Fantasist's Scroll

Imagine the entire universe laid out in a three-dimensional map.

Well, imagine no more, it’s a reality. According to this article on Wired News, a couple of scientists in New York have made just such a map. It’s not as accurate as they’d like, but that’s mainly because our actual knowlege of the universe is pretty limited. Still, it’s a three-dimensional map of the heavens that can be navigated in pretty fast “real-time”. Though, real time would take hundreds of years to get us from place to place, so it’s actually a lot quicker than that. A very cool learning tool that will, hopefully, inspire legions of future astronomers and space scientists.

You can experience the magic, in a more limited fashion, right on your desktop. The Hayden Observitory, who created the “big” map, also created Partiview, which let’s you see the same thing they show at the observatory at home, though it’s not quite as spectacular.
Enjoy!

Notice how bare the Fiction cupboard is?

Well, there’s a reason. My day job has kept me pretty busy. And, as much as I love this site and writing, my day job is what pays the mortgage and puts food on the table.
You can see what my “other” life is like here.
And you can see my Resume, here.

Who invented pickles?

I don’t really know, but I know I sure love them. And, while eating a pickle this weekend, I started to wonder about them. What does it say about a culture to have started making pickles? Lots of cultures have pickles of one kind or another, and have had them for a long time.
First of all, it indicates a certain level of agrarian culture to produce the produce that goes into the pickle. Or does it? Several Scandinavian cultures have pickled fish, like herring, so it’s not limited to a simple agrarian culture.
Secondly, there has to be a need of some kind. No one ever invented anything that has lasted without trying to solve a need of some kind. So, what need drives the invention of pickles? Simply put, the need to preserve food. Why a culture needs to preserve food is another matter. War? Famine? Seasonal hardships? All are possibilites and reasons to hoard food. Food hoarding implies some kind of preservation techniques, of which pickling is just one.
So, that covers the absolute basics, but how do pickles fit into a culture? Are they a delicacy? A staple? Or, does it depend on the time of year? Or, perhaps, what has been pickled?

As you can see, lunch is never simple at my house. Even something as simple as a pickle can generate questions and ConWorld possiblities. Worse yet, it may inspire me to do something like try to reproduce the technology myself! Come Fall, we may just find ourselves pickling any number of strange things.
But, this all illustrates a point that I try to make over and over again when it comes to writing and exploring created cultures: never stop asking questions. Question everything from how bread is made to how water is moved to how sewage is removed to how the average citizen makes their living. Anything and everything, if studied carefully, can provide information or inspiration for a conculture or conworld. Even pickles!