Life in California went topsy-turvy on Marth 19th, 2020, when Governor Gavin Newsom issued a stay at home order to protect the health and well-being of all Californians. Quite suddenly, the world shifted on its access. The ominous sense of dread finally had a definition: Pandemic. From the ground, there was confusion. The city shut down. Those of us who had day jobs, found ourselves confined to our houses. For me, editorial meetings and teaching yoga took place on Zoom. As a writer, nothing changed. Before Covid-19, writing meant entering a fantasy world of my own making, and after Covid-19, my inner landscape remained exactly the same. To write is to step into another dimension. But the real world is something altogether different. Life got tricky. As the deaths mounted and the grim reaper laid body bags down at the steps of the capital, the highest levels of government denied reality. Toxic tribal affiliations had gripped the nation. A simmering distrust of science caused a bizarre slide into disinformation and denial of a very real virus. As a devotee of both … [Read more...] about Life during Plague Time.
Don’t Panic! SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launches to Cheers!
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy, also known as the BFR which stands for "Big F**ing Rocket, successfully launched into space today, to the excited cheers of engineers and scientists. The BFR is the most powerful operational rocket in the world. Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, has ever delivered a comparable payload into orbit. With a total of 27 Merlin engines, Falcon Heavy is capable of 5 million pounds of thrust. Three cores made up the first stage of Falcon Heavy's test launch. The duo side cores, or boosters flanking the center core, returned to earth in perfect unison, landing on target in a dazzling display of technical prowess. SpaceX CEO/Lead Designer Elon Musk made the mission personal, by changing out the usual steel or concrete block payload, for his own midnight-cherry Tesla Roadster, in honor of the red planet. The Falcon Heavy will attempt to place the Roadster, with its space-suited mannikin, into a continual precession, Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun. And in a tribute to David Bowie, the song "Space Oddity," … [Read more...] about Don’t Panic! SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launches to Cheers!
A Beautiful Mind: RIP Jim Carrey’s Website
The most amazing website in existence has passed into time like a Tibetan sand mandala. Jim Carrey's riotous and sublime imagination was on full display in a surreal portal which sent the traveler spiraling into alternate dimensions. Loaded with Easter Eggs that opened doors to weird experiences, the actor's site was completely interactive. A traveler could commune with characters from his cannon of films, snap photographs, fly across strange landscapes or follow tunnels to beatific heavens or burning hells. More like a roadside attraction than a website, the labyrinth was built in Adobe Flash, the proprietary system once described by Wired as an "ubiquitous resource hog everyone hates to need." The movement to rid the Internet of this turbulent Flash gained momentum, led by a cadre of heavy hitters like Steve Jobs who penned this scathing letter. Facebook, Mozilla and Google soon followed his lead, calling for termination dates, limiting plugins, or allowing search engines to suspend Flash at will. Basically, all the cool kids took Flash out back and kicked the living crap … [Read more...] about A Beautiful Mind: RIP Jim Carrey’s Website
