9:59 PM
Astronomy Pirate
So after missing my usual 'thing that I like' and 'caturday' posts, I return to blogging. I had a great weekend with my girlfriend, but now she's back off at college since her spring break is over. I am counting my missed couple of days as my spring break from blogging, ha. Now I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on, but feeling a bit lazy.
Lets see, there are a couple of things... First, today is the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, for all those places where this dreadful event is celebrated. In the US, with the exception of Hawaii, Arizona, and various territories, this is the day that we loose an hour of sleep. So, I know a good amount of you are probably feeling the lack of an hour of sleep. The benefits of DST are still contested and there doesn't seem to be any solid evidence that it is worth it. Since we don't really have a huge agrarian culture, it doesn't change much, though it supposedly reduces energy consumption.
Next, I saw Battle: LA this weekend. It was interesting. It seemed a bit like an really long Marines commercial, if they were the whiniest Marines ever. There was some good action though, and they actually were intelligent and did some problem solving. Figuring out how to defeat the aliens seems believable the way they did it. And speaking of the aliens, they seemed pretty believable from my perspective. Disguising an invasion force as a meteor shower, stealing our precious water, massive use of drones with command-and-control, troops that are severely augmented to be unstoppable fighting machines, and not communicating with the indigenous population. If I were an advanced society capable of interstellar travel, I would do the same thing.
There were problems though. The aliens didn't seem as smart as they should be. Seriously, only one C&C center per city and placed underground? Why not out to sea, underwater, or in space, orbiting the Earth. And there were scenes just way to over dramatic to take seriously. Overall, it was a fun movie, nothing to original and full of cliches, but enjoyable.
Lastly, I got a toolkit that I am testing for the Night Sky Network (and therefore NASA) for outreach called Life in the Universe. I got my first chance to test it at the HCAS open house on Saturday night. Seemed like people enjoyed it, and I got some positive response out of it. It includes a number of concepts, some of which I might expand on in later posts. These include a timeline of Earth's history and the development of life, extremophile cards with facts on some of the extreme life that we know on Earth and may represent alien life, a presentation that explains the Drake equation, and habitability dice that shows how hard it can be to roll conditions suitable for life. Some interesting ideas and I am excited to be testing it out (there are a dozen clubs across the country testing this kit right now).
Lets see, there are a couple of things... First, today is the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, for all those places where this dreadful event is celebrated. In the US, with the exception of Hawaii, Arizona, and various territories, this is the day that we loose an hour of sleep. So, I know a good amount of you are probably feeling the lack of an hour of sleep. The benefits of DST are still contested and there doesn't seem to be any solid evidence that it is worth it. Since we don't really have a huge agrarian culture, it doesn't change much, though it supposedly reduces energy consumption.
Next, I saw Battle: LA this weekend. It was interesting. It seemed a bit like an really long Marines commercial, if they were the whiniest Marines ever. There was some good action though, and they actually were intelligent and did some problem solving. Figuring out how to defeat the aliens seems believable the way they did it. And speaking of the aliens, they seemed pretty believable from my perspective. Disguising an invasion force as a meteor shower, stealing our precious water, massive use of drones with command-and-control, troops that are severely augmented to be unstoppable fighting machines, and not communicating with the indigenous population. If I were an advanced society capable of interstellar travel, I would do the same thing.
There were problems though. The aliens didn't seem as smart as they should be. Seriously, only one C&C center per city and placed underground? Why not out to sea, underwater, or in space, orbiting the Earth. And there were scenes just way to over dramatic to take seriously. Overall, it was a fun movie, nothing to original and full of cliches, but enjoyable.
Lastly, I got a toolkit that I am testing for the Night Sky Network (and therefore NASA) for outreach called Life in the Universe. I got my first chance to test it at the HCAS open house on Saturday night. Seemed like people enjoyed it, and I got some positive response out of it. It includes a number of concepts, some of which I might expand on in later posts. These include a timeline of Earth's history and the development of life, extremophile cards with facts on some of the extreme life that we know on Earth and may represent alien life, a presentation that explains the Drake equation, and habitability dice that shows how hard it can be to roll conditions suitable for life. Some interesting ideas and I am excited to be testing it out (there are a dozen clubs across the country testing this kit right now).
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