BLOGS

AAAS: "Sequestration" Budget Cuts Would Cripple U.S. Scientific Progress, Experts Warn

PAnd0RA 001 is adjusting to life aboard the Transport DROMEDARY. As it's newest crewmember, PAnd0RA finds herself assisting her companion Captain Gital in his strange tinkering with ancient spacecraft and being adopted as the Dromedary's official mascot. The Android will soon find herself put to the test as her eccentric companion prepares an ancient ritual called a 'Pool Party Barbecue'! How will so 'fresh out of the container' being like PAnd0RA survive so barbaric a scene carried out by scantily clad humans and aliens? Answers and more questions will be revealed in 'The PAnd0RA Ultimatum EPISODE TWO: A Tale of W.O.E.S. Part 2!

TPU Episode 2 pt 2

NASA - Apollo

This is an open advocacy for returning to the moon.

Going back to the moon: as Dr. Tyson pointed out on WAMC (not up on the site yet, or maybe just a replay), this would be at most a three-day trip, which could ignite a renewed interest in science. For the current generation, moon launches are as boring as shuttle launches and Civil Rights movements and bear equal time and attention (as none). It would finallly put to rest the conspiracy theorists that weren't alive, yet are absolutely sure that the launch was faked (because the video software on their laptops say so). The young have become the ultimate consumers of electronics and technology, only annoyed when it doesn't work, but not interested in mastering it as future career options.

 

If we don't, other countries will make a first and successful run at our closest neighbor, and we will be scrambling like a nostalgic recast of Sputnik in 1957:

Indian Space Research Organisation - Wikipedia

It could serve as a launching pad for further deep space exploration, such as asteroids; such as Mars. Richard Branson could get his space hotels, and another generation of astronauts would see an Earthrise, and be forever affected, no longer feeling part of a particular "tribe," but human: an earthling.

With new cover art, the Android PAnd0RA 001 returns! PAnd0RA slowly learns how to interact with both her fellow crewmembers and her growing 'Fan Club' among the Transport DROMEDARY as they continue their journey to the HESTIA System. Dealing with overzealous fans is easy. Trying to complete her task of engaging her Human companion Captain Gital into forming a pair bond is hard! While PAnd0RA works towards her goal, she must contend with the negative side of social interaction as well. Not everyone aboard the Corporate Transport is enamored of the state-of-the-art android! Will PAnd0RA be able to navigate the treacherous currents and eddy's of social life and still complete her mission? Answers and more questions will be revealed in EPISODE TWO: A Tale of W.O.E.S.!

Greetings to all BSF Society Members!!
Please check out n join our WE-Village Crocoblog..short afro-fiction stories-enigmas!! We are finishing the last Episode and then beginning our look for a Publisher!!
Help us reach our 200 member goal!!
Leave a comment if you wish!!
Thanks So Much,

J.Peterson

D.Jahman Deidotree

Some excerpts:

Of course, there's an iPad app.

You can see the "Full Monty" of the brain below at the link. I'd prefer to remember him from photos like this:

Albert Einstein, seen playing the violin in the music room of the S.S. Belgenland, had knoblike structures on the part of the brain that controls motion of the right hand. Brain scans of modern musicians show similar structures.

NPR: Scientists Get A New Look At Einstein's Brain

“People have remarkably short memories when it’s in their interest–or a matter of convenience–to do so. Look at some of today’s political alliances: how many are between nations that were mortal enemies less than a century ago? Ironically, that could be construed as one of our better attributes, you know…that America and Japan, or France and Germany, or whomever else can overcome past grievances to work together economically or politically. But the shame of it…is that as often as not these collaborations only seem to fuel conflict or oppression in some other area. They’re almost always politically motivated or profit-oriented, hardly ever altruistic…”

James Stock, 5/24/2008

firstcauseproject.wordpress.com

Godspeed Larry Hagman...

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity dug up five scoops of sand from a patch nicknamed "Rocknest." A suite of instruments called SAM analyzed Martian soil samples, but the findings have not yet been released.

NPR: Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now

A morsel from my upcoming novel, TIC ONLINE. Please enjoy.

Various tests were conducted on the upgraded SmartSkin over a five-year period, with NAVYSPACE scientists discovering that there was no increase in physical attributes in all of the male test subjects. Female test subjects, however, outperformed their male counterparts 100 percent of the time, showing all the desired increases in speed, strength, and lethality with absolutely zero side effects. No one knows for sure why this is so but it is hypothesized and argued often that the female karyotype simply “works” with the special operations version of the S3BS, and because of this the special operations SmartSkin is more commonly known in the field as the 47XX. The 47XX allows its wearer to jump higher, hit harder, run faster, and kill more effectively than their male counterparts.

Considered the best of the best, Tameka Gates took the 47XX and rewrote the book on how to conduct special operations with over forty missions and a flawless success rate, making her the number-one-rated asset in the fleet. Lonewolf, Gates’s former pupil, planned to take that book and incinerate it. Thomas studied under Gates for three long, agonizing years. Three years of insults and hazing, nigh effective against Thomas’s unwavering confidence. Three long years of tagging along and taking unwarranted punishment from Gates while on missions gave Thomas the training and tools to quickly become the new go to asset in the fleet. Not much was known about this Georgia native, donning customized black armor and armed with a fuel cell accelerated .50-caliber sniper rifle dubbed “Cherokee Rose.” Thomas’s missions ranged from reconnaissance, sabotage, tactical extractions, and wetworks. Feeling her number-one spot quickly slipping away, Gates’s alpha female attitude, coupled with her explosive temper, had gotten her pulled from several jobs, opening the door for Thomas, among several other operatives, to move up the ranks. Gates now loathed her former apprentice and her rapid ascension to the special ops corps de’ elite, The Valkyries.

Monday PAnd0RA 001 returns to keep you going after the holiday and with a new official cover for the series! Special thanks to Artist Ken Bishop for not getting bent about the unofficial use of his work 'Maja'. PAnd0RA finds her presence aboard the Interstellar Transport, DROMEDARY has made her a celebrity. Learning to contend with her sometimes rabid 'Fans' and life with her new companion Captain Gital to be quite a challenge. While the pinnacle of Android engineering navigates life aboard her new home, a crack Contingency Team is in pursuit of the DROMEDARY to retrieve its mysterious cargo. PAnd0RA's curiosity continues to grow concerning the undocumented Gray Transport BOX, but what lay inside may be more than she or anyone in the Galaxy wants to know! Will the Contingency Team arrive in time to claim the BOX before PAnd0RA's curiosity gets the best of her? Answers will be revealed in 'The PAnd0RA Ultimatum' EPISODE TWO: A Tale of W.O.E.S.

To give you an idea of scale: a 4°C rise in global temperatures (by itself) equals 39.2°F.

°C * (9/5) + 32 = °F

25°C * (9/5) + 32 = 77°F
26°C * (9/5) + 32 = 78.8°F
27°C * (9/5) + 32 = 80.6°F
28°C * (9/5) + 32 = 82.4°F

29°C * (9/5) + 32 = 84.2°F

25°C equals 77°F (room temperature), so an increase of 4°C is 84.2°F (sweat, fans and AC).

Drought in Yunnan Province, China

Washington Post:

(Sneak peek of my forthcoming novel)

In the North air traffic tower above Old San Francisco, Willie, a short light-brown man with a thick afro, sat in his swivel chair with jazz flowing through his ear plugs and an open book on his lap. Music was one of the few things that hadn’t died with earth’s decline. A few libraries, crumbling dilapidated buildings that they were, had survived. They were free too, for anyone who had a mind to visit them. The diskettes had survived as well, and Willie was a music lover. He had hundreds of them that he kept in his satchel.

The tower was now used exclusively for monitoring extra-terrestrial contact. In the twenty years since the tower had been converted, there hadn’t been any. Only one employee maintained the upper tower staff.

The monitors were blank and, as always, Willie was alone on his night-duty shift. Hence, the ear plugs. It was a dream job. I ain’t got to do nothing but show up…bring some music, a book and ride the clock.

He glanced over at the screens. Flat lines. So what else is new? and dropped his head back to the crime novel in his lap.     

He didn’t hear the young woman come in. She was shapely and dark, with a long braid of hair hanging down her back. And she was dressed in the totally unpractical Early Earth grab, if you weren’t rich, of jeans and t-shirt. She walked over to Willie. He felt her presence, and jumped in surprise at the sight of her.

The young man snatched his ear plugs out. “You ain’t supposed to be in here! How’d you get in?”

“I know the guard.”

Damn she fine! Her pert breasts with their dark nipples were poking through her shirt like bee stings. And she had a tiny waist tapering down to wide, luscious hips. She ain’t wearing a bra, either.

“Well…” he stammered, “what you want?”

The young woman smiled fetchingly, displaying the dimple in the corner of her rosebud mouth, batted her lashes over her big brown eyes, and moved in close so that (censored) was right in front of his face. Willie restrained himself from licking his lips.

“You baby…” she simpered.

The young man’s lips spread in a wide goofy smile. Then he checked himself. This fine **** could be a plant! “You’re not supposed to be in here Miss!” he said again gruffly. “You need to leave. Now.”

In answer, she pulled her shirt over her head. Both her nipples and her navel were pierced.

“Damn!” Willie exploded. She started to unbutton her pants. “Wait!” he said. “Not here!” he jumped up, ran past her to the door opened it and looked up and down the hallway. “Come on!” he hissed waving her over.

They scooted out of the room and into the first broom closet on his left. “I’m Willie…what’s your name?”

“Melody,” she whispered. “I live in your dome…I been watching you…You look so good…” All the while, she was slipping out of her jeans. She wasn’t wearing any panties.

And Willie had stopped listening...

Copyright Valjeanne Jeffers 2012 all rights reserved.

Read the short story atamazon,nookand smashwords. The Full novel will be available later this year :)!

Physics arXiv

One of the central puzzles of spacetime is its structure on the smallest scale.

 

The equations of general relativity are smooth, even at the tiniest scales. But in the early 1960s, the American physicist John Wheeler pointed out that in quantum mechanics, ordinary properties of spacetime, such as position, momentum and so on, have an uncertainty associated with them. That implies that spacetme must be uncertain as well. Wheeler famously described it as "quantum foam".

Physicists would dearly love to study this foam but there's a problem. Spacetime only becomes foam-like on the tiniest scale, at so-called Planck lengths of 10^-35metres or so.

Probing that distance is obviously difficult. One way to do it is by accelerating particles to huge energies, which allows physicists to determine their position accurately, thereby probing very small volumes of space.

But the energies required are around 10¹⁹GeV, many orders of magnitude higher than today's particle accelerators. There's no likelihood of reaching this energy on Earth in the foreseeable future so physicists are more or less resigned to the idea that they’ll never get their hands on quantum foam.

They may change today thanks to a fascinating idea from Jacob Bekenstein, a physicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Bekenstein says he has worked out a way to measure the structure of spacetime on the Planck scale using a simple experiment involving little more than a block of glass and a laser.

In essence, the experiment is straightforward. Bekenstein's goal is to move the block by a distance that is about equal to the Planck length. His method is simple: zap the block with a single photon.

The photon carries a small amount of moment and consequently pushes the block as it enters the glass, giving it some momentum. As the photon leaves the block, the block comes to rest.

So the result of the photon's passage is that it moves the block a small distance.

Bekenstein's idea is that if this distance is smaller than the Planck length, then the block cannot move and the photon cannot pass through it.

So the experiment involves measuring the number of photons that pass through the block. If the number is fewer than predicted by classical optics, then that proves the existence of quantum foam.

Physics arXiv blog: How to Measure Quantum Foam With a Tabletop Experiment

ONLI STUDIOS & The Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago. Where people flow through over third Friday  events. We attracted art lovers, fans,  museum founders, collector organizations & city officials. .
Fans, collectors, curators and the curious were surprised to encounter the impact & quality of illustrations created by various Black Age Art Stars."Black Comix", the book, will be prominently displayed as part of the Black Age display.

OPENING RECEPTION NOV. 19th: "20 Years: Living In The Black Age!" This is the Black Age display and group art / multimedia exhibition at ONLI STUDIOS on the 4th floor of the Bridgeport Art Center. Also it will feature a screening of the historic DVD "Black Age Central" featuring the late & great L.A. Banks, from the 2010 Black Age of Comics Convention: Featuring creatives like Arie Monroe, John Jennings, Mshindo Kuumba I, Jamal Igle, Afua Richardson, Corey Greene, Rebeckah Younger, Eric Battle, N. Steven Harris, Turtel Onli and more.   The landmark "Black Comix" coffee table resource book and a variety of Black Age graphic novels will also be available for researchers or collectors.  Ours is such a growing community.  Black Age Central can be seen on YouTube under the same name.  ONLI STUDIOS is located at the Bridgeport Art Center.

Two:  The cafe   

The café is staffed and hosted by server and cook robots that cater and serve humans who have access cards only. Then, a late breaking report flashes on the digital image screens inside the café and outside on the main Washington St. "marauders and rebels and other unknown protesters continue to terrorize and fight against each other and against in a civil war against the federal patrol officers and Incbots that secure the main city streets all over the U.S and the world massive casualties estimate in the thousands, Today we interviewed Officer John Meeks who is the Federal Head Officer and Chief all Operations here in the U.S on Beacon Hill and here’s what he commented on the violent and civil war actions that have been going on since the lockdown law started many years ago “ I’ve been doing this sort of thing for 30 yrs. now, my dad was a federal officer, my granddad was a federal officer before him and so on and so forth, But let me tell all of you rebels, unknowns and low life  street scum marauders one thing my job is to uphold the federal lockdown law and the federal government pays me very, very handsomely to keep things the way they are around here”. “I'm RPG 059 reporting for New Boston World News,” the female robot says as she signs off.

The three men curiously stare at the people around the café who use their iPods, laptops and digital holographic image display devices to keep track of and to state updated on current events, they also see non-English speaking people laughing and conversation with English speaking people using portable global language translator or GLT devices."Can I help you gentlemen?” the small frail looking server robot asks startling the three men. "Yeah, I will have just a coffee, I'm not too hungry" Lee responded. "And you sir". "I have some pancakes, eggs and some orange juice, I just love me some orange juice" Mike sarcastically responds. "And you sir". I'll have toast and sausage and black coffee with four sugars, I like my coffee black and sweet just like my woman Gail" Peter replied. The server robot looked at Peter with a puzzled face not getting the meaning. "Black like your woman Gail sir that’s not on the menu" the server robot responded. "Just black coffee with four sugars,” Peter shouted. " Hey Peter calm down, robots do not know anything about being romantic" Lee said. The three men laughed.

 One: Downtown Boston 2199   

It is early spring in Boston, Massachusetts. The city is inhabited by humans and robots that walk and drive there hover cars and hover cycles in the streets carrying out there everyday tasks. Officers who uphold the national lockdown law patrol the streets. They walk on the streets carrying their laser rifles and pistols they also patrol there riding their hover cycles. 12 ft. 2000lb metal bipedal robots called IncBots who are heavily armed with laser weapons aid them. Two hover cars descend and land down on the surface of Tremont St. The car doors vertically open up. Three men get out of the car, one Asian man named Lee who is 5ft 7in tall, stalky build one black man named Mike who is 6ft 5 in. tall, athletically build and one white man named Peter who is 6ft even, muscular build. One of them takes one drag from a cigarette then he exhales the smoke and then thumps it on the cement sidewalk. "Hey you put your litter in its proper receptacle that's an order" the 2000lb, heavily armed bipedal Incbot shouted. "Sure thing" Peter replied. Mike walks over to the other hover car parked in back, the window rolls down on the driver's side. The beautiful face of an Indian woman whose name is Shana is revealed. "You all coming in the café with us" Mike asked. "No baby, we're going to ride around the town a bit, see what's happening" Shana responded. Mike runs his hand through Shana's long, ebony black silky hair and kisses her lips. "See you later baby,” she said. "Not if I see you first" Mike replied winking his eye at Shana. The window rolls up, the hover engine ignites and the car vertically and emerges into the ongoing air traffic. Mike, Peter and Lee walk into café, they sit down at a table at the far end.