Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 40
September 22, 2016
Elon Musk scales up his ambitions, considering going “well beyond” Mars
Elon Musk talks a great game. I like the cut of his jib, private enterprise colonising space? I thought it was science fiction but it’s quickly becoming reality.
Musk may soon detail the architecture he hopes will colonize the solar system.
Eric Berger – 9/18/2016, 10:45 PM
Enlarge / Elon Musk at the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Idaho during the summer of 2015. The book is Excession, by Iain Banks.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
For most of its 14 year existence, SpaceX has focused on designing and developing the hardware that will lead to its ultimate goal: colonizing Mars. These plans have remained largely secret from the general public, as company founder Elon Musk has dropped only the barest of hints. But that is expected to change on Sept. 27, during a session at the International Astronautical Congress, when Musk details some of these plans for the first time in a public forum.
However, on the eve of the meeting, Musk dropped a surprise on Twitter. The workhorse spacecraft that will carry approximately 100 tons of cargo or 100 people to the surface of Mars, which until now has been popularly known as the Mars Colonial Transporter, can’t be called that, Musk said. “Turns out MCT can go well beyond Mars, so will need a new name…” he tweeted on Friday evening. By Saturday evening he had a new name dubbing the spacecraft the “Interplanetary Transport System,” or ITS.
Running on Beer n Pizza
Ultra Runner Karl Meltzer Sets Appalachian Trail Record, Fueled by Beer and Candy
By LINDSAY CROUSESEPT. 18, 2016
Photo
Karl Meltzer, right, was congratulated by Scott Jurek, after breaking Jurek’s record for running the length of the Appalachian Trail. Credit Carl Rosen/Red Bull Content Pool
At a time when “endurance running” no longer means mere marathons — and even 100-mile races are attracting the masses — Karl Meltzer, a former ski-resort bartender, has proved he can suffer longer and faster than almost anyone else.
When he staggered onto Springer Mountain in Georgia before dawn Sunday, Meltzer set a record for completing the Appalachian Trail. He covered the 2,190 miles over 14 states in 45 days 22 hours 38 minutes.
Meltzer, 48, is a little different from other titans of the newly booming ultra-running scene. He is six years older than Scott Jurek, who was featured in the best-selling book about almost-barefoot endurance running, “Born to Run” — and who set the former Appalachian Trail record last year (46 days 8 hours 7 minutes).
In a sport checkered with mantras like “clean living,” Jurek sustained his trek on a vegan diet. Staples of Meltzer’s diet, by contrast, included Red Bull and Tang. Jurek incurred a $500 fine and public outrage for opening champagne at the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine during his record run. When Meltzer finished Sunday, he walked down the mountain, sat in a chair and sated himself with pepperoni pizza and a beer.
September 21, 2016
Sept. 2016 Winner: OLD BONES by Dermott Hayes — Matthew Toffolo’s Summary
Originally posted on First Scene Screenplay Festival: Watch the September 2016 Winning 1st Scene Screenplay. OLD BONES Written by Dermott Hayes SYNOPSIS: Genre: Fantasy, Crime, Drama We lose our soul when we bury the dead without dignity and for the sake of manna. Two brothers are caught in a dilemma of conscience, to lose their…
via Sept. 2016 Winner: OLD BONES by Dermott Hayes — Matthew Toffolo’s Summary
Sept. 2016 Winner: OLD BONES by Dermott Hayes
This is my short film screenplay, performed by Wildsound festival actors this month.
First Scene Screenplay Festival
Watch the September 2016 Winning 1st Scene Screenplay.
OLD BONES
Written by Dermott Hayes
SYNOPSIS:
Genre: Fantasy, Crime, Drama
We lose our soul when we bury the dead without dignity and for the sake of manna. Two brothers are caught in a dilemma of conscience, to lose their jobs or their souls.
CAST LIST:
NARRATOR – Steve Rizzo
COSTELLO – Steve Mitchell
SEAMUS – Randy Baumer
JOHN – John Fray
VOICE – Dan Cristofori
Get to know the winning writer:
What is your screenplay about?
It’s about devalued morals and the cheap currency of souls. People put so little value on their souls, they will trade them for a job and diminish the world they live in, as a result.
What genres does your screenplay fall under?
Contemporary Film Noir Drama
How would you describe this script in two words?
Dark Satire
What movie have you seen the most times…
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I Used to Be a Human Being
An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too.
Illustrations by Kim Dong-kyuBased on: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich (1818).
I was sitting in a large meditation hall in a converted novitiate in central Massachusetts when I reached into my pocket for my iPhone. A woman in the front of the room gamely held a basket in front of her, beaming beneficently, like a priest with a collection plate. I duly surrendered my little device, only to feel a sudden pang of panic on my way back to my seat. If it hadn’t been for everyone staring at me, I might have turned around immediately and asked for it back. But I didn’t. I knew why I’d come here.
A year before, like many addicts, I had sensed a personal crash coming. For a decade and a half, I’d been a web obsessive, publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week, and ultimately corralling a team that curated the web every 20 minutes during peak hours. Each morning began with a full immersion in the stream of internet consciousness and news, jumping from site to site, tweet to tweet, breaking news story to hottest take, scanning countless images and videos, catching up with multiple memes. Throughout the day, I’d cough up an insight or an argument or a joke about what had just occurred or what was happening right now. And at times, as events took over, I’d spend weeks manically grabbing every tiny scrap of a developing story in order to fuse them into a narrative in real time. I was in an unending dialogue with readers who were caviling, praising, booing, correcting. My brain had never been so occupied so insistently by so many different subjects and in so public a way for so long.
I was, in other words, a very early adopter of what we might now call living-in-the-web.
10 Bars at the End of the World
It is with pride, I reveal that among the ten most remote bars in the world, is an Irish bar, the last watering hole at the foot of Mount Everest.
7. Irish Pub at the Namche Bazaar
NAMCHE BAZAAR, NEPAL
Namche Bazaar. (Photo: McKay Savage/CC BY 2.0)
Hiking to the apex of Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world, is thirsty work. Luckily, as the Nepalese trading community of Namche Bazaar evolved into a village, one smart entrepreneur established the simply named, Irish Pub, the highest bar in the world.
Namche Bazaar is a small village on a steep mountain slope which was built in response to the increased number of hikers looking to follow in Sir Edmund Hillary’s footsteps, and many of those adventurous souls come together at the Irish Pub to share rousing tales of their travels. The pub consists of one long bar and a number of entertainments, including a pool table, foosball, and a wide-screen television where travelers can keep up with their local game. While the traditional taproom amenities are a welcome sight for many travellers, the opportunity to meet fellow wanderers and interact with the local people is just as attractive. In this vein, the bar offers a number of Irish whiskeys and standard draughts, but customers can also choose from a number of traditional Sherpa alcohols to spice up their Everest experience.
To reach the Irish Pub at Namche Bazaar you will need to fly into the only airport in the Everest region (oft thought of as one of the most treacherous airports in the world due to its short, sloped, and frozen runway) and trek in to the village on foot. The hike can be done in one day, but it is suggested that travelers take up to two days to avoid altitude sickness. Essential drink: A Raksi, which is a wood-distilled rice wine common among sherpa drinkers.
Paris from Camus’s Notebooks – Paris Review
Image Credit : Paris, 1928, Ted Griffin
September 19, 2016 | by Alice Kaplan
The myth is tenacious: an unknown writer on the verge of international fame, not suspecting that the scattered pages on his or her desk will become that miracle, a first published novel and a passport to glory. From March to May 1940, Albert Camus was that man, finishing a draft of the book he was calling The Stranger. The city, eerily calm, overtaken with a sense of dread, was weeks from the German invasion. Paris has changed enormously since 1940, but you can still walk in Camus’s footsteps through places that a few literary specialists have put on the map and come close to a moment of artistic creation.
Camus finished a first draft of his novel alone in a hotel room in Montmartre. The former Hôtel du Poirier on the rue Ravignan sits atop one of Paris’s “buttes” or hills, whose cleaner air might have benefitted the young writer, who struggled with chronic tuberculosis. The site is still about as picturesque a place as Paris has to offer: up a terraced set of steps, on one side of a cobblestone square with its own fountain, the little hotel stood directly across from the Bateau-Lavoir, a beehive of artist studios, spread out like a ship. On this vessel of high modernism, Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907. The glory days of the Bateau-Lavoir ended after World War I, but in March 1940, when Camus lived in its shadow, the place still exuded its bohemian aura. Crowned by the mammoth Sacré-Cœur cathedral, Montmartre was an acquired taste, with its own diehard citizens—pimps and scoundrels, anarchists and poets. Far from the business districts, Montmartre was still, in 1940, practically a separate village, a neighborhood where an artist or writer could get by on almost nothing.
Is “Show Don’t Tell” a Universal Truth or a Colonial Relic?
Recently, I transitioned from a world of transnational literary criticism into a predominantly white American creative writing workshop culture. As I moved from one fledgling story draft to another, the comments I received most consistently as feedback in my workshop seemed to be the standard fare for most novice writers: “show, show, show,” “show, don’t tell,” “convert into scene,” “externalize,” “get rid of exposition” and “what does this place or character look like?” For this repeated advice, I remain indebted to my workshop readers. After all, which storyteller worth her salt can afford to ignore the Chekhovian dictum today? “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” This counsel to “paint a picture” feels even more relevant in a 21st century whose readers, including myself, consume stories increasingly through images—be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters.
Yet, while perusing my drafts for strategies of revision, the aspiring fiction writer in me often wondered if “painting a picture” would be a most effective artistic move, especially in an age where verbal or textual storytelling competes constantly with visual and virtual storytelling.
September 20, 2016
Queenies and smoked bacon
You can find these recipes at this site…https://lastnightiboiledanegg.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/queenies-and-smoked-bacon/
I love this dish. It’s lazy, tasty and healthy with a good dose of naughty, too. It’s the kind of dish I’ll throw together on an impulse so long as the ingredients are available and the sun is shining. Queen scallops are a medium sized scallop, about as big as a button. In the Isle of Man, ‘queenies’ are served with pride as they are the local dish of choice.
Around this time of the year, queenies become widely available. I bought ten of these little beauties for €2 today and at those prices, I couldn’t resist. Mind you, there’s just enough in ten for one person. For a dinner party, I’d buy 50.
The first thing I did to put my super delicious lunch together was to build myself a Grteek salad with some fresh chard and little gem lettuce from my garden, then some thinly sliced red onion…
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Postcard from a Pigeon
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