Ares I-X Launch

Earth, from the Ares I-X rocket.

That was nice—the Ares gave us a smooth, simple launch.  It looks like a very nice rocket.  I’ll miss the Space Shuttle when it goes, but I won’t miss the technical problems, safety concerns, or launch delays.  I have to admit that, even though I have been an enthusiastic fan of the Space Shuttle program from its inception, I was deeply disappointed when I found out they were launching what should have been a space plane vertically, like a rocket.  Instead of building a true Earth-to-Orbit aircraft, they strapped their aircraft onto a YAR (Yet Another Rocket), and an uber-complicated, troublesome YAR at that.

Of course, in the Ares I-X they’ve also built a YAR, however it seems they’ve built a YAR that takes a welcome step toward simplicity.  All stages can be recovered like shuttle boosters, and maybe it’ll be less expensive than the human-launch systems of the past.  If it gets replaced by a commercially owned, horizontal-launch system, then I’m still way good with that too.

That’s the thing isn’t it.  This rocket won’t be ready for actual use until after the space station is “deorbited” and new commercial ventures operating true “space planes” take over low Earth orbit, so why did they spend the money to launch Ares I-X at all?

To learn.

Why do we study space and space flight in general?

To learn.

What good is all that expensive stuff anyway, what with a financial recovery, healthcare costs, and starving people all over the world?

To learn.

The Saturn V breaks the sound barrier en route to Earth's first manned Moon landing.

You see, it was worth it, even if Space-X and similar ventures grow to become the low Earth orbit, man-launch vehicle of choice and we never see this rocket in this configuration again.  Space-X couldn’t reach into space today without the lessons learned from the NASA launches of yesterday, and the Space-X-like ventures of tomorrow will feed off of this launch.  Ares I-X is also our first step in the direction of manned spaceflight outside of low-Earth orbit.  This test is part of the ongoing development of the rocket configuration that will take humankind back to the Moon and off to Mars.  I watched the first Moon landing as a kid, sitting cross-legged in front of the TV.  I still remember it, and it’ll be great to go back.

Folks may ask what good those programs will do, why go to those places?

To learn some more.

What will we learn that will actually benefit humankind?

I don’t know—yet.  Ask me again later, after we’ve learned it.

But I’m still gonna miss the shuttle.

UN and Rights of the Child

I couldn’t believe it.

No really, I thought it wasn’t possible.  It seemed to me at first like those who told me about it were jumping at shadows.  In fact, this is an issue whos proponents seem to actually like the shadows.

I have a couple of relatives who are further over to the right than I am politically–which is actually saying quite a lot.  Several months ago they told me about the UN circumventing U.S. laws and parental rights by signing a treaty with the U.N. to allow the United Nations to set laws with regard to how we raise our children here in the U.S.

The news media seems to ignore the issue.  It seems that Madelyn Albright of the Clinton administration signed this treaty which circumvents U.S. laws and lets folks in the U.N. hold sway in matters of child rearing.  They didn’t try and ratify it then because it wouldn’t have passed…duh!

Now it seems they are trying to pass it.  The treaty, apparently, would allow an unelected, unaccountable foreign commission to trump the decisions of parents in this country though our courts on several issues.  Including:

-Teen abortions and parental notification of abortions, pregnancy, illegal drug use and other health concerns.

-How and when parents can punish their children.

-How much church children have to attend.

-The presence of firearms in a home with children.

-Where and how children are to be educated.

Ironically, even though this legislation seems to be on the docket for this session of congress, I’ve been having a really difficult time locating information about in the local media.  I mean, I see lots of foreign new talking about how it effects them, now that they are bound to it, but not a peep out of news sources in this country. 

After much searching, I did find a brand new article in the Watertown Daily News which talks about this. 

You know, I really hate commenting on something until I’ve had a chance to readup on all sides of it, but in this case only the opponents of this treaty seem to want folks to know about it.  Folks like the above named online newspaper, Mikehachabee.com, homeschooling advocacy groups, and the like are talking about this, and it looks like it really does exist and that it really is an issue

Something inside me makes me wonder why the folks who like this idea are hushing it up.

Could it be that only those people who don’t want it want other people to know about it?

Wow.  That sounds like something everyone should know about!

So here it is.  I saw a uTube video on FaceBook with Mike Huckabee, referencing his website for info on this, but when I went there I couldn’t find the information.  There is also an advocacy group which opposes the ratification.

Other than that, your on your own.  Sorry.  Even FoxNews seemed blank.

If you find any good fresh meat on this issue, please comment.

This Obama Flag is Our Obama Flag

Now before you blow a gasket, let’s just analyze this for a minute–and yes, this image angers me too.

But beware the target of your anger, because anybody can hang a flag on a flagpole.

Did someone do this in Photoshop? Possibly, and possibly not—apparently there really is someone who makes and sells these flags, and that person’s politics may or may not agree with the Obama administration’s policies.

Assuming this really is real, then someone actually hung it there. Maybe they intended it as a joke, or a way to embarrass the person responsible for that flagpole and the house displayed in the picture.  If so, then this is simply vandalism, and the flag portrayed here is no more.

Maybe the resident hung it there to express support for President Obama in these rocky times. If so, then I think it’s a highly irresponsible form of expression. I’m sure such a thing is illegal at some level, and if not then it should be.  I hope they’ve already realized that and taken it down.

If someone, anyone, did this to make the statement which this image seems intended to portray—that Barrack Obama should be some kind of dictator over this country—then pox on them.

There is another possibility too. Someone opposed to Obama’s policies might have put this flag up to scare folks—because of where they think those policies could lead the country. It’s also conceivable, that certain fringe groups opposing Obama did this to discredit him in the eyes of the public, or annoy their fellow conservatives into getting involved.

If so, then pox on them too.

I don’t agree with Obama very often, but I’ll give him this much…I think this image sickens him as much as it sickens me, and unless he says anything to contradict that opinion, I’ll continue on that assumption.

No single president in the history of this country has the right to have their face on our flag—none. If the free winds of this nation are currently blowing over an abomination like this, then I want the person responsible to come forward, give us their name, and explain why they did this.

Then they need to take it down and replace it with the true symbol of our liberty that so many have lived and died to preserve.

Bill Housley’s newest SciFi shortstory in issue #24 of Nova SciFi.

My lastest short story, “Where’s the Cat?”, will appear in the upcoming edition of Wesley Kowato’s Nova Science Fiction magazine.

This heart-touching story takes place on a sublight freighter ship an the Earth-Saturn run.  Paulina and her husband Jim, in search of the ship’s cat Benny, discover a mysterious stowaway in the engine room who is more—much more—than he seems.

Click on over to NovaSciFi.com and subscribe to get your copy.

Lawrence Dagstine, a fellow Satrica author, has a story in this issue as well.  Larry’s work has been published over 400 times and he has become a fairly regular contributer to Nova SciFi, often appearing on the cover as the featured story.  If you enjoy his work, then you can grab past additions of the magazine here.  He is in issues #15, #18, #20, #22, and the new ones coming up, #24 and #25.

The artwork provided above was painted by my illustrator, Chelsea Conlin, who picked the scene for the image.

So now we boomers have messed up Twitter

We finally did it.

Our sweet children use social networking for, like, you know, social networking…duh!

But us boomers…too many of our generation like porn and money.

We seem to think that anything that attracts lots of eyeballs needs to have porn and spam on it.

I’m not completely innocent in all this. After all, the biggest reason I have this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and one of my two MySpace profiles is to help promote my Science Fiction writtings…to make money.  I don’t use or promote porn.  I think porn is an abominable, habit-forming, family destroying pestilence.  But most of my time online is spent trying to make money. 

That includes Tweets.   I wouldn’t have time to spend with Twitter or Facebook (or here on WordPress for that matter) unless there was at least the distant potential of making it pay.  Not everything I post on these sights are money-making related mind you, I do the fun stuff too, but a lot of the times I find myself doing that to make it look like I don’t think of the Internet as strictly business.  Sad, but true. At this stage in my life, family life support is where my priorities are.  Sorry, kids.  Some day when you’ve got a house and children, and more than one car, you’ll understand.

There is an article I read once somewhere that talks about this tendency of parents to embarrass their children online, but now there’s an article in Technotica on MSN.  It says that it’s Twitter’s turn.  So watch out, some of your followers might be porn bots.  Twitter’s people are aware of the problem, and have confronted it with a wave of filters and account deletions.

It’s not just Twitter either.  I sometimes get comments here on this WordPress blog that make me tip my head and say, “Huh?”. Just so you know, if you comment here, and the comment doesn’t seem to me to be relevent enough to the article I posted, I’ll probably dump it as spam. I have ten comments in my Akismet spam queue right now, and it has filtered seventy-two comments in the life of my blog space.  Seventy-two? Holy smokes, I have a total of five legit comments on this site. Five…with seventy-two spams.  I don’t think I’ve even been at this a full year yet (I’ll have to run and check later).

Good thing we have Akismet.

Maybe our children are right.

Writing Addiction

Ok.  I just experienced a shift in addictions.

You know, you read about folks who, intent on ridding themselves of one addiction, replace it with a less destructive one?

Well, I just finished writing my first novel, “Into the Dark—Escape of the Nomad”.  I sent it to the publisher last week.  I have worked on it on and off for five years, but over the past year, since the publication of my story in Satirica, I have been sort of on the sprint to the finish with my book.  I have shelved a variety of important projects and things to give me the time I needed to get this done.

I also have, for the most part, have had no time for computer gaming.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do have a busy life outside of my Science Fiction writing.  However, those other things are mostly those critical “gottados” that cannot be neglected by any responsible person.  The things I am talking about are the  “shouldadones” and “liketodos” that normal married men do; repair the extra car/s, plant tomatoes, build a deck, go fishing, clean the office, etc.

I kept saying, “Once the book is done, then I’ll have more time to…”

Well now the book is done.  As well as it can be done right after sending it off to the publisher, waiting on the next step.

So I read the third Twighlight novel, and enjoyed it.  There sit over almost a dozen more novels, piled up on my “must read soon” list, including the Guardian of the One, The Eragon series, The Inkheart Series, and Breaking Dawn.

But I have grown tired of reading.

And the computer is calling to me.

Backoning to me.

StarCraft is spinning in the CD drive.  It has sat there for months, but I ignore it.

I want to write.

I need to write.

It is early in the morning.  Everyone is asleep.  My most productive writing time.

My hard drive is crammed with partial writing projects of various types and sizes, in many stages of completion.

They want me, they cannot grow without my care.

Let’s see. 

Which one shall consume my life next?

Hmmm…

Historic Motor Convoy Treks the Lincoln Highway

I’ve always had an interest in history and historical reenactments. Well, I took a long lunch from work the other day and went to one the likes of which I’ve never attended.

Evanston Wyoming, where I live, lies along the route of he old Lincoln highway, the first transcontinental road system in the country.

In 1919, the Transcontinental Motor Convoy , a military expedition, used the Lincoln High to cross the country from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, California.  They averaged fifty-eight miles per day to test the U.S. Military’s ability to move material and personnel across the country overland using moterized vehicles, in the event of war with an “Asiatic Enemy”.  Another convoy took place the following year to San Diago.  Along the way they improved roads, built bridges, etc., and treated it as a military exercise—as if they were passing through potential enemy territory.  They experienced the trials inheriant with the movement of equipment through unimproved areas, including mud, quicksand and breakdowns.  Several vehicles were lost, and the convoy arrived at their destination late, but still set a world record by breaching the 3,000 mile distance in just 60 days. 

One of the participants in the endeavour was Lieutenant Colonel Dwight Eisenhower who later, as President of the United States, began the Interstate Highway System when he signed the Federal Highway Act of 1956.  He described the conditions through Southwest Wyoming at the time as “very poor dirt roads” and said that much of the path through Utah and Nevada were little more than wagon ruts through the desert.  Much of the original Lincoln Highway through Uinta County here is still dirt road.

On Wednesday, July 1st of this year, a 90th anniversary re-enactmentof this convoy, using vintage antique military vehicles, stopped here in Evanston for lunch and the vehicles sat on display for the public.  It was a hot day, but I went and looked around, asked some questions and took pictures.  Most of the vehicles in the re-enactment are WWII vintage, or around there, but I did see one period vehicle on a trailer.  I was told that it runs great and that they only take it out and drive it around at overnight stopovers.

The event is sponsored by the Military Vehicle Preservation Association.  They left Washington D.C. on June 13th and are scheduled to arrive in San Francisco on July 8th.  If you live along the Lincoln Highway, check with your local community for the details and get out and witness this historic occasion.  If the convoy is scheduled for a stopover near you, check it out.  Otherwise, just be somewhere they will pass by so you can take some pictures and give them a wave.  Maybe you cn make it part of your July 4th celebration.

If you write a blog or post your photos online, leave a comment here with the URL and I’ll include it, and I’ll even even link it in if I post a followup article.

I gleaned the historic pics, the map, and some of the factoids above from various articles on Wikipedia, the pics below came from my Samsung i760 smartphone.

The Bigger the Wall

My Phone

I should warn up front, this message is being typed into a Microsoft Word document, on a cellphone, sealed inside a ziplock sandwich bag—by a very wet man in a bathtub.

Shocked?  You should be.

An amazing thing is happening.

Can you feel it?

It’s a little like the fall of the Berlin Wall, except bigger.

Much bigger.

I have an old acquaintance, lost to me for over two decades, that I hooked up with recently through FaceBook. I found out that she was a victim of spousal abuse. She wrote a book about it, and it was published. Just like that.

I have another friend who I hear from instantly, wherever in the world his work takes him. He turns on his computer and I see him on MSN messenger, and we chat.

Not all that many years ago, I worked for New Horizons Computer Learning Center. One of the classes I taught was email. I learned a lot teaching that class. I learned that one doesn’t take a class to learn how to use email—one takes a class to learn to use email. I loved to show folks it’s benefits over what I called “YoMail”. YoMail is where you pop up out of your cubicle and yell, “Yo, Bob! Have you got (insert reference to desperately needed information here)?” I showed a particular group of nice folks from the same set of cubicles what the information age could do for them, and I witnessed the freeing of a people. Their eyes lit up and they started messaging back and forth, and a computer class turned into a celebration that could be heard all the way down the hallway.

But that was just the beginning. Since then the Information Age has come of age.

My three daughters are grown, attend college, and live many miles away, but I don’t miss them. We all have cell phones. Just a thumbpress away. Watch, I’ll demonstrate right now:

Me (9:48 PM):
Hey, Krista!

Housley, Krista (9:48 PM):
Hey, daddy!

Me (9:49 PM):
Say something.

Housley, Krista (9:49 PM):
I did! :p

Housley, Krista (9:50 PM):
Something.

Me (9:50 PM):
Great, that was perfect! Thanks.

Housley, Krista (9:50 PM):
Haha. why?

Housley, Krista (9:51 PM):
Why what are you doing?

Me (9:52 PM):
It’s formy WordPress blog, you can read about it all later. BTW, what was the path to your wp blog again?

Housley, Krista (9:53 PM):
Oh ok. it’s Klhpensil

Me (9:53 PM):
K thanks. See you on the 4th.

Housley, Krista (9:54 PM):
Ok

Just like that, but that’s not all.

If you are a Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Athiest, Budist, or whatever, and think your beliefs or people are misundertood—just blog it. Leave it out there for the world to see it, talk about it, and judge for themselves.

You can twitter your way to the Presidency, MySpace your way to fame, YouTube Karaoke the world, and Facebook all of your old friends and tell them about it.

Or, as is happening right now in Iran, you can free a people from repression.

That’s actually the topic of this blog. I read a recent news article about what’s going on over there. Somewhere in the article it said that all the journalists had to stay in their offices—were not allowed to go out and see what was happening.

It then proceeded to tell me all that was happening there anyway.

Just like that.

It’s all over Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Probably MySpace too. It’s coming at us from cell phones and computers all over Iran.

Tyrants and despots are put on notice today. The politically oppressed in Iran and elsewhere aren’t alone. Planet-molding events cannot hide from the planet anymore. The human family is having a reunion—online.

Governments can quarantine journalists, confiscate cameras, shoot rivals, lead guided and sanitized tours, and sponsor state-run media. It is all in vain, because none of that works anymore, and trying it only puts a big “L” on their foreheads. They can round up dissidents, and before they can transport their victims to detention, there’s a viral on YouTube showing the whole thing on thousands of computer screens, smartphones, and televisions worldwide.

But what is happening in Iran is only the first brick to fall.

The wall around the secret slaves of the world is crumbling.

So pay attention. Document it. Get involved. Get ready to tell your grandchildren how you were there when the world awakened and came together.

For history is being made today.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Day

That’s what I get for spending a couple of days to organize storage (and rest from the same).

I got up early this morning, at 2:30 am, to see if I could use Jupiter to nail Neptune with my cheap telescope…

BTW, Jupiter and Neptune are in triple conjunction this year, and were so close together last night that for a while I mistook Neptune for a Jovian moon! Then I saw a Jovian moon and saw the star along the ecliptic on the charts that I had been thinking was Neptune.  So I compared and could see the blue color of Neptune compared with the star.

I think I saw the International Space Station fly over too, I’ll have to research it and find out.  It was three or four times as bright as Jupiter and crossed the meridian quickly from about southwest to northeast.  I didn’t even try and hit it with my poor equipment for a better look though.  It flew way to fast fo that.

Anyway, it was 47 degrees here in Evanston, WY , and I was cold, so I came back inside the house to do some late night work on my book.  When I clicked my blog I found several blogs in Sci Fi Picks talking about ”Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Day“. Further research showed that it happened yesterday, that it was just invented this April—this year—and that I missed it.

Thank you, rolanni, for this great idea.  I’ll be more on the ball with it next year—I promise.

This year, I would like to honor the following SFandF authors whos works I’ve enjoyed, or re-enjoyed, during the past twenty-four months:

Robert Hienlien

Nancy Kress

Orson Scott Card

David Weber

Ursula Le Guin

J.R.R. Tolkien

Isaac Asimov

Child Soldiers

Children and teens, as is well known, don’t have the same respect for their own vulnerability that a more seasoned adult does.  They are more likely to be trusted by their target, and their innocence makes them a more volatile media focus when their target uses deadly force against them.

Adults, with ambitions for power, wealth, and control over others, are exploiting the innocence and media sensitivity of children to further their aims.  They don’t care about the harm they are doing.  It is a human rights issue that modern armies, celebrities and international organizations  struggle to find a solution for.

This is one of the reasons I wrote the science fiction story Another Man’s Terrorist, to draw more attention to this aspect of terrorism and how it robs a child of their childhood, their future, and often their lives.  Children are used as targets, human shields, soldiers, and propaganda tools the world over, to perpetuate the political issues and aspirations of adults.  I hoped that by writing a fiction story about it, and getting it published, could help people get to know more about this terrible tragedy.

Other fiction stories about child soldiers:

Guarding Antoine -- written and narrated by Roger Haller (.wav file, download may take several minutes)

From the pages of Satirica -- The Babies at Nae-Long -- by John Parke Davis

The Silent Army -- Written and directed by Jean van de Velde

Backpacker Fiction -- by Matthew R. Loney

Online Articles, Groups and Blogs:

War Child

The Child Soldiers

Think Again: Child Soldiers

Child Soldiers — Alarming Global Situation 

Child Soldier Relief

Statistics on Child Soldiers

Fact and Fiction About Child Soldiers

A Long Way Gone: The True Story of a Child Soldier by Ishmael Beah

Child Soldiers

International Organizations:

http://www.amnesty.org/en/children