BLOGS

All Posts (6513)

Sort by

Down by the River ~ Two more covers for the Spirit Waters Trilogy by Lucretia T Knight (@Irina_Mknight)

Posted by Aidana WillowRaven on August 15, 2015 at 9:30pm
Down by the River is the next soon-to-be-released volume of Lucretia T. Knight's Spirit AWaters Trilogy. And to take advantage of an available discount, we went ahead and readied the cover for book three, still to be written at the time of this post.
~
The unique challenge with this project was to utilize the same central graphic for each new volume while still making each unique to that particular book's plot needs and giving each one it's own look. Each cover has to 'work' on its own while remaining cohesive as a set. I am so not a fan of using the same exact image for each new volume, and just changing the text or color scheme. I find it lazy and potentially confusing to the readers. 
~
It would so aggravate me to grab the wrong book at a glance and have to go back and grab the right one. I image it would annoy book buyers, too. Or even worse, buyers not noticing the too slight variation, and not buying the sequels because they don't realize they are different books. We only have a click of the mouse to grab buyer attention. Why making harder for your book to sell?
~
But let me stop ranting and give you the blurb for Down by the River:
~
The ocean filled him, nearly killing him, and then released him. The experience of drowning when he was eight has haunted Drew ever since. Now at thirty-two, he has returned home to his cloying family in the small town of Demetra. He’s jobless, loveless, and searching. His family forces him into a baptismal immersion that triggers his childhood drowning and sends him spiraling toward an incomprehensible journey filled with terrifying and prophetic visions. Along the way he finds an unlikely love, the courage to release his deepest fears, and ultimately the strength to embrace his sublime destiny.
~
~
~
For those that want more information about book one, A Witch's Tale, here's a recap:
~
Amy’s life is a numb existence of work and home, until strange dreams of the moon and waves sweep her into a dark place within herself. Her mundane world begins to spin into exciting, erotic adventures. But, who is really in control? Disjointed memories of the day rattle Amy’s mind and she begins to question her sanity. She discovers an old familial connection to witchcraft. A journey into her mind and soul lead her to a place where she will have to battle for the right to her own existence. Converging blood lines will either destroy her, or liberate her.
~
Personally, I am most excited about the Luna's Tide volume. Lucretia has only told me a little bit about it, but I can't imagine not loving it.  
~
Be sure to connect with Lucretia online:
Twitter       Website
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
Onto wrapping up the next book :-D
Until next time ...
This post edited by Grammarly* ~ NOW FREE FOR CHROME USERS!
*Blurbs and quotes provided are not edited by WillowRaven, but posted as provided by author/publisher. 
Read more…

Agents of BMRLA

Posted by Soyinka I. Ogunbusola on August 15, 2015 at 12:07pm

The Bureau of Metaphysical Research and Logistics Agency a covert, clandestine agency operates outside and beyond the authority of shadow governments around the world in complete secrecy with total autonomy.  Their area of expertise includes all phenomena associated with the occult, including but not limited to the paranormal, extraterrestrial and intra-terrestrial, time paradoxes, astral projection, mind manipulation, remote viewing, and reanimation. The world’s foremost experts of their fields have been contracted and deployed for their expertise in the fields of Fringe science, and Occult studies.  Agents of BMRLA are scattered around the globe like cells waiting to be activated for their assignments.  These covert agents operate with clandestine objectives and agendas. Dorian Grey child prodigy born in Ethiopia of Egyptian parents protects the world from occult and supernatural threats; threats that do not come from technology against man but the unseen world around man.  Affectionately called D.G. she is the director of field operations, and the liaison between government agencies such as the FBI, NSA, KGB, Interpol, the CIA, and the DOD under the guise of Vatican archive curator. Her knowledge of ancient artifacts scrolls and numerous antiquities gained her complete autonomy.  Dr. Grey raised in Britain educated in Oxford holds PhDs in Forensic Anthropology, Archeology, Astral physics, and a world renowned linguist of ancient languages.  Dr. Grey recreated BMRLA in complete confidentiality and utilizes the Vatican’s resources. She protects the benevolent magic in the so called third world countries with Africa as her main objective. The agency’s primary purpose is to maintain balance on the planet, and return stolen artifacts to their ancestral homeland.  This particular  organization has existed for centuries under various names and titles eradicating the planet of malevolent forces keeping the balance between light and dark; however upon every encounter of evil  a trail  leads back to Rome, hence an agent infiltrates the Vatican with the help of a centuries old secret society to right the wrongs of the past. 

 Her colleague Dr. Courtney Uganda is a mathematician and social scientist who teaches in the Department of Political Science at the University in South Africa. Independent of her work at the university, she is also the leading scholar on the subject of "remote viewing" as it is done using procedures that were developed by the United States military and used for espionage purposes, with procedures that are derivative of those methodologies of a phenomenon of nonlocal consciousness known as "remote viewing" which they will need to locate a mysterious artifact locked in an underground bunker beneath the Vatican that has somehow gained consciousness as members of the Papal office mysteriously disappear.

 Meanwhile in another part of the world Leila Ali an agent of BMRLA must make her way to the city of Djenne to the great mosque and retrieve the ancient scrolls of Orion and replace them with duplicates before a faction of priest called the Legionnaires of Christ. They are tasked with pillaging the great mosque and destroying Mali’s most religious treasures. She must intercept the scrolls before her nemesis execute their objective of destruction. However caught in the middle of a U.S. drone strike gone horribly wrong a desperate race now ensues through the Sahara one of the world’s most inhospitable environments. 

You've just experienced a taste of "The Dorian Grey Files Womb of Darkness" books one & two 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwKntSgXgMI

available at amazon

Read more…

TED and Drake...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 14, 2015 at 6:34am
The Drake Equation


Topics: Astrobiology, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Drake Equation, SETI, TED


Note: today is my birthday. This blog auto posts, and I'm not doing anything special, as I'll be at work through Sunday. I haven't celebrated my birthday since the age of seven (or, as my mother said: "this kid is weird!"). Enjoy your weekend as well.

The Drake equation quantifies the probabilistic argument that gives the approximate number of active extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy or the whole Universe. At its original form Drake equation has 7 factors, including the average star formation rate, the fraction of stars that have planets, the number of planets per star and others. Even though the equation seems extremely simple at the first glance, coming up with sensible values for the factors is much harder than one might think.

In this recent TEDx video Fred Crawford, who has been teaching physics for over 30 years, discusses the main factors of Drake’s equation and describes how we arrive to sensible values of each of them. For more similar videos use the links below.
Read more…

Fifth Giant Planet...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 13, 2015 at 2:21pm
NASA, ESA, AND G. BACON (STSCI)
An artist's impression of an object in the Kuiper belt at the outer edge of the solar system.


Topics: Astronomy, Planetary Science, Space Exploration


A cluster of icy bodies in the same region as Pluto could be proof that our early solar system was home to a fifth giant planet, according to new research. That planet may have “bumped” Neptune during its migration away from the sun 4 billion years ago, causing the ice giant to jump into its current orbit and scattering a cluster of its satellites into the Kuiper belt in the outer solar system.

The cluster—a grouping of about a thousand icy rocks called the “kernel”—has long been a mystery to astronomers. The rocks stick close together and never veer from the same orbital plane as the planets, unlike the other icy bodies that inhabit the belt. Previous studies proposed that the tightly bound objects formed from violent collisions of larger parent bodies, but that hypothesis fell apart as soon as scientists realized these collisional families would have to be stretched across the Kuiper belt.

Science:
Our early solar system may have been home to a fifth giant planet, Nola Taylor Redd

Read more…

Connecting the Spots...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 12, 2015 at 7:07am
Sunspots on the solar surface, September 2011. (Courtesy: NASA/SDO/HMI)


Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Global Warming, Heliophysics


With respect to climate change, the activity of sunspots has been a red herring to deflect from the actual data that points in our direction. I saw that there were 11 comments, most of the troll variety; most likely without a background in STEM, Environmental Engineering or Heliophysics. The disdain for expertise expressed on a platform that they likely could never design is simultaneously amusing and saddening. It's like having a "better opinion" you can deliver a baby over a gynecologist.

A recalibration of data describing the number of sunspots and groups of sunspots on the surface of the Sun shows that there is no significant long-term upward trend in solar activity since 1700, contrary to what was previously thought. Indeed, the corrected numbers now point towards a consistent history of solar activity over the past few centuries, according to an international team of researchers. Its results suggest that rising global temperatures since the industrial revolution cannot be attributed to increased solar activity. The analysis, its results and its implications for climate research were discussed today at a press briefing at the IAU XXIX General Assembly currently taking place in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Measuring the sunspot number – or Wolf number – is one of the longest running scientific experiments in the world today, and provides crucial information to those studying the solar dynamo, space weather and climate change. Scientists have been observing and documenting sunspots – cool, dark regions of strong magnetism on the solar surface – for more than 400 years, ever since Galileo first pointed his telescope at the Sun in 1610. Scientists have also known about the solar cycle – an approximately 11-year period during which the Sun's magnetic activity oscillates from low to high strength, and then back again – since the mid-18th century, and they have been able to reconstruct solar cycles back to the beginning of the 17th century based on historic observations of sunspot numbers.

Physics World:
New sunspot analysis shows rising global temperatures not linked to solar activity
Tushna Commissariat

Read more…

Telling Our Stories...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 11, 2015 at 8:03am
Image Source: Science Diversity Group, USC Berkley

Topics: American Association of Physics Teachers, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Economy, Education, STEM, Women in Science

It's usually left to women teachers and people of color: African American, Asians, Hispanic/Latino to publicize or relate any information about specific characters or celebration months. I would have loved to participate in the American Association of Physics Teachers/AIP’s Teaching Guides on Women and Minorities in the Physical Sciences and participate in giving them feedback.

This blog started when I was employed as a physics and math teacher. It was a convenience to pull something up and project it on the screen in class, especially if it related to diversity. Some of my former students have found me on the Internet and in this format, I still "teach" them. I continue it universally for kids curious about science; adults that want to learn about STEM fields and teachers that can use my posts during African American History Month, Women's History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month as material or as a warm-up "hook" (it's kind of important for teenagers).

Our stories are the stories of this country; the inventions contributed by those who were deemed not worthy to produce anything at all contributed impacting, ground-breaking discoveries. They are under assault by the homophobic; racist; the sexist the xenophobic that would divide us and make "United States" an oxymoron. Ignoring our diversity will NOT bring us together as I've heard someone emphasize on the campaign trail: learning accurate histories eliminates ignorance, and ignorance is the father of intolerance.

We've come a long way, and we still have much further to go if we possess the courage for the journey. As a nation, we're in this together. Concrete, real world solutions, not soundbites and sloganeering - are what we need.

Nine teachers from California, Texas, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts participated, representing public and private elementary, middle, and high schools. They critiqued AIP’s Teaching Guides, digging deeply into some of the lesson plans, and offered ideas for how to include the stories of female and African American role models in a hands-on classroom. During the workshop, the teachers learned many things, including:
  • Students should know about several influential scientists such as Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Inge Lehmann, Mildred Dresselhaus, Sylvester James Gates, Jr., and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
  • Antinepotism laws kept women with PhDs from working at the same institutions as their husbands until the mid-20th century.
  • Women astronomers observed at Harvard Observatory before 1900.
  • Women worked on the Manhattan Project, at NASA, and in computing.
  • The first African American to obtain a PhD in physics was in 1876 (Edward Bouchet, Yale).
  • African-American physicists first found employment outside of historically Black colleges and universities with the US military, with NASA, and in other government scientific agencies.

American Institute of Physics:
Telling the stories of women and African Americans in the physical sciences
Scientific American:
Diversity in Science: Why It Is Essential for Excellence, Fred Guterl

Read more…

Behemoths and First Light...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 10, 2015 at 6:23pm
The European Extremely Large Telescope is under construction on Cerro Armazones, Chile. (Artist’s conception courtesy of ESO/L. Calçada.)
Citation: Phys. Today 68, 8, 24 (2015); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2875


Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Research, SETI, Telescopes


Among the science goals for three 30-m-scale telescopes is to seek signs of extraterrestrial life. But the big projects must first overcome big hurdles.

In what seems akin to winning the lottery, astronomers are moving ahead with not one, but three gigantic optical-IR telescopes, each with a price tag upwards of a billion dollars. The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) are both sited in Chile, and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is to be built on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

For a given wavelength, the diffraction limit, which sets a telescope’s maximum possible resolution, shrinks as the primary mirror grows. “We will be able to take exquisitely sensitive images back to the beginning of the observable universe,” says TMT board member Michael Bolte of the University of California, Santa Cruz. With adaptive optics, the ground-based telescopes will have spatial resolution exceeding that of the Hubble Space Telescope by at least a factor of 10 and topping that of the 6.5-m James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch in 2018.

The billion-dollar scale raises questions, says Matt Mountain, president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. “What are the appropriate funding models? It’s fair to ask if we have enough resources globally to build, operate, and adequately instrument three of these as completely independent entities.”

The science goals are similar for the three telescopes: They will be used to search for biomarkers in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets and to study black holes, dark matter, dark energy, star and galaxy formation, the era of re-ionization, and more. But the telescopes differ in design, instrumentation, approaches to adaptive optics, and funding and organizational structures.

Each project faces its own technical, financial, and social hurdles; in particular, the GMT still has half a billion dollars to raise, and some native Hawaiians strongly oppose the building of the TMT on a mountain they hold sacred. But to first order, says Jochen Liske, acting program scientist for the E-ELT, “The challenge for all three projects is getting things right and producing a telescope that works.” They all aim to have first light in the early to mid 2020s.

Physics Today: Behemoth telescopes build toward first light, Tom Feder

Read more…

#TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter

Posted by William Hayashi on August 9, 2015 at 10:33am

#TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter is a trending hashtag on the internet and one which Jodi Picoult, Amy Tan and others are having fun with...so I thought I'd chime in. After three decades of living the writer's life, I have many more than ten juicy possibilities for this list. But here is my all-time personal favorite:

"I found your book at a garage sale! In the Free Box!"

Click here for the full story

Read more…

Buzz and Teaching...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 7, 2015 at 6:11am
Image Source: Technology Review


Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Humor, Robotics, Science Fiction


I thought these articles were related, and I admit somewhat intriguing. The first regards Buzz, which is described in the paper's abstract as "a novel programming language for heterogeneous robot swarms," though I'm not sure if "swarm" is the operative word they should have had in their description. The second is a post on Technology Review titled: "Teaching Machines to Understand Us." [Ahem] We have a few that can - well, extrapolate to some extreme thought processes - I'm thinking of the recent shots fired in the Jade Helm 15 military exercises [1], and outrageous behavior encouraged by conspiracy provocateurs (that haven't participated). It doesn't help that some very good science fiction has speculated on this quite a bit, and a few of my fellow humans can't delineate between fantasy and reality. [2]

Abstract

We present Buzz, a novel programming language for heterogeneous robot swarms. Buzz advocates a compositional approach, offering primitives to define swarm behaviors both from the perspective of the single robot and of the overall swarm. Single-robot primitives include robot-specific instructions and manipulation of neighborhood data. Swarm-based primitives allow for the dynamic management of robot teams, and for sharing information globally across the swarm. Self-organization stems from the completely decentralized mechanisms upon which the Buzz run-time platform is based. The language can be extended to add new primitives (thus supporting heterogeneous robot swarms), and its run-time platform is designed to be laid on top of other frameworks, such as Robot Operating System. We showcase the capabilities of Buzz by providing code examples, and analyze scalability and robustness of the run-time platform through realistic simulated experiments with representative swarm algorithms. [3]

The first time Yann LeCun revolutionized artificial intelligence, it was a false dawn. It was 1995, and for almost a decade, the young Frenchman had been dedicated to what many computer scientists considered a bad idea: that crudely mimicking certain features of the brain was the best way to bring about intelligent machines. But LeCun had shown that this approach could produce something strikingly smart—and useful. Working at Bell Labs, he made software that roughly simulated neurons and learned to read handwritten text by looking at many different examples. Bell Labs’ corporate parent, AT&T, used it to sell the first machines capable of reading the handwriting on checks and written forms. To LeCun and a few fellow believers in artificial neural networks, it seemed to mark the beginning of an era in which machines could learn many other skills previously limited to humans. It wasn’t. [4]

1. Jade Helm: The Insanity that Ate Texas, Jim Wright, Stonekettle Station
2. Why Operation Jade Helm 15 is freaking out the Internet — and why it shouldn’t be, Dan Lamothe, Washington Post
3. Physics arXiv:
Buzz: An Extensible Programming Language for Self-Organizing Heterogeneous Robot Swarms, Carlo Pinciroli, Adam Lee-Brown, Giovanni Beltrame
4. Teaching Machines to Understand Us, Tom Simonite

Read more…

Diverse Storytelling with a Great Soundtrack

Posted by Christopher Love on August 6, 2015 at 11:44am

Diverse Heroes are Here Ready to Read

Along with Marvel/Disney, DC Entertainment, Dark Horse, Image and more; now Heroes Like Me Entertainment enters the field with diverse Heroes and a new form of storytelling.  In an environment where comic book heroes are majority Caucasian males. Now their will come MONTHLY stories like The Human Pearl, Bass Reeves - Deputy Marshal, The Flying Bullet, Shining Star and The Fiery Furnace and The Black Dove.
These stories will encourage reading for school age kids and for those who have graduated. Reading is Fundamental.
You can read these stories now with  musical soundtrack, sound effects and ambience audio.
Heroes Like Me will use the E-reader platform of Booktrack.
Dive into these stories with rich stereo sounds and finally become apart of the adventure.
What are you waiting for?
Come back each month for more.
Shining Star and The Fiery Furnace - what happens when a Black male and Latino go thru the struggles of everyday . And they have superpowers. The sparks fly monthly in this tale of adventure.
The Flying Bullet - All Curt Masters wanted to do was to defend his country against the Nazis as a Tuskegee Airman. That all  when he was kidnapped by an UFO and has to make a difficult choice billions of  away from home.

The Human Pearl- Fairy tales do come true in the story of a 300 year old lost african princess. Now she is forced to face the modern world. Is she a mermaid or something far more dangerous.
The Black Dove - She is a bounty hunter who has the tracking  of a wolverine. But skills are not enough when her greatest threat is her own body.
Bass Reeves- If you haven't heard of the greatest lawman of the old west, then you are not alone. In his 30+ year career, he has captured over 3000 criminals and shot 14 dead in self defense. His hat and belt was  off. He is the basis to the Lone Ranger character. Now he returns in monthly adventures.
Christopher Love is the Chief Creative Officer of Heroes Like Me Entertainment.  A website that catalogs diverse content from other creators along with its own material.
Read more…

Twittersphere and Fireworks...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 6, 2015 at 8:04am
Figure 2: Sample conversation graphs with retweet (top) and follow (bottom) features (visualized using the force directed layout algorithm in Gephi). The left side is controversial, (a,e) #beefban, (b,f) #russia march, while the right side is non-controversial, (c,g) #sxsw, (d,h) #germanwings.


Topics: Computer Science, History, Humor, Internet, Politics, Social Media


Poignantly, today is the 70th anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; as a species we entered the era where mass extinction became a troubling, crystallized thought. The BBC has a short presentation on their web site commemorating this history.

Equally significant and jarring: The first presidential debates are tonight from a party on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, that has made disenfranchising minorities from the voting booths for a non-existent problem a political tactic. That, thanks to 5 justices on the Supreme Court (ONE which I can arguably say left the African American community despite his physical attributes decades ago), gutting the provision that covered nine states, eight of which in the old Confederacy. A conservative circuit court with clearer legal vision saw through the canard in Texas and put full stop to that dark procedure in the Lone Star State.

I will fortunately be at work during this "debate." I can only stomach so much bombast and hyperbolic over-the-top rhetoric. I'll likely look at the analysis, soundbites and yes: Tweets.

Sadly, like most of us, I'll be looking for the "fireworks."

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Many a controversy has raged on social media platforms such as Twitter. Some last for weeks or months, others blow themselves in an afternoon. And yet most go unnoticed by most people. That would change if there was a reliable way of spotting controversies in the Twitterstream in real time.

That could happen thanks to the work of Kiran Garimella and pals at Aalto University in Finland. These guys have found a way to spot the characteristics of a controversy in a collection of tweets and distinguish this from a noncontroversial conversation.

Various researchers have studied controversies on Twitter but these have all focused on preidentified arguments, whereas Garimella and co want to spot them in the first place. Their key idea is that the structure of conversations that involve controversy are different from those that are benign.

Physics arXiv: Quantifying Controversy in Social Media
Kiran Garimella, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Aristides Gionis, Michael Mathioudakis

Read more…

Small Solutions For Big Problems...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 5, 2015 at 7:24am
Image source: National Physical Laboratory

Topics: Carbon Nanotubes, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Engineering Physics, Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology, Women in Science

Stephanie Moroz and I share the same background in Engineering Physics and both in the same industry at the moment (she has extensive experience in other areas as well, and I'm not a CEO). She gives an excellent primer presentation at TEDx:

What is nanotechnology? Stephanie Moroz explores some of the ways that designing materials at an incredibly small scale can address global challenges in fields such as energy, medicine and electronics.

Stephanie Moroz is the CEO of Nano-Nouvelle, a Sunshine Coast company developing high-performance battery electrodes. Her international career has been dedicated to commercializing new technologies, particularly in the areas of energy efficiency and nanomaterials.

Stephanie is a truly global citizen. With her education in engineering physics, she has worked in Canada and then Germany where she led the integration of hydrogen fuel cells into the Mercedes F-CELL vehicle. From there she moved to France, developing systems to reduce the pollution generated by conventional vehicles. Finally, she was lured to Australia by opportunities in nanotechnology: first in solid-state hydrogen storage and now innovative battery materials at Nano-Nouvelle.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
Read more…

YOUR SUPPORT IS REQUESTED

Posted by Abdul H. Rashid on August 5, 2015 at 1:26am

This is the final 6 days of the Kickstarter campaign for the creator-owned original title BLEED 2039 thru my studio (AHR VISIONS) and I would REALLY appreciate your support in getting it fully funded! It is over 65% near goal and I am confident it can make it to the finish with the right backers!

Here is the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/291655160/bleed-2039

Thank you all in advance for any support you care to offer and please share!

~ AHR

Read more…

Times Dark and Terrible...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 4, 2015 at 10:30am


Topics: Black Holes, CERN, God Particle, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, Humor, Large Hadron Collider, Particle Physics

Realize that the site Addicting Info usually titles its post with bombastic themes for equally outrageous stories. My response to this one regarding the latest conspiracy provocateur to enjoin that the Large Hadron Collider will "open other dimensions" or in a new twist, it's the "new Tower of Babel," and that its operation is a "dark and terrible chapter in human history." I posted the above meme sentiment and the following statement:

The "dark and terrible" chapter in human history is the willful choice of scientific ignorance in the 21st Century.

That got a lot of responses on Facebook, hundreds mostly positive with the exception of two trolls: one that ranted and the other that chimed in. They had their say and were brief and silent after that for the most part. The only dark and terrible time I can think of is the dark ages.

Willful meaning that with our access to the Internet and before that a public library, this kind of bombast without qualification is rather inexcusable. The only motivation is to pull a certain section of society towards your worldview; the only strength of your position is their ignorance, which unlike Thomas Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect at Eton College, is not "bliss" or necessity: it is control.

A brief history of accelerators and particle physics:

Accelerators: John D. Cockcroft and Ernest Walton at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, sought a way into the nucleus through a prediction of quantum mechanics. George Gamow had suggested that a particle with too little energy to overcome the electrical repulsion of the nucleus through the barrier. (The trick was that the energy of the particle was not actually well-defined, according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle). In 1930 Cockcroft and Walton used a 200-kilovolt transformer to accelerate protons down a straight discharge tube, but they concluded that Gamow's tunnelling did not work and decided to seek higher energies. [1] The Bubble Accelerator was designed by Donald A. Glaser, a popular apocryphal story about him contemplating the design over beer: it's something you hear as an undergrad and never, ever forget! He did win the Nobel Prize in 1960 for the Bubble Chamber.

Some examples:

Van der Graaf generator: If your high school physics teacher had you touch it and your hair stood on end like an Afro, THAT was a particle accelerator, no dimensions were opened or damaged in these experiments.

X-rays and nMRI: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging comes to mind. If you've had these procedures in a medical event, you have particle physics to thank for it.

Related info:

Black Holes: The byproduct of Red Giant stars that collapse after their nuclear fuel is spent at the end of their lifetimes. Our own sun at its end will likely become a Brown or White Dwarf, as it's not that massive. A large part of the analysis to even propose Black Holes was developed during the Second World War in the development of the atomic bomb. It was once so extreme, not even Einstein believed they could exist, though General Relativity pretty much predicted it. [2, 3]

CERN: European Organization for Nuclear Research. Here's a link that is a PDF on technological spin offs, some of which are things like, I don't know: the World Wide Web. The rants I've seen on web sites (or, even responses to some of my posts in the past) are breathtaking in their hypocrisy. I'd have more respect for a group that sincerely went back to snail mail, the Abacus and Slide Rule (I have the latter). There's even spin offs for treating cancer and solar panels.

The God Particle: Also known as the Higgs Boson. It was coined by Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon M. Lederman and science writer Dick Teresi in a book by the same name, the subtitle an obvious nod to "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy": The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What Is the Question? Lederman often joked due to the frustration at the time not having found it - with a colorful metaphor what else he would like to have called it. In this case, 42 didn't quite cover it.

Particle Physics: "Particle physics is the branch of physics that studies the nature of the particles that constitute matter (particles with mass) and radiation (massless particles). Although the word "particle" can refer to various types of very small objects (e.g. protons, gas particles, or even household dust), "particle physics" usually investigates the irreducibly smallest detectable particles and the irreducibly fundamental force fields necessary to explain them. By our current understanding, these elementary particles are excitations of the quantum fields that also govern their interactions. The currently dominant theory explaining these fundamental particles and fields, along with their dynamics, is called the Standard Model. Thus, modern particle physics generally investigates the Standard Model and its various possible extensions, e.g to the newest "known" particle, the Higgs boson, or even to the oldest known force field, gravity." Wikipedia

Wormholes: See Kip Thorne's book below [2]. It was the Einstein-Rosen Bridge seen in the movies Contact from Carl Sagan's novel and most recently, Marvel's Thor. An advanced civilization that lived beyond its technological adolescence (i.e., they didn't blow themselves to kingdom come) could probably engineer one.

So, rather than a soundbite, I thought it important to give longer explanations. It's easier to find out How Accelerators Work [4] by simply going to a site where experts give an explanation for consumption by the general public.

As a country, we have a historic fear and loathing of science - the aforementioned bomb [3] and the Tuskegee Experiments didn't help. This "dark and terrible chapter" for the most part had a lot of positive spin offs that have benefited everyone. Now, ignorance is a choice, but not a permanent state of affairs. As Carl Sagan said, "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." That state can be remedied.

1. American Institute of Physics: Early Particle Accelerators
2. "Black Holes and Time Warps-Einstein's Outrageous Legacy," Kip Thorne
3. #P4TC: M.A.D...
4. CERN: How Accelerators Work

Read more…

Two new maps created for David Millar's (@DavidHMillar) CONALL book series.

Posted by Aidana WillowRaven on August 3, 2015 at 12:30pm
covers by Ida at Amygdala Design

I really find creating maps for books a fun change of pace. These two maps are for David H Millar's CONALL book series, being published through A Wee Publishing Company. 
~
For this pair of illos, I had to reference really old maps of both Scotland and Ireland. What I found most challenging was how almost every map I could find was significantly different from every other map I found. So a lot of wingin' it was going on, lol.
~
Of course, I'm sure you've noticed the names above differ from the names you may know. Eriu is Ireland and Albu is Scotland.
~
~
Like so many other languages, there were regional variations of Gaelic. Irish-Gaelic and Scots-Gaelic. Sometimes so varying in spelling and pronunciation, there were often difficulties understanding each other. (I'm not this smart, lol. David told me.)
~
Speaking of Gaelic, did I ever tell ya'll my first name is Gaelic. Now that I know there is a difference, Aidana is Scots-Gaelic. I was named after the 6th-century fire God and Goddess (a combination of the two diety's names) Aidan and Edonna, even though my heritage is Spanish Gypsy with some French, Mexican, German, and Cherokee mixed in for good measure, lol. I have an eclectic background.
~
However, out of curiosity, I looked up my name in Irish-Gaelic, and it has a slightly different meaning ... Little Fiery One. I think
~
I like that :D Follow David Millar on Twitter and check out A Wee Publishing Company on Twitter, too.
~
~
~
~
~
Onto wrapping up the next book :-D
Until next time ...
This post edited by Grammarly* ~ NOW FREE FOR CHROME USERS!
*Blurbs and quotes provided are not edited by WillowRaven, but posted as provided by author/publisher. 
Read more…

Ultracold Atom Reservoir...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 3, 2015 at 7:56am
The ultracold atom reservoir. The 3D MOT is located in the centre of the region of cross-hatched copper pipes at the bottom left of the L-shape. Atoms are then guided to the right along the middle pipe in the trio of pipes, which dips into the differential pumping stage (in the U-bend) before rising upwards. The reservoir of ultracold atoms is at the centre of the region of cross-hatched copper pipes at the top of the L-shape. (Courtesy: Jan Mahnke)

Topics: Bose-Einstein Condensate, Condensed Matter Physics, Lasers, Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics

A reservoir of ultracold atoms that is topped-up continuously has been unveiled by physicists in Germany and Denmark. The system can store 38 million rubidium atoms at a temperature of 102 μK, and the team says that it could be adapted to work for a wide range of particles and trapping methods. Applications of the reservoir include using the cold atoms in metrology systems or to cool other gases or even tiny objects.

Gases of ultracold atoms and molecules are used in a wide range of applications, including atomic clocks and simulating quantum effects in solid materials. While physicists have come a long way in developing and perfecting techniques for cooling gases to temperatures as low as 50 pK, these are "one-shot" systems in which the gas is cooled in isolation and then the atoms are put to use until their numbers are exhausted or the gas is destroyed by making a measurement. In some cases, however, it would be useful to maintain a continuous reservoir of ultracold atoms that could be used to perform continuous metrology or to cool other systems.

Now, Jan Mahnke and colleagues at Leibniz Universität Hannover and Aarhus Universitet have created a continuously pumped reservoir of ultracold atoms that is integrated within an L-shaped device that is made from a copper block measuring several centimetres across (see image above). The cooling process begins in a separate device that functions as a 2D magneto-optical trap (MOT). This uses laser beams and magnetic fields to cool and guide about 10 billion rubidium-87 atoms at temperatures as low as 25 μK. Some of these atoms are then transferred to the first stage of the reservoir device, which is a 3D MOT that can store about 2 billion atoms.

Physics World: Reservoir of ultracold atoms is filled continuously, Hamish Johnston

Read more…

Did you know that if only 10% of the members of BSFS participated in this deal that we could create a black owned and operated network that would be dedicated to giving black sci fi writers a platform

Posted by Roy M. Eavins II on August 2, 2015 at 5:08pm

Did you know that if only 10% of the members of BSFS participated in this deal that we could create a black owned and operated network that would be dedicated to giving black sci fi writers a platform to promote their work AND create a Black SciFi event that could travel to at least 3 major cities??? We are trying to get as many people as possible to make this one time advertising deal! You could be physically in front of at least 20,000+ people weekly and many more streaming LIVE 24/7 on our digital platform!!! 

Are you ready to be a part of the solution?

Read more…

We, Oligarchy...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 2, 2015 at 6:18am
Image Source: IMDb


Topics: Democracy, Exceptionalism, Internet, Oligarchy, Republic


We are now days from the first debates of the presidential cycle - The Cycle, NOW with Alex Wagner and the Ed Show cancelled on MSNBC due to executives kowtowing at the arcane Nielsen altar, which worked well when you had only ABC, CBS NBC and a few UHF channels: on-demand television and cable viewing, Net Flicks, Amazon Prime et al and pretty much NO ONE in America working a standard 9 - 5 whereby they can park and watch Walter Cronkite at 6:30 pm has somewhat changed the game for the non-Fox audience that's not older, whiter, more conservative and semi or fully retired. We've been in the throws of reality television since Candid Camera in 1948. It has been the recent advent of Internet technology; instantaneous gratification by pointing and clicking that allows us all to "vote" for our favorite dancer/singer from the comfort of our living rooms that have allowed us all to participate in what used to be merely voyeurism with the boob tube. I currently have several apps on my smart phone, one of them allowing me to order a sandwich - days in advance - and pick it up at the shop at an appointed time and on a "rapid pick up" shelf.

"The Donald": a self-made billionaire with cheap toupee or poor comb over inherited his fortunes from his self-made millionaire father, and continued in the family business. He's had a triplet series of traditional marriages and far more bankruptcies. Someone at a New Hampshire focus group said: "he's just like us" while another woman said "he was classy." Unless you are worth billions and have a string of marriages and business bankruptcies, he's not "just like us"; and madam: if a bloviating bigot is your definition of "classy," I fear you need to get out more.
Image source: Super Mario Wiki and this blog

The Donald is a reality TV star - part of a long list of reality shows I don't watch - host of The Apprentice - and publisher of several books on his business philosophy and self-importance. He's been around notoriety-wise since the 1980's when he was much thinner and had exceptionally more hair. And now, his time has come. We have been conditioned like Pavlov's dogs from the sixty-seven year onslaught of filler television programming to consider his bid for the presidency genuine. We had a B-movie actor - why not The Donald? Conventional wisdom is he would have imploded by now and slinked back to his show with a boost in draconian Nielsen ratings. He's not doing it now. The oligarchs are likely quite confused, amused and nervous. As the departing Jon Stewart remarked [paraphrased]: "as a 1%er, he's supposed to BUY politicians, not actually become one." For the likes of the Koch brothers, the sock puppets Scott Walker and Chris Christie are "their kind of guys." The Donald is a loose and unpredictable cannon, following the formula that gets your reality primary high ratings. By going with the top 10 averaged in national polls, it encourages bombast and outrageous behaviors such that it is essentially what the GOP primary has become.

From above: "I currently have several apps on my smart phone, one of them allowing me to order a sandwich - days in advance - and pick it up at the shop at an appointed time and on a 'rapid pick up' shelf." Question: if we can do this with apps to get food and vote for our favorite contestant on "reality TV," why are we NOT doing it for the voting franchise? With mobile technology, ~90% of 311 million people voting would be a far louder voice than "corporations are people" Citizens United decisions that ushered in this current non-democratic (or, republic for that matter) model. Former President Carter disabused us of any illusions if we weren't already.

Answer: it would be "too much democracy." Now, that sounds horrifying on its face, but as a nation, we're somewhat prone not to reason, examination of facts/details/data and debate, but someone who sounds confident; "the decider" who "goes with his gut"; rides tall in the saddle even though he had as many deferments as Dick Cheney during the Vietnam conflict. The aforementioned, underlined link in the first sentence is one of many I found just searching on the term itself. Carnival barkers of Trump's mold - like used car salesmen - don't have to BE genuine, but like reality TV, they MUST at least sound genuine. We are ripe for an authoritarian, carnival barker or otherwise.

George Carlin - public intellectual, ever timely and prescient of the current election cycle with his stand-up: "Dumb Americans." American Exceptionalism is the mythology we tell ourselves, and provocateurs like Trump - strides in and yells it loud to adoring crowds. He has no solutions; no specifics. His hand gestures have become caricature, yet his appeal is due to the systematic dumbing down we've experienced for a little over two generations now. Science and technology - paramount to our survival - will exist in a parallel reality, its warnings ignored, as obedient Pavlov hounds bay at the previous month's blue moon and the rich wolves count the dividends they will send overseas, away from these shores, its crumbling roads, schools and infrastructure.

To quote Lawrence Lessig, we are a Republic, Lost.


An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens. It should be noted, that when Jefferson speaks of "science," he is often referring to knowledge or learning in general.
Read more…