Category: Travel
-
Out For Pizza, Day 4
On the fourth day it wasn't rainy! In delightful partly-sunny weather we boarded the train for Ercolano, where we planned to ascend Mount Vesuvius by bus and then explore the ruined city of Herculaneum. Ercolano, it must be said, is a dump. I hope nobody reading this is a proud native of the town, but…
-
Out For Pizza, Day 3
We made sammiches, put on our rain ponchos, and boarded the train for Pompeii. Pretty much everyone else aboard the Circumvesuviana rail line was also going to Pompeii, though we didn't learn why until we got there. Turns out we were very lucky in our choice of week to visit Italy. It was Culture Week,…
-
Out For Pizza, Day 2
The rain continued on our second day. Not a hard rain, but an annoying rain, especially since our supply of clothing was limited and the only way to dry things was to hang them up in the sunshine. If there had been any sunshine, which there wasn't. So staying dry and keeping dry clothes became…
-
Out For Pizza, Day 1
We decided to go out for pizza. Pizza originated in Naples, so that's where we went. The four of us (me, Diane, Emily, and Robert) set out on our trip to southern Italy on the 14th of April. Drove across Massachusetts after lunch, deposited the car at Alewife and rode the T to Logan Airport.…
-
Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 6
Party Like It's 1909! The guests begin to arrive for Ozma's birthday party, and L. Frank Baum demonstrates an early mastery of the Superhero Crossover subgenre. All the guests are either characters from other Oz books, or from some of Baum's non-Oz fantasies. This book solidly cements all of Baum's fantasies into a single fictional…
-
Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 4
After escaping the Scoodlers, Dorothy and Company come to the end of the road, literally. It reaches the edge of the Deadly Desert, an expanse of gray sand which completely surrounds the Land of Oz. In the course of the books the Deadly Desert becomes more and more Deadly. The first time we see it,…
-
Ozblogging: The Road to Oz, Part 1
The Road to Oz is the fifth of L. Frank Baum's immortal Oz series, published in 1909. Like its predecessor Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, it follows Dorothy on another difficult journey to Oz with a group of entertaining companions. Sure, by this point it's a formula, but it's a winning formula and Road…
-
Another Slice of Pi
As I was saying before I was interrupted, I'm going to be a guest at Pi-Con this weekend. Pi-Con is a science fiction convention in Enfield, Connecticut (just south of Springfield, Massachusetts). They've got me scheduled for a lot of events. See for yourself: 8/26/2011 8:00 PM — "Honey! The aliens are attacking again" 8/27/2011…
-
Off the Launch Pad, Day 4
Instead of going to class in our beloved basement lecture hall, on Thursday morning the Launch Pad workshop members got some fresh air and sunshine. We drove out to Vedauwoo Rocks east of Laramie for a three-mile hike. It was quite pretty. The rocks are ancient granite, cracked and eroded into mysterious almost-familiar shapes. Around…
-
Off the Launch Pad, Day 3
We reconvened in the familar windowless basement lecture hall on Wednesday, to hear Dr. Mike Brotherton give us a long and detailed lecture on Newton's laws, Kepler's laws and how combining them gives us the basics of orbital mechanics. We also discussed Lagrange points and transfer orbits, all good crunchy stuff. After the lunch break…
The Cambias Digression 