March 2008
20 posts
“The plot is about a bus driver who has to leave so he asks the reader to watch the pigeon. The pigeon tries many excuses and trys to finagle readers into letting him drive the bus.”
—Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“The tell-tale signature of the molecule methane in the atmosphere of the Jupiter-sized extrasolar planet HD 189733b has been found with the Hubble Space Telescope. Under the right circumstances methane can play a key role in prebiotic chemistry - the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it.”
—ESA Science & Technology
“May 28, 1964. Suggested to Stanley that “they” might be machines who regard organic life as a hideous disease. Stanley thinks this is cute and feels we’ve got something.”
—Clarke’s 2001 Diary (excerpts)
“Humanity has always been interested in the Earth.”
—History of geodesy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“The Vatican has released a new set of mortal sins, one of which includes polluting the environment.”
—Very Spatial
“The facts are simple,” says Charles K. Johnson, president of the International Flat Earth Research Society. “The earth is flat.” As you stand in his front yard, it is hard to argue the point. From among the Joshua trees, creosote bushes, and tumbleweeds surrounding his southern California hillside home, you have a spectacular view of the Mojave Desert. It looks as flat as a pool table. Nearly 20 miles to the west lies the small city of Lancaster; you can see right over it. Beyond Lancaster, 20 more miles as the cueball rolls, the Tehachepi Mountains rise up from the desert floor. Los Angeles is not far to the south. Near Lancaster, you see the Rockwell International plant where the Space Shuttle was built. To the north, beyond the next hill, lies Edwards Air Force Base, where the Shuttle was tested. There, also, the Shuttle will land when it returns from orbiting the earth. (At least, that’s NASA’s story.) “You can’t orbit a flat earth,” says Mr. Johnson. “The Space Shuttle is a joke—and a very ludicrous joke.”
—The Flat-out Truth
“Cinguetta ma non parla. Perché il piccolo appartamento dove viveva fino a poco tempo fa era affollato da uccellini: è così che ha imparato ad imitare i loro suoni.”
—
(V.U.E.?)
“A friend of mine who knows more about classical music than anyone I’ve ever met, and who has turned his passion for it into a second career, asked me a question a few years ago that stays with me. A great admirer of Toscanini, he wondered whether some of the the conductor’s prodigious output was in some sense still ‘out there.’ For Toscanini went to work in New York after he left Italy, conducting the first broadcast concert of the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1937. His NBC broadcasts were, of course, recorded, but my friend’s thoughts had turned interstellar and he wondered where those radio signals were now. Arturo Toscanini at work We discussed radio signals propagating outwards at the speed of light, so that a 1937 broadcast would now be 71 light years out, and in answer to his query, I said yes, if you could somehow position yourself through superluminal means 71 light years from here, you would be on the wavefront as the initial Toscanini broadcast swept over you. But, I assured him, you wouldn’t be able to hear it. For one thing, most of the radio signal, given its frequency range, would have bounced off the ionosphere and returned to Earth. What signal might have managed to leak out would have become so attenuated as to essentially fade into background noise.”
—Centauri Dreams » Toscanini Through the Light Years
