring the state of my reproductive system is a serious job requiring lots of government resources.
• THERE IS A SPACE OPERA VERSION OF THE HOBBIT.