Starry Wisdom and Time's Arrow

[tcpip]

The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour. And I can feel it.

I was rather impressed by this Christopher Eccleston quote as the Ninth Doctor, which re-established the series and gave it added seriousness by dealing with the complexity of the issues surrounding time travel. It was demanding, challenging, almost expressing anger with triviality. In the real world, I am quite fond of the elegance of Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov's work in this field. But I do feel it, in the spatial and temporal sense. The sheer immensity of the universe compares grandly to the small gods on the pale blue dot that humans seem so prevalent to following.

Today I began my 49th orbit attached to the third planet of Sol (on the eve of a planetary alignment - the stars are right!. Although this poor planet which has a questionable future (I am following the deliberations of the Athropocene Working Party quite closely). A small mountain of well-wishing came through, mostly on Facebook, of which I am deeply appreciative. Facebook of course is the mass consumer social media; Livejournal with its implicit anonymity and and orientation towards more productive and reflective entires cannot compete against the immediacy of a shared stream.

Clinging to this speck in space, in a blink of time's eye, hurtling ever onwards to a terminal conclusion, one cannot help but wonder, if there is anyone out there? Some may recall last September the paper that popular media reported that looked like alien megastructures. At the time, the paper argued that the aperiodic dips in flux was probably due to a family of exocomets (but it didn't stop me from reading it in detail and telling caseopaya that 'this may be the most important scientific paper ever written'). Now it turns out that comets cannot explain the flux issues - and New Scientist has been brave enough to use the "A" word.

It may seem minor in comparison and it doubtless is, but one of my gaming groups has convinced me to run an Eclipse Phase campaign, starting this Sunday. I've run it before, and played in two different stories. But running my own narrative will allow me to engage to some detail with the game rules, and to push the transhumanism and first contact themes along with a deliberately chosen isolationist (outer planets) setting. As part of the RPG Review Cooperative I'll also endeavour to use this as a foundation for an Eclipse Phase Companion.

Comments

[helvetica]

I think you would be such an exceptional person to run a campaign! You are so clever and just altogether well spoken. I can totally see you inspiring some wonderful imaginations!

I hope that you have a lovely birthday :)

[tcpip]

Thank you for the kind words helvetica. It's certainly going to be a challenge, with the wide range of thematic content available. I think I might go for an emergent narrative whilst I'm gathering my thoughts.

It was a lovely birthday; a light dinner, champagne, and a cheesy movie (the 2010 version of Clash of the Titans).

[ecosopher.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday! I worry about the future of our world, too. You can see so much more of the night sky down here than you can in Perth, and so whenever I go outside (like tonight) I regularly wonder about the fate of the planet and where we'll head next.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Thanks ecosopher. You may have seen the news this morning about last year's global weather as part of the climatic trend.

[microbie.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Thanks microbie!

[ariaflame.livejournal.com]

Feliĉan Naskitaĝon!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Dankon!

Ĉu vi vidas la novaĵon de la nova planedo?

Happy Birthday

[xanni-au.livejournal.com]

Many happy returns!

Re: Happy Birthday

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ha! Still making use of your livejournal login I see! Thank you!