“Is the commander’s shuttle clear yet?” Lian asked, switching gazes back and forth between Grimes and the display tank.
“Not yet, XO,” replied the ops chief. “Our fighters are still tied down with the enemy. His shuttle’s in the thick of it.”
A wailing vibration from an enemy missile that impacted perilously close to the bridge shorted out a row of display screens. Images in the tank fizzled out, leaving a gaping void of black. Instantly, a redundancy kicked in reconstituting the footage.
The behemoth ship covered a third of the display. Like an encroaching storm front, the massive ship’s image soon blotted out everything else in the tank, energy bolts surging forth from its many emitters like strokes of lightning.
A much larger bolt stabbed outward from the behemoth’s center node, piercing the Far Walker’s upper bow. The enormous green-white beam bit into shielding, draining it dry, then cut into layers of super hard hull plating. A seething, powdery burst of atmosphere erupted from the ensuing breach. Like a gargantuan fire sword, the beam thrust deeply into the Far Walker, turning vast areas of its interior into a star’s core.
Two similarly destructive beams ensnared the King and the Gujarat, penetrating each missile frigate on one side and exiting out the other. Charred, blackened debris jetted out of breaches in both frigates’ hulls. The Cane received particularly harsh dosages of the massive beam. Successive bolts burrowed into the troop carrier’s outer thrusters and mid section, shattering its shield generators.

“Fall back!” Lian turned to the pilot. “Try to outflank that ship!”
“That beam ripped through fifteen levels,” Hilburn reported. “We’ve got massive internal damage!”
“I’ve sourced those beams’ output,” said Weapons Specialist Domos. “Targeting!”
The XO extended a forestalling hand. “Belay that, Fahid. I’ve got something else in mind. Prepare Judgement One missiles.”
Domos tossed the XO a wary glance. “For a J1 launch we’re going to have to put distance between us and the target.”
The pilot, Janet Kiowa, adjusted controls. “Increasing fall back speed.”
“Tell the Task Force to clear the target zone,” ordered Lian.
Domos tapped a console key with a grim finality. “J1 is online.”
“I want every ship to implement a mass launch of lower grade missiles to screen the J1’s approach.”
Grimes acknowledged and disseminated Lian’s order to the task force.
Lian stepped closer to the display tank, barely suppressing an urge to cough from the hazy acridity of damaged, overloaded consoles. She fixed pitiless eyes on the dreaded behemoth, and a spirit of vengeance coiled enticingly around her heart when she snapped the next command, “fire!”

Clouds of Flail and Terror Rod missiles from every ship in Task Force Arrow descended upon the massive Erekdenit vessel.
The behemoth threw up a howling wall of point defense fire, wiping out a host of incoming missiles. Numerous task force missiles, nevertheless, broke through a gleaming barricade of enemy fire to smash into their target. Miles upon miles of the behemoth’s hull boiled beneath a restless, gaseous ocean of multiple missile eruptions. A slower moving J1 plunged into that searing ocean, detonating upon contact.
The J1’s explosion breached the target’s hull, channeling tremendous anti-matter laced forces into its interior, before whipping outward in a secondary blast that dislodged enormous chunks of dense hull.
The behemoth listed severely, its batteries silenced as large pulses of chain reactions assaulted its mighty framework, tearing it apart.
A collective pause seemed to come over the remaining 14 Erekdenit ships as their crews witnessed the death throes of their lead ship.

Lian smelled blood and swooned in its headiness. “Target the heavies and mediums with J1s and open fire.”
Eight J1 missiles, hidden beneath a blanket of screening fire, struck the behemoth’s medium and heavy companions. Individual blast waves from eight explosions merged into a single, moon size spatial disrupting wave that swept over the Task Force ships like a tsunami. One of the heavies broke in half, one segment consumed in a blazing aura, the other plummeting toward the planetoid’s surface.
A fiery typhoon consumed a large swathe of area where the segment impacted, producing a florescent crater that marked the planetoid like a glowing red eye.

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

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'!

“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.

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

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.

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

Quality Editing Designed With Indie Authors

Q & V Affordable Editing

Physics World - How ULAS J1120+0641 may have appeared

Physics World: Ancient gas sheds light on universe's first billion years

from NASA

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/8246896057/

Black Marble - City Lights 2012 [hd animation]

Physics World - a 'solar energy funnel'

Physics World: Semiconductor funnel could boost solar cells

Sun Ra has always been a tough listen for me. Out from his disciples though I found vibes I could comprehend. I couldn't do John Gilmore (will have to) but Archie Shepp strikes and explodes my imagination. The album "On This Night" I play over and over again. What is crazy is when you listen so many times you submerge down into the texture of the playing. I done the same with John Coltrane. Now he said in his interviews that he had a number of musical devices that he is experimenting with. From that I tried to identify them. I listen to Coltrane play "My Favorite Things" at different periods of his life side by side. Not just his searching growth comes out, his musical devices. Now John Coltrane was on a quest and I'd say a spiritual one.

My other two favorite sax guys were different. Archie Shepp was/is an explorer, an adventurer. Eddie Harris the inventor. Archie Shepp in his most lyrical used the Sun Ra sound as the instrument. He zooms in and out of noise, texture, tune and percussion. Hisssss, growl, sing, hummm, croon.........

Now Eddie Harris was a different sort. His use of the electronic sound on sound (echo) and multi-channel effects on wind instruments was cutting edge. I wonder why musicians playing electronic wind instruments today don't pay him greater homage. He could ballad, blues and jive but to me his spacey techno grooves are the blade. He practiced with Coltrane, I heard, and he did some tunes that Trane would approve, Eddie had some skills. He also had this desire to do funk, I don't know why?

Wayne Shorter is another guy I listened to. He passed through the Art Blakey school. He has some wonderful vistas and Weather Report still haunts me. I saw them play in person.

I listen to others and because of my immersion into the aforementioned I appreciate a greater depth. 

Curiousity - AAAS Science Mag

AAAS Science Mag: The First Signs of Ancient Life on Mars?

I tried this intuit contest where I sent in my own admission. I want to create an online review that covers the work of black writers. There used to be a magazine that did that but it went out of business. I figured out that it wouldn't take more than $6000 dollars to recreate the number and even the quality of reviews that this now defunct magazine -- I think it was Black Issues -- used to do.

I was going to go the Kickstarter route which I may do eventually but this Inuit idea came up so I submitted my idea. What I didn't tell them is that I'm primarily interested in promoting the work of genre writers such as Steven Barnes or Chip Delaney. I could also use the site to review up and coming writers like the people who post here.

So if anyone here wants to help here's the link. If I understand this contest the more votes I get the more likely I'll be selected. So your votes would be appreciated.

You can vote for the idea here:

https://www.facebook.com/intuit/app_280813488703650?app_data=us_showcase_3153

Philip Shropshire
www.threeriversonline.com

PS: I'm a professional reviewer, former newspaper person and prolific freelancer. I'm probably up for the job.

Here's a review that I did that was turned into a podcast, not African American related but it shows my chops:

http://jazropo.blogspot.com/2006/11/my-review-of-thomas-friedmans-world-is.html

And here's a review of "Charisma" (and other books) that I wrote a long time ago for BET, when they gave a frak about books and such.

http://www.threerivertechreview.com/redhourdown.htm

Nature

Nature: Grim picture of polar ice-sheet loss

This is not my webinar regarding getting business credit but even if it doesn't provide everything it promises...taking a look might not be a bad idea.

I recently met a colleague with a LOT of experience helping small business owners get legitimate “unsecured” 0% interest rate business credit (useable as cash; and doesn’t require your tax returns) -- and I thought you should know about this awesome resource!
If getting funds to grow your business...
* to buy advertising * hire the right kind of help * getting the right kind of software * paying for the best quality consulting
...would be helpful for you, then I highly recommend this free webinar about how to get that kind of 0% business credit.
Same webinar -- choose the time that works better for you:
Thursday Dec 6 @ 12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern
Thursday Dec 6 @ 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern
(Click one of the above)
Interestingly, using these methods can actually boost your personal credit rating, and yet, none of this business credit shows up on your credit report.  These are legitimate strategies that are unknown to most business owners.
Simply: if it would help you to have a loan or credit to grow your business, this event is a “must” attend.  It’ll save a lot of time and you'll get the latest best practices to get business credit.
If you attend and use these strategies, I’d love to hear how you’ll be spending the new funds!
Cheers, George

If you wish to stop receiving our emails or change your subscription options, please Manage Your Subscription George Kao Coaching, P.O. Box 22285, San Francisco CA, 94122

Our techno age has evolved so drastically; who ever thought that our cell phones would serve as interchangeable mini computers with ideas communicated in the blink of an eye whether they consist of graphic arts or military objectives.  A whole new world is at our finger tips waiting to be explored while we’re on the move with numerous cultures around the world to numerous to count. Even our literary options have drastically increased allowing us the freedom to enjoy our favorite books, magazines, news papers, and last but not least the various hard back to soft back graphic novels that were birthed from the comic book age we all grew up with.

 The onslaught of comic book genres that fill the shelves in our homes and at book stores are too numerous to count.  Who knew then how they would evolve and how their value would sky rocket as time moved into this techno age.   

One can only imagine how easy it was to accumulate boxes of comic books with companies like Wild Storm, Image, Vertigo, Dark Horse, Top Cow, and last but not least the Grand Daddies of them all “DC comics and Marvel Inc.” supplying our weekly habit of super heroes and villains fueling our imaginations.  When did the world of comic books enthrall and compel us? At one time or another in our life we have picked up a comic book. What was it about that collection of colorful images that drew us in captivating us? Was it the unbelievable feasts of our heroes or was it the diabolical plots of those villains who sometimes invaded our dreams as children.  Who were these villains where did they come from what was their psychosis and plot for world domination…or destruction of the universe itself.  For as long as anyone can remember there has always been some petty tyrant threatening mankind.  So our comic book industry has taken advantage of these psychotic individuals with delusions of grandeur as far back as the First and Second World War with Hitler and his infamous Third Reich, or America’s ugly history of segregation that created a dark backdrop with images of white robed tormentors burning crosses and how African descended people and people of color in general were depicted during that time.  Can you imagine how long the comic book industry has existed?  Let us turn back the pages of time.

Originally located in Manhattan, NY 432 Fourth Ave later relocating to 575 Lexington Ave in 1934 National Allied Publications was one of the most successful companies operating in the market for American comics they were the publishing unit of DC entertainment a company of Warner Bros owned by Time Warner. They were the producers of well known characters such as Superman, and others.  Later with the advent of Dick Tracy and Batman National Allied Publications transformed to Detective Comics hence the initials D.C. later they were to morph into Direct Comics, but still maintaining the DC logo   

In 1939 in NY Timely Publications was founded another American company that published comic books and other related media as the segregation era continued raging in the south. 

By the early 1950s Timely Publications had become Atlas Comics, and the birthing of the Civil Rights era was underway with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.  In 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white person hence fueling the inequality and injustices of the treatment of people of color in this country.  Her defiance inspired the Montgomery Alabama boycott which Dr. Martin Luther King and others was a driving force.

 In 1961 at the height of the Civil Rights era Atlas Comics became Marvel Comics launching the Fantastic four and other super heroes created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others creating the marvel universe with such characters as the Avengers, Dr. Doom, X men, The Hulk and many others.  

As the Civil Rights era gained momentum influencing the nation to adopt a stand for the elimination of injustice and inequality attracting worldwide attention the first black super hero was created in a mainstream comic book publication Marvel comic Inc.  T`Challa the king of a fictional advanced African nation referred to as WaKanda located in central Africa; made his appearance as the “Black Panther” in 1966 in the Fantastic 4 issue #52 created by writer / editor  Stan Lee and penciled by Jack Kirby. 

The Black Panther’s name predates 1966. The original Black Panther title was birthed from the segregated African American WW2 tank Battalion who liberated France. In the sixties others soldiers would pick up the mantle of fighting for justice ushering in the next generation of civil rights; Huey Newton, Bobby Seals, Stokely Carmichael, creating the Black Panther Party.  The Black Panther has always had a history of fighting inequality, injustice and protecting those who could not protect themselves. Could this concept of the Black Panther been adopted from the African American experience in this country by Marvel comics?    Later on in the sixties The Falcon, and Luke Cage were penciled to life with DC comics following suit creating such characters as Tyroc, Black lightning, and John Steward / Green lantern.  However there were predecessors to these black characters. 

In 1947 All Negro Comics Inc. was founded with artist / writer John Terrell and George J Evens; who created black characters such as detective Ace Harlem.  Another popular comic series was Ezekiel’s manhunt an action adventure and there was Lion Man an educated black man sent by the United Nations on a mission to find Uranium on Africa’s Gold Coast. These characters predated our heroes we know today; blazing a trail for positive images much needed for the revolutionary era to begin Civil Rights and Equality for all.

In 2008 Walt Disney acquired Marvel Worldwide commonly referred to as Marvel comics formally Marvel publishing Inc. and Marvel Comics Group for $4.24 billion. Walt Disney grosses 36 billion annually.

There is no doubt the African American experience has dramatically influenced the Marvel and DC universes.  Such a rich and diverse history accompanied by a culture older then the colonization of this country has left its mark upon the comic book industry.