| This is a response posted  james_nicoll's blog, and I'd like to repost it here. James writes:
Where should I send someone who wanted to look for instructions, checklists, training documents for the geology conducted by the Apollo astronauts?
It's for someone who wants to recreate Apollo astronaut "amateur geologist" protocols while on holiday. This is a charming idea, and would be a fine example of what Neal Stephenson once called "Hacker Tourism." (My own thoughts on the subject may be found here.)
The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal is a great starting point.
Schedule for astronaut geology training and list of sites.
Geological field trips and outdoor practice with Apollo equipment are noted in the crew training summaries.
This will be extremely informative for your correspondent, and it's online: The U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Astrogeology—A Chronology of Activities from Conception through the End of Project Apollo (1960-1973) by Gerald G. Schaber. There are some priceless photos in here.
This site at Northern Arizona University's archives seems relevant:Yet "Grover" sits in Flagstaff at the Science Center, tourists can get some of the Apollo Mission experience at Meteor Crater, and the public can re-live the Apollo training program through photographs and other materials, largely held in Vertical Files and the Paul Switzer Collection.
Another good book is online: To a Rocky Moon: A Geologist's History of Lunar Exploration by Don E. Wilhelms.
Haven't read this, but it seems relevant: Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program by Donald A. Beattie.
Rummage the bibliographies of these for reference documents. Numerous Springer/Praxis books might also have relevant clues.
Troll NASA's now-restored Technical Reports Server. Look over the NASA History Office publications.
Hope this is helpful to James's correspondent. Send us a postcard from the Moon.
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Long time Cardamom Addict readers know this handsome boy to the left--this is, of course, Mr. Bean. If you follow my @cardamomaddict Twitter account, you know things have been rough for this dear old cat these past few weeks. Unfortunately, one week after being diagnosed with both liver and pancreatic cancers, this lovely boy passed away.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there.
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| After four days the Sassafrass kickstarter is more than fully funded at $8306, and creeping up towards the $10,000 point where I'll post the Odin poem. Support music! Save the poem! Thanks to those who contributed already. Every little helps.
(A New World. This is another sample of the music, in case you want to see why I'm so very enthusiastic about it.) | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Words: 2036
Total words: 56558
Files: 4
Tea; Pu Erh
Music: Brandenburg Concertos, Orchestral Suite 2
Reason for stopping: end of bit
Coming along. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Nicked from Randy McDonald
Alec Ash: How did you start writing science fiction?
Fei Dao: When I was at middle school, 16 or 17, I started to read a lot of sci fi. I read the magazine Science Fiction World, and became more familiar with sci fi literature. I liked it because there was a lot of imagination and novelty in it. At that time, my dream was to become an author. When I started out, I didn’t think at all about writing science fiction. Back then I felt sci fi was very difficult to write, and needed some knowledge of science, so I could only appreciate it but not write it myself.
Like many post 80s authors, I started out writing campus stories about young people in school. But I couldn’t get them published. Until one day in university, I wrote a science fiction story on the side, and sent it in to Science Fiction World. I was just giving it a go, I had no idea that that first story would get published [in 2003]. A year later, I had another idea, and that second story also got published. So that encouraged me, and I started writing sci fi.
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| Well, don't mention it by name.
It seems some companies don’t enjoy free publicity. Due to legal protests from Ferrero, which owns the Nutella brand, the organizer of World Nutella Day has said she is canceling the unofficial holiday, as well as the event website and Facebook (FB) and Twitter accounts dedicated to celebrating the creamy, chocolatey, hazelnut spread.
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May 14th, 2013 - The day started early, as days in Washington tend to do. I was up before my alarm, already thinking about the day ahead of us: a day of meetings, events, handshakes, introductions, and effort. The Planetary Society was in D.C., and we were there to help save Planetary Science.
(To put this in perspective, the Canadian Space Agency's annual budget is something short of $500,000,000, which is why there aren't orbiters around other worlds with the Maple Leaf on one side).
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Words: 2536
Total words: 54448
Files: 4
Tea: Pu erh
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.
I think this book is going to be longer than I thought it was. I think it will need an extra set to get to the end. It comes in sets of six chapters -- two Simmea, a Maia, two Simmea, and an Apollo. I thought there were two more after this one, and I think there needs to be another. But I have an idea about what's between here and the end, and what the end is, so that's all good. And if it's longer than 93,000 that's not a problem. Just useful to know for pacing. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
|
Series Total Female Male F/T
Numbered paperback series 73 4 69 0.05
Unpublished titles 2 2 0
Hardcover titles 10 1 9 0.1
New design 62 12 50 0.19
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| From way back in 2006 (found because I was looking for a review of Gradisil).
I’ve argued this point in a couple of essays, but I’ll repeat myself: that once upon a time the road to space lay all before us like a dream of dawn. We were going to have hotels on the moon and trips to Pluto by the twenty-first century; instead of which we have nuclear piles the size of tumble-driers upon which microprocessors the size of scrabble-tiles fly silently and coldly past the outer planets. And nothing else.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there.
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| The Ex-Urbanites
A doleful morality tale about the fate that waits for those who make the fatal move out of New York and into the countryside. Although an endless struggle, mounting debt and alienation from their families are almost inevitable, the ex-ubanites are to respected for the example they set for lesser Americans.
I don't recall the last time I read or heard something quite as aghast as this is at the idea of leaving the City.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there. | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| The Legend of Jimmy Blue Eyes
This is a "story-ballad". A seemingly lucky win at cards leaves a chancer in possession of a magnificent silver horn and his ambition to learn to play it sends him straight on the path to hell.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So because I wrote Insults Every Man Should Know I was asked to speak on BBC5 about the weekend's row over swivel-eyed loons. I was told not to say the "f-word", the "c-word" or to "take the Lord's name in vain" but other than that anything would be fine.
I was on for all of two minutes. We spoke very briefly about clever insults between politicians, and I pointed out that this case is different: it's someone insulting their own rank and file, not trying to either build a coalition by insulting some "outsider", nor is it performative like the barbs politicians trade as part of the election show. I was then asked to address what "swivel-eyed" might have meant.
Me: "It's an ableist slur, it's basically saying that have a mental and physical disability...like calling someone spastic"
Host: "Oh, spastic is an offensive term!"
Me: "Well, yes..."
Host: "Not appropriate for BBC radio"
Me: "I'm explaining that it's an insult"
Host: "We apologize to anyone who might be offended..."
And after that I was asked about America and mentioned that John Adams once called Thomas Paine's Common Sense "crapulous" and I was off the air two seconds later.
SUPERSTAR! | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
|
I’m going to tell you a story about llamas. It will be like every other story you’ve ever heard about llamas: how they are covered in fine scales; how they eat their young if not raised properly; and how, at the end of their lives, they hurl themselves – lemming-like- over cliffs to drown in the surging sea. They are, at heart, sea creatures, birthed from the sea, married to it like the fishing people who make their livelihood there.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there.
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| Scalia at his most scathing and bashing his younger conservative bretheren for their judicial activism. City of Arlington v. FCC.
Leaving aside the awesome stuff and stuff that makes me personally happy (I laughed out loud at footnote 1), Scalia puts the critical issue succinctly when he writes that those who fear unelected bureaucrats interpreting the law make no improvement by shifting the interpretation of the laws to unelected and even less accountable judges.
This is the real core philosophical difference between conservative jurists who genuinely despise "judicial activism" and those who simply despise it when liberal judges exercise the prerogatives of conservative judges. The dissent is all about how awful big government is and the essential role of the judiciary to reign it in. The majority opinion by Scalia is that this is poppycock. Congress is the legislative body. If it wants to "rein in" the exercise of "big government," it should pass laws to that effect. Where Congress deliberately delegates broad authority to the executive, that delegation must be respected by the judiciary. | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| Words: 2325
Total words: 51589
Files: 4
Tea: Pu erh... I think I was going to make some more and forgot. Oh well.
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.
So what tech level do you need to be at to fix a cleft palate as a birth deformity? Could the Victorians do it? | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| look for instructions, checklists, training documents for the geology conducted by the Apollo astronauts?
It's for someone who wants to recreate Apollo astronaut "amateur geologist" protocols while on holiday.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there. | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| I often seem to have synchronistic themes in my life, and recently it is that of guts.
And I mean intellectually, not even counting the bout of personal physical distress a week or so ago, which was probably Norovirus. I had a day of vomiting and several days of stomach inflammation; supergee had a day or few of diarrhea; and our wonderful housekeeper, Delia, had a worse bout of diarrhea and the same kind of stomach inflammation. But, as they say, enough about that.
The motif has been much more interesting intellectually! In increasing order:
1) Gut instrument strings, perhaps from cats or perhaps from intestines way too large for that, on the TV show Hannibal, which is far, far better than it has any right to be, given its premise of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham working together to solve crimes.
2) The newest book from one of my fave nonfiction writers, Mary Roach, called Gulp, all about human eating and digestion, how flavor works, the food industry, and all things alimentary. I'm only on the second chapter (the pet-food industry, including the huge difference between what we think our pets want in food and what they really want), and history suggests I'll get even more enthusiastic about the book as I read further. Cats cannot taste sweetness but go crazy over a chemical with a flavor that humans can't even really process (probably something similar to something in meat)! Charts of diagnostic flavors in beer for which brewing went bad! I can't wait to get to the discussion of fecal implants.
3) And speaking of fecal implants, I highly recommend "Some of My Best Friends are Germs," by Michael Pollan, the recent NY Times Magazine cover story, all about research into the ecology of bacteria in the human body. The area of endemic and even necessary gut bacteria--including how they might affect our health, weight, and even mental outlook--is to me one of the most exciting scientific areas today.* In one experiment, a fecal transplant between a fat mouse and a thin mouse, changing the interior microflora of each, causes the former to lose weight and the latter to gain! Gut bacteria can affect not only digestion but perhaps also the immune system and serotonin production!
As Pollan makes clear, all of this is too new to derive any significant advice from, regarding lifestyle let alone specific medical manipulation of our inner ecology. H. pylori, which causes ulcers and may be implicit in some cancers, may be vital in the formation of baby's immune systems. And no one knows, when a certain microbiome and physical conditions tend to go together, what causes what.
The few approaches that Pollan says the scientists themselves have adopted seem mostly consistent with older advice, but for new reasons: eat lots of fruits and vegetables, because helpful gut bacteria thrive on the fiber; eat a variety, because a diverse ecology is, as usual, a more robust ecology. And the new common sense (since the 1980s) about germs has added support: keeping everything too clean is not as good an idea as we used to think it was, especially for babies. But given today's use of pesticides and E. coli-laden runoff water, don't go nuts with unwashed general produce. I plan to eat my strawberries and cherry tomatoes just dusted off (unless they really need washing), but only because I'll grow them myself. And if I were pregnant & undecided between nursing and the bottle, this article definitely would incline me to breast feed.
Most of all, the article presents a heady, almost dizzying, new view of humanity with implications for health, physiology, our general attitude towards bacteria, and even our ideas of what constitutes the self. Large or not, we really all do contain multitudes, each of us a macrocosm as well as a microcosm. I'm used to cursing the bacteria and viruses that make me miserable by using my cells as breeding pens without so much as asking my permission, but maybe it's time to start blessing the millions of microbes that silently and tirelessly nourish, maintain, and perhaps even build the very flesh of my body.
* Also the only one in decades that almost makes me wish I had pursued biology instead of switching to literature in high school.
Mood: relaxed but chipper | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Words: 2297
Total words: 49264
Files: 4
Tea: Pu erh
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: end of chapter
In a way, this is an even weirder book than MRC, but nobody will notice that because it looks so much more like a conventional genre story. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I was going to look at the f/m for Clarke Award submissions to see if the fraction varies significantly with time but as far as I can tell they didn't make the list of submissions public before 2008.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there. | | comments: Leave a comment |
|
Unlikely though it may seem, it’s still not at all uncommon to hear people insisting that there is no issue around the representation of women in F&SF, that a theoretically level playing field means there is no industry bias and no problem, hidden or otherwise. Unfortunately, in a world where, even after the whole BFS horror writers ‘In Conversation’ book debacle back in 2009, the organizers of last year’s Horror in the East festival in Lowestoft managed not to invite a single female horror writer on to their guest list (a fact that has been bugging me for months), that is clearly not the case. There’s been a lot of discussion around this year’s all-male shortlists for both the BSFA and the Clarke Award. The consensus among the cognoscenti seems to be not that women aren’t writing SF, but that they are finding unusual difficulty in getting published.
So what’s going on?
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there.
| | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Umbrellagate
Once again Barack Hussein Obama shocks the conscience of the nation by doing something all the white presidents have done.
Tumblr is not going to be as much fun if everyone has to come into the Yahoo! office to do it.
I wish we had the kind of humane health care system where a man could quietly ask for the mental treatments he desperately needs instead of having to go on the air and announce that he wants to shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| And now, to finish up my posts about going to Victoria at the beginning of April, here’s the recounting of what we did on Sunday of that weekend! The previous posts, for those of you who may have missed them, are:
- Friday, in which Anna and Dara declare that 6:30am is not an actual time of day, in which a ferry is taken, in which the Royal BC Museum has HOLY SHIT MAMMOTH!, and in which Fernwood has a highly awesome open mic
- Saturday morning and afternoon, in which much wandering of downtown Victoria is done, in which Anna’s new mammoth is photographed having adventures, in which books in French are bought, and in which Anna acquires SURPRISE GUITAR!
- Saturday evening, in which Anna and Dara have a spectacular time seeing Le Vent du Nord, in which Anna’s mammoth meets a polar bear, and in which there is photographic evidence of fiddle players
On to the final leg of the Victoria adventure: Sunday!
Read the rest of this entry » Mirrored from angelahighland.com. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Wednesday: 10:15 am - 12:46 pm: Flight to Indianapolis
Thursday: 8 am - Noon: RPG1343895: Victoriana: The Undersea Conspiracy. My first choice for this slot. Victoriana's getting a third edition, and I'd like to see how it plays. Also, Cubicle 7's been supplying me with much material for my Kerberos Club game, a lot of it via Victoriana.
Thursday: Noon - 5 pm: Time to Shop! Also, time to make sure I have enough food with me. And, time to ship off purchase with UPS, if they're fairly bulky.
Thursday: 5 pm - 9 pm: RPG1342022: Gumshoe: Mystery Solving Teens. I don't know if this will be using the new Bubblegumshoe system. The GM hadn't intended that to be the case, but that was because the GM didn't know it was currently in development. The GM's contacting the appropriate people to see if it will be possible to get and use those rules, which would be awesome. My first choice for this slot.
Thursday: 9 pm - sleep time: Currently, nothing. Possibly an oddly sane early night.
Friday: 9 am - 12:30 pm: RPG1343822 Savage Worlds: Kerberos Club: All the Queen's Men. I run Kerberos Club Fate Edition, so I'm always interested in Kerberos material. Savage Worlds is likely close enough to Fate that I can do mental translations, and anyway, I'd like to see how Savage Kerberos plays. My first choice for this slot.
Friday: 12:30 pm - 7 pm: Time to shop, nap, or maybe drop by Greg Stolze's Better Angels game from 2 pm - 6 pm to see if he's got an opening.
Friday: 7 pm - 1 am: LRP1341767: Larp: The Dresden Files Present: Invitation to the Ball. The combination of description and name of the group running it makes me think my odds of enjoying this are reasonable. My first choice for this slot.
Saturday: 1 am - 1 pm: Possibly sleeping in. Possibly that and shopping.
Saturday: 1 pm - 5 pm: LRP1343483: Larp: Carnival Arcane. One of the GMs is Gregory Nagler, who ran the two Buckaroo Banzai larps I loved. We got a link to the website for the group and an eddress so that we could email in our first three choices of characters from a list. (Mine were the fortune teller, the snake lady, and the bearded woman -- I own a fake beard from when we ran a circus larp with its own bearded woman.) This was my second choice in the slot, my first being Greg Stolze's Blacksat for Delta Green.
Saturday: 6 pm - 10 pm: RPG1343850: Rocket Age: Lost City of the Ancients. The only item not originally on my list. Originally, I got my second choice for the evening slot, but then got email about the game that indicated that, while it might well be a fine game, it wouldn't be to my taste. Someone who'll enjoy it more than I would should get the slot.
Saturday: 10 pm - sleep time: Possibly Cardhalla. Packing. Maybe hanging out.
Sunday: 10 am - 2 pm: RPG1340295: Night's Black Agents: Operation: Eagle Eye
Sunday: 2 pm - 4 pm: Probably last licks in the Exhibit Hall, aka last chance for shopping.
Sunday: 6:59 pm - 9:09 pm: Flight to NYC LaGuardia | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I can't be the only one who thought the last movie was setting up for this:
The former cop who inherited the Bat Cave sees batman is desperately needed as things get worse in some way. He is determined but uneasy about usurping Wayne's place. He may or may not know Wayne is alive. He's just about to go out as Batman for the first time, with grave misgivings, when Wayne shows up. The new guy becomes a much more grown-up version of Robin than we've seen before.
I don't follow fandom sites. I would guess this is not original. It seems pretty obvious. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| And sometimes it teleports across my screen so when I tried to find Shirley Manson's cover of Samson and Delilah I got this instead.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| Cops and Robbers
This was kind of interesting: half the people in this are actors who have a script for part of what they do (and presumably improvise for the rest). The other half are cops, treating the fictional crime as they would a real one (presumably with fewer savage beatings, although it's pretty it would be easy to fall down the stairs in the company of these guys). One thing I didn't notice much of was the word "warrant". It's also clear this is before Miranda v. Arizona.
The crime is the sort of dumb-ass thing doesn't come up in mysteries much because it's banal and solved mainly because the criminal is as bad at covering his tracks as he is at impulse control (what was supposed to be a trip to pick up Chow Mien turned into a robbery and a shooting).
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I am arriving Thursday afternoon, possibly in time for the Room of One's Own reception and readings, weather and traffic through O'Hare allowing, and will be leaving after breakfast on Monday. Seattle is a lot further from Madison than New York is, and there are no nonstop flights. I'm not on programming this year (I didn't volunteer, because I wasn't sure I could attend the con until after the sign-up deadline), which means either that I am more flexible than usual, or that I will spend more time wondering what to do when.
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth (http://redbird.dreamwidth.org/1385829.html), where there are  comments. I welcome comments here or there (OpenID and "anonymous" are fine if you don't have a DW account). | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Two pound cakes made today (mostly because I've been making them in loaf pans, and splitting the batter): one vanilla-lemon, one cinnamon-vanilla-lemon. I am suddenly wondering whether a ginger pound cake would be doable, and whether chopped-up bits of crystallized ginger would go well in it; and yes, that rather negates the simplicity of a pound cake, but might be tasty.
Last night, I went out with some of the Seattle Girls of Leather (and their friends) to a karaoke bar. It was fun, and being out with a bunch of leatherwomen singing was way cool. On the other hand, I realize, once again, that most of my socializing these days is in queer/queer-friendly, kinky, polyamory-friendly space, and thus I've lost my chops for dealing with straight people. This was made clear after a short conversation-like-exchange with a rather conventionally handsome man, who, near as far as I can tell, was trying to pick me up, with an affect of "You're not my usual type, but I might throw you a fuck, because you're kinda interesting, in a 'not ever introduce you to my friends' sort of way." Technically, there were two exchanges, one after I'd sung the first time, and another after I'd gone up to the stage area to watch someone ace a song.
(Aside: how can anyone ever actually pick someone up in a karaoke bar on a weekend? It's almost impossible to hear the conversation... which led to a hand being put on my waist, ostensibly to move us close enough together to hear each other speak, and which was removed rather firmly.)
People... or something like them.
It's been a frayed/fraying week, but I am hanging in there, hoping for another temp job, or an interview, keeping an eye on Soren and Jane (and Skippy), trying not to worry about health issues elsewhere in the family, and pretending that I am not being attacked by plot bunnies. | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
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