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Suzy McHale’s Journal: 2011

January

Wednesday 12/1: 6 years of journaling; Queensland flooding; online book order

Another dreary year begins for me. They seem to go so fast; 2001 seems only like a few years ago.

I have now been keeping this online journal for just over 6 years. I rarely re-read it; a lot of what I wrote about in previous years now holds little interest for me, and my opinions on some topics have changed over time.

The weather since Monday has been unpleasantly warm, humid and wet; a tropical weather front streaming down from up north. Queensland has, since before Christmas, been undergoing a massive disaster with statewide flooding, now in the process of innundating Brisbane. My sister and her family live in a hilly suburb (The Gap) just outside the city, so they are not in immediate danger. I am lucky where I live that it has not so far been prone to such disasters (flood, fire, cyclones, etc.).

I ordered another book from Book Depository (using their .com site, which is a few dollars cheaper than the .co.uk site) so, as Christmas is passed, it hopefully won’t take as long to arrive as the previous one I ordered! I can’t order very often as I am borrowing a relative’s credit card. The book, Halo: Cryptum, is $50 RRP here (or would be if it were on bookshelves, which it isn’t) and is $21.76 at BD.

Thursday 13/1: Head cold; YA novel of interest

More unpleasant humid wet weather today; I also have a head cold (my first for the year) which doesn’t help my discomfort!

A new Young Adult novel, Across the Universe (accompanied by a nice-looking website), piqued my interest as it is (amazingly!) actually sci-fi rather than the ubiquitous paranormal crap that has taken over bookshelves like an unstoppable virus (and for which I would support book-burning!). That being said, there are some caveats: as it is YA, the main protagonists are teenagers, with the attendent annoying angst; the plot appears to use the tired “Rebelling Against The System” trope; and the focus is on relationships rather than technology (similar to the exasperating The Host by Stephenie Meyer – “science fiction for those who don’t like science fiction” to quote one reviewer). A lot of readers (including some females) actually like the technology details.

Sunday 16/1: Still have a cold; Across the Universe thoughts

Melbourne’s humidity last week was the highest for more than 50 years – up to 97% on Wednesday, more than the cities in other countries that normally have that climate (such as Singapore, Rio, Denpasar and Calcutta). An awful climate to have to endure all the time! It completely saps what energy I have, and my skin hates it.

I have also been cough-cough-coughing all week; my cold seems to have lodged in my throat this time rather than progress to my sinuses as usual. I have not slept very well due to the irritating dry cough. It has improved a little today.

The Across the Universe novel was a decent read at first but I found it somewhat disagreeable as the story progressed (mainly due to some surprisingly explicit sex scenes for a YA novel, or perhaps those are normal these days). It felt rather constrained and claustrophobic somehow, though perhaps that was the author’s intent. The story just did not agree with me so I won’t read it further. The novel is the first of a trilogy; a common trend these days but it is annoying feeling compelled to buy 3 books rather than one, though it is obviously a ploy to get more money.

February

Saturday 5/2: Blocked toilet; Kepler data

Melbourne and much of Victoria has had heavy rains and flooding since yesterday (remnants from Cyclone Yasi). The backyard of my parents’ home is waterlogged and the toilet is making ominous gurgling noises (not good when it is shared between 3 people!). Dad has managed to clear it so far. We are in a low-lying area which is prone to flooding, though the local council put better street drainage in years ago which helped stop the worst of it.

More data from the Kepler space telescope was released this week, one being a planetary system with 6 planets inside the equivalent of the orbit of Mercury, and over 1100 extrasolar planet candidates, 54 of which are in their planet’s habitable zone. Commentary at: Bad Astronomy, Centauri Dreams, NYT, Space.com; one commenter at MetaFilter succinctly summed up the implications:

This is just the beginning. This release covers just over four months of data taking, and they have over 1100 candidates? Even at a 10% confirmation ratio, that’s 110 planets, with one of our first dedicated planetary search instruments.

The actual confirmation rate is more likely to be near 90%, not 10% – so over 900 planets. The field of view of Kepler? Hold your fist out at arm’s length. The coverage is 120°2 – the entire sky is about 41,500°2.

What Kepler has done is told us, quite simple, that planetary systems are not rare at all. It’s estimate that Kepler is watching 145,000 main sequence stars, and in four months, has candidates around 997 of them. That’s .6% of the stars in view. If we assume that percentage, it means that there are 600 million to 2.4 billion planetary systems in our Galaxy.

Just amazing. And we can be certain that Kepler won’t see all of the planetary systems in its field of view – any system where the planets don’t eclipse the star from our point of view is completely undetectable by Kepler. If a copy of our system was placed in the field of view, with only the Earth in it’s normal orbit, there’s a .47% chance that the ecliptic would be in plane enough for us to observe the transit and detect the Earth. This chance varies some by the size of the planet and a great deal by the distance – close in planets will be much more likely to have visible transits. Assume that 5% of the systems with planets are correctly aligned so that we see transits.

That means, now, that those 600M to 2.4B systems represent 5% of the total, and we’re now looking at 12 billion to 48 billion planetary systems in our Galaxy – out of a total of 100 to 400 billion stars. Assume half the lower number, 6 billion planetary systems per galaxy. Current estimates of number of galaxies in the observable universe is on the order of 150 billion, so at 6 billion planetary systems per, that’s 900 billion planetary systems in the universe.

And that’s a lower bound! A trillion planetary systems is almost a certainty, indeed, I think the number is easily ten times that, but that will need more data. But a trillion, sure?

Kepler may have discovered about 19 planets confirmed, and around a thousand other candidates, but what it’s really discovered is at least a trillion of them. We can’t see them – yet – but we know they’re there.

If we’re the only planet with intelligent life, then the universe is playing a joke on us.

– posted by eriko at 12:37 p.m. on February 3

It is amazing to consider that perhaps 2 decades ago, our solar system was thought to be alone in the Galaxy; now extrasolar worlds are becoming like that saying, “There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth”.

Wednesday 9/2: Ugly relatives

I was looking at pictures of various felines for some research, and found myself musing, why couldn’t have humans have evolved from a creature like them, rather than primates? Primates – such as our near relatives, chimpanzees – are not particularly appealing in appearance (downright ugly, in some cases!). The two photos below, taken from Wikipedia, illustrate my point:

Chimp and cougar

Felines and many other creatures, such as canines (though not the domestic breeds mutated/deformed by humans), some reptiles and birds are aesthetically pleasing. I wonder how humans would be regarded appearance-wise by other animals, or aliens – perhaps as peculiar flat-faced creatures with random patches of hair over their bodies and oddly protuberant noses and ears. Humans are so conditioned to seeing our appearance as normal that it’s difficult to view ourselves objectively as non-humans might see us, so it’s an interesting exercise in trying to do so!

Saturday 12/2: Internet brain fog; technology dependency

“How the internet makes us stupid,” The Age, 10/9/2010. I have noticed that my attention span has declined drastically since I began using a computer and the Internet in 2001. It may or may not be co-incidental, as I also have socially isolated myself since that time as well, which has obviously not been good for my mental health. I spend a lot of time mindlessly clicking from one site to the next – perhaps it is a bit like a gambling addiction, in that you are hoping the next link will be rewarding (I had definitely better stay away from pokie machines!). I feel restless and bored if I have to be offline for any length of time – the 8 days I spent in hospital in 2008 were the longest I had been offline, and I was going mad with boredom! I don’t think I would be able to cope with study now, given my lack of ability to focus.

I have a burgeoning collection of books, but I rarely read one from start to finish; I have several on the go at once and jump from one section to the other when the mood takes me. I often don’t finish any library books I might borrow.

“Chilling scenario that comes without a kerosene fridge,” 12/2. Modern societies have become dangerously dependent upon complex technology and centrally-provided utilites, and people can barely cope if deprived of this, as those who endured Cyclone Yasi found out.

For a few days there, when even the phones went down in numerous areas, you could get a glimpse of what a modern cataclysm might look like.

In the whirl of a malicious wind, communities strung along hundreds of kilometres of coastline had been reduced to a far more primitive and uncertain state than those who lived isolated and off the grid decades ago. It took little imagination to apprehend that without a benevolent nation to send help and the ability of well-resourced emergency services to restore essential services relatively quickly, social order could have broken down.

All that is needed for chaos to descend, it turns out, is to remove conveniences that have become so common we hardly notice them any more: power, water, access to fuel. And aren’t all of those commodities, if the vast majority of the world’s scientists contend, and as nature tends to insist from time to time, becoming increasingly fragile certainties?

Thursday 17/2: Borders bookstores in trouble

More unpleasant humid weather. Victoria is apparently becoming more like Queensland, rather dismayingly!

“Borders, Angus & Robertson go bust,” The Age, 17/1. Dismayingly, more bookstores are in trouble, although these companies have been in decline for a while if their increasingly limited book range is any indication. If Borders in Chadstone Shopping Center closes, that will take away my main reason for going there – for years I have liked to go once a week, browse through their vast inventory then sit down in their store and read; my idea of heaven! Unfortunately their stock has been drastically reduced in the last year or so, as I have griped in earlier entries, so even this pasttime is no longer enjoyable.

Wednesday 23/2: Dentist pain

I went to the dentist today, both because my teeth needed a clean and because of what turned out to be the same issue as last time (17/7/2010 entry) – pains in my lower jaw and molars which started on Friday. I clean diligently as I am in mortal fear of getting another cavity (I have 2 fillings since 2007), so I was fretting again but the dentist could find no anomalies, and suggested it was my jaw disorder flaring up, which I can cope with. It certainly felt like toothache!

March

Sunday 6/3: Eyes OK; alien movie

I had my biennial eye exam on Wednesday: they are healthy, with my prescription unchanged.

The Australian International Airshow at Avalon Airport is being held this weekend. As an adult ticket is now $55, it is unaffordable! Ten years ago it was around $25 – guess I should have tried to go then.

I watched the Skyline alien invasion movie which came out earlier this year. I am glad I didn’t go to the cinema to see it! The special effects were excellent, but – unlike District 9 – it just wasn’t compelling to watch, and the characters were rather irritating. Battle: Los Angeles is the next invasion movie being released (near the end of March for Australia) so I will see what the reviews are like.

Friday 11/3: Japan earthquake disaster

A big earthquake (~8.9) struck Japan this afternoon, near the east coast of Honsu. The TV news is showing spectacular footage from a helicopter of a wide tsunami front surging inexorably across fields from the ocean, sweeping debris, cars, buildings and people with it. More rows of waves were coming in towards the shore. It looked like a giant amoeba engulfing the land in slow motion. (MeFi thread)

Thursday 17/3: Japan in crisis

Nearly a week after the big earthquake (now 9.0 MW), much of the northeastern coastline of Japan is devastated, with thousands dead (over 4000 confirmed), more missing, and whole towns swept away by the huge tsunami. To make things even more grim, containment explosions and partial meltdowns in three or four nuclear reactors with radiation leaks are threatening to contaminate the surrounding countryside – but information is confused and contradictory on the latter. My main sources of information (tabs kept open in my Firefox browser):

Japan is a high-tech and particularly ordered society, so such a series of disasters are a massive shock for its citizens, who started off an ordinary day and had lost virtually everything at the end of it (though nowhere near as tragic as losing friends and relatives, losing one’s possessions is still devastating, as these are part of your memories and identity). The country already had economic problems, so this is a huge setback. Although they have endured earthquakes and such before, which killed thousands, not to mention atomic bombs in World War 2 – and rebuilt again. There has been much commentary on how generally well-behaved the people are, with few reports of looting and violence – one can imagine how the less-disciplined Western cultures would react – and the people are showing an admirable stoicism. A lot of other countries are rendering assistance, which is heartening to see.

Wednesday 23/3: Sore back again

My lower back has been acutely sore since yesterday, from no apparent cause (last time: 15/1/2009 entry), so I am shuffling around painfully (bending forward hurts). It usually subsides withing a few days (I hope!). I can’t afford to see a specialist, so will just have to endure it. There seems to be a weakness there; I don’t know if it is muscle or joint-related. I have also had persistant low-grade soreness there since my first (unrelated) operation in December 2008; it twinges when I move to get up from lying down.

Saturday 25/3: Japan horror death toll

It is just over 2 weeks since the Japan earthquake, and the official confirmed death toll passed 10,000 yesterday. The Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant is still dangerous, with ongoing radiation leaks. The disaster has, however – like others before it (Christchurch earthquake, Queensland floods and cyclone) – dropped out of media headlines after a week.

I can’t help but be disgusted at comments like these:

The Japanese recovery has prompted some investors, including American Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men, to declare that the disaster which has left 23,000 dead or missing represents a “buying opportunity” in the money markets.

Circling vultures, much?

Monday 28/3: GP visit

My height was measured at my last visit to the GP and I am shorter than I thought – I checked again today and I am around 162.5 cm tall, or 62 inches (just under 5 feet 3 inches); I previously thought I was 5 feet 4 inches or so. I must have mismeasured, or else have shrunk! Being short is not such an image issue for a woman as it would be for a man, though.

April

Friday 1/4: Nukes on YouTube

I like to watch videos of nuclear explosions, and YouTube has quite a lot of these, of various test explosions. It occurred to me to see if any of the tests Dad had watched when in the RAF were uploaded, and I did find 3 of these! This series was called “Grapple-Z,” done on Christmas Island in September 1958:

And a collection of tests by a variety of countries.

Dad said that even with his back turned and palms over his eyes, he could still see the bones of his hands from the initial flash. Cool and creepy! I guess that is from the x-rays emitted.

Tuesday 5/4: Daylight Savings over; upcoming movies; new TV

Daylight Savings has ended! Now I don’t have that vague feeling of being jetlagged. If only it could be abolished altogether, as Russia is considering doing! DS is a pointless and disruptive anachronism, though for some baffling reason a lot of people support it.

I decided not to go see World Invasion: Battle LA as I could not be bothered – going to the cinema is not a particularly pleasant experience these days. I’ll just wait for the DVD, or download. Two upcoming movies that look good are Green Lantern and Thor; though I am not generally into superheroes, the special effects look spectacular. There is also an upcoming TV series called Terra Nova, about some people who travel back in time to the dinosaur age to escape a ruined Earth – that is one of my favored time travel destinations (along with my own past, and the ancient human past). Unfortunately it probably won’t screen on free-to-air TV here.

My TV was “upgraded” for my last birthday, so I can now actually see the screen clearly! I hope the new Lone lasts as long as my little analog TV (bought in 1991). Unfortunately the offerings of the extra free-to-air digital channels are mostly the same crud as on the main channels. I hope there is a special place reserved in Hell for the creators of “reality” TV, crime and cooking shows! There is almost nothing for sci-fi fans. I mostly watch documentaries and the news.

Wednesday 6/4: Deep dive plans

Richard Branson is part of a team that is planning to do submarine dives to the deepest trenches, the first being the Mariana Trench, the deepest of all at 11 km down. The water pressure there is over 1000 atmospheres – that will be a seriously scary trip! Down there in the darkness with all that tremendous weight of water threatening to crush your ship into almost nothing at the slightest breach in its hull. Makes going into space look easy! I have long had a phobia of deep water and have no desire to go underwater at all, so I admire their courage! I’ll certainly be following the voyage when it happens, though (currently set to begin later this year).

Tuesday 26/4: Past Earth

It is now my favorite time of year, with clear sunny Autumn days and cold mornings. This summer was particularly unpleasant, with heat, too much rain and humidity.

A blog entry at Cosmic Log linked to a project at the Planetary Habitability Laboratory called Visible Paleo-Earth, visualizations of Earth’s continental drift at various points in its history (it may also be a useful resource if you are designing an alien planet for a story). At times it was almost an alien planet, with continent arrangements and climates different from those today; there were periods when it had no polar ice caps. The continents seem to clump together every few hundred million years, as described in a 2007 article, “Pangaea, the comeback”. Humans may or may not be around to see the next supercontinent!

One thing I was curious about is how much closer the Moon would have been to Earth in prehistoric (dinosaur-era) times. It is moving away from Earth at 3.8 cm/year, so multiply that by 65 million years and I get 247 km closer – it would not appear appreciably bigger (its current distance varies between 356,400 km to 406,700 km). Though according to the Wikipedia Tidal Acceleration page, the Moon was receding at a slower pace millions of years ago.

May

Wednesday 11/5: Planets inline; odd illness

Four planets are currently visible in the morning sky; I saw three on Sunday morning – Venus, Mercury and Jupiter (couldn’t make out Mars) while on my bicycle ride. First time I’ve seen Mercury.

Weather is miserable today – the coldest May day in more than a decade – with rain, hail and strong winds.

I’ve had a mysterious affliction appear since Monday evening: aching in the middle of my abdomen, loss of appetite, some nausea and a bit of indigestion. The aching (like toothache) was so bad Monday night that I got no sleep. It is not so bad now, but I am still off-color. I don’t have a headache or fever, and my abdomen is not sore if I poke at it. The symptoms appeared just before my “Time of the Month,” but I have not had such ones before.

Sunday 15/5: Illness gone; Game of Thrones thoughts

I am feeling mostly back to normal again.

Out of curiosity, I watched the first two episodes of HBO’s A Game of Thrones. I have not read the novels, though I know of them and some of the plot and themes. I was … not impressed. The scenery and costumes were nice, but I really don’t want to see depictions of humans mating in that much detail, thanks! The series has a lot of (very fanatical) fans, but if that is what passes for “adult” literature or TV these days, I’ll avoid it.

June

Saturday 4/6: Journal lookback; Wallmeyer twins; sore tooth; Borders books to close

I rarely re-read my journals, but I was looking at my 2001 journal, when I first began keeping one on a computer. I had acquired my first computer, was about to quit my job of then and was developing an interest in manned spaceflight (the latest of a long line of varying obsessions – those are how I measure my life). It is a bit dismaying to read through, as things have not changed for the better since then; the only difference is that I am nearly 10 years older and not as healthy. My thoughts and frustrations are exactly the same, as is my life – I might as well have spent the last 10 years in a coma or in jail. Most women my age have had full careers and/or families by now (though I am not interested in having the latter). I am existing, not living, but my inertia is so strong that I feel powerless to break out of it. I have no purpose in life and am drifting though it aimlessly.

Found the latest article (also on this blog) about the anorexic Wallmeyer twins (last mentioned 16/10/2007 entry). The one pictured in that article actually looks as if she has managed to put some weight on; an improvement from her previous ghastly skeletal figure. They still seem to be locked into mutual dependency, like binary stars or black holes that will eventually spiral into each other and self-destruct. They have wasted their lives like I have mine, so I am not alone, I suppose. I do blame getting an eating disorder, from age 18 to 22, for derailing my life then; perhaps a subconscious reaction to a fear of becoming independent. I could not cope with growing up, and still can’t; I am unable to fend for myself. I have no life skills. No real-world friends my age, as what little social ability I had has atrophied. Society is so much more worse now – more people, more competition for resources and jobs.

My probably-cracked tooth has become quite achy in the last few days; it has been aching and subsiding periodically since I damaged it in 2009, but this is rather more severe this time.

All Borders bookstores are to close now, including the one in Chadstone that has been my main reason for going there for the last decade or so. There will be nowhere to sit and read, or browse the vast range of books (my idea of heaven).

Wednesday 10/6: Space Shuttle photos; planets in line

The weather turned freezing on Tuesday after some nice sunny Autumn weather last week. Achy tooth is still aching, so I made a dentist appointment for next week.

Spectacular photos taken by Soyuz TMA-20 of STS-134 Endeavour docked to the ISS have been published, after 2 weeks’ delay (and grumblings from some about the Russians holding the photos to ransom!). NASA galleries: 1, 2 (page 40 onward), and a video. (For comparison, link to a 1995 photo of Atlantis docked to Mir space station, which I think was the only previous time such an image was taken.) Endeavour landed after its last flight. The very last Shuttle flight will be STS-135 Atlantis on 8 July.

I saw 3 of 4 planets lined up together on 8 May (Jupiter, Venus and either Mercury or Mars).

Wednesday 15/6: Tooth troubles

I visited the dentist to investigate my aching tooth (lower right 1st molar) but she could not find anything specifically wrong, even after viewing an x-ray. Rather frustrating! I suppose the only solutions would be a root canal (which I can’t afford) or extraction (unpleasant, and I would have a gap in my mouth). I think I damaged the nerve somehow; maybe there is a small crack somewhere. I will just have to put up with it. I am impatiently awaiting the time when teeth can be regrown!

Wednesday 21/6: Australian hacker attack

Winter Solstice tomorrow (at 3:16 a.m. in Melbourne to be precise). It would be more logical for the seasons to be marked by solstices and equinoxes rather than the arbitrary months used.

“4800 Aussie sites evaporate after hack,” The Age, 21/6. A massive disaster for website customers with their host hacked and servers damaged, and few if any backups apparently recoverable. It is an example of why not to rely solely on online storage – “the Cloud” – for your valuable data! My website, which has much of my creative writings for the last few years, is backed up on my computer, on an external hard drive, and I zip it up and upload to a storage site every so often (not every day). I hope that is adequate. It is only a basic HTML site, not a database, and is small (around 50 MB at the moment) so is probably easier to back up.

Saturday 25/6: Alien invasion movies

I have watched the alien invasion movies Skyline and Battle Los Angeles, and the first TV episode of Falling Skies (thanks to the Internet :-). Despite their subject, the first two movies were rather tedious and I found myself half-watching them in a minimized screen while visiting web pages as they did not hold my attention very well.

Skyline focused on annoying young hipster types stuck in an apartment building trying not to attract the aliens’ attention. BLA featured U.S. Marines running around yelling and shooting at aliens, and getting very grubby in the process (an alternative title comes to mind: Guns, with Occasional Aliens). FS was marginally better (or somewhat more realistic), with civilians trying to survive several months after the invasion.

I did not care much for the human characters, and the aliens invaded Earth in their usual inefficient manner: landing and engaging in ground fighting, when they could have just propelled some asteroids at Earth’s major cities to wipe out much of the population. I suppose the latter option would make for a short and bleak movie, though! The aliens were all of a similar design: squishy slimy multi-tentacled creatures wearing artificial exoskeletons, which must be their latest fashion.

Monday 27/6: Mental illness discrimination

“Mentally ill feel like ‘damaged goods’,” 7/6 (reproduced below).

Seeking work as someone with a mental illness feels like “trying to sell damaged goods” a federal parliamentary inquiry has been told.

Adelaide woman Sarah Reece told the inquiry into mental health and workforce participation of her continued attempts to find a job or to study at university while struggling with a mental illness. She said it almost impossible to secure job interviews and if she did she was competing against people who did not have unexplained gaps in their work history.

“Handing in a job application feels like I'm trying to sell damaged goods,” Ms Reece said on Tuesday.

She also told the inquiry of her three failed attempts to return to university study after being struck down with her illness. At one stage she sought counselling from an on-campus service but was refused help when she revealed her condition. “The attitude was that I should go away and get better and then re-engage,” she said.

“The problem is re-engaging is part of getting better. There was a line in my world that I couldn't get over.”

Ms Reece appeared before the inquiry as a client of support group Mental Illness Fellowship South Australia. The group offers programs and services to about 10,000 people each year suffering with a range of mental illnesses.

Chief executive Natasha Miliotis said for people with a mental illness, undergoing training or study or reaching an employment goal was important to their health, wellbeing and self-esteem. She said her organisation was also concerned with helping those people who sometimes “fell between the cracks,” who might not appear sick enough to need help.

The inquiry was continuing.

I suppose I would describe myself as mentally ill (mainly depression) and I now have a massive gap in my work history. I don’t have any reasonable excuse, such as having had children, being in jail or being in a coma. I have been in a sort of paralysis for many years and it now feels nearly impossible to break out of.

July

Saturday 2/7: Space Shuttle farewell; alien documentary

The last-ever Space Shuttle mission, STS-135 Atlantis, is tentatively due to launch this Friday 8th – barring any delays. I guess the delays are one aspect of launches that won’t be missed! There are only 4 crew members, one of who is female. I wish the crew had been a little more ethnically diverse (the others are 3 white guys).

I watched a National Geographic documentary, When Aliens Attack, about scenarios for an alien attack on Earth. It was predictably rather cheesy and it was obvious the producers had referenced the movie Independence Day for many scenes, but it was an agreeable way to pass 1½ hours. The author Travis S. Taylor was a consultant; his book Alien Invasion was given some product placement. (The book is a more affordable reprint of Planetary Defense, which caused me so much exasperation last year – 30/12/2010 entry – when purchasing it as an ebook.) The gist of the documentary was that humans could not do much to directly fight alien invaders (these were spaceships that hovered over cities and sent out swarms of aircraft and mechs to devastate them, though surely some kinetic strikes using asteroids would have been more effective) so humans would end up fleeing the cities and resort to guerilla warfare. The aliens in the documentary wanted to harvest protein and chlorophyll as these substances apparently aren’t readily available elsewhere (unlike water).

One scene that had me somewhat bemused was the U.S. President ordering a nuclear strike on an American city to try to take out one of the alien spaceships – not withstanding that most humans remaining there would be killed! Apparently nuking one’s own population is considered acceptable? The alien invasion might prove less harmful! The strike was done by a submarine-launched Trident-2 missile with warheads totalling 3.8 megatons, but it proved futile as the spaceship remained intact.

Another briefly-mentioned subject I did not like was how women might be treated – a direct extract from the book:

We need to drag the fight out as long as possible. The longer we can resist ET, perhaps the better our odds of survival become. We must resupply our warrior population in order to make extending the fight work to our advantage. We could need to revert to historical division of labor. Women may have to go back to pre-woman’s suffrage roles in the society and give up all their gains to enable society. We would have to reproduce and reproduce rapidly. To that end, every female with childbearing capabilities would have to be pregnant as often as possible. Each would have to essentially stay pregnant in order to overcome the mortality rate resulting from such a lopsided war. Each woman would need to take fertility pills in an attempt to multiply the offspring from each pregnancy. Would we be willing to forego our social standards related to fornication, monogamy, marriage and adultery, age of consent, and the age which is commonly considered too old for childbirth in order to preserve our species? That might be a necessary tactic in order to survive as the size of the male population is diminished in the war for survival.

Uh, no thanks! I would take my chances with the aliens – I don’t fancy forced pregnancy. At least aliens would be unlikely to rape human females (bad literature aside).

The Fallen Skies series will be screening in Australia – but only on pay TV, which I don’t have (and don’t wish to). Thankfully, there is the Internet!

Tuesday 5/7: Earthquake from Korumburra; Victoria’s sleeping volcanoes

An earthquake today! Felt just after 11:30 a.m.; my computer tower on my desk and monitor shook a little. It was a magnitude 4.4 as recorded on the Geoscience Australia site. Quite a lot of other people felt it too, as news reports noted. It was based in Korumburra, a coal-mining town which is a frequent epicenter for tremors (related to the coal-mining, I wonder?). I have not felt any of the reported aftershocks so far. The last earthquake I felt in Australia was on 18/3/2009 (see 18/3/2009 entry), a 4.6, also in Korumburra.

A linked article in the Herald-Sun says that:

Victoria’s overdue for volcano

Scientists have told a conference it is only a matter of time before volcanoes erupt in Victoria, and warned there is no disaster plan for when it happens.

According to scientists at Melbourne University, a series of volcanoes in Victoria’s west are well overdue to erupt.

Eruptions should occur in the region about every 2000 years, but the south-east of the country hasn’t experienced any volcanic activity since Mt Gambier erupted over 5000 years ago.

Earth Sciences Professor Bernie Joyce said this means the chance of an eruption is high, and that while the scale of any activity is hard to predict, it “could cause devastation to thousands of people”.

It isn’t the eruption that would necessarily do the damage, Prof Joyce said, but if rising magma meets ground water it could cause steam explosions that would blanket the state in volcanic ash, leading to widespread disruptions to critical infrastructure and transport.

Lava flows would also represent a “major fire hazard on the dry grassland plains of summer in western Victoria”.

Professor Joyce said that an eruption would most likely be around Colac, Port Fairy, Portland or Mt Gambier, areas which do not have pre-prepared responses in place for volcanic activity.

The research will be presented today at the XXV International Congress of Geodesy and Geophysics in Melbourne.

I did mention in that 18/3/2009 entry that Victoria was volcanically active up to 7000 years ago; Melbourne is surrounded by volcanic grassy plains that are unfortunately getting smothered by housing estates. I almost wish they would start erupting again – the Government might regret its encouragement of population growth!

Thursday 7/7: Farewell to Borders bookstore

Today I visited Borders bookstore in Chadstone for the last time; it will close after tomorrow. A dismal experience; books were heavily discounted but only the dregs were left and all the good stock removed. There will be no specialist bookstores in the shopping complex after that. Department stores have only a limited selection of mostly crappy bestsellers (Dan Brown, James Patterson, Stephenie Meyer, etc.) and generic rubbish. (The fiction book genres I would happily see thrown onto bonfires are thrillers, crime, chick lit, romance and paranormal.) Shopping online is no real substitute for real-world browsing, and it is not always convenient for those with limited or no access to credit cards. Visiting bookstores has long been my favorite part of going shopping.

I espied Halo: Cryptum in two department stores, much to my annoyance as I ordered it online a few months ago and didn’t like it that much. I would have waited if I had known it would be stocked in those places, but they are annoyingly erratic when it comes to choosing stock: they might get one book in a series, but not the others. (I am looking forward to Halo: Glasslands by Karen Traviss, an author I like, but it’s not due until October, in the USA at least – perhaps much later here.)

Friday 8/7: A lonely death

“Lonely death comes to light, eight years on,” SMH, 8/7 (also Herald-Sun article). Another case of a person dying at home and not being discovered for years – 8 years in this case! It is a depressing indictment upon our impersonal and uncaring society, something that seems inevitable as populations increase. I mentioned two previous cases in my 11/1/2008 entry. I could imagine myself ending up like that. Also depressing is that her possessions, including any photos and writings, will be disposed of, perhaps to charity stores or just in the garbage; a lifetime of memories vanishing.

I posted a query about an issue on the Whirlpool forum (an Australian forum dealing with mostly technological issues). The only reply so far is an unhelpful one about the person in the question I posed being “stupid”. Well, maybe so, but that’s not answering my question, is it? Unhelpful jerks like him really irritate me; unfortunately they seem to be a feature of many forums, including that one (though I otherwise find it generally useful).

Thursday 14/7: Borders closed; STS-135 launched

Borders bookstore had its windows blacked out at Chadstone shopping center today; a depressing sight! There is no dedicated bookstore there at all now. It was a nice place to meet up, and to sit down and read, and will be sorely missed.

STS-135 Atlantis launched early Saturday morning (1:26 a.m. Melbourne time) and is now docked to the ISS for the last time.

The last Harry Potter movie is out, accompanied by much publicity. I have watched parts of them on TV (at least, what I could manage to stay awake for), but I have yet to read the books aside from the first, and never found the world particularly appealing, though I admire the author’s success. I find I tend to like to read articles about her and other authors rather than the actual books they write.

Saturday 23/7: Power outage; U.S. Borders gone

There was a power failure in my suburb last Tuesday evening from around 5:45 to 7:25 p.m. – more of a brownout as a few lights could be turned on at half-strength. Don’t know what caused it. Unfortunately my computer was on, but it does not seem to have been adversely affected.

The U.S. Borders bookstore chain has also closed, 3 weeks after the Australian stores. I am really missing the one at Chadstone.

Saturday 30/7: My book addiction

“My name is Suzy, and I am a bookaholic.” I have spent some of today rearranging my burgeoning book collection to fit in more spaces. As I am limited to my bedroom (moving out isn’t currently an option), I have to find ever more creative ways of stashing books in every nook and cranny, and not a few boxes. I definitely have an addiction going there! Bookstores, especially 2nd-hand and charity shops, are like opium to me; I can’t resist going inside to see if there are any interesting finds. Occasionally I get lucky! I guess that books enable a temporary escape from reality.

If I did have an apartment or house of my own (only something I can fantasize about) my books would undoubtedly expand to fill the available space (there must be some mathematical formula to describe that). And ebooks have proven yet another means of expanding my collection; I currently have more than 5 GB of them, more than I can possibly read, but I download any that look “interesting”. At least I can limit these to hard drive space!

I watched the first episode of an animated series called Thundercats, the “rebooted” 2011 version of a 1980s series. I did not watch this series back then – as with Transformers of then, I was too old – and a couple of episodes I did watch recently seemed awfully cheesy. The new series seems decent, if the first episode is anything to go by.

August

Tuesday 9/8: Ebay order; Myki card; Juno launch

I have tried ordering off Ebay for the first time, just 2 back issues of National Geographic that I couldn’t find in charity shops. I mailed the postal money order today, and the seller says he has posted the magazines, so I will see how this works out. The magazines were only $3 each, but postage and the MO charge brought it to nearly $18! So I won’t do that too often (Australia Post have increased charges greatly in the last few years, annoyingly). I would not order expensive items such as electronics as I have read many tales of scams with these.

I also have tested the Myki public transport electronic card that is being introduced (over budget and late), and so far I have had no problems with it; I can track my top-ups and travel on the website. There was an offer for free cards early this year so I applied for one then; otherwise they are a rather exorbitant $10 for a new card ($7 concession).

NASA’s Juno space probe launched 3 days ago, on a 5-year journey to Jupiter, where it will arrive at the gas giant in July 2016. It will flyby Earth 2 years into the mission for a gravity assist. Even if the manned space program is rather moribund, the space probes are still providing lots of data and marvelous images! I can still see Jupiter in the early morning sky, high up and to the north; it has a slight orangeish tinge. A nice name for Jupiter I came across is “Dawn’s Heart,” mentioned in this NG article on the Kalahari Bushmen.

Sunday 14/8: Ebay order arrived; online Census

My Ebay order was delivered quickly, so the transaction went well.

Australian Census night happened last Tuesday, so I filled it in online, which was easy to do. I did say “yes” to my data being revealed after 99 years; unfortunately it will look rather dismally dull to whoever might read it!

Monday 15/8: Heaven’s Shadow release; upcoming movies

I ordered a novel from the Book Depository called Heaven’s Shadow as the plot concerns my favorite elements of first alien contact. Rather annoyingly, it is the first of a trilogy, as many novels seem to be these days – presumably to extract more money from readers. Also annoyingly, it is not currently available in Australia – if it were a popular novel like Twilight it would be released almost simultaneously here also – so I have to resort to the Internet to acquire it. There’s also the ridiculous parallel import restrictions here that give Australian publishers a monopoly on prices and distribution; moves to relax these rules were defeated again last year (see Coalition for Cheaper Books website). Lateness and price are probably the main frustrations of living down here!

A trailer recently appeared for a movie called John Carter, based on the old Edgar Rice Burroughs novels (most available free online). I have yet to read the first one. The books were one influence on the Avatar movie. The trailer left me somewhat underwhelmed, so I am not sure if I feel inclined to go see it yet.

One movie I just might go see – or at least have some interest in – is the latest Twilight movie to open in November, Breaking Dawn (Part 1). Of the novels this one I almost enjoyed as it had actual blood and gore and the hysterically negative fan reactions to it were amusing to read. The controversy over Jacob’s imprinting on Bella’s newborn child, for example, was ridiculous and I could see nothing wrong with the concept (it was perhaps derived from how birds imprint upon their parents). I also see nothing wrong with the books’ message of abstinence, rather than sleeping around – the latter behavior has become normalized and is not physically or mentally healthy, in my view – but such opinions get mocked in a permissive society.

Tuesday 16/8: Star-deprived

I haven’t seen the stars properly – away from light pollution – for many years. I can’t, in fact, recall the last time I saw them like that. What should be the starry river of the Milky Way is more like a dried-up creek bed from the suburbs of Melboure. I have not been out of my cluttered suburb in years, walked through a forest or seen open spaces and a view to the horizon. I think this is one cause of my continuing mental distress (along with the destruction of my familiar environment by evil developers and my own dim future). In my current situation I don’t have any means to remedy this.

“High-density living could be unhealthy,” 15/8. A brief article on the toll high-density living takes on health.

Among key challenges were the potential impact of high-density housing on mental health and longevity, as well as respiratory health and chronic disease, as residents were exposed to environmental stressors; such as noise from neighbours and traffic, poor air quality and traffic pollution.

Wednesday 17/8: Neural implants

I found out about this experiment a few days ago, Turning the Eye into a Camera Sensor (via MetaFilter); apparently the one in the linked article was carried out in 1999. I had thought of something similar a few years ago for my story: a neural implant that could detect and translate optical and aural signals in the brain, relaying them to an exterior device by radio waves. So it’s cool to have such ideas verified! Brain-computer interface at Wikipedia has some more recent developments.

Friday 19/8: Midlife crisis; disgraceful elderly death

“I have lived over half of my life,” Guardian, 14/8 – this article is too close to home! Though unlike me she has achieved something with her life.

I’ve just become aware, at 44, that I’m about halfway through. That there is less time to go than I have already had.

“Coroner says nursing home toilet death should not happen again,” H-S, 18/8. This has to be one of the most dismally dreary ways to die! Alone and forgotten in a little room. I sometimes consider that going off into the wilderness to die would be preferable; perhaps lying in a cave with a nice view, the sky overhead, the sounds of Nature and fresh air. I really don’t want to end up in a nursing home, though given my dire financial state I am not likely to (more likely I’ll end up homeless).

Thursday 25/8: Progress launch failure; awful tattoos

Russia had its first-ever launch failure of a Progress cargo ship, M-12M launching yesterday. The 3rd stage shut down for as-yet unknown reasons, and it and the Progress crashed into Siberia. See my blog for more.

“Body art,” The Age, 20/8. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I generally dislike tattoos. They (along with piercings) have become a fashion fad in Western culture and the effect is rather ugly. From a distance they make skin look mottled and diseased, and I dislike the notion of disfiguring nice skin. The linked article is predictably in defense of them. I can have some appreciation for tattoos in traditional tribal-type cultures which have meaning behind them (e.g. to mark initiations), but the ones in Western culture are usually put on at random and the effect is disorganized and meaningless (and, as old-fashioned as the notion seems, tattoos on women do seem especially trashy). The Ugliest Tattoos blog displays examples of, “What the hell were they thinking?” An Avatar fan also got tattoos which look awful as they are plastered randomly over his back (and if he loses interest in the movie, removing all those will be difficult). Twilight fans are equally guilty of getting hideous tattoos. An article from last month noted that tattoo removal has become a booming industry!

September

Monday 5/9: Heaven’s Shadow review

I finished the book I ordered, Heaven’s Shadow. Somewhat annoyingly, it is the first of a trilogy, though this seems to be the trend these days, presumably to make more money. The book was a reasonably entertaining read, though the characters were a little caricaturish and clichéd at times, mainly in the way they spoke (lots of U.S.-centric slang – is that the way people speak in reality?). There were some interesting ideas, which is a major purpose of science fiction (in my view). An unexpected plot point involved the Akashic Records – where all consciousness and thoughts of living beings are stored in the fabric of the Universe, and the technology of the aliens (who are not encountered in the first novel) can access this to resurrect the minds and bodies of dead people; some of the characters in the book lived again via this method. Below are some extracts explaining this (spoilers if you haven’t read it):

“There is, in my tradition, a version of what might be happening here. The Vedas, our sacred Sanskrit texts, mention the akashic records – a library of all human experience. What if that exists? What if the universe is nothing more than a giant akashic record … and these aliens somehow access it.”

There was so much more … concepts that lurked at the borders of memory, like lessons in computer science studied twenty years back: the idea that entities, organic or not, had a greater footprint in the universe than suggested by visual borders or physical limits, that they left quantum “wakes” or “clouds” that could be detected – and manipulated – years after death or destruction.

“Oh, we’ve got a model for your Revenants and such. The idea is, just as there is no true physical separation between your body and the universe – even when your core organism ceases to function, there are still atoms of moisture and skin and exhalation that linger, float off, whatever – the same thing applies to your mind, your soul, your life force. There is also some kind of physical connection between the electrical field that is you, Harley Drake, and the universe.

“Your carrier might be shut off. That is, you die. But the information lingers … like cloud computing, it’s all around us … accessible.”

“So our souls are some new kind of matter, is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s one way to look at it. I mean, hell, the universe is largely made up of dark matter and energy, and we still don’t have a terrific handle on what that is or does. Why not some other kind of energy or information? It’s probably affected by gravity, too. The cloud of souls travels with the Sun.”

“Sounds like the opening line of your next novel.”

“Those days are gone, my friend. But the image is elegant, is it not?” He let the contents of the bottle slosh. “Everything that ever lived on Earth – or in the solar system – is still with us, in some fashion. It’s all information … the folks who built Keanu just know how to access it and repackage it.”

“They must have a pretty impressive search engine to pull Zack Stewart’s wife out of a library like that.”

“We suspect they got some clues or information from the arriving astronauts. We think the, ah, markers help. Scanned them, I think. Then they’re retrieved the same way the National Security Agency plucks a single cell phone conversation out of an entire city’s signals. Random frequency tracking, amped up a bit.”

“Yeah, a bit,” Harley said. “Then, of course, there’s the whole business of growing new bodies.”

“That’s just twenty-second-century Earth biotech, don’t you think? If we live long enough, we could have new carcasses, too.” Williams wheezed, tipped his bottle toward Harley. “We both could certainly use one.”

Megan Doyle Stewart was not at all sure she approved of her newly reborn state. Yes, she’d been given a second chance at life, but why? What for? She had gone almost directly from car crash in Florida to the Beehive on Keanu.

Yes, something of “Megan Stewart” had existed for those two years in between … bodiless, blind, deaf, a state that would have terrified the living Megan, taking her buried-alive fear to a horrific extreme.

Yet she hadn’t felt fear. Instead she had … well, soared, flown, skipped from memory to memory. She had become unstuck in time and space, recalling and reliving her first kiss with Sean Peerali and meeting Zack at that party in Berkeley and late nights editing and dragging her tricycle across Main Street ….

But whereas dreams were mixed-up, twisted replays of a day’s activities, these moments seemed real, a record of what she had seen and heard and felt at the time.

She had even experienced “memories” from different points of view … other people in those same scenes. And in at least one instance – that she could recall now; it might have been a dozen or a hundred – she lived a moment from some other person’s life altogether.

The more she thought about it, the more fascinating it was … right up to the inevitable instant when she realized that unless her luck changed radically, and soon, she was going to be right back in that … postlife environment, a matrix of memories, a file in some cloud computing system.

She took a breath, then closed her eyes and said: “Okay, trying my best: life is hard to find in the universe. Intelligent life is … incredibly rare. We’ve found more dead civilizations than living ones, and we haven’t found many of those.”

“You said we.”

“Yes, we. I’m Megan. But I’m beginning to share some of their consciousness, too. This vessel … he’s really old, on the order of ten thousand years. And our solar system isn’t its first stop. There have been a dozen others.”

“Does it really have the ability to reengineer its environment to suit whatever creatures it encounters?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“For some of these other races, like the Sentries?”

“Other candidates, we call them.” She blinked, as if listening.

Zack was about to seize on the term candidates – for what? But he had a more vital question. “And this vessel can magically access specific ‘souls’ of the dead of … any race?”

“Yes. Don’t think of it as magic. It’s technology humans don’t possess. We know how consciousness and personality connect to bodies.”

“But you found a handful of souls out of millions!”

“It was accessing data stored in … the closest I can come is morphogenetic fields. The universe is filled with it … with bioelectric data, all kinds of data. Information.”

“Like the akashic records from the Vedas, the ‘library’ of all experiences and memories of human minds through their physical lifetimes.”

“They’re not using those terms.”

“Neither am I, really. They were Taj’s.”

“And I keep thinking of Jung. I guess we all reach for the words and concepts we already know.” She smiled. “This is like trying to explain the Internet to Benjamin Franklin. You know electricity, but you’re a long way from computers and networks.”

Zack looked up at the Architect, who seemed almost indifferent to his presence. “I feel like I’m standing outside the biggest library in the world, only it’s closed.”

“I’m doing my best.”

“Oh, God, honey, it’s not about you. It’s just … look at this!” He gestured at the Temple interior. “Okay, why did your friends send this vessel?”

“We’ve found a … presence, a challenge, another entity, and it’s been a threat to us. We came here looking for help. We think you might fill that role.”

“Against another race?”

“Another type of being, the Reivers.”

“The what? Sounds Irish.”

“I’m sure it’s Irish, Scots, Gaelic, whatever. It’s the word in my head, and it means bad guys. It’s not just that they’re enemies, they are enemies bent on exterminating us, and all memory of us. We can’t coexist.”

Zack took her by the shoulders. “But, still, it’s thousands of years in the past, hundreds of light-years from here, right? Does that threat still exist?”

“Yes. The Reivers don’t live on the same time scale humans do. They’ll be a threat for a million years.”

It’s an interesting alternative to the transhumanist idea of uploading one’s consciousness into a computer (which some believe won’t be biologically possible anyway, as mind and body are inextricably linked). You do get uploaded, but after death! And who would want to be stuck in an Earthly computer when you could have the whole Universe and other minds or essences to explore.

The Reivers sound a little like the Xul in Ian Douglas’s Galactic Marines saga; these were xenophobic aliens who had uploaded their minds into computers millions of years ago and wandered around the Galaxy in starships destroying any other intelligent life as a potential threat.

Wednesday 14/9: A decade since 9/11

The 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks was last Sunday (Monday in the U.S.). I did not watch or read much about it as the awfulness of the event becomes numbing. I only saw it on TV on the other side of the world, and that was bad enough.I have occasionally dreamed about it (last one I noted here was in my 15/8/2010 entry – earlier ones are in 23/2/2005, 13/2/2006, 1/10/2006). I did come across (via io9) a seismic sound recording of the event, which is oddly hypnotic and rather creepy to listen to; the first impact comes 20 minutes in, like a muted echoing thunder. The second is around 38 minutes, and the collapses are a bit vaguer to pinpoint, though the second is just over an hour in. (The “drone of the Earth” mentioned is perhaps the one in this article.)

Thursday 15/9: Head cold; odd plants

I’ve had a heavy cold since last Saturday – my second for this year – so I have been feeling rather miserable!

Weird stalk flowers

These unusual-looking plants were placed in a local park a couple of years ago. They appeared to be rather boring ornamental grasses, but this year, all of a sudden, 2- or 3-meter high single stalks grew up quickly from each clump and orange-red flowers opened up on top. I have no idea what the plants are, and would like to know; they look as though they were taken from some alien planet!

If you are looking to design alien plants and animals, there are plenty of bizarre examples to be found as inspiration on Earth. “The Most Alien-Looking Place on Earth” has photos of unique plants from an isolated ecosystem in the Socotra Islands. Another such isolated ecosystem is that of Madagascar.

A creature example is Opabinia, which existed in the Cambrian era around 530 million years ago; it looks nothing like any creatures existing today. If any of the historical extinction events had not happened, life on Earth today would look very different, and humans certainly would not have evolved.

I happened to see an article (online subscription viewing only) about the possibility of alien life in a magazine called American Scientist, so I bought it. The author essentially agrees with the Rare Earth hypothesis, which states that the emergence of complex and intelligent life on Earth was a random and extremely rare event, and is unlikely to be replicated commonly elsewhere in the Universe – if at all – though simple bacterial lifeforms might be found. (Somewhat surprisingly, scientists are still uncertain of the exact sequence that led to the emergence of life itself.) It’s a gloomy view, but probably to my mind the most realistic one – as much as I (and many others) would like it to be otherwise.

I have some thoughts about alien romances on my “Fictional aliens” page. Page deleted, so quoted below. Mainly, that they are unlikely to happen! Various forums, such as those for the Mass Effect games at Bioware or the ME Livejournal community, have multipage threads and artworks devoted to romances with various alien characters, and it’s a fun fantasy (though I do get irritated sometimes at the obsessive focus on romance as I am not particularly romantic by nature) but realistically … just no. The obsession probably says more about humans (alarmingly oversexed primates) than it does about potential aliens.

The prospect of romantic involvement with aliens is a topic explored in some science fiction, and other media such as video games (Mass Effect being one), not to mention certain sections of the Internet involved with fanfiction. The aliens in question tend to be (conveniently) more-or-less humanoid in appearance so romantic involvement is not such an outlandish idea as it might initially seem. In science-fiction-themed romance novels, the aliens are basically human with some exotic elements such as oddly-colored eyes (e.g. red or yellow). At the most they might be anthropomorphic – humanoid with animal features (such as “cat-people”; the Na’vi from Avatar being an example of this). The more “alien” aliens can be found in straight science fiction and games – some are described in the previous section.

A simple theory for why alien romances are a popular theme is the appeal of the exotic. One reviewer of The White Masai (an autobiography of a German woman who runs off to Africa and marries a Masai warrior) says:

What women will do for love, when the object of their desires is a warrior with beautiful hair. To the other reviewers who don’t understand why Corinne would ditch everything to live primitively in the Kenyan bush, her actions (comparable to Sarah Lloyd’s) appear to be based on an atavistic desire by modern women to find traditionally masculine men, with beautiful chiseled bodies, tremendous pride, weapons (swords, kris, spears) worn at the waist … as found among Masai, Samburu, Sikh and other men in the developing world.

Anthropologist April Gorry (who studied women who entered affairs with men in Belize) did a marvelous job in her doctoral thesis noting that modern women love competent, strong men, rather than the drones and eunuchs found in the Western workplace. That BMW cannot substitute for the ease with which men in traditional societies display mastery of their environment, from climbing a coconut tree and anchoring a boat to guiding female trekkers up Himalayan peaks. Corinne Hoffman’s tale is only the most extreme variation of a phenomenon involving perhaps 25,000 women per year.

The “Predator” alien previously mentioned, for example, has quite a few female fans (and fantasies …) despite not being conventionally handsome! He is a sort of idealization of the ultra-masculine male hunter, which a lot of women still instinctively find appealing (though they might be too embarrassed or “politically correct” to admit to it!). Although alien rather than from another “exotic” human culture, he does validate the reviewer’s observation.

Men have their fantasy aliens too – these can mostly (and sarcastically) be summed up in two words: female aliens with boobs. Neytiri in Avatar is an example of such “fan service” – James Cameron bluntly stated in a Playboy interview: “Right from the beginning I said, ‘She’s got to have tits,’ even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na’vi, aren’t placental mammals.” The lengthy forum threads devoted to her shows that JC achieved his aim here!

In reality, romances with aliens are probably unlikely! Aliens might not be physically compatible, might not have the same sexuality as humans (they could have a mating season, for example, and be uninterested outside of this) and both humans and aliens might find each other unappealing (humans, for example, are quite sweaty and stinky compared to many other mammals!). I could imagine some sort of platonic friendship if the two species could communicate, but nothing more than that – though one could possibly admire an attractive alien in the way we admire aesthetically appealing animals. I therefore tend to get irritated at the fevered imaginings of fangirls, such as in this Mass Effect forum thread devoted to a Turian character, Garrus. (Situations like this are not likely to happen, sorry! And there’s a lot more explicit on that site.)

The TV series Terra Nova appears to be screening in Australia on free-to-air TV, on Channel 10, though the date hasn’t been announced yet.

Sunday 18/9: Local Tree of Souls

I found a “Tree of Souls” in a front yard in my neighborhood! In reality I don’t know what type of tree it is, but it’s not a cherry blossom as the branches droop like a willow’s. Someone said it was a South African tree, but I have no idea where to start looking it up.

Wednesday 21/9: My Avatar collection; Sergei dream; Tim Furniss oddities; sports stadium waste

For a post at an Avatar forum, I made a list of the merchandise I have accumulated:

Not to mention several gigabytes of files stored on my PC. I seem to be more addicted than I thought I was! The books, CD and DVDs were bought at below RRP, so they were not as expensive as they otherwise might have been.

I had another dream last night featuring my favorite cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov! He does pop up in them on occasion, which is a bit odd as the main people in my dreams tend to be those I have known, or anonymous dream characters.

I mentioned the space writer Tim Furniss back in my 18/8/2007 entry. His website is still going, and he is still into crank conspiracy theories (mainly concerning the Challenger shuttle launch disaster) and Creationism – “The universe is not billions of years old. It is thousands of years old and the galaxies have not existed long enough for the their stars to fly off into space.” I wonder how he reconciles these with spaceflight – it rather undermines the authority of his publications on that topic.

I was disgusted to read that the State Government has “magically” found $55 million to spend on refurbishing a sports stadium. (See 26/1/2010 and 23/5/2007 entries for previous examples of this wasteful extravagance on other stadiums.)

Thursday 29/9: Big storm blackout; more Frankston rail deaths

A huge spring storm crossed Melbourne from around 3:30 yesterday afternoon, and the usual chaos ensued. There was a MASSIVE crash of thunder and lightning overhead just before 4 p.m., a power surge, and reduced power from then on. Fortunately I had turned my computer off before the storm began! The fuse box also has a surge protector. At 9:40 p.m. to 5:10 a.m. the electricity in my street went off completely – the longest outage period I can remember! It made for a dreary evening, and I got no sleep at all as I was anxiously waiting for power to resume as the fridge contents would be thawing out. A powerpole box (or whatever you call it) on a nearby street corner was the culprit; there is a crew still fixing it. I wonder if it was hit by lightning.

Another death on the nearby Frankston railway line with a 70-year-old woman killed crossing against the signals at McKinnon station. Back in August a 13-year-old girl committed suicide at Moorabbin Station (presumably jumping onto the tracks from the overpass) due to bullying, and back in February a female pedestrian, also 60, died after being hit by a train at Bentleigh station.

October

Thursday 13/10: Gymnea Lily; Terra Nova; Halo books

I found out the name of the plant mentioned in my 15/9 entry: a Gymea Lily (Doryanthes excelsa), indigenous to NSW – I emailed the local council to ask. Unfortunately some selfish morons removed a few stems from the plants since I took that photo, so there’s now only around 5 left. Anti-social behavior in Melbourne (and elsewhere) just gets worse and worse.

The Terra Nova series began on TV here 2 weeks ago. The ad breaks make it almost unwatchable. I don’t feel particularly enthusiastic about it yet. I had no sympathy for the family regarding their breaking the population rules. (Pet peeve of mine - why do rulebreakers get turned into heroes in so much fiction? I suppose it’s to provide drama). I detest the teenage angst and romance, and hope it won't be the main focus of the series! If the kids became dinosaur snacks I would cheer. I do like Commander Taylor so far and think he will be my favorite character. The landscapes looked nice, though reminiscent of Pandora! As were the flat-panel computer screens. The city also looked like Earth in Avatar. I did like the time-machine – though it, too, was like a Stargate – and hope it will be featured again.

I have Halo: The Art of Building Worlds on order from Book Depository (rather annoyingly, the price went up before I put in an order, despite it not yet being published) and am hoping my sister will order Halo: Glasslands for my birthday :-). Excerpts from the novel are now online at Tor.com and Halo Waypoint.

Thursday 27/10: Impatient for Glasslands

Halo: Glasslands has been released, but not in Australia, no thanks to our archaic parallel import rules – and it would be at least double the price here anyway. So I have been impatiently visiting forums for any tidbits of information.

November

Friday 11/11: Now 41

I turned 41 on Wednesday. I received a camera for my main gift; it is 12 megapixels – the previous one I had was only 4 mp. It has a lot of functions on it so it is rather complicated to use!

The weather was hot and humid earlier this week; a big thunderstorm came through early Tuesday morning (I was out walking and got soaked), and another more violent storm passed over Wednesday evening from just before 6 p.m. I watched the storm front coming and there was this continuous rumbling sound that was perhaps heavy rain approaching.

December

Thursday 15/12: Lucky find; vanishing houses

I haven’t felt like writing much (usual reasons).

Another big storm last Saturday night; this has been about the third big one this spring/summer. We are having a similar unpleasant humid weather pattern to last year.

I found $100 on the floor of a shop on Monday! I have to admit I was tempted to keep it (I'm not well off!) … but ended up handing it in to the service desk. Perhaps I was rather naïve in doing so; I don’t know if whoever dropped it will ever think to come back and ask, or if the money just might “disappear”.

Two more houses on my street have been demolished in the last couple of months, and another one is about to be. My old neighborhood is slowly disappearing house by house, and the new houses replacing them are massive, ugly, barren, unfriendly structures. A lot of other houses are bought up by investors and leased out, so the suburb’s population is increasingly transient, with no ties to the area. Being shy, I am not one for interacting much with neighbors, but I have lived in the same area all my life (somewhat of an anomaly these days) and the continuing loss of familiar faces is depressing. Moving would not make much difference, even if I had the means to; the situation is similar everywhere else.

I know my area very well, but am hopeless at remembering street names! I’ve had people stop to ask me for directions a couple of times and I had to embarrassedly confess I didn’t know where the street they wanted was, though the name was familiar. I wonder how I fit into the apparent gender differences with navigation (“Why women cannot read maps and men lose their keys”); I can map my region in my head visually like a 3D image.

Tuesday 20/12: Promising Prometheus

A movie of interest coming out in June next year (7 June in Australia) is Prometheus, a sort-of-prequel to the original Alien (i.e. set in the same fictional world). Promotions have just started for it (Apple trailers) and there is a lot of feverent specuation amongst the established fanbase (Prometheus forum at AVP Galaxy). So it’s something to look forward to next year, though I have not gone to the cinema since my one time last year (to see Predators) as it is just not enjoyable. It will feature new aliens – the so-called Space Jockeys – and not the xenomorphs, which have become rather overexposed. It will be fairly gruesome – a space horror movie – so it definitely appeals to me :-).

Monday 26/12: Storms

Had another bout of humid and violently stormy weather yesterday (The Age/ABC News) for Christmas Day, though thankfully there were no power blackouts this time in my area. The day was the usual quiet one at home.

Tuesday 27/12: Bird dream; cannabis concerns

I had a peculiar dream this morning and as I woke up immediately afterward, managed to motivate myself to write it down:

I have been outside exercising (my usual walking around local streets), but a storm is coming from the west so I return home as my clothing is inadequate. My parents are at home talking about something. I go to the back door, look out at the sky and see what look like thin black ribbons spiraling down in the distance from the north-west. These resolve themselves into a flock of small black-patterned birds that are raining out of the sky and attaching themselves to various surfaces. I go inside to tell my parents, then return to the back door and go outside, trying to avoid the birds, which are as densely-packed as a locust swarm. There are some neighbors on the second-storey balconies of their houses, dressed up for religious orthodox ceremonies. I want to talk to them about the birds. The storm passes and the birds diminish in number.

Real-life things where these images could have come from: watching flocks of birds flying high overhead, watching storms come in, the area in which I live, the neighbors behind me are Russian immigrants. It is bizarre how the brain can take all these random events and come up with such an odd narrative that only makes sense when I am inside a dream. For me they are vivid and in full color.

I was reading this post at Ask MetaFilter with some irritation: an anonymous poster is asking about the consequences of a “friend doing pot” (cannabis). They are still teenagers. A lot of people at MeFi, in my view, are a bit too liberal toward drug use (and too inclined to advocate use of medication for metal illness, but that is another issue), and those who are saying not to worry about using, but try not to get caught, are irresponsible in my opinion, though they scoff at such concerns. There have been a few reports over the years linking cannabis use with mental illness – people with a family history of such illness can have it triggered if they take up illicit drugs. (“Cannabis use does not appear to be causally related to the incidence of schizophrenia, but its use is highly likely to precipitate psychotic disorders in persons who are vulnerable to developing psychosis; and cannabis use is also likely to worsen the course of the disorder among those who have already developed it.” – Wikipedia) There is no conclusive evidence for or against this, similar to the link between use of mobile phones and brain tumors, but it’s better to err on the side of caution and not indulge if you are young and prone to mental issues.

A few collected articles on the topic:

Friday 30/12: Blocked ear

I have yet another wax blockage in my right ear which happened this morning, so I am going to have an uncomfortable and partly-deaf few days before going to the doctor for syringing (the receptionist today said to use ear drops then make an appointment). These blockages are getting irritatingly routine, looking at my records:

  1. June 1997: first time. I also had influenza for the first time when it happened, then some pulsar tinnitus in my right ear; it has never been quite right since then. Before that time I had no ear trouble.
  2. April 2008
  3. 10 July 2009
  4. 5 February 2010

So this is the fourth time in four years after that long gap. All have been in my right ear.

The weather will be hot (mid-30s) until next mid-week, so more discomfort. Another annoyance is imminent New Year’s Eve tomorrow and all the drunken stupidity and illegal fireworks that occasion brings on; the hot weather only makes things worse. If only last week’s storms could have come tomorrow night!