The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

– Robert Frost

XKCD: Narnia in the 21st century

Modern kids have a different approach to safety and technology than those in the 1940s. XKCD explains with an example.

A deleted scene from the John Carter movie

Disney’s 2012 movie John Carter captured well the beauty of the fantastic Mars/Barsoom created by Edgar Rice Burroughs one hundred years ago. Today I found a deleted opening scene on YouTube, one that provides some views of the interiors of the city of Helium.

In the heart of Jupiter

New laboratory research that, among other things, studies how hydrogen behaves under the enormous pressure found in the core of gas giants. It turns out that the older hypotheses about metallic hydrogen may be incorrect — link >>>

The Rabbit has landed

China’s Jade Rabbit rover successfully rolled onto the moon’s surface on December 14. Here is a piece of the live television coverage.

Mitt författarskap — en intervju

Nathalie Sjögren har publicerat en intervju om mitt författarskap på sin blogg — länk >>>

The future is not what it used to be

I was born in the 1950s. So I currently live in the future of my youth — and it is hardly what my younger self expected it to be. But it is fortunately a much better “place” than those we were able to imagine in 1973.

75 years ago: the first interplanetary war

In the autumn of 1938, Earth was suddenly invaded from space:

Martian dry lake with organics

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity is once again making the headlines in the science press. It has drilled into the ground in a place that appears to have been a lake in ancient times. The soil samples from what once was wet mud contained unexpected amounts of organic carbon. Read more here — link >>>>

The origin of these carbon compounds is however still not clear. On Earth, there are “stone-eating” microorganisms that survive in oxygen-free environments by using a process called chemolithotrophy. The quest for alien life om Mars continues.

Curiosity’s Martian drill hole

Post-apocalyptic vehicles

This is a follow-up to the recent post about Sillof’s Road Wars, in which Star Wars characters are re-imagined in a Mad Max context.

Zombie Blog has an interesting post (with plenty of photos) about vehicles re-fitted for survival in a post-apocalyptic environment — link >>>

Blogmaster James writes from a zombie apocalypse perspective, but those vehicles will fit nicely in many similar contexts, such as Wastelands or Falling Skies.

One example of a zombie-fighting vehicle. Design and picture by Donal O’Keeffe.