Into the West – Page 144 – Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind

Doctor Who: Day of the Moon

Nearly the first thing we did upon returning home from our weekend getaway to Table Rock Lake, after visiting the necessary room of course, was to watch the Day of the Moon via the DVR. Follow this link for a plot synopsis at the relevant Wikipedia article.

The beginning and middle of this episode kept me confused for longer than I like. And the Silents started creeping me out, similar to the Weeping Angels in “Blink” episode, especially when Amy was wondering a deserted orphanage during a night thunderstorm alone. Part of my confusion probably stemmed from the unreliably nature of the narration. Since the characters (including Doctor Who) could not cohesively remember their encounters with the Silents, we experienced what they experienced without much third-person omnipotent viewpoint advantage.

I am not convinced we have seen the last of the Silents, especially if you consider the continuity flashbacks and foreshadowings. I liked the very American response and call to revolution against the Silents that the Doctor engineered and I especially liked the black box at Area 51, but the resolution arrived too quickly for me.

As to the identity of the girl in the astronaut suit, you can find a good discussion ongoing here where I bring up some questions about who the girl might be and who her mother might be, all of which will be answered in Moffat‘s good time.

Close to four stars, better than three and a half stars (out of five stars) for an episode of Doctor Who. Next week it appears Doctor Who et al. will be playing pirates and chasing mermaids on the high seas in “The Curse of the Black Spot” episode.

Set the Way Back Machine for 25 Years Ago

A quarter century ago, . . .

Terry, Jon and newborn baby Derek

We (Terry and I) were the proud parents of our number one son, Derek.
We lived with Terry’s dad, in a small ranch on 34th street just shy of the Big Ditch in north Wichita.
I worked for an insurance agency in downtown Wichita, Kansas.
Terry went into business for himself that spring, after Derek was born.
Our only wedding photo (05/01/86)

While searching for something, I stumbled upon our marriage license, ready and waiting for a Justice of the Peace to sign and declare us officially married on May 1st at the Sedgwick County Courthouse.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, . . .

Median Household Income (current dollars): $24,897
Unemployment: 7.0%
Cost of a first-class stamp: 22 cents
The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in 1986 was: 93 cents
The Oprah Winfrey Show hits national television. (Not that I ever watch her show, but she is ‘iconic’ to our times).
The Academic American Encyclopedia is available on CD-ROM. It is the first reference work published in this medium.
Nintendo video games introduced in U.S.
The Voyager 2 probe passes Uranus in January, returning images and data on its moon, rings, atmosphere, interior, and magnetic field.
Halley’s comet yields information on return visit (April 10).

The Challenger exploded soon after launch in January, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
Chernobyl was making big headlines in the Spring of 1986.*

* See Infoplease.com web page for the year 1986 for more interesting facts from 25 years ago.

A Floss Runs Through Maggie

I arrived early to the third of four lectures and discussions of Victorian literature hosted and promoted by the Kansas City Public Library. Kaite Mediatore Stover, the Readers’ Services Manager for the Library, was helping to setup the conference room for the lecture. I took the opportunity to discuss with her the recent news articles about a possible change in the Library’s policy with respect to online card applications for patrons outside the Kansas City metro area. The Library does not charge a fee to anyone who applies for a card and this has caused an unusually high volume of applications from the St. Louis area (where the local library system does charge for access to it’s system if a person lives outside it’s taxbase). The result has been a flood of online checkouts of ebooks from the Library’s Overdrive site, leaving some local patrons with no recourse but the waiting list for popular ebooks. I apologized for my earlier misunderstanding concerning the Kansas City earnings tax (a one percent income tax paid by anyone who works in Kansas City, Missouri, regardless of where you live – like me, who lives in Lansing, Kansas, yet works in KCMO). I assumed, wrongly, that the earnings tax collected out of my paycheck trickled down to the Library and offset my access to the Library’s resources and programs. The Director set me straight and reminded me that all libraries, including the wonderful Kansas City Public Library, accept donations and in fact, receive between five and ten percents of their total budget through charitable giving. Properly chastised, I went searching for information to help support the Library and found the Library Foundation web page, where I can donate conveniently online.

Biographical Background (p. 2)
Setting and Literary Background(p. 3)
Discussion Questions (p. 4)

I didn’t get a chance to ask Kaite about her thoughts on the Librarian Boycott of HarperCollins, because our lecturer arrived, as well as Melissa Carle, the Weekend supervisor at the Plaza branch, and other readers began to join us in the conference room overlooking Brookside and Brush Creek. This unique reading program, A Taste of Victorian Literature, was first offered at the Waldo branch last summer, but returned this Spring to the Plaza branch, albeit in reverse order. So, I’ve finally caught up with the program, since I read D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow in July and attended the inaugural lecture, presentation, discussion led by Andrea Broomfield, associate professor of English at Johnson County Community College, and which included authentic Victorian era refreshments. But that was then, and this is now, so I spent most of April reading George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, taking my time to absorb and appreciate the nuances and subtleties of her third novel.

Pages: 1234

Book Review: Silverthorn by Feist

Silverthorn by Raymond E. Feist

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(To view spoilers, please highlight this redacted text.)

With the closing of the rift at the end of Magician, I wondered where Raymond Feist would take me in Silverthorn, the next novel in the Riftwar Saga series. The three brothers (Arutha, Lyam and Martin) spent a year touring the Kingdom and returned to Krondor to plan Arutha and Anita’s wedding. Jimmy the Hand, a young full-of-himself thief and rising star in the Mockers, foiled an assassination attempt upon Prince Arutha. Because Jimmy aided both Anita and Arutha in escaping Krondor during the Riftwar, he chose to warn Arutha before reporting to the Mockers, and for his divided loyalty he was branded a traitor by his Guild. Arutha haggled with the Upright Man, the leader of the Mockers and, unknown to Jimmy, his father. Arutha agrees to make Jimmy his Squire and the Mockers agree to hunt for the Night Hawk assassins. With the Mockers’ assistance, Arutha invades the Night Hawks’ hideout in Krondor, but what should have been a rout, instead turns into a zombie apocalypse melee until Jimmy burns the place down around them.

Thinking the threats to his life abated, Arutha and Anita proceed with their wedding. Jimmy gets a bad feeling and restlessly searches the upper galleries of the hall, stumbling upon a former high-ranking Mocker now turned assassin. Despite being knocked senseless, gagged and restrained, Jimmy manages to divert the assassin’s shot, which misses Arutha but strikes his bride-to-be Anita. Even the great Pug can’t cure Anita, so he places a spell upon her that slows time down to a barely perceptible crawl, allowing Arutha time to find an antidote for the poison. An interrogation session with the assassin reveals the name of the poison (and also the antidote) to be ‘silverthorn’ but no one on hand in Krondor has ever heard of it.

Thus, a quest is begun. Pug returns to Stardock to search Macros’ library and eventually discovers a way to return to Kelewan, where an even more comprehensive library exists founded by the Tsurani Assembly of Great Ones. Predictably, Pug is detained as a result of his last acts at the Imperial Games before closing the rift. Meanwhile, Arutha and a small party, including Jimmy, head to the Kingdom’s own repository of knowledge at Sarth.

Eventually, knowledge of the silverthorn is gleaned and Arutha’s party seeks it through elven territory in the west and the far northern reaches of Midkemia. Pug extricates himself from detention and goes on his own quest for the Watchers, also in the far northern reaches, but on Kelewan. Both storylines include action, adventure, danger, puzzles and more walking dead. Jimmy provides some sidekick humor to lighten the mood.

Arutha returns with the antidote and saves Anita. Jimmy continues his campaign to become Duke of Krondor. Pug finds the Watchers and agrees to be instructed in magic for a year.

Silverthorn delivered an almost typical quest adventure, focusing on Arutha’s obsessive need to save Anita and Jimmy’s transition from thief to trusted companion and squire to Arutha. Even though Pug only popped in for a few chapters, I am positive his quest will result in further adventures in later novels. Tomas appeared only in a couple of brief cameos, but at least he’s settling in nicely among the elves and fatherhood agrees with him. Princess Caroline, twice bereft of lovers in Magician, sets her sights on Laurie and I see another royal wedding in the near future.

Probably not quite a four star rating, but definitely better than three or three and a half. Stop in at Fantasy Book Club Series group to review discussions of Silverthorn (with a Q&A thread monitored by Raymond E. Feist) from April 2011.

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Volker Zings Rush Speechless in SGU Epilogue

I am worried that the next two final episodes of Stargate Universe may stumble after watching last night’s ‘Epilogue‘ episode, the continuation of last week’s ‘Common Descent‘ episode. Ratings were up 27% over last week’s episode and a week later here’s the transcript of the episode.

SGU: Epilogue aired Mon 25 Apr 2011 on Syfy

Destiny and the survivors from the drone-attacked planet, who were actually descendants of the ‘future’ Destiny crew thought lost back during the ‘Twin Destinies‘ episode, arrived at Novus to find it deserted due to a cataclysmic seismic event. The usual suspects take the shuttle down to the surface and find no people and no remains, but do find the archives in a bunker to which the fail to gain access. Matt asked Col. Young if the big guns on Destiny could be used to attempt to breach the bunker and one shot opens the doors to supplies and a vast store of data, two thousand years in the making thanks to Eli’s motto handed down through the Tenarans.

The rest of the episode boiled down to the crews’ fascination with their alternate selves diaries: who died, who got married, who had babies, who didn’t. All except Rush, of course, whose alternate self ‘married’ future Destiny and went down in flames at the end of the ‘Twin Destinies’ episode. Volker achieves a moment of greatness by leaving Rush speechless when driving this point home to the curmudgeonly Futuran ‘Messiah.’

If the series ended now, I could walk away without too much angst. Yes, there are many unanswered questions, but the achievement of the descendants transcends their harsh circumstances and the nay-saying of Rush’s camp so overwhelmingly and so courageously, like true pioneers on the galactic frontier plains, that I almost dread watching the next two episodes. I fear further disappointment and more loose ends never to be resolved.

I will give this episode four stars out of five, because Camille’s speech at the end actually brought a tear to my eye.

Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut

Just a few quick words, thoughts and questions about last night’s Doctor Who Season Six premiere ‘The Impossible Astronaut‘ (if you’re looking for a synopsis or re-cap of the episode, click on the episode name link). The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River hop across the pond to late 1960s America, unraveling (without alerting the younger doctor) the mystery surrounding the two hundred year older Doctor’s demise (yes, a bit of a spoiler but it happens within the first few minutes of the episode).

I enjoyed the nostalgic references to the space program (go NASA! to the moon and beyond!) and Nixon (as Doctor Who states ‘so much more happened in 1969 than people remember), but Moffat’s latest aliens didn’t seem as creative as his extremely creepy weeping angels (see the Hugo and BAFTA award winning episode ‘Blink‘ for further creepiness).

And it begs that question, if these aliens have the ability to make you forget them completely after you are no longer looking at them, why would one of these aliens command Amy to tell Doctor Who something? Don’t they realize she’ll forget whatever they told her as soon as she turns her head? Here’s an excerpt from Amy’s conversation with one of the aliens in a White House restroom:

Alien: You will tell the Doctor.

Amy: Tell him what?

Alien: What he must know and what he must never know.

Amy: How do you know about that?

Alien: Tell him.

After which Amy runs gasping from the restroom and immediately forgets what just happened. She did snap a photo of the alien with her cell phone, after she determined that humans forget the aliens as soon as they look away (thanks to a poor woman caught in the conversational crossfire as collateral damage). And was I the only one who that thought the electrifying moaning alien consuming said woman reminded you of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall‘? Ew.

An intriguing above-average episode of Doctor Who (more than three, probably close to four out of five stars). I’m still having David Tennant withdrawals as I just can’t relate to a Doctor Who played by an actor born just a year before I graduated from high school. I loved having Mark Sheppard, one of my current favorite British (or is that Irish) actors who pops up on many of the shows I watch. The preview for next week’s conclusion entitled ‘Day of the Moon‘ look suitably time-twisty and action packed.

Thank goodness BBC America saved science fiction television from complete extinction. Heaven knows, I can’t count on Syfy for anything except fantasy (because what else do you call WWE or reality TV)?

Amateur Astronomers Attend

My dad and I ventured out Saturday night to attend the April 2011 general meeting of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City, held on the fourth Saturday of nearly every month at Royal Hall on the campus of UMKC. Dad volunteered to drive from Lansing/Leavenworth to just east of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri. We had a pleasant uneventful drive.

Once we arrived on campus and eventually navigated the one-way streets around Royal Hall to find the entrance to the parking garage, we entered the building and immediately recognized a couple waiting in the hallway outside the lecture room. We stumbled upon old friends from our amateur radio past. We spent several minutes getting reacquainted and catching up. We gravitated towards the lecture hall and sat together.

The first hour of the meeting involved various awards for observing activities, reports on scholarship funding and distributing, status of the DSS (dark sky site), encouragement to try an observing club or activity and brief demonstration of beta testing a recent kit from the NASA‘s Nightsky Network. There was also a brief commercial for a performance called ‘Orbit‘ by Dark Matter scheduled for the first weekend in May at Union Station‘s Gottlieb Planetarium.

CME blast and subsequent impact at Earth

The meat of the meeting came with a presentation on Solar Observing Basics by Neta Apple. Her talk covered safety, first and foremost, various filters (white light, calcium K and hydrogen alpha – her personal preference). an introduction to the interior of our closest star, umbrae, penumbrae, light bridges, granulations, prominences, faculae and solar flares. Neta mentioned a 19th century solar flare, commonly know as the Carrington Event, named for the British amateur astronomer who observed it in 1859. She asked the audience what we thought the result of a large or super flare of similar magnitude to the Carrington Event would do to our technology heavy civilization? While we might survive that Russian roulette with the Sun’s gun, we lack the stockpiles of electrical transformers to replace all those that would be destroyed (estimates predict it would take two years for the Mexican manufacturers to create enough to replace just those lost in the United States alone).

On a happier note, Neta wrapped up with some examples from NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO for short) web site and opened the floor for a brief question and answer period.

By this time, we were approaching the latter half of the nine o’clock hour, and the meeting coordinator (the President was absent, so there was a substitute) decided to de-formalize the scheduled town hall meeting to a social gathering, with refreshments, encouraging attendees to meet their board members and other club regulars. I took the opportunity to quickly skim through the available observatory activities, grabbing the Astronomical League‘s Urban Observatory Club handout, but forgetting to grab ASKC’s Astro Quest one.

I asked a question of the Membership Secretary and then said goodbye to our old amateur radio friends. Dad and I returned to the car and drove home, under cloudy skies. I’m looking forward to ‘opening night‘ at Powell Observatory on Saturday, May 7th, featuring the ‘Galaxies of Spring’ and I hope to see you there!

Book Review: Magician: Master by Feist

Magician: Master by Raymond E. Feist

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second half of Magician became increasingly dark as I approached the climactic end to the Kelewan-Midkemian Riftwar. I observed definite growth to full maturity between Pug and Tomas, and perhaps that growth from boyhood through young adult into adulthood is what I lament – the rite of passage of most normal young boys, though Pug and Tomas could never be mistaken for normal. While everything seemed wondrous and adventurous in the first half of the novel (also known as Magician: Apprentice), I felt the oppression of circumstances, the collision of events and the machinations of a magician previously thought trustworthy. Not all was dark and gloomy, yet I didn’t walk away from this book thinking it ended on a resoundingly happy note.

A couple of scenes stood out as a bit over-the-top and stretched the envelope of believability: Milamber’s reaction to the Imperial Games and Tomas’ ability to overcome a dead dreaded god-like being with his boyish mental fortitude. And I can’t deny I felt gut-punched by the eleventh-hour betrayal by Macros. (to view spoiler, please highlight this paragraph).

For a debut work, I applaud Raymond Feist for a magnificent tale and the beginning to a well-loved fantasy epic. I’m continuing the Riftwar Saga by reading Silverthorn this month.

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SGU: Un-Common Descent

With only four episodes left for the final season (canceled after only two years and movie prospects to wrap things up appear dead), Stargate Universe returns to some more interesting territory. A couple of story arcs converge within the first few minutes of this week’s ‘Common Descent‘ episode, harking back to the mid-season opener, ‘Deliverance‘ and ‘Twin Destinies.’ Ratings Update: And this doesn’t make any sense, but viewership drops by 16 percent over last week’s episode. And just in time, straight from the presses, the transcript.

Destiny is back to falling apart, the breathable air on board needs scrubbing and dodging drones is not nearly as fun as it used to be. Thinking the dead drone might be phoning home, they jetison it, during an ongoing drone attack, destroy it and attempt a feeble launch into FTL flight. Destiny finds a couple of planets, one with a working gate, and one blocked, and Young agrees to drop out of FTL to solve the scrubber situation before everyone suffocates.

The expedition to the planet surface encounter English speaking humans who recognize members of the Destiny party. And no surprise to myself (or Eli), these humans claim to be descendants sixty or so generations removed from the current members of Destiny. And you thought the ‘future’ Destiny crew went through that unstable wormhole into oblivion? Ha!

Everyone but Rush reacted with excitement and interest in the plight of the stranded settlers. A friend of mine at GoodReads connected the dots before me, observing that since Rush remained behind on the ‘future’ Destiny, he sired no offspring (but did foster a philosophic debate of near epic, even Biblical, proportions). This reminded me that the other Rush actually achieved his (or is that their) dream and ‘married’ Destiny … so who knows what kind of offspring might crop up for Rush?

This episode had a bit of everything: some science (time travel), some action (dodging drones and their command ships), some humor (Futura is a font!), some drama (‘ancient’ keno footage from the ‘future’ Destiny survivors original settlement), a bit of mystery (how are these drones finding Destiny?), and of course some political unrest (fostered two thousand years ago by the current uncomfortable philosophical disagreement between Rush and Young which results in a highly polarized schism developing among their descendants to the point where Rush is either worshiped as a near Messiah by one half or demonized, literally, by the other).

Even though this episode ended prematurely, I thoroughly enjoyed it and for the first time this spring I’m excited and anxious to watch next week’s ‘Epilogue‘ episode. I give ‘Common Descent’ a solid four star rating out of five stars.

Book Review: David Levy’s Guide to the Night Sky

David Levy’s Guide to the Night Sky by David H. Levy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A good, but somewhat sporadic, book on astronomy by one of the astronomers who discovered the comet Shoemaker-Levy (yeah, the one that crashed spectacularly into Jupiter). The information seems a bit dated, even though this is a second edition (or a reprint ten years later). I went in search of astronomy books on the shelves of my local library and gave this a whirl.

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