So...

...you hate skeeters, right?

There might be a new way to keep the little critters from biting you: Making your blood deadly.

A regimen of Ivermectin for three days makes your blood poisonous to mosquitos for a month - will this be added to doctor's recommendations for people traveling to areas with malaria?

(Taking it regularly enough to last all summer, unfortunately, pushes the balance of side effects as opposed to good effects too far the other way. Hopefully we'll get a West Nile vaccine soon).

I'll see everyone at AwesomeCon this weekend!

So, the good news and the bad news

Just going to be fannish today.

Marvel: We're taking Dan Slott off of Amazing Spider-Man after nine years.

Me: Nooooooooooooo.

Marvel: Here is the new Fantastic Four book to be written by Dan Slott.

Me: ...

Me: Where's my Dan Slott Appreciation Banner?

(Now, there's no guarantee he'll be as good with the First Family as he has been with Peter, but...but...)

Cyberpunk Is Here

...or at least, aesthetic ware is.

A company has literally produced a powered implant that does nothing but make a red star glow under your hand. (The next generation will allow compatible devices to be operated by gesture).

Metallic temporary tattoos have been used to put QR codes on models so the audience can pull up more about their clothes - and may replace your con badge (they last three days - about the right length of time).

Of course, the problem with implants is that they may be vulnerable to hacking. Or your hand implant may interfere with the connection of your bluetooth keyboard...

But I've always liked the idea of some of these purely aesthetic things. Like, say, color-changing tattoos that can be programmed to disappear at work - or when your mother shows up.

So, About That Chinese Space Station

It's coming down.

And it's probably coming down this weekend. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it doesn't decide to make re-entry on April 1 (when I'll be at AwesomeCon. I won't say what I'm up to ;)).

The current likely window is between Saturday morning and Monday morning.

Don't worry. The chance of it landing on your head is considerably less than being struck by lightning. It's very unlikely the toilet will kill anyone (Geek points to anyone who gets that reference).

First Reaction To SyFy's "Krypton."

A show about Superman's homeworld? The concept intrigued me - even as I suspected that something might be going on under the surface.

SyFy has been here before - Caprica, the prequel show to Battlestar Galactica was a very similar concept. It was never hugely popular and lasted a single season.

Is Krypton going to do any better? It's tied in to a far larger property, of course, and with Supergirl doing pretty well on the CW and noted write Bendis taking over the Superman comics, Superman is hot despite...well, let's not go into why Zach Snyder should not be allowed anywhere near the character ever again.

The first episode did a reasonable job of setting the scene without exposition, but it somehow didn't feel like Krypton. It might have been young Seg-El's hairdo, it might have been the body language of the characters, but the Krypton of the show to me felt like...

...like a vaguely evil Vulcan.

It felt almost like they wanted to do a show about pre-enlightenment Vulcan, couldn't get the rights, so filed off the serial numbers and then wrapped the entire thing up in Superman's cape.

To make it more Superman-y, Adam Strange shows up, complete with...

...Superman's cape.

(And believe me, trust me, I made the Superman's cape joke before the actual artifact showed up on screen).

One thing bothered me:

The House of Zod are black.

In fact, we see quite a few black Kryptonians.

Good diversity, right?

Not when every one of them is military guild.

Maybe they'll fix it in future episodes, but...having every black person in your show be a soldier is a problem, people. Mix it up. I doubt they realize they're stereotyping, but they are.

In other notes:

Yes, I will get around to watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I slogged through Inhumans. The predictable ending did nothing to save what went before. Sorry, Marvel, but you failed.

I am caught up on the C.W. shows. Iris as the Flash was amusing, but why magenta lightning? Not sure about that aesthetic decision.

The entire search for the totems thing got semi-ruined by a certain person who had to compare them to Infinity Stones. Thanks. You know who you are.

And the Elvis episode belonged in a different and sadly-deceased show: Warehouse 13. It was fun, but...yeah.

Red Stars...

...have an odd place in mythology. When Anne McCaffrey made a red star the origin of Thread, she was pulling on older threads. The Dark Star theory claims that a red or brown dwarf made a close flyby during the time of Christ. Bright Antares has a special place in astrology.

We...kind of like red stars.

So, how about this. Astronomers have now discovered that Scholtz's Star passed within one light year of the sun about 70,000 years ago - and while it probably wasn't visible to the naked eye, the nature of the star...actually stars (it's a red dwarf/brown dwarf) pair is such that flares may have made it visible for hours at a time. We worked this out because it was moving very little for a star only 20 light years away - meaning it was either coming right at us or going right away...

Our ancestors would have known the stars well - and a new star would have meant something to them. A sign from the gods, perhaps. And as it perturbed the oort cloud, it may be responsible for some of the comets we now see.

So, did Scholtz's Star spark the imagination of ancient humans and somehow get woven into later mythology? No way of knowing.

As for anything like it happening again - we haven't found any close stars heading right at us yet, and they move pretty slowly. So the chances are...not for a long time, and perhaps not while humans as humans still look up at the sky.

So, is Uber at fault for the self driving car accident?

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Somebody walked out in front of a self-driving car and was hit and killed.

It's the first death that occurred due to an accident involving a self-driving car in fully autonomous mode.

I wasn't able to directly link to the video, but the BBC has it here.

The Tempe police have already said that Uber is unlikely to be found at fault in the incident - and their grounds are that a human driver would have been unable to avoid the accident.

Obviously, we want self-driving cars to do better, and one thing Uber does need to address is that the car was going 40 in a 35 zone. On the other hand, the victim was jaywalking, and came out of nowhere.

So, is this a major setback for autonomous cars?

Yes and no. The fact is that self-driving cars are already far safer than human drivers - but the fact also is that Uber should be looking into why the car simply did not see the pedestrian.

A setback, yes, but a small one. Uber needs to see if something went wrong or if this was the best the technology could do at present - and how it can be improved.

So, Is the World Going to End in 2135?

...probably not. The actual odds of Bennu hitting the Earth are 1 in 2,700 - although if it did hit it could be a global catastrophe.

And the actual time when it might hit is "somewhere between 2175 and 2199.

So, even if life extension means we're all still alive, it's probably not going to hit.

The reason this is all coming up is because NASA is using this asteroid to do the math on space defense - they're designing a hypothetical mission to divert Bennu if it does decide to put us in the crosshairs.

Which is making everyone think it's going to hit us.

Again.

Drat

It appears that the Trappist-1 system - the one with all those exoplanets - has a problem.

Too much water.

It seems likely that the planets are all covered with global oceans - which, unfortunately, isn't good for thermoregulation and thus for life. It tends to stagnate the atmosphere. World oceans are a science fiction trope that doesn't work well in the real world.

We won't know for sure without going there...and that's not likely to happen any time soon, unfortunately.

(Still holding out for that warp drive).

Okay...

...I need to say this.

If you contributed to a book, you should not be reviewing it. I see it mostly on Goodreads - where it's technically allowed, but please.

Look, here's the thing.

If you give a good review, then you look like a pimp, and nobody will believe you.

If you give a bad review, then the editor isn't going to be happy with you and neither are your fellow authors.

Shout outs are, of course, another matter. Reviews should be honest and unbiased, and no matter how unbiased you think you are? You aren't. You can't be. You're only human, ya know.

(It's also worth noting that you shouldn't review competitors on Amazon. They don't always crack down on this, but technically any other author in the same genre(s) is a competitor).

No, Scott Kelly's DNA didn't change

I was waiting to see if this one would be debunked - and it was.

NASA's twin study, designed to test the effects of long term space travel by hiring two identical twins, putting one of them in space and the other on Earth did show results...but it wasn't a "7% change in Scott Kelly's DNA."

What they were able to pinpoint were changes in gene expression, a reaction to the environment of space. Similar changes are seen in people who do a lot of scuba diving.

But something very significant was buried in the bottom.

Scott's telomeres became longer than his brother's. They shortened back up after his return, but this could give us insights into, well. Aging.

(And there's probably a story in there. Somewhere).

Kepler on the way out

NASA now predicts that the Kepler space telescope - yeah, the one that's been finding all of those exoplanets - will run out of maneuvering fuel in "the next few months". At that point scientists will no longer be able to target the scope.

Thankfully, its replacement, TESS should, if all goes well, be launched next month.

Kepler has actually done better service than initially planned, even after its software crashed in a rather scary way. NASA plans on making full use of the telescope until its inevitable death. (Unfortunately, we can't just recharge it).

R.I.P. Stephen Hawking

We have lost one of the greats of our time.

It's not so much that Stephen Hawking was a great theoretical theorist - with no less than 9 theorems, formulae, effects, etc, named for him either alone or with a collaborator. Because he was. He advanced our understanding of black holes, of gravity, of the origins of the universe. He was also wrong a number of times (including about the Higgs boson). He enjoyed betting on scientific discoveries, and understood that a scientist needs to be wrong.

But his arguably greater contribution was his ability to explain his ideas, the frontiers of his great mind, in terms that ordinary people could understand. With his daughter, Lucy, he wrote a series of books on theoretical physics for children, but his greatest literary achievement was A Brief History of Time. One ongoing result of this is the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication - which is given to individuals or organizations who help build awareness of science. (It hasn't been given to a science fiction writer yet, but as it started in 2016 there is plenty of time).

And...he did much of this work while seriously, profoundly disabled. He was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease in 1963, at the age of 21 - and given a life expectancy of two years. He slowly lost the ability to walk, to move, to speak - and had to give up teaching as a result, but he still managed to give lectures using his now famous speech synthesiser (which gave him an American accent). He became a reluctant disability advocate - reluctant because he always tried to be a "person with a disability" - but yet he became a symbol of just what a disabled person could achieve.

He was an icon of science and although his physical decline meant he had not done major work in some time, his passing diminishes all of us.

Kate Wilhelm

I just found out - belatedly - that Kate Wilhelm died last week. She was a co-founder of Clarion and she helped design the Nebula. (Which I didn't know).

She was as much a mystery writer as a science fiction writer, but I have a huge fondness for her exploration of immortality in "Welcome, Chaos."

Her biggest legacy, though, was as a teacher. I feel as if I have missed out on something as I never had the privilege to meet her.

Third Flatiron: Monstrosities

Third Flatiron Monstrosities is now available here. It's currently Kindle only, the print version is in the work and I'll let you know when it's out.

The anthology features a lead story by Keyan Bowes and an awesome story by Julia August as well as my mecha jockey story "Skywalker."

Editor Juliana Rew is fond of oddball humor, snark, and slightly strange stories. I haven't read my copy yet, but I know it's going to be a lot of fun.

In news which surprises no one...

...Marvel has confirmed that there will, indeed, be a Black Panther 2 (and that it's already partially written).

In less obvious news, Kristen Wiig has been cast to play classic Wonder Woman villain Cheetah. Seems a solid choice to me.

Fun On The Sun?

NASA is inviting everyone to submit their names to be included on a memory chip that will be part of the Parker probe - which will go closer to the sun than any other man-made object so far.

In fact, when its mission is over (specifically, when it runs out of fuel), it will eventually land on the sun.

It's free, because it's just a NASA publicity thing - everyone's forgetting the Parker probe exists. And it's going to do some good science - so if you want to be silly with NASA, go enter your name here.

(Not that the science is silly, but the names are. Which is exactly why it's so much fun).

Space Mold

Apparently, fungi grow well in space. Probably because they tend to grow in all directions.

So, here's a problem nobody ever talks about on spaceships. Mold.

Mold is going to be an issue on long distance trips. Now how to work that into a story...

Oscar Results

Best Picture: The Shape of Water.

Now, I'm not a del Toro fan and had no interest in this movie, but it is so rare for a genre film to win that I have to laud it anyway. The Shape of Water also won Directing, Original Score, and Production Design.

Blade Runner 2049 won Cinematography (deserved) and Special Effects (unsurprising - it had relatively light competition in this category).

Coco won Best Animation and while I never saw it I'm hearing a lot of people who's judgment I trust say it was deserved. Which is so rare in the Oscars. My friends and I don't often watch the kind of thing that gets Academy Awards.

And del Toro insisted on personally checking the card was correct before accepting his statuette, indicating that it may be a while before the Academy lives down last year's La La Land fiasco...

Black Panther

So...between avoiding crowds and family issues I finally saw it.

Here are some thoughts:

1. MCU, please give me Peter and Shuri. No, I don't want them to date. I want them in a lab geeking out. I think they would be amazing (and scary) friends. Pun intended.

2. General Okoye had all the best lines in the movie.

3. If this movie doesn't get an Oscar nomination for both Best Costume and Best Makeup next year I will suspect racism. The costumes...the costumes.

4. The city design for Wakanda was also amazing. Who painted that matte? (It looked suspiciously like a traditional matte and it was just gorgeous).

5. Amazing worldbuilding. The consistent accents were such a nice touch. So was the fact that the mud huts at the Wakandan border looked like they were part of a museum display ;). You could tell they were fake.

6. Everyone in this movie was amazingly talented (and, uh, gorgeous).

7. I now understand the Killmonger/Magneto parallels that have been made. As a white Jew, Magneto resonates with me - and I think I can see, although never understand, why Killmonger might resonate with many African-Americans.

8. Never turn your back on family. Not a message I was expecting to be there, but it was there and it was powerful.

Was it my favorite MCU movie? No, but that says more about my aesthetic preferences (I'm fond of a bit more, well, silliness with my superheroes) than the quality of the movie. If you haven't made it yet, then get to a theater.

Blown Away...

...thankfully not. Yes, the storm was pretty bad, but we're fine, and while it won't really stop until *Sunday*, the worst appears to be over.

I'm kind of glad I don't have a yard right now...

Apparently...

...selfies really are bad for you.

The issue is that if you take a picture from 12" away, it makes you look like...well, you have a huge schnozz. This is affecting people's self esteem and making them want completely unnecessary nose jobs.

In other words, selfies make your nose look big and you shouldn't worry about it.