The Amazing Temples of Chiang Mai, Thailand

Roof-line of Wat Prathat Doi Suthep

Quick note: This week I’m over at Turtleduck Press, talking about my latest “ooh, shiny!” obsession — gardening.

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It’s time for another installment of travel tales from my trip through Asia. In this episode, we’re still in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Chiang Mai is famous for more than the adventure tourism I mentioned last time. It’s also known for its temples, or wats….

Wat Prathat Doi SutheP

Detail of the naga (serpents) guarding the long flight of stairs up to the temple

Early in our stay, we took a group tour up Doi Suthep, a mountain next to the city. The main attraction of the mountain is the temple it hosts, Wat Prathat Doi Suthep. There’s a legend about its founding — involving a white elephant (sacred in Thailand) and a relic of Buddha — which you can read on Wikipedia.

This temple was our first experience with Thai religious architecture and Buddhism as practised in Thailand. I’d seen pictures, of course, but the sheer lavishness of the decoration was amazing in person. I wandered around in a daze snapping photos of everything, drunk on the beauty and worldbuilding potential.

Friday Link: Habitable Planet Discovered At Last?

Happy Friday!

As a huge Star Trek fan, I got really excited when astronomers first started discovering planets outside our solar system. Then more and more planets were identified, and none of them were hospitable to (Earth) life, and we didn’t find any aliens, and the whole thing got kind of boring even for a space geek like me.

Here’s a reminder that finding new planets is still something worth celebrating.

From the Surprising Science blog:

The latest in a long string of recent exoplanet discoveries could be the most exciting one yet: A planet called HD 40307g, roughly 44 light years away, appears to be the most likely candidate to harbor life of any exoplanet we’ve discovered to date. Larger than Earth, but smaller than a gas giant, the planet seems to be in the “goldilocks” zone of its star system, the region with the right balance of heat and cold to potentially allow for liquid water.

Read the rest.

That’s all for this week. See you back here on Monday!

Seeking the Dark Side of Halloween

Chapel near Kylemore Abbey, Connemara, Ireland | Copyright Siri Paulson, 2004

Happy Halloween!

I’ve never been into Halloween that much, and I’m not one for ghost stories (unless they’re by Neil Gaiman). Sure, I’ve dressed up and gone trick-or-treating. This year I got to hand out candy from my very own front porch for the first time. And I’ve carved pumpkins and decorated lightly and read kids’ books about witches. But it’s never been my favourite holiday.

And yet.

Things We’ve Forgotten: Make-Believe

Did you have a vivid fantasy life as a child?

I just finished reading Jo Walton’s Hugo-winning novel Among Others, and one of the (many) things that struck me about it was how real make-believe can be for kids. I’m not talking about the fairies in the book — those are meant to be read as real — but about the names Mori and her twin use in their playing. Osgiliath, Glorfindel…of course on one level they know they’re conflating stories with reality, but on another level, those names are true in their heads.

When my sister and I were children playing explorers or servant girls or pirates, we had much the same experience. We knew our snowy backyard wasn’t the Arctic, but it didn’t matter. We knew the playground near our house wasn’t a sailing ship surrounded by sharks, but at the same time, it absolutely was. (Or a robber fort, or a medieval castle, depending on what we needed it to be.) We hadn’t yet learned to fear cognitive dissonance.

Embassytown by China Miéville

What can I say about China Miéville’s Embassytown?

Miéville is not an easy author to read. His fantasy novels tend to be chock-full of really whacked-out worldbuilding, Lovecraftian monsters, and plots that don’t go the way they’re supposed to. (I’ve read several; my favourite of them is Perdido Street Station.) But with Embassytown he turns that sensibility to science fiction, and the result is something truly special.

(Note: No spoilers in the review, but there may be spoilers in comments.)

Autumn Love

I love autumn.

Copyright Siri Paulson, 2011

After a long, hot summer, I love the novelty of actually needing coziness and warmth, whether it’s my favourite chunky sweater, a warm latte or hot chocolate, or a hot soup. I love warm blankets on cool mornings (less so getting out of them!).

I love the sense of new things starting, kids heading back to school, energy building for NaNoWriMo. Often I feel as if the new year begins in September, Jewish-style.

Weekly Link: Tiny Tardigrades Can Live Through Anything

It’s Friday! Here’s a shiny science article to get you through the end of the week.

Apparently there exist in the world these almost microscopic animals called tardigrades that can live in some crazy conditions…

Scientists have found the tiny creatures surviving in boiling hot springs and buried under layers of ice on Himalayan mountaintops. Experiments have shown that they can survive being frozen at -328 degrees Fahrenheit or heated to more than 300 degrees F, are capable of withstanding pressures as powerful as 6000 times that of the atmosphere and can survive radiation doses that are thousands of times stronger than what would be fatal for a human.

And as if that weren’t enough, they have also been known to survive in outer space. Yes, really. To read more and find out how, click through to Surprising Science, a blog on the Smithsonian Magazine website.

In housekeeping news, posting may be a little scarce for the next week or two. The blog schedule will return to normal on the week of October 8.

In the meantime, don’t forget to look for everyday enchantments…

Weekly Link: A Toothbrush Saves the International Space Station

My mother pointed me to this wonderful article about the International Space Station. It starts with a sentence I never thought I’d read:

Astronauts used a toothbrush to conduct repairs outside the International Space Station, ending a marathon 6.5 hour-long spacewalk Wednesday.

Yup. Read the rest at CBC News.

Next week I’ll be buckling down on some writing, so I’m taking an Internet hiatus. But I’ve got an exciting guest blogger lined up for you on Wednesday. You can still comment, too — I just won’t see it until I’m back online next Sunday. Enjoy your week!

 

Remembering This Summer

This has been a long, hot summer — glorious or tiresome, depending on your preferences — but it’s drawing to a close at last. Over the past week I’ve felt a chill in the air, the first hints of autumn. Another season almost over.

It’s been an eventful and hectic summer for me. As I look back on it, I’m trying to fix in my mind the way I want to remember it…

Books for a Mars Landing

So we’re on Mars again! I didn’t watch the feed from NASA, but I saw the amazing landing video (seriously, if you haven’t seen it, go look. I’ll wait) and have been avidly sucking up all the photos being posted on the mission’s website.

Looking at pictures we’ve taken on the surface of another planet always moves me to tears. I can’t believe we’re really out there, down there, sitting on dirt that is not of this world, looking up at another sky. It looks so much like Earth, and yet, with all that red rock and that faded orange sky, so unlike, so alien.

I’m a lapsed physics geek. For a while I wanted to go into astronomy, dreaming of working for NASA or SETI. Why? Science fiction, plain and simple. So today, I’m presenting a list of books inspired by our return to Mars.

(Honourable mentions, disqualified for being too obvious: War of the Worlds; Dune; the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.)