Author: Mark Alexander

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While Planetary Formation is Unlikely…

…around any star in a globular cluster, can you imagine what the night sky would look like on one? I mean hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a sphere 150 light years across, with upward of 100 stars jammed into an area 1 light year in diameter. (For comparison, the sun’s nearest neighbor is a bit over 4 light years distant.)

See: Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall.

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I’ve Always Been Envious…

…of guys who can grow beards. Probably why I find them so damn sexy. I’ve never had a problem growing a respectable—nay, a full-on Tom Selleck porn-star—mustache, but I’m otherwise facially follicularly-challenged, a situation that’s plagued me my entire life.

My one and only attempt at bearding was disappointing:

Of course looking at these pictures now, I’d kill to be able to pull off even this meager bit of facial plumage, but at the time I wasn’t impressed with what was developing. When these pictures were taken in August 1993, it had also entered that I-want-to-scratch-my-face-off phase, and in fact, I went back to just the mustache shortly thereafter, never to try it again.

After the treatment for my cancer in 2003, I can’t even pull this off any more. The radiation destroyed all the hair follicles slightly above and below my jawline on both sides, so growing a beard (like any number of other things that age has robbed me of) is just another one of those things that will have to wait until another lifetime…

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I Hate to Admit It…

…but I agree with everything Mr. Murrell has to say about Season Two.

I mean, I enjoyed the second season of Picard while I was watching it. I was able to ignore the issues brought up in this video on a weekly basis, but looking back on the entire season once it finished I was so very…disappointed. It could’ve been so much more.

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I Often Wonder…

What a 17-year-old me would think if he was shown this photo and was told it would be his study in the year 2022. So many things we easily take for granted would be total sci-fi magic to that guy.

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