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There is a new documentary on Angela Davis called “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” see https://www.facebook.com/freeangelafilm and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2350432/.  Black Bloggers Connect (see http://blog.blackbloggersconnect.com/2013/03/black-bloggers-connect-presents-free.html) invited people to blog about why such a film is necessary.  The question can be asked, “Do African and African American astrophysicists need to know about Angela Davis?”  My answer is “Yes!” 

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Angela Davis PhD when I was a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis).  At the time I was playing my role as the first African American graduate student in the Astronomy & Astrophysics department.  I was slowly being worn down by the petty discrimination, insults, and slights that I had to face on a daily basis with no one available within the department with which to decompress.  Enter meeting Dr. Angela Davis and her graduate students.  She and her students helped me put my negative experiences into the context of the USA incarnations of racism, sexism, and who has the right to make new knowledge.  In effect, I learned that what I was experiencing was not specific to just me, UCSC, or to astrophysics.

 

Dr. Angela Davis is an icon of the Black Power movement in the United States, however when you spend your life studying physics and astrophysics...that part of my education was neglected.  All I knew was the outline of who she was, what she had done, and in the mid-1990s when I met her that she had one of the best jobs in the University of California system: an endowed chair.  What I did not understand at the time that became important to me later was that before she became an internationally recognized political figure, she was already a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; she was already Dr. Angela Davis with a doctorate in philosophy (see
http://histcon.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=aydavis).  This point is important enough that I am going to refer to her as Dr. Davis throughout this blog.

 

Meeting Dr. Davis and her intellectual community personally helped me endure a difficult situation long enough to complete my doctorate degree; however, knowing her story is important for our collective Black peers in astrophysics for many reasons, but one stands out.  Mentoring students of astrophysics, the fear emerges of being transformed during the PhD process into someone unrecognizable.  This issue touches on the imposture syndrome (see astrophysicist Dr. John Johnson’s blog on this at http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2012/09/impostor-syndrome.html) which arises from not seeing people like yourself in your profession as well as touches on the fear that in order to succeed in astrophysics you have to ‘whitewash’ yourself.  This whitewashing may include extraction and disassociation from family and community, adopting the value system of the majority, self-imposed silencing on certain topics, and in the extreme the adoption of majority fashion, speaking, and interaction style.  Dr. Davis is our peer in that she earned a doctorate and her working world is academia.  The process of earning a doctorate did not sever her connection to the African American community and did not change her values.  She was and is brave and courageous and willing to stand up for what she believes in and willing to sacrifice a comfortable academic lifestyle in the process. 

 

Dr. Davis is an example for us Black astrophysicists to emulate.  Our cause is that we want more diversity in astrophysics.  Then we have to bring our values with us and we have to not be silent.  We have to insist that our colleagues create an environment that supports all students especially those we are trying to attract to astrophysics.  Dr. Davis had the California government standing against her (and she was on the FBIs Most wanted list!) and she won.  We simply have to stand our ground to our academic colleagues and dare to forego the comfort of our fairly prestigious positions.  I plan to see “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” when it comes to my town and I know that I will be better educated for it and I will be inspired. I think that the same will be true of the other African and African American astrophysicists if they make the time to see this film. 

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Cuprates...

Philip Phillips, a professor of physics and of chemistry at Illinois, and colleagues found that something other than electrons carries the current in copper-containing superconductors known as cuprates.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — To engineers, it’s a tale as old as time: Electrical current is carried through materials by flowing electrons. But physicists at the University of Illinois and the University of Pennsylvania found that for copper-containing superconductors, known as cuprates, electrons are not enough to carry the current.



“The story of electrical conduction in metals is told entirely in terms of electrons. The cuprates show that there is something completely new to be understood beyond what electrons are doing,” said Philip Phillips, a professor of physics and of chemistry at the U. of I.



In physics, Luttinger’s theorem states that the number of electrons in a material is the same as the number of electrons in all of its atoms added together. Electrons are the sub-atomic particles that carry the current in a conductive material. Much-studied conducting materials, such as metals and semiconductors, hold true to the theorem.



Phillips’ group works on the theory behind high-temperature superconductors. In superconductors, current flows freely without resistance. Cuprate superconductors have puzzled physicists with their superconducting ability since their discovery in 1987.



The researchers developed a model outlining the breakdown of Luttinger’s theorem that is applicable to cuprate superconductors, since the hypotheses that the theorem is built on are violated at certain energies in these materials. The group tested it and indeed found discrepancies between the measured charge and the number of mobile electrons in cuprate superconductors, defying Luttinger.

News Bureau, Illinois:
Electrons are not enough: Cuprate superconductors defy convention

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Planck's Four Surprises...


Lopsided universe: Planck’s new skymap shows that one half of the microwave background is brighter than the other, and the universe has a large cold spot. Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration

By now you've probably heard about the amazing new cosmic snapshot from the European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft. It is one of those scientific achievements so mind-boggling that you have to spend a bit of time with it to truly appreciate what you are seeing. This is relic radiation from when the universe was 370,000 years old, still all aglow from the Big Bang. The radiation has been traveling 13.8 billion years since then, across ever-expanding stretches of space, before landing in Planck’s detectors. Then it took a tremendous feat of imagination and insight to translate that noisy signal into a comprehensible map of what the universe looked like in its infancy.



So let’s step back for a moment, look at how this image came to be, and consider some of the more surprising details hidden within it. [Headers lead into the topics]



The map started out as static.

Human brains cannot make sense of all the data from Planck.

The universe is darker, lighter, slower, and older than we thought.

The universe is lopsided.

Discovery: Four Surprises in Planck's New Map of the Cosmos

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Chicxulub Snowball...

...the prevailing theory:

 


Current theory:

 

The rocky object that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago may have been a comet, rather than an asteroid, scientists say.

 

The 112-mile (180 kilometers) Chicxulub crater in Mexico was made by the impact that caused the extinction of dinosaurs and about 70 percent of all species on Earth, many scientists believe. A new study suggests the crater was probably blasted out by a faster, smaller object than previously thought, according to research presented this week at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

 

Evidence of the space rock's impact comes from a worldwide layer of sediments containing high levels of the element iridium, dubbed the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, which could not have occurred on Earth naturally.

 

The new research suggests the often-cited iridium values are incorrect, however. The scientists compared these values with levels of osmium, another element delivered by the impact.

 

Their calculations suggested the space rock generated less debris than previously thought, implying the space rock was a smaller object. In order for the smaller rock to have created the giant Chicxulub crater, it had to have been going exceedingly fast, the researchers concluded.

 

Huffington Science: New Study Suggests Comet Instead Caused Extinction Event

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AFRO Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction is gaining popularity at the speed of light on the Internet. FF  is more than simply creating a story with a beginning, middle and end in less than 1000 words. There should be a plot twist and moral. This is a thin slice from the thick juicy part of  a much bigger story; the reader may have to fill in the blanks.

The BSFS has presented  Flash Fiction on its website -- in many excepts or stand alone pieces. This is good. We need to encourage more writers and webmasters to offer AFRO Flash Fiction to readers.

I have posted AFRO Flash Fiction  on my new website: http://www.afroflash.com

As always, I post a link back to BSFS to encourage us all to reach out and let others know that African Diaspora Speculative Fiction  is trending upwards.

(Image from Black Flash by Caesarium on Deviant Art -- it is not necessarily AfroCentric, but it is cool.)

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Einstein, Entropy and Information...


...as explained by one of the smartest physicists I know!

James Clerk Maxwell formulated the equations that describe electricity and magnetism. He was Einstein's hero! Both are the reason why we're in the age of laptops and I-phones.

Physics Colloquium, University of Texas Physics Department. Mark has a process that's a little more efficient than Steven Chu's (yes, THAT Steven Chu). It's worth your time to watch this presentation, and seek out colloquium wherever you are. Science is open and a social endeavor.

Something I used to enjoy in Texas, that I admittedly miss...
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L.I.A. #8 - Spring Call for Violence Against Women

taintedsaint-drocksj

NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT TO A NATION'S PROSPERITY, THAN THE SAFETY OF ITS WOMEN!!!

L.I.A. #8 - Spring Call for Violence Against Women
http://www.myspace.com/drocksouljah/blog/546788112

Contents for L.I.A. #8
I. Questioned Effectiveness of VAWA 2013
II. Sequestered Spring Flicks
III. 12-Step Program for Foul Foot Freaks
IV. TMSP Products & Services Wrap-up
MAY WE ALL ENACT CALLS TO BETTER SECURE OUR WOMEN & SELVES FROM ABUSE!!!
AL Bey
Author of Tainted Saint: The Autobiography of D-Rock SOUL-Jah
Owner, Tribal Metal Spear-it Publishing, LLC (TMSP)

 

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Surely Not Joking...

Electrons traveling through two slits and a single slit

Physicists in the US and Canada say that they have done the best job yet of realizing Richard Feynman's famous thought experiment about how single electrons pass through two slits. Although the researchers are not the first to recreate the experiment in the lab, they say that their incarnation best captures the essence of the original exercise.

 

Feynman originally outlined his thought experiment in volume three of his famous series The Feynman Lectures on Physics as a way of illustrating wave–particle duality in quantum mechanics. In the book, he invites the reader to imagine firing individual electrons through two slits and then marking the position where each electron strikes a screen behind the slits.

 

After many electrons have passed through the slits, the marks on the screen will comprise a diffraction pattern – illustrating the wave-like behaviour of each electron. But if one were to cover up one of the slits so that each electron could only pass through the other slit, the diffraction pattern would not appear – showing that each electron does indeed travel through both slits.

 

Physics World: Feynman's double-slit experiment gets a makeover
Feynman Physics Lectures: Site Link and You Tube Channel

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And Statistics...


"Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to [19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin] Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'"


Samuel Clemmons/Mark Twain, "Chapters from My Autobiography"

...Our analysis finds that the QGRE correlates with only one metric, the graduate GPA (but it is such a weak correlation the scientist in me rebels when fitting it to a line). That said, we find undergraduate GPA to be a better predictor of graduate GPA. We also find that undergraduate GPA is correlated with all three sections of the General GRE.

 

So why use the GRE at all? One certain answer: national rankings. Consider US News, whose rankings of graduate programs are widely influential among both prospective graduate students and administrators....

 

Justifying using the GRE becomes significantly more complicated, however, when the test results are dissected by race and gender. The figure plots QGRE scores by race/ethnicity and gender for US citizens whose intended graduate major was "physical sciences". The top and bottom of the lines are the 75th and 25th percentiles of the score distributions, respectively; the tick is the mean. This pattern is qualitatively unchanged when controlling for undergraduate GPA. Note the implications for diversity of using 700 as a minimum acceptable score: nearly three quarters of Hispanics would be rejected, and significantly more than this for American Indians, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans; similarly, women are filtered out at a higher rate than men. Mixing cut-off scores with these racial and gender disparities sets the foundation of a glass ceiling erected by the lopsided treatment of minorities and women before they even set foot in grad school.

 

The Asian > White > Hispanic > Black pattern permeates standardized testing: it is the same for the SAT, and is reflected in the recent race-based levels set by Florida and Virginia for grade schoolers' performance on state-wide standardized tests.

 

To be fair: there's more data and insight at the link below. The statistics (I feel), is a measure of where we've allowed ourselves as a society to get "comfortable." I have mused on this at length in the posts: "A Matter of Marketing" and "Dark Matters." Einstein is the source of the following quotes:

 

1. "It seems to be a universal fact that minorities--especially when the individuals composing them can be recognized by physical characteristics--are treated by the majorities among whom they live as an inferior order of beings. The tragedy of such a fate lies not merely in the unfair treatment to which these minorities are automatically subjected in social and economic matters, but also in the fact that under the suggestive influence of the majority most of the victims themselves succumb to the same prejudice and regard their kind as inferior beings. This second and greater part of the evil can be overcome by closer association and by the deliberate education of the minority, whose spiritual liberation can thus be accomplished.

"The resolute efforts of the American Negro in this direction deserve approval and assistance."

Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querido Verilog, 1934, pp 117-118.

 

2. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

 

Bear with me...

 

APS Back Page: Admissions Criteria and Diversity in Graduate School, Casey W. Miller

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Phaser Effect...



The theoretical foundations for the laser were established in 1917, when Einstein formulated the quantum theory of radiation, describing the absorption, spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. Its realization stayed hidden for decades, however, before it emerged in the form of masers and lasers, which emit microwave and visible radiation, respectively. The range of emitted frequencies was soon broadened to cover wavelengths from the infrared to the x-ray range, and lasing was extrapolated beyond the realm of optics. Free-electron lasers, in which the active medium is a relativistic electron beam, helped cover extreme wavelength ranges and are now the basis for a new generation of experimental facilities for x-ray experiments. Atom lasers—emitting matter waves instead of photons—have also been demonstrated. Recently, the laser idea was extended to sound waves, leading to the conceptualization of the acoustic analog of a laser, which emits phonons (lattice vibrations) instead of photons. Now, writing in Physical Review Letters, Imran Mahboob at the NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Japan, and colleagues report on the experimental demonstration of a purely mechanical counterpart of a three-level laser scheme [1]. The device, excited by acoustic vibrations, amplifies sound waves through stimulated emission of phonons and acts as a phonon laser: a spectrally pure source of phonons with a frequency of around 1.7 megahertz (MHz).



What is the appeal of phonon lasers? One potential advantage is that their emission has smaller wavelength than that of photon lasers at the same frequency because the sound speed is much smaller than the speed of light. This could help improve the resolution of tomographic, ultrasound, and other imaging techniques. In analogy with their optical cousins, phonon lasers might deliver directional and coherent acoustic beams, which could be coupled to nanoscale mechanical engines or used in communication networks based on acoustic waves. But as the history of optical lasers suggests, most applications of future phonon lasers may be completely unexpected.

The Trekkie in me notes: from the phonon pump, the upper-to-intermediate level transition is called "Phaser Emission." Wonder if there's a stun setting?

American Physical Society: Lasers of Pure Sound

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Photo Realistic Art

 

 

Kelcin Okafor

 

"We've seen our fair share of talented photorealist artists go viral, from Paul Cadden to Diego Fazio. But never before have we been privy to the painstaking process of creating such a detailed masterpiece. That is, until we discovered Kelvin Okafor's videos."

"The London artist's hyperrealistic graphite drawings look far more like photographs than pencil on paper. For skeptics, Okafor provides proof of his works' handmade history by posting the evolution of his pieces online, via photos on his blog and through entrancing YouTube videos."

"The artist describes himself on Twitter as "highly interested in detail and precision," and we can't help but agree."

 

 

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Kawazulite...

Kawazulite is a natural “topological insulator"

In a step toward understanding and exploiting an exotic form of matter that has been sparking excitement for potential applications in a new genre of supercomputers, scientists are reporting the first identification of a naturally occurring “topological insulator” (TI). Their report on discovery of the material, retrieved from an abandoned gold mine in the Czech Republic, appears in the ACS journal Nano Letters.

 

Pascal Gehring and colleagues point out that synthetic TIs, discovered only a decade ago, are regarded as a new horizon in materials science. Unlike conventional electrical insulators, which do not conduct electricity, TIs have the unique property of conducting electricity on their surface, while acting as an insulator inside. Although seemingly simple, this type of surface could allow manipulation of the spin of an electron, paving the way for development of a quantum computer. Such a computer would crunch data much faster than today’s best supercomputers.

 

American Chemical Society: First discovery of a natural topological insulator

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FWANKMISER

STUDIO AEGIS

First complete comic I've ever done that I personally acknowledge as complete.  I did it for a school project and based it on old school Universal Studios Monsters, but I may either continue the story or make another story etc.  I may even do one shots until I find something I want to continue.  Who knows.

If you want a physical copy, let me know or email me at lateef.a.reid@gmail.com 

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The Physics of Maple Syrup...

..."just when you thought it was safe to go into the IHOP"...Smiley

2D cross section through a fiber-vessel pair showing the water, ice and gas regions, the moving interfaces as well as the 1D region corresponding to simplified model geometry. Figure credit: Maurizio Ceseri and John Stockie

Philadelphia, PA—For many of us, maple syrup is an essential part of breakfast—a staple accompaniment to pancakes and waffles—but rarely do we think about the complicated and little-understood physiological aspects of syrup production. Each spring, maple growers in temperate regions around the world collect sap from sugar maple trees, which is one of the first steps in producing this delicious condiment.

 

However, the mechanisms behind sap exudation—processes that trigger pressure differences causing sap to flow— in maple trees are a topic of much debate. In a paper published today in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, authors Maurizio Ceseri and John Stockie shed light on this subject by proposing a mathematical model for the essential physiological processes that drive sap flow.

 

Sugars are produced in the leaves of the maple tree by photosynthesis with the help of absorbed water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight, and are consumed for current growth, or stored as starch. In the cold, dormant season, some of the starch enters the sap, where it remains mostly frozen until the spring. In the period between this dormant state and the active growing season (during cold nights with below-freezing temperatures followed by mild, warm days with above-freezing conditions), the stored starch is converted into sugar and the sap pressure grows, allowing it to exude naturally from the tap hole when tapped.

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics: Pancakes with a side of math

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Work in Progress - this is about chapter 5

It hurt. It hurt just to breathe, my head throbbed in rhythm with my heart, thumping and bumping.

I was bumping along in what smelled like a cart – an old horse-drawn cart that had last hauled potatoes and carrots. It smelled like warm earth for a minute, just a minute, before the dark stench of my brother wafted back to me.

My arms were tied tightly behind my back and my feet were numb. I shivered; it was cold in the breeze. The old wood pressed into my side and cheek, splinters scratching me as the cart swayed on the rocky path.

I finally forced my eyes open a little, just a slit, to see if it was day or night. The old moon curved in a thin crescent over black mountains, dropping out of sight as the glow on the horizon signaled the bare beginnings of a red dawn.

The cart must have hit a particularly large rock, it bounced violently and my head hit the boards again. I whimpered quietly, but not quietly enough. The cart stopped abruptly under a twisted old oak, just budding out in the new leaves of spring.

Rough hands grabbed me by the hair and lifted my head up. I forced myself to stay limp, eyes closed, as Tyn twisted my hair around his hand and pulled harder, dragging my body until I was twisted half round in the bottom of the cart. Abruptly, he let go and my head bounced on the floorboards again.

Since I didn’t flinch, he kicked me twice, hard, before climbing back over the seat and twitching the reins. The old horse didn’t move.

“Bloody stinking animal” Tyn hissed, “I’ll show you who’s the boss around here.”

The cart lurched hard, left, right, left as he climbed back out, stomping around to the front of the horse and I heard the heavy blows as he hit the poor old thing again and again, alternating with grunting as he tried to pull the horse forward. The cart didn’t move. I hazarded another bare glance through the crack under the seat as Tyn raised his fist to hit the horse again. It was then that the cat struck, dropping silently from the branch above his head, gripping him by his springy mess of curls with its back claws and striking at his eyes with the front.

“Aaarrrrgggghhhhhh” he screamed, dancing around and grabbing at the black cat that seemed glued to his bright curls. “Bloody stinking animals…” his screams settled into steady cursing as blood ran down his cheeks and dripped on his gray shirt, on to the ground. He couldn’t get a grip on the cat, every time he reached up, it clawed him again, methodically. Its eyes glittered yellow in the dawn.

I wiggled, trying to get to the back of the cart. I wasn’t going to wait around to find out what he’d planned to do with me. If I could just roll off the cart, maybe I could get into the brush next to the rutted track. From what little I could see of it, it looked thick enough to hide me for at least a few moments. I whimpered again, the effort of moving nearly blinding me with pain.

Shhhh, shhhh.

I looked up, squinting, as the oak shushed me.

No, it wasn’t the oak; it was the little brown man standing in the branches, nearly hidden in the new leaves. His long hair and tangled beard were the color of fallen leaves, his large hat, breeches and shirt were as green and soft as the moss on the bark on the north side of the oak. Knee high boots were like my own moccasins, beaded in turquoise and gold thread, but winding in a strange pattern, not like mine at all. The knife in his hand looked as sharp as Grandfather’s Civil War sword, the one that hung above the fireplace back home. It was as long as his forearm, dark with silver runes inscribed along its length. I only recognized a few, most were in an unfamiliar script. They glowed softly, just like his eyes glowed as he watched Tyn battling to get the black cat off his head.

Swinging down, he landed lightly in the cart.

With a quick swipe, he cut the cords binding my ankles and motioned me to roll onto my side. It was just a moment before my hands were also free, but the blade barely nicked my wrist and it heated up rapidly, blindingly hot and bright.

“Ayyyy, she likes your blood a bit too well, little one. Ah, but it was just a taste, she comes away freely. Quickly, we must go before he notices that you are free,” he murmured, jerking the blade away from me and nodding upward. I rubbed my feet, trying to get some feeling back in them as he looked back toward Tyn.

“We have no time left, come!”

I tried to stand and failed, my numb legs couldn’t hold me up. With an impatient grunt, he grabbed me by the waist, lifting and thrusting me upward. More strong brown hands reached down and sucked me up among the new leaves. My rescuer leaped upward, just as the cat bounded away, running down the track just ahead of the horse and cart Somehow the old horse managed to escape Tyn’s grip.

It was too bad that the cart didn’t run him over. I sighed, I was never lucky like that. Grandfather would have rapped me up side my head for that thought, but he wasn’t here. I sighed again.

A giggle warmed my ear and I knew it wasn’t “somehow” the horse had come loose. It had a little help from the bright-eyed child leaning over my shoulder, pointing with a sharp finger at the horse and chanting under her breath.

Tyn stood in the middle of the track, alone, and his curses rang in the brightness of the new morning.

We were already racing away through the forest, along an aerial walkway that swung between the trees. The young girl and another so like her that I thought they were twins helped me along. Barely able to walk, I had trouble keeping up with the group. My rescuer was in the lead, taking a quick pace away from the oak, as if there was still danger from the track, where Tyn was beating the bushes, looking for me.

A black cat streaked between my legs and I stumbled, nearly falling. Only the girls’ support kept me on my feet. The two youngsters were at least a head shorter than me, but they hustled right along as my feet grew pins and needles and then painfully began to work again.

“Bloody good thing you got that baboso stopped in time, we weren’t looking forward to rescuing you up the road in the Queen’s territory.”

Gasping with effort and trying not to show the pain that brought tears to my eyes, my curiosity overcame the agony of my head and feet. “Queen?”

“Yeah, you know, Queen Maeb. She’s not a nice person at all, you really don’t want to met her.”

Her daintily pointed ears perked up. “Well, that’s how she styles herself, anyway, the old biddy. She thinks she runs us Duende, but we have our own ways and that doesn’t include being the old one’s lackeys.”

In spite of the growing pain in my head, I snickered a little at her indignation at being anyone’s “lackey”.

“So, how did that nasty creature catch you? We know you were well warded when you left home, so he must have caught you somewhere unawares.” Her pert questions made me squirm a little in embarrassment.

“Well, I was at Granddad’s castle...”

She looked at me incredulously, “You were at the castle? No one is allowed to go there, it is forbidden.”

She repeated firmly. “Forbidden. Granddad doesn’t allow anyone to go to his castle, it is hidden somewhere in the world of humans while his daughter, Nimue, waits out her exile.” She looked sideways up at me, “You know he didn’t have to go with her into exile? He could have stayed here instead.”

The world of humans?

I hesitated, then shrugged mentally, “Well, I slipped and fell and when I woke up, I was bouncing along in a cart, so I suppose it must’ve been in Granddad’s castle.”

She stopped so abruptly that I nearly fell over her.

“What?”

She stared up at me in disbelief, her vowels rounding into the familiar Spanish of my childhood, “There is a traitor among Granddad’s people?”

“I don’t know.”

She grabbed me and took off like a shot, if I thought we were moving quickly before, it was nothing compared to the pace she set after my revelation. Even her silent sister, if sister she was, had a hard time keeping the pace.

“Ayyyy,” she lapsed into Spanish, “Madre de Dios, Papa se pondrá furioso cuando oye la noticia.”

I was trying to listen and keep up with her and smell the trees and lands around us. If I stayed focused, I might not vomit.

Everything was familiar, yet unfamiliar. Brighter, fresher, the sweet smells of pansies, roses, the vanilla of the Ponderosa pine we passed under. It all looked fresh and new, even the scents were fresher than fresh, but the underlying sense was old, old, old, an ancient place that reeked of power and Fae.

I hesitated and finally decided that I should ask, even if it made me look stupider than I already felt.

“Um, where are we?”

She looked at me with pity before she replied, “You’re in the Green Lands.”

I took a deep breath and tried to find some calm. It just made my head hurt more than it already did.

“Yes, and I’d surely like to know how you got here” A voice behind us, “You’re not supposed to be here.” He caught up to and passed us, eyeing me with hostile grey eyes. “The Great Ones don’t allow humans to pass through the gates.”

I looked him up and down, suppressing my pain and nausea. Tall, hard bodied, grey eyes, tanned, black hair worn back in a finely woven band, pointed ears, he was a handsome sight for a woman’s starving eyes. Too bad his face was stern and hard, the generous lips pressed together in anger. I wanted to see his smile, to see if the hard lines softened.

No such luck.

He frowned at me again and started past us.

Suddenly, a shrill whistle tweeted overhead. My escorts threw themselves down, dragging me with them. He turned back and ducking, threw his red cloak over us all.

“Be still woman” he ordered in a whisper so soft that a human would never have been able to hear it.

I was acutely aware of his warm body pressing me down into the path, strong arms holding some of his weight off me so I could breath. I focused. I didn’t want him to notice that I wasn’t human. According to the legends I’d studied with Grandfather, being neither Fae nor human could be fatal in the Green Lands.

A crow cawed, echoing in the distance. The forest went silent, as if all were holding their breath, trying to escape notice. An ant crawled slowly across my nose. It tickled, but I didn’t dare move, I could barely breath with the three Fae piled on and around me.

The cawing grew distant, the echoing voice fading, until at last even my sharp ears couldn’t hear it any more.

“Up!” The cloak swirled off me and he stood, grabbing me by the shoulder and pulling me up, stopping when I gasped in pain.

“What woman?” He demanded, “What’s wrong with you?”

The pain radiated down my arm, I couldn’t speak.

“She was injured and we haven’t had time to stop and care for her wounds.”

Long fingers suddenly became gentle as he carefully felt my shoulder, ran his fingers through my hair. I winced at the bruises but stayed silent as he finished.

“And you’ve been running her down the path? Ayyy, foolish children, here, let me take her now.” He leaned down and swooped me up in his arms.

His face softened a little in his concern. “We canna have her in this condition, let’s get home where we can properly care for her.”

He strode off, not waiting for an answer.

“Relax woman, none here will harm you. You’re among the Duende, they do no harm to those placed in their care.” He smelled like vanilla and cinnamon, warm like the old pine on a sunny day. I shivered.

“Are you cold?”

I didn’t answer but he wrapped the cloak around me, blocking the cool morning breeze. My head throbbed and I felt nauseous. I closed my eyes, wishing I was back at Great grandfather’s compound instead of being carried through a forest by a stranger. Green Land or not, I wanted to go home.

 Soft voices penetrated the fog of misery and pain when he finally stopped. Gentle hands moved me from strong arms to soft cushions. A damp cloth wiped the dirt from my face, neck, arms.

The clink of a glass and liquid made me thirstier than I already was. “Stop brother, ‘tis not safe to give her food or drink, lest she be left behind by the flowing tides of time.”

“Nay sister, look what she carries. She is tied to the Land and her time is separate from ours. ‘Tis safe.” His voice was deep and gentle, I wanted to open my eyes to see his face but I was afraid if I moved my head, I’d toss my cookies right then and there. I didn’t want to be seen that way by any Fae, let alone a handsome one that made me wish I was pretty. Petite and exotic I am, but not pretty.

A hand behind my head raised me enough to drink a little. I was parched, but I turned my head and tried to push the cup away.

“Nay, little wolf, take of the nectar, ‘tis safe enough for you.”

Smooth honey-flavored liquor flowed drop by drop over parched lips, warm and soothing. Everything around me faded and I slipped into a deep sleep even as a woman’s voice shooed the other Fae away.

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Do Good...

John Green, meme from Facebook

Warnie C. Hay, D.D. was my pastor in Winston-Salem, NC.

He was  a huge mountain of a man. No matter how tall I got, he never seemed small (or short to me). I heard prior to his then current life, he'd been a truck driver and could "drink a fifth of liquor straight." [My father was the source of that quote.]

He, like a lot of leaders that actually shepherded their flocks, was keenly interested in my education, since as recently as the 60s, he and a lot of other pastors in the vein of Dr. King fought for our access to it, and our equal treatment regarding it.

"How are you doing in school, son?" We were all either "son" or "daughter" to him.

"Well...I'm studying evolution in biology with Mrs. Brake."

"OK, son. Do good!"

[...] That was it. I told him my grade on the exam later: B+. He smiled.

 

He was also pleased at my interest in amateur astronomy. He didn't lecture me when a mishap chemistry experiment resulted in a spectacular explosion in my room (don't worry: my parents did!). The only reservation he communicated was after the Challenger Disaster (I was in the Air Force, home on a visit): he preferred I not become an astronaut, though I never promised him I wouldn't.


I miss that simple encouragement, and the divorce from what is now political implications and spiritual litmus tests that have frozen critical thinking into ice age glaciers. There was no falsified "debate" on evolution vs. creationism; 6,000 years estimates from the Gregorian calendar vs. 14.6 billion years as estimated by measured light reaching us from the farthest stars. Science unimpeded by such machinations brings benefits to society like finding cures for diseases and advancing technologies that supply water, food, clean air, but I'd be the first to say an astronomer et al could not lead a "March on Washington." Different skill sets are required for such an endeavor.

 

Dr. Hay had contacts with congressional leaders. He could have gotten me an appointment at one of the service academies. I declined, and stated I wanted to go to college close to home. He respected my wishes, and I did that. He invited me to bring some of my classmates and discuss majoring in engineering and science at his "Super Saturday" career day, which he did every year...at church. Yet, I don't ever recall his ever needing to 'correct my thinking,' challenge what I'd learned...or that he seemed threatened at all by my interest in science as some seem to be today. Galileo and Copernicus would have appreciated him, and our youth less confused by this boondoggle.

Note this excerpt:


"Science has been responsible for roughly half of all US economic growth since World War II, and it lies at the core of most major unsolved policy challenges.

 

"In an age when most major public policy challenges revolve around science, less than 2 percent of congresspersons have professional backgrounds in it. The membership of the 112th Congress, which ran from January 2011 to January 2013, included one physicist, one chemist, six engineers, and one microbiologist.

 

"In contrast, how many representatives and senators do you suppose have law degrees - and whom many suspect avoided college science classes like the plague? Two hundred twenty-two. It's little wonder we have more rhetoric than fact in our national policy making..."


Shawn Lawrence Otto, Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault of Science in America, Rodale Books, October, 2011.

He passed two months before my own father in the same year, 1999. It was a pretty sad summer for me, to say the least. Neither man quite made it to the next century, born and expired in the 20th. They are buried, as now is my mother (2009), in Piedmont Memorial Gardens. These were people who worked hard, got passed over unfairly for promotions, experienced their own "sequester" in the form of where we all could live: care of Jim Crow. Knowledge was precious and appreciated, as my father used to say to me (numerous times): "once you get it in your head, no one can take that from you." My mother would tell me: "you can do anything you want to, once you put your mind to it, and trust God: you can do it!" I miss my cheering Valkyrie.

I miss this generation, and their encouragement to improve and advance, appreciative of the sacrifices of past giants, without guile, obfuscations, machinations or agenda, encouraged to simply:

"Do good."
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Omega Nexus! Omega Awesome!

Last year I watched the best superhero movie I’d ever had the pleasure of seeing: The Avengers. Very recently I finished reading a book that if turned into a live action movie would be a sweeping effects laden spectacle on par with-even exceeding the Avengers. The Omega Nexus, by Roger Reece and Peter Reece, centers around a young man named Ty Slade who discovers that he is an Ascended, a human being with extraordinary abilities. Eventually, circumstances force him to reunite with members of a group also possessing Ascended abilities. The group, called the Omega Nexus, is led by a brilliant scientist, Dr. Brown who, during the Cold War, worked in a secret government program tasked with creating super soldiers. His former partner turned enemy, General Lassiter, controls an opposing organization bent on using Ascended persons to conquer the world.

From there, the action is fast, furious and uncompromising. The superhero/villain clashes explode from the pages with an intensity that brings to mind episodes of Justice League. Omega Nexus is a fun page-turner with the promise of more sequels to come. I’ll be waiting! 

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Higgs Confirmed!...



A newfound particle discovered at the world's largest atom smasher last year is, indeed, the Higgs boson, the particle thought to give other matter its mass, scientists reported today (March 14) at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference in Italy.

 

Physicists announced on July 4, 2012, that, with more than 99 percent certainty, they had found a new elementary particle weighing about 126 times the mass of the proton that was likely the long-sought Higgs boson. The Higgs is sometimes referred to as the "God particle," to the chagrin of many scientists, who prefer its official name.

 

But the two experiments, CMS and ATLAS, hadn't collected enough data to say the particle was, for sure, the Higgs boson, the last undiscovered piece of the puzzle predicted by the Standard Model, the reigning theory of particle physics.

 

Now, after collecting two and a half times more data inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — where protons zip at near light-speed around the 17-mile-long (27 kilometer) underground ring beneath Switzerland and France — physicists say the particle is the Higgs. [In Photos: Searching for the Higgs Boson]

 

"The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela in a statement.

 

Space.com: Confirmed! Newfound Particle Is the Higgs

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Fermi Bubbles, Dark Matter...



In 2011, an analysis of data from a NASA Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope turned up massive, previously unseen galactic structures. A group of astrophysicists located two massive bubbles of plasma, now know as "Fermi Bubbles," each extending tens of thousands of light-years, emitting high-energy radiation above and below the plane of the galaxy. The structure spans more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus, and it may be millions of years old.

 

Now, more recently, in 2013, astrophysicists Dan Hooper of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Tracy Slatyer at Princeton University, have published a study suggesting that a massive outflow of charged particles from Fermi bubbles, as they are known, outflows of charged particles (gamma rays) traveling at nearly a third the speed of light from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, may be partly due to collisions between dark matter particles that result in their annihilation, and the subsequent creation of the building blocks of visible matter—charged particles that appear as two lobes or "bubbles," above and below the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

 

Another possibility includes a particle jet from the supermassive black hole at the galactic center.

 

Daily Galaxy: Colossal Bubbles at Milky Way's Plane --"May Be the Annihilation of Dark Matter"

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