how now brownpau
James Doohan has passed away. Doohan played Enterprise’s Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott on Star Trek, and was my original inspiration for learning to mimic Scottish accents.
Bit of trivia: Doohan was a captain in the Royal Canadian Artillery, and fought in the invasion of Normandy in WWII, where three bullets destroyed the middle finger of his right hand. The finger was later amputated. When you watch classic Trek, notice how Scotty usually hides the injury by facing his right hand away from the camera or balling it into a fist. Occasionally it gets into the shot, though: some screen shots.
Update, 2007: You may also be interested in my OMG EXCLUSIVE DEATHLY HALLOWS SPOILERS!!! JINKIES!!!
Stop reading if you haven’t finished Half-Blood Prince! STOP!
So now that Harry knows that Tom Riddle is (was?) James Potter, how will Harry deal with the fact that Voldemort is his father? (That is, after that agonized yell when Voldemort cut off his wand-wielding hand?) Will he have the nerve to face Voldemort, stand his ground, and redeem his father, or will he give in to the dark side… of his personality?
The hand issue means Harry will have to master wandless spellcasting, unless he can use his left hand, or does the infirmary grow back hands? Plus, he’ll have to make a new wand.
Hermione didn’t take the news that she is Harry’s long-lost sister too well, either — that means Voldermort is her father too. That knowledge quite nicely handles the question of who gets to be Hermione’s lover, at least: Ron, as soon as he’s unfrozen from the Carbonitus curse — if Hagrid and Neville are able to rescue him from Peter Pettigrew’s clutches.
This is a dark time for the wizarding world. Now Voldemort has really struck back.
DARTH Voldemort!
I was up in NJ/NY for the weekend, and Amy and I checked out The Cloisters, the Met’s medieval art branch in Fort Tryon Park, Upper Manhattan. Being medieval art and history enthusiasts, we were fairly impressed with the collection at The Cloisters: artifacts and architecture from 11th to 16th Century Europe, all well-preserved and labeled. I was especially impressed with the Rosary Bead, large for a bead, but tiny for such an intricate work of sculpture.
The Cloisters photoset. Photos were taken by both me and Amy, as we were sharing her Powershot S230.
More from JCSparks, one of Amy’s classmates, via whom I first learned about The Cloisters.
You can get to Fort Tryon Park and The Cloisters by taking the A Train up to 190th Street. After you get out of the elevator and the station, turn right and walk through the park, or take the M4 Bus.
It seems that Deep Impact‘s impact may not have been as deep as first thought. Recent observations of target comet Tempel 1 show lots of fine powder in the impact plume, and not as much rock and ice as astronomers expected. This most likely means that not a lot of underground comet material was excavated by the collision, and some of our theories about cometary composition and structure will need to be revised.
Given funding and some careful planning, Deep Impact might have a new mission when it’s done with this one; JPL may retarget the craft at Comet 85P/Boethin, which, by the way, was discovered by a priest in the Philippines, Reverend Leo Boethin. With a gravitational assist from Earth, Deep Impact could be at 85P/Boethin by 2008.
While recent manned spaceflight news has been somewhat disappointing, exciting things are still happening with robotic probes in deeper space.
Saturn probe Cassini did its closest pass yet at Enceladus yesterday, one of the stranger moons in the Saturn system. The bright white surface of Enceladus, mostly coated with clean water ice, is smoother and less cratered than most moons like it, with long rifts and valleys wrinkling its face. This would indicate recent geologic activity: tectonics caused by gravitational tidal forces from Saturn, wiping out impact craters and forming cracks and bumps. Enceladus also has a tenuous atmosphere, which might be caused by cryovolcanoes spewing material from underground, covering the moon’s surface with icy particles, and replenishing Saturn’s E ring with new material. This is all theory, of course: no volcanic plumes have been spotted on Cassini yet.
I’m watching the Enceladus Flyby page for updates, but there haven’t been any yet since the scheduled event yesterday. Maybe it was boring. More Enceladus photos by Cassini.
Also check out:
America’s walk-on-eggshells return to manned spaceflight proved to be an anticlimactic disappointment yesterday, with the Space Shuttle Discovery’s launch being scrubbed due to faulty fuel sensors. (No, it was not the falling window cover that did it.) The sensors monitor propellant levels at the bottom of the external fuel tank during launch, signalling the need to shut off the enginges when they detect low levels of fuel. (Liquid hydrogen, in this case.) Engines normally shut off at a predetermined velocity in the launch process, but these fuel sensors act as an emergency backup to prevent the engines from continuing to burn without a continued supply of propellant, which would cause engine damage — a highly unlikely emergency situation, but a consideration important enought to warrant postponing the launch, it seems.
Next earliest possible opportunity for a launch will be Saturday afternoon, though that’s not looking likely. Update: Late next week at the earliest is now the current estimate. Countdown will have to restart at T-43 hours.
Follow the progress of this mission with SpaceflightNow’s STS-114 status page. More from NASA’s Return to Flight section, and Wikipedia’s STS-114 page.
See an overview of the whole space shuttle system in NASA’s Return to Flight section, and if you really feel geeky, go through the 1988 Space Shuttle News Reference Manual.
(And before you ask, as any Washingtonian will tell you, the National Mall is not a shopping mall.)
(Mushroom Mushroom uploaded by brownpau.)
(Capitol Flower uploaded by brownpau.)
(Grant Memorial and Crepuscular Rays uploaded by brownpau.)
(Brave Squirrel 3 uploaded by brownpau.)
Nice to see that the Internet Archive is adding classic films in the public domain to its growing library of web content. I’ve watched Gulliver’s Travels (a nostalgic flashback to childhood) and Killers from Space (featuring a young Peter Graves).
The following campy classics are now qeued for future viewing: Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Phantom Planet, Last Woman On Earth, and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.
