0. CONCISION AND PRECISION ARE ESSENTIAL components of the modern metaphor. What your end-user metaphorager is looking for is light in the mouth and easy on the fingers, especially when describing social groups — you want something tight enough to…
Tag: Committee For A Bigger Universe
Transcendent Science and Knowery.
5 Thoughts: EthnoReligiUfology
1. IF YOU DON’T READ THIS carefully, you’ll come away thinking that I think “God” is an alien, Moses a contactee and the Event at Sinai one of the humankind’s first recorded UFO sightings. 2. I really really don’t. But…
Pithyism #4 of 8+
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, BUT SO is imagination: isn’t it sad that today’s kids will never know the fun we had speculating about Martians?
6,855,687,281 Minus 9
THAT’S THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE currently inhabiting the Earth’s surface (according to http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html at 19:11 UTC, July 13, 2010), less the nine currently orbiting it (according to http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/). (Data maketh strange bedfellows. But at least we know how many.)
From Persephone to Canaveral
REMEMBER THE TV SERIES FIREFLY? The epic, intelligent, Star-Wars-without-aliens, Emmy Award-winning 2002 Joss Whedon production? Which Fox canceled after 14 episodes? Big fan campaign spawned the 2005 cinematic sequel Serenity? A feat unequaled since Star Trek v. NBC c. 1968?…
Allegiance Considered
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution Of the United States of America And to the ideal on which it stands: One nation of individuals Indivisibly intertwined With liberty, justice and peace for all.
Sizing Science Fiction
ADMIT IT: YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED to compare the Millenium Falcon to a Danube-class runabout. Well, they’re about the same length according to Jeff Russell’s STARSHIP DIMENSIONS. SD scales nearly every species, starship and space station in the visual science-fiction universe…
The Face That Launched A Thousand Orbits
PUT YOUR FACE AND/OR NAME on the Space Shuttle while you still can[1] at NASA Face in Space, then download and print the evidence. (This is a metaphor for something or other; p’raps best not think too hard on’t.) [1]…
Life? On Titan? Maybe.
FROM THE “THANK G?D I Lived Long Enough To See T*H*I*S” file: While life isn’t the only explanation for the unexpected acetylene/hydrogen findings, it is by far the coolest. (ObJewGeek: Bless the One who makes the makings of creation.) .…
What The %$#@! Hit Jupiter?
THAT’S WHAT ASTRONOMERS AMATEUR AND professional alike are asking after one of the former imaged the impact earlier today. As of 0940 pm PDT Thursday, few other sites have picked it up, so remember — you might have heard it…
So Much For Earth
WORST-CASE SCENARIO: THE BP SPILL will kill everything in the Gulf of Mexico. This will be the tipping point for all of Earth’s oceans to die. In 50 years we’ll be wishing for one more breath, if we even live…
Song of the Universe
TONIGHT IS SHAVUOT, WHICH CELEBRATES the gift of Torah at Mt. Sinai some 3,322 years ago. Whether one believes the Torah’s own account is inconsequential; what we celebrate is the living text (rather, Living Text) itself and its indivisibility from…