From the Mind of the Lemming: Night Flight

Humans are adaptable critters. Or perhaps the Lemming should say "adapting."

For example, although they've got top-rate color vision and see well enough to avoid trees at twilight, humans are most sincerely not nocturnal. But instead of accepting a role as day-dwellers, they keep developing new ways to stay active: no matter where a sun is relative to the local horizon.

They do, however, seem to like feeling "in control," even when the actual work is getting done — and quite well — by their tech.

The Lemming recalls a time when a train's "driver" didn't tell the train's AI that he was stepping out of the vehicle — and ran after the train as it left without him.

Originally posted last week:

• "From the Mind of the Lemming: Night Flight "
  (September 26, 2014)

NO! Don't Shoo... - - - GLIPNARF!!!!

Writing a post for another blog, A Catholic Citizen in America, my mind took me off on an tangent. Nothing unusual there.

It's almost on-topic for that post, but not quite: and the excerpt is a better fit with this blog.

Airman AB Glipnarf's Big Mistake

One of the very few 'UFO' reports that I think could plausibly involve extraterrestrial intelligence happened in northwestern Minnesota in 1979.

No, I do not think this is proof that We Are Not Alone: but the report is intriguing.

As a writer, I can imagine a story from the point of view of the space aliens: deputy sheriff Johnson could have startled the jittery crew of a vessel, maybe one that wasn't supposed to land in the first place. The alien equivalent of an Air Force AB shot at the patrol car before the commander could stop him/her/it: making a bad situation much worse.

What happens to Airman AB Glipnarf may depend on how many forms the commander needs to fill out; and whether the landing was the result of equipment failure, botched navigation, or something else.

Now I really should get back to work.

Vaguely-related posts:

• "Seriously Searching for Life in the Universe"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (February 8, 2013)
• "Genesis, Optimus Prime, and Victorian America"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (April 10, 2012)
• "The Aliens are Coming! The Aliens are Coming!"
  (April 26, 2010)
• "Interstellar Empires, Imagination, and an Occasionally-Sozzled Detective"
  (March 12, 2010)
• "Gods, Demons, and Used Spaceship Dealers"
  (February 13, 2010)