That is the entirety of NASA’s 2009 budget. The return-to-the-moon budget was between 1 and 3 billion. By canceling the lunar return program, the feckless fucktard occupying the White House has saved the American taxpayer precisely jack shit.

$3,000,000,000 / 300,000,000 people = $10 / person. 2.7 cents per day, over the course of one year. Or, we could go to the God damned moon.

It turns out I’m very clever.

A few years ago I had an idea for a new way to apply established aerodynamic principles to produce a new sort of flying machine. The problem was that, while the math worked out, I didn’t have the facilities to produce a physical test item. Plus, this is my idea; I didn’t want to give it to my employer despite the fact that they kinda do this sort of testing all the dang time. Throw in the fact that I’m like a schizophrenic with ADD on meth when it comes to projects, and you begin to understand why I hadn’t made much progress.

Anyway, years pass. I learn new skills. I dream up construction and manufacturing techniques. I discover technologies and materials of which I had been unaware.

Long story shortish: a couple night ago, I attached my foam-core compressor to my salvaged fan motor and successfully applied lift to an object weighing 25 grams.

Okay, that doesn’t sound like much. But it proves that the principle is sound. Given how little optimization I did on the design, the fact that I got any success at all is, frankly, monumental.

I mean, even the Wright brothers’ first flight was only 12 seconds, in a plane made out of toothpicks.

Now that I know it works, I can proceed out of the balsa wood and styrofoam phase and into something I can wow people with. And then, I WILL RULE THE WORLD!!!!

Ahem, sorry.

They’re usually in the form of a wand vibrating back and forth or a thing spinning in a circle with a line of LEDs on the end. I saw one of the spinning ones yesterday, and it gave me an idea.

Instead of having just one vertical line at the end of a spinning arm, make an entire array from the center out to the edge, both sides, plus the top and the outside edge. Using the same persistence of vision/fast-blinking light method, you can draw a 3D image without a lot more effort than the current 2D system.

It would be heavier, and require more power to spin it, but it’s still just a 2D display. No actual new technology would be required. You could do animation and everything. And the intriguing possibility of seeing the outside and inside of the projected object at the same time.

It wouldn’t be freestanding in open space, but still pretty awesome.

The Japanese have probably invented it already.

We all know a black hole is point in space where gravity is so intense that not even light can escape its pull. Well, sort of. Close enough, anyway.

We also know that, of the four known fundamental forces of the universe, gravity is the weakest. I think the order is Strong force, weak force, electromagnetism, gravity, but I might have the second and third switched. Electromagnetism is the only other one that has influence at a distance greater than atomic radii.

The weird idea I had arises from these two facts. It is this: is it possible for an electromagnetic equivalent of a black hole to exist? An electromagnetic field so strong that no charged particle or wave bundle could escape its pull.

As far as we know, electromagnetic phenomena only occur in the form of dipoles. That is, with a north and south pole and an orientation. Charged particles are attracted to one of the two poles, and move along the lines of force to get there. (I know, it’s more complex than that, electrical charges in magnetic fields, right hand rule and all that. It’s 1 AM; leave me alone.) Gravity, by contrast, is monopolar. Everything gets pulled directly toward the center regardless of relative position. So, a collapsed EM field generator might be self-extinguishing.

But if they can exist, do they? Because EM force is stronger than gravity, it should be possible to achieve EM collapse before gravity collapse. Light wouldn’t be able to escape either one, but a sufficiently fast-moving neutral particle could escape an EM hole, or even pass through unaffected.

Anyway, just a random notion I thought I’d share.

…didn’t the Lockerbie bomber’s chartered plane mysteriously explode in Libyan airspace?

Seriously. If some rich liberal wants to cut me a big check, I will go to town hall meetings and try to sway senators and Congressmen in favor of nationalized health care. I doesn’t even have to be my representatives. I’m happy to travel, if all expenses are paid. Give me a check with enough zeroes on it, and I’ll lay more astroturf than a football stadium.

I’m college-educated, fit the conservative stereotypes (white, male, from the south), and do not fear public speaking. And I’ve got diabetes, so the health care system affects me directly every single day. I’ve got credibility out the wazoo.

DNC, Soros, ACORN, I don’t care who signs the check. In this economy, I need some supplemental income. If somebody’s giving it away, I’ll take it. I’ll carry signs. I’ll wear silly outfits. I once won an award for chanting. I won’t beat anybody up, but I’d be happy to menace. People tell me I can be menacing.

Come on, left-wing money men! Let me be your protest whore.

I wonder, as total human population increases, will it still require six degrees of separation for everyone to be connected to everyone else? Will it drop to five or increase to seven? If so, when/at what population?

I haven’t written anything of significance in months. Late last year, my computer’s hard drive crashed. Luckily, I have an external drive I use for backup. Unluckily, I hadn’t updated it since April. Luckily, pretty much every word I’d written since April, I’d printed out and read to my writing group. So I don’t seem to have lost much if anything.

But I haven’t strung more than 100 words together fancifully since then. I keep thinking up ideas, premises, settings, even a few scenes. I make notes as appropriate. I look at “How to Write” websites, and decide I know all those tips already.

The short form is, I’m afraid to suck. Which is weird because I thought I was past that. I’m afraid of wasting my time. I know, all first drafts are terrible. And I know the solution is to suck it up and write anyway until it doesn’t suck anymore.

There are so many people out there who are better at it than I am. They’ve got the Seven Universal Plots and the Hero’s Journey and every cool thing Shakespeare ever said all memorized. They can describe an alternate reality Edwardian steampunk New York City street at the drop of a hat, in such detail as to make you smell the coal furnaces.

Me? I do funny dialog and cardboard sets. I wouldn’t know how to tug a heartstring if I could find one. My plots die of option paralysis after about three scenes. I couldn’t begin to tell you how to make a climax climactic.

I’ve heard about workshops, and they scare me silly. I can take the criticism; it’s the production rate I can’t fathom. I know, writing is a skill, and learning to do it fast is part of the skill set. But still, you can have it fast, or you can have it good….

I thought up my first major book idea in college, almost 20 years ago. Still haven’t written it. I still like the idea and take it out to play with once in a while. Those poor characters, stuck in limbo. How do you make a staged magical battle between two wizards who don’t have magic powers exciting?

Eh, I’m just whining. My cerebral cortex feels fuzzy whenever I try to think too hard for recreational purposes anymore. It’s like trying to think through cotton, if you can imagine how that feels.

I coulda been the guy.

I just had an interesting idea for a way to protest the nationalization of health care in America. It’s brilliant in its simplicity, really.

Everyone start calling your local Congressman and Senators, asking for medical advice. Alternatively, call the White House switchboard.

I don’t imagine it would take long to make the point.

It can be annoyingly difficult to plan my meals around what’s on TV when there’s nothing on TV.