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A New Grant to Encourage Science Fiction Writing from Diverse Worlds

Posted by Lyric Osiris on October 1, 2013 at 8:00am

A New Grant to Encourage Science Fiction Writing from Diverse Worlds

Science fiction and fantasy are full of limitless possibilities — so it only makes sense to encourage writers from diverse backgrounds to write them. A new grant aims to help "writers from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the genre to start and continue publishing." And you can help!

Two publicists with Hachette Group, Ellen B. Wright and Faye Bi, are going to be running the 2013 NYC Marathon as a way of raising funds to start a Diverse Worlds Grant, which would be administered by the Speculative Literature Foundation. The grant would help writers to complete works in progress, and would be administered similarly to the SLF's Older Writers Grant. And you can pledge money to support this undertaking!

From the Diverse Worlds Grant's crowdfunding page:

Science fiction and fantasy fans are a diverse bunch of people: male, female, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, cisgender, queer, with and without disability; from all classes, geographical regions, and backgrounds. Especially now, when speculative fiction has taken over pop culture, and some of the most popular movies, TV shows, and books of our era — and of all time — are inarguably speculative. It’s a great time to be a geek.

But those of us who don’t fit into one particular box (and some who do) have noticed something. There’s one story that’s told in the genre over and over again. You’ve probably seen it. It’s about a straight white man, or often a bunch of straight white men, creating things with science, wielding magic, saving the world, blowing stuff up. If there are women or people of color involved, we're probably love interests orsidekicks. We probably only talk to, or about, the white male lead. We probably die first, or to provide motivation for the protagonist.

Science fiction and fantasy, whether written for adults or children, are the genres of the imagination. We ask, “What if?” So it behooves us not to be complacent about this failure of imagination; not to let stories go untold because their creators think there’s no place for them in our (and their) genre.

As you might have guessed from the above, we're geeks. We're also runners. This year, we're running the NYC Marathon — the first marathon for the both of us — and it occurred to us that this was a great opportunity to combine these two interests. This year (and every year), there have been a number of incidents in which fans have been made unwelcome or harassed online and at genre events because of their identity. This is our chance — ours and yours — to do something about it.

We've created this marathon fundraiser on Crowdrise to support the Speculative Literature Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes science fiction and fantasy and encourages new writers of both adult and children's genre literature. They’ve agreed to use the funds we raise to create a new grant called the Diverse Worlds grant, which will help writers from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the genre to start and continue publishing. As good science fiction and fantasy worlds should, this grant will welcome all kinds of diversity: gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, ability level, religion, etc.

Science fiction and fantasy are full of limitless possibilities — so it only makes sense to encourage writers from diverse backgrounds to write them. A new grant aims to help "writers from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the genre to start and continue publishing." And you can help!

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D-Wave Quantum Party...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 30, 2013 at 7:32am


A quantum computer made by the Canadian company D-Wave Systems has been used to solve a famous puzzle in mathematics known as the party problem – according to a team of physicists in Canada and the US that has done the work. D-Wave describes the result as one of the most significant achievements for its devices to date, but some physicists are being party poopers by remaining unconvinced there is anything to boast about.






Unlike classical computers, which store bits of information in definite values of 0 or 1, quantum computers store information in quantum bits (qubits) that exist as a fuzzy superposition of both. This mixed-up nature of quantum computing extends beyond individual qubits: multiple qubits can be entangled so that they work in unison. As a result, quantum computers should be able to solve certain problems – such as factorizing large numbers – much faster than their classical counterparts.


In principle, there are several ways that quantum computers can work. A more conventional approach is to perform a calculation by operating on the qubits one step at a time, so that in the final step the answer is encoded in the qubit states. Another way is called adiabatic quantum computing and involves letting all the qubits slowly evolve in carefully controlled conditions so that the problem is described by their web of interactions. Adiabatic quantum computing should still give the desired result in the final qubit states. However, when compared with more conventional approaches, it is less susceptible to external influences such as stray heat, which can destroy a quantum calculation.

Physics World: Has a quantum computer solved the 'party problem'?

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Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 29, 2013 at 8:46am


Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa (also known as "Dr. Q") is a physician, author, and researcher. He practices neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital and runs a basic science research lab out of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Quiñones is Director of the Brain Tumor Surgery Program at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Director of the Pituitary Surgery Program at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Director of the Brain Tumor Stem Cell Laboratory at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.[1] In addition to being a professor of neurosurgery, neuroscience, oncology, and cellular and molecular medicine, Quiñones is also the author of the newly released book, Becoming Dr Q.

Early years

Quiñones, the oldest of six children, was born in a small village outside of Mexicali.[2] In 1987, at the age of 19, Quiñones-Hinojosa jumped the border fence between Mexico and the United States.[3][4][5] Once arriving in United States, Quinones could not speak English and worked on farms outside of Fresno, California.[1][6] As a farm hand, he saved enough money to take English classes.[7]

Education

Quiñones-Hinojosa started his education at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, California, and completed his bachelor's degree in psychology with the highest honors at University of California, Berkeley.[4] He then went on to receive his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, where he graduated with honors. He also became a US citizen during this time.[7] He then completed his residency in neurosurgery at the University of California, San Francisco, where he also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in developmental and stem cell biology.

Wikipedia: Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa

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Five Minutes to Midnight...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 29, 2013 at 8:37am


Reuters

My departure from physics I reserve for Sundays. Somewhat a double entendre most days; I am aware from the stats these are my least viewed postings; I call them my "sermons slightly left of the mount." As much as I'd like to focus on science and physics exclusively, public inanity from public officials drives my rants, and unfortunately, they decide the purse strings for scientific research. That thought alone is quite scary.

I grew up in the era of the doomsday clock and inane "duck and cover" drills of an ever-pending nuclear apocalypse. Recently, climate change has been counted in our path towards self-immolation.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its most decisive report, and it's not good. However, what also is not good is our lack of trust of science, the convolution of pseudo controversies, of which there is a litany, but essentially: anything that threatens a bottom-line of power, profit and influence must be obfuscated.

I tend to agree with Bill Nye. I selfishly want to save the planet...for myself and my children, and their children. The planet will be here: it is arrogance to believe that we will always be.

The link to the report is below. I will most likely as I'm apt to do, print it out, highlight it and consume what the report says to be informed on its findings.

Challenge: will you?

In the US at least, our media is consolidated into six corporate behemoths, everything we see in news and entertainment. During "duck and cover" days, that was greater than 150. Profit, ratings...and control are the primacy of goals in this arrangement. Now: The stock market is almost a 70's mood ring; talk radio flourished after repeal of the Fairness Doctrine; media can legally lie to us; thus "water cooler conversations" are always orchestrated in a kind of larger hive hierarchy, and we are not at the level of Horus' eye. "Ditto head" was not meant a compliment, nor evidence of deep contemplation. "Dumb and Dumber" and "Idiocracy" were box office hits; I didn't think they'd become the operative outline for our congress. A humorous urban myth tries to define congress as a "gathering of baboons" (it literally is not, but life imitates rumored art). It was a slow road to get here, but we are here. When "Green Eggs and Ham" become part of the record on in the Senate for a "silly buster," our decent; our devolution is apparent and quite public indeed. My childhood memories are henceforth ruined.

In my challenge, I'm trying to inform your water cooler conversations beyond the Borg collective. Your emancipation is in knowledge; and that is not what the six behemoths desire for you.

I simply don't want "once upon a time" to apply to Earth in nursery rhymes for children on distant worlds...as an intergalactic proverb.

The Atlantic: Leading Scientists Weigh-In on the Mother-of-All Climate Reports
IPCC: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Report: Climate Change 2013

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THE DARK GOD IS COMING....

Posted by H. Wolfgang Porter on September 29, 2013 at 3:27pm

October is the month the 'Dark God' will descend upon the BSFS and bestow a great and terrible 'Gift' upon the multiverse!

From the minds of Fantasy & Sci-Fi Authors H. Wolfgang Porter (The Gray Man, Book of Dragon's Teeth, The Priestess & The PAnd0RA Ultimatum) and Ronald T. Jones (Warriors of the Four Worlds, Chronicles of the Liberator, Subject 82-84 & Task Force Arrow) begins the saga of a Dark and powerful god's unleashing a construct of unimaginable power into the unsuspecting mortal realm.

The Dark God's construct is the epitome of an ancient twisted imagination. His fell creation is fueled by the darkest desires of those who would possess it! Unlimited power, sexual attractiveness, even invincibility are among the many, many wonders which can be bestowed by the construct known only as, 'The Trynaught'. But with great gifts, there is always a greater catch! Renown and Ruin are the Trynaught's handmaidens and they come hand in hand with the 'Dark God's Gift!'

The DARK GOD'S GIFT will be featured here at the BSFS so members will see it first! Be honored for the Dark God does not take kindly to the ungrateful....

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Roboy...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 28, 2013 at 10:30am


Robots usually look rigid and nonhuman, with joints engineered to avoid the elasticity that can make their movements less predictable and harder to control. Roboy, a robot developed by Rolf Pfeifer and colleagues in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Zurich, is an example of a different approach that is slowly gaining momentum.



Roboy has a four-foot-tall human shape and a set of “muscles” inspired by the human musculoskeletal system. The plastic muscles work together via electrical motors and artificial tendons. Tendon-driven systems like Roboy mimic the flexible mechanics of biology, and could result in a new class of robots that are lighter, safer, and move in a more natural way.



“If you’re interested in just getting a job done—in a particular movement or something—then we have traditional methods that are based on motors or joints,” says Pfeifer, who directs the Zurich AI lab. “If you’re interested in more natural kinds of movements, tendon-driven technology needs to be explored.”

Technology Review: Some Robots Are Starting to Move More Like Humans

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Celebrate Black Speculative Fiction Month

Posted by Stafford Battle on September 28, 2013 at 7:30pm

October 2013 is Black Speculative Fiction Month. We all should participate not only to merely broaden our fan base but to start a revolution. There is no official leadership  nor central committee. Black artists, writers, and publishers support this as an extension of AFROFuturism.  Everyone can participate.

During Black Science Fiction Month we should pledge to:

  • Buy books from Black authors; and write honest reviews.  Book reviews increase sales for authors and promote the genre.
  • Respond to articles published on the Black Science Fiction Society page and other websites. Your opinions are important and help to spread the word.
  • Add web links  to any website you control; this is very important.  Send your web addresses to me and I will link them on all my websites ( http://www.africanamericansciencefiction.com )
  • Read some great books; there is a suggested reading list for October at the Black Author Showcase. Good writers are great readers. Take a look.

 

Black Speculative Fiction Month means  more than just selling Black sci-fi books; this is a civic challenge to improve all our communities by encouraging people to read and imagine what could happen if we believe in the future. Become an AFROFuturist and dedicate yourself to collaboration, contribution and concern  as we save our planet and build a better world for our children.

 

Be sure to look around the web and connect with like-minded people who enjoy sci-fi from all cultures. We are all African. Therefore, we all have similar needs and ambitions. I applaud the Black Science Fiction Society for its longevity  and commitment to promoting sci-fi.

 

Happy Black Speculative Fiction Month!

 

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César Milstein...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 22, 2013 at 4:26pm


The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1984

Niels K. Jerne, Georges J.F. Köhler, César Milstein

Born: 8 October 1927, Bahia Blanca, Argentina

Died: 24 March 2002, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Affiliation at the time of the award: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Prize motivation: "for theories concerning the specificity in development and control of the immune system and the discovery of the principle for production of monoclonal antibodies"

My father was a Jewish immigrant who settled in Argentina, and was left to his own devices at the age of 15. My mother was a teacher, herself the daughter of a poor immigrant family. For both my mother and my father, no sacrifice was too hard to make sure that their three sons (I was the middle one) would go to university. I wasn't a particularly brilliant student, but on the other hand I was very active in Student Union affairs and in student politics. It was in this way that I met my wife, Celia. After graduation, we married, and took a full year off in a most unusual and romantic honeymoon, hitch-hiking our way through most countries in Europe, including a couple of months working in Israel kibbutzim. As we returned to Argentina, I started seriously to work towards a doctoral degree under the direction of Professor Stoppani, the Professor of Biochemistry at the Medical School. My PhD thesis work was done with no economic support. Both Celia and I worked part-time doing clinical biochemistry, between us earning just enough to keep us going. My thesis was on kinetics studies with the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase. When that was finished, I was granted a British Council Fellowship to work under the supervision of Malcolm Dixon.

Nobel Prize:

Biographical, Nobel Lecture, Documentary (1 min)

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Atomic Friction...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 23, 2013 at 7:27am


A new experimental method based on atomic force microscopy allows the investigation of friction at the scale of individual atoms.



Everyone learns the basics of friction in high-school physics classes: the friction force experienced by a sliding object is proportional to the normal force that an object exerts on a surface. Remarkably, this extremely simple and empirical relation, known as Amontons’ Law, is still often used in creating the most technologically sophisticated machines and devices, even though friction is known to vary with a large number of other parameters not captured in this relation. For example, at the nanoscale, friction is significantly influenced by adhesion, an example where Amontons’ Law cannot predict the friction force [1]. Likewise, friction can depend on sliding speed, duration of contact, environment, temperature, and the sliding direction [1, 2]. As reported in Physical Review Letters, Jay Weymouth and colleagues at the University of Regensburg in Germany have investigated the friction force at atomic length scales, using an atomic force microscope (AFM) [3] to probe the forces between a tungsten tip coated with a small amount of silicon, sliding on the surface of crystalline silicon. They report an observation never before obtained at the scale of just a few atoms: friction is strongly dependent on the orientation of specific silicon atomic bonds at the surface with respect to the sliding direction of the tip.



A directional dependence of friction, also known as friction anisotropy, has been previously observed on larger scales (at least a few nanometers). For example, a tip was pulled along a molecular layer where the molecules were locally all tilted in the same direction. Sliding along the tilt axis produced lower friction than when sliding perpendicular to it [4]. A similar behavior can be observed in a simple way by pressing one’s hands together (as if in prayer but with the fingers spaced apart). Upon sliding the fingers of the left hand against the fingers of right hand (perpendicular to the long axis of your fingers), the fingers of one hand become stuck in between those of the other. However, if one instead slides the left hand down and the right hand up (parallel to the long axis of your fingers), the hands move smoothly. The relative orientation between the sliding direction and the grooves of one’s fingers influences friction because of the geometry of our hands. Friction anisotropy has been observed by sliding a small tip on atomically flat and well-characterized surfaces [5]. However, in all these cases, the nanometer-size tip was pressed into contact with the surface, meaning that a large number (at least thousands) of atoms were in contact during this experiment.

American Physical Society: Friction at the Atomic Scale

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Mario J. Molina...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 23, 2013 at 7:31am


The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1995

Paul J. Crutzen, Mario J. Molina, F. Sherwood Rowland

Born: 19 March 1943, Mexico City, Mexico

Affiliation at the time of the award: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA

Prize motivation: "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone"

Field: Atmospheric and environmental chemistry

I attended elementary school and high school in Mexico City. I was already fascinated by science before entering high school; I still remember my excitement when I first glanced at paramecia and amoebae through a rather primitive toy microscope. I then converted a bathroom, seldom used by the family, into a laboratory and spent hours playing with chemistry sets. With the help of an aunt, Esther Molina, who was a chemist, I continued with more challenging experiments along the lines of those carried out by freshman chemistry students in college. Keeping with our family tradition of sending their children abroad for a couple of years, and aware of my interest in chemistry, I was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland when I was 11 years old, on the assumption that German was an important language for a prospective chemist to learn. I remember I was thrilled to go to Europe, but then I was disappointed in that my European schoolmates had no more interest in science than my Mexican friends. I had already decided at that time to become a research chemist; earlier, I had seriously contemplated the possibility of pursuing a career in music - I used to play the violin in those days. In 1960, I enrolled in the chemical engineering program at UNAM, as this was then the closest way to become a physical chemist, taking math-oriented courses not available to chemistry majors.

After finishing my undergraduate studies in Mexico, I decided to obtain a Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry. This was not an easy task; although my training in chemical engineering was good, it was weak in mathematics, physics, as well as in various areas of basic physical chemistry - subjects such as quantum mechanics were totally alien to me in those days. At first I went to Germany and enrolled at the University of Freiburg. After spending nearly two years doing research in kinetics of polymerizations, I realized that I wanted to have time to study various basic subjects in order to broaden my background and to explore other research areas. Thus, I decided to seek admission to a graduate program in the United States. While pondering my future plans, I spent several months in Paris, where I was able to study mathematics on my own and I also had a wonderful time discussing all sorts of topics, ranging from politics, philosophy, to the arts, etc., with many good friends. Subsequently, I returned to Mexico as an Assistant Professor at the UNAM and I set up the first graduate program in chemical engineering. Finally, in 1968 I left for the University of California at Berkeley to pursue my graduate studies in physical chemistry.

Nobel Prize:

Biographical, Nobel Lecture, Interview (32 minutes)

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OKLO REACTOR The world's first and only natural nuclear reactor

Posted by Celia Fernandes on September 23, 2013 at 2:20pm

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oklo-reactor

'' the uranium deposits in the Oklo region of Gabon created a natural nuclear power plant that operated for hundreds of thousands of years until most of the fissile uranium was depleted. While a majority of the uranium at Oklo is the non-fissile isotope U238, only about 3% needed to be the fissile isotope U235 for the chain reaction to start. Today, that percent of fissile uranium in the deposits is around 0.7%, indicating that the deposit had sustained reactions for a relatively long period of time. But it was this exact characteristic of the rocks from Oklo that first puzzled scientists''

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Vampires are terrible

Posted by Moorsgate Media on September 23, 2013 at 11:30am

By the title of this post you can probably guess that that I am about to rant about sparkly vampires or loving vampires or generally any sort of vampire that would not feature predominantly as a villain in a Blade reboot (ed:  Blade Reboot? awesome sauce!). 


 For the most part, you would be wrong. There is generally nothing wrong with twinkle vampires or any other form of fiction that explores wish fulfillment. There is a lot of "my rich boyfriend is a secret badass" to a lot of modern Vampire stories. As a result, people think the genera is over. No more vampire stories! people (namely book agents) cry!

 There is nothing wrong with the genera. It might just be that the current story slate, i.e. rich boyfriend, needs to be investigated further. Economic theory says that if nothing else, most vampires should be at least affluent, if not down right uber-wealthy. Figure out a story that explains how your sexy vampire got his cash.

ISSUE 1: Vampires Are(or should be) Rich.

Vampires, without direct violence, can be expected to live anywhere from "A Very Long Time" to "Infinity." While that sounds great in and of itself, it is really great from an economic stand point. Most vampires lack the need of actual economic inputs (read: food, clothing, shelter, sleep...air). As such, their actual cash outlays are minimal to non-existent. If they possess special powers, such as super speed or flight, then generally they have zero to minimal transportation costs. Think about the cost of an average transatlantic flight. Vampires pocket that for fancy hotels and ebony wood coffins.

However, most vampires lack a normal occupation (with the exception of that one that was a Rock Star and that other one that ran a medical clinic in Washington State). One assumes, if you rob your food source (i.e. people), after a few years you have acquired some sizable assets.  Let's assume that your vampire boyfriend is nice and does not commit regular robbery/homicides every other lunch period.

However, lets also not assume that he hails from some degenerate landed gentry or b) employs some sort of glamer on people, thereby hypnotizing them into giving them money.  Assuming he was, in his mortal incarnation, middle class; then by investing some portion of his money (which he really does not need)  in the sock market (say in General Electric Stock in 1915) and living solely off the dividends (or reinvestment or diversifying in times of economic struggle), then by the time he hit the 90's tech bubble he would be a millionaire several times over. By not touching the principal, each vampire more than 50 or 60 years old should have a sizable amount of the worlds money locked up in various modern, seaside, homes.

So any story that I encounter that does not explain why a) the vampire is or isn't rich, or b) lacks the assistance of a good financial advisor, is generally suspect.

ISSUE 2: Vampires Are Bad at Science.

Vampires, as stated above, are considerably long lived. Generally, society mourns the loss of great intellects, from Newton to Einstein. One would think that Vampires would scoop up these top notch scientist at the bargain basement price of "almost dead".  Why stop there? Why not selectively "convert" the top graduate  of a highly prestigious technical university.

 There should be vampire covens of geniuses, sitting around creating fantastic works of art, literature, and science. One should assume that the internally produced vampire literature is significantly superior to human literature. Most vampire stories take the position that only good looking people of an artistic bent, become vampires (see said rock star). However, rarely do we get a story about the great and fabulous Vampire museums featuring the "post-turned" works of Picasso, Muro et. al.

Most vampires stories paint the species at a significant technological and ecological disadvantage relative to humans. Vampires rely on a slowly reproducing natural resource that is subject to plagues, pandemics, endemic violence, and natural and cosmic disasters. Modern day farmers would not tolerate the level of uncertainty in the long term viability of their stock. Likewise, surveillance technology, networked infrastructure, high-capacity ammunition, and directed energy weapons all level the playing field against the natural gifts of the supernatural.

It would be natural that, with unlimited life spans and budgets, individual vampires should be able to privately fund all manner of Manhattan Project-style endeavors. For example, given their superhuman abilities, vampires re almost specifically designed for Deep Ocean and Deep Space exploration.

A round trip to Proxima Centuri, at 1/10 the speed of light (which is all we could ever be capable of with modern technology) would take 80 years. This is seen as a barrier for humans, but with a steady supply of cryogenically frozen blood, would be a cake walk for vampires. Assuming ambitions closer to home, one would expect that at least some vampires use their vast wealth and time horizons to devise counter-measures to human extinction (since one prefaces the other), ready to be deployed at a moment's notice.

At the very least, you would assume that Vampires operate technology that is several generations ahead of our own. Faster computers, smaller devices, robots . (ed - see Vampire Hunter D series for technologically advanced vampires).


 The point here is to note that the Vampire genre, just like any other genre, has room for interpretation or reinvention. Just because there have been a spate of successful, "Vampires are my Boyfriend", books doesn't mean that every story that could be written about them has been written. Now, a book on Vampire Economics might not get turned into a best selling novel series, but it would definitely set the author apart.

@Moorsgate

www.moorsgatemedia.blogspot.com

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Firmly Aboard the Pequod...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 22, 2013 at 4:23pm


The most prescient portrait of the American character and our ultimate fate as a species is found in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage. He is our foremost oracle. He is to us what William Shakespeare was to Elizabethan England or Fyodor Dostoyevsky to czarist Russia.

Our country is given shape in the form of the ship, the Pequod, named after the Indian tribe exterminated in 1638 by the Puritans and their Native American allies. The ship’s 30-man crew—there were 30 states in the Union when Melville wrote the novel—is a mixture of races and creeds. The object of the hunt is a massive white whale, Moby Dick, which, in a previous encounter, maimed the ship’s captain, Ahab, by biting off one of his legs. The self-destructive fury of the quest, much like that of the one we are on, assures the Pequod’s destruction. And those on the ship, on some level, know they are doomed—just as many of us know that a consumer culture based on corporate profit, limitless exploitation and the continued extraction of fossil fuels is doomed.

Chris Hedges, "We Are All Aboard the Pequod"

Houston Chronicle: Texas lawmakers on Tuesday began weighing changes to the state’s high school graduation requirements to give students more flexibility in which courses they must take.

A closely watched bill by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, would change the default graduation plan so students would not necessarily have to take four years of English, math, science and social studies. Instead, they could specialize in areas such as arts and humanities or science, technology, engineering and math.

“My focus is to help stem the dropout rate,” Patrick said during a meeting Tuesday, explaining that students would be able to take more courses that interest them.

Lake Houston Observer: Assessments in Algebra II, geometry, English III, chemistry, physics, world geography, and world history have been eliminated from the testing requirements. As a result, the July 2013 STAAR administration will not include assessments for these courses. End-of-course assessments will continue to be offered in Algebra I, English I, English II, biology, and U.S. history.

Texas is a large market due to its sheer size. Thus, a lot of other states emulate them; based their textbook purchase decisions on what they deem are deliberative, informed educational moves.

This was alerted to me by a friend on Facebook. My description/reaction is as follows:

"So, biology only is going to help us design an I-phone? Ye gods, we are destroyed by ideology, lunacy and idiocy! The only "logic" I can see in this: physics and chemistry would destroy their creationist/intelligent design garbage narrative I've read they're trying to get in textbooks K-12. Texas influences a lot of education markets nationally that assume it following a rational course, which this is NOT."

We seem all firmly aboard the Pequod, 'tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine' (Ephesians 4:14); the ship of fools captained by a 1% Ahab fighting against the forces of nature and common sense. Anything that should be eliminated is the testing-industrial-complex, not science in an ever-increasing; ever-complicated world. We need more scientists, mathematicians, engineers and technologists with an appreciation for written discourse, geography and history; more importantly: a citizenry that appreciates these subjects and informed enough to demand such from its leaders and hold them accountable. A canyon gap between 1 and 99% will soon be an untraversable chasm. I do not see a stable society emerging from this Phoenix's ashes.

Controversies are manufactured to keep us divided: "Smokey James: ['Blue Collar' voice over echoing earlier line] They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place." A fill-in-the-blank modern extrapolation is pretty simple.

Chris Hedges opined on climate change, which takes an appreciation of science. The conclusions of science have long been opposed since Galileo as it destroys the narrative of authoritarians in sheep and shepherds' clothing (Canis Lupus would be too obvious), more driven by their warped sense of order and power than any concern...as sociopaths lack empathy nor real concern for the well-being of their fellow humankind, spiritual and scientific efficacy in this country.

Shoulders thrown into the effort of rowing; brine spraying our collective faces, we steady our feet above deck as someone shouts:

"There she blows!--there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!"

"Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence."

"From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."

"Ignorance is the parent of fear."

There she blows, a great force of nature and alas, we cannot all be Ishmael...

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Blood rushing excerpt from my novel in progress Task Force Arrow!

Posted by Ronald T. Jones on September 21, 2013 at 8:51pm

Thirty light war cruisers swarmed the assault boat Matador as it rounded a sharply angled corner of the station. Ruby lasers lanced from Matador’s emitters, slashing the night. Six Association cruisers bucked violently as the lethal lasers cut through shielding and hull, boring into interiors, igniting reactors. A center cruiser exploded, its blast wave sending the others spinning away. More Association cruisers sped toward the Matador, but one veered off in a slightly different direction. It brushed close to the station’s equator covering a two-mile distance in less than three seconds. Then it dipped abruptly, crashing into the station in an impact so shattering the ship vaporized. A tremendous flash sprouted from the collision. It subsided rapidly, revealing a vast hole from which a plume of atmosphere shot out with typhoon strength.
The Matador’s captain, Rajay Thapoory, looked at the monitor in puzzlement. “Did that ship just deliberately…?”
A second cruiser raced toward the impact site, pausing fractionally to release clusters of small objects into the hole.
“Troop pods,” his XO said.
Thapoory shook his head. “Why are they deploying troops inside the station?”
The XO examined a sensor screen. “They’re bringing in more than troops, sir. Configuration scans are picking up bulk material inside some of those pods.”
Captain Thapoory took a handful of seconds to process the XO’s report. His eyes slowly narrowed. “Contact the Far Walker.”

Greggory, Lian, and Grimes stood around the display tank watching an image playback of the Association cruiser slamming into the station and the subsequent pod drops.
“What the hell…” Grimes’ expression registered shock and revulsion. “The Matador never touched that ship…that was a suicide crash!”
“If they wanted to hole the station, for whatever reason, they could have simply used firepower,” said Lian.
“It would have been too obvious.” Greggory turned away from the tank, facing Lian and Grimes. “Using a crash to disguise deployments inside the station is a good plan. The one, big flaw is that it still drew our attention.” He looked briefly at the display. “I think I know what they’re trying to do. Contact PSWO and Infantry. Tell them to mobilize.”

Tzayber Lur, Assault Leader, 12th Complement of the Bringers’ Fist Division growled into his mouth comm. The fifty soldiers under his command quickened their debarkation from the troop pod. High-speed winds screamed and whipped about, escaping through a massive breach above produced by the cruiser’s impact. Tzaybur Lur belted out praise chants for the 3,000 martryrs aboard who willingly gave their lives to pave the way for the Bringers’ Fist.
More pods soared through the breach, faster than they should have. Two bumped into each other and whirled out of control. One pod received the worst of the contact and tumbled twice when it hit the surface before skidding on its side and plowing into a thick support column. A handful of Bringers’ Fist soldiers managed to claw their way free of the mangled wreckage. Less than half of them cleared it before a pierced reactor gave up its volotile energies, consuming what was left of the pod.
Tzayber Lur chanted for the pod fatalities as well. Such were the hazards of a mission. They needed to dash halfway through the station, assemble five pulse cannons and blast that Demon helper ship out of its repair dock. And they needed to be quick about it.
“Move it, move it!” the Assault Leader bellowed, activating his powered armor boost to counteract the blasting wind. Chances were his Complement was not going to be the first to reach and secure the designated launch zone, but he was damned if it was going to be last.

Unit Leader Karinia Baez, Planetside Special Warfare Ops, crouched just within the entrance of a storefront facing a five-lane concourse. With a mental command to her helmet’s visual, she zoomed in on enemy movements at six hundred yards and closing. Fifty-one hostiles in heavy powered armor tramped swiftly down the concourse. A gathering of station occupants stood along both sides of the concourse, observing the soldiers’ approach. The occupants were part of a minority that chose not to evacuate the station. Perhaps they thought the situation was not serious enough to warrant so drastic a departure. Or maybe they were among those who were deeply loyal to the High Cleric and felt it unneassary to leave. After all, what did they, as true believers, have to fear?
A readout flashed above Baez’ helm display identifying the Association soldiers as members of the Bringers’ Fist, an elite detachment. Fist soldiers were the most highly trained and fanatical of all the forces under the High Cleric’s control. They were also incalculably ruthless.
A foreboding chill crept through Baez as the armored soldiers neared the bystanders.
The next instant they leveled cannon-size blaster rifles on the crowd.
Searing death funnelled from fifty-one barrels, slashing and burning through bodies with indiscriminate savagery.
Half the bystanders were reduced to charred chunks of flesh before the other half gained the presence of mind to scatter.
Some of the soldiers targeted their fleeing victims, blasting them apart in coherent ripples of light. Others preferred to kill up close, using narrow blades that extended from the tips of their armor suited arms. The blades were three feet long, less than an inch wide with ultra durable diamond edges that glowed emerald green.
Despite being no stranger to violence, Baez flinched when a pair of armored suits chased down four bystanders and hacked them to pieces.
The butchery continued as streaks of metallic green met flesh and bone, sending body parts flinging away on streamers of blood. With every bystander dead, the soldiers resumed their advance across a gore-splattered surface.

Baez reverted to normal vision and took a deep breath in an effort to tamp down her rage. Patience, patience. She sent a message through her subdermal comm. “First contacts are close to position.”
“Copy,” a voice replied. “Ready to light ‘em up.”
“Wait for my word,” Baez said with a smirk. She was ready too. The PSWO operative melted into the shadow of her dim hideaway and withdrew.

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On The Brane...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 20, 2013 at 10:02am


This challenges a holy grail of physics, and relates to The Standard Model; how we describe the four forces of nature and how they interact, even the Higgs Boson.

I almost hesitate to post it because many who do not "believe in the Big Bang Theory" will shout: aha! I say: ah, science - self-examining, exploring; learning more tomorrow than we thought we knew yesterday. Quantum mechanics had its trials and tribulations: Weins Law, Rayleigh-Jeans Law and the "ultraviolet catastrophe" eventually getting to Max Planck (of Planck's constant) and light seen as quanta. This eventually led to Einstein and the photoelectric effect in his Annus mirabilis papers generated in a lowly patent office in Munich. Thus we have the Internet, I-phones, flat screens, etc.

This description matches some of the wording I've seen over the years of the "universe as hologram" and admittedly either didn't understand or regarded as new age mystic pop culture. This challenge will have to be peer-reviewed and experiments performed to verify. Stay tuned...

However, Pluto is still not a planet.

A few nine-year-olds will send me hate mail now...Smiley

It could be time to bid the Big Bang bye-bye. Cosmologists have speculated that the Universe formed from the debris ejected when a four-dimensional star collapsed into a black hole — a scenario that would help to explain why the cosmos seems to be so uniform in all directions.

The standard Big Bang model tells us that the Universe exploded out of an infinitely dense point, or singularity. But nobody knows what would have triggered this outburst: the known laws of physics cannot tell us what happened at that moment.

“For all physicists know, dragons could have come flying out of the singularity,” says Niayesh Afshordi, an astrophysicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.

It is also difficult to explain how a violent Big Bang would have left behind a Universe that has an almost completely uniform temperature, because there does not seem to have been enough time since the birth of the cosmos for it to have reached temperature equilibrium.

In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary inside a black hole, in the bulk universe the event horizon of a 4D black hole would be a 3D object — a shape called a hypersphere. When Afshordi’s team modelled the death of a 4D star, they found that the ejected material would form a 3D brane surrounding that 3D event horizon, and slowly expand.

The authors postulate that the 3D Universe we live in might be just such a brane — and that we detect the brane’s growth as cosmic expansion. “Astronomers measured that expansion and extrapolated back that the Universe must have begun with a Big Bang — but that is just a mirage,” says Afshordi.

Nature: Did a hyper-black hole spawn the Universe?
Physics arXiv: Out of the White Hole: A Holographic Origin for the Big Bang

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new creative weapon of choice, the tablet

Posted by Arnold L. Johnson on September 18, 2013 at 1:52pm

"I see you have constructed a new light saber, your skills are complete."

Hi all, I know many have thought of this but I thought I'd mention it because I'm having so much fun. Yeah, yeah, smartphones everybody's got one. Except me, I got an old school cellphone so that I'm not bothered by endless txt, emails and calls or my own fiddl'n with the darn thing. I was in the market for a new laptop, one with longer battery life, light weight yet some power. I kept seeing the tablets at the various stores. I resisted for so long, finally pick one up for a closer look. Smartphones/cellphones, OK, the 7" tablet, just a big smartphone, the 10" tablet..............wait, hummmmmmmmm!

Picked up a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (it's OK to get an iPad, sheeech!). It does everything I need and has Wacom touch and stylus technology to boot. I can draw on the thing. It's like having a Wacom Cintiq............almost. The apps are all Android apps, there are numerous drawing apps including Photoshop Touch, Autodesk Sketch Pro and one called ArtFlow which I like very much. The Note app is wonderful, you can insert pictures, write/draw/type your ideas. I'm always in waiting rooms, running trips, finding a quite spot, watching a vid while working. It has two cams, takes very good pictures and videos. I recorded a couple of bands, two dance troops and a walk through at a local Art festival. I take it everywhere. I'm thinking velcro dots in the car, around the house. My old Chevy has been instantly upgraded.

All done, I can transfer pics and vids to my laptop via Dropbox (cloud transfer/storage) or use a flash drive. I'm still discovering hidden functions. Tablets don't have the full power of the force, but does well with what energy it commands. 7 hour battery life, wi-fi and sci-fi (thought I'd throw that in there!). I use a lot of note pads so this device is like having an endless roll of paper towels, stacks of envelopes and sticky notes galore.

Being in my usual semi-retirement economic crunchiness, a new laptop with the weapons of glory would have cost me a grand. This thing cost me less than 1/2 a grand, most apps were free. The big time apps are free but are advance feature locked, $4-$10 to unlock. That's Photoshop for $10, ok Photoshop Touch. Still it does a lot and I can still transfer pics over to GIMP on my laptop.

So, what's so sci-fictionee about a tablet? I imagine my self like those artist sitting on the river bank, easel, brushes, paints, tam, sweet air, curious walker-bys...........only without the setup, the mess, the cleanup. I'm in the role imagined. And passer-bys? "Hi, is that a Nook or iPad?" "Why no, it's a Galaxy 10.1!" Sounds kind of spacey.

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Luis Alvarez...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 18, 2013 at 8:35am


The Nobel Prize in Physics 1968
Luis Alvarez

Born: 13 June 1911, San Francisco, CA, USA

Died: 1 September 1988, Berkeley, CA, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Prize motivation: "for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis"

Field: Particle physics

Luis W. Alvarez was born in San Francisco, Calif., on June 13, 1911. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Chicago in 1932, a M.Sc. in 1934, and his Ph.D. in 1936. Dr. Alvarez joined the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, where he is now a professor, as a research fellow in 1936. He was on leave at the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1940 to 1943, at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago in 1943-1944, and at the Los Alamos Laboratory of the Manhattan District from 1944 to 1945.

Early in his scientific career, Dr. Alvarez worked concurrently in the fields of optics and cosmic rays. He is co-discoverer of the "East-West effect" in cosmic rays. For several years he concentrated his work in the field of nuclear physics. In 1937 he gave the first experimental demonstration of the existence of the phenomenon of K-electron capture by nuclei. Another early development was a method for producing beams of very slow neutrons. This method subsequently led to a fundamental investigation of neutron scattering in ortho- and para-hydrogen, with Pitzer, and to the first measurement, with Bloch, of the magnetic moment of the neutron. With Wiens, he was responsible for the production of the first 198Hg lamp; this device was developed by the Bureau of Standards into its present form as the universal standard of length. Just before the war, Alvarez and Cornog discovered the radioactivity of 3H (tritium) and showed that 3He was a stable constituent of ordinary helium. (Tritium is best known as a source of thermonuclear energy, and 3He has become of importance in low temperature research.)

Nobel Prize: Biographical, Nobel Lecture, Banquet Speech

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Sufficiently Advanced Technology...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 17, 2013 at 5:54pm

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke

I sadly see an arms race brewing:

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Today, Lu Lan at Zhejiang University in China and a few pals have actually created the first invisibility cloak designed using topology optimization. They carved it out of Teflon and it took them all of 15 minutes using a computer-controlled engraving machine. “The fabrication process of a sample is substantially simplified,” they say.

The resulting “Teflon eyelid” invisibility cloak hides a cylindrical disc of metal the size of poker chip from microwaves. But crucially, its performance closely matches the prediction of the computer simulation.

Physics arXiv:
Experimentally demonstrated an unidirectional electromagnetic cloak designed by topology optimization

Also:

Pro and Con, i.e. before I get too excited, I'd like to hedge my bets!

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Quantum Algae...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 17, 2013 at 5:59pm
Image of the diffraction grating made by the researcher

The exoskeleton of a tiny organism has been used as a diffraction grating by researchers in Vienna, who have carried out a molecular interferometry experiment using it. The team showed that a coherent molecular beam could be diffracted from the silicon-based cell walls of a marine alga. Algae are cheap and easily available, so replacing costly nanodevices with them in interferometry experiments would be beneficial, according to the researchers.

Contrary to classical mechanics, quantum physics states that a particle can act like a wave and vice versa – an idea that was first proposed by Nobel-prize-winning physicist Louis de Broglie back in 1923. While the idea that tiny particles such as electrons could behave like a wave came as a shock, scientists now know that even objects a million times more massive than electrons, such as complex molecules, also show quantum interference. Massive molecules have very small wavelengths and therefore a grating with extremely thin and closely spaced slits is needed to observe their diffraction. Currently, such sophisticated devices are specially fabricated using nanotechnology techniques.

Physics World: Diatoms bring the quantum effects to life

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