C James

Happy Birthday! :king:

Priest? Heck, I'd be delighted, and call a physicist, not a priest!

I just work on whatever I feel like working on, and I find it helpfull to have several ongoing projects.

THANK YOU!!!!!!! Well, guess what, it is being continued. There is a multi-chapter continuation underway, starting roughly where the short story leaves off. I'm about three chapters into it so far, but want to finish a little more (maybe one more chapter) so I can do a consistency check and pre-edit before sending it to my Editor. I hope to have it online here soon. As for any other stuff I have out there: I just sent in an anthology submission, and if it's accepted "The Muse" will be in the Fall anthology. I will warn everyone though, it's nothing like "No Shirt, No Problem" in any way.

That was a great section, I learned a lot from it, and I'm not an editor and have no ambitions to become one.

I voted for Friday, but I agree with Knotme: I'd hate to see too many on one day and few for the rest of the week.

Happy Birthday Dom!!! May you receive many gifts and much happiness, for indeed you have given us countless gifts.

I think I liked the advice for story promotions and the interviews the best. Though, it's hard to decide. One thing for sure, it's GREAT for future reference material due to the story promotion section, the Editing tips section, and a few others too.

Happy Birthday Jared!!!

One thing I think everyone can agree on: BOTH parties have their bad actors. BOTH parties have at times been reluctant to deal with them. Thanks for posting the list, Nick. It's always good to see both sides of every issue. My own personal opinion: I think both parties have massive flaws, and need to fix them, and learn to speak out against malfeasance in office regardless of whether the problem is on the other side of the political aisle or their own. I'm against corruption, period.

Sorry to hear it went to "car heaven" (I love that term BTW!). But, if there is a lot wrong, that's probably for the best. Once a car gets to a certain point, it becomes unreliable and a maintenance nightmare (and enormously expensive).

They are saying now that it's an electronics failure, and will likely result, worse case, in the loss of half the main channel's field of view, which could be compensated for by longer exposure times. As a wild guess, due to the age of the electronics, I suspect a "tin whiskers" problem. The Hubble has been superb, and I hope it will continue to function. Frankly, I'm deeply disturbed by the fact that NASA has chosen to abandon satellite servicing capability, which the proposed "replacement" for the shuttle system won't have. I've been a fan of NASA all my life, but the planned CRV/Ares system (supposedly to replace the Shuttles) is in my view a horrendous boondoggle. It's "shuttle based" technology in that it uses (for the manned launcher) a single SRB with one extra segment as the first stage, then an Apollo style "capsule" for the manned vehicle. For the cargo launcher, it's basically Shuttle-C, the concept (regrettably never implemented) of replacing an orbiter with a cargo container and engine pod, which would give an enormous LEO cargo capacity. The concept is insane in my view. It maintains the very labor-intensive aspects (and thus costs) of the current program, keeps the worst and most dangerous parts of the design, while throwing away many of the capabilities of the present system. I darkly suspect that the prime motive was political pork: they didn't want to terminate any of the current program. IMHO, they should have gone for an improved shuttle, built with efficiency and ease of maintenance in mind. As things stand now, the Shuttles will be retired in 2010, while the CRV system is still in early development. There will be at least a five year gap between the last shuttle flight and the first manned CRV flight. What really galls me is the supposed mission: This infrastructure is supposed to be used for new Lunar missions. However, it will require multiple launches for each mission, as well as massive changes to the earth-orbital CRV system. What galls me the most: The announced the "lunar mission goal" BEFORE they had come up with sound reasons for doing it! They also still don't have them. The moon can be explored and prospected very well by unmanned vehicles (similar to the current mars rovers) with the advantage that they can be directly remote-controlled in real time. They could operate for years, dozens of them, for the cost of one CRV-based manned mission to the moon. For the idea of a lunar colony the CRV/Ares concept is near useless anyway: insufficient cargo capacity. For Mars? Utterly useless, cheaper and better to design a totally new vehicle with the possible exception of the cargo launcher (which i suspect will be cancelled long before it's built, the same way Shuttle-C was). Finally, there is the promised "family" of shuttle-derived cargo launchers for heavier and heavier cargo. It looks great on paper: just add a beefed up ET and SRB, just move the liquid engines to under the tank, just stretch the tank, etc, etc. The problem is that in the real world, you can't just make changes like that. The engineering challenges are immense and time-consuming. For an example, look at the p;an to add one segment (to the current four) of the SRB in order to use it as the main stage of the CRV: It will take four years, at the earliest, to test launch an SRB with a DUMMY 5th segment, and only a ballast payload. Time to launch of a real 5-segment SRB? 2012, at the earliest. And this, engineering wise, is far easier then their other proposed changes. We are being sold a bill of goods.

James, thank you again for another great article! I wonder, though, if they are missing something here? My first objection is to the notion of the star pulling matter into a planar disk that rotates around the star. The laws of orbital mechanics argue strongly against that. Gravitational attraction would tend to pull in matter from all directions equally, and in order to enter orbit in a rotating belt as indicated, the debris would need to approach the star at an angle, AND be imparted some very significant delta/v at perihelion. My personal take on all this is that there is indeed a belt of orbiting matter (a proto solar system) but that the matter influx can overcome the star's radiation pressure by mass: They are assuming for their model that the matter is at the near-molecular level (otherwise it would not be repelled by radiation pressure for a star of that size) but what basis is there for assuming that mass distribution? None. On the other hand, we have the example of our own kuyper belt and Oort cloud. Much of the matter there is in larger structures (proto comets, etc) that very easily could overcome the star's radiation pressure. So, I think, in my not-so-humble opinion, that they got it partially right: there is indeed a ring of particulate matter in orbit of the star, and that explains their observed data (including the ejectile matter at the stellar poles). However, matter beginning to fall further inwards from that ring still has the delta/v issue: it's in orbit around the star, and would be even more susceptible (due to it's relative delta/v and the resulting greater time of exposure to the radiation pressure) to the radiation pressure once between the star and the belt (and thus no longer shielded by the belt). The matter influx would thus primarily be by objects having sufficient mass for the gravity of the star to have a greater effect that radiation pressure (even masses smaller than a grain of sand would be sufficient.) For objects consisting of mainly hydrogen and helium, they would need to be larger, so that the heat from the star would not turn the mass into monomolecular gas prior to a close enough approach for gravitational capture of said gas. One effect of this mechanism would be to significantly increase the percentage of heavier elements in the later-stage mass infalls. One other item overlooked in the article: radiation pressure is not sufficient at extremely short ranges to overcome the star's gravity even on gas, otherwise large stars could not exist (they would drive off their own coronas and quickly lose their mass).

Thanks Glomph!! It looks like that is a definite problem. Thank you Trebs!!! Those are good ideas, thanks for the insight. Thanks!! But I have to ask, what would lure you into participating in something like this? :-) ROFL! Well, yes, there is that! No, I didn't post the progress. Once it was zero on the first day of all the questions being online, I knew it was a flop. At that point, all encouraging one or two participants would have done would have been to cause the participating Authors to have to produce the prize for a failed effort, and I didn't want to do that to them. Thanks everyone, all the responses have been very helpful, and every opinion is and will be looked into.

*Adam* isn't just interested in a pretty face, he wants someone who will actually speak...words. Nah, blind as a bat! A serious thought though: Joe's "Hypothetical friend" <cough> assumes the object of his interest knows he is gay, because he "basically told him". Now, we all know that assumptions are bad, so perhaps the real issue is that the person of interest does not know that the, errrr, hypothetical friend is either gay or interested? Perhaps the Hypothetical friend could ask the object d'interest's opinion on which photo to pick?

Thanks Kurt! I think it's near unanimous that the difficulty was too high. I'm learning a great deal from all the feedback (thank you everyone!!) Thanks Juss!! I think that what you mention was the biggest problem. Thanks Nick! That's an itreguing idea!!! That way everyone would be on an even footing, and they are short stories! I don't know the release date for the fall anthology, but I seem to recall it being around the very end of October. I very much doubt that we could get everything approved and ready in time for this anthology, but I'll ask about if for future anthologies. Thanks Jack, and everyone. Any and all feedback is VERY much appreciated!!!! CJ

Below, you will find the answers to the Scavenger Hunt Questions. The game did not go well: there were no players! As it turns out, anyone could have won by just sending in the posted answer sheet (which contained an answer to #9, added due to a goof of mine). However, no one did, so the prize went unclaimed. I would very much appreciate it if people could give me their reasons for not playing, so that I can understand what went wrong. Why was the game unappealing to you personally? What about it didn't you like? What could have been done differently that would have made you more likly to play? Please, post in this thread with any opinions or reasons that you can think of. I'll really appreciate it, and you could be helping us avoid a future fiasco of this nature. Thanks Everyone! CJ Viv's Questions: 1 Q: Stephen has a shirt that has three letter on it and they are the initials for what two things? A: L.A.C. stands for Laura Ann Cooper, his mom, and the band Lost and Confused. 2 Q: What color socks did Stephen

Great pictures!!! My personal picks would be the bottom left in both sets. I'll also say that in your <cough> hypothetical situation, The object of your hypothetical interest is totally out of his tiny mind!!!!! (Either that, or 100% straight.) CJ

I agree....let's get the mimes!!!! :2hands: :2hands: :2hands: Um, do mimes carry cash and jewelry??? I think we should let the Mimes speak for themselves.

Same here, I wasn't thinking of anyone in particular. Well, with the possible exception of mine when I had the Scavenger Hunt banner up.

I'm busted! Yep, I knocked the font size down by one.

Graeme, don't tell anyone, but I'll let you in on a secret: Kevin really isn't all that quiet; he does post quite often. He might even be a postaholic in denial. I'm NOT speaking as a moderator here, just a user offering his personal opinion, but I agree. I've reduced the font size on mine, and in my case the graphic is a GA tag that will already be in the cache once anyone views a post of any member of the writer support team. I need to have it there as I'm on two different teams, and it's fairly small, and needed due to me using my sig for team projects. Peronally, I like the smaller sigs, and I'm more inclined to read them, but that's just me.

Don't worry Kevin, if I ever did add that quote to my siggy, no one would ever see it due to me almost never posting.

Totally agreed, and I think it's great when a person's sig reflects their personality Or, even better, when it quotes them.