Private Mars Rocket II

Netflix

2026-06-18T17:32:48Z

I am downstate, doing my part in Operation Get Mom to my Sister's in Atlanta. Last night, after determining that the dangerous bad weather was south of us, we decided to screen a movie. Netflix suggested the movie "The Bombardment" as a viable option, so we watched it. It was a good movie but Netflix had been very misleading.

What Netflix recommended was in reality a Danish movie The Shadow in My Eye, about the real-life effort to bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Netflix trailer was entirely the scene where the RAF briefs the pilots on the raid. However, 80% of the movie was really about Danish civilians prior to and immediately after the raid. It was overall a good movie under false pretenses.

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Random Thoughts, Surrender Edition

2026-06-15T15:26:11Z

On the occasion of Trump's official surrender to Iran, I have some non-Iran-thoughts.

1) Solar: So I had occasion to drive downstate to visit the parents. As I drove through what is the MAGA-ist part of Illinois (and this bit is as MAGA as Alabama) I couldn't help but notice the number of residential solar installations. I also couldn't help but notice that a residential solar installation company sponsors the local TV news. Sorry coal - solar is eating your lunch.

2) Cars: My current vehicle is 10 years old and has over 100,000 miles on it. Last week, I test-drove a 2026 electric Chevy Blazer. The drive was nice but the two rounds of "what will it take to get you into a new car today!" was tiresome. (Answer: a winning lottery ticket.)

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Star Trek Thoughts - Part 10

2026-06-10T15:10:27Z

I am continuing my ongoing (semi-) rewatch of Star Trek: The Original Series. This post will cover the first 4 episodes of Season 3, which was the last season to air. Herewith, thoughts.

General: Season 3 exists because fans lobbied for it. However, the studio was not fond of it and it's (lack of) ratings so they cut the budget. Overall, I found this batch of episodes second-rate at best - something that does not appear to be budget-related. Specifically:

1) Spock's Brain - aliens surgically remove Spock's brain and insert it into their Controller. Kirk overacts and there's a lot of wandering down empty corridors. The ending, where apparently we just abandon the people to their fate, is, well, crappy.

2) The Enterprise Incident - Keith R. A. DeCandido calls it an idiot plot, and well, it is. Although not obvious, the budget cuts are starting to hit - the Romulan ship interiors are obviously Enterprise sets with different lighting.

3) The Paradise Syndrome - I found pretty much all of the "Kirk as an Indian" scenes cringeworthy, and again the plot is weak. Why not divert the asteriod first then investigate? Or why not leave a search party while the rest of the ship goes to divert the asteroid? The only redeeming quality (somewhat reduced by the Great White Savior aspects of the story) is that we actually see Kirk grieve over a death.

4) And the Children Shall Lead - space aliens have taken over children who can use fear to control adults. Probably the best of a bad bunch, although I felt that the crewmembers should have been made of sterner stuff.

Like I said - not the best run of episodes.

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Screwworm and DOGE

2026-06-09T19:14:29Z

I for one welcome the arrival in the US of the screwworm parasite! (And if you believe this, please contact me about my selection of bridges for sale - I have something for EVERY budget!)

In a more serious vein, we have a screwworm problem because the idiots at DOGE cut a program to keep the flies that spread it in check. As I said when DOGE was on it's rampage, you can decide to save money by not getting the oil in your car changed. The car will not immediately stop running. It will, however, eventually crap out and when it does the repair bill will be way more than you saved in oil changes.

This current kurfluffle is proving me right. Reality is like gravity - it always wins in the end.

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Review of The Red Woman of Mars

2026-06-04T19:19:30Z

The Red Woman on Mars: A Novel by Claire Barner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am not obsessed with Mars - I can stop thinking about it at any time. This is not the time. I read Claire Barner's previous novel and enjoyed it, so when I saw this one I ordered it, as well as downloaded an ARC via Netgalley. Overall, this was an enjoyable book. They say that science fiction is the literature of ideas. Well, I have Thoughts about this book.

First, it's billed as "Jane Austen in space." There is some of that (the Martians consciously are following Regency customs) but there's rather a lot more violence in this book than in Austen's. Second, the reason that Vivian Bowen, the titular Red Woman, is on Mars is that, due to weak bones, Martian-borne women can't carry pregnancies to term. I'm not sure I buy the science on that.

I am reminded of a book I read in junior high in which the humans on Mars could only have boys, and they solved their women problem by kidnapping Earth girls. Even in back then, I found the idea the all the kidnapped women were okay with this to be problematic. Fortunately, Barner's characters have more normal reactions to being lured to Mars. Also, gays have been invented in Barner's work, which they weren't in the 1950s (that's sarcasm, of course).

My third problem is guns. On Barner's Mars, guns are banned because they would poke holes in pressure domes. Besides the idea of frangible ammunition (Google it), on Earth we get concerned about guns on airplanes because they are small and the walls are made of the thinnest material possible. On a station that is the size of a city, a few bullet holes would be negligible, and there's no particular reason to make your walls paper-thin. In fact, for thermal and radiation protection, thicker is better.

Don't get me wrong - I liked the book - it's just that it produced some thoughts.

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Weekend Update

2026-05-30T18:49:55Z

I am downstate in Westville at my parents house. As per usual, I brought down books to read, and as per usual they did not get read. My parents are not readers; they are TV watchers. Of note this week:

1) Apex: a 2026 largish-budget survival thriller staring Charlize Theron. Very good, but not recommended for those with a fear of heights.

2) Thieves Highway: a 2025 small-budget movie staring Aaron Eckhart. It's small enough to not earn a Wikipedia entry or a listing on Eckhart's Wikipedia bio. Still, kind of a nice modern western complete with cattle rustling.

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To Mars and Beyond!

2026-05-27T20:19:32Z

I am not obsessed with Mars; I can stop thinking about it any time I want to. Today is not that day.

Herewith, an interesting article on How should we think about Starship?. My additional two cents are: Where SpaceX fundamentally goes wrong is that to get any large mass to Mars you need to assemble whole ships in orbit. These ships can then be powered by electric-plasma drives (formerly known as "ion engines"). Relying on chemical rockets is not going to cut it.

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Review of Island at the Edge of the World; or Thoughts on Generation Ships

2026-05-20T21:32:32Z

Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island – A Provocative Archaeological Study of Colonial Legacy, Indigenous Reclamation, and the Collapse Myth by Mike Pitts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of these days I will start keeping track of how I learned about a book. Today is not that day. However I learned about Mike Pitt's book "Island at the Edge of the World," I acquired it, read it and enjoyed it.

I have been interested in the history of Easter Island, more properly Rapa Nui, for some time, and my interest is science fictional. There is a concept in SF called "generation ships." These are interstellar ships in which the journey is so long that generations of people are born and die before the journey is complete. In fiction, they always go wrong. The authors use as an example places like Rapa Nui, where the people committed "ecocide" by cutting down all the trees.

Except that didn't happen. Pitts details at length and convincingly that what happened to render Rapa Nui the way we see it was a series of slave raids by Europeans in the mid-1860s, followed by European exploitation of the island. Pitts also suggests that the mysterious writing system of Rapa Nui was a form of cargo cult, created after Spanish sailors had local chiefs sign a document acknowledging Spain's rule over the place.

This is a fascinating book which will remain in my library.

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Star Trek Thoughts - Part 9

2026-05-16T14:43:18Z

I am continuing my ongoing (semi-) rewatch of Star Trek: The Original Series. This post will cover the last four episodes of Season 2. Herewith, thoughts.

"The Omega Glory" - wow was this uneven! This is the episode with "Yangs" and "Kohms." I have to think that this episode was written to provide a bunch of WWII vets an opportunity to punch them some (anti-war) hippies on Prime Time TV.

"The Ultimate Computer" - a very timely story of AI gone amuck. It's also an example of a bottle episode - all the action takes place on the Enterprise on existing sets. In the original production, they reused a space station from "The Trouble With Tribbles" but in the Remastered version we get a new station.

"Bread and Circuses" - assuming one can get over the really bad worldbuilding (wouldn't a modern Roman Empire speak modernized Latin?) it's pretty good. Having said that, Kirk goes full horndog here! He's busily bonking a slave girl while Spock and McCoy are squabbling in a jail cell.

"Assignment Earth" - The Enterprise goes back to the 1960s For Reasons and intercepts a presumed alien named Gary Seven beaming onto the planet. Turns out, Seven's mission is to prevent WWIII by sabotaging a US rocket. NASA provided footage of the Apollo 4 launch (I was trying to figure out which launch while watching) for this episode.

Per Reactormag this was a backdoor pilot for Seven and his companion (a VERY young Teri Garr) protecting 1960's Earth from various aliens. Apparently Gene Roddenbery wasn't in a good enough odor with his bosses to swing another series. Also per Reactormag, Teri Garr was very much Not Happy with her filming experience. Despite all of that, the episode is one of the better ones.

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Wiscon 48

2026-05-16T14:18:44Z

I am attending Wiscon, a virtual SF convention, over Memorial Day weekend. My (early-bird) schedule:

Am I a Real Writer?
The Craft and Business of Writing • Sat 9:00 AM–10:15 AM

Stories of Revolution
Readings • Sat 2:30 PM–3:45 PM - I'll be reading from my upcoming novel "Gunmaker."

The Man Wants You to Drink the GenAI Kool-Aid
Power, Privilege, and Oppression • Sun 9:00 AM–10:15 AM

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Review of The Autumn Ghost

2026-05-14T14:21:44Z

The Autumn Ghost: How the Battle Against a Polio Epidemic Revolutionized Modern Medical Care by Hannah Wunsch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm a Rotarian, and this book was mentioned in an issue of our international association. I bought it and read it last night. The author, Hannah Wunsch, is a doctor who specializes in critical care - what laymen would call the ICU. She was working at an ICU in New York City during COVID. This specialization greatly informs the book and the reader.

The core of the book is about a polio epidemic which hit Copenhagen, Denmark in the fall of 1952. At the height of the epidemic, the main hospital in the city was getting around 200 new patients a day. Polio in 1952 was not well understood, but in the US, it was known that a primary cause of death was the patient becoming unable to breathe. This was "fixed" (somewhat) by putting them in an iron lung. There was one (1) iron lung in Denmark in 1952.

A group of Danish doctors, led by an anesthesiologist (which was not a specialty at the time) developed on the fly a way to breathe for patients with inflatable bags. This required hundreds of people to manually squeeze these bags so medical, dental and nursing students were pressed into service. It was crude but it worked, and directly led to the development of the modern ICU.

I found the story very moving and gripping. The doctors involved did not think of themselves as heroes but they were. The author also makes a great case for vaccines - a very timely thing.

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Star Trek Thoughts - Part 8.5

2026-05-12T14:08:38Z

I am continuing my ongoing (semi-) rewatch of Star Trek: The Original Series. As evidenced by the title, this is a minor update, covering only Season 2, Episode 22 "By Any Other Name." I see from my blog that the last batch of episodes I watched, episodes 18 to 21, kind of put me off my feed for Star Trek, as I haven't watched an episode since March 27.

"By Any Other Name" is better than the previous batch, but not by a lot. It's what's become a typical plot - Kirk and company beam down to a ~~soundstage~~ alien planet where the locals promptly attempt to take over the ship. In this case, the Kelvan Empire of beings from the Andromeda Galaxy are doing the taking-over. We learn that said aliens are too alien for 1960s TV budgets to film, so they've conveniently taken human form. This taking human form is their downfall - Kirk and company are able to play on their emotions to win the day.

Other thoughts:

1) Basically all the crew except Kirk, Spock, Scotty and McCoy are done for the day by the end of Act 1. Sucks to be them.

2) Kirk as womanizer is well-established - his method of "playing on emotions" is to seduce the blond female alien. There's another hot alien chick played by Lezlie Dalton who is basically ignored. I was not able to find much about the actress - seems like she was another woman who "aged out" of Hollywood.

3) In the remastered version, it is painfully obvious when they swap in the stunt doubles for the fight scenes.

4) Reactormag.com had an article about what Gene Roddenberry did between the end of the Original Series and the start of the movies. They mentioned William Ware Theiss as his long-time collaborator for costumes. The guy was up to his usual tricks on this episode - the female aliens wore backless shirts.

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Arrghh!!!

2026-05-06T18:15:58Z

Very frustrating morning here at Casa Gerrib. Herewith, two frustrating items.

Item #1: 1-800 Flowers and Fedex

So I ordered flowers for Mother's Day in mid-April from 1-800 Flowers for delivery today. They gave me a tracking number through Fedex. As of 10:00 AM today, the Fedex number said the item hadn't even been arrived in Fedex's hands! So, I ordered another set via FTD. Well, guess what - 1--800 Flowers showed up and now I can't cancel FTD's order! I mean, it's only money and I only have one mother, but WTF?

Item #2 - Quickbooks

So my small Rotary club wants to get some accounting software so our new member / bookkeeper can, well, keep the books. Quickbooks' cheapest online offering is $38 / month. I decide to go online and hit the chatbot with a (to my mind) simple question, "do you offer discounts for non-profits?" Well, an hour and two people into said chat, I get offered a product at $287 / month! WTF?

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Space!

2026-05-06T15:53:50Z

Posted here so I can find it later: Bitter Lessons from the ISSpresso: Why launch costs aren't the reason it costs a fortune to do things in space

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Coyote!

2026-05-01T14:35:30Z

Darien, a well-developed residential suburb, has a resident coyote! I first saw him (or her, I didn't check under the hood if you know what I mean) late Tuesday night in my side yard. Then I saw him yesterday at around 4:00 PM crossing a 4-lane road in town. Now all we need is a roadrunner to complete the set!

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Ballroom Blues

2026-04-26T17:30:57Z

For the record, I am against political assassinations, including attempts on politicians (like Trump) of whom I dislike. Also for the record, I do not think this is some kind of false flag operation. Frankly, I don't think Trump has the personal courage to order such a thing nor the self-control not to blab about it. I also don't think his staff has the wherewithal to organize such a thing. Since Trump's modus operandi is to flood the zone with shit, this will be no more than another distracting turd in that flood.

Regarding Trump's White House ballroom, he wants it for two reasons, one bad and one okay. The bad reason is that he wants to recreate the Mar-a-Lago dining room in Washington. He likes having a place where he can wander in, have his ring (or whatever other part of his anatomy is on offer) kissed, and then withdraw when he's had sufficient adulation. The okay reason is that it's logistically cumbersome to transport the President somewhere, especially when that "somewhere" is widely known to be the only place in town for a function of this size. [insert cliche about blind squirrel here]

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Stupid is as stupid does, part whatever

2026-04-21T15:19:12Z

It's very easy to lie to people who want to be lied to. Case in point - This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men. A med student says he’s made thousands of dollars selling photos and videos of a young conservative woman he created using generative tools. He’s not alone.

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Review of The Night Prophet

2026-04-20T20:15:25Z

The Night Prophet by Joanne E. Zienty

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I purchased my copy of this book from the author at a book fair. I've read the previous book in the series so I was very interested in seeing where she took the story next.

The book opens with Angel and her toddler, Lark, on the run in a future version of rural Wisconsin. Angel is approached by a stranger offering that which she does not want, namely to expand on her act of rebellion against the Galt Corporation. She's eventually persuaded, and well, things get interesting.

Zienty's prose is dense, but maybe I'm getting used to it because this was a quicker read. Overall, a very strong second entry in the series.

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Review of Sunshine Man

2026-04-14T16:07:39Z

The Sunshine Man by Emma Stonex

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm pretty sure I found this book because Goodreads suggested I sign up for a giveaway. I didn't get a free book so I bought it and finally got around to reading it.

It's a tense book with a great opening line: "The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other." Most of the action is set in January 1989, but we get lengthy flashbacks to fill us in. The book is very British and I had to Google several bits of British slang, but overall I really enjoyed it.

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Frankenstein in Iran

2026-04-11T16:20:21Z

Much like ole' Doc Frankenstein, we've created a monster: A long read - the short version is that we (the US) repeatedly stuck our nose into Iran's domestic affairs, thus creating the monster we now face.

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TACO Tuesday, Iran Edition

2026-04-08T13:36:49Z

Now don't get me wrong, I'm glad Trump TACO-ed out in Iran. This is, however, a clear defeat for the US - a defeat that is ENTIRELY on Trump. The US lost 13 soldiers killed, an unreported number of wounded, a dozen or so planes destroyed, and various (expensive) bits and bobs of military infrastructure blown to bits.

Iran, on the other hand, gets to keep it's uranium and enrich same, PLUS is allowed to levee tolls on ships going through the Strait of Hormuz. As a reminder, before the war, passage through the strait was free. Oh, and the current regime stays in power. Clearly, just blowing shit up does not mean you win a war.

The reason we lost is because Trump and his dipshit "Secretary of War" failed to plan. Iran closing the strait was always their go-to card in the event of war. We did not have assets in place to effectively contest that closure and so, pants around our ankles, we got spanked. (See also this: On the Military Failures of Fascism.)

Part of this failure is due to the decision to park the USS Ford carrier battle group in the Caribbean. Simply put, anything we wanted to do in that region, including remove Maduro, could have been done without the Ford's help. Now we've got a battlegroup in desperate need of a refit and a whole bunch of sailors who are going to exit the Navy as soon as possible. Good job Trump! /sarcasm

* TACO = Trump Always Chickens Out

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Review of Bixby Bluebottle & The Wizards' Bane

2026-04-02T17:59:20Z

Here's a quick review of Bixby Bluebottle & The Wizards' Bane:

Full disclosure: I am a member of the author's writing group and read this in draft. Having said that, I found this a delightful book. It's YA and aimed at the age group 10 to 16, but kids at heart can enjoy it too!

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Star Trek Thoughts - Part 8

2026-03-27T20:36:44Z

I am continuing my ongoing (semi-) rewatch of Star Trek: The Original Series. This post will cover season 2, episodes 18 to 21.

Overall, I found this batch decidedly mediocre. "Immunity Syndrome" was a semi-remake of "The Doomsday Machine" which aired earlier that season. "A Private Little War" was okay, but again very derivative of "Friday's Child" in the same season. I found "Return to Tomorrow" questionable - Kirk's decision to let aliens take over his body just did not work for me.

I don't remember ever seeing any of these episodes before - I think they tended to drift off of the rerun schedule. The only episode I remember, "Patterns of Force" (Starfleet interference recreates Nazi Germany) did not age well. The plot itself seemed original but full of holes that Adult Me saw and Kid Me didn't. Kirk as womanizer is getting established here - in two of the four episodes, Kirk gets handsy with a Hot Chick (and the romantic music plays).

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On To Mars, Part Whatever

2026-03-26T20:08:54Z

I'm not obsessed about Mars - I can stop thinking about it at any time. I just don't want to. (umm) An interesting article on a potential problem - low level radiation. (Posted here so I can find it later.)

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Two Links on War

2026-03-25T20:55:57Z

Two links on war, posted here so I can find them later.

1) why the war on Iran is a disaster for both the US and Israel. It's a long read but worth it.

2) On the Military Failures of Fascism. A post which points out that, for various internal reasons, fascist regimes are bad at winning wars.

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