NASA: The Latest and Greatest

So what’s the latest and greatest regarding NASA? And why should I care, you ask? Hasn't the shuttling of the Space Shuttle Program and cutbacks in funding and lack of vision from our political leaders made this once awesome organization boring and irrelevant? Well, please allow me dispel these thoughts and take you on a tour of the NASA Web site. 

NASA: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research. Since February 2006, NASA's mission statement has been to "pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research.” 

You can check out the latest and greatest in news, missions, multimedia, apps, and other ways to connect with NASA. You can even plan a visit to some of their eighteen facilities across the United States. 

NASA For Students: Have kids? Are you a school teacher, home schooler, or know someone who is? Then the NASA for Educators, the NASA for Students, and the NASA Kids Club and are worth a navigating and Bookmark or save in your Favorites. 

NASA for Students is broken up into grade groups of: 

K-4 

5-8 

9-12 

Higher Education 

Each group has age appropriate links. Example, NASA is sponsoring the 2012 NASA Space Settlement Design Program for 6th through 12 graders and can join as individuals, groups, or entire classrooms. 

Design a space settlement! Space settlements are permanent communities in orbit, as opposed to being on the moon or other planets. Designing a space settlement involves physics, mathematics, space science, environmental science and many other disciplines. This contest is for 11-18-year-old students from anywhere in the world. Individuals or teams may enter. Grades 6-8, 9-10 and 11-12 are judged separately, except for the grand prize. Submissions must be received by March 15, 2012. Click the link for more details, contest prizes, and certificates. 

And check out the Current Opportunities for Kids link. NASA  also hosts youth ambassadors from around the globe for successful outreach programs. NASA’s Web site is a great site for kids to research homework and for author to research their novels. 

What about classrooms and partnering with other classrooms around the globe? 

Virtual Tours: Can't work out a visit to a NASA facility? Check out their interactive features such as their Interactive Features and Virtual Tours.

Connect with NASA: Yep. There's an app for that. Check out the various apps and social networks NASA has such as Facebook and Twitter. 

What's Next For NASA? NASA is conducting an unprecedented array of missions that will seek new knowledge and understanding of Earth, the solar system and the universe. NASA has observatories in Earth orbit and deep space, spacecraft visiting the moon and other planetary bodies, and robotic landers, rovers, and sample return missions. One example is designing and building the capabilities to send humans to explore the solar system and working toward a goal of landing humans on Mars. 

NASA has a payback on our hard-earned tax dollars, providing great paying jobs, supporting entire communities, and opening doors for incredible future opportunities such as planet colonization and mining asteroids (more on this in a future post).

Special Challenge Participant Feature - Rick Daley and Movies!

Today we welcome Rick Daley from My Daley Rant! His theme for the A to Z Challenge was movies, something we can all enjoy. He was willing to answer a few questions about films, remakes, and bad adaptations.

Your theme was movies – which I thought rocked – what made you decide to post about films?

Short answer: I thought it would be easy.

Long answer: I wanted to participate in the A-Z challenge because my blog is more neglected than a fact at a political rally. Posting every day for a month seemed like a great way to force myself into action…I am a world-class procrastinator (MOTTO: Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after tomorrow).

Before I pulled the trigger and signed up, I wanted to make sure I could finish the task. I needed a topic I could dive into, deep. I’m the kind of guy who knows a little bit about a lot of things—my wife calls me a “vessel of useless knowledge”—but one area in which my inventory of arcane knowledge runs deep is film. I made a list, A-Z, and quickly came up with at least one movie title per letter. It was time to email Alex…

It was an eclectic mix, so I have to ask – what’s your favorite genre?

That’s tough. I think I’ll have to go with Comedy. My favorite movie is Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so if that’s my favorite movie, it must be in my favorite genre, right? Besides, laughter is always good. Except maybe at a funeral. But then again, *Death at a Funeral is a damn funny movie.

I don’t know if there is a genre I don’t like. I love horror movies, too. And superhero movies, martial arts movies, action / suspense / thrillers, some dramas, even some RomComs have merit.

*Even though I have some choice words about remakes in general in response to the next question, the re-make of Death at a Funeral with Chris Rock is 100% hilarious.

Talk to us about your R post, Robocop and Ridiculous Remakes.

I went back and re-read that post… Now I have to rant for a minute. Studios are churning out remakes because they think it will net them a quick buck. Marketing can be cheaper when your name is already known. Properties ranging from 70s TV shows to board games have made it to the silver screen without any regard for quality. Many have sucked, while good, original stories deserving of the limelight go unnoticed. Not that I am bitter. It’s just that Remakes are the new Prequel. (Remember ten years ago, when Prequels were the new Sequel?)

Then you have movies like Prometheus, which was tied to Alien, one of the best horror / sci-fi / thrillers of all time, but tied to it in a new way, that supposedly stood on its own.

I was really excited to see Prometheus, and it ended up as the biggest letdown of my film-watching life. Here we have a fantastic tale of wasted potential: a movie with an excellent premise but stocked with characters so dumb you could create a satire like Airplane! without changing a single line in the script. It was lazy writing. The characters had no purpose being together in that story. Formulae was pinched from other properties, but the recycling didn’t work in Prometheus…In LOST, a group of disparate characters waking up and meeting each other for the first time worked because they were on a crashed commercial flight, but that made no sense on a trillion-dollar corporate investment to meet God. In Alien, a roughneck captain leading a crew in deep space worked because the ship was essentially a tractor-trailer; but that made no sense on a trillion-dollar corporate investment to meet God.

Some people argue about the film’s thematic implications of the origins of life, claiming the movie is interesting because of what it leaves unresolved. For me, the problem is not what the movie didn’t tell us; its flaw is what was actually on the screen. I could go on and on (and on), but there are other questions I need to address…

You talked about Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and Quentin Tarantino. Any other favorite directors?

The Warchowskis did a fantastic job with The Matrix (I’m not a big fan of the 2nd and 3rd in the trilogy, but the original is a modern classic, truly groundbreaking).

Peter Jackson nailed it with LOTR, but I am very disappointed to hear he is breaking The Hobbit into three movies. I think he is giving himself too much license and I worry he will stray too far from the primary story. LOTR succeeded as three movies, but it was also three books.

Steven Spielberg is a director who has made countless exceptional films over the years, demonstrating success in multiple genres. Scorsese has, too.

And speaking as a kid who saw Star Wars at a drive-in when I was six, George Lucas played a large role in my childhood.

Finally, while we’re talking about directors, I must lament the passing of Tony Scott, who directed my T-movie and one of my all-time favorite films, True Romance.

You also mentioned books to movies. What are some of the worst adaptations?

The Sum of All Fears tops my list of bad adaptations…Harrison Ford declined the role of Jack Ryan in this film, and the studio fixed that problem by making the character of Jack Ryan a junior analyst instead of the senior agent who had Hunted for Red October, played the Patriot Games, survived the Clear and Present Danger, and rescued the Cardinal from the Kremlin. (NOTE: The lattermost title never made it to film, but the story has a huge role in the plausibility of Ryan’s actions in The Sum of All Fears).

By casting a young actor (Ben Afflek), the writers removed Ryan’s experience and zapped the film of the realism that makes Clancy’s books so damn good. The result is a brainless romp with a cheesy ending.

Do you consider yourself a real movie geek?

No, I only geek out about fake movies ;-)

Have you ever done an all-day, extended-version marathon of Lord of the Rings?

Not yet. I don’t have the extended editions of The Two Towers or Return of the King, so an extended-edition marathon is out of the picture (yeah, there’s a pun, take it or leave it). The real challenge is getting permission from my family to let me just sit on the couch for ten hours watching LOTR at volumes that shake the very foundation of my home, which I would gladly do if only they would let me.


If you do the Challenge again next year, what theme would you consider?

I’m also a musician, so next year I may go after bands and songs, another area where I have very eclectic taste.

Thanks, Rick! Music would be an awesome theme for next year.


Co-host Ninja Captain Alex is the author of CassaStar and CassaFire and his blog can be found HERE

Monstrous Monday Brought to You by Tim Brannan

            Today's guest is two time A to Z veteran Tim Brannan.  The podium is yours Tim.

My name is Tim Brannan and I blog over at The Other Side.  My blog is primarily a gaming blog; I write about Role-Playing Games, the original kind, with paper, pencils and dice.  I tend to focus primarily on games I have been involved with over the last 30+ years of playing, running and eventually, writing them.   So my blog, originally, began as a means of me improving on and showing off my game writing.   My particular interests though lie in horror games.  I worked on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG and I wrote Ghosts of Albion.  So I wanted to expand out in to horror as well.


I came to the A to Z blogging challenge back in 2011.  I figure I was blogging everyday anyway, so the challenge for me was finding something to say that began with that day’s letter.  I checked over my regular schedule and I noticed that the letters corresponded well with my regular posts. I remember that Z fell on a Saturday that year and I post about the comic character Zatanna on Saturdays.  That clinched it for me! Last year I went REALLY overboard and all my posts on the Other Side had to fit my theme of reviewing a new RPG.  So I reviewed 26 games, in alphabetical order.  Because I am also a glutton for punishment, I participated over at my Atheism blog, The Freedom of Nonbelief, about the A to Z of Atheism.  

For 2013, I am thinking of adding a couple of blogs to the challenge, these are ones I co-author with others.


The A to Z Challenge was so much fun that I have been itching to do something like that on my own.  Some sort of blogging challenge that would play to my interests and maybe even give my little blog some attention.  We I finally came up with something in the form of MONSTROUS MONDAY.  There are five Mondays in October this year and I thought it would be great if I posted a monster every Monday.  These would be game stats, something you could use in a game.  But then I got to thinking, my audience is more than just gamers.  I decided to expand it to include any type of monster discussion.  I know a lot of authors too, so they can talk about the monster from their new book. Movie bloggers can join and talk about their favorite movie monster; I could go on for pages (and have) about Dracula for example.

So allow me to present the MONSTROUS MONDAY bloghop/blogfest (not sure what the difference is).  Just go to my blog, grab the code, sign up and Monday, October 29th post your monster.  I have information, banners/buttons and signup here: http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/p/bloghop.html


What I would love is to get a variety of blogs to participate.  Blogging is great, but we all tend to stay in our own circles.  Not that we all necessarily all agree with each other all the time, but there is a tendency for us all to talk about the same things.  A bloghop or a blogfest is a great way to expand your circles a bit, to see what other bloggers are doing, what sort of things excite them and so on.  I enjoy stepping outside the gaming circles because I get different perspectives.  I can talk about something like vampires or witches and get totally different responses from gamers, horror authors and horror movie fans.  I find that feedback essential to my growth as a blogger and as a game writer.   And if I can also get some people interested in this hobby of mine, then all the better!


So let’s see your monsters! The ones you love, the ones you hate and the ones that still send you hiding under the covers or behind the sofa!

          Thanks Tim!   I've signed up on Tossing It Out.  This is a great way to celebrate Halloween and I've always had a soft spot in my heart for monsters. How about you?  Do you like monsters?  Would you like to join us on Monday October 29th for this blog event?

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