Hey, look, this is still here!

Continued from last post but one

After this observation, the haze closed in again and no observation was possible for a while. When the sky cleared again, the sunspot had moved. Moved much further in an hour or so than a sunspot ordinarily moved in a day, but just about as much as the planet Mercury would have moved.

To understand what Gassendi was expecting to see, we must cast our minds back some 1500-odd years before Gassendi, to about the year 150 AD. At that time, the astronomer we know as Claudius Ptolemy published a book which came to be known by the name Almagest, from an Arabic expression meaning the greatest, although Ptolemy himself modestly called it simply a Mathematical Treatise. By whatever name, the book was a set of mathematical procedures for predicting the future location of planets in the sky based on observations of their past locations. This was a difficult task, since the motion of the planets is strangely irregular, or so it must have seemed to the ancient Greek astronomers.

I saw the Wolverine movie for nothing

Explanation:
My Friendly Local Comic Book Store has been running a promotion all summer long that if you brought in ticket stubs from a list of 7 or 8 movies you could get in a drawing for a chance at 2 movie tickets a week for a year.  One of the movies was Wolverine, which I didn't particularly want to see. But I saw it anyway for the chance at the tickets.
They held the drawing this evening, and I didn't win.
Oddly, however, it still cheered me up to clap for the guy who did win, although probably not as much as winning around $1200 worth of movie tickets would have!

One post in every calendar year, that's my motto.

And so far it hasn't steered me wrong, as Theophile Escargot said in a different context.

Paris. November 7, 1631. Pierre Gassendi has been watching the sun for two days, now, hoping to see something that no one in the history of the world has ever before seen: the passage of the planet Mercury across the face of the sun, a transit of Mercury.
Not that this has never happened before. In fact, it happens about 13 times every century, at irregular intervals. But no one before Gassendi has had both the tools and foreknowledge to observe the transit.
The foreknowledge is courtesy of the recently deceased German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who four years earlier in 1627 had published his Rudolphine Tables, the most accurate astronomical tables computed up to that time (all calculations done by hand, of course) and a year before, in 1630, had published an "Admonition" pointing out to Europe's astronomers that a transit of Mercury was predicted for November 7th, and advising that they watch for it, cautiously suggesting that they watch from November 6th to the 8th in case of errors in his observations or computations. Gassendi, even more cautious, decided to start watching on the 5th.

“Yeah? And what then?” Greyson asked.
Cargill sipped more mocha chai. “Well, while I was running from the cannibals (if they were cannibals) I literally ran right into Clete, and he was running from a gang of… of gangsters, I guess.”
“Gangsters in the middle of the jungle?” Greyson waved at the server.
“Why not? We’d already run into a gorilla tribe, the Jungle King, the elephant graveyard, and a river full of piranha.”
“Yes, sir?” The server inquired.
“Can I get a refill here?” Greyson indicated his empty mug.
“Right away,” she said.
“But gangsters don’t seem to fit the theme,” Greyson objected.
“Yeah, well, there they were. And it turned out to be a good thing, really.”
Greyson silently raised his eyebrows.

Aonip returns!

Can I manage more than 3 posts this year?
Also, I owe my writing group a page of prose (or poetry, or something!) today, so here goes nothing:

Aluminium siding?

Well, naoow, it's a funny thing yew should ask about aluminium siding just naoow. I 'mind me of a time I was out Bettellgeeyoos way -- what? Well, eff it's pro-nounced 'beetle juice' then why in the name of supernovas ent it spelled 'beetle juice'? Who ever heard of such a thing as beetle juice? It's a dis-turbing concept. And there ent no beetles out that way, anyways, as I should know. 'Beetle juice' my eye.

As I was sayin', I was out Bettellgeeyoos way, some time back, peacefully prospectin' fer darstell amongst the dead stars, when one o' them Galactic He-ros shows up. Yew know the type, ray-guns in both hands, and in the feet too, half of 'em; blowing up planets and stars left and right; and a-tryin' to ex-terminate some poor Bug-Eyed Monsters because they thought one of 'em looked funny at their girlfriend, er boyfriend, as the case may be. Now I ask yew: Do that make any sense at all? O'course a Bug-Eyed Monster's gonna look at yew funny, they can't help it! They're bug-eyed! That's why they're called Bug-Eyed Monsters!

Anyways, this Galactic He-ro, I fergit his exact name, Pinball Pellican er something like that, he ups to me as I'm a-digging fer darstell in the dead starfields out back of Bettellgeeyoos IX and says, he says, "Pray excuseth me, goodfellow, but canst thou directeth me wherein I mightst findest mineselfest a goodly supply of varny?" --er words to that effect.

Naow, as a law-abidin' citizen of the Moderen Eera, I expect yew ent never heerd of 'varny', but back in my ol' pappy's day it were another name fer whats properly called varnioopium, ef there be any proper name fer that devil's brew, and yew don't need to know any more about it then that yew should stay as faar away from the stuff as yew can git.

So, hearing this yer Pellican ask about 'varny', which word ent been used in a century by anybody but a Perfesser o' History, I knows right away that he must be a-tryin' to sneak into what he would'a called a 'varny cave', that being another superannuated term fer any place whar the users of various kinds of ill-eagle stimulants gather, in order to bring 'em to justice, as I expect he'd say, an' he thinks he'll fit right in, using his 'hep slang'.

Naow, I ent got enny use fer ill-eagle stimulants, er their users either, so I'm perfectly happy to help him out, even if he do be a He-ro, but I don't know about enny varnioopium an' I hope I never do. However, I do know what I just been a-tellin' yew, that using the word 'varny' will mark the poor boob as a Perfesser er a He-ro er worse and enny 'varny' users who hear it will seal up tighter than a nebular hydro-grazer what's run into a pogo-stick, as th' Immortal Bard once put it. So I try an' enlighten the fella.

"It ent called 'varny', hereabouts," I says. "Ef'n yew want ta find it, yew best be asking fer Berry Millions," that being the term at. the. time. fer the stuff, and it ent the term now and no I ent telling yew how I knew.

Well, yew would have thought I told him the star bats was a-fixing to install gravity stills in his grandma's curlers. He shoots up 30 feet in the air, er in the vacuum to git technical, an' when he comes down, he starts a-yellin' questions about who this 'Millions' is an' where he is an' who else I know an' what else I know, an' I come to realize he thinks "Berry Millions" is the name of a person who sells 'varny'. When I git done laughin', I try to set him straight, but he ent having enny. 'Berry Millions' is the name of a 'varny' seller and that's the end of it. I finally convince him I don't know nothing else but 'Berry Millions', which is pretty close to Supernova's honest truth, but I never get him to understand that 'Berry Millions' ent a person. Off he goes, sayin' "the patrol thankest thou for thine information, goodcitizen," and whether he found his varny or not I never knew.

Aluminium siding? Whoever said it had ennything to do with aluminium siding? Why ever would yew ask sech a fool question?

One post every six months is a doable goal, surely?

Blogging about not blogging is a kind of anti-meta-blogging joke that doesn't even really amuse me.
There's a distinct lack of concentrated awesome, isn't there? Where is the concentrated awesome?
I think the space travelers must find it at the Core of the Galaxy:

"Exploding Suns! Galaxy-eating Singularities! Holes in the Very Fabric of Reality! Superintelligent beings made of Pure Thought!"

"Down, boy!" Bob made calming motions at Brown.

Brown grinned. "Don't try to kid me, you faker. You're as excited as I am."

Bob coughed.

"Are there really things like that, there?" Donna asked.

Before either Bob or Brown could answer, the MM vented steam loudly enough to make them jump. "Nobody knows what's there."

"But it must be something pretty amazing, all the same," Brown insisted. "Maybe something every more amazing than we've ever thought of."

The MM performed the mechanical equivalent of a shrug. "Perhaps, perhaps not. In any event, we won't know until we get there. In the meantime, I'm long overdue for a maintenance overhaul. If you want me, I'll be in the mechanics bay rebalancing my mainsprings." He clanked off around a corner and somehow disappeared in the distance at the same time.

Donna shuddered. "That's so weird."

Brown chuckled. "That's nothing. You should see the engine room!"

"I don't think I want to."

* * *

"Let's review," Bob said. "It looks like Xanthippus' distorter has sent him round the bend from merely mad..."
Bob bowed.
"...to omnicidally insane."

"What?" Donna asked from her upside-down post on the overstuffed chair.

"He wants to kill everything in the universe."

"What he wants," the MM said, "is to enslave everything in the universe."

"There's no practical difference," Brown argued. "He can't do that, and he'll either accidentally destroy everything with that distorter by trying, or else when he figures out it has no chance of working he'll destroy everything on purpose. You saw what he did to the..." he paused, glancing at Donna. "To the boarding house."

"Hmmp." Donna said. "I'm not a little kid. I know that wasn't a boarding house."

"Hmmp yourself. Little girls are supposed to be sweet and innocent," Brown began.

"Oh stop it! I hate that kind of stuff!" Donna snapped. "I told you, I'm not a little kid!"

Brown cleared his throat. "Oh. Um. OK. Sorry." There was a brief silence. "Anyway," he went on, "One way or another, X is going to end up destroying the universe, either on purpose or accidentally, if someone doesn't stop him."

"Agreed," Bob said. The MM emitted a mechanical sound indicative of assent.

"Then we better stop him," Donna said.

"How?" Bob asked.

"How should I know, you're the science guys."

"I don't know either," said Brown, "but I think X, at least, thinks we have some way to stop him, based on his actions. Something I have, or can do..."

"Or me, or Donna, or the MM," Bob suggested.

"Maybe." Brown was dubious. "I think he was aiming at me, though, even before we left Earth."

"Maybe it's this thing," Donna said, gesturing to snap the "spagoyenator" into sudden visibility.

"Maybe. But we don't know. For now, the only thing I can think of is to track him down as fast as we can and try to think what can stop him while we do it."