BLOGS

The other day I was listening to the podcast The Auteur Cast. In discussing The Empire strikes back, one of the hosts used the character of Lando Calrissian to question why there are so few black people in science-fiction. It’s not a new question. In 1976, on the album Bicentennial Nigger, Richard Pryor observed:

“I don’t like movies when they don’t have no niggers in ‘em. I went to see, I went to see Logan’s Run, right. They had a movie of the future called Logan’s Run. Ain’t no niggers in it. I said, well white folks ain’t planning for us to be here. That’s why we gotta make movies. Then we be in the pictures.”

It would be nice to say that times sure have changed in the 37 years since. There’ve been nineteen black astronauts in NASA, there’s a black president, a black attorney general and countless other black people have attained positions of power or advanced science (it's even fair to say that Neil deGrasse Tyson is a household name). But that's science-fact and in Hollywood science-fiction the future remains so white you’ve gotta wear shades.

Most space operas depict a universe populated by aliens with prosthetic alterations to their eyes and ears and in all shades of skin tone… almost invariably played by white people. If one tries to think of an alien played by a Latino, I can think of Edward James Olmos (in blue contacts) in Battlestar Galactica as Caprican (of Tauron descent) Commander Bill Adama and that’s it (OK, and Tahnee Welch in the Cocoon movies). Ricardo Montalban as Khan doesn’t count because firstly, Khan Noonien Singh was apparently supposed to be South Asian, given his title “Singh,” and a native of earth -- not an extraterrestrial. Speaking of Asian aliens – are there any besides Flash Gordon’s Ming the Merciless, emperor of the planet Mongo (obviously meant to be the face of yellow peril and who was also always played by white actors)?

Continued...

Was watching morning news show, saw a couple of guys riding elongated skate boards carrying poles for balance and momentum. They looked like gondoliers in Venice..........

A skateboard city? Pedestrian sidewalks for walkers, wide streets and long skateboards with one driver and four passengers. It is a striking sight, how folks get on board, get in sync together and ride with a sort of mindless ease. Carrying stuff, reading their ePads and chattering back and forth with effortlessness. There is an apparent laid back attitude as if this mode of transport is preferred, even for the aged.  Wide skateboards carrying goods, delivering food, the precision of the riders to navigate is uncanny. The poles they carry to balance and propel are mostly plain but some are ornate and some are high-tek concealing lights, weaponry and safety items.

There are solitary blade skaters zooming about who often link shoulder to shoulder resembling a centipede to share power and aerodynamics for long trips in high speed lanes.

There is an ultra speed lane that has a unique feature, a crew of pushers. They patrol the byways looking for a flag signal from linked groups to speed-assist. The pusher has motorized wheels and emergency clearance to break riding rules. Pushers keep things moving, quick to point out or teach "good form" which is the law.

As with any city an element that skirts "good form" exists. They are slightly to overtly out of sync, somewhat arrogant and always dress the part. Shorts and tees and the fake tattoos they change like chameleons to hide and allude. They inhabit the skate parks and are all about extending their "terror-tory". They shout "remember the old school when skating was free and off grid?". They hate that boarding has become normalized, yet they don't prefer to walk.

There is always talk of the gliders of the future, no more wheels. Sure water gliders are as old as boats but land gliders? That is the holy grail of boarding. Come on, you got to believe the Silver Surfer is god. Ok, he's a herald of a galaxy eater. Not to worry, NASA has the TUMS project to protect us. So SS can once again be Harold the skateboard rider.   

Mark G. Raizen, Professor of Physics

Topics: Atomic Physics, Optical Physics, Laser Cooling, Nanotechnology, Nobel Prize, Research

UT News:
Keck Foundation Awards $1.5 Million for New Method to Cool Atoms and Student Research

CERN: An illustration of the possible layout of quarks in a pentaquark (Time)

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

Physics arXiv:
Observation of J/ψp resonances consistent with pentaquark states in Λ0b→J/ψK−p decays
LHCb collaboration

Source: Technology Review

Topics: Acoustics, Humor, Materials Science, Radio Frequency Microelectronics, Sonar

Physics arXiv: Demonstration of novel high-power acoustic through-the-wall sensor,
Franklin Felber

Latest photos of Pluto's puzzling spots. Source: John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

NASA: Pluto and Charon: New Horizons' Dynamic Duo
New Horizons: NASA's Mission to Pluto
* USA Today:
Astronomer's ashes nearing icy world he discovered: Pluto, Marcia Dunn, Associated Press

I am still just reeling from this book. I was a skeptic when this became the Blerd Book Club read, but I have to say the club got it right. A nine year old quick thinking girl, Letitia, goes to a her sister’s kindergarten class to save her and ends up saving about a dozen of her classmates as well from certain death during the zombie apocalypse.

MORE...

Credit: Thomas Fuchs

Topics: History, Humor, Kinetic Theory of Gases, Mathematical Models, Stochastic Modeling

Okay, this was a bit of a stretch but it APPEARS in Scientific American. I mean a stretch applying theory meant for essentially micro environments to macro environments. They apply the fact that armies and gases have densities and a little imagination. There have been other models of war using either known mathematics or natural phenomena. I was also mildly entertained by the credits for the author of the article and the photo credit. I'll let you discover without mention. I hope I'm not in trouble with too many high school physics teachers, and it makes your Friday.

Scientific American:
The Kinetic Theory of Gases Accurately Predicts Nazi Blitzkrieg Attacks, Tim Palucka

“No matter how successful I am, and no matter how many things I have under my belt, it just feels like nothing is enough” – those are the words of the writer and performer Dylan Marron, talking about his own difficulty in finding work and being cast in Hollywood.

We know that Marron isn’t alone. There’s a dearth of non-white actors getting roles in Hollywood. We know because of the statistics, the lack of award nominations and the steps that have been taken to counteract it.

Click here for the full story

Figure 1. (a) A sketched diagram of 193i exposure head. Water fills the gap between the final lens and the wafer. The water injection and confinement system is not included in the diagram. (b) Optical paths of two-beam interference for both "dry" and 193i exposures.

Topics: Economy, Education, Photolithography, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology, STEM

Solid State Electronics:
Immersion lithography remains the industry’s workhorse technology, Jeff Dorsch
SPIE: 193nm immersion lithography: Status and challenges, Yayi Wei and David Back

Revised payment methods for Kindle  Owners Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited, like other Amazon services, are author and reader friendly, argues Orna Ross

“Now will you admit that Amazon is no friend to authors?” said my book-loving friend, who had telephoned me from Ireland for a chat. He’d heard a writer on Irish radio talking about what he called  “Amazon attack on author incomes”.

“You know, whenever I see what the media writes and says about Amazon,” I said, “I wonder if the information I’m getting about other topics is as skewed and inaccurate.”

“But this poor writer’s income had been totally decimated, overnight. On a whim. They are only paying writers for the number of pages read now, instead of the whole book. Aren’t you worried?”

Sigh.

I do understand that most people outside our business (and some within) are not au fait with the difference between a reader buying an ebook on Amazon vis a vis borrowing it via Kindle Owners Lending Library (KOLL), or downloading it as part of their Kindle Unlimited (KU) subscription. [Details on these differences, from a writer’s perspective, here, if you’d like to know more]

But this wasn’t an honest misunderstanding. This was, once again, a wide strand of the press and reading public refusing to let facts inform the latest chapter in their “Amazon Is A Scary Monster” story.

My friend is a reader who resents ebooks and his determination to diss Amazon over this latest move was echoed in media, old and new, across  the world — UK daily newspapers right-wing ( The Telegraph) and left The Guardian, culture press USA (The Atlantic), business press (Canada Business), tech reporting (Gismodo Australia), not to mention among authors online. In all of these articles, and hundreds more, errors, fallacies, and  miscalculations flew, laced with howls of protest from self-interested authors.

They confused sales with borrows, did calculations that overlooked how KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Page) counts are higher than print page counts, overlooked the leap in the global fund from $3 million to $11 million; and generally assumed bad motives and outcomes.

It was left to author blogs (see Hugh Howey and Catherine Ryan Howard ) and the ever-thoughtful publishing commentator, Porter Anderson, to keep the record accurate.

So Why All The Negativity?
You could put it down to the negativity bias to which, psychologists tell us, we are all prone — do you pay more attention to a good review or bad? — but it’s more than that. What we have here is fear.

Amazon is powerful and has flexed that power in negotiations with publishers. It is at the forefront of technological change that has thrown up big challenges for independent publishers and wholesalers, booksellers and authors. And it keeps on ringing the commercial changes in an industry that is conservative and that, quite rightly, values its cultural role as well as its commercial well-being.

Continued...

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It’s fair to say that Daniel José Older is having a very good year.

In the first week of 2015, Penguin published his first novel, Half-Resurrection Blues. By the end of January, Anika Noni Rose’s production company had optioned the film and television rights to the book, as well as rights for the following two in the series. This week sees him publish a hotly anticipated young adult novel called Shadowshaper.

To top it off, he got married in March.

Until 2014, Older worked by day as an emergency medical technician in Manhattan. He wrote mostly at night. And he sees himself, explicitly, as an outsider to the literary and publishing scene: “I entered the writing work clearly and strategically to do this thing, to write these books, to get them into the world and fuck with people, and to generally fuck shit up,” he says at a restaurant in Brooklyn.

Shadowshaper is set in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, where Older lives. The protagonist, a young Afro-Latina named Sierra, learns about her family’s history of supernatural powers. She can, as it turns out, interact with the spirit world. Her family has gone to great lengths to conceal that fact from her, but now it’s Sierra’s responsibility to protect them from what’s coming.

Older’s imagined Brooklyn is full of danger, less gentrified than the real-life version, and decidedly diverse. “We’re doing something very political by deciding whose life matters, where we’re going to focus things, and who we erase from the picture,” he says. This kind of diversity, he feels, is lacking in most other fantasy YA novels. “When we create worlds based on this world that don’t include diversity, we’re lying,” he says. “We’re not being honest as authors. Even if it’s infused with magical powers, or zombies, or whatever you’ll have, we should still be trying to tell the truth. Then, it becomes a question of what truth, how are we telling it, and whose truth do we take the time to repeat?”

Older is critical of books that he says fail to include racial diversity – such as, he says, The Hunger Games. He chalks it up to a “phenomenal lack of imagination” on the part of the author, and a laziness, he feels, that is designed to keep some people out of the picture. “To be able to figure out all these quirky things about what you imagine the future will be like, and not somehow have any folks of colour doing anything heroic or worthwhile in it, what happened?” he asked. “Where did we go?”

Continued...

I recently uploaded the first 25 pages of my MS on my website: www.snpetro.com/. Below is a description of my novel and a link to the first 25 pages.

The Warrior from Monde:

Human women are ideal for seeding Castra’s alien army. But the children of such a union are not conceived without a price. One part his mother, and nine parts his father, Lucian is like no other child. With his father absent, his mother faces raising him in squalor, and in a country unfamiliar to her, Monde.

Lucian grows up in a world of politics, religious contention, and spies. But what he craves is war. And he has been gifted with the body, mind, and courage of a warrior. His formidable strength and superior intelligence incite both awe and envy. He earns praise from as high as the king. But not all see Lucian’s abilities as benign. Suspicion soon forms around him. His inborn charm keeps most enemies at bay. But not for long. He struggles to suppress growing, dark urges. And he sees the world as rank with weak men and vain challenges. This leaves him to question why he was born with such gifts. Are they to be wasted on a world he feels distant from?

This book is currently undergoing editing. I hope to have it ready for agent submission by the fall.

Read the first 25 pages (author’s edit): The Warrior from Monde, first 25 pages

Please read the sample, and leave a comment on my site here: https://snpetro.com/

Credit: John Moreno/Argonne National Laboratory

Topics: Applied Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Physics and Pop Culture, Semiconductor Technology, Thermodynamics

1. Vapor pressure
2. Friction
3. Drag coefficient
4. Momentum
5. Rolling resistance

Bonus: Air temperature

Phys.org: Five properties of physics that affect your gas mileage, Louise Lerner

Image Source: Spring 8

Topics: Optical Physics, Laser, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, X-rays

Physics Today:
Brighter and faster: The promise and challenge of the x-ray free-electron laser
Philip H. Bucksbaum and Nora Berrah

Image Source: Wikiquote "Once you have learned to read you will forever be free." "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." More at Brainyquote.com

Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Frederick Douglass, History, Human Rights

History is a Weapon: The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, Frederick Douglass
Related link: What the Civil War Can Teach us About Patriotism, Jarret Ruminski, PhD Historian, "That Devil History" blog

Okay; this is a rant, and will probably be my only, or one of very few blogs. That's because I have other venues for writing.

Anyway: Here is something that has caused me consternation for a very long time. Albinos in the media have always been seen as other than human. We have been given red demonic eyes, stark white unruly hair and skin that resembles a corpse or a powdered doughnut.

In fact, we have been portrayed as vampires, aliens, an even underground cannibal brainless brutes. Although I do know some brainless brutes with albinism, this is by no means the norm for people like me.

Believe me; if I had the power to make my eyes glow and make people step out in front of trucks, I certainly would. But I can't do that so breathe easy.

If you have ever seen Village of the Damned, The Time Machine, The Omega Man, or read a Marvel comic you know what I mean. If you've seen End of Days (I know that guy) read The Famished Road or Sent For You Yesterday, you are all too familiar with the albino as some otherworldly freak. I'm not even going to talk about Powder. ugh.

There are people who actually think we are witches or magic.Sometimes this is rather funny. I met a man who thought I was a witch and offered to save my soul. But sometimes it can be downright dangerous. People in parts of Africa have been hacking up albino children collecting their body parts for sale. They have had to put children in safe camps for their protection.

But I digress.

There was a man who contacted me about an albino character he wanted to create for a game. I suggested he give the character long blond dreads. That was a long time ago and I haven't heard anything.

So what would happen if there were a character in a comic book that was just a person with albinism? No superhuman powers, not out to conquer the universe. It would be just like putting an evil dwarf in your story who wasn't evil. 

It's all about using disability and difference, as a metaphor for "the other".

I'm not going to offer any answers here since I don't have any myself. How do you portray a person with albinism in the comics? Why would you put them in the story? How would you draw them? I'll let you figure that out. I just thought I'd give you some food for thought.

A new social network that uses a points-based system to encourage people to interact with content is closing in on 1 million registered users since it launched earlier this month, according to the company's CEO.

"We've been around for a week. We are already serving significant impressions," said Bill Ottman, the founder and CEO of Minds, in an interview last week. "We're not saying we're an ad network on the scale of Facebook or Google or television: It's the potential of what it might become."

Minds has existed as a blogging platform since 2012, reaching 30,000 users in its private alpha mode. But on June 19, the developers behind it launched a new social network and associated mobile applications for Apple and Android devices. And according to Ottman, it's already wildly popular, with almost 1 million accounts.

Click here for the full story