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Tag: Mars

morning computer one by one

I’ve sometimes thought that that’s why I became a painter, because I have all these pictures inside me, yes, so many pictures that they’re a kind of agony, yes, it hurts me when they keep popping up again and again, like visions almost, and in all kinds of contexts, and I can’t do anything about it, the only thing I can do is paint, yes, try to paint away these pictures that are lodged inside me, there’s nothing to do but paint them away, one by one

THE OTHER NAME, Jon Fosse

Mars’ oddest cloud: the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud. 

Roberta Gentry:

“While the idea of God has received much attention from philosophers and progressive theologians, its counterpart, the dark figure of the Evil One, has been much neglected”. So begins The History of the Devil, wherein this perceived wrong is to be righted by Paul Carus, a self-described “theologian of science”.

Although an unfamiliar name now, at the end the nineteenth century Carus was hailed for his attempts to “conciliate science and religion”. He also played a key role in the introduction of Buddhist thought to the United States, to which he emigrated from his native Germany in the mid-1880s.

THE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL AND THE IDEA OF EVIL

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sailing ship time: 26mar26

Off to see PROJECT HAIL MARY today, and then I need to crack a story idea that’s been eluding me for two weeks, and tomorrow is solid scripting and prose writing all damn day, and then the weekend is all about washing out propagators and starting seeds. It’s going to be a cold weekend, and the light and spring warmth is supposed to come back next week… and I’m back to living in the weather changes. I suspect I’ll be losing an entire day next week to running the woodchipper and chopping holly wood into logs, in between planting raspberry canes and onions.

I missed this yesterday: NASA intends to send a probe to Mars on top of a nuclear-electric drive, Space Reactor-1 Freedom. It seems to be pretty much a test article – a year-long transit to Mars does not imply much in the way of breakthrough oomph, but the efficiency of nuclear-electric thrust does mean that once it’s dropped off its payload of helicopters at Mars there will be more than enough juice to send the thing off to Saturn.

Important to remember that this is nuclear-electric, not nuclear-thermal – therefore slower but “cleaner.” I don’t yet know enough to know if a bigger reactor will provide more nuclear-electric speed, so we’re still in sailing-ship transit times. I always thought I’d see a solved version of NERVA in my lifetime, but I guess not.


READING: NETTLES AND PETALS, Jamie Walton (UK) (US+),  THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+)

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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rewarded by a return to the earth: 22feb26

Sky Hopinka

Yesterday I reduced a viburnum by half, hacked back salvia and holly, raked a bed, dug a trench in it, mixed a hundred litres of compost into the trench, and planted three cherry trees. Today I am actually less achy and knackered than I expected, especially bearing in mind that I still have this plague in my system. Once I have some charge in my phone, I’m going to check the weather and see if I’m going to have the space to plant some apple trees today.

Today it’s the Swatch Metropolis, yesterday it was the G-Shock G-Rescue because it was a day of working with saws and chainsaws and other implements of destruction.

New newsletter is out.

And my fourth leather notebook cover arrived, so now I have a system that can contain everything I’m working on with space to accommodate more.

TODAY:

“Kiyoshi Awazu[KIYOSHI AWAZU SCPAP BOOK].published by Tabata Shobo.1970.”

Accessions: The complete works of Plato


READING: THE BIG THREE: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, Neel Burton (UK) (US+)

When asked why he had made death the penalty for most offences, Draco replied that he considered the lesser offences to deserve it and had no harsher punishment for the greater ones.


LISTENING: Monument Podcast (MNMT 506 : Síoda Rua) – listened to a lot of it yesterday while working in the garden and it’s an amazing mix

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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PROJECT MARS, Wernher von Braun

When I was writing MINISTRY OF SPACE, only the technical appendix to this book, THE MARS PROJECT, was available, and that was invaluable. I picked this up around 2006 to accompany it on a shelf, and promptly lost it until today. It seems to be out of print now. But it’s nice to have it as a bookend to a period of research, and a period of thinking.

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