Kids Need to Read

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Serenity: A Dream of What’s to Come

Posted by Chris Tobias on May 25, 2015
Posted in: Articles, Con Presence, Updates. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
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SpaceX’s Dragon is recovered after a successful splashdown last week. The unmanned transport ship returned over 3,100 pounds of cargo and experiments from the ISS. (Photo: SpaceX)

by Jeff Cunningham

Ni hao, fellow travellers. Jeff here, in a long-overdue return. When I offered to take over this weekend to lighten Chris’ load during exam week and we got to discussing a topic, something about his choice of words got me thinking about the future. In the past week or two, we’ve seen the successful milestone pad abort test of the Dragon II manned spacecraft, followed by the safe return of her unmanned freighter sister craft from the International Space Station. The past couple of days have also seen some unprecedented conversations in the United States capital–who ever thought we’d see the day when legislatures would seriously discuss things like property rights for the first settlers in the ‘Verse? It is indeed an exciting time to be alive. Between stories like this and the premiere of Disney’s Tomorrowland in theaters, it’s becoming clear that society may finally be beginning to turn away from the general malaise and pessimism that accompanied the recession, and is now looking towards the future. In this same spirit, I’d thought it might be a good time to talk to you all about “the road from here.” I suppose we haven’t been as detailed as we could have been about how your letters and petition signatures would lead to a real-life Serenity or what comes in between the two. “No time like the present,” as they say… Continue Reading

The 26 for 26 Project

Posted by Chris Tobias on December 27, 2013
Posted in: Good Works, Reviews. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

by Chris Tobias

Howdy.  Chris here.  This post is going to be a little off the beaten path from what we usually do here at Take Back the Sky, but as an educator, I wanted to share something that affected me very deeply, both personally and professionally.  I hope you don’t mind.

It has been a little over a year since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that claimed the lives of 26 of the school’s students and teachers.  Like many people, I was deeply affected by the event, more so than by any other like it before or since.  I think this was not only because of the young age of many of the victims, but also because teachers gave their lives in an effort to protect their students.

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It’s unfortunate that so much controversy arose in the wake of the Newtown shooting.  All the debate about gun control vs. Americans’ right to keep and bear arms and the media’s coverage of incidents like this (and those who perpetrate them) vs. Americans’ right to free speech can sometimes cause us to lose sight of the real human tragedy.  Like most Americans, I have very strong feelings about those issues, but it is not my intention to discuss them here.  Instead, I want to talk about a project I undertook to pay tribute to those students and teachers who lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary, a project I dubbed “The 26 for 26 Project.”

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