The Weekly Gnuz & Lynx Roundup for Caturday, 2013/04/13

Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor (photocredit: wikipedia)

Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lately I’ve been in one of my brooding Ninth Doctor (or Second Doctor, take your pick) moods. I’m not happy with the current progress of my education.

Meh. *Hiss*

Yes, I know that’s irrational, unnecessary and counterproductive, so I’m pacing myself by mixing study with relaxation, while using more objective gauges of my learning rate so I don’t drive myself barmy that I haven’t memorized in one sitting the complete plays of Sophocles or the text of the essential dialogues of Plato.

Impatience does me no good, and it is a quick path to burnout and failure. Focus.

This has been a good week, otherwise, and has been quite fun. I’ve just come back as of this typing from a good walk on the beach while having some *Aha!* moments which should serve me nicely during the next week. I’ve done a book review for Massimo Pigliucci’s Answers for Aristotle, see below, which I rather enjoyed working on. I hope it was objective, fair, and piques your interest.

———–Bloggy Lynx———–

• The Storytelling of Science commentary
• Doctor Puppet Episodes 1 & 2 a new discovery I’ve found…on the Nerdist channel…
• Only a man… …a quote by my antihero, the Mirus, upon being asked exactly what he is…
• The Safe Cracking of Dick Feynman the unusual pastime of Richard, the Feyn man of science
• Fractals of the Week: Mandelbulber Macromutations back after a week’s hiatus, some new experiments in using MB3D
• Book Review: Answers for Aristotle, by Massimo Pigliucci
• Caturday’s Astronomy pix for 2013/04/7-13

———Others’ Bloggies———

• Guinea Pig Update
• Cat Thursday – Cattitude
• Underground: The Julian Assange Story
• Left Hemispheres Podcast Interview Ep02 – Hemant Mehta
• Derren Brown’s Fear and Faith: Inducing Religious Experience
• Friday Link Dump 4/12/13
• Feminism and Humanism

————-Sciencey & Odd Stuff————-

• Apelike Fossils show hint of Human Ancestry
• Russia’s Putin Announces $50 Billion in New Space Spending
• Creepiest Headless Portraits from the Victorian Era
• Geoengineering Our Way out of Trouble?
• Nine year old autistic Indian girl claimed to be psychic

———-Bloggy Stats———-

• 126,280 keen-eyed peerings since 2008/12/28
• 1,857 comments posted,
• 2,058 posts published, including this one,
• 188 WordPress subscribers,
• 233 Tumblr fellows,
• 2,000 Twitter fellows,
• 18 Likes on this blog’s FB page,

Thanks, all of you ^(;,,;)^

———-Bonobo: Cirrus [Official Video]———-

——–Animated Mandelbulb———

hat tip to Steve Barry

Only a man…

Timeless Man

via @boraz & twojokerfilms

Have you ever imagined that you could go back in time and meet your heroes? Benjamin Hewson has. He has travelled back from the year 2330 to meet his hero, legendary rock god Jonny Murtagh.But in his bid to witness history in the making, has Benjamin put Jonny’s future in jeopardy?

Timeless Man is an imaginative and witty comedy with overtures of iconic time travel classics. Its Back to the Future meets Bill & Ted by way of Quantum Leap.

The Kai’Siri — Xenohumans with Badassitude

The Kai’Siri, humans of Sirug, are relatives of terrestrial humans, evolved for a carnivorous diet and aggressive temperament in parallel to their Terran sister species, us. Classified as species Homo ferox, their ancestors were taken from Earth millennia ago by the mysterious Strangers and genetically modified for their adopted homeworld in an isolated region of the Sagittarius spiral arm of the galaxy. They are powerful, violent, and technologically advanced, and, most dangerously, they’ve learned to regulate and channel their aggressive nature to promote, not endanger, their own survival as a species…

The Kai’Siri are the default alien race in my Gods of Terra setting; they are the standard by which other species are measured, and their language used as the primary naming convention for the other aliens. Theirs is a civilization predating our own, having accelerated to its current state of development by war, conquest, the struggle for dominance with the alien predators native to Sirug, and the harsh conditions found there.

But while they are innately aggressive, they are also wise to a degree, for they’ve learned to get along with each other, and sometimes, with their former enemies. While the Kai’Siri could be characterized as a warrior-race, this is too simplistic a description. They have many other aptitudes besides fighting and conquest, and their aggression and drive sees vent in a number of fields, including sublimation in the sciences, the arts, and oddly, diplomacy.

They have developed social mechanisms to prevent self-extinction.

The Kai’Siri are the former employers of the Mirus, and his opposite number, the Magnus. Former.

On the Kai’Siri homeworld, most of the vegetation has certain biochemical quirks in nutrients, like the native starches and sugars, making them inedible to humans — often causing severe toxicity and allergic reactions if eaten directly — but the native animal life is, with a little cooking skill, readily edible, the (herbivorous) animals having metabolized the dangerous plant toxins into useful substances fit for human consumption.

This has led to the humans newly transplanted to Sirug to evolve into a carnivorous species, to make best use of the available native food supply.

Kai’Siri have certain ‘ethnic’ features Terran humans may find strange; subtly pointed ears, those being a bit flatter against the sides of the head; canine teeth slightly pointed and sharper than in Homo sapiens, just short enough not to protrude over the lips, but obvious when smiling — for this species a threat gesture, and rude in polite company; eye shades unusual for humans, but here common — ruby, violet, gold — and all the typical eye-colors of Terran humanity, with those being less common; Hair and skin tones tend to be darker shades, due to the high ultraviolet output of Sirug’s stellar primary, Emulael; Facial features tend to resemble those common to South Asia and Southeast Asia on Terra, with about 50% of the population having epicanthic folds in the eyelids; Thorough genetic intermixing between regions and cultural factors have resulted in a good blend of dominant traits and a robust species.

Some terms in their language follow, with phonetic spelling to aid in pronunciation:

Digmas Binigarul (DÏĝⅿəś bĭｎĭgəŕool) – (noun) “Way of the Exarchs” A powerful and ancient Kai’Siri religion which worships the Strangers as creators of the Kai’Siri race and the teachers of civilization — recently, a secular movement has arisen that criticizes the precepts of this religion as baseless, superstitious and insulting to human dignity and ingenuity. They are not well loved by believers.

Dinat Aru-Tasuul (DÏnät Əroo-Təsool) – (noun) “Null-Dancers” trained assassin/warrior/MMA performers trained to hunt down and destroy dangerous, powerful, highly intelligent prey, and look damn good doing it on live holographic vodcast. Their ‘hits’ are often netcast live to millions of online viewers.

Talotaa’Frang (Təlōtə-Fräng) – Typical spoken Kai’Siri greeting, spoken both upon meeting and upon parting. It means “Be strong and well,” and is spoken with a slightly tongue-in-cheek raising of the lip over the tips of the upper canine teeth in a mock threat gesture, implying the one seeing it is expected to fear no threat.

I thought I would put this out to see what people think of it. I’m sure this will require a lot of reworking, as I don’t want this to sound too much like things I’ve read from others, and other revisions will be needed for any logical problems along the way, so this post, like all my writing on my fiction and fictional concepts, is exploratory, not final. Enjoy Monday, peeps. I’m headed for bed so I can get up in time to sign for my new laptop when it arrives.

Talotaa’Frang

The Weird Hunt

In my fright I see a star,

Where resides King’s avatar.

Served by faceless Tathladi,

To hunt Suthdr, rampage seen.

Three-sided beings found throughout space,

Allied with Man to purge the race.

To extirpate the vermoid spawn,

To rule the skies, our kind as pawns.

To slay with such impunity,

For harvesting the galaxy.