death

Disaster has struck our little bio-sphere! Mr. Collins and Watson are dead. We discovered their bodies this morning. And was in the throws of death, but he held on for a few hours more. The poor things were belly-up, but at the bottom of the tank rather than at the water's surface. Hale-Bopp and Crick seem alright. The temperature in the tank has been adjusted, and "good" bacteria added. I will have to be more careful with Bopp and Crick from now on. A consultation with the pet store is in order.

Still no word on the dental work. I think there are a few days left before the next moon....

So, not the happiest of days.

outposts and supplies

Wow. When it gets this cold, one really has to bundle up just to go outside for a few minutes. A climate this inhospitable allows me to day-dream that I am on a distant planet during the winter months, trapped, awaiting the saucer that brings the tea and other little luxuries. There are indigenous populations farther north that rely on supplies flown in to their communities, though during the winter there are "ice-roads" that allow transport over land, lake and river. Their ancestors lived on a "different" planet, so to speak. And they looked up into space at a different angle from other peoples, and they saw the movement of the northern lights in the sky. What did think, and what stories did they tell?

Is it easier, I wonder, for a spacecraft to enter a planet's orbit at the poles? I remember reading about Asimov's gravitational-powered vessels and thoughts of the Inuit living so high up North on our planet lead to the question. Things are different up there, and not just because of the ice and snow. Earthmen are frequently pulling meteorites out of the polar ice-caps and studying them. But maybe gravitational pull is greater at the equator. It certainly rhymes. Pull at the pole suggests something entirely different.

not much talk of little green men

Today there was lots of shoveling. Lots and lots of shoveling. Tomorrow, the shoveling of the roofs. There is far too much snow on top of our out-post and the garage. I started clearing some of the snow off the garage this evening and it looked like it was actually three feet deep up there. Quite a large drift had formed. I don't want us to be crushed under a falling ceiling, or hit by an avalanche in our own back yard. That would be most embarrassing.

I had to look up "roofs". At first I was confident I had read that was the correct plural. I did an interweb search and found "rooves". Even as I finish typing it now the computer decorates it with the dotted red underlining, just as it has done with "interweb". Thinking about it a bit I decided the notion I'd had in favour of the unvoiced "f" had come from Tolkien and his thoughts on "dwarfs". A better dictionary gave me some background: late Old English and Middle English use hrof (line above the "o", whichever accent that is) as does Old Norse. Dutch also uses "roef" (the modern language using the same as English, "roof" and the reconstructed Pre-Germanic source (assumed through linguists' study of morphology) is listed as *khrofaz.

Every word has a like history. It's true. I  back-traced it. Language remains one of the most incredible technologies conceived  by the human mind, and one of the most over-looked.

impactful is still a lowsy word

Whenever I try to stretch my mind to contemplate the vastness of space and the strangeness of its other inhabitants, the exercise causes my appreciation for every-day existence on Earth to swell. Even if I do occasionally forget that Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov were two different people, their work impresses itself upon my mind in a likewise impactful fashion. That's correct. Impactful. Like a giant meteorite. Per ardua, ad astra, ad terra firma? Hooray!

books

Two books by Edgar Rice Burroughs arrived for us at the library this past week and today presented an opportunity to pick them up. Both are stories about Mars. I took the time to look around the stacks (which only really qualify as shelves, to be honest with you) and found a Reginald Hill mystery I haven't yet read, and a big book of U.F.O.s by a man who lives in or near Winnipeg. I am trying to "follow" his on-line internet web log (blog for short) but the "blogging" program does not make this easy. It is also difficult to search for blogs. I'll have to do a search for searchers for blogs, but right now that seems tedious.

Still have not officially communicated my desire to leave my mouth to science. Will call the school for dentists before the year, nay, week is out. 

Another discovery: "Marvin" the Martian, of Looney Toons fame, was only given his name quite some time after the original episodes in which he appeared were broadcast. He was only named to improve merchandising profits. In the episodes he is actually only referred to as "Commander of Flying Saucer  X-2".

oral hygiene

I must go to the dentist sometime in the coming few weeks. At least, I must make an appointment with a dentist in the next fortnight, whether that appointment is one, two, or even three months from now is another thing. The plan at the moment is to "leave my mouth to science" and allow dentists-in-training a chance to learn from my gob.

There are ample learning opportunities for a young aspiring dentist in this pie-hole. It's been quite a long time since my last visit to such a professional: a decade at least. Plenty of cavities to fill, possibly some wisdom teeth to pull. Perhaps I'll even wind up with adult braces and a couple of root canals! It's hard to guess in advance what they might say, especially since they are new to the job. I'm sure they will thank me for the wealth of experience I'm giving them.

It appears this communication must be cut a bit short. The others need to do some scans. Off to read Neuromancer. Wild story.

under the freshwater sea

We wanted to let you know the three Puntia anchispora (or tiger barb fish) have been given names. Mr. Collins and Hale-Bopp share their little biosphere with Watson, And, and Crick. Since it is very difficult to tell them apart one from the next, and since they are always swimming around causing a mild but pleasing hypnosis in the mind of their minders, the near pointlessness of their having names has become a running joke here at the outpost. The dynamic duo for whom the fish are named come, appropriately, from the world of human scientific research. James D. Watson and Francis Crick were the first to suggest the double-helix model of deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. If you watch these fish swim for a little too long, you start to wonder if their constant voyages around the tank might be conjuring life into being on some plane of existence parallel to our own. Srsly.