Musings on Miayamto Musashi and the Book of Five Rings (Go Rin No Sho) Statue on Ganryu Island depicting the duel between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro A long time ago in a land far, far away, there lived a very strange and dangerous man. He is known to us as Miyamoto Musashi (also called…
THE MORNING AFTER! The candy haul is in, gourds need to be bagged and disposed of, and for those unpopular neighbors trees and lawns have been decorated in long white streamers. Halloween is over, and those post-scary-night blues are starting to hit you. Some words of advice, get up an hour or two earlier. If…
I recently saw the movie Shin Godzilla. http://www.funimationfilms.com/movie/shingodzilla/ (Warning possible spoiler alerts) This was less of a monster movie then an exploration of how a bureaucracy copes with a crisis. For me, interested in all things Japanese, the movie was enjoyable and I found the background fascinating. For those looking for a standard Kaiju movie,…
Space is not simply a hole into which money that could be better used for food stamps or worker retraining is flushed. It fundamentally helps economies and the poor. The single most powerful example of this is the weather satellite. Storms that sank ships and destroyed cities are now spotted early enough for avoidance and…
A mere chunk of rock is survivable. It’s not likely to get all of us, though it could. Even if it didn’t wipe us all out, would a technic civilization ever arise again? We’ve mined most of the easily reachable resources around. Could we start over again? There are greater terrors in space that could…
October is the magic month in Autumn, when nature paints trees with a chromatic brush, creating magical landscapes that all too soon shed their skins in anticipation of Winter.
There are of course the usual arguments against humans in space. But let’s start with an examination of that statement, “humans in space.” Humanity is now and has always been “in space.” The thing in the sky is a G-2 main sequence star perhaps halfway through its lifespan. Its attributes govern every second of our…
That’s right, Autumn is here! And Copper Dog Publishing wants to remind you that it is time to sing that Autumn song… verses bursting with multi-colored leaves and cool, breezy evenings, and Harvest moons. Halloween looms large on the horizon, but for the next few weeks the lawns need raking, piles of leaves release fiery…
Last blog we discussed manned space flight on the theme that we humans have to directly experience things. More on that line… To anyone who has seen the Mona Lisa in person, seeing it on TV or in an art book is meaningless. The original cannot be captured, it must be experienced. Perhaps a…