Posts Tagged ‘cosmology’

Not by a Longshot?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Longshot magazine (formerly 48 HR magazine*) screamed onto the internet/magazine/media experimentation scene in May, and went for round two this past weekend. Never heard of it? The magazine’s maxim is as follows: Produce a full, glossy and finished issue in 48 hours or less(!).

The editors pull it off by decreeing a theme, then granting hopeful contributors 24 hours** to submit their text, photos, illustrations and other content. In the following 24 hours, the mag’s staff selects, arranges, generates art, edits, fact-checks, copyedits, designs and posts a final product to an on-demand magazine publisher called MagCloud.

I didn’t make the cut in issue “zero” (as I lament in another post), themed hustle, nor did I make it this time around in issue one, themed comeback.

But I’m not too bummed about it, seeing as there were hundreds of submissions, many by writers I hold immense respect for. I can also see many reasons why my submission wasn’t published — in a way, I’m glad. To name a couple shortcomings, the piece had at least one three errors (fixed in this version), weird structure (not fixed) and lacked enough context/explanation (not fixed).

In my defense, I hope Longshot manages to launch an issue when I:

a) am not moving at a high rate of speed

b) have a reliable (or any) internet connection

and

c) can commit my full, undivided attention for more than a few minutes at a time

Even if that day never arrives, I’ll still crank out content for them in a frenzied, disorderly way. In the meantime, constructive criticism is welcome:

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The most amazing thing about the universe

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Kepler's supernova remnantLast weekend, Kendra and I had dinner and drinks with some friends. Put two nerds together, and we eventually get to talking about science…

One of my particular guilty pleasures is waxing poetic about our astoundingly meager place in the universe. It reliably makes my skin crawl. (Think that’s weird? Please subtract some points from your nerd score.)

So we somehow managed to corner our helpless guests with tall tales about what is known about space. Where spacecraft have visited and what they’ve observed; if we think life is out there, and where; when we’ll get to Mars, if ever; if any habitable planets are nearby; how large the universe is thought to be; where does matter come from; and so on.

As we threw back our beers at the local pub, one friend dropped the question any science enthusiast salivates over:

“What do you think is the most amazing thing about the universe?” (more…)