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AstronomypodcastsScience

From “365 Days of Astronomy”: DD’s Winter Solstice podcast

by Diane Duane December 21, 2015

It was a great pleasure to do this podcast for the 365 Days of Astronomy some years back. Considering how close we are to the Winter Solstice*, I thought I’d repost the link to my (winter) contribution here:

Dancing in the Dark: Deities, Celebrations and the Bottom of the Year

Click here to go straight to the MP3 audio. Prefer a transcript? It’s here.

Some links for extra info about the subject of the podcast are here:

http://www.dianeduane.com/solstice

*If you’re reading this in 2016, it falls on December 21 at 10:44 GMT.

 

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December 21, 2015
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AstronomyEuropeHistoryHome lifeHumorIrelandMediaOOA2tumblrpredicting the futurepredicting the future badlyreligionthings that piss you off

Dude, where’s my Apocalypse?!

by Diane Duane December 21, 2012

Does anybody have an 800 number for the ancient Mayans? Because I need to lodge a complaint.

Seriously, 2012 has been something of a wash all around.  Tragedies. Mass shootings. Anguish of all kinds. Local cataclysms of the flood-and-earthquake variety. Wars and rumors of war (well, yeah, we always have those, but this year has seemed worse than usual for some reason).  Superstorms. Droughts and famines. Endless human pain. (And other species are suffering too, obviously, but in typically human fashion it’s our own pain we notice most.)

A nice hefty apocalypse would’ve really taken the edge off all of those.

Because just think of it.  No more… well, no more [fill in the blank with whatever really gets on your case]. I have my own list:  full of the great tragedies above, but also full of many lesser ones, of annoyances and  disappointments and things that just get under my skin. No more Prometheus.  No more robocalling marketers. No more fiscal cliffs.  No more spam. No more Windows 8.  No more Apple Maps.  Crash a runaway planet or so into us and it’s all over with, and good riddance. (I really would miss never seeing season 3 of Sherlock or the remaining Hobbit films, but when so much evil would be wiped out at the same time, it seems petty to complain.)

Yet after all this effing buildup, what have we got this morning?

Bupkis!

It’s been beyond annoying, really: partly because we were promised two others of these this year. One of them was going to be a few days after my birthday. I thought, “Yeah, typical. I hit a landmark year and then have three days to enjoy it: whose good idea was this??” And the day came — it was supposed to be one of those raptures or something similar — and what do we get?

Nothing.

Then immediately the guy responsible for the math says, “Whoops, no, calculation error, God moves in mysterious ways, I haven’t been told everything, uh, human error, that’s the ticket. It’s going to be October.” The designated date was right after Peter’s birthday this time.  P. simply said, “Great, I get a party and no hangover!” — trust him to see the bright side of an apocalypse: this kind of behavior is the reason I married the man. And the day comes, and we have our little party, and the day goes, and what do we get?

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

What’s the saying? Once might be an accident. Twice could be coincidence. But the third time? Enemy action. The third time, any sensible person would pick up the phone and call Customer Service and say, “This is unacceptable. Something is really wrong at the fulfillment end. You need to do something to put this right.”

But who do I complain to?

Because now we’re going to hear the old song again…  all the stuff about how complex the problem is, how you can’t possibly blame any one person or organization. It was this writer. Or that broadcasting personality. It was a runaway meme. It was publicity-seeking New Agers — that’ll be a popular one. You can just see what the news is going to look like tomorrow, as all these people who promised us an End Of The World that could actually be worth something start pointing at each other and trying to shift the blame.

“Miscalculations in the calendar” — I bet that’ll be the most popular excuse. Rounding errors. Failure to correctly convert metric to imperial, or the other way around. (At least one Mars probe went God knows where because of that: you’d think people would’ve learned better by now! Seriously.) Or wait a moment, no, it’ll all have been a translation error, won’t it? Such a subjective art. Yeah, let’s blame the translators. Like they don’t already have enough on their plates.

I guess there’s nothing for it but to settle in for a nice long session of watching the fingerpointing, until the news cycle gets bored with it and cycles on.  (And I bet that won’t happen soon enough for some of these people, who’ve thought nothing in particular of inflicting their own crazy paranoias on the rest of the planet at large.) It’ll be just like the week after the US Presidential election all over again, with all the people who thought Romney was such a shoe-in suddenly finding all these great reasons how the other guys in the party screwed it up. “Wait, what? Women? Black and hispanic voters? Young voters? He said not to pay them any mind…! Yeah, him over there. And Romney, pff, I never really liked him anyway…”

Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not going to let this slide.  I want to march up to somebody’s desk and get this made right. I don’t care what it takes: they can bloody well get DHL or FedEx on it, for God’s sake, but I want that runaway planet or whatever the hell it was supposed to be on my desk by tomorrow morning at the latest. And in the meantime, until the email with the tracking number comes in, I just want an answer.

Dude, where’s my apocalypse?!

December 21, 2012
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AstronomyComputer stuffGraphic and plastic artsYoung Wizards

A couple more snapshots from the "A Wizard of Mars" book trailer

by Diane Duane March 28, 2011

Here are two more wallpapers for those who might be interested in DL’ing them. Once again, these were produced in the wonderful Terragen 2.2.

The location is in Syrtis Major, and that shiny object is the “superegg” that the wizards find buried in a dune by an outcropping  there. (I have removed the sand in these shots because I like seeing the whole superegg shape: I find it very cool.)

This first one is a late afternoon shot —

Small Syrtis Superegg image

The second is a reverse angle on the same position, and you can see a proper Martian “blue sunset” in the b.g. The superegg is plainly about to start misbehaving in this one.

Small sunset outcropping image

Both of these are 1920×1200 pixels. The images are hosted at Box.net, so that’s where clicking on the images will take you for your download.

Enjoy!

March 28, 2011
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AstronomyScienceYoung Wizards

Mist in Valles Marineris

by Diane Duane February 17, 2011

Mist in Valles Marineris wallpaper

We’re starting to put together the book trailer for the paperback edition of A Wizard of Mars (which comes out in May) and I thought I might start putting up some of the prettier separate frames as downloadable wallpapers for anyone who might like them.

These are all generated using the wonderful Terragen terrain generation and modeling software, which has been used in some interesting places (the highest-profile at the moment probably being the wonderful volumetric-cloud work they did for TRON: LEGACY). The terrain data comes from Martian radar altimetry sent home to us by the Mars Global Surveyor.

This one shows some very atypical weather in the Valles Marineris region — secondary to some busted-loose wizardry monkeying with the surface conditions, as described in AWoM. The dimensions are 1920×1200. Just “>click here or on the image to go to the download site at Box.net.

More of these are available over at the Young Wizards website, at this link. (The biggest resolutions aren’t available at the moment, but will be during March. It takes a couple/few days to render some of the more complex files.)

February 17, 2011
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AstronomyScienceTravel

Enceladus

by Diane Duane August 17, 2008

Gorgeous.

Tags: Enceladus, Saturn, moon, space, probe, ice, life, solar+system
August 17, 2008
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AstronomyHumorMediaNewsOnline lifeScienceTechnogeekery

Hadron abuse

by Diane Duane August 8, 2008

One more thing I hadn’t thought I needed to be worried about.

(with a tip of the hat to our cousins at Bad Astronomy Blog)

Tags: hadron, abuse, subatomic, particle, CERN

August 8, 2008
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AstronomyFood, restaurants and cookingTravel

If this is Friday, it must be Sweden

by Diane Duane August 1, 2008

So here I am. Missing Peter (inevitable), enjoying the weather (hot, sunny, a touch humid), and working (also inevitable: Vasa is going to have to wait for the next trip, I’m afraid).

The eclipse passed without notice in most parts of the city, I think. (But at only — what, 30%-ish totality? — this is forgivable. I think I noticed things getting a little dim this morning, but there was some cloud cover passing through at the time, and people no doubt attributed the change of lighting to that.)

Meanwhile I am holed up in a comfortable bar/restaurant called the Järntorgs Pumpen, finishing work on the film outline and watching other, more normal people sitting out in the sun in front of the restaurant and enjoying themselves. Having had a nice cool tuna salad, I then started a cyberskulk (i.e., a hunt for powerpoints / outlets) and was delighted to find outlets to charge up both computer and cellphone just a table away. (Future visitors, NB: it’s the table for four inside the window on the left as you face the restaurant from the square: the outlets are between the table and the front door.)

Here’s the view from where I’m working:

View out the front window of the Jaerntorgs Pumpen restaurant
 …And now back to work.

(Dublin readers: imagine my surprise to find a bar/restaurant called “The Temple Bar” just around the corner. To my surprise, the menu was mostly Greek. Go figure.)

August 1, 2008
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AstronomyHumorScienceTravel

The galactic bar scene

by Diane Duane July 30, 2008

PASADENA, Calif.–Bars abound in spiral galaxies today, but this was not always the case. A group of 16 astronomers, led by Kartik Sheth of NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, has found that bars tripled in number over the past seven billion years…

So what’s the cause? Gentrification, or looser liquor licensing laws?  You decide.

(with a tip of the hat to The Quantum Pontiff)

July 30, 2008
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AstronomyScienceTravel

Local definition of being focused on work: totally forgot about the solar eclipse

by Diane Duane July 30, 2008

Sheesh. Unusual for me. But here’s the info.  (The path of totality has also been Google Mapped.)

Stockholm will only be getting a partial — I estimate 35–40%-ish coverage from the diagram — but that’s still more than I’d have seen at home in Ireland. What great timing!

Here’s a magic phrase, though:

The path of totality crosses the Great Wall of China before sunset.

OMG SOMEBODY GET PICTUREZ!!

 

Tags: eclipse, August+1, 2008, Stockholm, midnight+sun, China, Great+Wall, partial, wow
July 30, 2008
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AstronomyHome lifeIrelandUncategorized

How I Missed the Conjunction of Tarva and Alambil

by Diane Duane December 10, 2006

“At the dead of night, two noble planets, Tarva and Alambil, will pass within one degree of each other. Such a conjunction has not occurred for two hundred years.” (Dr. Cornelius in Prince Caspian)

Irish weather strikes again.

We had a tight conjunction of Mercury, Mars and Jupiter this morning. When I went to bed the weather was crisp, cold and perfectly clear. When I woke up pre-dawn, it was totally socked in and dumping down rain.

Oh well. If I watch my cholesterol, I might just make it to the next one in 2050. (Also, this morning was just the tightest conjunction: the three planets will still be fairly close tomorrow morning.)

[tags][/tags]

 

 

December 10, 2006
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AstronomyCurrent eventsTravel

In the "Why was I not told about this earlier" department

by Diane Duane September 14, 2006

From an article about the deploying of the International Space Station’s new solar panels: one astronaut is mentioned…

…Christopher J. Ferguson, another Navy captain, who is on his first shuttle mission and is a member of the all-astronaut rock band Max Q.

The all-astronaut rock band??!!

Where do they play? Where can a geek(ette) buy their CDs? Someone must know…

(More info on them here at Wikipedia.)
[tags]Christopher J. Ferguson, astronaut, rock band, all-astronaut rock band[/tags]

September 14, 2006
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AstronomyCurrent events

The tenth planet gets a name

by Diane Duane September 14, 2006

Or the second planette. (Or dwarf planet, or planetoid, or whatever-the-F we’re calling the Small Guys Out Past Neptune this week.)

Anyway: the planet formerly known as Xena is now Eris. …Which makes so much sense, given recent events. And her moon is Dysnomia. (Which I would otherwise have pegged as the word for the syndrome that makes you hate naming things, but never mind.)

But now let’s get serious. What’s the new body’s symbol?

It really ought to be an apple.

[tags]dwarf planet, planette, planetoid, Xena, planet, new planet, tenth planet, Eris, Dysnomia [/tags]

September 14, 2006
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40 years in print, 50+ novels, assorted TV/movies, NYT Bestseller List a few times, blah blah blah. Young Wizards series, 1983-2020 and beyond; Middle Kingdoms series, 1979-2019. And now, also: Proud past Guest of Honour at Dublin2019, the World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland.

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From the Young Wizards universe: an update

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