Growing up in Japan, I didn’t have too many opportunities to read American comic books. But between the superhero movies of this past decade; a crash course in Moore, Miller, and Gaiman (more on that in a separate post); and a weekend at Emerald City Comic-Con, I’ve realized that I’m much more a Marvel fan than a DC Comics fan.
Artist Alex Mitchell combines two of my favorite things to put a distinctly Japanese twist on the Avengers.
Via Neatorama.
Girls in small glasses and men in long coats
wait for their buses. Beyond the bank,
behind the courthouse, the highway and hotels,
there are places you and I cannot see.
Stairs lead halfway up a hill. Climb them.
A hedge has no gate. Walk through it.
Leaves spin in the road. Step into the wind.
Piled stones shift in the grass. Stand atop them.
Above the highest step, through the hedge,
carried on the air with the whirling leaves,
balanced on rocks tumbling from beneath your feet,
you’ll find the world that shimmers and glows.
In the space between those buildings and buses,
take my hand and close your eyes. Go there with me now.
And now, for no particular reason other than that they are wonderful, a list of my favorite animals.
The woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis)
The domestic Dog (Canis lupus familiaris)
The orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus & P. abelii)
Cephalopods (class Cephalopoda)
The tiger (Panthera tigris)
The Japanese rhinoceros beetle (Allomyrina dichotoma)
The orca (Orcinus orca)
The trilobite (class Trilobita)
24 hours ago, I held my breath with the team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as they waited for the Mars Curiosity Rover to roar through the Martian atmosphere, deploy its supersonic parachute, fire its rockets, and get lowered to the surface of the Red Planet via “sky crane.”
Afterward, I stayed up to watch the press conference. In his comments, Adam Steltzner, lead engineer for EDL (entry, descent, and landing) said, “We humans are toolmakers, explorers, agriculturalists, pioneers.”
Of all the comments made by NASA/JPL team members last night, this brief comment really struck home. Steltzner weaves the story of this landing of one robotic rover into the fabric of our greater human story — from paleolithic toolmaking, neolithic agriculture, and the spread of Homo sapiens across the globe through our next steps to our sister planets and beyond.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden‘s introduction made me proud to be American, but Adam Steltzner made me proud to be a human being.
Here’s one of the first, low-resolution pictures Curiosity took through a dust cover on a “Haz Cam”:
And here’s a spectacular photo of Curiosity parachuting down to Mars, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:
![Curiosity Parachute Landing Spotted by NASA Orbiter [detail]](https://i0.wp.com/farm8.staticflickr.com/7129/7727084702_994e140f7d.jpg)
We can expect high-resolution color photos later this week.
Andrew-Becraft.com 