This week is a semi-kinda-sorta-annual-bi-monthly-whenever-I-feel-like-it column about whatever is interesting/pissing me off this week.

Let’s get started.

First the fun stuff:

Cupcakes

Apparently, there’s a cupcake zeitgeist out there.  Who knew. There was all that hubbub about cupcakes on Sex and the City. And The Dude informs me that there was a cupcake-centric storyline on some show called What About Brian.  Again, I say: Who knew.

I was on AOL today and they had an entire list of cupcake bakeries and their “specialties.”  Honestly, I almost got up to bake, but I took a few deep breaths until it passed.

There was also a link to what happens when cupcakes meet knitting.   Some people really need to get out more.

On to more serious matters:

Scott McClellan Finds Reality 

It was attached to his ass all along.

Read More »

All right, I’m three days late.  Mea culpa and like that.  But I’m here, after having faced off with the horror that is post-Thanksgiving shopping.  While Avocado was looking for presents at Borders I was browsing around and came upon a copy of Little Women, that staple-of-girlhood-literature.  Now, the copy of Little I grew up with was the Little Brown hardcover (part of the collected books, all with tipped in color illustrations, and utterly ubiquitous: if you are a female person of a certain age, even if you loathed Louisa May Alcott, you would recognize the edition I mean).  The first illustration, opposite the title page, looked something like this:

 There they are: Meg in the center, Amy, petite and blonde, on the left, Jo on the right, and Meg, doubtless too sickly to stand up, sitting in the middle.  I not only like Little Women, I’m fond of most of Alcott’s work…

Read More »

For several months I have been collecting data for a series of graphics-focused posts on space exploration, and I am finally ready to start sharing my results with you, my dear, zombie-infested Brainiacs.

First of all, allow me to introduce you to my assistant, who will be helping me to illustrate certain concepts. You’ll see more of hir as we go along.

Human Space Density, in Hours

Here is a graph showing how many hours humans (only US astronauts, so far; see note below) have spent above the level of the atmosphere.

I’m counting the upper edge of the atmosphere as about 76 miles up, though you will find many different estimates–and in fact, it changes over time, with fluctuations in the solar wind and other factors, including global warming impacts. But 76 miles is a good average number for our purposes.

So how much time are we talking about, really? For comparison, the average American work-year is about 2,000 hours. A year has about 8,900 hours, all told.

As you can see in the chart above, after a promising start with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, the US manned space program languished, when SkyLab drew to a close. It wasn’t until 1981 that the space shuttle program re-energized space exploration. The hours really started racking up once the International Space Station was completed. You can also see the effect of the Challenger (1986) disaster. The Columbia re-entry breakup (2003) is not as easy to see, but it is the cause of the dip in 2003-2004. In fact, it has slowed the pace of NASA shuttle missions to this day.

If you were to add up all the hours every NASA astronaut has spent in space since our first manned mission, that’s almost 31 years. Humans have spent nearly half a life’s worth of time outside Earth’s atmosphere (A good deal more than that, in fact, if you include other nations’ efforts. More on that rsn).

Granted, that’s a pittance, compared to how many people live beneath the atmosphere. (In fact, it surprised me. I thought it would be more.) But hey, it’s a start.

As you can see from the chart above, the US has had seven major piloted space programs since we launched our first astronaut, Alan Shepard, Jr., into space in mid-1961. Since this is my first post on the subject, it seems like a good idea to talk about that launch.

Mercury Redstone 3

On May 5, 1961, 37-year-old Alan Shepard climbed into a tiny capsule atop a liquid-fueled rocket. He rode it up from Cape Canaveral, Florida to an altitude of 116 miles: about forty miles above the upper reaches of the atmosphere. He experienced six gees (six times Earth’s gravitational pull) during liftoff, stayed aloft about 15 and a half minutes, and then splashed down in the waters of the Gulf Stream.

I was very young then, a preschooler, but even so I remember my excitement, and also fear, as I watched the news footage. I recall the wind from the helicopter stirring up the waves that splashed against the capsule as it righted itself.

I can only imagine what it must have felt like, soaring up so high. Not to mention how it felt, coming down.

I remember seeking a glimpse of his face through the little portal, and the thrill I felt when the divers helped him emerge and climb into the sling.

President Kennedy was there, for that first launch.

Since that time, the US has launched 167 piloted missions, and many, many robotic missions. Our astronauts have spent months at a time in the International Space Station, working in cooperation with people from a variety of other nations to do scientific and engineering research.

We have forty-six years of human-piloted space exploration under our belt*. Alan Shepard and Mercury-Redstone 3 set the stage for everything else.

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*Van Allen belt, that is.

Notes: Now that I’ve gotten started, let me haul out the usual caveats. I pulled the graphical data together primarily from NASA’s mission data pages, with Wikipedia as a secondary source (in particular for the International Space Station). About five percent of the data (in particular, maximum altitude and distance traveled, which will follow in impending posts) was not readily available online, in which case I SWAG’d^ it, based on data from other missions. In other words, there is slop in the data. Don’t use it for your doctoral thesis, or to calculate whether you have enough oxygen to survive till the rescue team arrives.

Also, I currently only have information on US astronauts. I hope to add other countries soon. Watch this, er, space.

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^Scientific Wild Assed Guess. It’s tethered to real numbers to some degree, but it definitely floats around in the ether to some degree, too.

Full of good food and good fellowship, I have little to say today other than ”Urg.”

I will point out, however, that today (November 22, 2007) is not only Thanksgiving — but also the 44th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

According to Vincent Bugliosi, 75% of Americans currently believe that President Kennedy was not killed by an assassin acting alone, but as the result of a conspiracy.  And a quick Google of “Kennedy,” “assassination,” and “conspiracy” may lead one to the conclusion that Mr. Bugliosi’s 75% figure is a bit low.

So rather than link to any of the countless websites that explain who really killed President Kennedy, I’ll simply link to a brief “Yes, it was a Conspiracy”/”No, it wasn’t a Conspiracy” debate-in-print between Mr. Bugliosi and Mr. David Talbot from earlier this year.

I’ll also recommend viewing this clip featuring the late, great Bill Hicks (1961-1994). 

It was sometimes difficult to tell how much of Mr. Hicks’s act was just an act . . . and how much he really thought was true. 

But he always provoked his audience into examining what they thought was true.

And in that regard, his words were magic bullets.

Go here.

Click to embiggen.

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Check out the sweet flamethrower action on the back cover of Jumper: Griffin’s Story. Could it be ZOMBIES?

In my fantasies, I don’t imagine dinner with Voltaire (happy birthday, V.) or Abraham Lincoln or Will Rogers. I don’t picture in my head what I would serve to the Dalai Lama, or Matt Damon (the sexiest man alive) or George Clooney. No, when I seat imaginary guests at my dinner table, they’re chefs. Right now, I can think of no more fun guests to have than Michael Symon of Lola and John Besh of Restaurant August. They both went to the finals of the Next Iron Chef competition and they made great food, and were really funny and fun. (Michael Symon, shaved head intense-looking, has a shotgun giggle that I find terrifically endearing.)

I write for an imaginary audience. What some people call the ideal reader. I cook for a couple of audiences. My husband, especially. But also for the ideal eater. And chefs seem to me to be people steeped in food. Demanding, of course. Understanding and catholic—they get food and what was done with it, and they have to be able to eat broadly. Not all chefs, of course. A chef is the guy in charge of the kitchen. He is the one who creates the menu, tells the line cooks and dishwashers what to do. He’s a business manager. The guy in the local Big Boy is technically a chef. But that’s not what I mean. I admire a good chef’s ability to meet price points and organize a kitchen, but what I want is someone who really really thinks a lot about food.

Thanksgiving is a balancing act between the real and the imaginary. My Thanksgiving Menu, posted below the cut, reflects that. Read More »

I’ve decided I just gotta get my humans-in-space post done. No more excuses. But it’s going to take a while and I may not be done before sunrise tomorrow. Meanwhile, here is a great zombie video.

Update: Brainiacs, I’ve FINALLY gotten all the data I need. It’s ReAlLy rEaLlY cool stuff — believe me! But it’s going to take me time to get it to do what I want it to do, and I just gotta go to bed. I’m not a spring chicken anymore, and I’m recovering from a(nother!Damn!) cold. Bear with me just a little longer. I won’t put it off till next week, I promise.

It’s so close. Gauld. Gould. Really, only one letter’s difference, so I’m going to declare Tom Gauld an honorary relative. His illustrations are perfect–I especially like this one.

What’s significant about this one? Nothing particular. Why?

See lots more here.

(Seen at Making Light.)

A few months ago, She Who Is Awesome forced me to watch ‘Walk the Line’ one night in exchange for being allowed to crash at her place.

I liked it a lot. And it got me to thinking….

If you’re my True Friend, you’ll click on the pic and view Johnny and Kris tearing it up in an excellent live performance of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’. If you don’t do this first, you may not realize just how relentlessly, mind-bogglingly, self-aggrandizingly clever are the lyrics that I’ve written.

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Then: Fast Zombie Blues

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EDIT: I’ve gotten some really good critique from the maniacs at KVR and done a remix of this song. Mostly just some balancing of track levels, changing some reverb, EQ’ing a bit, and a few other tweaks. Not a done deal yet; I think I still need to sort out the bass line more. But I think this mix sounds a lot more polished and am quite pleased with it.

Fast Zombie Blues Remix

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I played it live at the recent Samhain gathering outside Dripping Springs, and John realized, as I hadn’t, that this is actually a teaching song. This is the sort of wisdom that needs to be passed on by the tribal elders around the campfire, so that the young ones who’ve never experienced an infestation will have a framework that gives them a better chance of survival.

I’ve spent the entire weekend recording and mixing my magnum opus, and my ears and brain are fried. I have no perspective on it any more. I’ve tried it on two speaker systems and through headphones, but mixes sometimes translate poorly. And I think it’s a little slow. I may revisit it and speed it up some.

I welcome comments on the mix and other relevant items.

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EDIT: Okay, so I’m a little obsessive. I bumped the speed on the song from 95 bpm to 105 bpm, and replaced the original in my link above with the new Fast Zombie version. Fortunately, Reaper, which is my recording software and is the best goddam software in the galaxy, uses Elastique Pro, the very best pitch and time-stretching algorithm on the market. I can’t hear any artifacts in the new version.

It’s a real toe-tapper now.

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Okay, last April I traveled to L.A. on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, an experience that was delightful, but still took from about four in the afternoon to eight thirty the following morning. The distance is 775 miles or so and that gives us an average speed of 47 miles an hour (or so.)

Last April, in France, they broke their own World Record for trains. Let me put it this way: if we had their tracks and their trains I could’ve done it in a little over 2 hours and 10 minutes.

(found at Making Light. They got the pointer from Charlie Stross)

By the way, there have been faster trains (both MagLev and Rocket) but this had loads of passengers aboard.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I missed my post for last week and I’m late this week.  And I’m so freaking lazy that I’m stealing my blog idea for this week from The Dude.

Yes, I am THAT lame.

(In my defense, I have a very good reason for last week’s crapping out. And as for this week, it’s early Thanksgiving — at my house.)

The Dude is an inveterate list maker.  He makes lists of his favorite books, movies, and actresses he’s got a crush on who were born no later than 1910.  I make lists that involve groceries, errands, and bill paying.

Obviously, his lists are more fun.

So, I’m embracing my inner Dude and going to leave you with a couple of lists of my own — though the items on said lists are not in order of preference or importance.

Things not to say to your wife/girlfriend:

1. What did you do to your hair?
2. Actually, that does make you look fat.
3. I think you’re overreacting.
4. Yes, “X” is prettier than you.
5. The house looks fine.  My mother won’t notice if the place isn’t clean.
6. Is it right before your period?
7. Did you lose weight?
8. Did you gain weight?
9. Oh my God, Edyta Sliwinska has a smoking hot bod.  (Which is true, but must it be commented on every time she appears on TV?)

10. Are you sure you’re not on your period?

Things not to say when you’re in a band:

1. This is my girlfriend, Yoko.
2. You’ve been playing it in E? I thought we were playing it in F# minor.
3. Let’s make “Cocaine” our ten-minute jam song. (In all fairness, only the bass player will want to kill you.)
4. I think you’re turned up too loud.
5. You’re not turned up enough.
6. You know what would really make our sound?  An accordion.
7. Well, she’s not a good singer, but she’s HOT!
8. I think we should go for a combination of Led Zeppelin and Maurice Chevalier.
9. Let’s cover “My Heart Will Go On.”
10. This is my girlfriend, Yoko.

The Short List:

The “Go To” books when I need something wonderful to read:

Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop
Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis
Geek Love by Katherine Dunne

The future must be here. As they said over at Science Made Cool, “Seriously, can you imagine that headline on a nonfiction article back in the Old Millennium?”

Maureen ran this on her blog and got the same result. She seemed pleased.

When I ran it over at my personal blog, I got Junior High School.

I’m thinking swirlies, wet willies, and wedgies.