“If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.”
The insidious creatures began their assault yesterday and caused the typical panic. Relief may not come for several days. Local authorities encourage everyone to remain indoors for safety.
Good night and good luck, people of Earth.
1) Suggest that any work of comic literature is not, in fact, the equal or superior to every other classic of world literature, up to and including Shakespeare. If you do, you’re being a tedious literature elitist, and missing the fact that Shakespeare is popular mainly for the fart jokes.
2) Suggest that anybody trying to keep certain not-really-for-kids comics out of the hands of 11-year-olds is anything but a censor-happy ogre out to destroy the intellectual culture of the nation.
As the game release calendar picks up steam for the mad rush to the holidays, I find myself with things to say. To that end, my review of the fantastic Batman: Arkham Asylum game is up at Needcoffee.
This is the inside of my head all the time.
The BBC reports a new database containing details on a quarter of a million soldiers from the Hundred Years’ War has gone live. Impossibly cool stuff.
For 50 years, humanity has been straining at the leash of gravity. Those drawn to this endeavor come from all kinds of backgrounds, and for a host of different reasons. The one common thread running through it all is a desire to see the species break free of the limitations placed on us by virtue of birth, to push our understanding of ourselves, our world, and the larger universe around us ever outward. It’s a pattern of behaviors repeated throughout history, with its share of ups and downs. Finding the Northwest Passage, circumnavigating the globe, crossing the Atlantic, or spreading west of the Mississippi, we have pushed against the environment, geography, and political forces to move Beyond.
Any frontier contains danger. If it did not, then the advance and spread of humanity would never have been checked in the first place. The functional definition of “frontier,” for this purpose, is the place beyond which we cannot proceed, certain of our safety. When confronting these frontiers, exceptional men and women have stepped forward and proferred themselves in service of a greater good, to push into those boundaries and see what lies beyond them. Many have lost their lives in the effort. We owe a debt to those explorers that we can never adequately repay, save to remember the price they paid.
Today is a designated Day of Remembrance for 17 of those explorers. I’m too young to have seen Apollo, watched Challenger disintegrate live on television in my elementary school classroom, and got the call about Columbia from a coworker in the space program. I’ve watched hearings, read reports, and prepared reports for release to accident investigators and the public. I’ve also had the good fortune to meet some of the men and women that continue to suit up, strap in, and blast off to blaze the trail for humanity’s future. It’s my fervent belief that the job they do should never be taken for granted, and that these sacrifices never be forgotten. Nothing about spaceflight is “routine,” no matter how many launches we make.
My console-jockey brethren are likely the only ones who will appreciate it, but it amused me.