Galactic Refuge Coffee House - ... where an alien is just a friend you haven't met.

Here's a place for all sorts of believers - not sure how this will evolve. If you [[send|mailto:joel@mrklingon.org]] me links to things you think should be included - I'll be happy to look into - it's a very big coffee house. If you want my creed, start [[here|http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext90/kjv10.txt]], then move on [[here|http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1670/1670.txt]], [[here|http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14551/14551.txt]] and read a whole bunch more [[here|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechism]]. Things I'm thinking about include [[this|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Theism]].\n\n''__Believers__''\n**[[Adherents|http://adherents.com/]]\n**[[Beliefnet|http://beliefnet.com/]]\n**[[Breakpoint|http://thepoint.breakpoint.org/]]\n**[[Christianity Today|http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/]]\n**[[Faithful Democrats|http://faithfuldemocrats.org/]]\n**[[Sojourners|http://www.sojo.net/]]\n\n''__Prayers__''\n**[[Christian Meditation|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_meditation]]\n**[[Ecumenical Rosary|http://www.ecumenicalrosary.org]]\n**[[Just Pray|http://justpray.mrklingon.org]]\n**[[Mere Prayer|http://prayer.mrklingon.org]]\n**[[Virtual Rosary|http://virtualrosary.org]]\n\n''__Word__''\n**[[Bible|http://ccel.org/wwsb/]] [[KJV Gutengerg project|http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext90/kjv10.txt]][[Douay (Gutenberg)|http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/0drvb10.txt]]\n**[[Koran|http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/]] [[Koran (Gutenberg project)|http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/koran10.txt]]\n**[[Book of Mormon|http://scriptures.lds.org/bm/contents]] [[Book of Mormon (Gutenberg project)|http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext91/mormon13.txt]]\n**[[Sacred Texts|http://www.sacred-texts.org]]\n\n''__Alien Word__''\n**[[Klingon Book of Mormon|http://stfhe.jlcarroll.net/Klingon_BoM/]]\n**[[Klingon Language Version of the World English Bible|http://klv.mrklingon.org]]\n**[[Mandoa Laguage Version of the World English Bible|http://mndbible.mrklingon.org]]\n

Hello! This [[Wiki|WhatWiki]] will be my own coffee house - you're welcome to stop by and visit! Let me know what you'd like to see, and I'll try to oblige! [[drop a line|mailto:joel@mrklingon.org]]\n\nCoffee is my favorite drink - seriously. And I plan to offer a cup - or links to coffee, its benefits and joys. I will admit that, after fifty years, I've switched primarily to decaf - but it doesn't mean I still don't love coffee! My vision of what this coffee house should be is here in this article from the __Economist__: TheInternetInACup\n\n|>| Coffee References|>|\n|[[Wikipedia|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee]] | [[Free Dictionary|http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=coffee]] |[[1911 Encyclopedia Britannica|http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Coffee]]|\n\n|>| Buy Some! |>|\n|[[Peace Coffee|https://www.peacecoffee.com/home.htm]]|[[Starbucks|http://www.starbucks.com/]]|>|\n\n**[[Badgett's Coffee Journal|http://www.aboutcoffee.net]]\n**[[Coffee as a Health Drink? Studies Find Some Benefits|http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/health/nutrition/15coff.html?ex=1313294400&en=d420f19ee1c77365&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss]]\n**http://www.energyfiend.com/\n

HandBill\nCoffeeHouse

Things I want to remember - dreaming of tomorrow:\n----------------------\n"In The Land of Invented Languages"\n\n[IMG[http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/30130000/30133502.JPG][http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/30130000/30133502.JPG]]\n\nIn the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language\n by Arika Okrent\n\nThis book is dangerous! I wasn't even done and I was wandering across Esperanto websites and looking for library books on Esperanto. Okrent does a wonderful job of leading the reader through the perplexing world of language-dreamers (visionaries AND cranks) who have, through the centuries, invented all manner of fascinating languages.She does a wonderful job of teaching about linguistic theory, the mechanics of real AND imaginary languages and plenty of detail (but never too much detail). With grace and a good dash of humor (as a Klingonist I had my long suffering family laughing when I read some of her depictions of the Klingon crowd) she covers it all.\n\n\nExcellent! Highly recommended!\n----------------------\n''Visualizing the Bible''\n\nWow! http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/bibleviz/index.html is a beautiful project that graphs cross references through the Bible! \n[img[http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/bibleviz/BibleVizArc7small.jpg][http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/bibleviz/BibleVizArc7small.jpg]]\n\nAs Chris describes it:\n\nThis set of visualizations started as a collaboration between Christoph Römhild and myself. Christoph, a Lutheran Pastor, first emailed me in October of 2007. He described a data set he was putting together that defined textual cross references found in the Bible. He had already done considerable work visualizing the data before contacting me. Together, we struggled to find an elegant solution to render the data, more than 63,000 cross references in total. As work progressed, it became clear that an interactive visualization would be needed to properly explore the data, where users could zoom in and prune down the information to manageable levels. However, this was less interesting to us, as several Bible-exploration programs existed that offered similar functionality (and much more). Instead we set our sights on the other end of the spectrum –- something more beautiful than functional. At the same time, we wanted something that honored and revealed the complexity of the data at every level –- as one leans in, smaller details should become visible. This ultimately led us to the multi-colored arc diagram you see below.\n\nThe bar graph that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible. Books alternate in color between white and light gray. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible is depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect. \n\n[img[http://www.flapdoodle.org/bibleviz/BibleNetworkmediumOrig.jpg][http://www.flapdoodle.org/bibleviz/BibleNetworkmediumOrig.jpg]]\n\n----------------------\n\n\n''Free Books!!! (and my hero, Eric Flint!)''\n\nI can't say enough about Eric Flint - he's really a fantastic force in SF. As an editor, author and collaborator, he's given me no end of enjoyment and thought provoking material. The most remarkable thing (besides providing good hard SF) is his championing of FREE books and especially DRM Free ebooks! The fact that I've been able to get so many of the Baen library for free, has meant that I've gone out of my way to buy more Baen books (paper AND electronic) versions. Fabulous stuff - don't miss it!\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Flint\n\n|[[Baen Books Free Library|http://www.baen.com/library/]]||[[Baen CD Books | http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/]]|\n----------------------\n''Clive Thompson on //Why Sci-Fi Is the Last Bastion of Philosophical Writing//''\n\nRecently I read a novella that posed a really deep question: What would happen if physical property could be duplicated like an MP3 file? What if a poor society could prosper simply by making pirated copies of cars, clothes, or drugs that cure fatal illnesses?\n\nThe answer Cory Doctorow offers in his novella After the Siege is that you'd get a brutal war. The wealthy countries that invented the original objects would freak out, demand royalties from the developing ones, and, when they didn't get them, invade. Told from the perspective of a young girl trying to survive in a poor country being bombed by well-off adversaries, After the Siege is an absolute delight, by turns horrifying, witty, and touching.\n\nTechnically, After the Siege is a work of science fiction. But as with so many sci-fi stories, it works on two levels, exploring real-world issues like the plight of African countries that can't afford AIDS drugs. The upshot is that Doctorow's fiction got me thinking — on a Lockean level — about the nature of international law, justice, and property.\n\nWhich brings me to my point. If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas.\n\nFrom where I sit, traditional "literary fiction" has dropped the ball. I studied literature in college, and throughout my twenties I voraciously read contemporary fiction. Then, eight or nine years ago, I found myself getting — well — bored.\n\nWhy? I think it's because I was reading novel after novel about the real world. And there are, at the risk of sounding superweird, only so many ways to describe reality. After I'd read my 189th novel about someone living in a city, working in a basically realistic job and having a realistic relationship and a realistically fraught family, I was like, "OK. Cool. I see how today's world works." I also started to feel like I'd been reading the same book over and over again.\n\nHere's my overly reductive, incredibly nerdy way of thinking about the novel: Consider it a simulation, kind of like The Sims. If you run a realistic simulation enough times — writing tens of thousands of novels about contemporary life — eventually you're going to explore almost every outcome. So what do you do then?\n\nYou change the physics in the sim. Alter reality — and see what new results you get. Which is precisely what sci-fi does. Its authors rewrite one or two basic rules about society and then examine how humanity responds — so we can learn more about ourselves. How would love change if we lived to be 500? If you could travel back in time and revise decisions, would you? What if you could confront, talk to, or kill God?\n\nTeenagers love to ponder such massive, brain-shaking concepts, which is precisely why they devour novels like Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, the Narnia series, the Harry Potter books, and Ender's Game. They know that big-idea novels are more likely to have an embossed foil dragon on the cover than a Booker Prize badge.\n\nAdults and serious intellectuals used to love ruminating over this stuff, too. Thought experiments formed the foundation of Western philosophy — from Socrates to Thomas Hobbes to Simone de Beauvoir.\n\nSo, then, why does sci-fi, the inheritor of this intellectual tradition, get short shrift among serious adult readers? Probably because the genre tolerates execrable prose stylists. Plus, many of sci-fi's most famous authors — like Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick — have positively deranged notions about the inner lives of women.\n\nBut the worm is turning. For whatever reasons — maybe the reality fatigue I've felt — a lot of literary writers are trying their hand at speculative fiction. Philip Roth used a "counterfactual" history — what if Nazi sympathizers in the US won the 1940 election? — to explore anti-Semitism in The Plot Against America. Cormac McCarthy muses on the nature of morality in the Hobbesian anarchy of his novel The Road. Then there's the genre-bending likes of Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Susanna Clarke, and Margaret Atwood (whom I like to think of as a sci-fi novelist trapped inside a literary author).\n\nThose aren't writers whose books are adorned with embossed dragons. But that doesn't mean they don't owe that dragon a large debt.\n\n----------------------\n''What Our Top Spy Doesn't Get: Security and Privacy Aren't Opposites''\n\nNational Intelligence Director Michael McConnell (right) listens as Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff (left) testifies on Capitol Hill in Sept. 2007 before the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on post-9/11 terrorist threats.\nIf there's a debate that sums up post-9/11 politics, it's security versus privacy. Which is more important? How much privacy are you willing to give up for security? Can we even afford privacy in this age of insecurity? Security versus privacy: It's the battle of the century, or at least its first decade.\nIn a Jan. 21 New Yorker article, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell discusses a proposed plan to monitor all -- that's right, all -- internet communications for security purposes, an idea so extreme that the word " Orwellian" feels too mild.\nThe article (not online) contains this passage:\nIn order for cyberspace to be policed, internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search. "Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"\nI'm sure they have that saying in their business. And it's precisely why, when people in their business are in charge of government, it becomes a police state. If privacy and security really were a zero-sum game, we would have seen mass immigration into the former East Germany and modern-day China. While it's true that police states like those have less street crime, no one argues that their citizens are fundamentally more secure.\nWe've been told we have to trade off security and privacy so often -- in debates on security versus privacy, writing contests, polls, reasoned essays and political rhetoric -- that most of us don't even question the fundamental dichotomy.\nBut it's a false one.\nSecurity and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don't have to accept less of one to get more of the other. Think of a door lock, a burglar alarm and a tall fence. Think of guns, anti-counterfeiting measures on currency and that dumb liquid ban at airports. Security affects privacy only when it's based on identity, and there are limitations to that sort of approach.\nSince 9/11, two -- or maybe three -- things have potentially improved airline security: reinforcing the cockpit doors, passengers realizing they have to fight back and -- possibly -- sky marshals. Everything else -- all the security measures that affect privacy -- is just security theater and a waste of effort.\nBy the same token, many of the anti-privacy "security" measures we're seeing -- national ID cards, warrantless eavesdropping , massive data mining and so on -- do little to improve, and in some cases harm, security. And government claims of their success are either wrong, or against fake threats.\nThe debate isn't security versus privacy. It's liberty versus control.\nYou can see it in comments by government officials: "Privacy no longer can mean anonymity," says Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence. "Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information." Did you catch that? You're expected to give up control of your privacy to others, who -- presumably -- get to decide how much of it you deserve. That's what loss of liberty looks like.\nIt should be no surprise that people choose security over privacy: 51 to 29 percent in a recent poll . Even if you don't subscribe to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's obvious that security is more important. Security is vital to survival, not just of people but of every living thing. Privacy is unique to humans, but it's a social need. It's vital to personal dignity, to family life, to society -- to what makes us uniquely human -- but not to survival.\nIf you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy -- especially if you scare them first. But it's still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy. The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin reads: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." It's also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither.\n---\nBruce Schneier is CTO of BT Counterpane and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. You can read more of his writings on his website. \n----------------------\nMore fun with Paper Rockets!\n\nI was inspired by the recent flights at PlasterBlaster of an X-Wing and Y-Wing. ( http://rocketdungeon.blogspot.com/2007/10/empire-struck-back-may-x-wing-rip.html) so I used the mashup tool at StarWars.com to create a movie with my own paper X-Wing: http://tinyurl.com/2qahm4\n----------------------\n[img[http://bp0.blogger.com/_9Kf_wwzz9bs/RsMCohbNmBI/AAAAAAAAACo/lBoDradb6ig/s320/whoosh.jpg][http://bp0.blogger.com/_9Kf_wwzz9bs/RsMCohbNmBI/AAAAAAAAACo/lBoDradb6ig/s320/whoosh.jpg]]\n''Origami Aerospace!''\n\nWow! I've found the cheapest form of rocketry!\n\nhttp://www.sciencetoymaker.org/airRocket/index.html\n\nThe other day I showed off model rockets for some neighbor kids this week, and I built one of these to show off - almost free rockets that you can blast off.\n\n[img[http://www.sciencetoymaker.org/airRocket/images/guyLauncher.JPG][http://www.sciencetoymaker.org/airRocket/images/guyLauncher.JPG]]\n\nI tested it indoors (big mistake) then had to work to clean the smudge off the ceiling. These are more powerful and fast than you'd expect. Out doors it disappeared (almost) higher than the trees. After two launches it was lost in the trees. No matter - a little paper and tape and I've got two more ready for flight.\n\nYou can design and simulate these with a nice NASA tool here: http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/rktsim.html\n[img[http://bp1.blogger.com/_9Kf_wwzz9bs/RryxghbNmAI/AAAAAAAAACg/lOLtQ9mTvAs/s200/rocketsim.jpg][http://bp1.blogger.com/_9Kf_wwzz9bs/RryxghbNmAI/AAAAAAAAACg/lOLtQ9mTvAs/s200/rocketsim.jpg]]\n\n----------------------\n[img[http://baen.com/library/Free_library90.gif][http://baen.com/library/Free_library90.gif]]\n\n''Living on the trailing edge!''\n\nThere is great delight in using the older tech! Inspired by my last thoughts regarding "the library in the pocket" I scored a copy of older Palm devices (one from ebay and another a castoff from a friend). That means I've got handy pocket libraries in my pocket! \n\nCombined with the Baen Free library (http://www.baen.com/library), and Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org - using the very nifty Plucker reader) I've got plenty to keep me reading!\n\n----------------------\n[img[http://www.pg-news.org/templates/pg-news/images/banner.gif][http://www.pg-news.org/templates/pg-news/images/banner.gif]]\n\n''Dreaming of the library in my pocket''\n\n The joke in my family is that I say I always carry a book in my pocket "in case I'm abducted by aliens," since I want to be sure to have something to read up there in that spaceship! Wouldn't it be even better if you could carry a bookshelf in your pocket?! Thanks to cheap mass storage, like USB thumb drives and mp3 players, you can carry around a library wherever you go. (and I do) Go search at Amazon for "mp3 player usb drive" and you'll have a variety of great (and cheap) choices! That means you can carry etexts from the Gutenberg project ''AND'' mp3 audio books in the same package.\n\nIn this __Science Friday__ podcast, listen to an interesting discussion about the future of cheap storage and huge libraries you can carry anywhere:\n\nhttp://www.pg-news.org/content/view/230/34/ \n\n'' Michael Hart Interviewed on NPR about Digital Libraries ''\nWritten by Mike Cook \nTuesday, 15 May 2007\nThis coming weekend an interview with Michael Hart about Digital Libraries will be broadcast on NPR [National Public Radio]. In this interview he was also joined by Brewster Kahle (The Internet Archive) and Michael Keller (Librarian of Stanford).\n\nMichael specifically talks about wearing Digital Libraries on a necklace, Terabyte hard drives and creating a Billion eBook Library.\n\nThis is also available as a download from;\nhttp://media.libsyn.com/media/sciencefriday/scifri-2007051112.mp3\n \nThe great thing is that, with my iPod nano, I've got it all! Besides hundreds of songs I've currently got something like 10 different audio books (or portions thereof) AND more!\n\n[img[http://www.sturm.net.nz/images/iPodLibrary.jpg][http://www.sturm.net.nz/images/iPodLibrary.jpg]]\n\nUsing ipodlibrary ( http://www.sturm.net.nz/website.php?Section=iPod+Programs&Page=iPodLibrary ) or ipod-notes.com (http://www.ipod-notes.com/ ), I've added 9 different text documents - including 2 complete books - to my iPod.\n\nBut WAIT, there's more! Using the disk mode I've used the nano to store software tools AND encrypted documents for safekeeping! And I still have room for nearly a thousand songs!\n----------------------\n[img[http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/portraits/schirra.jpg][http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/portraits/schirra.jpg]]\n\nWalter Marty Schirra, Jr. (March 12, 1923 – May 3, 2007) was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts chosen for the Project Mercury, America's first effort to put men in space. He was the only man to fly in all of America's first three space programs (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo). He logged a total of 295 hours and 15 minutes in space.\n\n Biography\n\nThe family name Schirra is originally from the Valle Onsernone, in Canton Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.\n\nSchirra was born into an aviation family in Hackensack, New Jersey. Schirra's father, Walter M. Schirra, Sr., went to Canada during World War I and earned his pilot rating. He later became a barnstormer. Schirra's mother, Florence Leach Schirra, went along on her husband's barnstorming tours and performed wing walking stunts. By the time he was 15, Wally was flying his father's airplane. Schirra was a Boy Scout and earned the rank of First Class in Troop 36 in Oradell, New Jersey.[1]\n\nSchirra graduated from Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, New Jersey and attended the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1941, where he was a member of Sigma Pi Fraternity. He attended the US Naval Academy and graduated in 1945. He was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy, serving the final months of World War II aboard the battle cruiser USS Alaska. After the war ended, he trained as a pilot at NAS Pensacola and joined a carrier fighter squadron. He became only the second naval aviator to log 1,000 hours in jet aircraft.\n\nUpon the outbreak of the Korean War, Schirra was dispatched to South Korea as an exchange pilot on loan to the US Air Force. He served as a flight leader with the 136th Bomb Wing, and then as operations officer with the 154th Fighter Bomber Squadron. He flew 90 combat missions between 1951 and 1952, mostly in F-84s. Schirra was credited with downing one MiG-15 and damaging two others. Schirra received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with an oak leaf cluster for his service in Korea.\n\nAfter his tour in Korea, Schirra served as a test pilot. At China Lake he tested weapons systems such as the Sidewinder missile and the F7U-3 Cutlass jet fighter. After spending time as a flight instructor and carrier based aviator, he later returned to his test pilot duties and helped evaluate the F-4 fighter for naval service.\n\nOn April 2, 1959, Schirra was chosen as one of the original seven American astronauts. He entered Project Mercury and was assigned the specialty area involving life support systems.\n\nOn October 3, 1962, Schirra became the fifth American in space, piloting the Mercury 8 (Sigma 7) on a six-orbit mission lasting 9 hours, 13 minutes, and 11 seconds. The capsule attained a velocity of 17,557 miles per hour and an altitude of 175 statute miles, and landed within four miles of the main Pacific Ocean recovery ship.\n\nOn December 15, 1965, Schirra flew into space a second time in Gemini 6A with Tom Stafford, rendezvousing with astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell, Jr. in Gemini 7. This was the first rendezvous of two manned spacecraft in earth orbit. The two vehicles, however, were not capable of actually docking. Gemini 6 landed in the Atlantic Ocean the next day, while Gemini 7 continued on to a record-setting 14-day mission.\n\nOn October 11, 1968, Schirra became the first man to fly in space three times on his final flight as commander of Apollo 7, the first manned flight in the Apollo program, which occurred after a fatal fire during tests of Apollo 1. The three-man crew, including Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham, spent eleven days in earth orbit, performed rendezvous exercises with the upper stage of the Saturn 1-B launch vehicle that rocketed them into space and provided the first live television pictures from inside a U.S. manned spacecraft (other than an experimental broadcast during the flight of Gordon Cooper) for which he received an Emmy.\n\nDuring the Apollo 7 mission, Schirra caught what was perhaps the most famous cold in NASA history.[1] He took Actifed to relieve his symptoms upon the advice of the flight surgeon.[citation needed] Years later, he became a spokesman for Actifed and would appear in television commercials advertising the product.[citation needed]\n\nDuring later Apollo missions he served as a news consultant, often being interviewed by Walter Cronkite on CBS News.\n\nSchirra's logbooks show a total of 4,577 hours flight time (295 in space) and 267 carrier landings.\n\nHe died on May 3, 2007 of a heart attack at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, California[2]. Schirra was 84 years old.\n\n Trivia\n\n * In the 1983 film The Right Stuff, Schirra was played by Lance Henriksen.\n * In the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, he was played by Mark Harmon.\n\nDefinition of a space rendezvous\n\nSchirra stated a clear definition of a space rendezvous. He said:\n\n "Somebody said ... when you come to within three miles, you've rendezvoused. If anybody thinks they've pulled a rendezvous off at three miles, have fun! This is when we started doing our work. I don't think rendezvous is over until you are stopped - completely stopped - with no relative motion between the two vehicles, at a range of approximately 120 feet. That's rendezvous! From there on, it's stationkeeping. That's when you can go back and play the game of driving a car or driving an airplane or pushing a skateboard — it's about that simple."[3]\n\n 1. ^ Astronauts and the BSA. Fact sheet. Boy Scouts of America. Retrieved on 2007-05-02.\n 2. ^ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070503/ap_on_re_us/obit_schirra\n 3. ^ http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4203/ch12-7.htm\n\n\n----------------------\n\n\nThis is a great blog - http://paleo-future.blogspot.com - I expect I'll be finding lots of fun stuff there, like this:\n\nhttp://paleo-future.blogspot.com/2007/03/plant-life-on-mars-1957.html\n\n...the depiction of possible plants on Mars may be even more imaginative....\n\n[img[http://bp0.blogger.com/_sGYULzoQCgA/RfidJz0nliI/AAAAAAAAAU4/OreDHBz3ayw/s400/mars+plants+2.jpg][http://bp0.blogger.com/_sGYULzoQCgA/RfidJz0nliI/AAAAAAAAAU4/OreDHBz3ayw/s400/mars+plants+2.jpg]]\n\n\n\n\n----------------------\n\n\n[img[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fd/Solarearth_large.jpg/800px-Solarearth_large.jpg|http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fd/Solarearth_large.jpg/800px-Solarearth_large.jpg][http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fd/Solarearth_large.jpg/800px-Solarearth_large.jpg]]\n\nSolar Sails!! This is a great way to get around!\n\nhttp://www.solarsails.info/index.html\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail :\n\nSolar sails (also called light sails, especially when they use light sources other than the Sun) are a proposed form of spacecraft propulsion using large membrane mirrors. Radiation pressure is small and decreases by the square of the distance from the sun, but unlike rockets, solar sails require no fuel. Although the thrust is small, it continues as long as the sun shines and the sail is deployed.\n\nSolar collectors, temperature-control panels and sun shades are occasionally used as expedient solar sails, to help ordinary spacecraft and satellites make minor corrections to their attitude and orbit without using fuel. This conserves fuel that would otherwise be used for maneuvering and attitude control. A few have even had small purpose-built solar sails for this use. For example, EADS Astrium built Eurostar E3000 geostationary communications satellites use solar sail panels attached to their solar cell arrays to off-load transverse angular momentum, thereby saving fuel (angular momentum is accumulated over time as the gyroscopic momentum wheels control the spacecraft's attitude - this excess momentum must be offloaded to prevent the wheels from overspin).\n\nSome unmanned spacecraft (such as Pioneer 10) have substantially extended their service lives with this practice.\n\n[img[http://www.solarsails.info/pics/disk-icon.jpg|http://www.solarsails.info/pics/disk-icon.jpg][http://www.solarsails.info/pics/disk-icon.jpg]]\n\n-----\n\n\nCurrent Space Demographic Data - cool: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts116/fdf/currentdemo.html\n\n\n\n-------------------------\n\nCurrent Space Demographic Data - cool: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts116/fdf/currentdemo.html\n\nHeading back to Mars! \n[img[Off to Mars!|http://www.tc.umn.edu/~joela/mrk/freedomlaunch2.jpg][http://www.tc.umn.edu/~joela/mrk/freedomlaunch2.jpg]]\nThanks to NASA and the Planetary Society, we'll soon be heading back to Mars on the [[Phoenix Mission|http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/future/phoenix.html]], [[see? |http://jppix.blogspot.com/2006/11/come-along-to-mars.html]] [[You can come, too!|http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/international_mission_participation/messages/phoenix_dvd.html]]\n\n[img[To the Red Planet!|http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/images/phoenix_lander-200th.gif][http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/images/phoenix_lander-200th.gif]]\n\n------------------\n[[I NEED one of these! |http://www.lostinspacerobot.com/index.html]]\n \n[img[Danger, Will Robinson!|http://www.lostinspacerobot.com/images/RobotFamily.jpg]]\n\nThe year was 1965... \n\nIrwin Allen's hit TV series, "Lost in Space", had captured the imagination of future "space colonists" across America. Every boy dreamed of being William Robinson... and why not? Never before had "Space" been so cool.\n\nIt is now 40 years later and we still dream of having our very own Robot!\n\nIt is with this same enthusiasm that [[B9 Creations|http://www.b9creations.com]] is excited to announce our production and sale of Full Size, Limited Edition, Fully Licensed Replicas of this amazing TV Icon!\n

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"In The Land of Invented Languages"\n\n[IMG[http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/30130000/30133502.JPG][http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/30130000/30133502.JPG]]\n\nIn the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language\n by Arika Okrent\n\nThis book is dangerous! I wasn't even done and I was wandering across Esperanto websites and looking for library books on Esperanto. Okrent does a wonderful job of leading the reader through the perplexing world of language-dreamers (visionaries AND cranks) who have, through the centuries, invented all manner of fascinating languages.She does a wonderful job of teaching about linguistic theory, the mechanics of real AND imaginary languages and plenty of detail (but never too much detail). With grace and a good dash of humor (as a Klingonist I had my long suffering family laughing when I read some of her depictions of the Klingon crowd) she covers it all.\n\n\nExcellent! Highly recommended!

see MrKlingon

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CoffeeHouse\nNewsStand\nLibraryRoom\nBelieversCentral\nDreamLand\n

Who *IS* MrKlingon?\n[img[ready for liftoff!|http://photos1.blogger.com/img/57/5740/320/JoelSpace.jpg][http://photos1.blogger.com/img/57/5740/640/JoelSpace.jpg]]\nJoelAnderson, who, despite rumors to the contrary, is not a Klingon. He is however:\n\n**A Software Engineer who has worked in software development and the telecommunications industry for nearly 20 years. He still remembers the "good old days" when [[computing online meant dialing with a rotary phone, using his VIC 20.|http://www.geocities.com/mrklingon/goodolddays.html]]\n** A science fiction enthusiast, Joel may occasionally need to be reminded that he is a human, from Earth.\n** A language hobbyist who enjoys [[building programs that use science fiction languages|http://members.aol.com/jpklingon/uta/software.html]], especially those found in the worlds of Star Trek.\n** A card carrying member of the [[Klingon Language Institute|http://www.kli.org]]. See his article in the institute's journal, HolQeD, "Building a Klingon Computer".\n** Joel enjoys developing Biblical software to read the World English Bible translation, and the Klingon Language Version|http://klv.mrklingon.org]\n** .A fan of the Disney theme parks - see the [[family report "A Dozen Days at Disney"|http://members.aol.com/joeland54/disney.html]]. He'd like anyone going to DisneyWorld to be especially nice to the help - his son was one of them on an internship Spring of 2001. \n** A certified space cadet, Joel and his daughter are graduates of [[Space Camp|http://www.spacecamp.com]], and love to launch model rockets - ask him about his daughter's terrific science fair projects! Recently he's built his own spaceship! http://Spaceship.MrKlingon.org\n** His long suffering wife claims to have never watched an episode of Star Trek, but is thoughtful and supportive of his many eccentricities. (She has been heard to utter a Klingon phrase or two.) Visit her [[website|http://www.mosaicmom.com]] - if you wish to learn how to make beautiful mosaics\n** A good sport - he even shaved off his moustache so his family could dress up as the [[Osbournes!|http://www.tc.umn.edu/%7Ejoela/ab]]\n\n\nJoel does not claim to be the all encompassing expert on things Klingon. But he's always happy to field [[questions|mailto:joel@mrklingon.org]] on the Klingon language.

http://news.google.com\nhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/\nhttp://www.nytimes.com\n

[img[A good place to enjoy a brew|http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3844/34/320/GRCoffeeShop.1.jpg][http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3844/34/1600/GRCoffeeShop.1.jpg]]\n\n ... where an alien is just a friend you haven't met.

Galactic Refuge Coffee House

''__The Internet In A Cup__''\n ''from http://coffee--tea.com/internet-in-a-cup.php''\n\nCoffee fuelled the information exchanges of the 17th and 18th centuries\n\nWhere do you go when you want to know the latest business news, follow commodity prices, keep up with political gossip, find out what others think of a new book, or stay abreast of the latest scientific and technological developments? Today, the answer is obvious: you log on to the internet. Three centuries ago, the answer was just as easy: you went to a coffee-house. There, for the price of a cup of coffee, you could read the latest pamphlets, catch up on news and gossip, attend scientific lectures, strike business deals, or chat with like-minded people about literature or politics.\n\nThe coffee-houses that sprang up across Europe, starting around 1650, functioned as information exchanges for writers, politicians, businessmen and scientists. Like today's websites, weblogs and discussion boards, coffee-houses were lively and often unreliable sources of information that typically specialised in a particular topic or political viewpoint. They were outlets for a stream of newsletters, pamphlets, advertising free-sheets and broadsides. Depending on the interests of their customers, some coffee-houses displayed commodity prices, share prices and shipping lists, whereas others provided foreign newsletters filled with coffee-house gossip from abroad.\n\nRumours, news and gossip were also carried between coffee-houses by their patrons, and sometimes runners would flit from one coffee-house to another within a particular city to report major events such as the outbreak of a war or the death of a head of state. Coffee-houses were centres of scientific education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation and, sometimes, political fermentation. Collectively, Europe's interconnected web of coffee-houses formed the internet of the Enlightenment era.\n\nThe great soberer\n\nCoffee, the drink that fuelled this network, originated in the highlands of Ethiopia, where its beans were originally chewed rather than infused for their invigorating effects. It spread into the Islamic world during the 15th century, where it was embraced as an alternative to alcohol, which was forbidden (officially, at least) to Muslims. Coffee came to be regarded as the very antithesis of alcoholic drinks, sobering rather than intoxicating, stimulating mental activity and heightening perception rather than dulling the senses.\n\nThis reputation accompanied coffee as it spread into western Europe during the 17th century, at first as a medicine, and then as a social drink in the Arab tradition. An anonymous poem published in London in 1674 denounced wine as the “sweet Poison of the Treacherous Grape” that drowns “our Reason and our Souls”. Beer was condemned as “Foggy Ale” that “besieg'd our Brains”. Coffee, however, was heralded as\n\n...that Grave and Wholesome Liquor,\nthat heals the Stomach, makes the Genius quicker,\nRelieves the Memory, revives the Sad,\nand cheers the Spirits, without making Mad.\n\nThe contrast between coffee and alcoholic drinks was reflected in the decor of the coffee-houses that began to appear in European cities, London in particular. They were adorned with bookshelves, mirrors, gilt-framed pictures and good furniture, in contrast to the rowdiness, gloom and squalor of taverns. According to custom, social differences were left at the coffee-house door, the practice of drinking healths was banned, and anyone who started a quarrel had to atone for it by buying an order of coffee for all present. In short, coffee-houses were calm, sober and well-ordered establishments that promoted polite conversation and discussion.\n\nWith a new rationalism abroad in the spheres of both philosophy and commerce, coffee was the ideal drink. Its popularity owed much to the growing middle class of information workers—clerks, merchants and businessmen—who did mental work in offices rather than performing physical labour in the open, and found that coffee sharpened their mental faculties. Such men were not rich enough to entertain lavishly at home, but could afford to spend a few pence a day on coffee. Coffee-houses provided a forum for education, debate and self-improvement. They were nicknamed “penny universities” in a contemporary English verse which observed: “So great a Universitie, I think there ne'er was any; In which you may a Scholar be, for spending of a Penny.”\n\nAs with modern websites, the coffee-houses you went to depended on your interests, for each coffee-house attracted a particular clientele, usually by virtue of its location. Though coffee-houses were also popular in Paris, Venice and Amsterdam, this characteristic was particularly notable in London, where 82 coffee-houses had been set up by 1663, and more than 500 by 1700. Coffee-houses around the Royal Exchange were frequented by businessmen; those around St James's and Westminster by politicians; those near St Paul's Cathedral by clergymen and theologians. Indeed, so closely were some coffee-houses associated with particular topics that the Tatler, a London newspaper founded in 1709, used the names of coffee-houses as subject headings for its articles. Its first issue declared:\n\nAll accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment shall be under the Article of White's Chocolate-house; Poetry, under that of Will's Coffee-house; Learning, under...Grecian; Foreign and Domestick News, you will have from St James's Coffee-house.\n\nRichard Steele, the Tatler's editor, gave its postal address as the Grecian coffee-house, which he used as his office. In the days before street numbering or regular postal services, it became a common practice to use a coffee-house as a mailing address. Regulars could pop in once or twice a day, hear the latest news, and check to see if any post awaited them. That said, most people frequented several coffee-houses, the choice of which reflected their range of interests. A merchant, for example, would generally oscillate between a financial coffee-house and one specialising in Baltic, West Indian or East Indian shipping. The wide-ranging interests of Robert Hooke, a scientist and polymath, were reflected in his visits to around 60 coffee-houses during the 1670s.\n\nAs the Tatler's categorisation suggests, the coffee-house most closely associated with science was the Grecian, the preferred coffee-house of the members of the Royal Society, Britain's pioneering scientific institution. On one occasion a group of scientists including Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley dissected a dolphin on the premises. Scientific lectures and experiments also took place in coffee-houses, such as the Marine, near St Paul's, which were frequented by sailors and navigators. Seamen and merchants realised that science could contribute to improvements in navigation, and hence to commercial success, whereas the scientists were keen to show the practical value of their work. It was in coffee-houses that commerce and new technology first became intertwined.\n\nThe more literary-minded, meanwhile, congregated at Will's coffee-house in Covent Garden, where for three decades the poet John Dryden and his circle reviewed and discussed the latest poems and plays. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary on December 3rd 1663 that he had looked in at Will's and seen Dryden and “all the wits of the town” engaged in “very witty and pleasant discourse”. After Dryden's death many of the literatured shifted to Button's, which was frequented by Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, among others. Pope's poem “The Rape of the Lock” was based on coffee-house gossip, and discussions in coffee-houses inspired a new, more colloquial and less ponderous prose style, conversational in tone and clearly visible in the journalism of the day.\n\nOther coffee-houses were hotbeds of financial innovation and experimentation, producing new business models in the form of innumerable novel variations on insurance, lottery or joint-stock schemes. The best-known example was the coffee-house opened in the late 1680s by Edward Lloyd. It became a meeting-place for ships' captains, shipowners and merchants, who went to hear the latest maritime news and to attend auctions of ships and their cargoes. Lloyd began to collect and summarise this information, supplemented with reports from a network of foreign correspondents, in the form of a regular newsletter, at first handwritten and later printed and sent to subscribers. Lloyd's thus became the natural meeting place for shipowners and the underwriters who insured their ships. Some underwriters began to rent booths at Lloyd's, and in 1771 a group of 79 of them collectively established the Society of Lloyd's, better known as Lloyd's of London.\n\nSimilarly, two coffee-houses near London's Royal Exchange, Jonathan's and Garraway's, were frequented by stockbrokers and jobbers. Attempts to regulate the membership of Jonathan's, by charging an annual subscription and barring non-members, were successfully blocked by traders who opposed such exclusivity. So in 1773 a group of traders from Jonathan's broke away and decamped to a new building, the forerunner of the London Stock Exchange. Garraway's was a less reputable coffee-house, home to auctions of all kinds and much dodgy dealing, particularly during the South Sea Bubble of 1719-21. It was said of Garraway's that no other establishment “fostered so great a quantity of dishonoured paper”.\n\nFar more controversial than the coffee-houses' functions as centres of scientific, literary and business exchange, however, was their potential as centres of political dissent. Coffee's reputation as a seditious beverage goes back at least as far as 1511, the date of the first known attempt to ban the consumption of coffee, in Mecca. Thereafter, many attempts were made to prohibit coffee and coffee-houses in the Muslim world. Some claimed it was intoxicating and therefore subject to the same religious prohibition as alcohol. Others claimed it was harmful to the health. But the real problem was the coffee-houses' alarming potential for facilitating political discussion and activity.\n\nThis was the objection raised in a proclamation by Charles II of England in 1675. Coffee-houses, it declared, had produced very evil and dangerous effects...for that in such Houses...divers False, Malitious and Scandalous Reports are devised and spread abroad, to the Defamation of His Majestie's Government, and to the Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm.\n\nThe result was a public outcry, for coffee-houses had become central to commercial and political life. When it became clear that the proclamation would be widely ignored and the government's authority thus undermined, a further proclamation was issued, announcing that coffee-sellers would be allowed to stay in business for six months if they paid £500 and agreed to swear an oath of allegiance. But the fee and time limit were soon dropped in favour of vague demands that coffee-houses should refuse entry to spies and mischief-makers.\n\nDark rumours of plots and counter-plots swirled in London's coffee-houses, but they were also centres of informed political debate. Swift remarked that he was “not yet convinced that any Access to men in Power gives a man more Truth or Light than the Politicks of a Coffee House.” Miles's coffee-house was the meeting-place of a discussion group, founded in 1659 and known as the Amateur Parliament. Pepys observed that its debates were “the most ingeniose, and smart, that I ever heard, or expect to heare, and bandied with great eagernesse; the arguments in the Parliament howse were but flatte to it.” After debates, he noted, the group would hold a vote using a “wooden oracle”, or ballot-box—a novelty at the time.\n\nSweet smell of sedition\n\nThe contrast with France was striking. One French visitor to London, the Abbé Prévost, declared that coffee-houses, “where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government”, were the “seats of English liberty”. Coffee-houses were popular in Paris, where 380 had been established by 1720. As in London, they were associated with particular topics or lines of business. But with strict curbs on press freedom and a bureaucratic system of state censorship, France had far fewer sources of news than did England, Holland or Germany. This led to the emergence of handwritten newsletters of Paris gossip, transcribed by dozens of copyists and sent by post to subscribers in Paris and beyond. The lack of a free press also meant that poems and songs passed around on scraps of paper, along with coffee-house gossip, were important sources of news for many Parisians.\n\nLittle wonder then that coffee-houses, like other public places in Paris, were stuffed with government spies. Anyone who spoke out against the state risked being hauled off to the Bastille, whose archives contain reports of hundreds of coffee-house conversations, noted down by informers. “At the Café de Foy someone said that the king had taken a mistress, that she was named Gontaut, and that she was a beautiful woman, the niece of the Duc de Noailles,” runs one report from the 1720s. Another, from 1749, reads, “Jean-Louis Le Clerc made the following remarks in the Café de Procope: that there never has been a worse king; that the court and the ministers make the king do shameful things, which utterly disgust his people.”\n\nDespite their reputation as breeding-grounds for discontent, coffee-houses seem to have been tolerated by the French government as a means of keeping track of public opinion. Yet it was at the Café de Foy, eyed by police spies while standing on a table brandishing two pistols, that Camille Desmoulins roused his countrymen with his historic appeal—“Aux armes, citoyens!”—on July 12th 1789. The Bastille fell two days later, and the French revolution had begun. Jules Michelet, a French historian, subsequently noted that those “who assembled day after day in the Café de Procope saw, with penetrating glance, in the depths of their black drink, the illumination of the year of the revolution.”\n\nCan the coffee-houses' modern equivalent, the internet, claim to have had such an impact? Perhaps not. But the parallels are certainly striking. Originally the province of scientists, the internet has since grown to become a nexus of commercial, journalistic and political interchange.\n\nIn discussion groups and chatrooms, gossip passes freely—a little too freely, think some regulators and governments, which have tried and generally failed to rein them in. Snippets of political news are rounded up and analysed in weblogs, those modern equivalents of pamphlets and broadsides. Obscure scientific and medical papers, once available only to specialists, are just clicks away; many scientists explain their work, both to their colleagues and to the public at large, on web pages. Countless new companies and business models have emerged, not many of them successful, though one or two have become household names. Online exchanges and auction houses, from eBay to industry-specific marketplaces, match buyers and sellers of components, commodities and household bric-à-brac.\n\nCoffee, meet WiFi\n\nThe kinship between coffee-houses and the internet has recently been underlined by the establishment of wireless “hotspots” which provide internet access, using a technology called WiFi, in modern-day coffee-shops. T-Mobile, a wireless network operator, has installed hotspots in thousands of Starbucks coffee-shops across America and Europe. Coffee-shop WiFi is particularly popular in Seattle—home to both Starbucks and such leading internet firms as Amazon and Microsoft.\n\nSuch hotspots allow laptop-toting customers to check their e-mail and read the news as they sip their lattes. But history provides a cautionary tale for those hotspot operators that charge for access. Coffee-houses used to charge for coffee, but gave away access to reading materials. Many coffee-shops are now following the same model, which could undermine the prospects for fee-based hotspots. Information, both in the 17th century and today, wants to be free—and coffee-drinking customers, it seems, expect it to be.\n\n

This is a [[TiddlyWiki|http://www.tiddlywiki.com]] - a simple one-file wiki. You won't be able to edit it, but I can, and I'm happy to get your [[input!|mailto:joel@mrklingon.org]]