That’s one of two images from a post<\/a> at Canadian hard-SF author Peter Watts<\/a>‘ blog<\/a>. Read the post<\/a> for a higher resolution version, another picture, and a very disturbing mental image.<\/p>\n Of course there are even better vantage points for seeing the aurora australis. Consider this image:<\/p>\n That one’s from the NASA Earth Observatory site<\/a> — images from the IMAGE satellite<\/a>, from shortly before it stopped working.. They have a movie<\/a> as well, and it’s a bit freaky in that it reminds me of those “lightning balls” I had in my bedroom back in the day Every time I think I am ridiculously elitist and egotistical in my conception of “the masses” I see an article on results of polling people for common knowledge, and I fear.<\/p>\n This week’s example<\/a>, at MSNBC\/Newsweek, has a ridiculous number of frightening statistics in it.<\/p>\n Here are some examples:<\/p>\n You can see other examples and the full results at the link.<\/p>\n Apparently at least one person feels that the BBC is too hard on Americans<\/a>. (I am sure this is unrelated to the last item).<\/p>\n While I don’t buy into most of the argument, I thought this part was interesting:<\/p>\n The international shimmy from anti-Bush sentiments to blanket anti-American sentiments has been widely noted, especially since the President was elected a second time and so, say critics, the refusal of the nation to bow to experience means not just they have only themselves to blame but that we, by extension, may play the blame game too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’ve seen a lot of that myself, but haven’t seen it expressed so concisely before.<\/p>\n The comments on the piece are also interesting (at least the ones that reach beyond knee-jerk reactions are).<\/p>\n Hey, I didn’t know they were making a movie<\/a> of Steven Gould<\/a>‘s Jumper<\/a>. I remember really liking that book at the time Of course the movie version has Hayden Christensen, so it will most likely suck even if the adaptation beat the odds and turned out decently.<\/p>\n I’ll ZipList<\/a> it though, just to see.<\/p>\n Speaking of books, the new Matt Hughes book<\/a> is coming out soon. I’ve mentioned Hughes here before<\/a>, but if none of that has convinced you yet, let me quote a little bit from Rick Kleffel’s review<\/a> of the new book:<\/p>\n I mentioned the prose, right? Incredibly witty and funny, it rolls trippingly through your mind as you read it. But given that the prose is so tremendously funny and gorgeously, ornately well-written, how do the ideas, plots and characters fare? Well, they’re all mind-bogglingly able to keep up with Hughes’ prose. Now, look, from the get-go you\u2019re going to have be OK with some really weird settings, characters and concepts. This is not simply some TV detective franchise in spaceship drag. Hughes offers us a complex vision of magic and science, of reason and wonder separated at birth and in close competition. You\u2019re going to encounter all manner of sorcerers and mad scientists, monsters and men in here. Rest assured that conceptually it all hangs together. But be certain as well that getting to the point is going to be more fun than you can possibly imagine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hughes’ website<\/a> also has some background info, but hasn’t been updated with information on the new novel yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For some reason I’ve been on a things-in-space-with-cool-pictures kick this week, so why stop now? Here’s a picture of the aurora australis, as seen from Antarctica: That’s one of two images from a post at Canadian hard-SF author Peter Watts‘ blog. Read the post for a higher resolution version, another picture, and a very disturbing mental image. Of course there… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-linkapalooza","category-technology","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-eY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Aurora](\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2007\/06\/_SPAurora.jpg\" "\\"Aurora")
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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2007\/06\/hughes-spiral_labyrinth.jpg\" "\\"The")
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