The Book of the Sword, Part Three: Flos Duellatorum

Behold the well-dressed student of arms - longsword, gorget for neck
protection, and souvenir Trinity College t-shirt from Dublin.
Fencing masks are added for actual face-to-face practice.

In last night's longsword session, we began for the first time to link together the various attacks and defenses as they would be used in actual single combat through a series of exercises that progressed from simply attacking a static opponent, to having the opponent dodge, to having the opponent defend themselves. It's the also the first time we've been given complete freedom in choosing our attacks and defenses, and it was interesting to see how people approached the opportunity.

Aaron, our substitute trainer for the class, compared this sort of combat to chess, where victory is based on the ability to plan several moves ahead.  I've already starting thinking in those terms, based on the simple attack/defend exchanges that we've had as part of our practice. 

If I have one complaint about the training, it's that there hasn't really been enough repetition to embed the full range of moves into muscle memory.  Out of the various cuts, thrusts and guards that we've learned, I've retained between a half and a third of them, and some additional time spent just doing military-style repetitive drill for each move would have helped me quite a bit.

However, I also realize that eight hours of training sessions isn't a lot of time to cover a wide range of weapons and techniques, and as such, some personal practise may be in order.  To help with this, Academie Duello also has a video subscription service called Duello TV, which offers a wide range of instructional videos through a variety of subscription-based and course pack purchasing options.

 

Conveniently, the Longsword Fundamentals curriculum is available for free on DuelloTV after you register, but I would still recommend that any interested parties sign up for an actual in-person class.  The videos will certainly show you how it's done without any investment of money, but having a knowledgeable instructor correcting your stance or answering questions is invaluable - not to mention a good supply of longswords, appropriate protective gear, and someone else to poke your sword at.

- Sid

The Book of the Sword, Part Two: Weapons of War.

 

This week marked the half-way point in my Academie Duello Introduction to Longsword course, and I'm please to say that I've begun to enjoy the classes more now that we've settled in.
 
Miguel, our instructor, has done an excellent job of familiarizing us with the various longsword techniques, and my fellow students have been quite accommodating when we've been practising as a group of three. The school also has some standard methods of rotating partners so that people get to practise with a variety of opponents.

After three sessions on longsword technique, we spent our last class working with polearms - which, interestingly, are considered to be superior to a sword in a combat situation.  Our instructor informed us that every time they've matched polearm against longsword, the polearm has been the clear winner, based on leverage and flexibility in attack and defense.  He compared a polearm to a rifle and a sword to a pistol in terms of their relative authority on the historical battlefield.

In case you're not a student of edged weapons, the term polearm is generic, covering a wide range of offensive options attached to the end of a pole, with the simplest of polearms being the spear.  More elaborate weapons are the glaive (sword on a stick), poleaxe (axe on a stick), and bardiche, which falls somewhere in between glaive and poleaxe with its extended curved blade (third from the left in the above photo).  Our exercises tonight were done with halberds, a combination axe blade with a spear point on the end and a hammer on the reverse.

We were cautioned to use extra care when practising against an opponent, even with our rubber-tipped mockups.  As Miguel pointed out, whereas a sword can be blunted and capped, a wooden pole is perfectly capable of doing damage all on its own.

The school is very aware of the potential for harm during practise, and as such everything is done at about a quarter of normal speed.  This can be a challenge to maintain, and also requires a certain amount of what Miguel refers to as "honesty" during the sparring process.

 If I'm lunging at someone's face and they move to the side as the start of a parry that will control my blade and allow them to lunge over top of it into my face, I actually have lots of time to redirect my sword to their new location.  However, in an actual fight, I'd be committed to my lunge, and as an honest opponent, I need to maintain that commitment in the same manner.  However, there are some moves, such as defensively snapping a lunge out of line, that simply can't be done slowly.  As I once read in a novel set on a glacial planet where the local wildlife even hunted at a snail's pace in order to preserve energy, regardless of how slow you're moving, there's only one speed for a jump.

- Sid

 

The Book of the Sword, Part One: Forte versus debole.

 

Last night I attended my first longsword class at Academie Duello, and found it to be a mixed experience, to be honest.

I've signed up for eight evening classes, one hour every Tuesday and Thursday evenings for the month of March, which I planned as a substitute for my normal visits to the gym on those nights. As requested, I arrived a bit early for the class in order to receive a quick orientation on the simple student login process and the setup of the studio. The exercise space is divided into larger and smaller practice floors by sword and fencing mask storage racks, with a small retail area near the front and a museum display along one wall.

While I was waiting for our session to start, I watched the students in a rapier class dueling each other, and I was surprised to see that muscle doesn't seem to play a large part in the duels. I would expect the duelists to forcefully push their opponent's blade out of line to either block an attack or to create an opening, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

I mentioned this to our instructor Miguel, who pointed out that it doesn't take a lot of effort to hurt someone with a sharpened steel weapon - apparently it only takes four pounds of pressure to pierce the skin. I can't argue with that, but I still feel that muscle has to have some application in the process.

The evening begins with a lesson on our weapon of choice. The longswords that we're using are in the style from the 14th to 16th century, about 40 inches long, with a 30 inch blade length and a simple crossguard. They're designed to be used with a two-handed grip, with the left hand on the pommel of the sword, rather than snug to the right hand on the hilt, in order to provide leverage and control. The school follows the Italianate model of swordplay, and as such all the terminology is Italian - the stronger part of the blade is the forte, or strong, the part near the point is the weak, the debole.

It's interesting to learn the techniques and the language used to describe them. There's a kind of poetry to the names of the moves: posta di donna, "the woman's guard";  the "boar's tooth" or dente di zenghiaro; porta di ferro, the "iron door" and so on, and watching the instructor do demonstrations shows a nuanced and graceful style.

It's a bit more challenging to try the exercises in person - not so much due to the complexity of the moves, but simply because it's extremely difficult not to mirror the instructor and do everything backwards. I also recognize that these are the building blocks of a martial art - stances, strikes, and blocks - but right now they're just disconnected fragments, which is a bit confusing. It may help when we go further down the path of blending the moves.

However, it's frustrating as well. By its very nature, fighting with swords requires an opponent, and, sadly, once again I'm the odd man out at the party, as with my ballroom dance classes many years ago in Toronto. I'm in a class of five with two couples, both of whom had one partner buy the sessions as a gift for the other.* The instructor had me working with one of the couples as a trio last night, but I feel more than a little self-conscious about interfering in their shared experience.

It's also not really a substitute for gym workouts, at least at this level - the only time I breath heavily is when I run to catch the Number 7 bus for my trip home.

However, early days, and I'm certainly not going to drop out of the class, but I'm hoping to feel a little less like a fifth wheel as we move forward. That being said, if I had one piece of advice for someone taking the course, I'd recommend that they go with a sparring partner.

- Sid

* I texted my wife Karli to confess that I had never thought to invite her, and she was kind enough to reply that it had never occurred to her that she might want to attend.

Fan Boy.

 

Many years ago, someone suggested to me that I should mention something about my personal life on my resume. After a little thought, I cautiously added the following:

PERSONAL INTERESTS

• Science Fiction
• Military History *

I can't honestly say that this has had any overt effect on being hired since then, but I did once have an job interviewer say to me, in the same conspiratorial tone of voice that one would use to discuss a shared interest in latex or lingerie, "So, science fiction....do you go to...conventions????"

In response, I laughed a bit, and said, "No, never, I'm not that kind of a fan."

Which is quite true. I know a few people who have similar interests to my own, but for the most part my fandom has been a private activity.**  I'm also enough of an introvert that I'm not a huge fan of crowds, and as such, I've always viewed conventions and so forth as being a bit too busy for my tastes.  Nonetheless, last Saturday I found myself picking out a suitable t-shirt for an experimental visit to the second day of Fan Expo Vancouver.

After all, conventions have become the great public face of fandom and should be recognized as such. The first World Science Fiction Convention was held in New York in 1939, with a classic guest list from the Golden Age of science fiction: Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Jack Williamson, John W. Campbell, Hannes Bok, E. E. "Doc" Smith, L. Sprague de Camp, and so on. (It also featured the first example of cosplay - legendary fan Forrest J. Ackerman and his partner Myrtle R. Douglas wore "futuristicostumes" that she had designed and created for the gathering.)

The current standard for conventions is the San Diego Comic-Con, which started with a modest 300 attendees at its debut in 1970, but has since grown to over 200,000 attendees in 2018, with New York Comic-Con pulling in similar numbers on the East Coast.  I really don't think I'd be comfortable participating in an event on that scale, making the expected 30,000 guests for the 2019 Fan Expo look like a much more approachable option for a neophyte like myself.

My final t-shirt choice for the show is my lenticular Astroboy souvenir shirt from our 2015 trip to Japan.  It's apparently a good choice, based on the handful of compliments and comments that it garners from random people in the convention crowd once I'm on site. 

 

I arrive around lunch, at which time the con floor space is not terribly crowded (to my mild relief).  For a small show, they've done all right for guests - for old school fans there's George Takei and Billy Dee Williams representing the Star Trek/Star Wars camps, and Cary Elwes and Wallace Shawn from The Princess Bride. The balance of the theatrical guests relies heavily on the number of television shows being shot locally, with representatives from Riverdale, Arrow, Flash, and Supergirl.  Coming in from further afield we also have Bruce Wayne and Alfred from Gotham - David Mazouz and Sean Pertwee - Pom Klementieff from The Guardians of the Galaxy, and Khary Payton (King Ezekiel in The Walking Dead, as well as voice acting for Big Hero 6 and Teen Titans).

Other attractions include the usual Artist's Alley area for comic creators - I've been out the market for quite a while but I recognize a few names:  Arthur Suydam, Ty Templeton, Arthur Adams, and Steve Englehart, legendary for his work on Batman with Marshall Rogers in the 70s. (My friend Christi*** had the good fortune to walk away with an original Ty Templeton drawing from one of the Sketch-Offs between artists.)

The cosplay crowd is represented by the famous 501st Legion of Imperial Stormtroopers, along with the Mandalorian Mercs and the Falcon Base Rebel Legion, and some individual cosplayers such as Oshley Cosplay, Evilyn13, and Cherry Amaru. The 502st Legion is accompanied by a remote controlled R2-D2, which gets a lot of attention as it wanders the floor.

 

There's also a pretty good selection of cosplay on the part of the attendees. Right in front of me when I enter is a very well done classic Time Lord costume from Doctor Who, and as I wander through the retail area there are a lot of anime characters, an excellent Ghostbuster, an eight-foot tall Bumblebee from Transformers, a wide range of game-derived costumes, and easily a dozen Harley Quinns - for future reference, please be careful with those giant wooden mallets, ladies!

Some of the costume references are quite obscure - until I noticed the TV set in Viking gear, I didn't realize that the green-faced woman with wizard's hat and six-foot tall wand was Dot Matrix from the computer animated Reboot! series. (The TV is named Mike, not that it's important.)  It's safe to say that you're mining a very narrow vein of fandom if you wear a costume that appeared in a single episode**** of a show from 1994.

The booths cover the expected range of broad geek shopping categories:  comics, weapons, toys, clothing and art, along with a few unexpected items that you probably never thought you'd need (Imperial AT-AT planters, anyone?) 

 

I don't leave the show empty-handed, although Star Wars planters don't make the cut. The Canadian Comics booth has a number of attractive deals, and after browsing through several boxes of half-price graphic novels and omnibus collections, I select a Captain Canuck Compendium and a DC New 52 collection of Dial H for Hero, written by science fiction/fantasy author China Miéville, whose surrealistic style should make for interesting reading. I also buy a souvenir shopping bag, because really, you should always get at least one piece of show schwag - and I don't really need any more t-shirts.

Overall, I would have to say that it was an interesting experience, but unless they had someone on the guest list that I desperately wanted to meet in person, I probably wouldn't go again.  It's not that I found any problems with the event, it was well organized with a good selection of guests for a small show, but ultimately I'm more at home at home, where I can peacefully browse shopping opportunities and science fiction updates online.

I guess it's true - I'm really just not that kind of a fan.

- Sid

* The science fiction part has gotten a comment or two, but NO ONE has ever asked me about military history - why does no one want my opinion on how the Russian T-34 was the game changer in WWII tank design?

** Says the man with 816 posts about his hobby on the internet.

*** Yes, her insignia is on the wrong side, but let's not be picky about this.  (In her defense, the dress itself appears to be mirror reversed - the wide part of the collar should be on the left.)

*** Episode 9, Season 1: Wizards, Warriors and a Word from Our Sponsor.

The glass will just keep filling up.

 

I was chatting with my co-worker Wendy this morning and she asked if I was a 90210 fan.  I explained that I was not, but that my wife had already informed me of Luke Perry's premature passing at the age of 52.

Wendy is currently studying to become a personal trainer, and she mentioned that it had come up as part of her course material that there are some people who just have a genetic predilection for problems like strokes, heart attacks, what have some, and some people who just don't.

"Oh well," she concluded, "There's nothing you can do about your DNA."

"Well, not yet," I replied.

Which, really, is the ultimate expression of being a science fiction fan, and one of the things that I most enjoy about science fiction.  There's a kind of optimism to it - yes, there are people who are predicting the apocalypse in 30 years, but really, science fiction suggests that there will be a future, and that we will be in it.  And,  that hopefully we will be able to solve some of the problems that we just have to accept right now, like dying of a stroke when you're 52.

- Sid

Gateway.

 

 “Canada is going to the moon.”

- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Yesterday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada's commitment to NASA's planned Lunar Gateway space station, which will hopefully begin construction sometime in the 2020s.  As in the past, our two billion CAD contribution to the orbital platform will take the form of a smart robotic manipulator - the Canadarm3, of course - which will be composed of a primary large-scale arm and a smaller arm similar to the current DEXTRE unit in use on the ISS.

 

I confess that I'm a bit conflicted regarding the Gateway Station*.  On one hand, I'd prefer to see more of a focus on Mars, in spite of the recent resurgence of interest in lunar exploration, as demonstrated by the Chinese Chang'e 4 lunar probe landing on the dark side at the start of this year, and a planned return to the Moon by NASA.  However, the name "Gateway" is well chosen - a station in lunar orbit would also be a useful stepping stone for Martian exploration while providing the perfect overwatch for lunar missions, and also allow for the development of dedicated vacuum shuttles for ISS-Gateway travel, which would be far more efficient than the hybrid craft that have made the Earth-Moon circuit in the past.

Ultimately, it's important to be sensible about things like this. To paraphrase Bachman-Turner Overdrive**, any space exploration is good space exploration. Everything we do moves us forward on the path of exploration, and, like the song says, we should take what we can get.

- Sid

* All other issues aside, I do think it's a cool name for a space station, no offense to the ISS.

** 70s band from Winnipeg, for the younger members of our audience.  The song being misquoted here is You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.

Updates.

"Sergeant Storm, Major Matt Mason's Space Friend!"

 

Over time, I've kept a casual eye on opportunities to add to my little collection of Major Matt Mason toys from the 60s, but generally the options on eBay are either a bit more than I want to spend, or not in very good condition.

However, it would seem that perseverance is its own reward.  I had the misfortune of waking up early on Wednesday morning, and as a result had some extra time before getting ready for work.  So I checked on a Matt Mason figure that I'd been following on eBay, only to discover that it had been purchased by someone else.  However, it recommended another auction:  a Sergeant Storm figure in relatively good condition at only $49.00 for the Buy It Now option - a very reasonable price compared to similar listings. Not only that, but the seller would only ship within Canada, which sounded to me like a clear message. A few quick clicks and voila, a new addition to my toy collection.

The slightly damaged 1966 "blue strap" figure comes with a slightly damaged flight propulsion pack - interestingly, the damage on the pack matches the damage to the paint on the back of the figure. It turns out that if you leave a painted rubber action figure in contact with a polystyrene accessory for long enough, the paint will glue itself to the plastic - remind me to keep an eye on the Major, who spends all of his time strapped into his near-mint Supernaut Power Limbs. I'd really hate to see him get stuck in there.


"He had it coming, he had it coming, he only had himself to blame..."

 

I'm now on my third Survival attempt in The Long Dark game.  The second one ended 81 days in after repeated falls through thin ice (my own fault for not paying attention to the health bar - the game was telling me that my Risk of Hypothermia affliction was Healed, but apparently it doesn't matter what temperature the water is when you drown).

I'm currently 41 days into my current run, and after recently recovering from multiple wolf attacks, it was with a certain sense of grim satisfaction that I returned to the scene of the crime after finding some .303 ammo for my battered Lee Enfield rifle at the Hunting Lodge in the Broken Railroad map.  The score:  two bullets, 10 kilograms of wolf meat, and a couple of useful hides for crafting.  And hey, they started it.



"A red day, a sword day!"

 

Wish me luck:  I'm finally registered for a month of Longsword Training at Vancouver's Academie Duello, starting next Tuesday at 7:30.  I generally avoid group activities like this, a stance reinforced by an unfortunate experience with ballroom dance classes many years ago, so I'm a bit nervous about how things will work out in practice. At least in this case no one has falsely assured me that there will be lots and lots of potential partners in attendance - and if I do have to dance with the instructor, well, the circumstances are a little different.



Coming Soon!

Does anyone else mark book release dates on their calendars?  Anyone?  No?  Well, not the biggest surprise in my life...   On that basis, let me just remind everyone that the eighth book in the Expanse series, Tiamat's Wrath, will be dropping from Orbit* on March 26th.

Authors often struggle to keep a concept fresh over multiple novels, but the team of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the writing partners behind the nom de plume of James S. A. Corey, have done an excellent job of maintaining the ongoing story of Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante.  Damn - that reminds me, I still need to find some time to sit down with the first season of  the SciFi adaptation that I purchased on Blu-ray...so much media, so little time.


At least the cover art is finished...

 

The present tense made him nervous.

William Gibson, Neuromancer 

Speaking of books on the "Coming Soon" list, I was curious as to whether or not Agency, William Gibson's follow-up to The Peripheral, was going to make its scheduled debut in December after I had mentioned it in last year's Geekmas list.

Given that it was originally supposed to be released on December 25th in 2018, was pushed to April 2nd of 2019, and is now scheduled for September 3rd, I'm just a little concerned as to whether or not Bill is doing okay. Now, for all I know William Gibson has been late with every novel he's ever written, I've never tried to track that before, but it seems worrisome that the release date has been so publicly changed twice now.

The joke, if there is one, is that Agency is apparently set in an alternative 2017 in which Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election - a what-if version of the world that we are getting further and further away from every single day.

- Sid

* Ha, little science fiction joke:  Orbit is the publishing company.

Where is John Nada when you need him?

Oh, by the way, I've cracked the code.
I've figured out these shadow organizations
And the Illuminati know
That they're finally primed for world domination.
And soon you've got black helicopters comin' cross the border
Puppet masters for the New World Order
Be aware: there's always someone that's watching you.
And still the government won't admit they faked the whole moon landing
Thought control rays, psychotronic scanning
Don't mind that, I'm protected cause I made this hat
From aluminum foil (foil)...
Wear a hat that's foil lined
In case an alien's inclined
To probe your butt or read your mind.
Looks a bit peculiar ('culiar)
Seems a little crazy
But someday I'll prove (I'll prove, I'll prove, I'll prove)
There's a big conspiracy.

Weird Al Yankovic, Foil

Free, free for the first time from the subliminal voices of our reptilian overlords!!  But for how long?

- Sid

Mission Complete.

My battery is low and it's getting dark.

Final message from Opportunity rover, June 10, 2018.

After over a thousand attempts at contact*, NASA has officially announced that it is no longer attempting to revive the inactive Opportunity Mars rover, thereby ending the longest running rover mission to date. 

When you consider that Opportunity operated for close to 15 years and covered 45 kilometers of the Martian landscape, it's almost ridiculous to look at its original mission as part of the Mars Exploration Rover program:  to last 90 Martian days and travel one kilometer from its landing site.  On that basis, I appreciate the fact that NASA has logged this as "Mission Complete" - that's a much better epitaph for Opportunity than any of the various headlines announcing that the rover is dead.  It's equally appropriate that Opportunity's last resting place is in Perseverance Valley, on the edge of Endeavour Crater. 

In his 2012 book Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the following comment:

Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I'll stay down here and get the data. But nobody's ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody's ever named a high school after a robot. So when I don my public-educator hat, I have to recognize the elements of exploration that excite people. It's not only the discoveries and the beautiful photos that come down from the heavens; it's the vicarious participation in discovery itself.

I'm sorry, Neil, but I have to disagree with you.  I think that in this case, it would be completely appropriate to name a high school after a robot: you'd be hard pressed to find a better example of how to overcome obstacles and exceed expectations than Opportunity.

- Sid

* Including an 18-song playlist.

Valley Girl.

Valentine's Day 2019 will see the release of Alita: Battle Angel, James Cameron's return to the big screen as writer and producer, with Robert Rodriguez in the director's chair.  The movie is based on Japanese writer/artist Yukito Kishiro's 1990 manga series, which was translated into English and republished by Viz Comics in 1992 - as far as I know, I still have three or four years of the black and white Viz editions tucked away in storage with the rest of my comics.

The comic book version of Battle Angel Alita tells the tale of a have/have not world where the sky is dominated by the isolated floating city of Tiphares*, which rains down its trash onto the Junkyard that lies below. Cyberphysician Daisuke Ido, an exile from the city, is wandering through the piles of junk in search of spare parts when he stumbles upon a discarded cyborg head and upper torso which still holds life.  He takes this fragment of a person back to his laboratory and repairs it.

He names his discovery Alita  - she has no memories of her name, or of her life before her re-awakening in the lab.   However, when she discovers that Ido has a second life as a bounty hunter, she also learns that her subconscious mind contains an instinctive knowledge of Panzer Kunst -  the "Armoured Art", an acrobatic cyborg martial arts technique originally created for zero-gravity combat.
 
The comic follows Alita as she also becomes a bounty hunter, finds - and loses - love, participates in the brutal and deadly sport of Motorball, and eventually ends up as a ground agent for the rulers of Tiphares.  From what I gather from the trailers, the movie combines the first three parts of Alita's life into a single plot.  Based on those same trailers, the movie completely nails the visual style of the comics - and that's where I'm concerned.

For the most part, the quality of the art direction is a good thing. The sets look good, and the casting is spot-on:  Christoph Waltz is perfect for Alita's enigmatic saviour Dr. Ido, Mahershala Ali is identical to the villainous Vector, and the glimpses that we see of the more robotic cyborgs are an excellent evocation of the over-the-top cyberpunk look of the manga.

However, it's the character of Alita, as played by 33-year-old actress Rosa Salazar, that worries me.  Her digitally reworked face is intended to match the stylized manga convention for wide-eyed female characters, and I can't help but feel that it pushes her character into the trap that has captured so many computer-generated characters:  the Uncanny Valley.

 

The concept of the Uncanny Valley was introduced by Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970 to describe the negative reaction that people often have to near-duplicates of humanity.  As representations of a person get closer and closer to reality, the response becomes more and more positive up until a point where it dips down sharply before ascending once again.  That dip in the curve is the Uncanny Valley.

The problem is that we perceive these almost-but-not-quite perfect copies of humanity as being weird or creepy - the "uncanny" part of the term.

Computer animation is constantly flirting with the Valley. The characters in the 2007 film Beowulf, 2001's  Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Polar Express from 2004 and the digital Princess Leia** from Rogue One in 2016 are often cited as prime examples of Valley - characters that come disconcertingly close to achieving life, but not close enough.  The Alita that I've seen in the trailers, with her enlarged anime eyes, may be sliding into the Valley as well.

It seems odd to pick on her modified facial features when the movie is full of extravagant combinations of human and machine,  but as the concept of the Valley suggests, it's the closeness to actual humanity that creates the disconnect.  The less human a character looks, the less likely they are to trigger that sense of dissonance that characterizes the Uncanny Valley.

That being said, I'm willing to trust Cameron's instincts.  After all, the same sort of comments might be made about the semi-feline blue aliens from Avatar, and audiences seemed to have no problem spending close to three billion dollars at the box office to experience their world.

But even then, unlike Neytiri and the Na'vi, Alita is actually intended to be almost human - is she human enough? We'll see what the audience decides on the 14th.

- Sid

* There are some odd changes from the Japanese language version to the Viz release:  the city of Salem becomes Tiphares, Junk Iron City changes to the Junkyard, and Gally is reborn as Alita.  The movie version obviously kept her  new name, but I don't know where the rest of the proper nouns ended up.

** Digital Grand Moff Tarkin was a bit more positively received - it's a fine line.

" If I don’t get a rose tonight, it’s the biggest upset of all time."

"My brand is the pensive gentleman. He could have a glass of good scotch, he could have a book in his hand, he could have a flower in his hand giving it to a lady."

Jordan Kimball, Season 14, The Bachelorette

- Sid

Where we're going next.

Canada's most renowned astronaut, Colonel Chris Hadfield, will be hitting the road to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon-landing* in his "Exploration: Where We're Going Next" tour. The tour will see the heavily decorated astronaut, engineer and pilot discussing the history and future of space exploration.

Regular visitors to The Infinite Revolution will already be aware that I'm a bit of a Chris Hadfield fan:  as such, probably not a surprise that I've just purchased two tickets to his next speaking tour - which, surprisingly, appears to be restricted to Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.  Hmmm...visiting friends in Western Canada at the end of April and decided to do a few talks for beer money, Commander? 

- Sid

* Which is actually not until July 20th**, so he's jumping the gun a little.

** And Neil Armstrong didn't step onto the surface until the 21st.

"Under a red blood moon."

"Now that's some science fiction stuff!"

Karli Thomas

Anyone else go out to watch the total lunar eclipse tonight?

- Sid