BFT
Guess who's back. C-man's back. C-man's back, tell a friend. Guess who's back, guess who's back...
Why I have not been blogging? Well, it's quite simple. I only had Internet access at work, where I was a government contractor, whose Internet access was being paid for by the American taxpayer. While I will consider most benign uses of the Internet as ancillary use, blogging with government money for non-governmental purposes struck me as unethical. Besides, I was too busy most of the time.
Nor have I made more than cursory looks at the blogs of others. I've been updating myself over the last twenty hours. Apparently, the very sweet romance of the Acousmatist continues. The Man of Hats has won some sort of pineapple and is engaging in his usual range of theoretically disreputable but practically innocent activities.
All right: first things, first. I did not die some time in early June. I have been working for the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, TX (really should be in Pasadena, TX but urban geography in Houston is weird) for the last ten weeks.
At the Lunar and Planetary Institute, I was working on the problem of infrared spectroscopy of geologic materials on Earth as applied to Mars. Most specifically, I was interested in certain types of sulfate minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water, igneous rocks, and certain types of calcareous salts in evaporitic environments. An e-print is available on request. Anyway, I know what I want to do with my life, even if I may have to spend a few years in State College to do it. (I forgot to tell my parents about that last night...oops). I want to reconstruct the past history of the planet Mars. I was fairly sure I wanted to do that before I went to Houston, but I am now far more sure. I also know I may have to take a few circuitous routes to do it. So I am going to just have to learn more geology, meteorology, and planetary remote sensing. I have Mars on the brain (a terminal case of it), and I feel great.
And if Manuel Lopes thinks I'm wasting my life. Well, wait until the reality of outer space finally hits the chattering classes. I saw many fascinating things in Texas. My biggest worry is that I will wake up twenty years from now, all of the technology to go to Mars in forty days and live there will exist, and the chief problem in ecological economics will be soluble (energy). But we will be fighting to keep most of the world in the 16th century so that few can live in the 21st.
OK. I'm going to stick in the soapbox in its corner for the moment. Living in Texas was great. I traveled with my fellow interns around some of the state. I swam in the Gulf. I lost my field hat in the Guadalupe River. I ate dinner and drank English hard cider while San Antonio yuppies made complete drunk fools of themselves at a place where the waiters are paid to insult you. (The food is expensive, though not quite overpriced. The drink is overpriced, but Dick's in San Antonio is on the Riverwalk and worth a visit if you're of age.) The neighborhood bar where I lived was a lot of fun, too. And I also went to some fairly country bars, shall we say, in various parts of the Houston area.
There, however, was not much romance. Women in Texas are not my type. I'm not their type because I look far too young for my age. "You look so young" was the comment I kept getting from women my age (19-24). They're not my type for a variety of reasons but most importantly:
Marital/maternal status: If you're 20, left the kid at a friend's, and partied very hardy in Galveston the night before, you are quite welcome to play pool with me. But, boy, do you scare me. And if you're 24 and just have been divorced after a nine year marriage, you are going to scare my 25 year old friend in the oil services industry, especially if you are putting out feelers to him. My Texas friends had certain skills that I never knew to acquire, including the ability to tell if a woman has had children. And, by the same principle, you're always surprised when you're hanging out with a woman with grandkids.
OK, I could go on, but it would be very unfair. Whatever the ways Texans live their lives, I have never seen a people with such native strength of human decency as a whole. I never felt like a stranger.
To Do
1. Figure out what graduate schools I want to apply to.
2. Write more Areopoesis . It's over 2000 lines now...
3. Relax.
ESA(20040815.1)
Guess who's back. C-man's back. C-man's back, tell a friend. Guess who's back, guess who's back...
Why I have not been blogging? Well, it's quite simple. I only had Internet access at work, where I was a government contractor, whose Internet access was being paid for by the American taxpayer. While I will consider most benign uses of the Internet as ancillary use, blogging with government money for non-governmental purposes struck me as unethical. Besides, I was too busy most of the time.
Nor have I made more than cursory looks at the blogs of others. I've been updating myself over the last twenty hours. Apparently, the very sweet romance of the Acousmatist continues. The Man of Hats has won some sort of pineapple and is engaging in his usual range of theoretically disreputable but practically innocent activities.
All right: first things, first. I did not die some time in early June. I have been working for the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, TX (really should be in Pasadena, TX but urban geography in Houston is weird) for the last ten weeks.
At the Lunar and Planetary Institute, I was working on the problem of infrared spectroscopy of geologic materials on Earth as applied to Mars. Most specifically, I was interested in certain types of sulfate minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water, igneous rocks, and certain types of calcareous salts in evaporitic environments. An e-print is available on request. Anyway, I know what I want to do with my life, even if I may have to spend a few years in State College to do it. (I forgot to tell my parents about that last night...oops). I want to reconstruct the past history of the planet Mars. I was fairly sure I wanted to do that before I went to Houston, but I am now far more sure. I also know I may have to take a few circuitous routes to do it. So I am going to just have to learn more geology, meteorology, and planetary remote sensing. I have Mars on the brain (a terminal case of it), and I feel great.
And if Manuel Lopes thinks I'm wasting my life. Well, wait until the reality of outer space finally hits the chattering classes. I saw many fascinating things in Texas. My biggest worry is that I will wake up twenty years from now, all of the technology to go to Mars in forty days and live there will exist, and the chief problem in ecological economics will be soluble (energy). But we will be fighting to keep most of the world in the 16th century so that few can live in the 21st.
OK. I'm going to stick in the soapbox in its corner for the moment. Living in Texas was great. I traveled with my fellow interns around some of the state. I swam in the Gulf. I lost my field hat in the Guadalupe River. I ate dinner and drank English hard cider while San Antonio yuppies made complete drunk fools of themselves at a place where the waiters are paid to insult you. (The food is expensive, though not quite overpriced. The drink is overpriced, but Dick's in San Antonio is on the Riverwalk and worth a visit if you're of age.) The neighborhood bar where I lived was a lot of fun, too. And I also went to some fairly country bars, shall we say, in various parts of the Houston area.
There, however, was not much romance. Women in Texas are not my type. I'm not their type because I look far too young for my age. "You look so young" was the comment I kept getting from women my age (19-24). They're not my type for a variety of reasons but most importantly:
Marital/maternal status: If you're 20, left the kid at a friend's, and partied very hardy in Galveston the night before, you are quite welcome to play pool with me. But, boy, do you scare me. And if you're 24 and just have been divorced after a nine year marriage, you are going to scare my 25 year old friend in the oil services industry, especially if you are putting out feelers to him. My Texas friends had certain skills that I never knew to acquire, including the ability to tell if a woman has had children. And, by the same principle, you're always surprised when you're hanging out with a woman with grandkids.
OK, I could go on, but it would be very unfair. Whatever the ways Texans live their lives, I have never seen a people with such native strength of human decency as a whole. I never felt like a stranger.
To Do
1. Figure out what graduate schools I want to apply to.
2. Write more Areopoesis . It's over 2000 lines now...
3. Relax.
ESA(20040815.1)
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