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| Personal background |
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OK. Where to start? That's the question, isn't it?
Well, I was born and raised in Switzerland, to be more specific, in a town called Lugano, in the Italian-speaking part of the Nation.
I grew up in a multi-lingual family, so I cannot really say that I have a native speaking idiom. I speak whatever feels easier at the moment.
But you may want me to be a bit more detailed, so here it is: I used to speak Italian, because at school they told me to, I spoke German, English and French at home, because members of my family come from the four corners of the Earth.
OK, OK. My father was Irish, but worked many years in Italy, my father's mother was Swedish. My mother was born in Spain but raised in France and her mother was German and her father was Russian, but only spoke French, because his family settled to France in the early 19th Century, belonging as it goes, to the Czar's special Diplomatic Corps.
The Irish part of me retained my first name, Patrick, but not the family name, due to the wish expressed by my father, that the only living male heir (if this had been the case at the moment of his death, which alas came to pass and took him from us when I was only two) should keep my mother's last name, for continuity's sake.
Hence my last name is Selitrenny, a French translated form of its original Russian one, which I never could actually find out,
I have mainly worked as a web designer, text-translator and editor, as well as being one of the last true "method" actors around.
The ones who study the "method" nowadays are just doing so by hear-say and not by the original Masters, unless they manage to know a close pupil of them.
I am also a stage and film director, but have only had a chance to prove myself on stages around the States and in Europe, but never participated to a major movie production, which is actually still my main goal.
I am an avid collector of DVDs and Videotapes of Classic Movies, together with some newer one (if they manage to stand up in comparison).
I also love to collect Movie Scores, as long as they are original compositions of great masters, such as Jerry Goldsmith, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Max Steiner and so forth.
I read a lot (due to my trade), but mostly Classic Literature, which for my character and my taste, appeals much more to me than its modern counterpart.
Every now and then I even dare to pick up some good Sci-Fi book and devour it.
I have a keen interest in History and Space Exploration. The periods I prefer the most are the Middle Ages (from the Dark Ages to the Age of Exploration, approx. 470AD to 1490AD) and World War II, particularly the last two years of the War (ca. September 1943 to August 1945).
In Space Exploration I literally grab whatever comes my way. Books, DVDs, tapes and try to get a deeper grasp of all the wonders we have achieved in a very short period of time.
My favorite theme though, are the Apollo missions, that together with Mercury and Gemini in context, represented the Genie in the lamp.
I own the complete broadcasts of Apollo 11, 15, 16 and 17 and discovered how fascinating it can be to be involved in working on the Moon.
At 52 years of age, it will be difficult for me to still be able to board a spacecraft, unless by abduction by aliens, so I keep on dreaming of what could have been.
This is probably why I grew so attached to Science Fiction movies and Series, such as The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and UFO. Movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still or Mission to Mars still fascinate me, but many more are also stacked in my collection and I love them all.
What can I say more? Ah yes. I forgot. Model building...
Another of my passions.
Many consider it just a hobby, others play it down as simply playing with toys, while to me, modeling is just another Art Form.
It includes studying the history of the model that has to be built, performing a thorough research of the settings in which said model used to move, fly or other ways trail around. It also has to do with some form of primitive architecture and landscaping, when building a diorama, with the art of painting and sculpting, by choosing the right tools for the task and the hues of color applied on the vehicle and on "people" in scale.
Hours, days, weeks, sometimes months can go by before an actual model is actually ready to see the light of day and be displayed in an appropriate setting.
It is both creative, and at the same time has to be precise enough, in order to actually reproduce a "3D replica" of something, or some event that took place a long time ago and of which at times, we only have written explanations, or if fortunate, some blurred and confused B&W stills (this is especially true for all subjects dating back to before the 1950s).
I usually build German and Allied Tanks in 1:35 scale, but for Aircraft of WWII and belonging to the modern Era I generally prefer 1:72.
I also occasionally build models concerning Real Space and Science Fiction.
Just recently I discovered, or should I say rediscovered a modeling medium, which is probably as old as its origins: paper.
Paper modeling can really be fun if some skill and time is put into it.
Through this additional form of model building I had a totally new approach to this craft.
I also discovered that one can build a Runabaout in Cardstock, detail it with some extra material, paint it appropriately and voila, you have an excellent and vibrant model in your hands.
I also discovered that many models that the industry usually snobs, are readily available this way, such as all the variants of the Apollo-Saturn rockets, or the Mercury-Redstone/Mercury-Atlas, or again all the variants of the Soyuz or Energia spacecraft.
Everything one needs is the appropriate materials and a good printer.
Well, here it is, this in short, or in length, is what I am all about.
In essence this is who I am. Nothing special, nothing exceptional.
Just a sturdy (if you should meet me, bare in mind Orson Welles, not as heavy as he was, but almost, beard and all) middle-aged guy, more similar to a bear than a human being (thank Heavens not an ape), loving to sit around home, whenever possible, rather than participate to all the craziness and excitement that is such a beloved ritual of my species.
If you are a couch-potato, or a bear like me, drop me a note, and I may share my peanuts with you... |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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Why on Earth would I be running SETI@home indeed?
Well because I have the feeling that despite of what all scientists seem to claim nowadays, someone is out there.
I don't care if its a cerebral amoeba or E.T., or again the Monster from Alien (which I actually doubt), but someone is either doing what we are doing, attempting to communicate, or has done so in the past or his future.
It is just pure curiosity, call it wishful thinking, but I am sure that some day, maybe not today, nor tomorrow, but one day, something will pop up.
The key then will be to decipher it, which is another problem altogether.
It is still questionable if another race, humanoid or not, may be communicating with our own parameters.
What if they were able to communicate telepathically from a solar system to another?
They wouldn't be using radio waves, but rather mind directed magnetic or even chemically generated signals and messages.
What would we be doing then?
Anyhow, it is fun to know that you can be useful to others for no particular reason whatsoever.
As said in my bio, I may never reach the stars, but why not try to see if I, you, we, can capt some sort of message on spaceship Earth?
Yeah, because although we live in the illusion that we need a spacecraft to move around in space, we already are in a sort of a gigantic spaceship and it is traveling much faster through space than any known object we may ever cram together in the near future.
My only question is, when will we really get to make the big leap forward and finally step into the space adventure?
And when do we count to finally work on some new engine concept a la Star Trek, such as Warp Velocity.
We already know the theory. It is possible.
So why not actively do something about it?
After all we know the string theory, we know about folding space, we know about wormholes. So why are we still sitting around doing nothing?
Because of money?
C'mon, give me a break...
If Pharaohs ever had to worry about money, they would never have dared to move a stone to build the pyramids. But they did.
Why can't we, as humanity united, do the same for Space Exploration?
Politicians wine all the time about the "Bad Economy", about the loss of yet another thousand or ten-thousand working places and wonder how to convert these unemployed people into something useful.
Here you have the answer.
Invest in space mining, space construction, space travel, space tourism, space research, space listening, space exploration, space research.... etc., etc.
Do I have to tell them?
Do we have to tell them?
Can't they see on what a gold mine we are sitting on?
That's right. We are sitting on it, not doing a thing.
And if we are doing something, it is simply not enough.
When will we wake up and see the immense potential of space?
Not just for its own sake, but for Planet Earth too.
We are almost six and a half billion people living on this planet and resources grow shorter and shorter by the minute.
In a hundred years we will probably have no more reserves left.
Then it will be up to nature and an Epidemic to take care of the surplus population, or we will have, like it or not, willing or not (but human nature tells us otherwise, doesn't it), resort once again to war.
Wouldn't it be simpler to send some of these people out there and actively be doing something for ourselves, in engaging them in a project as big as our world and as big as our dreams have always been, a project that is worthy of Mankind all together and in which Mankind as a whole could take pride?
After all, weren't we all proud to belong to the human race, no matter the religion, the skin color, the language, when Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of Moon for the first time ever, on July 1969?
We need that pride again.
We need to be reminded of our own greatness.
We all need to be part of a project that is bigger than ourselves.
If not for us, at least for the generations that will follow.
I really hope, someone would listen to my message...
I can only go on and hope... |
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