While we wait for the release of the five-disc ultimate-fanboy-edition of Blade Runner, BoingBoing has posted a link to an interview with director Ridley Scott on the "final" version of the film. Final? We shall see!

Addendum (September 30, 2007): Fred Kaplan, at The New York Times, on the restored edition. Here there be spoilers.

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Opportunity has dipped its toes into Victoria Crater, stopping at a band of bright bedrock partway down the slope of the crater. The rover will bring its suite of instruments to bear as soon as mission managers are sure that safety checks (needed because of the 25 degree tilt of the rover) are working.

"This will be the first of several stops within this band of rock," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the science payloads on Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit. "By sampling it at several different levels in the crater, we're hoping to figure out the processes that led to its formation and its very distinctive appearance." more...

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There's nothing like waking up and watching a successful rocket launch! After a relatively minor hold, the Dawn spacecraft was launched from Florida this morning on its journey to Ceres and Vesta (and possibly a few smaller encounters). Next up for the mission are a series of system "wakeups" and a slow "throttling up" of the vehicle's ion engines (for the earlier posting on Dawn, please see this entry).

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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We've been invaded by Moties! On the way in to work I saw a woman who was smoking a cigarette, talking on her cellphone, drinking a cup of coffee and driving the car. All at the same time. How many hands would that be?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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There is something decidedly odd looking about somebody roughly my age with multiple (visible, never mind what else is there!) body piercings. For one thing, the older attempts are still visible as puckered dimples that are clearly not the result of nature or accident, but purposeful changes by a person. Add in purposefully "distressed" clothing and you get a not so authentic image!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jack let her pay off until the flurry was over, and then, as he began to bring her back, his hands strong on the spokes,so he came into direct contact with the living essence of the sloop: the vibration beneath his palm, something between a sound and a flow, came straight up from her rudder, and it joined with the innumerable rhythms, the creak and humming of her hull and rigging. The keen clear wind swept in on his left cheek, and as he bore on the helm so the Sophie answered, quicker and more nervous than he had expected. Closer and closer to the wind. The were all staring up and forward: at last, in spite of the fiddle-tight bowline, the foretopgallantsail shivered, and Jack eased off.

(Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Was bitten on the cheek by a spider. Do not appear to be able to climb walls or have any kind of extrasensory abilities yet. So far I've just got a spider bite on my cheek. Seems deeply unfair, really."

(Neil Gaiman)

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Heard about the mysterious meteor in Peru? Sometimes a conspiracy theory is a lot more fun than the truth. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Somebody want to explain to me how an ISBN—a number assigned to a book by an outside organization, which helps to catalog the book—can be the "intellectual property" of a bookstore?

You see, I use those numbers as part of the database I have on my own books, so I don't want to be stepping on on the toes of that fine Haaarrrvaarrrd bookstore!

It wouldn't have to do anything, in reality, with (sssshhhhh!) competition and free markets would it?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Japan launched its first probe to the Moon, Kaguya (or "Selene"), since its successful Hiten-Hagomoro probe in 1993. Relatively quiet since the 1960's, except for the occasional visitor such as a flyby of the Jupiter-bound Galileo, the orbital invasion began again in earnest in the 1990's with Hiten-Hagomoro, as well as Clementine, Lunar Prospector and the ESA's SMART-1. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:49 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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China has decided that it is going to regulate reincarnation. It seems the Dalai Lama (who hasn't done the Chinese any favors by shutting up on how they are destroying the land of Tibet) has stated he won't be reincarnated in Tibet as long as the Chinese are in Tibet.

Ummm...so by doing this, doesn't the Chinese government legitimize religion, the afterlife, Buddist philosophy, etc.?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Latest in a series of overpriced items. How about $150,000 for a stereo? From Steinway (as in pianos)?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 02:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Lobachevsky alone has looked on Beauty bare.
She curves in here, she curves in here.
She curves out there.

Her parallel clefts come together to tease
In un-callipygianous-wise;
With fewer than one hundred eighty degrees
Her glorious triangle lies.

Her double-trumpet symmetry Riemann did not court-
His tastes to simpler-curvedness, the buxom Teuton sort!
An ellipse is fine for as far as it goes,
But modesty, away!
If I'm going to see Beauty without her clothes
Give me hyperbolas any old day.

The world is curves, I've heard it said,
And straightway in it nothing lies.
This then my wish, before I'm dead:
To look through Lobachevsky's eyes.

(Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via Geekpress, a report of a real-life droud.

(As the technovelgy entry on "droud" notes, this is not actually the application Niven envisioned.)

Posted by: JohnL at 09:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The New York Times has given up on its premium service and set vast amounts of information free. A vast number of articles are now available in the archives; no longer will you have to scrabble to find an article to link to because it is being locked behind a wall. What will you find? Here's one example, a review by Samuel R. Delany from 1968!

More ads, but they finally realized they were being left in the dust (no matter how they "officially" dress it up).

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Just a friendly reminder to dust off that stuffed parrot tomorrow. more...

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Well, maybe not best ever, but up there. If you're going to try to spam me by claiming that my PayPal account has been accessed by unauthorized users, maybe you should use a spoof address that appears to be from PayPal? And not, say, from the Internal Revenue Service?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Is Peter Diamandis the real-life Harriman?

Thanks to Google, there's now a $25-30 million X-prize available to the team that lands a privately-funded rover on the moon by the end of 2012, takes some pictures, and moves at least 500 meters on the lunar surface. Details here. And here. And here. And here.

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When we last took a look at Mars, things looked bad for the Mars Rovers. A global dust storm threatened their power-generating capabilities. Was this the end of Spirit and Opportunity? more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The air was filled with the smell of burning plastic, the smell of a million melted computers.

(Warning: Real Life, Real World, Real Event Content. Strong Situations. Strong Language. Things Are Not Pretty. Real Life Is Ugly. This is the posting that got me "moderated" on User Friendly. You are warned.) more...

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