The head accretion team leader, Martha Biggins, told Brain of Shawn reporters that indeed the holiday weight gain is a perfect time to test gravity altering black hole experiments.

“Everyone gains a few pounds over the holidays, so we use that phenomenon to study microscopic singularities,” Biggins said.

A microscopic singularity, for those of us not familiar with astrophysics jargon, is a black hole. The [mad] scientists at CERN are creating black holes over the holiday season, and using grandma’s pumpkin pie to hide the truth from us. That truth, however, is about to unhide like a Jack-in-the-Box.

“The problem is that Hawking Radiation, which normally nullifies the singularities before they can do any damage, seems to be affected by solar flares,” Biggins confessed. “While normally the microscopic singularities vaporize in a little puff of radiation, the solar flare on December 18th disrupted this outgassing, and actually allowed the black hole to take hold.”

Scientists are not sure how to handle the growing dilemma, but the effects of the planetary bound black hole are already evident in gravitation fluctuations across the globe. Our own Shawn Powers weighed himself 3 times today, and each time his weight had increased.

“I’ve been trying to spend my Christmas Day in a normal fashion, and have been eating huge meals with my family, but at every spare opportunity I’ve been stepping on the scale. The increase is impossible to deny. Gravity from the black hole is making me weigh more,” said Shawn.

Biggins gave us the following advice, “While we’re trying everything we can to increase the Hawking Radiation, and eliminate the black hole, it doesn’t look good. Gravitational forces will continue to rise throughout the holiday season, and throughout the following months. With proper diet and exercise, it will be possible to lose enough weight to offset the increase in gravity, but once the singularity accretes enough mass, there will be nothing we can do but leave the planet or be crushed. We’re sorry, fellow Earthlings. We really messed up on this one.”

Some anti-LHC scientists have already volunteered their time, and have calculated the timeline for total destruction. Based on scientific models, the singularity will make this planet uninhabitable around December 21st, 2012. That gives us almost 2 years to either get rid of the black hole, or find another solar system to live in.

Here at The Brain of Shawn, we suggest ignoring the problem. It’s really the only thing we can do. And for the next few years, you never have to worry about gaining weight — because remember, it’s not you, it’s the black hole! Happy Holidays everyone, and remember, have another helping of mashed potatoes. It really doesn’t matter anymore.

• Our community is pretty conservative, so graphic alien on alien action is likely a deal breaker.
• Please don’t recommend a book that is in the middle of a series. Recommend the whole series. Seriously, my OCD can’t handle that nonsense.
• Newer authors are encouraged. The classics are certainly not to be left out, but really — we want to introduce kids to new authors as well.
• I think that’s it!

So please, leave your thoughts in the comments. Also, if you know anyone that would have an opinion on the issue, please pass a link along. I’m really hoping to get a good list together for her. Thank you!

If you’re in the US, the East Coast will have a slightly better view, because the best show will be around 4AM Tuesday morning, which will still be very dark. On the West Coast, you’ll want to stick it out until daybreak if you can, because before that there will be many over the horizon you’ll miss.

For more information, check out this site. And don’t forget: HAVE FUN!!!

In honor of the awesome “almost touch it if you stretch” moon, I give you the Sponge Monkeys, and their rendition of “We Like the Moon”. Enjoy.

Blink/Sophie sat in as fetal a position as possible in the corner of a phone booth outside of Negworth, Amsterdam. Their recent merging was, of course, successful. Both minds were now in perfect harmony, and mostly open to one another. Therein started the awful realization.

“Blink, it’s so hard because our memories don’t line up exactly right. Is that because we interpreted the situations differently?”, thought Sophie.

“Well, normally I’d say yes”, thought Blink, “But our memory divergence goes far beyond what differing points of view would explain. Apart from our thread-bonded love and compassion, everything seems different in our pasts. Even our recent past.”

“Blink, we’ve both changed. I’m a little girl living in the head of… of… well, we’re in the same head!”

“I know sweetie, and I’m so happy to be merged with you.” Blink emoted love to Sophie. “Travel back in our memories though. I’m not even sure what a coconut is, and yet, you remember — no, experienced — us both living on them. Sophie, I’ve never been to a desert island.”

Blink could feel fear well up inside Sophie. Horrible scenes of Not-Sophie, emotions of pain, and crippling terror were flooding their consciousness.

“Sophie! Wait!” Blink solidified their thread-bond, and opened his entire consciousness to her. “I don’t want you to think I’m anything other than Blink. Sophie, you can see everything that I am. I love you. I can’t lie to you. I will not hurt or deceive you.” He could feel her calm down, and relaxed himself too.

Blink/Sophie worked together, slowly piecing together the horrible truth regarding the sterilization fleet. It was Sophie that first realized the fleet wasn’t destroying planets, but rather, terraforming the galaxy piece by piece into parallel universes in order to create the perfect Tragethen empire. Why destroy a planet, when enough dimensional shifting would bring forth a slave planet?

“Sophie!” thought-shouted Blink, “That explains their need for a dual mind!”

Blink/Sophie began to realize the futility in the way the Space Force was trying to defeat the Trageth. Amassing armies was pointless, and the SF officers with their single minds had no way of knowing the Trageth were just trying to keep them all busy. Just as Blink/Sophie started to plan their next move, the phone booth seemed to change.

Link to Sophie from Shinola, Part 1 (The story starts halfway down the page)

Sophie from Shinola, Part 2:

Objectively, Sophie knew that the real SpaceForce wasn’t all adventure and excitement, but compared to Chenolla VI, anything had to be an improvement. “Jeez”, she thought, “What’s taking so long?”

It was easy enough to take this little girl’s body over, but over the past few months, the Trageth officer had begun to sympathize with her “family” on Chenolla VI. Why aren’t these idiots preparing for the battle? Yes, the Space Force is powerful, but they can’t defend all the human planets at once. When the sterilization fleet comes to this planet, the best defense the humans will have is fishing poles!

All the preparations were made in the beryllium mine, and the accelerated decay was already spewing beryllium ions into subspace, signaling the start of the first wave. If Sophie didn’t get accepted into the Space Force, and off this planet, she would die with all the stupid fishermen.

“Why are they making us wait, Mom?” Sophie muttered, nervously.

“They’re warming up the brain remover, dear.” Said her mother, as she casually flipped a page in her magazine.

Sophie panicked, and almost suicidally released the real Sophie to avoid the torture herself. After a moment, however, she realized the mother was playing the human lying game. Some humans lied like this more than others, but Sophie’s mother was particularly evil. The past few months had taught her how to deal with situations like this, but with her current stress regarding the interview, she momentarily slipped. Thankfully, the mother hadn’t noticed.

“Shut up, Mom, they already removed my brain in school.”

“Nice, Soph. Nice.” her mother chuckled.

It was reasons like that which required the humans to be destroyed. They lied to their own nestlings! How could they ever be trusted as allies? Sophie was even more determined to get accepted into the Space Force and help destroy these evil creatures. They’re so seductive! So many times I’ve wanted to suggest a peace negotiation, and then they lie for nothing more than evil pleasure!

“Mom, what are you and Dad going to do when I go off to the Space Force?” Sophie asked.

“Oh, I think we’ll be fine, dear. The one I’m really worried about is Blink. Are you sure you don’t want him to stay here? No one is really sure if they can survive off planet, and you might not see him for months.”

Cool, eh?

About 3 minutes ago, the Lunar Eclipse started, and we won’t have another till 2010. And it will probably be cloudy in 2010. So go watch now! (It’s actually a rather slow event, so you have some time. You can go to the bathroom and stuff. Just don’t tell me about it.)

If you want one, just click on the photo, it will take you to an online store. Please buy me one too, because there’s absolutely no way I could convince my wife it was a good idea.

Astronauts to Inspect Space Station Joints in Spacewalk

I don’t think they should be smoking marijuana on the space station at all. Call me a prude if you will, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

That said, are the laws the same once you leave the planet? If an astronaut kills another in space, is it illegal? How far do our laws extend? Yes, these are the things I think about…

If I couldn’t be a brown dwarf, I would want to be a star large enough to go supernova, because I think that’d be fun. I’d also want to be large enough to be a black hole, or at least a neutron star. I mean, that’s some cool stuff.

If I couldn’t be a star, I’d settle for a failed star, like Jupiter. At least it emanates light. It’s just so gassy, it seems a little lame. But I could have red storms and stuff. That’d be cool.

So if you could be a heavenly body, what would you be?

Ok, in all fairness, it’s largely better in the Northern Hemisphere, but it’s worth a look regardless. The peak will be about 2 hours before the sun comes up on Monday morning, so make some coffee and get a comfy chair.

Meteor showers are great, because you don’t need anything but eyeballs to see them. The are expected to peak with 60-80 meteors per hour. Just watch the entire sky, partially easterly sky if you want to have a facing direction, and you should see them. Tonight is especially great because of the new moon. (New moon = no moon visible)

Below is a diagram of the sky. The meteors appear to streak from the Perseus constellation, and go across the whole nighttime canvas. It should be great!!!

So there you have it. In comparison to the entire universe, my 32 laps are pretty insignificant. But hey, Jupiter hasn’t even made it around the Sun 3 times in my lifetime. What a pokey little fella.

Anyway, the really cool part is that as we walked into the house, I thought I’d give her my “look at Venus” speech. My whole family hears it all the time, but I thought maybe I’d spark some emotion in my youngest.

It turns out I was right on the money. I called Lizzie to the front of the house, away from the porch light. I pointed up to the west, and said, “Lizzie, do you see that really bright star over there?”

“Uh huh.”

I was tickled that she said it with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “That’s not really a star, it’s a planet, like Earth is a planet.”

“Really?!?!”

“Yep. It’s name is Venus, and it’s not as big as Earth, but it shines really bright so it looks like a star.”

“Wow, cool!”

She was actually excited about knowing it was a planet. The coolest part was when we went inside, and Lizzie ran to Donna. “Mommy, did you know that really bright star is a planet? It’s name is Vee-Nuts!”

I love my family.

I’m so excited about this kind of stuff!

I’ve gotten so many comments from people about it, that I wanted to put it here for everyone to download. So here’s for all the search engines to pick up on this post:

Free Star Trek Ringtone. Download for free. MP3 Star Trek TNG ringtone. Get it while it’s hot!

UPDATE: Here’s an iPhone ringtone version too.

Donna is the coolest wife in the world. I think that her not being a die hard trekkie, yet still enjoying watching it with me makes her super cool. She’s the woman that isn’t a geek (thus she retains her cool status), but loves ME enough to watch, and even enjoy, Star Trek episodes with me.

You know you’re jealous.

As most things usually do, that got me thinking. What do you see when you look up at the stars? Are you amazed at our smallness? Do you find it odd that some of the twinkles are actually from millions of years ago, and some billions? Do you just see big and little dippers?

Whenever I gaze into the heavens, I am in awe. The universe is just that, awe inspiring. I want my kids to look up, and visit distant galaxies, wonder what the pink Orion Nebula smells like, and experience joy and sadness at the sheer immensity of “up.”

When they watch Star Trek, I want them to live vicariously through Captain Piccard and Wesley Crusher. When the space shuttle launches, I want them to think, “WOW!!! Those guys are going to SPACE!!!” I hope they believe interstellar travel is possible, it just hasn’t been invented yet. Never underestimate the power of dreams. Never underestimate the dreams the night sky can produce.

Look up my friend, look up.

That’s followed by Ogre’s famous line, which is also the title of this blog entry.

What IF infinite smallness does exist though? And what does infinite bigness really mean? You’d have to be a total tool (the 80s did have fun slang, no?) to deny the similarity between atomic structure and interstellar structure. Both are governed by distinct energy types, and both interact similarly in some regards, and drastically different in others.

Is atomic energy (or quantum energy if you’re particularly geeky) and gravitational energy just an “energy order of magnitude apart” ? That opens up a ton of other questions, the likes of which I ponder often.

Where does magnetic energy fit into the bill? Is there a quantum equivalent to dark matter? Since the larger scale energy (gravity) sparks change in the quantum world (fusion in a star anyone?), is there a larger magnitude of energy and existence in play that we can’t detect? Are there infinitely many?

I find it really odd that EVERYTHING scales up. Atomic energy states are absurdly quick, and yet a black hole takes millions of years to eat a star. Same with orbital speeds, my very rough estimates seem to place them on scale too.

And still my brain trudges on…

If space and time can be warped (gravity does this, I’m not talking the Enterprise or anthing), are the ideas regarding non-linear space travel possible? Since time is our adversary when it comes to interstellar travels, should we focus on a solution to the problem of our short lives? If so, what is the best way to do that? Cybernetics? Stasis? Near light-speed travel? Generational ships?

These are the things I ponder, and I’m gravely concerned that our next generation will care more about youtube videos and blogs like this than in actual learning and exploration. NASA is worried that 20 somethings really don’t care about another trip to the moon, or a manned mission to Mars. Are we raising a generation no longer inspired by Star Trek? Is the Friday night trip to Atlantis now our end goal instead of a reason to explore in real life? Have special effects gotten better than reality?

I hope not. I really hope not.

Our 90ish years (and that’s only if I quit eating so much pizza) is such a small amount of time, that it’s a wonder any of us have bothered to discover the cosmos at all. It would be easy for a pessimist like myself to just forget about it. And yet, even I stare up at a billion year old picture of our universe every night, dreaming myself amongst the stars.

So what’s a 30+ year old man to do with himself? My only hope of travelling the cosmos will come from an amazing physicist here on earth discovering something “impossible”, or more likely an alien species gifting us interstellar magics. It’s quite a sad day when the more likely event is that of little green men coming to the rescue. Plus, in either event, *I* am really not a likely candidate for the free ride in a space car. I’m just a guy that wears a Spongebob t-shirt on the weekends…

Hmm, what are my choices? Freeze myself, in the hopes that in 1,000,000 years our descendants will just be aching to thaw out a Neanderthal like myself? Give up and drop some acid for a special “trip” of my own? (The answer there being “NO” of course…)

What I do is what mankind has always done — all that we can. I’ll keep reading science fiction books, watch on streaming TV when the space shuttle takes off, and prepare myself for huge philosophical debates when it turns out there is microscopic life on Mars. I can only hope that our (by “our” I mean our generation) discoveries can help someday bring mankind to better and clearer understanding. And maybe, just maybe, evolve our collective intellect enough to handle an interstellar world. We can’t even handle an intercontinental one now…