The Insignificance of Earth
I’ve always found it profoundly interesting how people on this little planet think of themselves as so utterly important. So I thought I would write a post about just how insignificant we are in comparison to the universe, an idea spawned by this link.Earth is but one planet in a our solar system. Our solar system has 8 planets–Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune–since Pluto is no longer a planet. Thanks stupid scientists and your anal criteria. There are loads of asteroids, comets, etc. too. Of our 8 planets, 6 of them have moons–one for Earth, two for Mars, 63 for Jupiter, 60 for Saturn, 27 for Uranus, and 13 for Neptune. Our Solar System has one sun.Our sun is a star in the Milky Way Galaxy. There are billions upon billions of other starts in our galaxy, and millions of them are similar to our sun. There are hundreds of confirmed exo-planets–planets around other stars. Our galaxy is one of billions of other galaxies in our universe. In those galaxies there are billions upon billions of other stars, and since the Universe is so vast, this means there are so many stars and so many chances for life out there, that the thought that we would have been only intelligent life to emerge is absurd. (Note that we probably will never see those other lifeforms).Now, here is where things get even more ridiculous in regards to our insignificance. Scientists are theorizing that our universe is not the only one out there. Now this could mean that maybe there are just many universes that act as big bubbles in the vastness of space, sort of like galaxies are in our universe, or it could mean that alternate dimensions are at work. This all sounds very crazy, but there is some real strength to the theories, most particularly the whole deal with the ten dimensions.So how’s that for putting things into perspective?
Updates, Changes, and New Writing Projects
So I am officially moved in to my new place for the next couple years. Well, at least for the next year. There is a good possibility I will be spending some considerable time in New Zealand next year, but we’ll see. Things are still a bit hectic. Some things are not yet unpacked, and things are a little misplaced and misshapen. I’m in a smaller room than I was before. You can see somewhat how things are progressing in some of the images at the end of this post. It’s not perfect, but it will certainly do, and at least I have DSL, a roof, TV, my beautiful animals, and my schooling to look forward to!So given that, it’s been a rather stressful couple of weeks. Now for an update on, well, stuff. I’m reading Leven Thumps and the Whispered Secret for SQT’s blog. It’s a wonderful book and if anyone hasn’t read the first you should. I also got a laptop, which I’ll get a picture of eventually. I need it of course, because I’ll be on campus quite a lot during the week. Now, for the darker news. My blog has been getting a few comments from people from TeenageWriters, a website I was a part of. Well, I am no longer a part of the website due to issues that I don’t think need to be repeated in full detail, but I will give the gist of why this happened. I was the debate mod at TW. Recent happenings were causing the upper mods to begin breaking apart and I got dragged into the fray. Certain members proved to be incapable of trying to find a compromise, some members were trying to understand what was going on, and others were trying to explain it. Ultimately what happened was that all the upper mods were split right down the middle because of immaturity and selfishness. Everyone was bickering, everyone was arguing, and when someone tried to bring the argument to a close and resume finding solutions, the same people would continue bickering. So, nothing got done. Then a few members came back who had left before, some things were said behind my back, and I realized pretty quick with the beginning of ‘mod elections’ that things were going from bad to extremely horrible at TW. So, I made the decision to leave so as not to have to deal with the worsening condition of the site and the idiocy of holding ‘mod elections’, which proved actually to bring things even further down. I have left, several other members have left, and people who were very important to the site are now considering leaving permanently. So, that’s that. The Anthology for the website is basically dead. I’ve pulled all my material off the blog and intend to place it elsewhere, and it’s just a very bad experience. There will be more about this later, but for now, that’s that. Now for some changes. I have a new email. If you click the “Contact Me” link on the left there it will have you send to the new email. For now it is a yahoo.com account. That may change again, but because my sbcglobal.net account will be going away I have to switch up. I have to start forwarding about 300 emails too. I also recently had a short story reviewed by Zen Pen and at some point soon I’ll have to put a summary of what was said. The short version is that it was good stuff, but with some things that really got me thinking. Now for my writing. I’ve got a few projects in the works now. I’m still working on my short stories. I am hoping to get several stories in final working order so I can start sending them out to magazines. I think I’ll end up with about 4 or 5 good stories all going out at once. The Spellweaver of Dern is still in the plotting stage. I’m a bit stuck on it, but at some point I’ll have to sit down and work out the entire plotline. I’ve taken an old unfinished story and have started turning it into a novel. It’s a cross genre piece taking a lot of elements from both science fiction and horror, and there are little bits of fantasy in there, in some ways. I’m not sure how it will work but I have two storylines working right now and I am really enjoying writing it That pretty much completes that. Now for pictures! All the ones of the bay and nature and what not are actually from the UC Santa Cruz campus. Hope you enjoy them. All the pictures of a room are ones of my new room. Those are the early unpacking photos. Things are a bit different now of course. Enjoy!
Art is Awesome!
This is topical because it’s Scifi art! I was over at Astrona today and there were a series of videos of this spraypaint artist that does things with spraypaint I didn’t think were possible. You need to to check it out. The first video is totally amazing! I especially liked the part when he started using fire to make what I assume was the gloss. Also it seems that Michael Capobianco of SFWA has issued a statement regarding basically how SFWA intends to continue to protect author’s rights here. I pretty much agree. One blunder should not change how SFWA intends to protect its authors. Of course they messed up, but that surely doesn’t mean we should condemn the organization entirely. They’ve been around forever. Couldn’t hurt to be nice to them a bit.Now for some really bizarre news thanks to this Universe Today article. Sometimes stars eat up comets, asteroids, and planets, and sometimes stars get eaten up. Apparently, and I’m no expert here, scientists have discovered an instance of a star literally being eaten alive. Well, perhaps not literally, since a star isn’t a live, but you catch my drift. Usually when you hear about stars being destroyed, it’s either because they’re at the end of their life or a lovely black hole or bigger star has taken care of them. Well, in this case, it’s something a little smaller at work–a pulsar. The irony in this situation is that a pulsar is actually the remains of a star, rapidly spinning and emitting large amounts of electromagnetic radiation let off in pulses of radio waves. That’s a pretty simple version. In any case, this particular pulsar has been sucking the life out of this other star. Initially astronomers were puzzled as to why the pulsar was speeding up. Generally they accelerate and then dwindle down. But astronomers knew that something had to be feeding the pulsar. Further study proved there was a object, and when they really looked, they realized that it was another star, rather what they initially thought was a planet. They believe that the star was already quite old, probably at the end of its lifespan anyway in the white dwarf stage, but the little pulsar sucking away all the leftover material is truly wreaking havoc. Today they’re so close that the pulsar produces a tidal bulge on the surface of the dead star, siphoning material away. Sometimes there’s so much mass accumulated that it piles up and explodes as the outburst that led astronomers to the discovery in the first place.Don’t think of the companion as the planet. “Despite its extremely low mass, the companion isn’t considered a planet because of its formation,” says researcher Christopher Deloye of Northwestern University. “It’s essentially a white dwarf that has been whittled down to a planetary mass.” Now how is that for a rude neighbor?
Sad News For the Week and Some Happier Stuff
I just found out today that Lloyd Alexander and Madeleine L’Engle died this year. Read the post here at Wands and Worlds. Also here is the USA Today reports for Lloyd Alexander and Madeleine L’Engle. Sad day indeed for me. Both wonderful writers who did much for literature. For happier news I guess:Here is a neat bit on the Voyager spacecraft. I love the image. Very Scifi :).Also an interesting read on magic is here at Karen Lee Field’s blog. Good stuff there. As part of my column at the TeenageWriters Blog, I’ve started an eight part series on beginnings. The first of them is here. Feel free to check it out! I also wrote a bit about the importance of places like TeenageWriters, Critique Circle, and the like here. Also, at some point this weekend I’m probably going to babble about the latest SFWA issue. Some of you know about it already, but I feel like adding my two cents, even though I’m not a part of SFWA cause I don’t fit into their strict guidelines yet. Enjoy the links!
New Design and Writing
Some of you who visit here may have noticed that the look of my blog has changed. This is only the start of the changes for it. I’ve decided to stick with Blogger for now. I imagine that while WordPress might have some amazing features, such features will end up being a part of Blogger anyway, and the idea that I can edit and change just about anything for free on Blogger is more important to me than having some of the neat features of WordPress under restriction.First and foremost, what do you think thus far? I’ve added the left hand sidebar and was trying to figure out how to add another bar so that the left is identical to the right. This was hopefully to reduce the length of all the information so it is a little more accessible for people. Does it look okay? I don’t want it to be incredibly cluttered and hopefully it isn’t that way. The idea is so that things look a little smoother without a bunch of annoying buttons and junk or an endless sidebar.What other improvements might you be interested in seeing? I’m contemplating trying to replace the current banner with something a little more flashy. Nothing spectacular, but certainly something that might be a little more ‘me’ in regards to the blog and what I’m using this blog for. I have an idea how to put it up there, but it will take me quite some time to come up with something that I actually like to put there. I’m not great with Photoshop so either I will have to learn some tricks or have to make due with what I know. Most of my experience with Photoshop is generally randomness that becomes art, or in the instance of some of my space ‘paintings’ some predefined methods that I fiddled with to get different effects. I would use those methods except this blog isn’t really an SF blog and I don’t know if space type stuff would be good for it. But, we’ll see. Now, currently I’m not writing anything. Mostly I’m editing and critiquing. I have several stories that are in need of some final edits and several that are going to some groups I’m a part of for crits. I have a lot of ideas mulling around in my head and I think before I start really digging in The Spellweaver of Dern, I want to get some other stuff on the page first. My goal is to start The Spellweaver of Dern around Christmas. The problem with starting sooner is that I want to be properly prepared with the story this time. WISB is going to have to go through some extensive edits, which means in the next month or so all the chapters will be pulled off. Those that are reading it may of course send me emails asking about the project, etc. WISB is not in a perfect state at the moment, obviously, but I intend to make it much better.So, for now I’m working on other projects. Never fear, much will be done for the world in the satin bag. We’ll meet James again, and Pea, Triska, Darl, Iliad, and of course Laura. We’ll see a little more of this Captain Norp fellow and actually find out what and who he is, and more about who Darl is will be revealed. There will be many surprises and many things will be answered. The Lean will show up again, because the Lean must. I have to think a lot on this to figure out the best way to present all these things. The book may or may not be considerably longer than WISB. I don’t know yet. That depends on where the characters take me.So, stay tuned to the blog, because other stuff will be discussed!
Official Notice of Nothing Whatsoever
Alright all, I’ve sat around arguing with myself for the past week and a half now about whether to jump to WP or not. SQT has given me some great advice on what I could do. As of this moment I am doing nothing whatsoever. I’ve searched the net for an easy template to fiddle with that has a built in top bar (which you apparently can have with Blogger and which I can actually create alternate blogger accounts to go with those links), but quite honestly, it’s all a lot of work I’m not willing to do for a blog, at least not right now with my schedule and with all that is going on.So I have some questions.Is anyone really all that bothered with the layout now? Are there things you would like to see improved? These are serious questions. It won’t hurt my feelings if you mention what you don’t like. In fact, I would appreciate it if someone said somethingOne thing I was considering is using a 3 column version of this particular template, but at the same time I think such a template would be rather cluttered. Another thing I’m considering is trying to figure how to stretch the header bar and the section where all the post text shows up across the left side so it is somewhat larger. I don’t know how to do that, but maybe someone else does. What about a different template that is a 3 column? Would 3 column with small left and right columns and a larger text section look okay? My hope is to at least make this blog look more original. I don’t want to have a template a million other people have. So, what are you thoughts? In other news the TW Anthology is technically coming to a close. I’ve accepted 3 fiction submissions–all rather good I think–and 5 poems–which were phenomenal poems to be honest and were instant acceptances without even an iota of thought. The deadline obviously is right around the corner. Yes, there is a possibility that I will be extending the deadline to a later date. However, this is pending what happens over this weekend, obviously. I’m also currently reading Crystal Rain by Tobia Buckell and will finish that this weekend so I can get to Ragamuffin. I’ll be doing all book reviews at SQT’s review blog. I’ve done one review there already. It’s for Spin State by Chris Moriarty. Check it out here! I will keep everyone informed of my reviews as they come available. So, for now, that’s it. More blog posts will come this weekend. I’ve got some links buried in my bookmarks to share. Also I have two chapters due of WISB to finish it out. Hopefully I can manage it. Anyway!