Jordan Jumping a Gate
This is a test of the link to Flickr plugin I just added. I’ve been mucking about with adding galleries to the blog, and it’s kind of a pain. Especially when I already setup Flickr. So…here’s the test.
By the way, the picture is of my niece Jordan jumping a gate during a riding class in the Spring of 2008.
I posted my thought experiment over in Baen’s Bar. I guess I shouldn’t have, at least not the way I did. The responses are focusing on the engineering errors and not on the underlying concepts. Let me redo the idea in the abstract.
Well, sorta abstract. Bear with me a bit.
Hi-
If you want to have a user account, and have access to the closed areas and such, send me an email. If I don’t get an email, I purge the user. Sorry about that, but it’s the only way to keep ahead of the spam.
Dr.Z
Ever since I was a kid, really, I’ve loved science fiction and fantasy, and I’ve long wanted to write SF. Over the years I’ve works up lots of background material, written vignettes and shorts, and started many more novels than I’ve finished. Most, though by no means all, of this work has gone unfinished and un-submitted. Since college I’ve been pretty busy, though, and for the past fifteen years I’ve been involved one way or another with the Internet which has kept me too occupied to do more than tinker and ponder concepts.
One of my pet peeves about SF (or, for that matter, fantasy) is excessive hand-waving. You know what I mean, dialog or exposition intended to paper over the fact that something is happening because the author wants it to happen, not because it would have happened. And of those, rocket-less space drives are usually prime offenders. I’ll credit David Weber with confounding me the most with his “impeller” drive – a contrivance intended to ensure that his ships have broadsides and rake-able fore and aft aspects. As much as I love the stories set in the Honor Harrington universe, this drive makes me … peevish.
Karen, my fiancée is delighted with herself just now. I’m tickled too. If you were to google Karen Schroll, and go in a couple pages, you’ll find a link to a page about the Thelma and Louise movie. Now, a bit of background. For the past couple years, in the Spring, the Washington Post has run a contest centered on dioramas using peeps, those marshmallow chick and bunny shapes that appear around Easter-time. Karen did one, and was one of the finalists in the 3rd annual contest. Her diorama was, you guessed it, about Thelma and Louise.
Now, if you go to the “photos” tab on the Picso site, you’ll see that someone (not her, she swears!) uploaded a picture of her diorama. She’s famous! In fact, other than “Thelma” and “Louise” her name is the only name accompanying any of the pictures. Here’s a link to the picture on the Picso site.
This is a rant, apologies in advance.
I still can’t believe that anyone working for a federal agency, whether an employee or a contractor, can possibly say “we’re not sure if this information security stuff applies to us.” Can you not read? FISMA was enacted in 2002! How many years of OMB saying, “FISMA applies to all unclassified federal information anywhere in any form” does it take for people to get the message?
