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Book Review: Angel Lover

Posted by Rasheedah Prioleau on July 2, 2015 at 6:33pm

Angel Lover
By: Tricia Skinner

I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Half-human angels with a mission to kill their fallen angel fathers, oh the DRAMA.

This is the second book in Skinner’s Angel Assassins Series. Even though I missed the first one, it was not hard at all getting drawn in and caught up. The hero of the story, Kasdeja (Kas for short) is the tech savvy Nephilim (half-angel) in a group of Nephilim, abandoned by their fathers as children and sentenced to die for being half human.... MORE

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Amazon set to pay self-published authors as little as $0.006 per page read

Posted by William Hayashi on July 2, 2015 at 10:00pm

Writers of shorter works could lose out on revenue as company’s Kindle Owners Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited no longer pay per copy downloaded

Self-published authors could be paid as little as $0.006 per page read under new rules planned by Amazon.

Writers who make their works available through Amazon’s Kindle Owners Lending Library, and a similar service called Kindle Unlimited, will no longer be paid per copy downloaded following a move announced last week.

Instead, they would receive a payment based on how many pages had actually been read, with longer books receiving a higher potential payment than shorter works.

In an email to authors, sent on Wednesday, Amazon revealed exactly how little that payment would be.

Click here for the full story

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To Explain the World...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 28, 2015 at 6:51am



Topics: Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, NSBP, Steven Weinberg, Theoretical Physics, World Science Festival


The above is not the cover of "To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science." I downloaded that to my Kindle. This is just an autographed copy of one of his earlier famous books I'm proud to own. I'm equally proud to have met him.

As I've said, I met Dr. Weinberg at an NSBP conference in Austin, Texas in 2011. I meant to attend the World Science Festival in New York and hear this lecture personally. I alas, had a mandatory training related to work (it was good, though I went kicking and because it was good, not quite screaming towards the end of it). So accept my own consolation prize with the embed below. Consolation prize #2: I joined the World Science Festival as my "Father's Day" present to myself. I'll hopefully attend - barring anything else put on my schedule - next year.

Amazon.com:
To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science, Dr. Steven Weinberg

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Best progressive images of rage against horrible Trayvon Martin verdict.

Posted by Philip Shropshire on July 14, 2013 at 5:36pm

(For all 14 images go here. Yes I hate the popups too.)

I just have some initial thoughts about the tragic yet entirely predictable outcome in the Trayvon Martin case.

One, it seems that the prosecution's heart just wasn't in it. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the case and it showed. Two, even if it had been filmed or if there were more witnesses there's a very good chance that you would have gotten that same verdict. There have been those cases as well, although I'm thinking of Oscar Grant where his death was pretty much filmed and that cop served a whopping one year sentence. Three, even if Trayvon Martin had lived and could have presented his own version there's no evidence that would have changed the verdict either. Just take a look at the local Jordan Miles verdict where Miles was beaten to an inch of his life and we couldn't get a conviction against the cops. Four, it has become clear to me that black men are Marked for Death in this society. It's clear that we're being groomed for the prison industrial complex at best and just routinely murdered at worst.

I'm really not sure what can be done about any of these things. I guess more decent paying jobs for everyone would help. Perhaps more black men need to carry guns so that  predators will at least know they'll be in a fight. But when I reverse the situation in my head -- where Trayvon Martin shoots Zimmerman --  every time Trayvon Martin gets convicted and for a long time.

I was looking through my Facebook feed and found a number of helpful illustrations and images that explain these problems. These images made me feel a little better for some reason. So enjoy the slideshow. Related: The story about the arrest of Dennis Henderson, for, as best as I can tell, being "uppity" tells the problem from a Pittsburgh angle here and here. Somewhat Related: My struggle against Peter Gidas of Gidas Flowers and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) continues. And justifiably so.

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The Ca$h Ninja Grant

Posted by Moorsgate Media on June 26, 2015 at 9:36am

Title: The Ca$h Ninja Grant

By: Grant Chambers

Image Credit: KDA

 

To: Descendants of Counter-Inversion Veterans

 

It is neither our intent, nor desire to cause controversy. However, history provides little insight into the early life of the war hero, Antoine Clark, aka ‘Tha Ca$h Ninja.’ Contemporaneous records re-inflated from submerged computronium memory cores indicate that he was, at best, a middling third age hip-hop troubadour. Like other members of the genera superset, Tha Ca$h Ninja existed in a fragmented entertainment space deeply riven by notions of sub-genera purity and domain exclusivity. Pre-Inversion Artists frequently eschewed popular appeal, and Tha Ca$h Ninja was no different. For most members of various crews, clans and assorted musical combines, the widespread acclaim reached by classical artists (e.g. B.I.G., The Notorious) was considered a betrayal of artistic integrity. Musical balkinization resulted in flourishing, if not necessarily lucrative, hyper-local music scenes.

History should not judge the Tha Ca$h Ninja harshly for his lack of commercial success, both for his later contributions to the Second Refactoring of the Western Convergence, and the fact that artists who did achieve some measure of cross-genre appeal usually did so through a combination of exploitative cultural appropriation and deployment of unregulated memetic-catalyzed Langfordian Syrens. Given the gross storage and algorithmic processing requirements necessary to deploy such vectors, Tha Ca$h Ninja, despite assurances regarding his personal net worth, would not have been financially able to support such domain violations.  

Instead, Tha Ca$h Ninja’s core support grew out of a loyal fanbase cultivated from the dense urban conglomerations doting Bayou Country.  He innovated a fork of ‘southern’ hip-hop that incorporated  الدحية  and full VR simulacrum of mundane events and various prior sexual conquests engaging in Dabke-style erotic dancing. To wit, his seminal hit “Ca$h Ninja is günna’ Ninja that A$$!” featured amelodic, and at times rambling, exposition on the nature of ontological empiricism paired with bass loops and FVR recordings of interactions with surgical and germ-line modified gender-fluid individuals and constructs.

As our hypothesis (attached) posits, etho-phrenol recognition shows that many of the exotic dancers were likely Greco-Syrians recruited from the large populations settled in and around Mobile after the Burning Sands War.  If conclusively proved, it lends an explanation as to why the later incarnations of the Tha Ca$h Ninja Mercenary organization contained analogous command structures with various Levent-originated ‘Free’ forces.   

By Tha Ca$h Ninja’s own statements, he was an avid and enthusiastic student of both Bushido and Wing-chun. While other historians take these statements as boastfulness in keeping with the hyper-masculinity of the genera, we aim to prove these claims. What is not in dispute is that Tha Ca$h Ninja did exhibit considerable proficiency in light energy weapons during the Reclamation of Texarkana from Class 2 autonomous, non-metabolizing carnivorous forms.

During the later stages of the Inversion, when the Silicon Lords retreated to western Rockies, Tha Ca$h Ninja Mercenary was one of the first outfits commissioned by the Distributed Republic to halt the advance of Semi-sentients across the Mississippi. Though apocryphal, it is said that Tha Ca$h Ninja, accompanied by his most loyal retainers "These Amazonian Bitches!", could be seen battling amphibious-mechs on the river bank, his white mink coat trailing behind him and his crisp athletic shoes caked with red mud.

We hereby submit this grant to the Descendants of Inversion Veterans and ask permission to excavate the sites indicated, and recompile any imprinted data structures such that a complete understanding of the Second Battle of Vicksburg can be had.

For more short fiction Friday please visit http://moorsgatemedia.blogspot.com/

 

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Entropy and Meaning...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 26, 2015 at 6:00am
Source: Facebook meme


Topics: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Philosophy, Thermodynamics


"Man - a being in search of meaning." Plato

Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics - The "zeroth law" states that if two systems are at the same time in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are in thermal equilibrium with each other. [1]

First Law of Thermodynamics - Is the application of the conservation of energy principle to heat and thermodynamic processes: The change in internal energy of a system is equal to the heat added to the system minus the work done by the system. [1]

Second Law of Thermodynamics - In any cyclic process the entropy will either increase or remain the same. Since entropy gives information about the evolution of an isolated system with time, it is said to give us the direction of "time's arrow" . If snapshots of a system at two different times shows one state which is more disordered, then it could be implied that this state came later in time. For an isolated system, the natural course of events takes the system to a more disordered (higher entropy) state. [1]

Third Law of Thermodynamics - Is essentially a statement about the ability to create an absolute temperature scale, for which absolute zero is the point at which the internal energy of a solid is precisely 0.

Various sources show the following three potential formulations of the third law of thermodynamics:

1. It is impossible to reduce any system to absolute zero in a finite series of operations.

2. The entropy of a perfect crystal of an element in its most stable form tends to zero as the temperature approaches absolute zero.

3. As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant. [2]

Sources:
1. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/heacon.html#heacon
2. http://physics.about.com/od/thermodynamics/a/lawthermo_5.htm


There are admittedly other parts of the 2nd Law I don't focus on purposely: heat transfer and refrigerators. It will become apparent [hopefully] in a moment.



Thermodynamics is the science of "energy and its transformations," usually applied to systems. As I've alluded to in previous posts, the system in question is modern civilization itself. It's just an observation, not a doomsday prophecy. I see common cause-kissing cousins in Al Qaeda, ISIL/ISIS and Dylann Roof, hence the meme from Facebook above.



We tend to fight Entropy in various ways personally: diet, exercise, vitamins. It doesn't keep us from dying, but theoretically it preserves us; prolongs our stay on the planet.



A society can fight Entropy through education, as in the case of what should be called forevermore the Roof massacre, the less-educated tend to be more prejudiced and have less of a nuanced view of the world. It's typically "us versus them," as he stated an hour after his clandestine attendance at a bible study and his rampage began. Would he have been so angry, would he have sought the web sites of racist lunatics had he finished high school? Perhaps learned a trade or finished at least a college degree? His focus on debunked mythologies about African Americans purposely causing - in his twisted logic - genetic annihilation through miscegenation could have been alleviated by education. That would have resulted in stable finances, self-esteem that usually leads to better wardrobe selection, cologne, charm and if fortunate: coitus. He could have relieved his problems; his libido and nine innocent souls would still be with us.



The violence we're seeing in the news is tribal and primitive, born of ignorance and a sense of entitlement that is pathological. Isla Vista in Santa Barbara last year; a torrent of violence on black bodies since Trayvon Martin - shot, choked and beaten; churches set aflame appear to have made a "comeback" - to now a pastor and state senator and his members gunned down in their own house of worship. As these primitive instincts express themselves so violently, we as a nation are approaching Entropy as regressive types struggle in an ever-changing world that frightens them and their perceived loss of meaning, purpose and "specialness" in it. Unfortunately, "times arrow" has no reset button, and nation states not careful nor renewing itself with education of its citizenry, can drift inexorably from order...to chaos. It is at this juncture of our current history, ignorance - in the spirit of Thomas Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" - is NOT nor ever has been: bliss.
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80 Percent Improvement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 24, 2015 at 5:35pm
The MIT researchers' prototype for a chip measuring 3 millimeters by 3 millimeters. The magnified detail shows the chip's main control circuitry, including the startup electronics; the controller that determines whether to charge the battery, power a device, or both; and the array of switches that control current flow to an external inductor coil. This active area measures just 2.2 millimeters by 1.1 millimeters.


Topics: Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Internet of Things, Semiconductor Technology


The latest buzz in the information technology industry regards "the Internet of things"—the idea that vehicles, appliances, civil-engineering structures, manufacturing equipment, and even livestock would have their own embedded sensors that report information directly to networked servers, aiding with maintenance and the coordination of tasks.

Realizing that vision, however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes—or, even better, that can extract energy from the environment to recharge.

Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it, even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous experimental ultralow-power converters had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent.

Moreover, the researchers' chip achieves those efficiency improvements while assuming additional responsibilities. Where its predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery or directly power a device, this new chip can do both, and it can power the device directly from the battery.

Phys.org:
Ultralow-power circuit improves efficiency of energy harvesting to more than 80 percent, Larry Hardesty

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Optical Tweezers and Nanojets...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 25, 2015 at 7:36am
Artistic rendering of a lithography by photonic nanojets from an optically trapped microsphere. Courtesy: A A R Neves


Topics: Biology, MEMS, Nanotechnology, Optical Tweezers


Traditional optical tweezers, which have been around for decades, are one of the most important modern-day tools in biology, physics and chemistry. They work by trapping micron-scale objects near the focus of a laser beam. The technique allows objects to be picked up and moved to another place using just light.

Being able to control the position of individual molecules in this way is critical in medical research, for example, when manipulating viruses or large proteins. And being able to accurately place tiny objects, such as carbon nanotubes or nanowires, for instance, in a given structure or array will be important for fabricating nanomachines such as molecular motors and other devices in the future.

Nanojets are relatively new structures and are typically formed under the “shadow” of an illuminated dielectric cylinder or microsphere. The microsphere acts as a focusing lens and the nanojets form thanks to the constructive interference between the incoming and scattered light fields.

The nanojets created by Antonio Alvaro Ranha Neves of the Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas at the UFABC are a little more complex since they rely on highly focused incident light beams (in contrast to the plane waves generally used to form such jets). Neves used two collinear and co-propagating beams to create his nanojets and positioned one trap in a particular direction with respect to the other. It is the precise positioning of these two beams in this way that allows the nanojets to be switched on and off at will, he explains When they are switched on, they exert a trapping force on the microsphere, holding it approximately midway between the focuses of both beams.

Nanotechweb: Optical tweezers produce “nanojets”, Belle Dumé

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Dilation and Superposition...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 23, 2015 at 6:52am
Illustration of a molecule in the presence of gravitational time dilation. The molecule is in a quantum superposition of being in several places at the same time, but time dilation destroys this quantum phenomenon. (Courtesy: Igor Pikovski, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)


Topics: Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Schrödinger Wave Equation, Superposition


Why do we not see everyday objects in quantum superpositions? The answer to that long-standing question may partly lie with gravity. So says a group of physicists in Austria, which has shown theoretically that a feature of Einstein's general relativity, known as time dilation, can render quantum states classical. The researchers say that even the Earth's puny gravitational field may be strong enough for the effect to be measurable in a laboratory within a few years.

Our daily experience suggests that there exists a fundamental boundary between the quantum and classical worlds. One way that physicists explain the transition between the two, is to say that quantum superposition states simply break down when a system exceeds a certain size or level of complexity – its wavefunction is said to "collapse" and the system becomes "decoherent."

An alternative explanation, in which quantum mechanics holds sway at all scales, posits that interactions with the environment bring different elements of an object's wavefunction out of phase, such that they no longer interfere with one another. Larger objects are subject to this decoherence more quickly than smaller ones because they have more constituent particles and, therefore, more complex wavefunctions.

Physics World: Does time dilation destroy quantum superposition?
Edwin Cartlidge, science writer in Rome

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Charleston...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 23, 2015 at 6:56am


Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Charleston, History, Human Rights


I was in Charleston, South Carolina for my oldest son's graduation from Army Basic Training. My wife and I took a horse and buggy tour of Charleston, past the historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, its history and high steeple. The memories of being burned down and the parishioners worshiping in secret; Dr. Martin Luther King and Corretta Scott King leading from its steps marches to facilitate the world we currently have - not perfect, but better supposedly than the one we had.

Dylann Storm Roof ended that blithe innocence with the blood of nine innocent members spilled on the floor during...bible study.

The coward did not pick a certified street gang - Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings - and go out in a martyred blase of glory. Surely, he would have started the "race war" in his manifesto; surely he would have spurred others to his cause. They would make room on Mount Rushmore for his gaunt young face. He would be immortal...and dead.

More than one article appears on the subject with its own official hash tag: #TakeItDown. Standard bearers of the GOP like Mitt Romney and state representatives are now calling for its removal from the South Carolina capital, something along with an African American president, I thought I'd never see. Rev. Clementa Pinckney - the pastor and state senator of Mother Emanuel now lies in state...beneath that flag. Mr. Roof was enamored with that, along with the ensigns of Apartheid South Africa and equally repugnant Rhodesia.

The confederate flag has been first above the capital of South Carolina since 1961; made law in 1962, so as long as I've been on the planet. 1961 was the 100th anniversary of the Civil War's beginnings. It's first appearance was in 1954, which Lee Atwater succinctly described in the "Southern Strategy." This has been done with a wink-and-a-nod; covered with platitudes like "tradition"; "heritage"; "way of life"; "Christian values" ignoring the domestic terrorism and outright encouragement of genocide by fire, explosions, gunshot and lynchings...now gunfire in a church. Yet another moment of eulogy over shootings like Newtown that should not happen...that not just children's lives matter, but #BlackLivesMatter. They matter in Chicago and Newtown; they matter in country municipalities and cities...they matter in churches that traditionally, have bible study on Wednesday nights, and I assume synagogues and mosques have similar times of cultural unity either weekly or annually - Ramadan and Yom Kippur comes to mind.

Dylann published a manifesto on the Internet. He gunned down nine innocent American souls. Falsely, it was spread through social media early on Roof was treated to a Burger King meal after his arrest; Freddie Gray in Maryland [definitely] a broken back. Freddie (18) was made by the media to look like a "thug"; Dylann (21), predictably as a confused "kid."

I'll likely tune into or DVR what the president has to say yet again. He looks like he's getting tired of it; I'M getting tired of it. He is one year and four days older than I, yet the gray hair and cracked skin makes him look ninety. As a country, we're an international embarrassment and likely, our lower mortality with respect to the rest of the industrialized world is a self-inflicted wound made by constantly playing...Russian roulette. I am particularly tired of talking about this, yet again. Our "normal" is national psychosis; E pluribus unum to warring tribes.
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I have created a Sci-Fi Cartoon series called Chase Vapor. It is about a young black girl who has to go on a quest into deep space to retrieve the Earth's water supply after a hostile group of aliens

Posted by Corran Lindsay on June 22, 2015 at 10:49pm

I have created a Sci-Fi Cartoon series called Chase Vapor. It is about a young black girl who has to go on a quest into deep space to retrieve the Earth's water supply after a hostile group of aliens steals it. The project is currently in the hands of Amazon Studios. The way they operate is: They put the pitches they receive on their website for the public to rate out of 5 stars. This helps them determine which shows to make. Chase Vapor is currently #1 in the Childrenand Tween category, and #6 over all. What the CEO of Amazon studios has said is he doesn't just want the shows with the most likes, he wants to see that there is a passionate fanbase out there for the show. So if everyone could to go to https://studios.amazon.com/projects/79693 take a look at our show, rate it and leave positive comments, it would help a lot in getting the show made.

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Grace Jones, a science fiction vision in obsidian

Posted by Keith A. Owens on June 16, 2015 at 9:57pm

Tell me this ain't scifi enough.

I can't remember the first time I got turned on to Grace Jones, but I do remember that it wasn't the music that got me, although the music was cool. But, my God, the way she looked...

I've always dug the extreme, even if I was never quite able to pattern myself after so many of my heroes. Any number of reasons for that which I'm not gonna bother with here, but I can say without a doubt that I have always admired those who simply did not give a damn and stepped out of whoever they were once upon a time into a brand new self-created existence as a brand new self-created individual. When Grace was young, according to her bio on Wikipedia, she was a very shy Jamaican kid who was good at sports. But somewhere between then and now she became a dark fantasy vision of science fiction. From Clash, 10 Things You Never Knew About Grace Jones:

3.This rebelliousness included her constant love of nightclubbing in New York, as well as going out road-tripping and taking acid with Hell’s Angels. She wore afros before they came into fashion and she was exposing herself in clubs way before nude establishments were officially commissioned.

6.She is a character well-known for her controversial moments - as well as her television appearance on the Russell Harty show she is renowned for, she has a lifetime ban from Walt Disney World in Florida due to indecently exposing her breasts on a live set whilst she was performing.

8.A time she recalls (unfazed) was living in Paris with fellow models Jerry Hall and Jessica Lange in the late-’70s. They once attended a party full of French politicians, Jones turned up with just a string of bones around her neck and nothing else. Another typical Grace Jones stunt that’s sure to go down in French history.

Grace Jones is a walking, talking, breathing piece of modernist art. And me  imagining what does it take to come to the realization that, if I only follow my imagination and my art I can evolve into this instead of that. There are all sorts of butterflies, some of them by choice.

Originally published on www.keithaowens.com

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Magnetic Portals Connect the Earth to the Sun

Posted by LN Gibson on June 14, 2015 at 1:29pm

Source: Humansarefree.com

Did you know that there are portals that open and connect our planet to its Star?



A magnetic portal opens and links the Earth to the sun across 150 million kilometers. 

Tons of high-energy particles are transmitted between the two bodies before the portal closes.

This phenomenon is known as flux transfer event, or FTE.

Mysteriously, this phenomenon is repeated several times throughout a day, approximately every eight minutes. some scientists speculated that the Earth and the Sun were connected in some way.

Our planet’s magnetosphere, that is the magnetic bubble that surrounds the Earth, is full of particles from the sun that reach our planet through bursts of solar winds, these particles eventually penetrate the defenses of the magnetic field of our planet. 

Today researchers know that these particles are able to penetrate as they travel through magnetic fields that directly link the ground floor with the sun’s atmosphere.

Interestingly, according to various experts in the field, the phenomenon can be explained like this: on the side of our planet where it is day, which is the area that is the nearest to the sun, the Magnetic field of our planet is actually “pressed” against the sun’s magnetic field. 

The interesting part is....Continue..

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Fifteen Styles Of Chat (and counting), as compiled by William Hayashi through scholarly observation

Posted by William Hayashi on June 14, 2015 at 2:00am

The following are the fifteen most familiar chat styles observed across the Internet, and here at BSFS presented alphabetically (research assistance courtesy of James Jones).

1. "Entitlement Chat" - when someone drops into chat, interrupts everyone else with a question or link, then when no one pays immediate attention, they slink off pissed off.

2. "Grasp Of The Obvious Chat" - when someone drops into chat in the middle of a conversation and insists on everyone stopping everything and bringing them up to speed instead of just reading the previous entries.

3. “Just Can’t Tell A Joke Chat” - when one is convinced that their sense of humor is so universal and so clever that they constantly post their sad lines and jokes, convinced of their superiority

4. “Me! Me! Look At Me Chat” – when someone drops by and announces in the middle of the conversation some current project or posts a link to their work and makes small talk only about said project and then leaves

5. “Misogynist Chat” - when a man greets every woman in chat with some off-color, sexist joke, or inappropriate line and is truly oblivious to the fact that he’s an ass.

6. “My Taste Is All That Matters Chat” - when someone mentions something they like in chat, then someone else MUST state why they don’t like it as if they are the final arbiter of all things.

7. “One Up Chat” - after the posting of an audio or video link in chat they MUST post one of their own to prove their superiority in musicianship or relevance

8. “Pay Me Chat” (Sometimes Called "Brother Can You Spare A Dime Chat")- when someone drops by only to promote their fund raising campaign and begs everyone else in chat for money

9. “Phantom Chat” - when someone leaves the site up in their browser at home while they leave the state on a cross country road trip, making people believe they’re there, but are just being rude

10. “Pontificate Chat” – when someone tosses out a question as if to educate the group as a whole like they’re the only one in the universe who ever had that thought

11. "Special Needs Chat" - when someone has a woefully pitiful life, but insists on presenting every single uninteresting detail of what they’re doing in real-time as if they’re the most significant events in the world.

12. “Spoiler Chat” - when someone who just saw something that most in chat have not, they insist on telling spoilers without regard for those who wanted to see whatever it was for them self

13. “Technology Challenged Chat” - when someone has a technical problem in chat, and makes everyone else solve the problem for them before they let the conversation resume.

14. “Time Warp Chat” - when someone starts a conversation, and then lets ten minutes or more (sometimes even hours) lapse between their responses back to everyone else

15. “Your Welcome Chat” - when an adult is so grammatically challenged they don’t know the difference between the possessive and the contraction of similar-sounding words

You know who you are!

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STEP UP TO THE PLATE; WINDOW MOVIE MAKER OR SONY VEGAS

Posted by Ricardo Holliman on June 13, 2015 at 12:36pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      There is a time in our lives where we have to step up to the plate. I would like to like to share my story of how I transition from Window Movie Maker to Sony Vegas Pro. For our Window Movie Maker fans; I have used this software for slideshows and short videos.I loved the simplicity and how I was able to render it fast.  My mentality was it is enough to get by.

      When I moved from Greenville to Jonesboro and went to Arkansas State for a year. My first year of graduate school majoring in Mass Communication: Radio and Television was challenging. When I  was in computer lab working in IMovie on a show. I was challenged by group of students asking me, " Why are you using IMovie?" A professor came and challenged me to use Final Cut Pro. My thought process was I want to do enough to get by.

         When I was approach to do Kollege Kids; I became the visual/animation coordinator being in charge of the visuals. When it came to the editing; I thought I could use Window Movie Maker to get by. However Window Movie Maker cannot handle and render lengthy HD video. It constantly crashed and I knew I had to get an editing software to handle this demand. Learning Sony Vegas was imtimidating to me at first. I played around with it but to actually learn it was scary.

            Over time I became comfortable with learning to use it. Transitioning from a basic to an industry standard software can be imtimidating if you let it. A thirty to hour tutorial will break it down for you. The major thing I learned was you can't fake being a professional.  If you can do something the common man knows how to do.  You have no special value. If you want to be distinguished I recommend you using Final Cut and Sony Vegas or something similar to that.  Window Movie Makers and IMovies are for babies. Step up to the plate and don't let these programs imtimidate you.

 

Here is an example how Sony Vegas Pro and Window Movie Maker helped me with Kollege Kids. Check in the comment section for the link.

 

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Near Absolute Zero...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 12, 2015 at 6:00am
MIT researchers have successfully cooled a gas of sodium potassium (NaK) molecules to a temperature of 500 nanokelvin. In this artist's illustration, the NaK molecule is represented with frozen spheres of ice merged together: the smaller sphere on the left represents a sodium atom, and the larger sphere on the right is a potassium atom.

Illustration: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT


Topics: Materials Science, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Superconductivity


The air around us is a chaotic superhighway of molecules whizzing through space and constantly colliding with each other at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. Such erratic molecular behavior is normal at ambient temperatures.

But scientists have long suspected that if temperatures were to plunge to near absolute zero, molecules would come to a screeching halt, ceasing their individual chaotic motion and behaving as one collective body. This more orderly molecular behavior would begin to form very strange, exotic states of matter — states that have never been observed in the physical world.

Now experimental physicists at MIT have successfully cooled molecules in a gas of sodium potassium (NaK) to a temperature of 500 nanokelvins — just a hair above absolute zero, and over a million times colder than interstellar space. The researchers found that the ultracold molecules were relatively long-lived and stable, resisting reactive collisions with other molecules. The molecules also exhibited very strong dipole moments — strong imbalances in electric charge within molecules that mediate magnet-like forces between molecules over large distances.

MIT News: MIT team creates ultracold molecules, Jennifer Chu

Note: OOTO for a week or so. Happy Father's Day next week! Back on the 23rd.
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MOOC and Sesame Street...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 11, 2015 at 6:22am
Image source: link below


Topics: Economy, Education, Humor, Jobs, Science, STEM


Admittedly, my first education wasn't Sesame Street, it was "Green Eggs and Ham," which got me in considerable trouble when I admitted the "Dick and Jane" reading stories in the first grade were "dumb." (Well...they were.) Despite that fact, half of my first day in the first grade was spent in the principal's office.

I was six going on seven when my parents parked me in front of the television. I was hooked with the life-sized animated characters that would become known as "Muppets." Along with Schoolhouse Rock and the original charter of The Learning Channel, we enjoyed passive learning, a democratized, continuous education that transcends neighborhoods, demographics and social barriers. With a foundation of reading and simple numbers, the strength of Sesame Street was both making education fun and instilling a sense of wonder, the foundation of scientific exploration. For competitiveness in global economies and the narrowing of the wealth gap, we need more of this (and LESS "reality TV").

For 46 years now, "Sesame Street" has created television programming aimed at preparing young children for school both academically and socially.

According to a new study, it worked.

Children who lived in areas where "Sesame Street" was easy to view when it premiered were less likely to have been held back in school by 9th grade than children who lived in areas where reception was spotty or non-existent. Boys, black children, and children living in economically disadvantaged areas saw particularly strong effects.

How this carried over into educational attainment and the job market is unclear, according to the researchers. But, "for a television show that kids watch for an hour a day to have an impact that persists for 10 years or so, that's remarkable," said Phillip B. Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. He co-authored the paper with Melissa S. Kearney, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland in College Park. (Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, was a Maryland graduate.)

The researchers consider "Sesame Street" to be the first "massive open online course," an education course made available for free to a large group of people. Of course, in the early days of "Sesame Street," people were not receiving the program over the Internet. But the basic tenet of transmitting educational material outside of the traditional classroom remains is the same, the researchers said. Early Childhood Education by MOOC: Lessons from Sesame Street was published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Education Week:

'Sesame Street' Boosted School Readiness for Young Children, Study Says,
Christina Samuels

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Human Computation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 9, 2015 at 8:36pm
Image Source; Tecnology Review


Topics: Collaboration, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Humor, Internet, Research


The romance is the singular genius making some great breakthrough from shear effort and endowment with god-like intelligence that the rest of us mere mortals cannot possibly possess. In academia and industry, there's a lot of collaboration; cross-functional teams; cross-training, etc. Even the most monumental breakthrough that's affecting your life and mine right now - the transistor - was a collaborative effort that earned the Nobel Prize. Humans do a lot of collaboration; it's in our natures and we tend to do it with like-minded people (hence, Internet and other social networks). Sir Isaac Newton - the founder of physics - stated: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants," in a letter to Robert Hooke (Hooke's Law), though it was a metaphor originally attributed to John of Salisbury, meaning benifitting and building on the work of others before you. (Wikipedia)

There is a romanticism I think that originates with the oft-told story of the original "Eureka moment" (a dubious claim, probably more tall-tale than fact), along with Newton's apple and Einstein being, well...Einstein. So much so, my youngest son text messaged his older brother and me a picture of the latest album cover by the rapper Gucci Mane, seen here, knowing full well I'd laugh as he did: "I guess Gucci Mane is calling himself the Einstein of trapology...lol."

As I said, I laughed - literally "out loud"! I just sincerely hope Mr. Mane's lawyers have properly contacted the estate of Professor Einstein and likely Princeton University for the image rights...when you're making money WITH it, that's kinda important!

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The wisdom of the crowd has become so powerful and so accessible via the Internet that it has become a resource in its own right. Various services now tap into this rich supply of human cognition, such as Wikipedia, Duolingo, and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

So important is this resource that scientists have given it a name; they call it human computation. And a rapidly emerging and increasingly important question is how best to exploit it.

Today, we get an answer of sorts thanks to a group of computer scientists, crowdsourcing pioneers, and visionaries who have created a roadmap for research into human computation. The team, led by Pietro Michelucci at the Human Computation Institute, point out that human computation systems have been hugely successful at tackling complex problems from identifying spiral galaxies to organizing disaster relief.

But their potential is even greater still, provided that human cognition can be efficiently harnessed on a global scale. Last year, they met to discuss these issues and have now published the results of their debate.

Physics arXiv: A U.S. Research Roadmap for Human Computation
Pietro Michelucci, Lea Shanley, Janis Dickinson, Haym Hirsh

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