February 2011
22 posts
3 tags
The Interstitial Hitchhiker Examines Her Thumbs
Act 1
This tumblr is, as stages go, more orbital platform than soapbox.
It’s fairly impersonal. I like that.
Unless you know me well enough to comment via correspondence, it’s essentially one-way communication. I like that, too; enough to maintain it by keeping my what I post myopic and eccentric enough to avoid starting many public conversations. I find, that in the Web 2.0, the...
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All His Life, Buzz Has Been Reaching for Something...
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Third Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til...
The choice of the name “Discovery” carried on a tradition drawn from some historic, Earth-bound exploring ships of the past. One of these sailing forerunners was the vessel used in the early 1600s by Henry Hudson to explore Hudson Bay and search for a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Another such ship was used by British explorer James Cook in the 1770s during his...
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The Collectible Dead
Bubblegum card, ca. 1957.
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In Memoriam, Dwayne McDuffie
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"Yes" and "Michael Collins," Respectively
I suspect that one may tell, perhaps not a lot, but a few fairly specific things, about a person based on whether she has a favorite astronaut, and, if so, which.
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Postcards from Space IV: The Voyage Somewhere
No, I’m from outer space. I only work in Iowa.
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In Case You Were Wondering
How many people are in space right now?
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You Know Who You Are
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To break, blow, burn, and make me new
My father and I watch opera on DVD: Cleopatra dancing her way through a recent Bollywood-inspired production of Giulio Cesare, and then most of the first act of Doctor Atomic, a relatively recent production by Peter Sellars (not that one) and John Adams (not that one) about the days leading up to the first atomic bomb test.
The libretto of Doctor Atomic is adapted from historical documents and J....
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Do You Believe In Time Travel?
The Sarasota in my head is a limited map, stuck in an eternal remix of the late nineties. In that Sarasota, the Hollywood 20 is still shiny and new and full of promise, and the Emporium still displays a battered suit tin armor on Main Street. The Circus Museum is still a spooky, dusty relic, and I can still get in for free by flashing my long-expired student ID. My bedroom, in all its bizarre...
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In Case of Cabin Depressurization, Space Suits...
On planes, as a kid, I’d try to get a seat in the back, where I could feel the rumble and roar of the engines. Once the flight attendants were seated for takeoff and no one was looking my way, I’d lean my seat all the way back, and if I closed my eyes and pressed myself back hard, I could pretend I was perched at the top of a rocket, stuttering toward the stars.
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Or Florida. Or Something.
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The Gallivespians Would Like a Word With You
This is a robot dragonfly spy.
Robot dragonfly spy.
Robot.
Dragonfly.
Spy.
In the 1970s the CIA had developed a miniature listening device that needed a delivery system, so the agency’s scientists looked at building a bumblebee to carry it. They found, however, that the bumblebee was erratic in flight, so the idea was scrapped. An amateur entymologist on the project then suggested a...
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The Amazing Metafiction of Kavalier and Clay
This is the novel that Chabon wrote.
This is the fictional comic created in the novel that Chabon wrote.
This is the actual comic based on the fictional comic created in the novel that Chabon wrote.
This is the actual comic about the fictional comic created in the novel that Chabon wrote.
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Aha
Prefixpunk
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Imaginary Bands of Which I Am a Member
Eat Your Young
Violent Science
Gay Abortion Unicorn
Gemini XIII*
Attritional Cupcakes**
*This is actually a collaborative artfuckery project I am involved in, not a band. But I am including it anyway because I think it would make a good band name.
**Also not a real imaginary band. I just find the phrase “attritional cupcakes” really entertaining.
Open Source Women Back Each Other Up & Gentlemen's... →
Germane to both current discussions in the geek community and the fact that I just got an envelope full of Back Up badge ribbons in the mail. I’ll be wearing one of those at RadCon, by the way, and carrying a couple extras in case someone else wants ‘em.
The Back Up Project was started in response to a spectacularly ill-conceived social experiment and to the general atmosphere of...
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The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows →
backmasking
n. the instinctive tendency to see someone as you knew them in their youth, a burned-in image of grass-stained knees, graffitied backpacks or handfuls of birthday cake superimposed on an adult with a degree, an illusion formed when someone opens the door to your emotional darkroom while the memory is still developing.
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K. M. L.
LXXIX ‘More than my brothers are to me,’— Let this not vex thee, noble heart! I know thee of what force thou art To hold the costliest love in fee. But thou and I are one in kind, As moulded like in Nature’s mint; And hill and wood and field did print The same sweet forms in either mind. For us the same cold streamlet curl’d Thro’ all his eddying coves, the same All...
