Internetting

A couple of interesting sites, from the depths of the tubes:

Looking for someone to do your coal mining? Click here.

Wanna watch the show Southpark, every season, for free? Click here.

Amazing music with video here and here and here. And a little something old school.

UPDATE: Here is one incredible '81 video from the Replacements, via UnfairPark.

And you must check out Jonathon Coulton.

Lastly, here is a page from web comic Penny Arcade where I got a nod for a ten word story I wrote regarding WoW. My name is in the middle of the post.

Leaving the Trotternish by Bus

Waiting just off the main way where one bend gives and submits to the next falling slide of road, the Fisherman broke stride in time to turn and see us (all scarves and cameras with a little thermos) pass in our bus (which itself was all rumble and diesel) as we bladed through the open country and into a rare track of trees, trembling and skidding on that narrow patch of path before joining the New Road to bounce up a hill just tall enough to see through the wet-weighted boughs to where we'd been married the week before; or we would have seen that stark, black cliff against the distant sea if the Native hadn't paused in the gap to adjust his Mac and blocked the view of where we had stood, then had knelt, and then had stood again to go back inside to where the fire and tea were waiting.


- 7:23pm Tuesday, March Twentieth, 2007

A Better Place

I found this site, Project Better Place, which details an effort to free automobiles from the need for oil.

The first project is to help the State of Israel convert to electric cars. The goal is for Israel to free itself from Middle Eastern oil - that is, the oil produced by its neighbors, many of whom are an anathema to it.

One interesting challenge on the site is how much money is spent on gas versus the cost of the car. So I pulled up my handy Windows calculator and ran my own numbers.

1995 Honda Del Sol 1.5L SOHC, manual transmission - $3200
Average repairs each year - $500-600
Average miles driven each year: 16000
Average MPG: 28 (32+ HW, 25 City)

Based on this, I have to buy 571 gallons of gasoline per year. If we assume that the average of last year and the next few years to be $3.5 per gallon, after three years I will have spent around $5k on the car itself (purchase price plus repairs and maintenance), and nearly $6k in gas.

Even with a high MPG rating, electric starts to make sense after a few years.

Run your numbers. See how long it will be (or was) before you spend (or spent) more on the fuel then on the vehicle.

Obama VS. NASA

Everyone interested in both presidential politics and our government's space program, specifically the manned portion, I would like to refer them to this article. It details Democratic candidate Obama's plan to defund, for five years, NASA's next generation of manned space exploration vehicles: the Constellation Launch System, which is designed to take us back to the moon and eventually to Mars. The savings will provide a portion of the cost of his proposed Zero to Five pre-kindergarten education program, designed to begin educating children as soon as they burst the womb. I'll leave what I think of government run education for another topic.

I consider myself a boomer for space exploration. So I disagree with the Senator on this. Canceling Constellation will not just set back our ability to explore the Universe outside our atmosphere, it will also cost thousands of high-tech jobs - many of which will leave the country to work for China's, India's, and Pakistan's growing space industry. I, therefore, firmly reject his stance and hope that our federal legislature, in the next decade, continues to insist, in strong terms, that NASA is fully funded for all current projects.

But does it really matter? If Humankind is truly destined to be a multi-planet species, then it won't be governments that make that happen. The loss of Constellation would be a blow and setback, but the private space industry is brinked on coming into it's own. Here's some companies to watch: Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Armadillo Space, XCOR, and RocketPlane.

Already, five people have entered space as "tourists" - that is, private citizens paying for a ticket. Within the next ten years, that number will at least triple; and far more if we count the suborbital thrill rides that Virgin Galactic and RocketPlane are nearly ready to offer.

For fiction involving humans in space, I suggest Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ben Bova, and the lately departed Arthur C. Clarke.

Wholly Other

from the east: our hope. in the west: our dreams
as suns hunt shadows; hopes chase western dreams.

sing the angels there; dance the old ones there
just beyond the sea; past the outer air,

Here I sing my only; Here lonely love - unheard of Prophet, unsought Priest -

talks of the beauteous and wondrous
essential inner colors,
the people luminous
archidealic and subdimensional,
and the sacred, the magic, the numinous.