Big
Circles
I recently celebrated
a birthday and it occurred to
me
that, were
I living on the
planet Mercury, I might possibly live to
reach a Methuselahn-like 400 years as
it only takes 88 days for that planet to
circle the sun. Hallmark Cards should snap
up an opportunity to fund a
colony there.
Conversely,
any human colony on Pluto, a planet that
requires
250 years
to complete a solar orbit, would instantly
suffer the solar system's worst
infant
mortality
rate
as
no child, or adult for that matter, would
live to see their first birthday.
While I'm waxing fantastical, I recently
got to pondering the Star Trek-kian matter
transporter. Something like that would
revolutionize space travel as you could
zap a large group of explorers into a
data bank, shoot it off into deep space,
and
then have
it rematerialize
its cargo once the spacecraft reached
its destination. No life-support required
and, almost as important, no light-years-long
interpersonal squabbles. And
if the targeted planet didn't pan out then
just redeploy back into memory and shove
off
in another
direction.
-----------
Since I know you all have
time on your hands I'd like to introduce
you to Freeman's
Mind, a most entertaining repurposing
of the game, Half-Life. Creator Ross Scott
plays the game from a uniquely entertaining
first-person perspective and all 68 Youtube
chapters (Yes, 68, and that's too damn
few in my
opinion!) are worth a look. The red link
takes you to episode 45, which is one of
his most popular, and for good reason.
Enjoy!
=Lefty=
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