Curl et al.
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Curl et al.

Musings

I dream of the future

5/20/2016

 
Picture
Okay, so the above image is a little ridiculous if you think about it. That is a DJI Phantom quad-copter "carrying" or perhaps birthing an Amazon Echo smart speaker. While the form factor I have featured would never make it past R&D, I hope that it demonstrates the concept. For my purposes it will work just fine.
This post technically started when I first picked up the Golden Compass, by  Philip Pullman years ago. While the focus of his work was more or less to show that you can have The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe style fantasy without all that God allusion, I tend to read things for myself and draw my own conclusions. Sorry Phil, I enjoyed your works but remain convinced of the existence of a personal and loving God. The reason I bring this up in relation to the above picture though is because of a very neat concept that Mr. Pullman introduced in his novels: the daemons​. Today, we are hunting for daemons!

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Dizziness in Space

5/20/2016

 
I'm not the first. I could probably start every musing with that statement. Today, I am not the first to contemplate building a better space station (or spacecraft in general). The problem that comes up in the media a lot with space travel is human health - particularly long term negative effects on the persons known as astronauts in micro- or null gravity. There are a whole host of other issues to be aware of including radiation, outer hull perforation, fuel, atmosphere, food, etc. But the idea that your bones figuratively evaporate calcium when there is no load strain placed on them is cause for real concern. NASA and Roscosmos just launched the first year long stay for several Cosmonauts and Astronauts to study the longterm effects of space on human health. The findings should be quite interesting.

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Did anyone see that?

3/28/2015

 
The map shows the location of the Germanwings Flight 9525 that crashed on 3/24/2015. All 144 passengers and 6 crew aboard the flight were killed, likely instantly on impact. Several were Americans (though they were all people, so I'm not sure why we insist on adding that information to these types of stories), and the shockwave of the crash event has reverberated around the globe in a brisk fashion. There is a human cost to human action, which can be glossed over when we reduce casualties to simple numbers or we talk about how much the families are suing and who they are going after. Hopefully we can all take a step back and breathe and simply remember that there were real live people on that plane, with faults and foibles, dreams and abilities, and the world no longer gets the benefit of their life. Please pray for solace to those hurting, and for joy to come back to life swiftly. Tragedies are hard, and our memories can be long.

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The Second Beginning

3/26/2015

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The first website I ever made from scratch was the wedding announcement and details page. We sent out invitations that had a fun little poem, an RSVP card that could be detached, and then directed them to the site to find the various venue locations, dates, and times as well as basic "what should I wear" information. This worked pretty well, even if it was ahead of many of our guests' normal digital comfort levels. Hopefully we didn't ruffle too many feathers with the electron-incursion into their lives.
After the wedding, I maintained the page sporadically for a about a year - adding pictures and stories and poems. Then I just let it sit until Apple decided to kill off MobileMe (which was the host of the site) followed with the death of iWeb, my webmaster tenure came to a quiet end.
So now we're here. As the title suggests, this is the second beginning. The second website, another iteration in the digital fingerprint that is my presence on the interwebs. I have many great plans, most of them unrealistic. To help me keep reality and expectation in lockstep, I want to make this site less rigid. Instead of promising weekly updates, how about I promise to write something when I have something interesting to say? Instead of posting all the pictures and videos I take of all the adventures that we take (which would be expensive in storage cost without even factoring in time), how about I post an image that stands out to me as interesting. After all - this is as much a selfish endeavour as it is informative to my reader(s - for the optimist in me). I'm less likely to try hard if I don't find it interesting. That said, be prepared for some sermons to get mixed into here as well.
So yes, the second beginning. Probably not even the final beginning, but assuredly not the first or final ending. Welcome.

~Mike
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    Michael Curl:
    Opinionated, intelligent, and often wrong. His wife desires that he be correct more often.
    "I'm trying sweetie."
    

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