March 31, 2013

Today was a typical Sunday so I didn't really do a lot. A decent chunk of the day was taken up by video games. A continued attempt to play all the games I have purchased on Steam. I still have a long way to go but I'm making progress. The first game I played was The Baconing. It is a comedic Diablo-clone. So like an isometric top-down RPG sort of game. The comedy was really good and the game itself was pretty fun. I didn't make it too far into the game according to the map. I've only revealed the bottom corner, maybe getting into the third area, so it looks like there is a lot left. I called it quits before hitting the three hour mark so I could move onto something else.

That something else was To The Moon, which looks like an old school RPG, like an updated SNES Zelda. It is more of an interactive narrative than it is a game. The idea is that in the future there is a company that can grant last wishes to people on their death bed by going into their memories and implanting their wish. In the game this old dude wants to go to the Moon so the two doctors jump into his memories, but they can't go right to his childhood where they need to implant the Moon wish, so they work their way back from the recent past. You find different things in the environment which introduce more and more information about the characters in the story. At times it is a little hard to keep track of just because you are going through the story in reverse. I am hoping that at the end of the game, or maybe after I beat it, that I can see the story played out in chronological order. If not I'll just have to find that summary online somewhere. It is a really interesting game though.

Tonight we had Easter dinner. It almost didn't happen because my mom was having vertigo issues throughout the day but it got at least mildly better in time for dinner to happen. She made an alfredo pasta thing with broccoli and my fake chicken, and it was delicious. There was also deviled eggs, which are always a winner. My sister brought over her homemade hummus and petas which was a little freaky because I've been thinking about asking her to make some. I was thinking about it for my birthday and she was apparently thinking the same thing but then she decided I probably wouldn't mind if she made it now and for my birthday. She is correct.

My mom kept up her funny card streak with the Easter card she got me. The outside has a bunny sitting in a basket and says “We asked a leading expert if there really is an Easter Bunny.” On the inside there is a picture of Santa saying “F#@k if I know!” Instant classic.

And now, here is a whole bunch of interesting stuff from Space Chronicles by Neil deGrasse Tyson:

“The chances that your tombstone will read “KILLED BY ASTEROID” are about the same as they'd be for “KILLED IN AIRPLANE CRASH.” Only about two dozen people have been killed by falling asteroids in the past four hundred years, while thousands have died in crashes during the relatively brief history of passenger air travel. So how can this comparative statistic be true? Simple.

“The impact record shows that by the end of ten million years, when the sum of all airplane crashes has killed a billion people (assuming a death-by-airplane rate of a hundred per year), an asteroid large enough to kill the same number of people will have hit Earth. The difference is that while airplanes are continually killing people a few at a time, that asteroid might not kill anybody for millions of years. But when it does hit, it will take out a billion people: some instantaneously, and the rest in the wake of global climatic upheaval.” (p. 45)

That example is just proof that you can make statistics say anything you want. Especially if you're willing to wait ten million years.

“...profound insights into nature lurk behind questions we have yet to ask.” (p. 90)

“It's worth remembering that the act of discovery does not require that you understand, either in advance or after the fact, what you've discovered. That's what happened with the cosmic microwave background. It also happened with gamma-ray bursts. Mysterious, seemingly random explosions of high-energy gamma rays scattered across the sky were first detected in the 1960s by satellites searching out radiation from clandestine Soviet nuclear-weapons tests. Only decades later did spaceborne telescopes, in concert with ground-based follow-up observations, show them to be the signature of distant stellar catastrophes.” (p. 94)

“Credit the Apollo astronauts who went to the Moon with attaining the highest speeds at which humans have ever flown: about seven miles per second at the end of the rocket burn that lifted their craft beyond low Earth orbit. This is a paltry 1/250 of one percent of the speed of light. Actually, the real problem is not the moat that separates these two speeds but the laws of physics that prevent any object from ever achieving the speed of light, no matter how inventive your technology. The sound barrier and the light barrier are not equivalent limits on invention.” (p. 109)

“Besides launching the first artificial satellite, the Soviets sent the first animal into orbit (Laika, a stray dog), the first human being (Yuri Gagarin, a military pilot), the first woman (Valentina Tereshkova, a parachutist), and the first black person (Arnaldo Tamayo-Mendez, a Cuban military pilot). The Soviets sent the first multiperson crew and the first international crew into orbit. They made the first spacewalk, launched the first space station, and were the first to put a manned space station into long-term orbit.

“They were also the first to orbit the Moon, the first to land an unmanned capsule on the Moon, the first to photograph Earthrise from the Moon, the first to photograph the far side of the Moon, the first to put a rover on the Moon, and the first to put a satellite in orbit around the moon. They were the first to land on Mars and the first to land on Venus. And whereas Sputnik 1 weighed 184 pounds and Sputnik 2 (launched a month later) weighed 1,120 pounds, the first satellite America had planned to send aloft weighed slightly more than three pounds. Most ignominious of all, when the United States tried its first actual launch after Sputnik – in early December 1957 – the rocket burst into flames at the (suborbital) altitude of three feet.” (p. 122)

“Jupiter-C, the rocket that launched Explorer 1, weighed 64,000 pounds at takeoff, fully loaded. The final stage weighed 80.” (p. 126)

“The shuttle has three main parts: a stubby, airplanelike “orbiter” that holds the crew, the payload, and the three main engines; an immense external fuel tank that holds more than half a million gallons of self-combustible liquid; and two “solid rocket boosters,” whose two million pounds of rubbery aluminum-based fuel generate 85 percent of the thrust needed to get the giant off the ground. On the launchpad the shuttle weighs four and a half million pounds. Two minutes after launch, the boosters have finished their work and drop away into the ocean, to be fished out of the water and reused. Six minutes later, just before the shuttle reaches orbital speed, the now-empty external tank drops off and disintegrates as it reenters Earth's atmosphere. By the time the shuttle reaches orbit, 90 percent of its launch mass has been left behind.” (p. 155)