ust giving everyone a heads up on my holiday special, full colored pieces are now $15(normally $25).
Swing by my deviantart page to see what I offer: http://kphillips702.deviantart.com/
Look forward to working with you and happy holidays.
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My cats avoid my attempts to photograph them. One good head shot to twenty ears shots, butt shots, man I've got to get a faster shutter. Need to shoot before the shot to get the picture just right, or do a video and cut some stills.
My tablet has a slow shutter speed, I have since found apps to take quick shots, burst shots. Still they see me coming with my tablet I might as well yell "Vet time". I pulled out the usb remote webcam, for some reason it stopped working on my laptop. I'll figure it out someday, in the meantime an app allows me to work it with my tablet.
I secured the webcam to a stick to view at floor level. When I did the cat test, they saw me coming, besides the stick shook unless resting on the floor. I had to get close without being a threat. Took an old black sock, cut a two inch elastic band. I put the band around my foot and tucked the webcam under the band on my foot. Then I wrapped the cord around my leg and to the tablet. Now the cat test. The cat in question and I already have a love/fear relationship. Hey it's tough, I caught him in the act a few times, had to bust him.
I walk into the room make eye contact, he sits to decide to come close or not. I got the tablet and camera thing running and he senses something. He walks around me but doesn't stop or pause. He meows to acknowledge my kitty call then says I don't know dude and what is that thing with the little green light on your foot? I try to point the cam at him, he moves just out of the view finder. Finally I shut the stuff down, he moves in for the pet. I laugh my butt off. Next time we cover the little green light.
Story seeds, go for it.
Saw uTube vid about viable heart grown from stem cells, a full face transplant. These are what we are allowed to see. Who knows how far we've really come. Implanted organ anti-rejection device, you open a hatch and pop in a small capsule. Organic nanos adjust the body to except new DNA streams. Talk of consciousness transfer and live donors. The medical world has become an industry, a business with a dark underbelly. There is hope for a few and merciless terror for others. Bodies like cars and OEM replacement parts. The critics bash the science by the uncovered mishaps, the egos of ones who can pay to live forever and coined a new word "donor nation".
There was a hospital incident, confusion, intercom voice to evacuate. Guy gets dressed runs out, doesn't know where he's going. Bums on the street direct him to a shelter. No ID, no name, too many questions, sits in lobby watching reruns of Six-million Dollar Man and Robocop. Has flashbacks, flees out the door in anguish screams. No special powers or abilities, an ordinary guy...............
A space ship on a long journey. The suspended animation device has been outfitted with a slew of clone bodies. The idea is to keep someone conscious during the whole trip to run the ship, record and experience. An object strikes the ship, the mind transfer device turns transceiver, picks up an assortment of human souls, all the clones animate. The ship's computer becomes parent, referee, and god..............
Man discovers that photos of people contain a part of the soul. Indians knew this, they warned us. He rigged a way to access the photo soul and record it's experiences. Then he wrote a book about traveling the world in an envelope, the sea in a bottle. He destroyed all data when he recorded a photo soul's experience in a copy machine, a paper shredder and a photographer's studio fire. Today he reads books with no pictures.
As in past breaks, please enjoy all the previous posts.
Short observation of the announced Executive Action on Immigration Reform: Pass a bill. Yes, at 844 pages, Senate Bill 744 is a hefty thing, but that's why you hire staff to read it and give you the "Cliff Notes" summary. It would also help if the congress worked a sizable amount of a year like every other American. I don't expect the bill's current form to survive a House committee without amendments. Its form will naturally change.
That's politics: the art of compromise that through social media atomizing us into the very factions George Washington warned about in his 1796 Farewell Address has become lost. We've become tribal, "E pluribus unum" a quaint Latin phrase; "United States" oxymoron and national poetry, not reality.
We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means. What remains peculiar to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means.
Chapter 1, Section 24, in the Princeton University Press translation (1976)
Variant translation: War is merely the continuation of politics by other means. Carl von Clausewitz, "On War," Source: Wikiquote
Horror vacui: "nature abhors a vacuum" and so does politics in this post "Citizens United" and McCutcheon oxymoronic era. We're making fascism inevitable and "rational"; Oligarchy a natural progression from our laziness as an electorate to be informed; to participate and to actually shape the agendas of the "collectivist conspiracy" also known as self-government.
Spending time with friends and family. Blogging will resume 3 December. Peace.
Hey BSFS!!!
I have started a group for members that have titles in the Kindle Unlimited program. Please join if you would like to have your titles listed.
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| Figure 2 from the paper |
Three frames from a video (electronic supplementary material, movie S1) showing a 70 kg climber ascending a 3.7 m vertical glass surface using a synthetic adhesion system with degressive load-sharing and gecko-inspired adhesives. The time between (a) and (c) is about 90 s and includes six steps.
Geckos, when not shilling for insurance companies, are most known for their climbing abilities that let them scale walls effortlessly. Thanks to their biology, geckos have one major advantage over humans who want to move vertically: they are small, and their bodies are light, so their natural adhesive just has to be good, not great. But a team of scientists from Stanford University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have now one-upped the gecko, creating a hand-sized adhesive surface that allows humans to vertically scale glass walls.
I don't plan on rock climbing sheer faces of office buildings any time soon, but the fact they've figured this out (without the proverbial radioactive genetically enhanced spider) is pretty neat!
Popular Science:
Scale a Glass Wall With Gecko-Inspired Adhesive on Your Hands, Kelsey D. Atherton
Royal Society Publishing:
Human climbing with efficiently scaled gecko-inspired dry adhesives
Elliot W. Hawkes, Eric V. Eason, David L. Christensen, Mark R. Cutkosky
Wikipedia:
van der Waals Force
van der Waals Equation
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| Purdue University's Yang Xu inspects devices made from topological insulators under a microscope before electrical measurements are made on the samples. (Courtesy: Purdue University/Ting-fung Chung) |
Researchers in the US say that they have made the best 3D topological insulator to date. The material is called bismuth antimony tellurium selenide (BiSbTeSe2) and could be of fundamental importance for testing a number of condensed-matter and particle-physics theories. The material could also find use in spintronics devices and be used to build robust topological quantum bits (qubits) for quantum computers.
Topological insulators are materials that are electrical insulators in the bulk but can conduct electricity on their surface via special surface electronic states. "Most topological insulators made to date have not been completely insulating in the bulk, because of impurities (unintentionally introduced during material synthesis or processing) that doped the bulk and made it conducting," explains Yong Chen of Purdue University, who led the research. "Our topological insulator appears not to conduct at all in the bulk but does so only at its surface."
The researchers worked this out by measuring how thin flakes of BiSbTeSe2 of various thicknesses conducted electricity. They found that the conductance of different samples was almost independent of their thicknesses. Such behaviour is completely different to that seen in normal 3D materials, in which conductance is proportional to sample thickness.
Physics World: New 3D topological insulator is the nearest to perfection yet
#P4TC: Hopping To Open Bandgap
Bernal Sphere interior, complete with California-style wine and cheese party, and human powered flight in the lower-gravity area near the axis. Painting by Rick Guidice courtesy of NASA. Source: National Space Society
A Democratic Technocracy I’d define as "a representative democratic republic of elected officials independent of outside financial interests with experience in and/or an appreciation of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to effectively govern a nation and global economy exquisitely dependent on STEM."
More in the embed/link below as well as my observations of the movie "Interstellar."
Source Credit: http://www.npr.org
Article by Charles Pulliam-Moore
Last month Marvel Studios announced the roster for some upcoming features. In addition to Ant-Man and a female-led Captain Marvel film, Marvel's Kevin Feige confirmed that on November 3, 2017, the studio planned to release one of its longest-rumored projects: The Black Panther.
Wesley Snipes portrayed Blade in 1998 and later in the film's two sequels. Halle Berry has reprised her role as Storm in every X-Men film since 2000. Depending on which of the Iron Man films you're watching, either Terrence Howard or Don Cheadle is moonlighting as War Machine. Most recently, Anthony Mackie played sidekick to Captain America as the Falcon.
The thing that makes the Black Panther exciting isn't really his race, it's where he's from – the great nation of Wakanda.
A secretive and isolationist country, Wakanda possesses the world's largest deposit of vibranium, a vibration-absorbing metal that is exceedingly valuable for its technological applications. (It's also the substance that composes Captain America's shield.)
Wary of conflict and foreign exploitation, Wakanda shut out the rest of the world, choosing instead to become a largely self-sustaining society. Through Wakanda, Marvel toyed with and subverted stereotypical depictions of Africa as "wild" or "exotic."
Instead, Wakanda was a futuristic African nation that had never been conquered or touched by colonialism.
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An Interesting read.
Full Article on NPR: http://n.pr/1tF85oW
Greetings, BSFS!
You read correctly, fellow deviants! The first book in my series, "The War of Millennium Night" has finally been made available as a print copy! So for those of you without Kindles or Nooks, look no further!
From Slate to Crimson - Amazon
For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it is as follows:
"Talante, for 10,000 years has governed his clan like a father in the endless war with their hated enemy over the fate of humankind. One winter’s night, he chances to meet Amelia Grayson, a human whose blood arouses his desire, and whose presence arouses his compassion in a way no mortal ever has before. Distracted and terrified by all but alien emotions and instincts by this burgeoning bond in a prelude to what may be his clan’s most desperate hour, Talante is caught between duty and desire, until he is forced by choice and circumstance to decide whether to hold to the one he has grown to love more than his immortal life, or in spite of the cost, let go for the sake of his people and Amelia’s safety, in spite of twofold danger: one from a ravenous enemy that has hunted her kind for millennia … and the other from the seductive bond that would make her forever his, body and soul."
I hope those of you interested in vampire stories will come on down and purchase my book. I'm working on revisions for the second book in the series, "Double-Cross My Heart." So look forward to that as well!
-Brandon Hill
I watch the intrude-a-vision more than use my mobile interrogation device. I see the want/need based streams all day. I want unpopulated space between me and thee. I want space in my rooms so we can be the furthest apart yet still in the same room. Only the echo is natural but the fireplace is digital.
I watched the iHouse movement people make their own shelter, pile o'sticks and punctured cans, on a trailer, tethered to the ground. The echo in these has been digitally remastered and the scaled down fireplace is digital candle.
Nothing beats the Japanese who have learned to live tightly packed. They've elevated origami, folded space, folded objects, folded minds. Wait, folded minds? Yes, they have created infinite personal space within themselves to the point they can be alone while being together. They are not ignoring or mentally abusing each other while doing it either. To be and not be is something Shakespeare always said was the answer, not a question of or.
My house is one of ever shifting piles of paper, magazines and pamphlets, pill bottles and electronic media remotes. We move matter to make an appearance of order, clothes, shoes and meal implements. Oh, the metaphysics in this place. We have chaos, force order, let it decay into disorder. The only junk to enter the space is groceries and the mail, yet many bags of castoffs are jettisoned every week.
We stopped breeding cats and are stuck with an aging remnant of 6. They shed like snakes, but the process is not one of elegance. So cute while grooming themselves when without warning and without discretion of place, expel an unidentifiable hairy mass. It's a stillborn mouth birth. They remove themselves to the other side of the room, wasn't me. Out of 6 one is purr-less, something happened in kittyhood I think. Then perhaps he's high frequency, his meow is normal. They practice opening doors, blinds and minds. Like Jedi they stare you down from a distance, then distract you presenting their backs for a scratch so you didn't win, you never win, you always scratch.
The quantum of life is finding balance between a physical world and a mental world. Hard to have two masters. You must keep up in one and let it be in the other. The constructs are all illusions within illusions complicated by sensory apparatus (the meat suit), embedded organic halodeck technology and consciousness with amnesia. We catalog our thoughts by telling stories, sometimes we even find ourselves in the characters we play. We like aliens but they are us, why? We look at mirrors, not within.
Now let me be clear. We maybe are challenged in the physical world, the lot of us. We live in the mental world, stepping down into the physical every now and then to take care of meat suit issues. Some of us adorn the meat suit with swag and strut a little. Some paint, plaster, mold, shape, pierce, engrave and semi-permanently accessorize, hey!?! Mostly though, we live in our minds, making and getting pimped by illusions, ours or others. Who is driving this egg basket or this sperm blaster anyway? Who is driving the driver who drives the driven? You, the meat suit jockey.
We are the waves in motion, when someone notices, we become the point. We like being the point all the time, or the wave all the time. We don't know the quantum reality. A conscious photon thriving in a symbiotic convergence with metaclorians. Now ask yourself, “is it real or Memorex?”
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| Source: Link below |
Note: Dr. Holt represented New Jersey, but hey: we're close enough! Okay, he was actually a plasma physics person, but you get the drift. Go with the bit...
Rush Holt, a physicist, educator, and eight-term Democratic member of Congress, has been named the new CEO of AAAS (which publishes ScienceInsider). He will succeed Alan Leshner, a neuroscientist who is stepping down this winter after leading AAAS since 2001.
Holt, 66, has represented a New Jersey district since 1999, but in February announced he would not seek another term. Although not known for sponsoring legislation, Holt has earned kudos from both Republican and Democrat colleagues for being an effective, behind-the-scenes advocate for additional funding for research and science education. He was part of an unofficial, bipartisan “physics caucus” in Congress that, at its peak, totaled three members who held physics Ph.D.s.
Holt was a vocal—but often lone—advocate in Congress for reviving the Office of Technology Assessment, a well-regarded in-house think tank for legislators that Congress abolished when Republicans took control in 1995. He admitted that it was an uphill battle, but felt the fight was worth waging. “I would say that most members of Congress value science and respect scientists,” he told ScienceInsider in February. “But I don’t see more scientific thinking evidence-based, critical thinking.”
And now...there are none.
"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." Carl Sagan
Science Mag: Rush Holt, physicist and congressman, to lead AAAS, Jeffrey Mervis
Tomorrow: A Democratic Technocracy
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| Source: Last link in third paragraph below |
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard
A hundred years ago, one out of every five people lived in urban areas. By 2050, that number will balloon to over four out of five.
This rapid urbanization presents significant problems to the world. Even a modest annual population growth of three or five percent can mean thousands of new inhabitants, and each new resident will require energy, transportation, potable water, food and other infrastructure services that strain finite resources.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago are developing tools that merge urban design with scientific analysis to improve the decision-making process associated with large-scale urban developments. One such tool, called LakeSim, has been prototyped with an initial focus on consumer-driven energy and transportation demand, through a partnership with the Chicago-based architectural and engineering design firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Clean Energy Trust and developer McCaffery Interests. LakeSim began with the need to answer practical questions about urban design and planning, requiring a better understanding about the long-term impact of design decisions on energy and transportation demand for a 600-acre development project on Chicago’s South Side—the Chicago Lakeside Development project.
More Videos: Chicago Lakeside Development Project
Argonne National Laboratories: Designing Future Cities, Justin H. S. Breaux
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| Image and video source |
For more high energy and particle physics information, see:
International Journal of High Energy Physics: CERN Courier
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| Image Source |
The Shadow knows (or, at least "they" do).
"They" know without any critical thinking skills, reason, logic or investigative training. "They" know without any expertise that climate change is a hoax (even write books of pseudoscience on it), get reelected with committee appointments in congress over environmental regulation. Clean air; clean water; survival of the species: no problem! I guess the Department of Defense can scrap that whole pesky, fact-based road map.
The moon landing was faked, "they" say (and a few sadly, trained in STEM). "They" know, despite having never worked at NASA, or in my case at near seven-years-old, having my Saturday morning cartoons interrupted the day before (I quickly got over it). Never mind if it had been, the Russians would have broadcast our shortcomings, gloated at our obtuse obfuscations, then traveled there themselves just to prove the superiority of their system over ours.
Almost immediately after the Sandy Hook Massacre, these speculators spun tales of government "false flag operations"; "the children were actually alive"; "the parents were in on the plot," etc. Boorish, insane and insensitive to the families that everyday: their losses are quite real. The truth is, fear, bamboozle and boondoggle are quite profitable; bankruptcy the only muzzle provocateurs would ever respect.
There were 1,500 inadvertent leaks with the Manhattan Project (you know, the one that built the nuclear bomb), and we're to assume not a peep has come out from a so-called faked Moon Landing?
The Keystone pipeline may actually increase gas prices at the pump by 20 cents per gallon as its done in the Midwest despite the most optimistic propaganda; the purported "thousands of good, blue collar jobs" may only number in the hundreds; instead of making us energy independent, we'll see Canadian shale processed in Texas refineries and put on ships out to the global open market, but no matter. We're being sold a bill of goods by consummate, pathological liars and con artists cum "elected" officials. Instead of reasoned debate, we get: birth certificates...death panels...votes against what was a market-based solution from the Heritage Foundation...UFOs and government cover-ups...Apocalypse...demonic possession requiring telecommuting exorcism (now a state senator despite a colorful military record)...Bigfoot! All fanciful and colorful; worrisome that there is no distinction from reality and fantasies for some citizens determined to propagate them.
When China eventually sets up camp on a new moon base and spin off the world's first trillionaires from the Helium-3 mineral wealth abundant on the lunar surface that will make fossil fuels obsolete (as well as the billionaires profiting from it), I'm sure "they'll" have another explanation: the Chinese (will have) faked it! The profits, political and economic leverage however, will be quite real and felt here as well as globally. Ignorance won't be pleasant.
As humorous as this post attempts to be, my observation is we're addicted to "reality TV"; becoming un-moored from actual reality and facts; prone to the bill of [not] goods snake oil salesmen sell that poses as "information" supporting our worldviews, warped or otherwise to ensure they remain in or gain power.
History bears no evidence adherence to fantasies ever generating, in the long term, national prosperity.
Skeptic:
Conspiracy Theories: Who, Why and How, Michael Shermer and Pat Linse
Skeptical Science: The History of Climate Change
Image of a simulated traversable wormhole that connects the square in front of the physical institutes of Tübingen University with the sand dunes near Boulogne sur Mer in the north of France. The image is calculated with 4D raytracing in a Morris–Thorne wormhole metric, but the gravitational effects on the wavelength of light have not been simulated. Wikipedia
Wormholes — shortcuts that in theory can connect distant points in the universe — might be linked with the spooky phenomenon of quantum entanglement, where the behavior of particles can be connected regardless of distance, researchers say.
These findings could help scientists explain the universe from its very smallest to its biggest scales.
Scientists have long sought to develop a theory that can describe how the cosmos works in its entirety. Currently, researchers have two disparate theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity, which can respectively mostly explain the universe on its tiniest scales and its largest scales. There are currently several competing theories seeking to reconcile the pair.
One prediction of the theory of general relativity devised by Einstein involves wormholes, formally known as Einstein-Rosen bridges. In principle, these warps in the fabric of space and time can behave like shortcuts connecting any black holes in the universe, making them a common staple of science fiction.
NBC News: Spooky physics phenomenon may link universe's wormholes, Charles Q. Choi
Tomorrow: The Shadow Knows
Tonight 'Friday the 14th', the only reality-tv show that counts airs again on DEU-TV! Online streaming begins at 8pm CST (US) and will run all night long. So after you catch The Genesis Radio Show with William Hayashi, you'll have another chance to catch the award-winning horror film that shows where reality-tv will ultimately go for ratings!
*Suggested Mature Audiences for L,V and gore.
Hi All -
My name is Martin Reese and I have recently re-launched a new and improved Kickstarter for the short live action fantasy film Mulogo and His Quintuple of Trouble. The story deals with a young wizard's apprentice from Kush who unwittingly recites a spell from a forbidden book of magic and conjures up a powerful five-headed dragon. The dragon is more than eager to make him pay for his mistake. Our Kickstarter will run until December 15th. You can check it out at this link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1549181393/mulogo-and-his-quintuple-of-trouble-a-magical-shor?ref=category We humbly ask for your support of this project. If we want more of us featured in positive roles in science fiction and fantasy films then we have to prove that we will support films that feature us in such roles. We have a great creative team and cast in place. All we need is your help. Thank you for any support you are willing to give.
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| Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine; source: S. M. Freeney et. al., Physical Review Letters |
An ancient collision with a bubble universe would have altered the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (left), creating a faint disk in the sky (right) that could potentially be observed.
Early in cosmic history, our universe may have bumped into another — a primordial clash that could have left traces in the Big Bang’s afterglow.
Like many of her colleagues, Hiranya Peiris, a cosmologist at University College London, once largely dismissed the notion that our universe might be only one of many in a vast multiverse. It was scientifically intriguing, she thought, but also fundamentally untestable. She preferred to focus her research on more concrete questions, like how galaxies evolve.
Then one summer at the Aspen Center for Physics, Peiris found herself chatting with the Perimeter Institute’s Matt Johnson, who mentioned his interest in developing tools to study the idea. He suggested that they collaborate.
At first, Peiris was skeptical. “I think as an observer that any theory, however interesting and elegant, is seriously lacking if it doesn’t have testable consequences,” she said. But Johnson convinced her that there might be a way to test the concept. If the universe that we inhabit had long ago collided with another universe, the crash would have left an imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the faint afterglow from the Big Bang. And if physicists could detect such a signature, it would provide a window into the multiverse.
Erick Weinberg, a physicist at Columbia University, explains this multiverse by comparing it to a boiling cauldron, with the bubbles representing individual universes — isolated pockets of space-time. As the pot boils, the bubbles expand and sometimes collide. A similar process may have occurred in the first moments of the cosmos.
Quanta Magazine: Multiverse Collisions May Dot the Sky, Jennifer Ouellette
the ladies at Black Nerd Girls put out a call for art featuring black elves. I'm like obsessed with it now.
here are mine. I'm trying to make them look like stills from an animated series.
