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The Grey Area Project

Posted by B.W. Redwood on April 5, 2017 at 3:09pm

Hey Guys,

I have invited you to this note because I value your feedback and expertise. I am looking for conversation starting questions, constructive criticism, and overall editing feedback. This is a high-level rough summary of my Serial Novel... “The Grey Area.” I am super excited to FINALLY have my head wrapped around this particular segment of the industry. Even still, the end goal is to write a really insightful, in-depth, an engaging literary work of art chapter by chapter, and then convert those chapters in to screenplays/graphic novel scripts. The ultimate goal is to use this story as a platform to get in to the comic book industry.

Forewarning...This story is loosely based off of my own life. I was laid off from a cushy stay at home job at the end of 2015, but refused to ever go back to working for anyone besides myself. I started a concierge service called Blue Chip Management. I basically wanted to become a lifestyle manager for influential and eccentric individuals. I saw a lot of artists around me struggling to make ends meet, and I wanted to be the one to create a way to utilize all of our talents to make real money! But in the meanwhile, I had to survive...and used Detroit’s “informal economy” to make money. It got to a point where I was doing extremely well, but just a little too well, know what I mean? I began to fantasize about what if I pushed this idea to the limit. It really had some juice...even though I was still trying define exactly what it was. I was already operating in the grey area surviving, but did I want to live there? The answer was no...but I dreamt about how it could of went...then I wrote it down as a business plan.

I read the business plan, and said...you know what? This would be an awesome graphic novel story. So I threw a lil cyberpunk “sauce” on top of it...and voila...I had something...different. Please read the summary...leave questions...comments...

The Grey Area Elevator Pitch

A survival story about a young slick entrepreneur’s tumultuous, but rapid journey to becoming a self-made millionaire with only his road bike, elaborate schemes, eccentric network, and insatiable desire to dominate the informal economy in a city many view as a desolate dead end, Detroit, MI.

Summary

This is a story that takes place in modern day Detroit focused on a group of friends that have one thing in common…riding road bikes. Each of them have greater aspirations for life and are tired of living paycheck to paycheck. Each has great potential, and grandiose dreams to be much more than their meek existence they now walk in. It starts with Red and Black…the business minds of the crew. Black is a rehabilitated drug dealer, who changed his life for the better after having a kid. Red is the prodigal son of a successful business man looking to make a name for himself, and define his own path. Red and Black are always proposing ideas, but never executed anything together. Red was laid off from his cushy job one day, spiraling him into a world of uncertainty that haunted him day in and day out. Black was beginning to miss the thrill of the street life, but did not want to put his life on the line anymore. After being laid off, Red made up his mind that he would never be fired again, and began doing odd jobs and chores for others to make ends meet. Eventually, he built up a reputation to take on courier jobs on his bike, it was just enough for him. Nothing gave him more freedom than to be on his bike all day, living the life of complete freedom.

He built relationships over time, but it would all change once one of his longest held customers fell ill to cancer and had to undergo chemo therapy. They would always debate about the potential profits of the marijuana industry and how it would change Detroit for the good. Both would have the discussion over a joint, but once he fell ill this happened more frequently. Red recommended THC alternatives, which eventually puts the cancer into submission. He began to grow his own strain that Red helped him construct with the aid of Red’s Uncle. His client returned to work, and began to refer Red’s services to his high-profile colleagues to push his strain. Demand spikes a lot faster than Red or his client could imagine, and they needed to take it to the next level. Red never thought about selling drugs as a full-time occupation…but the upside would bring him more money than he could ever imagine. He takes the risk, and the business begins to boom. So, Red brings Black into the business.

Eventually business grows to a size that even Red and Black can no longer manage on their own. Black suggests bringing the rest of the bike crew on. Each member brings their own unique skills set that makes them an even stronger team. In this story, a business case for marijuana as a solution to Detroit’s plight will be a main point, but even still, as this team faces opposition from police, drug lords and basic societal pressures, they still strive to stick together. Their brotherhood is the focus, and how they position their skills to serve their greater overall vision. The reader will come to understand what it means to go against the grain to achieve a goal, and despite the lure of the street for the young black male, how they can use their brains to win. The Grey Area represents the passage between the known and unknown, the area between good and evil that all humans must face to get to what they want out of life. With Detroit, itself representing a place that is predominantly black in population, but owned by white the dollar. The Grey Area of the U.S., where the taboo of wealth and human rights are at odds with each other.

GERDA...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 6, 2017 at 5:59am

From Nature: “The inner walls of the water tank are covered by a reflecting foil improving the light detection. This permits the identification of cosmic muons.” Image: K. Freund, GERDA collaboration

Topics: Antimatter, Big Bang, Cosmology, Neutrinos, Particle Physics

You and me, we’re matter. Everyone you know is matter. Everything on Earth, spare a few particles, is matter. Most of the things in space are matter. But we don’t have convincing reasons why there should be so much more matter than antimatter. So where’s all the antimatter?

A team of European scientists have taken a major step in understanding this conundrum, using a house-sized detector called the Germanium Detector Array, or GERDA, buried inside a mountain in Grand Sasso, Italy. GERDA’s scientists are looking for a strange behavior in radioactive atoms, called “neutrinoless double beta decay” (I’ll get to that in a second). Some versions of the rules of particle physics says this behavior could help explain where all the antimatter went. But for now, the experiment is reporting some important results: it works.

“A discovery of [neutrinoless double beta] decay would have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of particle physics and cosmology,” the researchers write in the paper, published today in the journal Nature. It’s important that we understand why there is more matter than antimatter today. The Big Bang probably should have created equal amounts... but it didn't.

Neutrinos, they’re weird. Scientists don’t know how much they weigh, but even at the upper limit of what we guess their mass is, they’re many times lighter than electrons. They’re also really common—for example, the sun sending almost a hundred billion of them per square centimeter of your body every second. They don’t interact via electromagnetism, though, so they don’t harm us in any way. If they were their own antiparticle, what scientists call “Majorana particles,” they should annihilate one another. Most extensions of our main theory of particle physics, called the Standard Model, say this is true.

That’s what GERDA is looking for. They’re watching 35.6 kilograms of a special form of germanium, the shiny semiconducting metal, sitting inside a vat of liquid argon inside a bigger vat of water, waiting however long it takes for it to experience a neutrinoless double beta decay. No, they haven’t found any evidence of the process yet. But their experiment works really, really well—there’s no background noise, which is an incredible feat. Otherwise, we might see a false signal. And there’s radiation that could set off the detector everywhere, from the sun to the air we breathe.

Gizmodo:Scientists Are Getting Closer to Understanding Where All the Antimatter Has GoneRyan F. Mandelbaum

Micro-Gami...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 4, 2017 at 5:33am

Image Source: Origami Resource Center

Topics: Graphene, Nanotechnology, NEMS, Robotics

Thirty years ago, a professor in Japan folded an origami crane smaller than a pinhead. Peering through a microscope, he used a sewing needle to carefully crimp the paper.

Now researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, have gone one step further, creating origami about the size of a red blood cell. Too small for human hands, their origami folds itself. This new take on an old tradition is made not from paper, but from sheets of glass and carbon only a few atoms thick.

“It’s the world’s thinnest origami … comparable in size to a biological microorganism,” said Marc Miskin, a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of applied physicist Itai Cohen at Cornell. He described the new research in a March 14 talk at an American Physical Society meeting in New Orleans.

The simple shapes formed by the micro-gami, such as cubes and pyramids, lack the grace and sophistication of a bird. But they could be a step toward miniature machines that fold themselves up into packages small enough to be injected into the body.

Inside Science: World's Thinnest Origami Could Build Microscopic MachinesDevin Powell

No Fooling...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 3, 2017 at 6:22am

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Comets, NASA

A comet whose identity took nearly 100 years to pin down is making its closest approach to Earth today (April 1), just in time for April Fools' Day, but this is no cosmic prank. It is the comet's closest Earth encounter in more than 50 years, and maybe more than a century, NASA officials said.

Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák is named after its three discoverers —Horace Tuttle, Michael Giacobini and L'ubor Kresák — who tracked the comet separately over nearly a century.

Tuttle first spotted the comet in 1858, when 41P was first identified as a sun-orbiting (or periodic) comet, NASA officials wrote, citing the Cometagraphy website by Gary Kronk. But the length of the comet's orbit was unknown at the time. Comet 41P was rediscovered in 1907 by Giacobini, but still not tied to the object seen by Tuttle in 1858.

Another astronomer, Andrew Crommelin, later linked the two observations by Tuttle and Giacobini and predicted Comet 41P would return in 1928 and 1934, but the object went unseen, according to Cometography. It wasn't until 1951, when Kresák spotted the comet and linked it with the earlier observations, that Comet 41P identity was officially pinned down.

Space.com: April Fools' Comet Passes by Earth, Took Nearly a Century to IdentifyTariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor

The Shattering...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 31, 2017 at 7:30am

Image Source: wiseGEEK

Topics: Civics, Existentialism, History, Politics

From FBI.gov:

COINTELPRO The FBI began COINTELPRO—short for Counterintelligence Program—in 1956 to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, it was expanded to include a number of other domestic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party. All COINTELPRO operations were ended in 1971. Although limited in scope (about two-tenths of one percent of the FBI’s workload over a 15-year period), COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment rights and for other reasons.

The John Birch Society (TIME):

Had his story ended when he retired as a candy-maker, Robert Welch Jr. might have made his mark on history as the father of the Sugar Daddy, Sugar Babies and Junior Mints. But Welch, whose shrewd leadership helped grow his brother’s Massachusetts candy business a hundred-fold from 1935 to 1956, shifted his aim from caramels to communists.

On this day, Dec. 9, in 1958, Welch — then retired from the candy business — founded the ultraconservative John Birch Society along with 11 like-minded “Americanists,” as they referred to themselves. Their goal was to expose and eradicate the growing leftist threat in America, which they believed to be 40 to 60 percent communist-controlled, according to a 1961 TIME report. Members of the John Birch Society saw communists wherever they looked, from the Oval Office of Dwight Eisenhower (“A conscious agent of the communist conspiracy,” per Welch) to the Bay of Pigs (“a theatrical performance jointly sponsored by Castro and ‘his friends in the U.S. Government’ in order to strengthen the communist hold on Cuba,” as paraphrased in TIME).

The "growing leftist threat"...

COINTELPRO was the government version of John Birch. Though the write up eludes to other groups the FBI had under surveillance, it was felt by African American communities the most, specifically the Black Panther Party; the Nation of Islam; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, etc. The approval of the Communist Manifesto by the likes of Huey Newton and the unrest in the streets likely gave J. Edgar Hoover much alarm. It couldn't have been the treatment of American citizens by their fellow citizens and de facto/de jure Jim Crow laws against them. It was easy to wrap surveillance in the flag and patriotism to hide the racist overtones of the act.

The "growing leftist threat"...

If the Birch philosophy sounds familiar, it's because one of its ardent members was the famous Koch Brother's father, Frank Koch, an MIT oil engineer. He infamously built oil refineries for Nazi Germany and did a considerable amount of business with the Russians.

The Nazis... the Russians...

It was "American" to oppose godless communism. It was easy for the right to demonize the left as unpatriotic, out-of-touch and not fluent in the deified "free market."

The reclusive billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer has been known to fund right wing groups in this country (Steve Bannon) and overseas (Nigel Farage). Like many of the self-made billionaires he's likely a fan of Ayn Rand and her apotheosis of selfishness in "Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged," lauded by Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul, Speaker Paul Ryan and President Ronald Reagan. It's funny how an avowed enemy of religion as a sickness can be so praised by those who put the Ten Commandments, godly masculinity and "family values" on high pedestals.

During the 1960's, COINTELPRO was concerned that foreign powers were infiltrating us and destabilizing our republic in the various Civil Rights organizations. They, along with the John Birch Society, were decidedly anti-communist, such that the Republican Party made this stance a litmus test for two generations. At that time, foreign Russian interference would have been called the KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, or the Committee for State Security). If they were infiltrating Civil Rights organizations, it was a time and an environment ripe for manipulation.

Fast-forward 40 years: 1968 - 2008. Forty years after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the country has gone through a massive experiment in forced busing that would eventually be objected to and eliminated. Cities would through economic opportunities and structured stratification re-segregate more so than 1968. The former Soviet Union would fall in that window in 1989. Then President George Bush (41) and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would opine on the "Peace Dividend." The previous Russian Politburo was their 1%. As I recall from Air Force ROTC class in college, they were the ones with the actual money while their populations starved. They had access to things like fashion, food, sex all the while pretending that the Politburo was "temporary" and eventually there would be pure Communism with no hierarchy, no stratification: no "income inequality" as we now call it. It never came. An attempt at reformation from the previous authoritarian communist regime - Democratization - would be attempted and fail. Some would say it was a weakness of Russian civil society, as in democratization usually entails a beneficial tug-of-war from above and below. If citizens aren't putting pressure on their leadership, that leadership will eventually go back to what they know well: ironclad, authoritarian control.

2008 saw the election of the country's first African American president, Barack Hussein Obama, for the first time in 232 years of the republic during a financial free fall compared quite literally to the Great Depression, a concern that furrowed his brow and eventually grayed his mane. A graduate of two elite schools, a Constitutional Scholar and community organizer, he "dotted every 'i' and crossed every 't'." His crowds were compared to rock concerts. We quickly spat out the bubblegum philosophy of a "post-racial" society. We had "grown up" Dr. Maya Angelou commented; poems were composed, t-shirts were made, tearful hymns were sung: we had finally "overcome."

President Obama's name was a source of angst to his legitimacy. Then the Tea Party arose, AstroTurf-fed by dark money - Koch, Mercer et al - as a faux grass movement, their bigotry was hidden - at least initially from their Tea Party selves - behind clever slogans and jingoism: "I want my country back!" The demographics was decidedly, predominately the only original creation of the American continent: "whiteness," and a few people of color comfortable in tokenism and able to maneuver within a religion of white supremacy, that itself masquerades as a faux evangelical Christianity.

The KGB became the FSB (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, or Federal Security Service). Some rumors that they would weaponize misinformation on a scale heretofore unseen. As the former KGB observed an opening in the Civil Rights unrest, the FSB noticed Birtherism, the bigotry, the calling out "YOU LIE" during a president's State of the Union; the praying Psalms 109:8 and callously calling themselves "Christians." They saw faux voter integrity ID laws designed to act as a 21st Century poll tax; they saw the slaughter of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, and countless others. Add to it the lack of any jurisprudence/convictions of their slayers (the noted exceptions in Davis and McBride): note also the rush to call them "thugs" and disappointed Kentucky fans "students." The clever bigotry giving way to blatant racism, our national pathology laid naked to any intelligence officers to manipulate. From the ascendancy of a rock star African American president, the situation demanded his precise antithesis as counterbalance.

It was simply a change in strategy: if COINTELPRO was correct (though biased), the infiltration was through some Civil Rights organizations. If our current intelligence is correct, the infiltration was through our obvious bigotry: it was designed to shatter our institutional norms, and internationally like democratic republics from within.

With fake news by bots and hackers, servers between Moscow and New York; backroom deals that may have been caught with (possible) FISA-warranted incidental communications monitoring, the Russians merely enacted in real-time cyber attacks the poignant observation President Lyndon Baines Johnson made on a trip to the south with journalist Bill Moyers:

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

With Brexit proceeding in the UK, spurred broadly by bigotry, their next targets to destabilize western democracy are France and Germany, with the ultimate goals of dismantling NATO and the European Union. There would be in essence a "New World Order" - not of the conspiratorial kind - but under the same conditions when "IRA" stood for Irish Republican Army (not Individual Retirement Account): there were a lot of bombings, death and instability. Before the EU, European countries often warred among themselves. That can't be good for tourism, ...or world peace.

We have "given them the store" of white supremacist bigotry, and our republic. I'm concerned apathy, racism, stupidity and tribalism may well not allow us... to get it back.

Martian Tsunamis...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 28, 2017 at 8:39am

Image Source: BBC. Did early Mars have a vast northern ocean?

Topics: Mars, NASA, Planetary Science, Space Exploration, Spaceflight

Scientists have located an impact crater linked to powerful tsunamis that swept across part of ancient Mars.

The team believe an asteroid triggered 150m-high waves when it plunged into an ocean thought to have existed on northern Mars three billion years ago.

Lomonosov crater in the planet's northern plains fits the bill as the source of tsunami deposits identified on the surface.

Details were outlined at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Although the idea has lost some of its currency in recent years, some scientists think an ocean might once have filled the vast lowland region that occupies the Red Planet's northerly latitudes.

Growing evidence that tsunami waves washed over the boundary between the southern highlands and northern lowlands help strengthen the hypothesis.

BBC Science: Impact crater linked to Martian tsunamis, Paul RinconNASA: Giant Tsunamis Battered the Coastlines of an Early Martian Ocean

Failure...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 29, 2017 at 8:13am

Credit: Getty Images

Topics: Education, Science, STEM, Research

I've failed quite often.

I've received D's on Quantum Mechanics homework from an admired professor with the admonition "SEE THE ANSWER" in all caps as if shouting from the paper. I remember crying, largely out of frustration and out of the fact I truly had deep respect for the professor, who had talked me into majoring in physics in the first place (I was initially a math major). I also remember looking at the solutions in the Mezzanine of the library. I saw where my mistakes were. My next homework grade was a B- and my test score was an A. I passed Quantum with a high B overall.

Failure is a large part of the scientific enterprise. A story I heard years ago from a Thomas Edison experiment with a lab assistant (there had been an explosion):

Assistant: "When are you going to give up this crazy idea? This is the 9,999th time you've tried to invent this light bulb!"

Edison: "Yes. This is the 9,999th time we tried to invent the light bulb. But there's an explosive application that could prove useful later."

"Do not worry too much about your difficulties in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater," Albert Einstein. I think he was referring to learning Tensor Calculus to describe the General Theory of Relativity.

Somehow we miss the fact that when Einstein was working at a patent office in Germany, he probably saw himself as a failure. He took a job because he'd made his then girlfriend pregnant. Being responsible, he took a job to support his new family. His "Miracle Year" was 1905 when he published four papers: The Photoelectric Effect, Brownian Motion, Special Relativity and Mass-Energy Equivalence (E=mc²).

The competitive nature of western civilization doesn't allow or celebrate failure. Reality television, sporting contests, millennials awarded medals for "just showing up" at t-ball doesn't account for the many stutter steps if not downright stumbles a team makes to a championship. We celebrate the aftermath; the end result looking effortless and inevitable, the great discoveries often preceded by a lot of hard work and...failure.

Some of that failure is by design: peer review I've often stated can be brutal and demeaning. It can discourage anyone in the sciences to rethink if this is "what you really wanted to do with your life." A whole comic series was started by Jorge Cham (who has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering) quite literally on this angst.

There are sleepless nights, long experiments that take you through weekends (that everyone else outside seems to be enjoying). "Why am I doing it"? you may ask.

I tend to think of loud explosions and parents that didn't freak out (largely because I didn't die nor their house didn't burn down).

You throw yourself back into the lab, the chalkboard or the computer program...out of love.

People in the sciences are usually there because they love it: solving complex problems is almost meditative; spiritual in the satisfaction of not just solving problems, but birthing in many cases something that didn't previously exist. Someone in their past supported them despite their socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation and said four important words: "you can do it."

And to show our love of the area and the support from family and friends, many of us did.

**********

Four weeks into my first semester of college, my academic confidence was completely shredded. I had back-to-back tests in cell biology, chemistry, and calculus, and my time management skills weren’t quite there yet. I failed my calculus exam, and suddenly I wasn’t sure I had the intelligence or the ability to get a degree in science.

My story has a happy ending—at least to me. Through stress eating, meltdowns, and support from my professor and older students, I studied my way to an A-minus in that calculus class. But, even better: I learned how to fail, something I keep learning and relearning as I come to the end of my second semester in graduate school. It’s the fundamental underpinning of scientific resilience—failing repeatedly, and picking yourself up to try again.

It’s what I think is missing from many young Americans’ educational experiences, and, in part, why I think so many of us, as smart and creative and technically adept as we are, shy away from scientific research as our careers.

Learning resilience is fundamental to a successful career as a scientist. The experiments we try will fail many times before they work, whether as an undergraduate, a PhD student, or a postdoc gunning for a faculty position.

But actually overcoming failure is challenging. Many students who began science degrees with me switched to other majors the first time a project failed. One failure and they were gone.

This dropout situation has lasting implications for American science. The US has plenty of scientists, but fewer and fewer are being born in the US. These foreign-born scientists are welcome, as far as I’m concerned, but with all the recent changes in immigration and visa policy, it’s an uncertain future—large numbers of our scientists-in-training could be forced to leave after they finish graduate school or postdocs.

Without these scientists, American science will suffer.

Scientific American:One Reason Young People Don’t Go Into Science? We Don’t Fail Well, Sara Whitlock

ON SALE NOW!!! Classic Sci-Fi Film/Graphic Novel

Posted by Christopher Love on March 29, 2017 at 10:01pm

Be Like a Bullet...Be Unstoppable

PRESS RELEASE UPDATED: MAR 29, 2017 07:00 EDT

The Flying Bullet: Graphic Novel/Film---A Sci-Fi; Story going from the Cotton Field to Outer Space

Huntsville, Alabama, March 29, 2017 (Newswire.com) - Heroes Like Me Entertainment will release a graphic novel and film called THE FLYING BULLET. It is the tale of Tuskegee Airman, Lt. Curt Masters, who is kidnapped by aliens and has to fight for an Earth that doesn't fight for him. This project has been six years in the making.

Lt. Curt Masters, a Tuskegee Airman, is flying a combat mission over the skies of Nazi Germany in 1945. He encounters an alien craft. He engages the craft unsuccessfully. Soon, he is aboard the UFO and is charged with Obstruction of Galactic Operations. He and the people of earth are on trial for their survival. Can Curt Masters free himself from over a billion miles away? Will he ever return home? Or will he die at the hands of The Warlord. In this new universe, he meets Aliena-a Galactic Police officer, Sutter-a mysterious friend or foe and ARC, who is an android without a will of his own. Curt will learn that once you Look Forward you can Never Go Back. Written by Chris Love, this graphic novel offers new worlds and possibilities. A companion feature film has been adapted from this graphic novel.

This is not a Hollywood blockbuster, but a film by one person, Christopher Love. This film is an independent film made by a fan of sci-fi for fans of sci-fi. The characters in the film will be of african-american, asian and hispanic descent.

"During World War II, Black and White Lives, including First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt; petioned the government to allow Black Americans to fight and defend their country by training them to fly. All they asked in return was the opportunity to enjoy in the blessings of our great nation. This story is about one person who had to fight and defend the whole planet," says Chris Love.

This graphic novel/film is in the direct response to the lack of diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

"We've waited for Hollywood to present stories of the future that has more than Caucasian characters in it. The Future is for everyone, but on the big screen I do not always see someone like me or my kids in that future. I'm doing this for them and other kids of color and diversity who deserves to see themselves on the big screen, tablet or phone to enjoy. Everyone deserves heroes that look like them," says Chris Love.

This is Mr. Love's first graphic novel and film. He has been writing for over 20 years. He is the Chief Creative Officer of Heroes Like Me Entertainment.

Mr. Love concludes by saying, "If you want something you never had, you must do something you never did."

The Flying Bullet can be found on Amazon.com. Go to heroeslikeme.com

Source: Heroes Like Me Entertainment

Lies and Automation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 30, 2017 at 8:30am

Image Source: Mining.com link below

Topics: Alternative Energy, Economics, Jobs, Robotics

The times I've talked about automation: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and finally here. So it's not a new subject broached, hardly.

However the signature of repealing climate change rules merely to roll back your predecessor's executive order will benefit no one except the owners of the mines.

Robotics, not regulations is the reasons your mining jobs aren't coming back. A robot doesn't get sick, it doesn't have sick kids to stay home with; it doesn't require vacation/medical/dental/retirement benefits or get tired, however it will due to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (Entropy) wear down and eventually need repair. For that you need technicians, a specialty that can be awarded after two years study for an associates degree or military service in communications electronics or related military occupational specialty. So in this instance, a four year degree or higher is a bit of overcompensation and unnecessary from a cost-point concern, i.e. you could find yourself "overqualified" and not be hired due to the fact the potential employer is likely to think this is an interim assignment and you'll just find a better paying job when one opens.

We are ALL on a giant spaceship on an elliptical trajectory around the sun that takes approximately 365.25 days as we measure it, adjusted every fourth year with a "leap day" on which here in America we've parked our presidential election years. Due to the angle of incidence of ultraviolet light and our respective proximity on the globe, Melanin has rendered identifying pigmentation to different groups. We have no spare planets like it within the solar system or light years in human lifetimes. Learning to share within our respective sandbox is the only immediate surety for species survival in the near future.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have been ambivalent and avoided discussing it to placate the electorate through another election cycle, our political thinking like our financial reduced to quarterly concerns, not existential ones. The best way to obfuscate is to punt about "clean coal" (an oxymoron), alternative energy (that will take considerable national will and government investment - e.g. the oil industry has literally been on government subsidies since the Bolshevik revolution), and of course demonize "the other" that doesn't look quite like your constituents in the first place (it tends to work "like a charm"; see ultraviolet and Melanin above).

That would take considerable synaptic activity, some long-range planning and a little less solipsism.

Brookings Institute

Increased automation guarantees a bleak outlook for Trump’s promises to coal miners,
Devashree Saha and Sifan Liu

Mining.com

Study shows 96% of some mining jobs can be automated,
Frik Els

New York Times

Coal Miners Hope Trump’s Order Will Help. But Few Are Counting on It,
Campbell Robertson
Policy Shift Helps Coal, but Other Forces May Limit Effect,
Clifford Krauss and Diane Cardwell
Planned Rollback of Climate Rules Unlikely to Achieve All Trump’s Goals,
Coral Davenport

CAL...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 27, 2017 at 9:36am

NASA will use CAL to better try to understand a highly misunderstood type of matter in space. Image Credit: NASA

Topics: Bose-Einstein Condensate, International Space Station, Materials Science, NASA, Thermodynamics

NASA has a goal of creating what they say will be the coldest place in the entire universe, as it will help them to understand a property of matter that isn't well-understood. The project has been in development for a number of years, but soon it will come to fruition.

In the near future, an ice chest-sized box that NASA is calling the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) will be shipped to the International Space Station aboard a supply rocket.

CAL will come equipped with the tools it needs to hyper-chill gas atoms to just a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, which citing NASA, is about 100 million times colder than even the depths of outer space itself. It's worth noting that at absolute zero, atom activity reportedly freezes. The tools that will make this possible include a vacuum chamber, special lasers, and what NASA calls an “electromagnetic knife.” These tools will essentially slow the gas molecules that get trapped inside to a near-motionless state.

Since there is so much misunderstanding about how these kinds of hyper-chilled properties impact physics, this is a huge opportunity to fill a gap in mankind's expanding knowledge. The gasses that get chilled to these kinds of low temperatures really aren’t even gasses anymore – their atoms become arranged into a state of matter dubbed Bose-Einstein Condensate. This is a unique type of matter that we don’t fully understand yet. Scientists describe it as a type of “super fluid” that lacks any friction.

Lab Roots: NASA Aims to Create the Coldest Place in the Universe, Anthony Bouchard

Guest Authors Welcome at SpecFics.com

Posted by Tonya R. Moore on March 24, 2017 at 9:00am

Dust off those old specfic flashfics and short stories you’ve got lying around.

Spec Fics is now accepting submissions from Guest Authors who would like to showcase their overlooked works on our website. To that end, we are now accepting short works of fiction to be made available for free online reading.

We welcome speculative flash fiction and short stories. All sub-genres that fit under the umbrella of speculative fiction are welcome: scifi, horror, dark fantasy, steampunk—you name it.

For information on how to submit your story, here are the Submission Guidelines:

Submission Guidelines

Email your story as an attachment to tonyamoore@outlook.com.

Your story should be in RTF (Rich Text Format) or DOCX (Word) format. Be sure to include your name and email address in the story document.

Include the following information in the body of your email:

Name:

Short Bio:

Picture (Optional):

Website/Blog Url:

Previously blogged/published stories are welcome.

We do stipulate that your story must be your original work. Sorry, no Fan Fiction.

Transparency...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 23, 2017 at 5:30am

Does the brain behave like a spin glass? (Courtesy: Shutterstock / Phonlamai Photo)

Topics: Biology, Biophysics, Neuroscience, Particle Physics

Spin-glass-like states that occur in models of neural networks can provide important insights into states of low and high brain activity that have been observed in mammals. That is the claim of a team of theoretical biophysicists in Spain who are the first to show that disordered states in neurological networks could have a functional role in living brains.

In familiar magnetic materials such as ferromagnets, the interaction between individual spin magnetic moments causes all of the spins to point in the same direction of magnetization. In spin-glass states, the interaction between spins does not allow individual spins to point in the same direction as their neighbours. This leads to "frustration", whereby no direction of magnetization exists and the spins point in random directions.

Brains are not magnetic systems and their working cells – neurons – do not resemble magnetic moments, but mathematically they behave in a similar manner. This is because neurons also have a binary variable – firing or not firing – which is similar to the up or down quantum states of spin. Neurons are also linked by synapses in a way that is similar to how magnetic spins interact with each other. As a result, a neural network in which all of the neurons are firing (or not firing) is similar to a magnetic material in which all of the spins are all pointing up (or down).

Physics World: Spin glass provides insight into brain activity, Michael Allen

Mars, Lava and Dinosaurs...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 22, 2017 at 10:26am

This digital-image mosaic of Mars' Tharsis plateau shows the extinct volcano Arsia Mons. It was assembled from images that the Viking 1 Orbiter took during its 1976-1980 working life at Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

Topics: Mars, NASA, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

New NASA research reveals that the giant Martian shield volcano Arsia Mons produced one new lava flow at its summit every 1 to 3 million years during the final peak of activity. The last volcanic activity there ceased about 50 million years ago—around the time of Earth's Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, when large numbers of our planet's plant and animal species (including dinosaurs) went extinct.

Located just south of Mars' equator, Arsia Mons is the southernmost member of a trio of broad, gently sloping shield volcanoes collectively known as Tharsis Montes. Arsia Mons was built up over billions of years, though the details of its lifecycle are still being worked out. The most recent volcanic activity is thought to have taken place in the caldera—the bowl-shaped depression at the top—where 29 volcanic vents have been identified. Until now, it's been difficult to make a precise estimate of when this volcanic field was active.

"We estimate that the peak activity for the volcanic field at the summit of Arsia Mons probably occurred approximately 150 million years ago—the late Jurassic period on Earth—and then died out around the same time as Earth's dinosaurs," said Jacob Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It's possible, though, that the last volcanic vent or two might have been active in the past 50 million years, which is very recent in geological terms."

Richardson is presenting the findings on March 20, 2017, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The study also is published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Phys.org: Mars volcano, Earth's dinosaurs went extinct about the same timeElizabeth Zubritsky

Deciphering Auroras...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 21, 2017 at 7:54am

An aurora viewed from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Topics: Electromagnetism, High Energy Physics, Plasma Physics

Auroras have long dazzled sky watchers but befuddled physicists. Via a mechanism that remains unclear, electrons get yanked away from the magnetosphere and slammed into the ionosphere, where their collisions with atoms and molecules engender green, red, and blue light. (See the Quick Study by Bob Strangeway, Physics Today, July 2008, page 68.) The leading culprits for scooping up and accelerating auroral electrons are Alfvén waves, oscillations of the ions in a plasma that propagate along magnetic field lines. The oscillations can be triggered by magnetic storms, which often portend auroral displays. And at least in theory, the waves should be able to propel electrons in their path.

Auroras: The sun sends us more than heat and light; it sends lots of other energy and small particles our way. The protective magnetic field around Earth shields us from most of the energy and particles, and we don’t even notice them.

But the sun doesn’t send the same amount of energy all the time. There is a constant streaming solar wind and there are also solar storms. During one kind of solar storm called a coronal mass ejection, the sun burps out a huge bubble of electrified gas that can travel through space at high speeds. Source: NASA

Alfvén waves: In plasma physics, an Alfvén wave, named after Hannes Alfvén, is a type of magnetohydrodynamic wave in which ions oscillate in response to a restoring force provided by an effective tension on the magnetic field lines. Wikipedia

Physics Today: A step toward deciphering auroras, Andrew Grant

Poquito...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 20, 2017 at 7:55am

A schematic illustration showing how differences in the distribution of dark matter (red) alter the spin rates of modern-day spiral galaxies (left) and spiral galaxies from the early universe (right). Modern spiral galaxies tend to spin faster than their counterparts in the distant, earlier universe due to greater concentrations of dark matter near their centers. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Dark Matter

Although the invisible substance known as dark matter dominates galaxies nowadays, it was apparently only a minor ingredient of galaxies in the early universe, a new study finds.

This new finding sheds light on how galaxies and their mysterious "haloes" of dark matter have changed over time, researchers said.

Dark matter is thought to make up about 84 percent of the matter in the universe. Although dark matter is invisible, its presence can be inferred by its gravitational effects on visible matter. For instance, previous work discovered that the outer parts of galactic disks whirl faster than expected around the cores of those galaxies. These findings make sense if one assumes that "haloes" of dark matter envelop those galaxies and gravitationally pull at their outer regions. [The Search for Dark Matter in Pictures]

Now, the researchers unexpectedly find that in the early universe, dark matter played a much smaller role in galaxies than previously thought. The scientists detailed their findings in the March 16 issue of the journal Nature.

Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, the researchers examined six massive, star-forming galaxies from the early universe during the peak of galaxy formation 10 billion years ago. They analyzed the rotation of these galaxies to calculate how much dark matter they possessed.

Scientific American: Dark Matter Did Not Dominate Early Galaxies, Charles Q. Choi

NUBATOMIC - SHORT FILM/MUSIC VIDEO, THIRD EYE

Posted by AL Bey on March 17, 2017 at 10:30pm

Check out this short film featuring Conscious Metal Sounds & Wholistic Visuals from a Thrash-Hop Rock Band featuring musicians I played on and off the radio from my DJ Days - GOD BLESS - D-Rock SOUL-Jah!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khB7PalSIxo

Inevitability, Sports Metaphors and Republics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 17, 2017 at 8:43am

Image Source

Topics: Civics, History, Politics, Research, Science

History matters. It is "2 a: a chronological record of significant events (as affecting a nation or institution) often including an explanation of their causes, a history of Japan; 3: a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events, medieval history." Merriam-Webster

The more dependent we are on technology, the more we are flippant on history and expertise. Reading (sadly, on the decline) for example, is an interrogation of history, whether fiction or nonfiction, as some basis of an understanding of past events has to go into the crafting of even fanciful tales. Backgrounds are structured such that the verisimilitude seems plausible; if the author has done their work, the realistic realm pulls you to the last page of the book, whether papyrus, I-Pad, Kindle or Nook. If it's a good read, you feel accomplished, better for the effort and time spent away from passive, frequently banal entertainment media. Above all, one feels a sense of empowerment.

Our knowledge of civics has been reduced educationally to multiple testing choices a, b, c, d and e (the last usually, all of the above) and in practice "us versus them"; we won, you lost. The Common Good is virtually unknown as it has no reality show or equivalent entertainment platform. MSNBC seems recently captivated with sports metaphors: Chuck Todd with basketball and Chris Matthews with boxing.

Over the decades I've been voting since 1980, that attitude has solidified. "We The People" have been grouped by tribal affiliations, we vote for "who we like," the current anointed-by-God politician we tweet, and will likely never meet. Consensus, compromise and reconciliation is to be avoided; conciliation is betrayal. Our self-governance is now so toxic, old and vile prejudices open us up to manipulation; our pride allows us to self-delude and mask from the con that we have been duped by extra-national, nefarious agents and complicit wolves within.

I've mentioned my excellent high school Social Studies/Civics teacher Van Bullock. The other instructors I received civics lessons from were my high school JROTC and college AFROTC instructors. Senior Master Sergeant Wilkins at North Forsyth High School used to emphasize that democratic republics can only exist in educated populations. In insular environments such as these, one can assume your classmates are getting some version of the same teaching. I now have my doubts.

Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny warns that republics are not "automatic" nor are they inevitable. It requires a buy-in from the governed, a fundamental knowledge of the mechanism of republics and the citizen's responsibilities in keeping them going. One simple aspect is voting; the other is holding our elected officials accountable for their actions towards their constituency, not their donors or the donor class. That alludes to other forms of government that have the labels: autocracy, authoritarianism, corporatism, kleptocracy, oligarchy, totalitarianism that are the basis of very haunting dystopian novels of hopeless futures, Orwell's "boot stamping on a human face forever." Our lethargy in this country and overseas is due to the near instantaneous access to information, resulting in a citizenry in western nations that would "rather not think about it," or in the spirit of Sinclair Lewis, "It Can't Happen Here." In his prescient essay in 2004, Chris Hedges begs to differ *:

* The movement seeks the imprint of law and science. It must discredit the rational disciplines that are the pillars of the Enlightenment to abolish the liberal polity of the Enlightenment. This corruption of science and law is vital in promoting the doctrine. Creationism, or “intelligent design,” like Eugenics for the Nazis, must be introduced into the mainstream as a valid scientific discipline to destroy the discipline of science itself. This is why the Christian Right is working to bring test cases to ensure that school textbooks include “intelligent design” and condemn gay marriage.

The drive by the Christian Right to include crackpot theories in scientific or legal debate is part of the campaign to destroy dispassionate and honest intellectual inquiry. Facts become interchangeable with opinions. An understanding of reality is not to be based on the elaborate gathering of facts and evidence. The ideology alone is true. Facts that get in the way of the ideology can be altered. Lies, in this worldview, become true. Hannah Arendt called this effort “nihilistic relativism” although a better phrase might be collective insanity.

Failure to question alternative facts (lies) or stretched truths, or play by any fairness or rules, the lazy put their cares in the hands of one strong man or woman: as long as "their team" wins.

When sports loyalties becomes the foundation for the administration of a republic, it becomes a zero-sum game. Whatever you need to do to WIN is then justifiable, from secret, ultimately disastrous raids decided flippantly over dinner; deflated footballs to collusion with governments that are not looking at one party or another anymore than Al Qaeda or ISIL/ISIS has a preference of one western nation over another, or the particular Melanin hue of their respective babies.

In each case, they call themselves "us" and we, E Pluribus Unum... are "them."

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.” —Timothy Snyder

Image Source

BEAM...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 16, 2017 at 9:22am

This artist's concept depicts the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), constructed by Bigelow Aerospace, attached to the International Space Station (ISS). The BEAM will be launched to the space station later this year. Credits: Bigelow Aerospace

Topics: Mars, Moon, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is an expandable habitat technology demonstration for the International Space Station. Expandable habitats greatly decrease the amount of transport volume for future space missions. These “expandables” require minimal payload volume on a rocket, but expand after being deployed in space to potentially provide a comfortable area for astronauts to live and work. They also provide a varying degree of protection from solar and cosmic radiation, space debris, atomic oxygen, ultraviolet radiation and other elements of the space environment.

The journey to Mars is complex and filled with challenges that NASA and its partners are continuously working to solve. Before sending the first astronauts to the Red Planet, several rockets filled with cargo and supplies will be deployed to await the crews’ arrival. Expandable modules, which are lower-mass and lower-volume systems than metal habitats, can increase the efficiency of cargo shipments, possibly reducing the number of launches needed and overall mission costs. [1]

* * * * *

Bigelow Aerospace founder Robert Bigelow‘s company makes in-space habitats. One (the BEAM adds 16 cubic meters of living area to the ISS) is now attached to the International Space Station and he and his company are developing permanent, stand-alone habitats to serve as private space stations in orbit around the Earth, ready to house private astronauts.

Bigelow has talked with United Launch Alliance Chief Executive Tory Bruno about using the company's Atlas V 552 rocket, which has an extra-wide payload fairing, to deliver the B330 into orbit.

United Launch Alliance is developing an advanced upper-stage vehicle, ACES, to provide in-space propulsion.

Two ACES in tandem could be used to move the B330 into a low lunar orbit. They orbit within 75 kilometers of the lunar surface.

Bigelow has spoken SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell about using the company's Dragon 2 spacecraft to transport astronauts to the B330 in deep space.

By 2020, NASA and commercial astronauts could be living and working in lunar orbit inside a functional space station. [2]

1. NASA: Advanced Exploration Systems: Bigelow Expandable Activity Module2. Next Big Future: Bigelow Aerospace offers plan for an expandable space station orbiting the moon by 2020

ProtoDUNE...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 15, 2017 at 6:38am

The outer (warm) vessel for the single-phase protoDUNE at CERN. The red steel frame provides support for the cold-membrane cryostat, the detector, and approximately 800 tonnes of liquid argon. Image credit: M Brice/CERN.

Topics: CERN, Large Hadron Collider, LHC, Neutrinos, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics

This 11 m-high structure with thick steel walls will soon contain a prototype detector for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), a major international project based in the US for studying neutrinos and proton decay. It is being assembled in conjunction with CERN’s Neutrino Platform, which was established in 2014 to support neutrino experiments hosted in Japan and the US (CERN Courier July/August 2016 p21), and is pictured here in December as the roof of the structure was lowered into place. Another almost identical structure is under construction nearby and will house a second prototype detector for DUNE. Both are being built at CERN’s new “EHN1” test facility, which was completed last year at the north area of the laboratory’s Prévessin site.

DUNE, which is due to start operations in the next decade, will address key outstanding questions about neutrinos. In addition to determining the ordering of the neutrino masses, it will search for leptonic CP violation by precisely measuring differences between the oscillations of muon-type neutrinos and antineutrinos into electron-type neutrinos and antineutrinos, respectively (CERN Courier December 2015 p19). To do so, DUNE will consist of two advanced detectors placed in an intense neutrino beam produced at Fermilab’s Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF). One will record particle interactions near the source of the beam before the neutrinos have had time to oscillate, while a second, much larger detector will be installed deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Laboratory in Lead, South Dakota, 1300 km away.

CERN Courier: ProtoDUNE revealed, Matthew Chalmers

ET, FRBs and Light Sails...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 13, 2017 at 7:30am

Image Source: Science Alert

Topics: Astrophysics, Photonics, SETI, Solar Sail, Space Exploration

It's not the first time I've discussed Fast Radio Burst (FRBs): I had posts in 2013, 2015 and just last year in 2016. I first read this in Science Alert, then followed the links to arXiv. Although I've posted from physics arXiv before, some things I should give as a caveat emptor:

- The arXiv is a pre-print journal, i.e. it precedes publication in peer-reviewed, scientific journals.

- As such, it's a good way to "get an idea out there." The first stringent peer reviews should be from your own research team. You can also in subsequent submission to scholarly publications correct previous conclusions, especially after peer challenge.

- You can submit your paper here, if you're a registered author.

What took me aback was a Harvard astrophysicist* submitting it, and it's apparently not as the colloquial phrase goes, his first rodeo (see #P4TC related link below). I was a little thrilled and a little worried if the hypothesis falls flat.

However, it does work on physics that we know, or at least think we know: we haven't built a functional solar sail YET, but it's a little more practical on our humble 0.7 Kardashev Scale than warp drive (to the chagrin of my inner Trekkie), but within the realm of reasonable relativistic speeds, a fraction of light speed, but doable.

If we're receiving these fast radio bursts, the question are: is this just stellar phenomena, a lucky observation break, or are we in a flight path? And if the latter, for what purpose?

* Loeb admits that this work is speculative. When asked whether he really believes that any fast radio bursts are due to aliens, he replied, "Science isn't a matter of belief, it's a matter of evidence. Deciding what’s likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It's worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge.”

Abstract

We examine the possibility that Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) originate from the activity of extragalactic civilizations. Our analysis shows that beams used for powering large light sails could yield parameters that are consistent with FRBs. The characteristic diameter of the beam emitter is estimated through a combination of energetic and engineering constraints, and both approaches intriguingly yield a similar result which is on the scale of a large rocky planet. Moreover, the optimal frequency for powering the light sail is shown to be similar to the detected FRB frequencies. These `coincidences' lend some credence to the possibility that FRBs might be artificial in origin. Other relevant quantities, such as the characteristic mass of the light sail, and the angular velocity of the beam, are also derived. By using the FRB occurrence rate, we infer upper bounds on the rate of FRBs from extragalactic civilizations in a typical galaxy. The possibility of detecting fainter signals is briefly discussed, and the wait time for an exceptionally bright FRB event in the Milky Way is estimated.

Physics arXiv: Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails
Manasvi Lingam, Abraham Loeb

#P4TC:

Light Sails Leakage, September 9, 2015

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