Robert E. Howard’s Almuric

Posted on May 23, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Hot on the heels of a discussion of various ‘planetary romances’ set on Mars, I turned to Robert E. Howard’s own take on said romances: the tale of the savage world of Almuric:

I have to admit, Howard fan that I am, that I was completely unaware of this novel before the Planet Stories edition, especially embarrassing because it is one of Howard’s very few novels!

The book is a mixture of the planetary romance of Burroughs and the barbarian saga which was pure Howard. It is perhaps one of Howard’s least successful adventure stories, but seems in many ways to be the ‘ultimate’ Robert E. Howard story, as it combines many of his themes (and pet peeves) into one fantasy world…

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Posted in Fantasy fiction, Robert E. Howard | 2 Comments

Keep ’em coming!

Posted on May 22, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I’m currently sitting in a condo on the beach, after a ten-hour drive from home. I managed to find some internet to steal, so here I am! I just thought I’d write a quick note and mention that I’ve updated the ‘classic science papers‘ page with a bunch of recent new entries which are excellent! There’s still plenty of time to meet my arbitrarily-chosen deadline, so keep ’em coming!

(Knowing science-types, and being one myself, I fully expect to receive a flood of entries just before noon on May 31st!) 🙂

Posted in General science | Leave a comment

My accent? I don’t have an accent!

Posted on May 22, 2008 by skullsinthestars

A few weeks ago I stumbled across this fascinating quiz on GoToQuiz. Many of the quizzes one takes online are just silly, content-free distractions (with the exception of the Dungeons & Dragons character quiz I’ve talked about earlier), but this one really seems to work: “What American accent do you have?” My results are below:

What American accent do you have?

Your Result: The Inland North

You may think you speak “Standard English straight out of the dictionary” but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like “Are you from Wisconsin?” or “Are you from Chicago?” Chances are you call carbonated drinks “pop.”
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I have to say, they’ve nailed it. I’m originally from the Chicago area. The quiz also tagged the fiancée as being from Ohio (the ‘midlands’, I think they called it). Does it correctly determine your accent? Give it a try!

Posted in Silliness | 2 Comments

Vacation time!

Posted on May 21, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Those who read me regularly may have noticed that I’ve dropped off in my postings lately. I’ve been preparing for a trip to Florida to skydive off the Gulf and land on the beach, and much of my time has been spent making sure all my work business is up to date. I leave tonight, and come back on Monday.

I’ve set up a few small posts for the time that I’m away, and may get another one up this afternoon before I go. Otherwise, when I come back, I’ll have a few excellent scientific posts (all my ILLs finally came in) and hopefully some cool skydiving pics/video!

P.S.  I’ve raved before about the Gallica website that is part of the National Library of France.  Well, now it looks like they’re into a version 2, beta, and the search pages can be read in English as well as French.  I just downloaded part of the complete works (Oeuvres) of François Arago, circa 1850.   I’m almost in awe of the fact that it’s so easy to find these works now.

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

Fusion man goes flying, or: How about them jetpacks, eh?

Posted on May 19, 2008 by skullsinthestars

It would be quite remiss of me not to comment on the cool video of Swiss pilot Yves Rossy, aka “Fusion Man”, and his remarkable jet-powered wing.  There’s a YouTube video associated with the news story which, although it’s in Swedish, is quite interesting to watch.  This flight was the culmination of five years of training.

The equipment is quite impressive: with his eight-foot wings extended, he stepped out of an aircraft at 7500 feet over the Alps, turned on the jets and accelerated to 186 miles per hour.  He was able to do figure-eights, loops, and climbs of up to 2600 feet.  Maneuvering is achieved by altering body position, in a similar manner that a normal skydiver maneuvers.

A couple of comments in the AP article jumped out at me:

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Posted in Sports | 2 Comments

China earthquake and a word about seiches

Posted on May 16, 2008 by skullsinthestars

The tally of death and devastation in China in the aftermath of the earthquake continues to grow; now the official death toll is 22,000, with 14,000 still buried under rubble. In addition, repeated aftershocks are hitting the region.

Numerous eyewitness videos have been posted online since the event. This one in particular caught my eye, which shows a group of students outdoors experiencing the quake firsthand. It is a bit chilling to see their enthusiasm, knowing the devastation that was being wrought far away, but the students clearly felt that they were experiencing a small local quake, and had no idea that they were in fact 500 miles from the epicenter.

The part of the video that caught my eye was the sloshing of the water in the small pond. I believe this could be considered a small-scale version of a relatively little-known water wave phenomenon known as a seiche.

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Posted in General science, Physics, Science news | 1 Comment

Richard Marsh’s The Joss: A Reversion

Posted on May 16, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Richard Marsh was a prolific writer of horror, suspense and mystery stories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I’ve previously blogged about his most famous work, The Beetle: A Mystery, an 1897 horror tale that was so popular that it outsold its contemporary Dracula for some time. The other night I finished reading another of Marsh’s works, his 1901 novel The Joss: A Reversion. The facsimile of the original cover is below:

I have to say that I enjoyed The Joss even more than The Beetle! I give a brief description of the tale below the fold…

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Posted in Horror | 4 Comments

How my mind works

Posted on May 15, 2008 by skullsinthestars

So I just got a new laptop from the university last week, and have started the process of moving all my files and software onto it.  My old laptop, which still works just fine, I left at my girlfriend’s place for the time being.

Yesterday I went over to her place for the night.  When I got there, I noticed with some chagrin that I had forgotten to bring the power cord for the new laptop.  This really bugs me, because I have a hard time working when I’m on ‘borrowed time’, so to speak.

“But wait!” I thought to myself, “Maybe the power cord for my old laptop will work with the new one!”

So I went over to the cabinet, moved aside the perfectly functional old laptop to get at its power cord, and found that it wasn’t compatible.  So I put the perfectly functional old laptop back in place, went to the couch and sulked that I wouldn’t be able to work very long on the computer that evening.

It took me a half-hour to realize that I had missed a pretty obvious solution.

*points at self* Ph.D. in physics, ladies and gentlemen!  *bows*

Posted in ... the Hell? | 4 Comments

Get your ass to Mars!

Posted on May 13, 2008 by skullsinthestars

(Title courtesy of the movie Total Recall.)

The planet Mars has always been a source of fascination (as is its sister planet Venus, but that’s another post). As we have seen (here and here), in reality Mars can be quite an interesting place, but it has also served as an exotic locale for fantasy and science fiction adventures. Recently I started stumbling across various classic adventure stories set on the red planet, and after a couple of weeks of marathon reading, I thought I would do a post about them!

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Posted in Fantasy fiction | 3 Comments

Measuring neural activity using surface plasmons

Posted on May 12, 2008 by skullsinthestars

ResearchBlogging.org In the May 1st issue of Optics Letters, a Korean research group has demonstrated another interesting application of surface plasmon resonances: the optical measurement of neural activity. Though I’m not sure how useful this technique will be in the long run, it shows that surface excitations can be used in sensors in many situations when an ordinary optical wave is not sensitive enough. A description after the fold…

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Posted in Optics, Physics | Leave a comment