Category: Art and Science
At the Art Student’s League Gallery
This sketch was chosen for the League’s student show at the Phyllis Harriman Gallery. The class was all there, showing their best work
Last Girl Standing (short story clip)
From my short story published in the limitless Visions VII: Universes anthology:
When I first saw the Professor, I thought he was a dingbatter, the kind of tourist who would come to our little Outer Banks Island, lean out the car window and shout, “Hey kid, what time does the 4 o’clock ferry leave?” But he wasn’t that way at all.
I met him when I was working behind the counter at Momma’s video store. My real job was to get on my bike and deliver videos, but Momma wanted to go out to lunch, so she said “Amelie, you’re on the register.” and I was stuck inside.
Luckily my best friend Jen showed up. Momma was gone, and when the cat’s away, the mice will play. We got a pile of returned videos from the Adult Section and tried to find the funniest titles. Jen very delicately put her long black hair behind her ear and presented C. Assablanca. I found Tom Dare, Crack Detective. We were already giggling ourselves silly when the Professor came up to the counter with Paper Moon. That sent us into hysterics. No one can laugh harder than thirteen year-old girls.
He brushed the sleeve of his jacket and said “Young ladies!”
I stopped laughing. The man had the whole professor look down, from the tweed jacket with elbow patches to the shock of white Einstein hair. His dark face was framed by a grey goatee and topped off with little gold-rimmed glasses. Why would such a respectable dude be renting porn?
Concept art for my ‘Murmuration’ series
A murmuration of starlings is a system that’s ready to be almost instantly and completely transformed, like metals becoming magnetized or liquid turning to gas. Each starling is connected to every other. When they turns in unison, it’s a phase transition (def. – when a substance changes from a solid, liquid, or gas state to a different state. Every element and substance can transition from one phase to another at a specific combination of temperature and pressure.)
At the individual level, the rules guiding this are relatively simple. When your neighbor moves, so do you. Depending on the flock’s size, speed and individual flight physiologies, the large-scale pattern changes. But we don’t know yet what physiological mechanisms allow this to happen almost simultaneously with two birds separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds.
The implications extend beyond birds. Starlings may be the most visible and beautiful example of a biological transition that operates in proteins and neurons, hinting at universal principles yet to be understood.
More about Murmuration (via Wired)
Cleaning Out My Illustrations Folder
A comic about a Repo Lady I worked on years ago with Dean Esmay (he wrote it, I did the sketches)
Red Planet Plans
NASA is taking a multistep approach to its ultimate goal of putting boots on Mars.
The journey begins in low Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which has hosted rotating crews continuously since November 2000. During this time, NASA and its ISS partners have been learning more and more about how to support astronauts on space missions.This effort took a big step forward this past March, when NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko wrapped up an unprecedented 11-month mission aboard the orbiting lab that gave researchers new data about the physiological and psychological effects of long-duration spaceflight. (A Mars mission will be long-duration; it takes six to nine months to get to the Red Planet using currently available propulsion technology.)
In the next 10 years, NASA plans to extend the reach of human spaceflight out near the moon, to test spaceflight gear — such as the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and Orion crew capsule, both of which are in development — in a “proving ground” in deep space. For example, in the mid-2020s, the agency plans to send astronauts out to lunar orbit, to visit an asteroid boulder dragged there by a robotic spacecraft. (The boulder-snagging first part of this Asteroid Redirect Mission is scheduled to launch in the early 2020s.)
After the proving ground comes the journey to Mars itself. Current plans call for sending astronauts to Mars orbit in the early 2030s, with trips to the surface coming sometime after that. NASA officials have said they hope to eventually set up a small outpost on the Red Planet, where astronauts would search for signs of Mars life and perform other research.
What will we live in?
6 Private Deep Space Habitats to Pave Way to Mars
NASA sets $2.25m prize for 3D printed Mars habitats
What’s Under the Surface of Europa?
It’s long been suggested that Europa has an ocean underneath all of its ice. If there is water sprouting onto its surface, that could mean that not only is there an ocean, but also that the ocean could be far more accessible for measurements and scientific study than previously thought.
Why? Because the ice on Europa is 10 to 15 miles, or 15 to 25 kilometers, thick — a very long way for a drill or submersible to have to go. And who knows what’s waiting down there once they arrive! So catching these plumes of water on a flyby mission could be a far more feasible operation.
Plumes would provide a far easier way to detect the composition of this buried ocean, as well as to discover any signs of life. It’s much the same as with exoplanets, where space folks are used to learning a lot from a little in reading the signatures of these worlds.
Now, all we need is a mission to these plumes to see if we can change universal history!
Describe Yourself in Three Fictional Characters
Had to try this – my favorites:
GoPro is Literally Listening to Customers
I’ve still got my GoPro2, and despite the many times I’ve nearly crushed and/or drowned it, it’s still working. But this looks like a nice replacement
The Hero5 now incorporates the best features of both of those cameras. It captures 4K footage at up to 30 frames per second like the Black, while also incorporating the Hero4 Silver’s touchscreen, which allows you to frame shots without the use of a wirelessly-connected smartphone, and makes it much easier to tweak settings and options. Perhaps most shockingly, the action super camera comes with a dramatic drop in price, to just $399. It seems GoPro’s feeling the heat from the competition.
