Cold and Clear

Just an evocative photo of surfacing after a dive in Puget Sound last year. Two weeks from now Todd and I will be back in the water, dropping down the 100-foot line towards the sea whips, seen in the drawing below!

Bob Edwards Show Interview

A recent interview with Bob Edwards -- the legendary 'Voice of NPR' for two decades -- covered the evolution book, and will be broadcast on 01 March 2012:

"Thursday, March 1, 2012: Evolution is a fact, not a debatable theory. Prehistorian and popular-science writer Cameron Smith lays out the evidence and logic in his book The Fact of Evolution."

[ direct link ]

An alternative to pick up the book, from the Amazon monster, is at the Scientific American Book Club.

Arctic Moonlight

"Arctic Moonlight", from The Polar and Tropical Worlds by G. Hartwig, 1883.

Hydroptere

Fantastic!



If the video doesn't show, see the direct link.

Helmet Details

Worked on some fine adjustments to the helmet. The oral-nasal mask is fitted inside, with a communications microphone (fitted on the side of the mask) that leads to a walkie-talkie that I will wear inside the pressure suit; this is just for the tests, and of course a normal radio comms cable will be used when I fly. The breathing gas hoses--IN and OUT--descend from the mask to through-ports in the suit itself. In the view from slightly above you can see the oral-nasal mask hoses connected to the mask itself; inside are the inhale and exhale valves. Side view shows how I had to customize the mask to fit inside the helmet; most aviation breathing masks are much too large to do this. You can also see the reflective UV / IR blocking film I've attached to the outside of the visor; this is simply attached with bits of blue-tack right now, but for flight it will be attached in a different way.

Dive! Dive! Dive!

My diving partner, Todd, shot this photo of me ascending through some murky, beautiful cold Pacific waters!

Page Proofs!

Well, it has taken eight years since first dreaming up the idea for this book, but now the pdf file of proofs are here, and I'm just wrapping up the final typos. Above, the opening page of Chapter 7.

It will be said, of course, that expending energy on such a project as the colonization of space would be to callously ignore the plight of so many unfortunate people on Earth. But while those circumstances must of course be addressed, the same could be said of anything that does not address them. What is the use of a painting, or a multi-million-dollar art museum? What is the value of a poem? Considering the real threats to our planet and civilization, on a cosmic scale the colonization of space is not an unnatural, technocratic stunt, but a natural human species insurance policy.

Some will say, also of course, that the human species will only continue to destroy and waste off of Earth, as we have on Earth. But that takes only the sour view. Humanity also has done magnificent, wonderful and magnanimous things. As an extraterrestrial put it to an astronomer, in the movie 'Contact', based on the Carl Sagan / Ann Druyan novel, 'Humanity...you have such terrible nightmares, and such wonderful dreams.'. Every person decides where they will lean in this spectrum. I am choosing to gravitate towards the dreams and the light.