Posted By Ness

Unless you are trying to finish a 50,000  word novel in that one month. Well if that's all I were doing it would be easy! There's just so many other things! There's so much school, and orchestra rehearsals, and speech and debate, and other things that are just fun.

      It's near the end of Novemeber, almost Thanksgiving. This time last year I was on the point of realizing that I only had 5,000 words in my novel. about four days later I was writing solidly trying to make the 50,000 word mark before the end of November... which even with all my valiant work... I failed :)

    Well, so what's happened since I last posted?  I went to my first practice tournament of the year (and only one unfortunately) It was really fun! I won must of my rounds, whcih I wasn't expecting. My impromptu speech wasn't very scary, and I didn't mess up on my DI, it was completely memorized :) It was a really fun practice tournament, and I had a lot of fun. I don't have any pictures... oh well... Afterwards we went out to eat, that was fun too :-)

   For thanksgiving we are going to visiting my grandparents. The whole ride up I will be writing on my NaNo novel, furiously trying to finish it :) When we get back it will be December... think of that. November will be over... We will have our Orchestra concert and the Messiah concert, my first piano ****** (ever!) and Christmas will be approaching...

I also just finished reading ' 'Till We Have Faces '  by CS Lewis  if you've read it tell me what you thought of it! =)

     ~Ness

Posted By Alex

Over the last century, and especially recently, countless people have predicted that the world is going to end due to some catastrophe.  Some predicted aliens; some prophesied that overpopulation would lead to massive incurable famines; still others proclaimed that the end would come by disease, permenant submersion of all habitable land, a super volcano, an experimental accident, global warming, a nearby supernova, superintelligent computers, or grey goo nano-technology that would dominate the universe. All these scenarios have been seriously put forward, but few as much as one: that earth will be hit and destroyed by a giant asteroid.



Now serious people usually brush off all these scenarios off, calling them "alarmist" and "apocolyptic." Those who trust in science say that man could ward off any of these threats that might actually be possible. For example they say: 'We can detect astroids years before they come near earth and a well guided missle sent from earth could end an asteroid's life far out in space.'

Well, theses people sound much more credible and believable. And they are, but neither side has things completely right as was proved this past week.

Science was proved faulty last Friday when an asteroid nearly struck earth and was not detected until 15 hours before it made its closest approach. (Click here for article). Fortunately, the asteroid was only 23 feet in diameter, and would have been much reduced in size by the time it hit earth. Still, it could have exploded in the atmosphere and caused severe damage.

Several historical events show the damage that can be done even by small asteroids or meteors:

1. In prehistoric times a 54 yard long meteor hit in what's now Arizona. It caused a 4,000 ft long crater that is 570 ft deep. See the picture below.




2. In 1490, in China, historical documents tell of 10,000 people being slain by "falling stones." Astronomers believe these "stones" to have been the result of an asteroid that exploded in the atmosphere.

3. The most recent impact catastrophe was the Tunguska Event in Russia in 1908, when a 4-6 mile wide meteor blew up in the atmosphere directly impacting 830 sq miles.

 Fortunately it happened above an empty part of Siberia populated only by extensive evergreen forests. The damage was still tremendous. The explosion was 1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, and produced the effect of a level 5 earthquake.

There are many eyewitness accounts from Tungus villagers and Russian settlers living many hundreds of miles away on the shores of Lake Baikal. They report seeing a massive blue column, as bright as the sun, descend from the sky and immediately after, a massive explosion that knocked people off their feet, broke all the windows, and severely damaged crops.

This was all hundreds and hundreds of miles away. The influence of the explosion was felt even in Europe. There was no night in either Europe or Asia for several days afterward due to the explosion. People in London could read their newspapers at night in its light. It was generally assumed to be the beginning of the end of the world.

In Siberia itself, where the explosion actually happened, a new lake was created 80 million trees were felled as seen in the picture below.



If that asteroid on Friday had hit earth and if it had been as big as the Tunguska asteroid, our world would be drastically changed. And scientists didn't even see it coming until hours before the event. If an asteroid like Tunguska hit the US, China, or Europe, the world as we know it would truly have been at an end.



 

Posted By Ness

Have you ever heard a song that you liked and then looked it up online to see if there's a piece of free sheet music for it?
    Often you can find a piece of free sheet music for that song, such as 'The Spinning Song' for piano. But more often than not you can't find what your looking for... At least I can't.
Below are links for four sheet music sites, which don't come up when you google 'free sheet music', they never have for me anyway.



http://imslp.org/ A project to put all out of print music online for anyone to use. This website has a lot of classical music on it.

Music Scores   Has a lot of free arrangements and solos ranging in difficulty levels. Some songs are not free. Also the site has a limit of downloading three files every twenty-four hours if you are not a member. To become a member it costs thirty dollars a year.

Making Music Fun  Mostly easy music. Meant for a  music teacher  resource. It's all free and there's music for a lot of different instruments.

The Session free Irish fiddle tunes. These are arrangements just simple tunes.

My favorite is music scores, except the limitations can be annoying. I also like Imslp a lot but it just depends what your looking for

There you go, have fun! =D

                          ~Ness

• Comments (3) • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link