NASA: NASA Science; Google Plus
Institute of Physics: 2012 (evidence we'll all have a few more Mondays)

Hey everyone,

I pray all is well. Here's the first preview from Lightweightz: The Anthology Part Two. It's the first page of Qasim's intro, drawn by Przemyzlaw R. Dedelis and colored by Lya. Enjoy, and support the Kickstarter!

kkjkkjk

Part 1 is about the supposed "good old days" and part 2 is more hopeful about where the species might be heading, if given a chance.

To Those Who Celebrate “The Good Old Days”, and all the conservatives and traditionalists: here’s your time capsule, feel free.

For those who think the world’s just fine as it is, and hearken back to “the good old days”, you’re advocating the world that brought us to this point. Which represents:

Corporal punishment of children; institutionalized segregation; institutional corruption; women and ‘blacks’ forbidden to vote; schoolyard bullying as rite of passage; the “color line”; drunken driving as the only recourse for getting home; police corruption; “spare the rod, spoil the child”; the “one-drop rule”; intra-family violence of innumerable kinds as an accepted part of life; religious clergy passing down sexual torture to generations of men who not only are forbidden to discuss it, but quite often likely to transmit it; women not allowed to play sports or pursue the sciences; men not allowed to show or cultivate sensitivity; women being traded as property, which is more like ‘traditional marriage’ than a lot what the ‘religious right’ will ever tell you; ALL KINDS of people being traded as property under numerous other guises; clothesline tackles and playing with multiple concussions in football; fighting as an integral part of hockey culture; nepotism; caste societies in all their forms; torture as an instrument of foreign policy; “golden parachutes” in finance; germ warfare; “man up”; “MK ULTRA” (no, seriously, google it); the Millgram Experiments and the Stanford Prison Experiment; cigarette companies deliberately spreading addiction to slow and painful deaths; police riots; draft riots; race riots; entrenched poverty; enormous gaps between rich and poor; “omerta” (google that one, too, it’s a doosy); “the thin blue line”; glass ceilings; the glorification of suffering in silence; did I mention bullying, segregation, institutional violence + corruption and the glorification of meanness?

So then, to those who brought us, and hearken back to, the good old days, I say: thanks for nothing, and if a time machine’s finally invented, feel free to jump on in and see how you like a world where your odds of full citizenship are practically nil–and even if you’re lucky enough to be a citizen in full standing, you get to be born into a world where violence, cruelty and unfairness are collectively unspoken about–and the wish for greater kindness and gentleness is mocked. You hearken back to a past that has poisoned us all, and whose influence we’re all crawling out from under. A past which it takes force of will, or good luck, or a combination thereof, not to continue to unconsciously replicate in all the little things we do. Most of today’s problems can be traced to problems handed down to us from the past–or are just reallocations of pre-existing problems, only someone else has to suffer from them now (to which I say, payback’s a bit-h–yes, another lovely expression handed down to us from our glorious past. See, I’m a product of it, too.)

Yeah, thanks for all that. Nice world you gave us. Once they invent time travel, you can line up for the old world.

“The Good Old Days” part 2: the world IS getting better

Every time you are shocked or dismayed by something you see people undertake to do to other people, remember that not long ago, you just wouldn’t have heard, seen or read about it. The fact that so many think the world is getting worse is a sign that it’s getting better; we’re trying harder, pulling away from the old norms, including more people in the fabric of society.

For the first time in human history, the concept of inalienable rights actually is somewhat broadly considered to apply to all categories of human being. Its application still lags well behind its ideation, but at least all draft-eligible Americans can vote now–it cannot be forgotten that that has not yet even been true for fifty years!!! We are shocked and dismayed, as more of our old assumptions are brought to the ground; this dismay represents progress, as more people are brought into the fold of basic human opportunity. The best we can do, any of us older than preschool age, is thank ourselves for every way in which we’re free from the poisonous crap that’s been drummed into us from birth. We are products of a poisoned world, a world where people are defined by ridiculous parameters and not taught to see each other as individuals; where violence as instruction is taken for granted, and wars last for astounding lengths of time: where people collude to exclude others from citizenship for reasons as preposterous as skin color, genitalia or inherited religion. Where bullying, humiliation and authoritarian punishment are rites of passage.

Fortunately, the grand scale of human-on-human atrocity is actually getting smaller, as the world shrinks and we increasingly realize that, as it was once said, ‘an explorer from another galaxy would find us all very much alike’. We have to remember that, and remember that the only hope for our wretched but brilliant species lies in its future.

PW

NASA: NASA Science

Unrivaled control of a robotic arm has been achieved using a paralyzed woman's thoughts, a US study says.

BBC News: Paralyzed woman's thoughts control robotic arm

Hey everyone,

I know our hearts were saddened this past weekend upon hearing about the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut and the stabbings in China. As we approach this holiday season and afterwards, please continue to keep the families of those affected, and their respective communities in your thoughts and/or prayers.

On the comic front, I have a couple of quick updates:

(1) The first week got off to a strong start, with 47% of the project being funded! With this being my first Kickstarter campaign I didn’t know what to expect, so the amount of love and support I’ve received out the gate has been nothing short of amazing. To every backer and person who helped spread the word, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

(2) My goal for this week is to keep up the momentum from last week, and I believe that by people continuing to get the word out, we can make that happen.

(3) Colored pages are coming in, and they look great! So expect to see some colored pages real soon.

(4) Last but not least, I’ve been fortunate enough to have two great friends who are also in the comic world share their thoughts on what they liked about Lightweightz: The Anthology Part One, and why people should support Lightweightz: The Anthology Part Two.

Again, thanks for helping the movement get off to a strong start, and I look forward to us achieving the same this week.

With Gratitude,

Justin

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1862527497/lightweightz-the-anthology-part-two

“The Good Old Days” part 2: the world IS getting better

Every time you are shocked or dismayed by something you see people undertake to do to other people, remember that not long ago, you just wouldn’t have heard, seen or read about it. The fact that so many think the world is getting worse is a sign that it’s getting better; we’re trying harder, pulling away from the old norms, including more people in the fabric of society.

For the first time in human history, the concept of inalienable rights actually is somewhat broadly considered to apply to all categories of human being. Its application still lags well behind its ideation, but at least all draft-eligible Americans can vote now–it cannot be forgotten that that has not yet even been true for fifty years!!! We are shocked and dismayed, as more of our old assumptions are brought to the ground; this dismay represents progress, as more people are brought into the fold of basic human opportunity. The best we can do, any of us older than preschool age, is thank ourselves for every way in which we’re free from the poisonous crap that’s been drummed into us from birth. We are products of a poisoned world, a world where people are defined by ridiculous parameters and not taught to see each other as individuals; where violence as instruction is taken for granted, and wars last for astounding lengths of time: where people collude to exclude others from citizenship for reasons as preposterous as skin color, genitalia or inherited religion. Where bullying, humiliation and authoritarian punishment are rites of passage.

Fortunately, the grand scale of human-on-human atrocity is actually getting smaller, as the world shrinks and we increasingly realize that, as it was once said, ‘an explorer from another galaxy would find us all very much alike’. We have to remember that, and remember that the only hope for our wretched but brilliant species lies in its future.

The last week in December, PAnd0RA 001 returns as your Holiday gift to brighten your travels through deep space! 'A Broken Jar' sees the vivacious android confront both her growing popularity and her obsessive attraction to the strange unmarked Transport BOX secured aboard the Interstellar Transport DROMEDARY. Meanwhile forces to retrieve the BOX and insights PAnd0RA will need for her development are moving to converge on her upon the Dromedary's arrival in the HESTIA system. Questions will be raised and answers will be given but will anyone involved be able to handle them? Much will be revealed in the next episode of 'The PAnd0RA Ultimatum'!

A cross-sectional image is shown of a silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities. Shown are the layers -- n+, i, and p+ -- that have been deposited inside the pore of the fiber. (Image: Badding lab, Pennsylvania State University)

The team's new findings build on earlier work addressing the challenge of merging optical fibers with silicon chips. Rather than merge a flat chip with a round optical fiber, the team found a way to build a new kind of optical fiber with its own integrated electronic component, bypassing the need to integrate fiber-optics with chip-based electronics. To do this, they used high-pressure chemical vapor deposition to deposit semiconducting materials directly into holes in optical fibers.

Laser Focus World:
Silicon p-i-n junction optical fibers could lead to photovoltaic fabrics

Without you there would have been no Blade Runner.

Artist's impression of a protostar, with its jets of outflowing matter, protoplanetary disk, and envelope of gas and dust. NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC)

Ars Technica: Astronomers discover youngest protostar yet observed, Matthew Francis

• Doomsday: a lot of angst and hype about next Friday being suddenly 10^100 years into the future with imminent, hypo thermal death to the universe. At least that's the conventional science regarding the universe's end -- and NOT the hype. The good news is by THAT distant time, we'll all be gone (and I no longer blogging) when this occurs: just not next Friday.
• Active shooter training: we're going to have to think about this. Places like Israel search you before you enter...the mall. That's not comfortable for US residents to think about, just as taking off our shoes and pat searches in airports still are not comfortable post-9/11, but we may have to think about and earnestly consider things we'd rather not.
• Mental health: it amazes me that we'd never think of walking about with an obviously broken arm, pierced skin, blood streaming out of an open wound, yet we HIDE mental health issues. We stigmatize those that want to seek help as if admittance of a problem would be "career limiting." We spend more time on Facebook and "words with friends" when we need to speak to one another; see a play versus a movie; go to dinner at a restaurant and talk to one another.
• Gun control: we're going to have to debate this (unlike both candidates' dodge in the last election cycle). Debate: A formal discussion on a particular topic in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward. Instead of dismissing occurrences as "isolated"; this is becoming too frequent to ignore.

It is hard to design a dwelling, especially to project into the future. You have to decide to embrace the present building codes and area architecture and orchestrated consumer wants or cut new turf. For instance the one room cabin soon evolved into one family room and a master bed chamber. The fireplace was the kitchen. Now each family member deserves a bedroom or mini-apartment and every room is big. Glamor, elegance, prestige, status, the display to neighbors that either I have made it or I am important is evident.

Many rooms are designed around activities. Formal dining rooms with individual eatery, ample shoulder separation and ostentatious junk jewelery chandeliers suspended like the sword of Damocles, chairs hard and straight and Emily Post worship. That was the scheme even with our crowded family table, messy kids, finger foods and more modest display. This beats eat where you sit and sleep where you drop, it's a more civilized arrangement. Africans families when I seen them in the magazines shared a pot of communal stew. Though their eating was orderly and practical they soon also succumbed to Emily Post.

Designing the future is hard because we don't often view the details like when Superman makes a potty run does his cape get in the way? He rushes to his next call with toilet paper stuck to his boot. In the Star Wars saga the young Vader has a fruit meal with his beau, so human, unlike Jar Jar Binks whose spaghetti whip tongue is faster than you can say "pass the........" Tatoone dining where Luke's Aunt swears by her nuke powered food processor, even they sit at a table. My dreams go back to "Lost in Space", where they lived in a RV and had an ATV or Space 1999 and their environmentally sound moon base on an drifting asteroid (NASA likes that episode).

So why the future, why the techno hut? Because most of us live in homes we didn't make for ourselves by people who had dreams and standards that didn't regard how we think and desire and live. We check out the place and adapt. We adapt within certain parameters and are driven to satisfy ourselves and showoff to others. National Geographic ran a photographic series that showed families sitting amongst their material possessions from different parts of the globe. That was totally interesting. Today I drive by homes and see garage doors open and packed to the hilt. We put puffy furniture in a small room and complain about no space and awkward comfort. I laughed at Thomas Edison's house (so small) and at ancient homes in Africa, we are so advanced, NOT!

The techno hut has four parts. The private space for sleeping and bath, food storage and prep, utility room and the common space. Present homes maximize everything. Eventually you can't economically support the home and each family member is isolated in their own personal compartment. The individual autonomy is exaggerated in this culture, where as in African culture both autonomy and family blend in a good proportion. This consideration reflects in the arrangement of the architecture. Talk about fractals, the individual and the family and the hood have the same look and feel. The home accommodates that in a practical way. For instance we need huge powered food storage when food is bought for the long run. Not so big when markets are local and the habit is to consume while fresh. We spend so much time working and have no time for hunting, gathering, growing and preparing, we consume ready to eat packaged meals and fast foods, so we don't need a big kitchen, do we?

The physical body is not as advanced as people think. That capsule that contains every chemical needed will fail because the body has to push through some bulk, because that is the way the body is made. Super mental means nothing to blood in the arteries and a pumping heart. A man must poop something. A home can be just a force field, but to cover the butt, can I get some privacy please? So to me the most advanced techno hut is probably the simplest that makes survival in an environment practical. First provide the basics, food, heat/cool, light, water and waste removal, then some free  space. Yeah, we can jazz it a bit.

To verify entanglement among the three photons, the physicists measured the times that the photons arrived at a detector. This 2D histogram shows that groups of three photons are all localized to a small region, indicating strong correlations in the arrival times of the three photons. Image credit: L. K. Shalm, et al. ©2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited

Phys.org: Physicists extend entanglement in Einstein experiment, Lisa Zyga

The following is an excerpt from "Her Hand in Mine," a novella-length story I wrote in conjunction with my upcoming webcomic, "Wild Space Saga."  Any critiques or requests to read the story are welcome.  

The story is about a lonely scrap hauler named Jules who reunites with an alien friend from his childhood, and resumes their relationship, which has matured from the puppy love of their youth.  Enjoy! 




        As it had done innumerable times that week, the incoming call hologram appeared on my phone as it lay upon the dresser across from my bed.
        "Li-ah, why won't you turn that thing off?"  Sar'vana murmured plaintively, her words coming in a background of soft, relaxed purring as I applied the detangling ointment to her fur and massaged it into her skin.  It was a type of oil that Felyans used on themselves for personal grooming, but it was often customary for mates to apply it to each other.  The process was very intimate, as I learned, like a full body massage when done correctly.  And Sar'vana was a very good teacher.  The scent, I learned, was the same familiar aroma that had constantly emanated from her and most other Felyans,  something akin to baby powder.
        "There might be an emergency," I replied as I finished applying the ointment to her tail, and reached for her brush.
        "Well, so far, it's only been your friend, as usual," Sar'vana said, and hissed at the phone.
        "He'll give up," I assured her.
        "He hasn't yet."
        I sighed as the hologram faded away.  "You're right; he hasn't."  It was the fourth day, I learned from viewing the timestamp on a previous attempt of Chester's that had occurred when we had last woken up.  Time had otherwise blurred together in those endless hours, becoming meaningless as Sar'vana and I indulged ourselves in each other.  "He's too damn persistent," I said with a deep, mildly annoyed sigh.  "He knew that I'd be with you this week.  He's got too much personality and not enough patience."
        Sar'vana giggled at my remark, and then stiffened as my brush passed over the very sensitive base of her tail.  She shuddered, and growled softly and deeply as I passed its fine bristles over her luxurious fur, being especially soft and gentle upon this part.  Her reaction never failed to both amuse and arouse me, and my laugh was just as soft as her growl as I passed the brush several times upon the area.
        "Oh, you're doing that on purpose, now," she said, trying to sound annoyed, but there was a betraying pleasured lilt in her voice that I could easily detect.
        "Maybe," I said coyly.
        Her tail slapped me upon my side as she hissed faintly.  It was a playful, gentle slap, and I saw a faint smile upon her muzzle as she cast an alluring sideways glance at me.    
        "So are you really pissed, or are you just being frisky?"  I asked, the scent of the ointment and the sight of Sar'vana's supine body building up the desire that my grooming of her had already thoroughly stoked.
        "Well, now … that depends on whether or not you can finish the job without becoming 'frisky' yourself," Sar'vana said, and rolled over onto her back.
        Laughing, I accepted her challenge, and forced down my desire as I went back to work.

        "By the way, who is Keisha?"

        That question was like a bucket of cold water on me, eliminating every vestige of my arousal, even as my hands neared her breasts.  How could this have happened?  I wondered, my mind racing with mixed fear and consternation.  Hadn't I blocked Keisha's code from accessing my phone?
        "Keisha…?"  It was the only thing I could say.  The name came out sounding incongruous and utterly stupid in my ears.
        "I saw that your friend had left you a message last night," Sar'vana said.  "You were still asleep.  He said that Keisha was wondering where you were, and wondering why you never returned her calls."
        I sighed with resignation.  I'd expected this, of course; It wasn't as if I planned to keep this a secret.  I knew that I'd have to tell Sar'vana about this before long, but I had hoped that it would have been on my terms.
        I sat up in the bed, and curled my knees up to my chest.  Sar'vana, noticing the doubtless troubled look on my face, turned over on her side, facing me.
        "I don't know how you'll take this," I said.  "You've probably already suspected that you're not the first woman I've been with, right?"
        Sar'vana nodded without word.  
        I had intended to keep quiet about some of the things I knew, to soften the sting of my confession, but my lips overrode my intentions, as if an angel were forcing me to purge my conscience of all its sordid contents.  I told Sar'vana everything.  I told her about Keisha, the burn, our nights together, my confusion, and my regret.  I couldn't bear to look directly at her as I spoke, yet I could feel Sar'vana's beautiful, violet eyes fixed upon me as I talked on, like a balloon inflated with sin releasing its contents through a tiny hole.
        "I'm not a virgin, Vani," I said in conclusion, "but I had little interest in women until I met you.  And then … well … you know the rest."  Drained and without excuse, my eyes tightened as I, guilty by my own word, waited for the storm of reproach that I was certain would come.
        "Whom do you love?"  Sar'vana asked.
        Her question, spoken gently, and devoid of any judgment, caught me utterly and completely off-guard.  I blinked the tears from my eyes as I once again settled my gaze upon Sar'vana.  Like an angel, there was no look of anger in her lovely eyes, no condemnation.
        "Who … whom do I…?"  I sputtered.
        "Whom do you love?"  Sar'vana asked again, her voice without any betrayal of judgment.
        "Well …  you, of course," I said, still amazed that this conversation had even taken such an unforeseen turn.  "I've always loved you." 
        "Are you certain of this?"  Sar'vana asked.
        "I've never been more certain in my life.
        "And are you my li-ah as I am yours?"
        I crawled to her, and took her hand in my own.
        "Vani … If I had my pick of any woman on this planet, but was denied you, I'd choose celibacy," I said with earnestness that burned from the depths of my heart.  "I would be sterilized before I'd choose any other girl.  Were it allowed, and were it possible, I would have you bear our children.  Li-ah … I've loved you since we were kids.  And my only regret is not having had the courage to act on my feelings sooner."
        "Then there is nothing to forgive," she whispered.
        And just like that, it was over.  And as we kissed, all the shame and confusion of the times of the burn vanished at her gentle touch.  We fell into the soft sheets, reveling in that joy that I felt at her forgiveness, and sought to bring that joy … and that love … once again, into its fullest expression.

12.12.12: The last time this date, or repetition of dates will occur again until January 1, 2101 (the 01.01.01 of the 22^nd Century). The Astronomical Society of the Pacific proclaims today Anti-Doomsday Day. There's a concert for Hurricane Sandy relief.

American Geophysical Union: IPCC Climate Forecast from 1990 - Amazingly Accurate
Astronomical Society of the Pacific: Anti-Doomsday Day

Hey, folks.  

I'm looking for some readers for my work, so I can have some critiques.  In exchange, I can do critiques of your work.  Please let me know if anyone is interested, and I will post a few excerpts.  Thanks a million!  

-Brandon