SuperInterview (Go see Serenity on Friday!!)

The concept of this interview blew my mind (thanks for the link, Jac!). Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon interviewed together.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1109313,00.html

These are probably my two very favorite people who create entertainment things. Please check out both of their movies (Mirrormask and Serenity)!

I haven't seen Mirromask yet (and probably won't get to for a long time), but Serenity is the best movie I have ever seen, and I saw an unfinished version in May.

CNN Moon poll

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/09/18/space.moon.reut/index.html

CNN Quick Vote:
Should NASA begin a multibillion dollar program to send people and cargo to the moon?

Vote here.

(and vote "yes"!)

approaching the end of the first week of ISU

School continues to be good. All the classes are full of space. The library is full of space books. The faculty is all space people. There's this whole theme thing... of space. It's exciting. The library, especially, because I actually have time to read books. It's this whole wacky thing.

After the "treasure hunt" yesterday, we had a reception from the mayor's office in the Hotel de Ville with a welcome address and then local wine, beer, and breads (kougelhopf, bretzel). Because we're in France, and there's lots and lots and lots of bread, all the time.

Then we went to dinner at a local tarte flambee (flamenkuch) place and had all we could eat tarte flambee (which are kinda like pizzas except they're made on tortillas, there's not tomoto sauce, and they come with cheese and sour cream-ish sauce on them... this place serves mushroom ones, sauer kraut ones, cheese/sour cream ones, and another kind that has something that might be ham on it). Point is that they're delicious. Then we went out to a couple more local bars in a group of about 20, and I was home by 1 am. Because the trams stop running at 12:30 and classes start every weekday at 8:45 am, so you gotta watch the time. If you miss the last tram, it's a 15 euro taxi ride or a two-hour walk from the centre of Strasbourg to Illkirch.

Oh, classes! At some point I should talk about them. The structure goes like this:
8:45 - 9:45, lecture 1
10:00 - 11:00, lecture 2
11:15 - 12:15, lecture 3
12:15 - 14:00, lunch
14:00 - 18:00, random things like another lecture, info on assignments, language classes, meetings with our advisors.

So far the lectures we've had have been: Political Rationale of Space Activities; Why and How Do We Go into Space; The MSS/MSM Programs, History of Space Activities I and II; Space Mission Definition and Architecture; Space Economics; Electromagnetic Spectrum; Strasbourg Environment; Intro to Satellite Applications: RS, Telecom, Navigation; Cosmology: Origin and Fate of the Universe; Intro to Military Space Applications, and Intro to Space Systems Design.
Tomorrow is Space Mission Reqirements and Trade-Offs; Space Business; and Sources of International Law.

It's been very interesting, and exactly what I want... an introduction to every aspect of space.

We've had two group assignments that are due in the next couple of weeks; our first presentation is on Tuesday and is about Emerging Countries and space involvement, and our project is on Kazakhstan. The second is an educational outreach thing called "Physics on Stage" and we have to come up with a way to convey the topic of radiation and space for high school students in a fun and interesting way.

Yeah, so that's what I've been up to the last couple of weeks.

ISU with our new anti-gypsy camper strategy implemented. Yes, they're giant logs. But it'll work, and keep people from coming close and throwing rocks at the windows, so that's good.  

ISU students and faculty in the square in front of the cathedral. "In front of the cathedral" is the usual meeting place for just about everything in the center, which is a good thing because about 27 billion little streets connect to this area and each one has about 30 billion little shops and restaurants on it. That's the post office in the background where I later bought some stamps so I can send some letters back to the US.  

Here's a closer shot of the main entrance. It's quite detailed and involved. 

This is the big cathedral in the center of the center. It's really gorgeous. I'll try to take a better picture of it soon. 

The students of ISU Masters program 2006 in an alley after getting off the boat waiting for the start of our Strasbourg clue competition.  

The Council of Europe building. 

Lots of fancy architecture. The bridge we're about to go under was cool, too. 

This is us rising in the lock between two levels of water in the river. There's no pump in this... they just use the water equilibrium and let it in and out.  

Typical houses of Strasbourg. We learned earlier that these houses can actually be taken apart, carried to other places, and reassembled. The flowers in the windows are everywhere (I think they're geraniums). The stork is supposed to be a symbol of the city, too.  

We passed lots of very lovely things and each seat had headphones playing recorded descriptions of the things we were passing in several different languages on different channels you could select with a knob. I didn't listen to all of it because I was talking about NASA with Gary Martin (previously NASA's Space Architect) most of the time, but I took lots of pictures, which I will now share with you.  

Okay so yesterday we had a boat tour of the city, pretty much the touristyiest thing you can do, ever. But it was cool and pretty. And uncomfortably HOT because it's always hot here so far. I think it's rained once since I've been here. Anyway, going under the many bridges (like shown here) for a moment of cool shade made the entire boat (over a hundred people) say "ahhh" in unison several times.  

It occurs to me that I should have cleaned up before taking the pictures, but after the spider thing, I was thinking about it, so I did it then anyway. No a/c (in France) so that open window with the metal blinds is my cooling system. The desk space is spacious, and the bed isn't bad. Note that both of my doors are painted bright pink that you see in the left edge of the picture. I hate pink, but somehow I completely don't notice the bright bright pinkness of it unless I'm thinking of it (like now). They like the bright colors.  

The shower half of the bathroom... note that the scale is defined by the towel. The bathtub is adorably half-sized and the shower head mounts on the side of the tub there, not overhead, but I have my own shower and bathtub, so I'm delighted.  

My "kitchette." The spiderful sink, cupboards, two hotplates, and fridge. 

So then I finally got a room in Residence Schumann near campus. My first encounter with wildlife in France: my shortlived friend the ginormous spider with big fuzzy fangs. This was the largest spider I've ever seen that wasn't a wolf spider or a tarantula. Big. See the fangs?  

And here's the school. It's a really nice building. Note the rock in the middle of the bridge. This is to keep the gypsies from driving across. Also note the gypsy camp in the back. This was a low-gypsy count day in the first week. There was a convention or something on the main lawn with several dozen campers (pulled by Mercedes) for most of the first two weeks I was here with different groups coming and going. You can't see it, but the bridge actually goes over a little mini-moat.  

In the common room of the hostel... cute little booths, a perrier vending machine, ping pong, the pay internet stations, and (not pictured) the Last Action Hero pinball machine, Cruisin' USA, Mortal Kombat 2, and Street Fighter 2 video game machines.  

This is the hostel where I stayed for the first week. It was in a nice little nook near a small river, the bus stop, and a really loud train track. 

This is from the window of some of my new friends' flat in Petite France. It's typical of a street in Strasbourg. Somehow cars actually drive down these roads. Tiny tiny cars. It's wacky. 

This was a pic that I took from the airplane on my way into SXB (Strasbourg International Airport).