Chris Howard's Writing Blog

What they're really up to on Mars

You've all seen the "footprint" shot next to the Phoenix Mars Lander?  See the news story in the Guardian here
Mars mission: Phoenix leaves 'footprint' in red planet's soil

What they didn't show you is the full NASA shot with analysis of what's really going on a hop/skip/jump away on the Red Planet.  That's right, there's some hot dancin' happening! --"Looks like an East Coast Swing, possibly a Foxtrot.  There just aren't enough of the prints to establish with certainty the style of dance," said an unnamed soil engineer/ballroom champion. 

"It's like Footloose on an interplanetary scale," said one concerned Mars technician. "They're trying to stop us from dancing, from moving with the beat, from feeling the Martian vibe. I think it's time to call in Mars colonist numero uno: Kevin Bacon help us, you're our only hope."

Here's the super secret real shot:

Amazon's Digital Text Platform

Amazon's Digital Text Platform (DTP) is where you go to manage all of your ebook-selling functions for Kindle, Amazon's eBook Reader--and the "Kindle Store" the place to get all things Kindle, books, newspapers, magazines, and other downloadable content.

DTP follows a simple structure, you have a Shelf with all your ebooks, reports to see what's going on with sales, and your account information--address, identity, and bank account information--who you are, and how you're going to get paid.

I signed up yesterday to include my novel Nanowhere, really just to see how easy it is to get things going with Amazon.  And, yeah, it's very simple.  Some basic account forms to fill out--the same information you need for PayPal--and you're on your way. 

If you're doing this as an "individual" business type, then you may have to get some numbers together first, like a bank account and routing number. I mean, I don't carry this information around with me, but I do have a bank account specifically set up for online stuff--an account separate from our main account.  I recommend this if you're doing business of any sort online--and this is a business arrangement, you're selling books through Amazon.com, and they need to know where to send your money.

You will have to provide one of the following:
Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN)
Social Security Number (SSN)
Employer Identification Number (EIN)

Here's a quick walk-through of the ebook setup (Click any of these images to see the larger versions).

I created a nice readable HTML version of Nanowhere (using simple tagging.  See the link at the end for all the supported tags).  The upload block also has a cool Preview feature to show you what your book's going to look like on a Kindle. 

Then I set a price, and saved the whole thing to my Shelf:

Before you can get your ebooks into the Kindle Store, you need to add your account information:

and--so you can get paid--bank info:

And you're done.  It's free to set up, and anyone with a Kindle can wirelessly download and read your books, articles, stories.

Kindle Stuff:
Supported HTML tags:
http://forums.digitaltextplatform.com/dtpforums/entry.jspa?externalID=30&categoryID=11

http://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin

Kindle books through Fictionwise?  No problem:
http://www.fictionwise.com/help/kindleFaq.htm

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Those crazy guys at the customs office

"An unwitting passenger arriving at Japan's Narita airport has received 142g of cannabis after a customs test went awry..."

A customs agent planted the stuff in a random passenger's bag, the dog never found it, and the luggage left the airpot--excuse me, airport--with the bag. 

Full story at BBC news

I Heart Spuds

I reached into a bag of Lay's Wavy potato chips tonight, and pulled out a heart-shaped one.  Alice and I immediately made a wish and shared it.

Hi5'n in the Galapagos

I'm looking at the global social network map over at Wandamere by way of an analysis of the map post at Valleywag.  It's basically our planet with national boundaries filled in with the color of the dominant social net in that particular country.  My first thought was...how cool.  Then it became obvious that there's a drawback in using the brand colors for mapping when several of the major social nets have all gone blue.  (So, is that MySpace that's taken over America, and Facebook in Canada?) 

My second thought: are they really hot on Hi5 in the Galapagos or did the islands simply get lumped in with Ecuador where Hi5 is hot?

Here's another cool social net face-off between facebook, myspace, orkut, bebo, linkedin over on GoogleTrends, showing news reference and search volumes. 

Check out the giant version of the map here: http://www.wandamere.com/SocialNetworks_WorldMap.png/SocialNetworks_WorldMap-full.jpg

A nasty mix of spam and marine biology

That's my guess.  They want me to try some experimental drug that will turn half of me into a sea urchin, some sort of freak mix of the phyla chordata and echinodermata.  Well, I don't know about you but I'm intrigued.

Got this in my spam box this morning:

Like there was any doubt...

Took the Harry Potter peronsality quiz, and as expected...I just want to shape the world into something more useful.  That's all.

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

Coolness via A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

Googlexical

Must spend more time pondering the keywords the world uses to get to my site.  I've been using Lijit (http://www.lijit.com/) for a month or two, found it very neat to work with--very useful.  Search inside your blog is as important as getting readers to your blog.  Google's going to get them to an archive page, a month of your posts, and leave them there trying to find what they were looking for.  Sign up for Lijit and you get a weekly report on search driven traffic, where your readers came from, and a bunch of other stats--plus the cool search widget.

A couple of my favs:

christopher howard author how to make millions in the oil market

Why are Echinoderms called headless wonders

BTW, I'm ranked first at Google with "Echinoderms," above science journals and blogs.  I've always considered myself more Molluska leaning--rather than Echinodermata, but it's cool, I'm down with the crinoids and brittle stars.

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CONduct (Rules for good conduct at conventions)

Diana Rowland spells it out: How to network at conventions in fourteen easy steps, with a bonus: How to make friends.  (I'm one of those introverted writers who needs help making friends).  I'll be taking all of these with me to World Fantasy in a couple weeks.

via Tobias Buckell  (It's hard to believe someone followed you into the bathroom, still yapping away while you're at the urinal.  Just wrong).

rememble.com

Interesting...People who use rememble.com are Rememblers.  Rememble is,

a 'washing line' for your digital bits and pieces. Thread together texts, photos, videos, sounds, scribbles, scans, notes, tweets... so they're not drifting a digital wasteland.

Free sign-up (promised to be under a minute) and away you go, adding clips, video, audio, from your phone.  I'm kind of liking Nina the intern's idea of creating "a Souvenir Shelf timeline and took a picture of everything one-by-one before she threw it out and Remembled them all. Now her flat (and her head) is clear and her junk is virtual!" 

I'm a total packrat, never throw anything out, and keeping things virtually is very tempting.

via Amazon Web Services Blog

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Make him squeal

Okay, we've had this presidential squeaky toy for a while, George Bush in a black suit, red tie, a bit greyer than he was when Alice's brother sent it to Penny for Christmas.  What's funny is that Penny (Jack Russell Terrier / Australian Herder mix) never cared for George, always singling out the pink squeaky moose, orange hippo, or one of her rope toys.  (And let's not forget the very squeaky green alien which we lost late in the autumn one year and didn't recover him until next spring--after all the snow was gone).

Well Penny has recently taken a rather keen interest in George.  Maybe it's dissatisfaction with Iraq, the Gonzales thing.  Maybe it's because we don't happen to have a Cheney squeaky.  Who knows?  Whatever it is, Penny's all about making the prez squeal now.  He's like her favorite squeaky.

(Here's another great inside Penny post.  Best dog in the whole world).

Click to enlarge:

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Aristotle on the value of biology and Heraclitus taking a dump

Here's Aristotle trying to convince his largely aristocratic students that studying the "less valuable animals," such as fish and rodents and hen's eggs (Not just cavalry horses and lions) is a valuable pastime in itself.  There are things to learn about their actions, the habitats in which they thrive, their eating, sleeping, mating behavior.  Aristotle--before there was a science of biology--had to go out of his way to make it clear that examining all animals and their ways is a worthy exercise.

Read this passage from Parts of Animals (De Partibus Animalium):

(PA I 5, 645a4)  For this reason we should not be childishly disgusted at the examination of the less valuable animals. For in all natural things there is something marvelous. Even as Heraclitus is said to have spoken to those strangers who wished to meet him but stopped as they were approaching when they saw him warming himself at the oven—he bade them to enter without fear, ‘For there are gods here too’—so too one should approach research about each of the animals without disgust, since in every one there is something natural and good.

Here's what's really cool about this passage.  The phrase "warming himself at the oven" is thought to be slang referring to going to the bathroom, i.e., sitting on the pot, taking a dump.  "There are gods here too."  Heraclitus' use of "gods" doesn't refer to actual divinities, but to processes worth discovering, exploring--the idea that some value may be gained by studying what would be considered the lowest of functions of the body.

Of course, another quote--the very famous fragment--from Heraclitus has him saying, "Everything flows..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
http://www.non-contradiction.com/2007/09/on-the-parts-of.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/

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"Pet" in the garden

Looks like we have a large Tomato Hornworm  (Manduca sp.) attacking one of our tomato plants, settling himself down to devour one tomato.  Crazy.  Click any of the pics to see them larger.

And then there's a watermelon.  Hope we have enough warmth left in the season to allow this one to grow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_hornworm
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/dp_hfrr/extensn/problems/hornworm.htm
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2015.html

Building bridges

Story idea...Picture it, rebels control the bridges.  He who controls the spice bridges controls the universe!  I've said it a few times, and I'll keep saying it: if you are a writer of fantasy and you do not subscribe the The Medieval Review list, you're missing some great story generating ideas.  They send you long detailed book reviews by email.

Here's one:

Bridges, Law and Power in Medieval England, 700- 1400 by Alan Cooper. Woodbridge and Rochester (NY); The Boydell Press, 2006.

Alan Cooper's Bridges, Law and Power in Medieval England, 700- 1400, is an important contribution to our understanding of the development of the English laws relating to bridge building and maintenance from Anglo-Saxon times to the final decades of the fourteenth century...

Cooper introduces his subject by explaining that while the peace and stability offered by early medieval kings extended to guarantees that major roads and thoroughfares would be free of obstacles, brigands and other undesirables, such roads were expected to "look after themselves."  The same was not true of bridges, however, which were recognised as needing legal provisions for their upkeep from a very early time.  The changing nature of those legal provisions is the central concern of the book...

The full review is a couple pages long. Subscribe here: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tmr/

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I love the process

Donato Ginacola on his sketching process with "toned paper worked with pencil and chalk" and some wonderful early sketches next to finished pieces over on Irene Gallo's blog.  I love having a view into an artist's process.

• http://www.donatoart.com/
• http://igallo.blogspot.com/2007/09/donato-ginacola-on-sketching.html

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So you want to build a treehouse?

You have to start with the perfect tree.  I was digging through some archived files and came across a photo set with this beautiful tree at Bonfante Gardens (which I believe has since been re-branded Gilroy Gardens).  Took this one in 2004.

Well, if you were going to build a treehouse, or had to move the family off the forest floor for some reason--or if you have to deal with the unforeseen arrival of exiles from Valinor--here's the tree for you.

About: http://www.bonfantegardens.com/circus.html

I was unaware of the use of sunflowers as temporal accelerators

But apparently it's a known phenomenon: The Art Department

Put me squarely in Seth's camp

Tobias Buckell posts quotes from Seth Godin and Peter Watts.  Sure, there's a context difference, but there's also a clear here's-my-view-of-the-world in each of these, and it's interesting how wholeheartedly accepted and different the two are.

Okay, dammit, she's a vampire

Sometimes things don't work out the way you intend, and this is one of those times.  Blame it on watercolors.  The more I look at this one, the more I see the teeth.  It's obvious that she's a blood-sucker.  So, I cut out the lyre, moved the sig over, and voila!  She's now my favorite vampire Alice from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, New Moon, and soon, Eclipse (August 7th!).

Click the pic to see it larger.

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/

Stephenie Meyer MySpace

Flipped

I just signed up for an account at Flip.com because it seems like an interesting service and because I sign up for absolutely everything.  (See right column top).  I saw Marureen's link to a flip book for her latest novel, [Alien] Girl at Sea, and thought knowing about Flip may come in handy at some point. 

http://www.flip.com

Ask Me About Stamps

Check out the Discworld stamps:

http://www.joerg-neidig.de/stamps/index.html

http://www.discworldemporium.com/catalog.php?category=2

Blogging and connecting

I posted a week ago about our trip to Seattle, and trekking across the state of Washington to Idaho.  While in Seattle, we spent several hours at the Pacific Science Center.  A day after mentioning this here, I get an email from a VP at the Pacific Science Center, thanking me for mentioning it. 

Now, the tech is fairly trivial, and has existed for a while.  Anyone can use Google alerts to get an email anytime anyone mentions anything with the specified keywords, but I still think it's cool that individuals at some companies, organizations, and not-for-profit educational institutions that inspire "lifelong interest in science, math and technology by engaging diverse communities through interactive and innovative exhibits and programs in every county of Washington state and beyond" take the time to email a thanks to people who mention or link back to their site.  Bravo Pacific Science Center.

Link: http://pacificsciencecenter.org/

WWI Memorial

My dad and I spent an hour Saturday morning walking up the hill from the Crown Center in Kansas City to the Liberty Memorial, a big neo-classical structure with a 217 foot tower.  There's a wonderful World War One museum inside, full of stories and uniforms, land and sea weapons, interactive touch boards that explain political events, how machine guns work, and a lot more.  If you're ever in the area, I definitely recommend taking the time to walk through the museum.

http://www.libertymemorialmuseum.org/
Google Map

See the full set on Flickr (56 photos)

What's your rating?

I found this interesting:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• knife (3x)
• sex (1x)

What's weird is that I can't remember ever using the word "knife" in a post.  Three times?  It's not that I have anything against knives.  I'm just not a knife sort of fellow.

(Saw this on Cocktail Party Physics). Get your own blog rating here:  http://mingle2.com/blog-rating

Lighthouse Kids

Amy over on Atlantic Avenue posts about a cool event the weekend after next: "a walk-a-thon Friday, May 18, to raise money for ongoing repairs and maintenance of White Island Light, New Hampshire's only ocean lighthouse."

More

Here's my post on why lighthouses make great story settings--and includes the above pic of White Island light.

Orson Whales

Melville, Bonham (Drummer for Led Zep), and Itin--currently working as artist-in-residence at the Institute for the Future of the Book.  Check out the animated Moby Dick:

Link: IT IN place » Blog Archive » Orson Whales.

Clear and present...

Pay a $100 and FlyClear will get you through the airport security lines faster.

Links
OhGizmo
Popgadget

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows cover

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows gets a cover.

American and British covers:

Links:

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/books/harry_potter_nerds_get_new_cover_to_argue_over_55879.asp

When the old 2D map just won't cut it anymore

It's time to throw out that old wrinkled repaired-with-Scotch-tape map of the dark matter in the universe.  It's not like you've ever been able to fold it back up again, right?  And now there's no need to because a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology and from the associated laboratories of the CNRS and the CEA, have "made the first three-dimensional map of dark matter in the Universe using gravitational lensing effects."

Check out the story at SpaceDaily.com

And it was all done by "analyzing the COSMOS field, the largest field of galaxies ever observed with the Hubble space telescope."

Context isn't everything

But it sure helps.  Take this headline for example:

Genetically distinct devils give new hope

Depending on where you are in the world, what era you think we're living in, movie influences, weltanshaung, socio-economic status, your frame of mind--even how stable your mind is--you might expect a very different news story under that headline.

Before you lift the flap and reveal the answer...hell, who cares, it's about Tasmanian devils, of course, cute and furry with sharp teeth and a disdain for cuddling.

Here's the flap for the curious:  Click to see the news story.

But just imagine we live in a very different world, one in which our minds are less stable for instance, and then imagine a news story that isn't about large carnivorous marsupials, but...something else, something monstrous, smelling of brimstone, etc.  Why would genetically distinct devils give new hope?  Do the genetically distinct ones have more power?  Sharper horns, longer tails, pitchier forks?  What the hell's going on?  Do the devils control the news services? 

In a related story, New Zealand fishermen in the Ross Sea have caught what's thought to be the largest squid ever found anywhere in the world, weighing an estimated 450kg.

Something to think about...

...the next time you design your imaginary city from the ground up.  We all know Athens.  You know, Socrates, Plato, Perikles, democracy, parrhesia, but did you know the city name is plural?  How many plural city names can you think of?  In Greek, Athens, Athenai--is like saying "Athenses".  Only one Lakaidemon.  Only one Korinth.  Many Athenses.

Lethal Garden

It's fun to look back...way back, to sort your "writing" directory by date and go through stuff you wrote years ago.  I keep my fiction, non-fiction, and notes all in the same place.  Here's a bit of over-the-top description for an essay on tide pools I wrote four or five years ago:

A tide pool is a micro-habitat, a haven from the hazards of low tide, a bowl of life that can sustain animals and plants far from their normal habitats.  The competition for space and food is high, and it's not entirely safe:  fluctuations in salinity from rain or evaporation can be deadly.  A hot sun can turn the pool into soup.  But for natural tide pool residents endurance is a matter of life, of preservation.

In quite a few ways, a tide pool is like an aquarium, a closed system, at least until the tide returns.  The pool is subject to many of the same problems a new aquarium faces, dissolved oxygen levels may decrease, waste products, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate increase.  Of course, the tide pool inhabitants must endure these problems only a matter of hours, and most creatures, even the most delicate, can fend for itself that long.

External factors, like weather, can destroy the balance of a tide pool in a matter of minutes.  A heavy rain can drop salinity levels well below anything a marine plant or animal can tolerate.  There have been reports of up to seventy-five percent mortality rates among certain littoral species after severe rains.  Likewise, a hot sun can increase salinity levels and temperature above bearable levels.  (Mostly pure water is lost in evaporation, leaving much of the salts and minerals behind).  There are other dangers, like a seagull dropping its feces in the pool, decaying fish and seaweed.

The danger is almost over-shadowed by the beauty.  The tide pool is a lethal garden, with anemones flowering in the still water and brittle stars coiling in the sand, waiting for the refugees from low tide to wander in.  Natural tide pool inhabitants have learned either how to avoid being eaten by the other inhabitants, or that life is a constant struggle to maintain territory, and the possibility of being eaten is simply part of the design. Everything else, the plankton, fish and crustaceans stranded in the pool during the ebb are unwillingly added to the menu.

All of these factors contribute to make tide pool life precarious at best.

Precarious?  ...oh please.

Meme...

I deplore the institution of meming on ontological grounds, but I can't help myself.  ;)

Skott at Textiplication has tagged me with,

Five things about me that most people don’t know:

1. I'm an army brat, which means my father was an officer in the U.S. Army, and my brother and sister and I received all the amenities that go along with dad's rank, you know, maids, butlers, someone to turn down the bed, someone who goes around and lights all the candles at sunset, horses, carriages, tea--oh wait, wrong era.  I mean we were shunted off to different parts of the world (sometimes in the middle of the night), we moved from place to place every couple years, never had any long term friendships, always a new school--four different high schools in fact, and tea.

2. I was (picture me squeezing my thumb and forefinger together) this close to really wanting to be a marine biologist.  Actually, I still do.  Damn priorities.

3. I founded (with a couple friends) one of those late-nineties dot coms that raised twelve million dollars, had offices in London and San Jose, and then augered in around 2001.  We worked eighteen hours a day for two years, and all I have are a few t-shirts and a California license plate to show for it.

4. I play guitar and bass guitar--not very well, more playing with them than actually playing some would say.

5. The subject of the earliest drawing that I was really proud of was a whale breaching.  It was a cartoon whale with an open mouth and geyser-like plume of water and vapor coming out its head.  I was five years old, going to Linbrook School in Springfield, VA (where we lived for a year and a half while my dad was in Viet Nam), and the detail that made me think I could actually draw?  Something I did to give the mouth some depth, not just a line but a line that wrapped around the head with another curving around to mark the inside of the mouth.  Sounds strange, but I thought it was really cool.  Sadly, I lost that picture somewhere between Virginia and California, or Japan, or some other place.

Okay, so I guess the idea here is that I then tag others so this thing spreads virally.  I'm not holding my breath. 

I tag the last four commenters: Lee, Karen, Erica and Koray!

Cthulhu is my friend!

And he/it even left me a comment on MySpace describing the nature of our friendship, something about slow digestion and other unpleasant stuff--which, I guess, seems fair as this is payment for "immediate gratification through all the power, wealth and prestige associated with allegiance to the Great Old Ones."

Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  Hell, I'm voting for him in the next presidential election. Cthulhu in '08! I'm thinking there's something we can do with Oh-Ate?

http://www.myspace.com/the0phrastus

Hello Cthulhu

They found my secret Arctic stash of giant sea reptiles!

Hah!  I still have my Antarctic store from which to draw (On those occasions when I need large quantities of skeletal plesiosaurs). 

News story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5403570.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plesiosaur
http://www.plesiosauria.com/

Discord just might be what's needed here

Diane Duane posts about the planet formerly known as Xena.

It's to be called Eris, and Diane suggests an apple as the planetoid's symbol.  An apple is perfect, except that I can see Apple Computer and the Beatles' record label tying in the music of the spheres to pull Eris into litigation.  Presumably, both will lobby the UAL to promote Eris to full-fledged planet status with corresponding deeper pockets. 

Hey, maybe this is how we get our beloved Pluto back!  We pack the UAL vote with the Apple Corps!

Weather, combat and other factors

I've had to think about the kinds of armor that work well underwater, very lightweight (magically light), plated, flexible, strong against missile weapons, spears, lances.  With magic, I can get away with a lot. 

Gabriele at The Lost Fort posts about troubles the Romans faced at the disastrous battle of the Teutoburg Forest, and the general nastiness of fighting in bogs in armor soaked from rain, in a dark woods far from home.

Don't download this song

Saw this on Scalzi's blog.

And I wanted so badly for it to be a real sea monster

First, what's up with the Russian military and their apparent obsession with the paranormal, aliens and unidentified quirks in biology?  Is it really the military or just guys in camo, smoking cigarettes militarily? 

Anyway, this thing allegedly washed up on the beach, the guys with cigs were called out to take pictures and whamo, it’s all over the Net, a freaky, hairy, dragonlike sea monster washes up on the shore, and I imagine the "crypto-zoologists" are going nuts.  "It has been said that it was taken by Russian special services for in-depth studies, and we are lucky that people who encountered it first made those photos before it was brought away."

Sadly, it's the skeletal remains of a Beluga whale draped in a bunch of sea debris.  I love dragons and sea monsters.  I wish this was the real thing.

Compare with this pic of a Beluga skull.  More on the Beluga.

Here's the article in English Russia: Unknown creature was found by soldiers

You want a rock?

Send NASA Mars scientists your rocks. 

Mars scientists are asking students from around the world to help them understand the red planet. Send in a rock collected by you or your classroom from your region of the world, and we will use a special tool like the one on the rover to tell you what it's made of. Then everyone can compare their rocks to the ones found on Mars.

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/rockworld/

Doing the victory walk

Yup.  Because I'm a self-absorbed egomaniacal bastard (aren't we all), I Googled myself ("Chris Howard" in quotes) to see where I rank, and guess what?  I'm number one, baby.  Numero uno.  Ichiban. 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22chris+howard%22

I collect heart-shaped stones...

It's interesting how tiny details become significant in a story.  The summer before Chloe and I wrote The Wreath, we (the whole family) were walking along Hampton Beach and this woman looked up from a handful of beach rocks and told us, "I collect heart-shaped stones."  She even gave us one that she had collected that day. 

That night, I took that moment down in my journal, and five months later, I used it as the code phrase that meant you were against the king and willing to help smuggle a Sea-born exile out of the ocean and hide him or her on land.  Chloe also thought there should be some significance to the shape itself, and so, we borrowed from legend the trilithon (three-stones) tri = three, lithos (Grk.) = stone) and used that as a device that a Sea-born can clamp around a source of water (drinking fountain, water faucet, etc.) and make a path through it to some other source of water, a lake, the ocean, etc. 

All this brings me to the crazy picture I've posted below. Alice is digging in the front yard, creating an area for a "butterfly garden" that promises to be something really cool next spring and summer—the idea being that you plant a bunch of plants and flowers that butterflies like and they will hang out in your yard.

And this is what she digs up:

I don't know if it comes across in the image, but this heart-shaped stone is about a foot across.  Really cool.

"A world of fantasy like no other"

So I get this email from Disney...

It begins with "Dear Christopher" and goes on to tell me that I will be able to...

"Live out Disney dreams like never before. Soon, you won't just see princesses.  You'll be able to imagine yourself as one ... You'll be able to immerse yourself in a world of fantasy like no other..."

Wait.  Hold on.  I can be a princess if I want to?  Wow!  <closing my eyes>  I just have to imagine it?  <tighter> ...  <sigh> I'm just not feeling the princess vibe.  Should I be wearing a tiara?  Would that help?  Maybe I have to stand inside the gates of Disney World.  That's it!  It is the Magic Kingdom after all.  Wait, there's a video?  Is it like a how-to?

Blond highlights--they're not just for summer...

...on Mars.  That's right, if you can cope with the other corrosive constituents in the snow, Mars is the place for aspiring platinum blonds--with an affinity for extreme snowboarding.  Time to apply my "I'd Rather Be Solar Sailing" bumpersticker! 

Found this at MarsDaily: The Hydrogen Peroxide Snows Of Mars

"The planet-wide dust storms that periodically cloak Mars in a mantle of red may be generating a snow of corrosive chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, that would be toxic to life, according to two new studies published in the most recent issue of the journal Astrobiology."

Copper Canoe

If you're ever in New England, you must come up (or down for those in Maine) to southern New Hampshire for the very short but beautiful coastline.  We have a nice mix of sandy shore (Surf New Hampshire!) and rocky shore--with tidepools and all the slimy boulders and cool intertidal zone inhabitants that go with them.

And if you're here, you must stroll around Exeter, a few miles inland, which has some wonderful shops, galleries and restaurants, including Water Street Books, Time of Wonder Books, and