The Birthday Trilogy, Part 4.

Photo courtesy of MasterClass

Through the combination of a real sense of purpose and an enormous amount of work on behalf of a lot of people, we can make impossible things happen.

Chris Hadfield, Masterclass

Dear Colin:

Hello again!  Sorry to hear about your cold - I hope that you can take some time off over the holidays to recover.  Also sorry to hear about the Ralph and wine disaster, which, somehow, sounds like another typical episode from the Campbell Brothers Chronicles.

It's been a few months since my thank-you note regarding your birthday gift, so I thought I should take a few minutes to bring you up to speed on progress.

I'm a little behind on the schedule that I laid out at the time, but, as John Lennon points out, life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. I strongly needed a break from scholastic activity after my online safety course*, and as such didn't sign up for the Chris Hadfield Masterclass on Space Exploration until just Thursday of this last week.  However, I'm now part of Commander Hadfield's virtual classroom, and I have to say that I have absolutely no regrets about my purchase.

The course is made up of just over seven and a half hours of video**, a downloadable 97 page PDF workbook which also links the student to a wide variety of pertinent content, an online discussion group, and an Office Hours module for submitting questions to the Commander.

(And, to be honest, it's the last two that really make the investment worthwhile - I'm more than confident that a quick search through the shadier parts of the Internet would have revealed an archive containing downloadable copies of both the videos and the workbook.)

I'm quite impressed by both the quality and the quantity of the course material, and as you know, I set high standards for this sort of thing. The production values for the videos are superb, and with over seven and a half hours of content, I'm looking forward to hearing the Commander's experienced and anecdotal viewpoint on being an astronaut and space exploration in general.  At this point in his career, Hadfield is a seasoned professional speaker, and his manner in front of the camera is natural and sincere - he's the perfect instructor for a course like this.

The accompanying workbook is well laid out, and the photos are an excellent bonus.  I don't think that any of the linked content is unique to the course, but the manner in which it's tied into the lesson structure gives it more relevancy than it would have as the results of a random Web search.

It's obvious that I'm not going to walk away from the last lesson and expect that NASA will add me to the next mission to the ISS, but I don't think anyone would expect that - the course is intended to offer some privileged insight into the process from the viewpoint of someone with a lot of experience from a wide variety of involvement, and as such, it's exactly what it should be.

In the case of my planned swordplay class at Vancouver's Academie Duello, procrastination actually ended up working well for me.  The centre is having a Christmas sale on their classes, and I was able to purchase a gift coupon for a Longsword Fundamentals course that brought the normal $135 fee down to $99 plus tax.  As you know, I was originally going to sign up for a January course, but the last couple of months have not been terribly cooperative in terms of gym attendance, so my new plan is to take January for a month of preparatory workouts, and then switch to longsword in February.

And that's the news, my friend.  Take care of yourself, and happy holidays to you and Jennifer!

- Sid

* Just for the record, I managed an A, with an average mark of 92%.  I might have done better if it hadn't had so much overlap with my honeymoon.

** A total which I added up on my own for 29 videos ranging in length from just under three minutes to almost 30 - and honestly, base 60 math is a nuisance.

Geekmas 2018: "... if all else fails, surprise me!"

In my Geekmas 2018 gift list posting, I provided the usual list of possible gifts, but, in a bit of a departure from previous years, I urged potential gift buyers to surprise me.  After all, it’s a big marketplace, and I’m not buying as many books as I used to, picking a novel that I don’t already own is not the challenge that it once was.

In the case of Brennan, this year’s workplace Secret Santa, he successfully accepted the challenge, and presented me with a copy of Mage Against The Machine, by Shaun Barger. It’s his first novel, and from what I can gather it’s a possibly young adult genre mix of magic and technological post-apocalyptic AI warfare.  Because it’s a first novel, I’ve got nothing to go on regarding Mr. Barger’s work, so I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s come up with.

Now all we have to do is work on the "secret" part of the process -  thanks again, Brennan, but writing your name on the gift tag does somewhat take away from the mystery of it all.

- Sid

"Oliver Queen is a hero."

My lovely wife Karli recently spent a four day weekend in Palm Springs with her family, but other commitments prevented me from going with her, so I headed out to YVR on the Sunday night she returned so that I could greet her when she got off the plane, as one does when one is in love.

In the fullness of time, the plane landed, taxied to the gate, and so on, so I left my seat in the lounge and moved to the railing beside the exit to the secure area corridor so that I could see her as soon as she came through the automatic doors (again, as one does when one is in love).

As the first person from the flight came through, a bearded man in his 30s, a group of about a dozen people rushed to the railing and he stopped to chat with them.

I was initially a bit puzzled as to what was going on, until I realized that the passenger in question was Stephen Amell, the Canadian actor who plays Oliver Queen/Green Arrow on CW's flagship DC Comics show Arrow*. As they crowded to the railing and he worked his way along the group, I suddenly realized that I was now part of the lineup, and, feeling a bit embarrassed, actually moved away from the railing so as to avoid having to explain I was just there to meet my wife should he offer to pose for a photo.

That aside, I have to give him full credit for rapport with his fans – he's much more pleasant in person than YouTube™ clips of him breaking bones in Star(ling) City would suggest. At 10:45 at night, after getting off a delayed flight from Palm Springs, he cheerfully signed photos, comics and action figure packaging (including some Funko boxes), posed for selfies, and graciously accepted a vintage Green Arrow comic book as a gift from one obviously dedicated follower. If anyone in the entertainment industry is looking for a role model on how to interact with their fan base, they could do a lot worse than taking some lessons from Mr. Amell.

 

Some research demonstrated that his generosity extends past late-night selfie sessions.  Over the past few years, he's worked closely and constantly with a variety of charity groups to raise over a million dollars for causes ranging from cancer to mental health and children's hospice care. Full points, Stephen - I know it's a cliché, but it's gratifying to see that someone playing a comic book character can be a hero in real life as well. 

Which only leaves me with one question – how did they know he’d be on that flight?

- Sid

* I don't really follow the Arrowverse, but as with a lot of things, I just sort of keep track of what's going on as part of my general geekness.

Tsundoku.

Oh great, there's a word for it...

- Sid

Time is what it is.

Amelia Folch: But what's the plan?
Jaime Blanch : We are Spanish, aren't we? Improvise.

El tiempo es el que es, El Ministerio Del Tiempo

Remember in the third installment of the Back to the Future trilogy when Marty McFly, faced with trouble in 1885, threateningly announces that his name is Clint Eastwood, starting a joke that threads through the entire movie? The joke is obvious, but only if you know who Clint Eastwood is (and that part of his fame derives from doing spaghetti Westerns for Sergio Leone in the 60s).

To which you reply, "But of course I know who Clint Eastwood is - everyone knows that."

But what if you've never heard of Clint Eastwood?

I've recently enountered exactly that situation while watching a show called El Ministerio del Tiempo on Netflix™. It's a Spanish time travel series that my friend Chris recommended, and so far I'm quite enjoying it - but not entirely for the reasons that the show's creators intended.

The show deals with a branch of the Spanish government which manages unwanted changes and alterations in history. Originally created by Queen Isabella I in 1491, the Ministry of Time's representatives rely on literal doorways into other times to visit the past and restore the status quo - or more accurately the status quo ante. The Ministry's staff is recruited from a wide range of historical milieux: the trio of agents who feature in the first season is composed of a 16th century soldier, a female intellectual from the late 1800s, and a contemporary paramedic.

As with most time travel series, the show relies heavily on historical references and anachronisms, except in this case, they're primarily referenced from Spanish history and popular culture.

 

As an example, at one point the head of the ministry is showing a new recruit some of the doorways into the past.  The two stand stand silhouetted for a moment in a doorway, looking at an oddly mixed group of people and an unfinished painting, and the guide grunts, "Velázquez is always late" after he closes the door. The Velázquez in question is acclaimed 17th century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, and the painting is Las Meninas (The Ladies in Waiting), his best known work and one of the most analyzed paintings in history. Interestingly, the doorway in the background of the painting is the one used by the Ministry.

 

Velázquez turns out to also be the Ministry's forensic sketch artist  - there's an entertaining little background scene where Velázquez is shown in the Ministry's lunch room, grimacing at a book on Picasso and attempting to draw an apple in the same style.

Researching these little Spanish cultural Easter Eggs has added unexpected interest to the show for me. For example, in the first episode the agents are asked for their names when renting rooms in 1808, and they reply one by one:

"Amelia Folch."

"Alonso de Entrerríos."

Julián Martíne, the 21st Century paramedic, smiles broadly and says, "Curro Jiménez."

 

Wait, who?  There has to be a reason he's used a different name...

A little investigation through Google™ reveals that Señor Martíne has taken his nom de histoire from a 1970s Spanish television series that explores the adventures of, you guessed it, Curro Jiménez as he fights in the guerilla* war against the French during the War of Independence** - making it a bit like saying that your name is Clint Eastwood in 1885.

 

The first episode also features a running gag with Alonso de Entrerríos, the soldier from the 16th century,  being referred to as Captain Alatriste. Again, research tells us that Captain Alatriste is the 17th century soldier-of-fortune hero of a series of novels by Arturo Pérez-Reverte - surprisingly, there's also a 2006 movie adaptation starring Viggo Mortensen.

I don't know if I'd recommend El Ministerio del Tiempo to everyone.  Ignoring the barrier of subtitles, the non-Spanish viewer is either faced with doing history homework or just missing a lot of the subtext. On the other hand, the show is well written, well acted, and shows a lot of potential in terms of its treatment of the perils and temptations of time travel on a personal level, over and above the consequences of changes to the historical timeline. 

If you do decide to give the show a try but you're not interested in researching the last five hundred years of Spanish history, don't worry, there were at least two Terminator references in the first episode - although I'm not convinced that this makes Arnold Schwarznegger the Clint Eastwood of international time travel references.

- Sid

* In case you've ever wondered, this is the origin of the term guerilla: literally, the little war.

** This is actually another little historical sidebar.  To the rest of the world, it's not the War of Independence, it's the Peninsular War, where Lord Wellington first takes the field against the armies of Napoleon.

"What dreams may come..."

 

 “To sleep, perchance to dream...”

Hamlet, Act III, Scene I.

Although the Martian storm* that held the Opportunity Mars rover in powered-down sleep since June 10th of this year has finally subsided after 180 days, it remains unresponsive to NASA's attempts to establish communications.  So far Mission Control has made over 350 attempts to contact the disabled rover, with no results.

However, Opportunity still has a chance.  Although the sandstorm has abated, the winds continue, which offers the possibility that residual dust will be blown off Opportunity's solar panels so that it can recharge its batteries and resume operation, which would certainly the best of all the possible conclusions to the rover's current plight.

Until that happy outcome, sleep on in peace, Opportunity. May your digital dreams take you to a place where your batteries never need charging, your memory arrays are sharp and fast, the sands are smooth under your wheels and the skies are always clear.

- Sid

* Did you know that there's a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that, among other things, keeps track of Martian weather for NASA? It was launched in 2005 with the mission of searching for historical evidence of water on Mars, and, as with so much of the technology we've sent to Mars, has remained in place and continued to work.

"There's a fire, sir."

Having just announced my love affair with the International Space Station, it seems unfortunate to learn that scientists have discovered antibiotic-resistant bacteria of the Enterobacter* strain on the station.

Okay, the good news is that they're not pathogenic** to humans. The bad news is that they exist at all as a different form from related Terran bacteria. The really bad news is the missing part of the good news: they're not pathogenic to humans YET.  Computer simulations indicate a 79 percent probability that they will eventually evolve into a human disease pathogen, which seems like a bad thing.

Anybody remember The Andromeda Strain...?

- Sid

* If you're unfamiliar with the Enterobacter strain of bacteria, Wikipedia™ informs us that it is "a genus of common Gram-negative, facultatively anaerobic, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae."

You're welcome. 

** Able to cause disease. Again, you're welcome.

A Personal Observation on the ISS: I Don't Like It.

I've had a chance to see something that is way outside everybody else's frame of reference and gives a perspective that is very different from everyone else's. 

Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield

It's true - I don't like the ISS.

I love it.

 

I love that there's this massive science fiction prop up there in low earth orbit, second brightest thing in the night sky after the Moon, traveling at the ridiculous speed of 28,000 kilometers an hour and zooming around the planet once every 90 minutes.

I love the pictures of the ISS, and I love the pictures from the ISS, the Canadarm and DEXTRE, incredible photos of the Earth, astronauts doing spacewalks, all that stuff, because they all look like pictures of the future, except they're being taken now.

I really love that people on the ISS have worn Star Trek uniforms and waved DON'T PANIC towels and shot David Bowie homage music videos and done all that sort of silly human stuff that has nothing to do with science.

Because they're living there, and that's what people do when they live someplace, silly human stuff - and we do that now, as a species, some of us sort of live in space, how incredibly cool is that?  And what a great step into the future - I don't know about small steps and giant leaps, but at least we're moving forward.

And when they come back, the astronauts seem to love and appreciate the planet just a little bit more than when they left, which has to be a good thing.

So, again, I don't like the ISS - I LOVE IT.

- Sid

Islands in the Sky.

Today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the International Space Station, whose first construction module lifted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on this date in 1998.

So much of the process of space exploration has been ephemeral in terms of human involvement: yes, there are some abandoned bits and pieces on the Moon, we're about to add another citizen to Mars' burgeoning robot population, and there are various satellites and probes whirling around the solar system, but when it comes to people, humanity itself has just come and gone, leaving only a footprint or two.  Space stations such as the ISS represent the first real progress toward establishing a permanent extraterrestrial presence for our species.

The International Space Station is the descendant of two space initiatives from the 1970s: the Soviet Salyut space station program, and the American Skylab.

Salyut 7, Skylab

Salyut 1, the first inhabited orbital outpost, was launched on April 19, 1971, heralding a series of nine Soviet civilian and military space stations - although, to be accurate, only six of the stations were successfully crewed.  The Salyut program was plagued by disasters:  the first crew sent to Salyut 1 was unable to board the station, and the second crew tragically suffocated during re-entry after their ground-breaking 23 day sojourn in space.

Later missions suffered from launch failures and mechanical issues in orbit.  The second Salyut mission crashed into the Pacific Ocean during launch, its replacement and Salyut 3 both fell to Earth without ever being boarded, and only one of two crews were able to board the next successfully established station.  However, the Salyut program also succeeding in establishing new records for time spent in space, and developing protocols for ongoing orbital stays and re-supply missions.

Skylab, which was launched on May 14, 1973, and infamously returned to Earth as a rain of fiery debris in 1979, has been the only space station to date operated solely by the United States. The Skylab program also suffered its share of problems, starting with damage to the micrometeorite shield and one of the station's primary solar panels during launch - in fact, the the primary purpose of SL-2, the first manned mission to Skylab, was to make repairs.  After making the station inhabitable, the SL-2 crew spent 28 days on the station, setting a new record for time in orbit.  The SL-3 and SL-4 missions extended that record to 59 and then 84 days in 1974, after which the station was abandoned until its orbit decayed.*

The Mir station was the successor to the Salyut program, and took the evolutionary step of modular construction in order to create a larger station, rather than the single-unit approach taken by Salyut and Skylab.  Originally established by the Soviet Union in 1986 and later kept in operation by Russia until it was de-orbited in 2001,  Mir also planted the seed of international cooperation in space exploration. Over its 15 year lifespan, Mir hosted astronauts** from the United States, France, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Syria, Afghanistan, and, of course, Canada: Chris Hadfield's first mission into space was a space shuttle flight to Mir.

These three programs paved the way for the ISS by proving the value of a permanent orbital platform for scientific research, establishing the feasibility of extended stays in space by humans, and demonstrating the practicality of using a modular approach to orbital construction. 

The ISS has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a repurposed 12.5 metre Mir module. Twenty years and 136 assembly flights later, the current configuration is 109 metres in length, weighs just over 400 metric tonnes, and offers visitors 32,333 cubic feet of space, with as much living room as a six bedroom house.***  (By the way, there's a great tour of the interior of the ISS available on Google™ Streetview.)  It also represents the first truly international cooperative space venture, with sixteen nations being involved in the station's construction: the United States, Russia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

230 astronauts have visited the station, which has been continuously occupied since the end of 2000, with NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson setting the record for the longest time in space at 665 days.  

It would be wonderful if the ISS followed through on its obvious potential to act as a way station to the Moon, Mars, or any similar manned exploratory missions to explore the solar system, or even just continued in its current role as a unique and productive research platform. However, at the moment its days are numbered. Funding by the US government is scheduled to end in 2025, after which its fate is uncertain. Although other countries provide financial support (Canada has chipped in $1.4 billion since the station's inception) NASA handles the lion's share of the expenses - if the US government pulled out, the station's future would be in jeopardy.

Although privatization has been suggested, so far the private sector has not demonstrated very much interest in the station, other than Space-X's Dragon re-supply contract.  Perhaps an even more public approach is the solution: what if we all had the opportunity to directly support the ISS?  I already donate about sixty dollars a year to the Planetary Society to support space exploration - it would only cost the US population ten dollars per citizen annually to match their government's current financial commitment. How many people spend more than that at Starbuck's every day?

- Sid

* Skylab also set the stage for the first recorded orbital mutiny. Overwhelmed by the frantic work schedule set by NASA for the last Skylab mission before the decommissioning of the station, the irritated Skylab 4 mission crew turned off their radio link to Mission Control and went on a one-day strike on December 28th, 1973.

**  Mir also hosted a Japanese journalist, Toyohiro Akiyama, in 1990.

*** Some sources say a five bedroom house, although the station sleeps six - I guess it depends on how big bedrooms are where you come from.