eponymous_rose

Okay, this is pretty clever. (Link contains speculation and probable spoilers for Sherlock!) I just watched those particular episodes of each show, too, and I never made the connection. So cool!

I'm a scientist, and I've done posts like this about science that interests me, but I'm also a classically trained pianist, and I think that one of the absolute greatest things anyone has ever taught me was how to listen to classical music - and I don't mean sit in concert halls and nod sagely and go "hmm, yes, quite nice", I mean really listen. So I'd like to pass that on to you, if you're curious or bored or getting a vague sense that this is something wonderful and huge that you now have a perfect excuse to experience.

Here's the thing - the vast majority of songs you hear on the radio are going to follow a certain formula. You've got your verses ("In the town where I was born/Lived a man who sailed to sea"), your chorus ("We all live in a yellow submarine") that's the always-stuck-in-your-head bit that pops up between verses, and somewhere around the middle you'll get a bridge with different instrumentation, often in a different key (this particular example has an instrumental bridge). This is, happily, a little point of commonality with the often-arcane world of classical music. In particular, I'm going to chat a bit (using an example!) about a certain form of music, a formula like the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus form you get so often in popular music.

This formula's called sonata-allegro form, and it was incredibly popular in the late 18th and early 19th century. Folks like Mozart loved this sucker, and a whole lot of pieces from that period have sonata-allegro form written all over them.

If you can get the hang of sonata-allegro form, you've got a pretty great start when it comes to understanding the structure behind this kind of music (and you've got a better chance at staying awake in a concert hall). So if you've got the time, sit back, relax, turn up your speakers, and let me try to talk you into really listening to this particular piece of music.

( Onwards! This post is aimed at folks with little or no experience with music, although experts and enthusiasts are welcome to come in and point out all the ways in which I'm completely wrong about all this. )

Uh, I kinda committed casefic based on the finale. Anyone willing to do a fairly quick beta? (I'd like to get it out of my system before I decide to stick it on my hard drive and forget about it.)

It's about 6000 words (I know) and focuses on John, with a secondary spotlight on Sally Donovan, and it's gen. Pretty standard for me - some language, some violence. Any takers? Anyone familiar with the city of London would be especially nice, since I'd like to not screw up too badly when it comes to places and travel times, and I'm mostly operating based on half-remembered jet-lagged visits years and years ago.

I've screened comments, so you can leave an e-mail address without fear of the spambots, if that suits you better. Thank you so much!

Edit: That was quick, thank you!

Title: Simulacrum
Word Count: 11,600 (in four chapters)
Characters: Mirror Miles O'Brien, Mirror Julian Bashir, Mirror Jadzia Dax, Mirror Jennifer Sisko, Julian Bashir, Mirror Benjamin Sisko, Benjamin Sisko, Mirror Dukat, Mirror Tuvok, Mirror Kira Nerys, Mirror Garak
Warnings: None
Notes: For echoinautumn. Thank you to epershand and justice_turtle for their super-detailed and thought-provoking betas - this story's much better for their help, and any remaining errors are entirely my fault! Also, thank you to persiflage_1, who did an eleventh-hour beta for a longfic in a relatively unfamiliar fandom - I really appreciate it!

Summary: Through the looking glass, Miles O'Brien makes the acquaintance of two Julian Bashirs. He's always had a talent for fixing broken things.

AO3: Simulacrum
LJ/DW: ( Simulacrum (4/4) )

Title: Simulacrum
Word Count: 11,600 (in four chapters)
Characters: Mirror Miles O'Brien, Mirror Julian Bashir, Mirror Jadzia Dax, Mirror Jennifer Sisko, Julian Bashir, Mirror Benjamin Sisko, Benjamin Sisko, Mirror Dukat, Mirror Tuvok, Mirror Kira Nerys, Mirror Garak
Warnings: None
Notes: For echoinautumn. Thank you to epershand and justice_turtle for their super-detailed and thought-provoking betas - this story's much better for their help, and any remaining errors are entirely my fault! Also, thank you to persiflage_1, who did an eleventh-hour beta for a longfic in a relatively unfamiliar fandom - I really appreciate it!

Summary: Through the looking glass, Miles O'Brien makes the acquaintance of two Julian Bashirs. He's always had a talent for fixing broken things.

AO3: Simulacrum
LJ/DW: ( Simulacrum (2/4) )

(On the hunt for recs, I just stumbled across my Yuletide recipient and another reviewer discussing the fic I wrote in thousands of words of in-depth meta. I may have flailed quite a lot, and I kinda feel like I can pack up and go home, because that right there is everything I ever wanted as a fic-writer. ♥)

Yuletide Madness has occurred, and I was absolutely boggled to find three fics waiting for me - so exciting! They are all three of them gorgeous little stories that deserve lots and lots of love:

First, in DS9 fandom, Past Lives and Propaganda is hilarious(ly meta), and will ensure that you never look at the first couple seasons of TNG the same way again. Kira helps Jadzia go through Curzon's old things.

In drabble-sized form, there's Snowflakes - in my Mass Effect request, I'd asked for something featuring the characters with less screen time, and this drabble delivers! Zaeed and Gardner share a drink, and it's fantastic to see how much of a rapport can be built in 100 words alone.

Finally, also in DS9 fandom, there's As Was Intended, which is beautifully written and is so full of awesomeness that I never realized I'd always wanted to see in the show. Jadzia sits down for coffee with Garak.

All in all, I feel ridiculously lucky this Yuletidely season, and I hope I can repay some of that kindness via fandom_stocking this year. ♥

Since apparently some 20,000 new accounts have been created on Dreamwidth since the last LJ code rollout, I'm gonna assume some of you are among them! I crosspost everything at the moment, and try to remember to check my flists on both sites. If you're hiding out over there, do drop me a line and I'll add you!

Last post for today, honest.

This is ridiculously cool. Learn about how the retina's backwards, why we have a blind spot in each eye, and how to trick your brain into letting you see the blood vessels crisscrossed across your vision.

Also, the Anonymous Holiday Love Meme is up and running again! My thread's over here. I'm having fun hunting through the comments for familiar names - go add yours to the mix! ♥

You've probably heard by now that NASA has confirmed the existence of a planet in its sun's "habitable zone" - that is, the distance from the sun where liquid water could exist. It's called Kepler-22b, it's about 2.4 times the size of the Earth, and has a mean temperature of around 22C (for comparison, Earth's mean temperature is around 13C). Here are some things people (and articles) have been getting wrong lately.

1. "Habitable" means "inhabited".
Alas, this isn't proof of alien life (although the possibility for life as we know it to exist on that planet is higher than anywhere else we've observed). Mars is within the habitable zone of our own sun, to put that into perspective. That said, the Curiosity rover could be on-track to discover simple life on Mars.

2. There is water at the surface.
We have no data on the planet's atmospheric composition. As I understand it, the mean temperature quoted above is merely an estimation based on physical proximity to its sun. For all we know, the planet could be in the grips of a runaway greenhouse effect and turn out to be a scorched hothouse like Venus, covered in poisonous gas.

3. This planet would make a great, habitable substitute for Earth.
If we did find some way to traverse the incredible distance between us and Kepler-22b, we might find some strong differences, even assuming it turns out to have similar atmospheric composition to our own. Depending on the composition of the planet's interior (another unknown, although we should have more data on this when the planet transits its sun again this summer), the larger size of the planet could indicate crushing gravitational forces. The planet's rotation could be strange, or skewed, or totally unknown to us. Very little is known about these so-called "super-Earth" planets (larger than Earth, but not too much larger), since we have none in our own system, and observations of them have only been coming in since around 2006.

Okay, so what's the point in getting excited over this?
Everything I said up there is just pointing out uncertainties. There are two different kinds of criteria for a planet to support life: the necessary conditions and the sufficient conditions. If you have the necessary conditions, you've got the possibility of life - think of it as going out to buy the ingredients in bulk you need for a cake, a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, whatever. If you have the sufficient conditions, you've got the guarantee of life - think of it as knowing exactly the right amounts of each ingredient. In terms of extraterrestrial life, the sufficient conditions are still largely a mystery, but we are familiar with the necessary conditions. One of the necessary conditions has never been met before Kepler-22b: the location of the planet's orbit with respect to its sun. We may not know yet how many eggs we need to make this cake, but we do know we need some number of eggs, and this is the first time we've actually opened our fridge to find a carton of eggs waiting for us.

It's a first step, and it's a step we've never taken before. That's big news! And the fact that we still have 48 other candidate planets in the habitable zones of their respective stars is a Big Deal. But it's news in a way that a lot of the media seems to be missing out on.