Thou ice-hearted harpy, incessantly prattling on, whose tongue drips with honeyed promises, then turns to fire with outward blame for all the world when confronted with those same promises broken: look now how you bluster and swagger, filled to overflowing with righteousness and self-aggrandizement. Your overabundance of faith in your own correctness leads you to reject the mere possibility of your fallibility. Your pride makes you reject accusation out of hand as a witch hunt, then you cannot even hear dissent through ears stopped with the hardened wax of ego.
But therein lies the issue. In this case, your inaccuracy lies plain for all to see. Assuming that everyone else thinks the way you do and that a situation will never happen merely because you cannot conceive of it leaves you blind and mockable when that same situation comes to pass, as it inevitably will. As it recently, in fact, has.
Goals for 2017
Again I ask myself how to create lasting community outside of an expensive con that forces us to reserve hundreds of dollars and a weekend of time to hang with friends that live locally but we don't see as often as you want to. It should be easy to reach out and schedule something, but the mundane reality of parenthood and being a responsible adult with a job and a mortgage means that friendships slip down on the priority list far more often than they should. And that sucks.
Sometimes introversion sucks. Self-induced anxiety tends to suck all the time.
Frame
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| Hubert Robert [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons |
There's a little grey box with a light in the middle
And buttons and switches that beg you to fiddle
Sitting there on its back, on the table dead center,
Your eye finds it right quick just as soon as you enter.
Plus that frame on the wall? It holds nothing at all.
Wanted: Your Brain
Partial transcript of an Imperial Navy recruitment holovid on file at the Cronus Academy of Sciences, Elysium, Corinthian Subsector.
If you think science is boring, you're not seeing all of its implication and applications. Science isn't something you need to endure while you're in school, its uses are all around us in technology and methodology. Science saves lives every day. Science lets you turn the raw materials you have at hand into real advantages. Science gives you options that you wouldn't otherwise know about.
As an ancient astrophysicist once said, "Science exposes The Truth whether you believe in it or not."
I remember we were sent to investigate a rebellion. We arrived in-system and did the standard planetary analysis. We were outgunned 10 to 1, but we had the element of surprise. We went over the geographic data, and it turned out this huge rebel base was right next to a fault line under significant stress. That was our way in.
I talked it over with my CO, and we decided to give the fault line a little nudge. We did the math as fast as we could before we were detected, and we hit it with as blunt an instrument as we had available: all six missile bays. Targeting was dead on, and we could see the whole line line lit up with fire. That did it - the fault slipped a good couple of meters, and it looked like the whole continent kicked up a cloud of dust.
We didn't hit the base at all, but the quake flattened every structure and damaged every ship on the ground. Our company of marines hit the ground and cleaned house in only a couple of hours with zero friendly casualties. The captured equipment alone would keep a couple of batallions of mercs in the field for a year or more. And we did it with barely a shot fired.
That day we ended a rebellion in an afternoon. We captured thousands of enemy combatants with scientific analysis of the situation and a proper application of force. As an added bonus, the land should be quake-free for the next few thousand years.
We were outgunned ten to one. Xenogeology saved our ass that day.
Never tell me science is boring. It's what gets me up in the morning. Science bores you, you need to go find better questions to ask.
Now study hard so you can make a damn difference.
- Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin Cartwright, PhD
Chief of Planetary Data Analysis Command (PDAC)
aboard the Strike Destroyer Fulcrum (DS-8817)
If you think science is boring, you're not seeing all of its implication and applications. Science isn't something you need to endure while you're in school, its uses are all around us in technology and methodology. Science saves lives every day. Science lets you turn the raw materials you have at hand into real advantages. Science gives you options that you wouldn't otherwise know about.
As an ancient astrophysicist once said, "Science exposes The Truth whether you believe in it or not."
I remember we were sent to investigate a rebellion. We arrived in-system and did the standard planetary analysis. We were outgunned 10 to 1, but we had the element of surprise. We went over the geographic data, and it turned out this huge rebel base was right next to a fault line under significant stress. That was our way in.
I talked it over with my CO, and we decided to give the fault line a little nudge. We did the math as fast as we could before we were detected, and we hit it with as blunt an instrument as we had available: all six missile bays. Targeting was dead on, and we could see the whole line line lit up with fire. That did it - the fault slipped a good couple of meters, and it looked like the whole continent kicked up a cloud of dust.
We didn't hit the base at all, but the quake flattened every structure and damaged every ship on the ground. Our company of marines hit the ground and cleaned house in only a couple of hours with zero friendly casualties. The captured equipment alone would keep a couple of batallions of mercs in the field for a year or more. And we did it with barely a shot fired.
That day we ended a rebellion in an afternoon. We captured thousands of enemy combatants with scientific analysis of the situation and a proper application of force. As an added bonus, the land should be quake-free for the next few thousand years.
We were outgunned ten to one. Xenogeology saved our ass that day.
Never tell me science is boring. It's what gets me up in the morning. Science bores you, you need to go find better questions to ask.
Now study hard so you can make a damn difference.
- Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin Cartwright, PhD
Chief of Planetary Data Analysis Command (PDAC)
aboard the Strike Destroyer Fulcrum (DS-8817)
Insubstantial
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| Gossamer Dome by Steve Jurvetson |
Dawn stains the east as Queen Mab finally retires. Time grows short as I hear opportunity’s window sliding closed. My indistinct hand reaches the invisible wall, morning fog fingers pressing against imagined creatures’ dreams.
Reflections of heat lightning throw me back into the faerie ring; distant thunder echoes this year's slamming window. I rush back before I’m missed, doomed to serve, hoping until next Halloween...
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