Fillineous Lunch Box

I found myself wandering down Memory Lane the other night, headed to Woe-be-Gone, that little corner of the mind that harbors yesterday.

What got me on the Lane is rather strange. I got to musing about my childhood, nothing in particularly mind you, just some errant thought, and it occurred to me that the Germans probably have a word for nostalgic gymnastics and then I thought, we need one here, in America, a word that signifies that faint, warm memory of some past event that can never be. 

"Like lunch boxes." I thought to myself.

Man I loved that lunch box. Everyday is was the same food. A thermos of some apple juice, a peanut butter and jelly (apple, the true jelly) sandwich in a clear sandwich bag, with the long fold tucked i; a bag of Taco Doritos (there were only two types of Doritos in those days, taco and regular) also tucked in a bag and some type of brownie or cupcake or whatever mom put in there for dessert. I remember the weight of it. It was solid too. It felt like you had something, something to hold on to. Opening the lunch box was pure gold. The lid, tight and snug gave way with a simple pull, revealing the tightly back case of order and calm. Everything was there.

That lunch box was gold. 

Interestingly I can't remember what designs I had on my lunch boxes. Was it Green Lantern? Surely it was Tarzan. Maybe Scooby doo, or Speed Racer. I can't actually remember. I don't even remember the thermos. Scraping my brain for some vestige of a thought, lost in the jumbled tumble of could-of-beens and did-happens yields nothing but the faint memory of the sound of the lunch box opening.

We definitely need a word for this feeling. Maybe Fillineous: a nostalgic feeling of some simple thing that is lost but remembered fondly; a traveled road whose location is lost.

Castles of Anglamay - Aihrde

Inspiration for Castles in Aihrde, as appear or will appear on the updated maps. They were all found on pintrest, the first four are real world castles whose names I failed to write down! All of these are in Anglamay:

Castle Anglamay

Castle Clarion

Castle Hereswyth

Castle Mons

And the Free City of Royon

Anatomy of a Castle

 A helpful little illustration. My favorite thing to browse...anatomy of a X. Castle, flower petal, ship, sword... good way to learn useless stuff!

Castle Let in Aihrde

Castle Let, of the County of Kleaves

 

Castle Capua in Aihrde

A render, but nonetheless, a good concept for Castle Capua, ancestral seat of the County of Ceeana in the world of Aihrde. 

Castle Aachen Aihrde

The kingdom of Aachen in the world of Aihrde is lead by King Baldwin III who dwells in Castle Aachen, constructed by his great great Grandfather Baldwin I. This is much how I picture it (Spis Castle in Slovakia).

Jack's Saloon

I had to come back...

 I know.

Determining Life - The Drake Equation

As recounted in Howard Blum’s Out There the Drake equation was the brainchild of a young radio astronomer working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. Radio astronomy was in its infancy and Frank Drake was a second generation adherent. Radio astronomy had reared is pretty head in 1931 when Karl Jansky working at Bell Telephone Laboratories kept encountering radio interference that he could not initially track down. After some home-brewed experiments he discovered the heavens above and beyond earth were filled with radio static. This discovery led to a the new science that landed young Frank Drake in the small, remote  observatory in the wilds of West Virginia in 1959.

The source of these radio waves was not clearly understood and there was a great deal of speculation as to what we were hearing; they ran the gamut from thunderstorms somewhere on earth being bounced through the atmosphere to waves being released by distant nebulae only now just washing the earth. But Drake began to speculate that perhaps they were waves emitting from distant planets. Maybe it wasn’t just stars and galaxies, but planets. Why not? His math showed that the smaller telescope in Green Bank could “hear” noise from 10 light years away. Why not something more? He posed this at a lunch at Antonine’s Diner to his colleagues.

As Blum relates, one of the astronomers challenged him with a french fry with a so what? attitude. Perhaps, Drake replied, the planets were the source, and the source lay in extraterrestrial civilizations. He then pitched an idea on how to figure this out. By choosing a specific frequency that was the most logical for a civilization to use (this is a whole different tale) that might be able to “hear” them. It didn’t hurt that this frequency also allowed them to search for magnetic fields, and for that they could certainly get funding from the government. They would need about $2,000 to begin their search. He was given the go ahead by the head of the observatory, because, well scientists like to science, and he built his relay and begin listening. Though he only got one hit from his gear it did not dampen his enthusiasm, in fact it was something of a catalyst for the creation of the Order of the Dolphin (another story, and was some of the driving force behind the SETI observatory).

Two years on, in 1961, the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences invited selected astronomers to gather at Green Bank for a meeting. There, amidst news of a Nobel for one of the invitees and discussions about possible life on other planets Frank Drake posed the Drake Equation, the equation that became and remains the standard for determining the number of technologically advanced civilizations in the galaxy.

The Drake equation is thus:  N = R × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L

For a more thorough discussion of the equation head to the Seti website.

From this small beginning in the hills of West Virginia begins a long discussion of the possibility of life on other planets, and where that life may be in their arc of development and how, if at all, that life may interact with earth.

Go check out Howard Blum’s book Out There. It is replete with a history of this and other weird science that circles the whole UFO phenomena.