I lost access to my Twitter account. There were a combination of email and access issues that I could not resolve.
But Twitter did not spark joy.
As such, while I can’t delete the account, I won’t use it anymore.
Trump Gates
Later in the first series Corwin opens a gate and moves a detachment of fighters into Amber.
Why didn’t he do that in his attack with Bleys at the beginning, Bleys being a master trump artisan?
Zelazny, everybody. Now I gotta make something up.
Spam
I get so much spam on this website that by now I automatically delete all comments that don’t reference the post. The way to overcome this filter is comment useful information that addresses whatever point the blog-post addresses.
There’s an XKCD about it.
Pet Peeves
I’ve probably never told you how much I hate being right all the time because I love it. It’s delightful.
Good sentences
Want a good intense sentence?
But the ring would not be denied.
That’s a good one. JRRT dropping a banger.
It’s got some aspects worthy of consideration. The ‘But’ beginning establishes conflict. The sentence isn’t too wordy. The final ‘denied’ is a good, strong one, and supports the implicit conflict of the opening, augmented by ‘not be’ denied. There is a lot of conflict within that sentence purely grammatically, and the ring as a focus of the narrative is a tool of conflict.
Furthermore the ‘would not be’ implies a desire and a will. Both are good for the narrative, but also support the conflict. The ring wants something, and that’s pretty clear.
That’s what you do to make a sentence intense. Make it short but laden with conflict. Give it a clear meaning, and leave the implications nebulous. It sets up later events.
The Moon
The Moon appears flipped upside down in the southern hemisphere vs the northern.
In cosmological terms (cosMOlogy is the study of the universe, cosMETOlogy is makeup and cosmetics) there is no predefined up and down, but more humans live in the northern hemisphere than the south. As such a lot of popsci refers to north as up and south as down, and this is the convention for immobile maps. Those of the big pieces of paper kind usually use put north up, whereas computer maps often have north rotating around as the mobile device moves. Google Maps lets you lock north to up, but will free spin otherwise.
This up-down ambivalence is not found everywhere. For example a boat has a definite top and bottom, and getting the two confused will make the thing sink. Tree branches grow up, roots grow down, and there isn’t a lot of confusion between the two. People have their heads on top and feet on bottom, usually. These are what we call preferred reference frames. One can, via math, make any reference frame up or down, but some are much more work than others. By convention, down is the direction the gravity force vector points, and up is the other direction.
Cosmology doesn’t have such preferences, so up is whichever way we pick. The more pedantic among us will eschew terms like up and down to refer to directions unencumbered by gravity.
North of the Equator our heads generally point more north than south. Up and north do have some overlaps. South of the Equator our heads generally point south. Up and south have some vector overlap.
The Moon is the same Moon in both north and south, so the part of it we think of as the top, the bit that is furthest ‘up’ in our personal reference frame, depends on where we stand. At the North Pole this bit, the uppermost part of the Moon, will be the northernmost part of the Moon. At the South Pole the uppermost bit is the southernmost part of the Moon. Inbetween ‘up’ will point to an edge, and where that direction points depends on our latitude on Earth.
All of that is a long bit of saying that in Chile the Moon will look upside down compared to the Moon in Alaska. You can see this by following Moon pictures on Instagram. Look for some southern city’s hashtag and #moon, and compare the moon to how it looks in the north.
This would not happen on a flat Earth. If you really don’t trust Insta, and if you don’t I understand, a plane ticket to Chile is about a thousand bucks. You can prove it to yourself and have a great vacation. You might need a lens for your camera or phone depending on resolution and focus, but a decent one is less than a hundred bucks and will give decent lunar resolution.
Monday 4/1
Happy Monday, my dudes.
Whatever you put in the world stays, and whatever you take out leaves. Put in more kindness and take out animosity. Let yourself be a filter. No one ever wished the world they were in or the life they lived had more anger and less kindness.
Up
Up, go up.
I’m going to hit Ouray and maybe Telluride, Crested Butte if I can fit it. I feel like I have an obligation to the person I was in Maryland to see mountains when I live near them, and so up I intend to go. I’ve got a phone that takes pictures now. Still too cold for most things, but I can go up.
Friday Meme
Edit: Tragically, I’m going to be mature.
Redwall
I finished Redwall, the one about the mice. It can be found on Goodreads or on Amazon.
I’m not very good at providing feedback or reviews, and as such am going to practice. So imagine this is directed to a hypothetical Mr Jacques or you, the reader, have just published Redwall.
Give me a million dollars, please.
Okay, but seriously.
The basic idea behind Redwall is its biggest draw, the interest in animals doing human things. Within that idea Redwall has great success. The attraction is that if you, the reader, want to read about animals doing things, the book rewards that interest. Moreso than a lot of other works on similar themes, the book is interested in animals doing things. There’s energy in there, and if you want to have your enthusiasm matched, Redwall does so with a willful lack of self-awareness that becomes confidence. The book trusts you too want to read about animals with people problems, and is a little more excited about them than it needs to be. It’s welcoming in that way. It invites you in, shows you the cards, and lets you wonder how they’re to be played out.
It’s a lot more brutal than I expected. Mice, rats, and forest creatures get killed. They get killed in natural ways; they get killed by cruelty, but they die and Redwall pulls few punches. No one really expects the mains to die, but otherwise, it is varmint season at Redwall Abbey. Not only miscellaneous rats, but named characters. I wasn’t expecting that, and was surprised at how well it worked on a kid’s book.
It is a kid’s book, or at least young adult. The writing is aimed young. The same enthusiasm which makes the book welcoming adds a level of roughness, a defiance of polish, that makes the energy authentic. I get the impression Jacques really liked the story and had a ton of fun writing it.
Having said all that, I don’t quite know if I liked it or not. I obviously liked it enough, because I tore through it in a few busy days. But I’m not sure about it. It’s a good book to have read, and I’m pleased it’s in my headspace.