Updated Star Wars Timeline

I finally update my Star Wars Timeline Checklist on my website from last year. It includes a lot of the StarWars.com Hyperspace stories and Source Archives as well as most of the new stuff that has come out since. I also included a lot of older stories that did not make it on the timeline before. I hope to keep it updated a little more often with the Clone Wars series rolling out a new episode every week.

Some Interesting Stories

I found some of these stories previously and figured I could post them here.

Do we really have free will or do our minds make up the decision before we do?
Or as my wife put it "Does our subconscious control our conscious?"

Scientific Worship?

Star Wars Video Games

On the Star Wars portion of my website I included a PDF of a Star Wars Video Game checklist. Since I had made it for myself I figured this could be useful for other people also looking to do the same. They are sorted by year and all available consoles for each game are listed as well. You can find the PDF HERE towards the bottom of the page.

Oh Palin

Geology Fun Fact - For the Week of Oct 5th, 08'

Yea, I know. I haven't done this every week and I probably won't. But I will try to at least to alternate the Geo Facts and the Dino Pics.

100 Greatest Books #78 - Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is listed on both on the Sybervision and Observer book lists.

I got the feeling while I was reading this of Cast Away a lot. I know there were several people out there who thought that movie was boring. Well the book came across the same way. It just seemed to drag on for me. Every other page at the beginning I was expecting him to become ship wrecked, then when he finally was, nothing exciting happened. For a book that seemed to be billed as an action-adventure novel I got none of that through the narrative. It's not a totally bad book and I enjoyed the plot, I just felt it was really slow at times. I found it amusing how no matter what Robinson did he seemed to end up on the short end of things, although I found it irritating that all Native Americans/ Native Islanders were referred to as savages and cannibals. I can see how they might be thought of that way in the story until you meet them but Defoe continued to show them eating humans. Sorry but cannibalism was not that widespread.

VP Debate and the Environment

Ok, one of my major concerns as a geologist is the environment. So thinking of that, Governor Palin has come across as not only ignorant but down right backwards on her thinking. I think Biden's comment of "drill, drill, drill" hits the nail right on the head. Personally I think that instead of wasting time and money on more drilling we could spend the same time and money on renewable resources and get the return not only sooner but it would then be sustainable.

But the main focus of this rant is on Palin's comment to global warming at the VP debate:

IFILL: ... Let's talk about climate change. What is true and what is false about what we have heard, read, discussed, debated about the causes of climate change?

PALIN: Yes. Well, as the nation's only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it's real.

I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.

As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We've got to reduce emissions. John McCain is right there with an "all of the above" approach to deal with climate change impacts.

We've got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don't care as much about the climate as we do, we're allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for. So even in dealing with climate change, it's all the more reason that we have an "all of the above" approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change.

How does that even make any sense? If somehow McCain wins, he better not die.