To generate a buzz for my upcoming novel COLONY I'm offering my erotic space opera shorts COLONY and PROBE free on smashwords.
The full length novel Colony will be released near the end of the year :)!
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http://scriptwritercontest.com/?et_mid=604413&rid=232899166
| James Lassiter and Will Smith of Overbrook Entertainment are searching for the next great TV scriptwriters — Are you one of them? |
James Lassiter and Will Smith of Overbrook Entertainment have entered a unique and innovative new partnership with the ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment in search of the most talented and undiscovered writers in the country, with the vision of bringing extraordinary entertainment to air.
Submit either your 30-minute comedy or 1-hour drama today.
If any creators are interested in this contest, I would be happy to help you adapt your comedy or drama short story or novel into TV script format. Let me know!
To celebrate my week as the Spotlight Author on Reading in Black, I decided that I'd give away free ebooks of my little cookbook. TODAY ONLY! "The Soul of California - Cooking for the Holidays" - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/272176. Use coupon code YE85Y for a free copy.
Don't forget to pick up your free copy of The Closet all weekend on Kindle. It's the start of the Returned series about two versions of Earth and the link between them. It also includes an extended excerpt of The Prophet, available next Tuesday.
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| Students participating in the Mars Student Imaging Project work directly with data they requested from the THEMIS instrument on board NASA's Mars Odyssey satellite. CREDIT: Arizona State University Mars Education Program |
Post title inspired and courtesy of the Watts Prophets.
A project that puts middle and high school students in charge of an instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter received a top prize from the journal Science today (Feb. 21).
The journal recognized the Mars Student Imaging Project, which allows young scientists to request time on the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) instrument aboard the satellite after developing and proposing their own research. But the benefits go beyond learning about Mars.
"The underlying premise of what Mars Student Imaging is about is helping students to learn the process of science, the nature of science and how it works," Sheri Klug Boonstra, director of the Arizona State University Mars Education program in charge of the project, told SPACE.com.
Space.com: Students Get Satellite Time: Inside the Mars Student Imaging Project
Yesterday, a mysterious group called the Inspiration Mars Foundation announced vague plans for a “historic journey to Mars and back in 501 days” scheduled for 2018. The group neglected to mention if the trip would be manned, instead directing the public to a press conference scheduled for February 27. But new information reveals that the individuals behind the Inspiration Mars Foundation plan to send two people on a flight to Mars and back—presumably in one piece.
Not that I'm a pessimist, but some facts about spaceflight seems missing from this bold endeavor:
Time and propulsion technologies: at current rates of speed, let's pick the average to obtain LEO - low earth orbit ~ 17,000 mph (27358.8 kph).
The average distance between Earth and Mars is 140 million miles (225 million km).
Thus, your trip would take roughly 8,235 hours, or 343 days. These are of course, my "back of the envelope calculations."
Human frailty: we tend to like gravity, and lose muscle mass as well as bone density just in LEO on the ISS.
According to Universe Today: "The total journey time from Earth to Mars takes between 150-300 days depending on the speed of the launch, the alignment of Earth and Mars, and the length of the journey the spacecraft takes to reach its target. It really just depends on how much fuel you’re willing to burn to get there. More fuel, shorter travel time."
So, mysterious cabal or not: it's going to take some serious engineering to get to Mars, loads of fuel and/or a very large solar sail. Unfortunately, all of that costs money that if you've noticed, we're having a bit of trouble counting...not mad at you, though.
Scientific American: Millionaire Plans Mission to Mars in 2018
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| Global Integration Consulting |
Defining the Challenge
Today’s world requires that all students obtain a solid foundation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Gone are the days where students we deem non-college material are served best by teaching them to “work with their hands”. Virtually every job requires proficiency in applied technology and a growing number of careers involve applied math and science. Moreover, it is the integration of STEM disciplines, the ability to apply knowledge to workflow along with 21st century skills such as communication and collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving, information literacy and adaptability that are most critical to success in a fast-paced global economy.
While this need is widely recognized by educators and public policy experts, solutions often miss the mark. Instead of an integrated approach focused on applied knowledge, we continue to emphasize knowledge in silos; the “s”, the “e”, the “m” - and whatever “t” exists is most often put in the hands of teachers, not students. This approach may be easiest, since it is consistent with traditional educational approaches and structures, but it does not meet the post-secondary and career readiness needs of the vast majority of our students.
Creative Learning Systems: STEM for All Students: Beyond the Silos
The 18-year-old who built a nuclear reactor
Editor's note: Taylor Wilson is the subject of CNN's "The Next List" on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET.
By The Next List Staff, CNN
(CNN) - At 18, Taylor Wilson has probably accomplished more than most people will in a lifetime.
He is the youngest person in the world to build a nuclear fusion reactor. And he won national acclaim for a counter terror device that sniffs out nuclear material in cargo containers. If that’s not enough, he built a prototype for a device that generates medical isotopes - a feat that could make diagnosing and treating cancer cheaper and more widely accessible to patients.
Wilson has won a dozen awards at the prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the Super Bowl of science fairs, over the course of his high school career. Not to mention tens of thousands of dollars in prize money.
“Some people wonder if he’s for real,” said Bill Brinsmead, one of Wilson's mentors, and a Senior Technician in the Physics Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. Brinsmead and others who know him are sure that he is. The director of The Davidson Academy, Wilson's high school, calls him “larger than life.”
It would be easy to conclude that what sets Taylor apart is his rare intellect, something only a tiny fraction of the world possesses.
But ask Wilson why he’s successful and the answer might surprise you.
“I think it’s mainly passion. We all have a similar intellectual capacity within reason but the people who really change the world, the Steve Jobs of the world, have always had that passion, that drive," he said. "They have that unique image of how the world should be and I have that. And I think that’s what sets me apart. You know my brain does work differently, but it’s the passion that really makes me successful."
And where passion is concerned, it seems Wilson has a nearly inexhaustible supply.
That and, as his father, Kenneth Wilson, points out: “He never takes no for an answer.”
Wilson started building the nuclear fusion reactor in his garage but finished it at the University of Nevada, Reno. He did it initially because he was amazed by the power contained within the atom and obsessed with making things radioactive.
Here's what he had to say on that subject:
"I had this obsession with radioactivity, and short of contaminating something, to make something radioactive, you had to have a source of neutrons. And I don’t have weapons-grade plutonium around the house, or at least not at that time. But anyway, to make things radioactive, I would need a neutron source, so I decided to build this fusion reactor, but kind of with that came this interest in fusion."
Subsequently, he used his reactor as a basis for the devices he invented.
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Who is Kelvin Doe?
Kelvin Doe, often called “The Whiz Kid,” is a 16-year-old self-taught inventor and engineer from Sierra Leone.
He has created batteries and generators from scrap parts in his community to help provide electricity for his family and friends. Doe built his first battery at the age of 13, and has since developed a local FM radio station, which runs off homemade radio transmitter and generator.
The whiz kid explained his influence for making the radio station, “if we have a radio station in my community, the people can be able to debate about issues affecting our community and Sierra Leone as a whole.”
“People normally call me DJ Focus in my community because I believe if you focus you can do invention perfectly,” he said in a video that profiled him, produced by @radical.media for the THNKR YouTube channel.
Ubuntu: I am because we are and because we are, you are. It is a statement of being.
The Grio: Kelvin Doe, the Whiz Kid from Sierra Leone
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The emerging technology of neural prostheses has the power to change what it means to be human. The ability to implant electrodes into the eyes ears, spine or even the brain has the potential to overcome degenerative disease, mend broken bodies and even enhance our senses with superhuman abilities.
But despite numerous trials of electronic devices implanted into the human body, there are still many challenges ahead. The problem is that most of these devices are based on silicon substrates which are hard, rigid and sharp. Those are not normally qualities that sit well with soft tissue.
Consequently, any small movement of these devices can damage nearby tissue and in the worst cases, form scar tissue. What’s more, the hot, wet and salty environment inside the body can damage electronic components, limiting their lifespan.
What’s needed, of course, is a flexible substrate that is also biocompatible with human tissue. Now Lucas Hess and pals at the Technische Universität München in Germany say they’ve found the ideal material–graphene. Today, they outline their plans for graphene-based neural prostheses and the experiments they’ve already done to test its biocompatibility.
Graphene is ideal because carbon “chicken wire” is only a single atom thick and therefore highly flexible. It is also held together by carbon bonds, which are among the most stable known to chemists. That means it should be relatively stable inside the human body.
Physics arXiv: Graphene transistors for bioelectronics
Hello BSFS Graphic Artists, Artists,
This series of conferences specifically examines the intersection of Astronomy/Sky and the Arts. In the past this has included musical compositions, paintings, literature, you can see the range.
Unfortunately I will not be attending! But I encourage BSFS members to submit their inspired works for consideration. Sending in an abstract or a sample is free!
See http://www.amnh.org/insap-viii
INSAP VIII "City of Stars"
The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena Conference, July 7–12, 2013
All the ways our exploration of the cosmos has inspired communities and cultures that would not otherwise do so, to think about the universe.
Hayden Planetarium
Rose Center for Earth and Space
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY 10024
USA
Who is Kat Calvin?
Kat Calvin is the founder of “Black Girls Hack,” the country’s first all-black female hack-a-thon. “Black Girls Hack” gives women of color across the US the opportunity to come together to create code that tackles specific digital challenges and problems. Numerous publications featured her for her dedication to educating young women in the tech field.
Calvin aims to empower young women who look like her and prepare them for a field where women of color are too scarce.
1. The Grio: Kat Calvin, Founder of Black Girls Hack
2. Welcome to Blerdology (Kat's web site)
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: One of the increasingly famous paradoxes in science is named after the German mathematician Dietrich Braess who noted that adding extra roads to a network can lead to greater congestion. Similarly, removing roads can improve travel times.
Traffic planners have recorded many examples of Braess’ paradox in cities such as Seoul, Stuttgart, New York and London. And in recent years, physicists have begun to study how it might be applied in other areas too, such as power transmission, sporting performance where the removal of one player can sometimes improve a team’s performance and materials science where the network of forces within a material can be modified in counterintuitive ways, to make it expand under compression, for example.
Today, Krzysztof Apt at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands and a couple of pals reveal an entirely new version of this paradox that occurs in social networks in which people choose products based on the decisions made by their friends.
They show mathematically that adding extra products can reduce the outcome for everyone and that reducing product choice can lead to better outcomes for all. That’s a formal equivalent to Braess’ paradox for consumers.
1. Physics arXiv: Paradoxes in Social Networks With Multiple Products
2. Harvard: Virtual Cell Program
I enjoyed the brief series Firefly as much as I've enjoyed over the years Star Trek: TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT (there, I think that's all the abbreviations).
Gina Torres (Zoe Warren-Washburne, coincidentally married to Lawrence Fishburne), Nichelle Nichols (Nyota Uhura, literally "freedom star"), LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge), Michael Dorn (Worf); Avery Brooks (Benjamin Sisko), Felicia M. Bell (Jennifer Sisko), Brock Peters (Joseph Sisko), Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko); Tim Russ (Tuvok), Anthony Montgomery (Travis Mayweather, AKA "Boomer"): they are the offspring of Dr. King's encouragement to Ms. Nichols to not quit after the first season of TOS.
Yet, despite this, and the astronomical odds of going from amateur to professional athlete, we've apotheosized athletic accomplishment over academic accomplishment; physical prowess in subjective games with the one goal of winning for ONE team over physics and STEM, with very objective, obtainable and worthwhile goals for the individual, and our nation.
This was a link posted in an online forum I participate in on black science fiction:
It’s Black History Month and a great time for The Internets to remember that black people exist, and apparently, it sucks to be us.
First I read a piece in xojane about the racism hurled toward black cosplayer Chaka Cumberbatch. Then Comic Alliance published a piece on the dearth of black writers in the comic book industry. I’m sure there will be more articles just like this in the next 22 days.
I’m a second generation Trek fan, a life long Star Wars fan and sporadic Marvel fangirl. I know the Fellowship of the Ring by heart. I self-identified as a geek long before I self-identified as a metalhead – but I honestly never really thought I was much of an anomaly until going to a mostly white college. You see, many of the kids I hung out with in my middle-class, black neighborhood in Chicago were (and are) geeks, obsessing over Star Wars lore, reading Spiderman and X-Men comics, trading Transformers, watching Aliens on HBO.
There are tons of us: black, geek, proud – and generally invisible in portrayals of mainstream geek culture. And let’s face it, geek culture is mainstream.
Her article makes the astute observation in the following sad, simple formula:
"Geek" culture = white; "Urban" culture = black (in general).
"The Big Bang Theory" had Neil deGrasse Tyson in a brief cameo, but with the exception of an Indian scientist played by Kunal Nayyar (Dr. Rajesh Koothrappali) that fell in love with Siri, the cast is as diverse as "Cheers," "Friends" or "Seinfeld."
Advertising is simply information about a product or service - where/how to purchase it and what price; marketing is informing our minds how-to-think, or how we should think to drive the sales to said products and services.
Marketing has data that drives its decisions. Thus, an appearance by Dr. Tyson, as [his somewhat] ubiquitous presence has been in popularizing science to American culture is seen as a brief deviation from "the model." The model is the marketing plan that drives viewers to television stations and web sites, eventually to "point-and-click" = sales.
It is why things are so neatly packaged, socially "quantized" - and how we explicitly go along with it. An African American young woman that wants to write gaming code, a young man that wants to study science rather than hang out in the streets is labeled "white girl/boy" (I should know), and this sadly sometimes comes from their own immediate families. It is why Lil Wayne and Future can publish a controversial song about Emmett Till, further proving that for the untimely deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, the current two modern day minstrels would be flipping burgers at McDonald's, or sharing a cell.
"Geek" culture = chemistry sets, Lego's, museum trips, science documentaries, Sylvan tutoring, scholarships, telescopes; leading to science or engineering positions, management, entrepreneurship, vice president, CEO, Nobel Laureate. These guys couldn't "make" the team, they now expense $200,000 box seats and/or OWN the team!
"Urban" culture = 5 Star basketball camps, football camps, hip hop/pop culture, memorizing rap, sagging (minstrel) britches, weed smoking, "thug life" glorification, leading to in the RAREST of cases, Russell Simmons or Jay-Z. The majority become the poor, or brick and mortar for the prison-industrial-complex.
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary." Carter G. Woodson, "The MIS-Education of the Negro"
It is simply, a matter of marketing...
Ultra-fast computers of the future might consist of tiny pieces of superconducting material linked electrically to equally small mechanical resonators, the former providing the processing power and the latter the memory. That is the prospect raised by new work carried out by an international group of physicists, showing that quantum information can be passed between the two kinds of component in such a way that this delicate information might be protected from environmental interference.
Quantum computers exploit the counterintuitive idea that tiny objects can exist in more than one state at the same time. Rather than processing bits – which are either 0 or 1 – such devices instead manipulate qubits – which can be 0 and 1 simultaneously – potentially allowing vast numbers of operations to be carried out in parallel and rendering these devices far quicker than classical computers.
Physicists are working on a number of different kinds of quantum computer but all have their downsides. Some exploit the spin of individual particles, such as atoms, molecules or photons. The quantum states in these devices can be made quite robust against interference from outside – one of the biggest challenges in building a workable quantum computer – but they require bulky apparatus that is not well suited to building computers with large numbers of qubits. Suitable scaling up should not be a problem for solid-state designs, however, such as devices that exploit the quantum-mechanical properties of superconductors. But these devices are extremely susceptible to electromagnetic interference.
Physics World: Quantum computers turn mechanical
https://www.facebook.com/groups/readinginblack/
That is so cool, I'm really excited about it. But jeez, what am I going to say about myself? I'm really pretty boring these days.
Now back in the day...
Article I wrote for World of Black Heroes.
Art by peter aymard cacho
Characters Created by Me.
George Edward Alcorn, Jr. received a four-year academic scholarship to Occidental College, Los Angeles ,California where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics. He received his degree with honors while earning eight letters in basketball and football. George Alcorn earned a Master of Science in Nuclear Physics in 1963 from Howard University, after nine months of study. During the summers of 1962 and 1963 George Alcorn worked as a research engineer for the Space Division of North America Rockwell. He was involved with the computer analysis of launch trajectories and orbital mechanics for Rockwell missiles, including the Titan I and II, Saturn IV, and the Nova.
In 1967 George Alcorn earned a Ph.D. in Atomic and Molecular Physics from Howard University. Between 1965-67 Alcorn conducted research on negative ion formation under a NASA-sponsored grant. Dr. Alcorn holds eight patents in the United States and Europe on semiconductor technology. His area of research includes:
Adaptation of chemical ionization mass spectrometers for the detection of amino acids and development of other experimental methods for planetary life detection;
Classified research involved with missile reeentry and missile defense;
Design and building of space instrumentation, atmospheric contaminant sensors, magnetic mass spectrometers, mass analyzers;
Development of new concepts of magnet design and the invention of a new type of x-ray spectrometer.
Nelson George has an article in the New York Times today titled:
Still Too Good, Too Bad or Invisible
The following paragraph pretty much captures why I make documentary films and write science fiction. I would only add "Are they scientists?"
"Looking at these Oscar-nominated films, we should ask: Are black characters given a real back story and real-world motivations? Are they agents of their own destiny or just foils for white characters? Are they too noble to be real? Are they too ghetto to be flesh and blood? Do any of these characters point to a way forward?"
Nelson George writes about four movies that feature African American actors: Flight, Django Unchained, Lincoln, and Beasts of the Southern Wild. The Oscar nominees are Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, and Quvenzhané Wallis, however George discusses many more than the three characters these played. He is searching for character complexity and only finds it in Wink, the father in Beasts of the Southern Wild.
I'm not so particular a critic, I like to see African Americans playing all types of characters reflecting the true diversity within the African American community (and our scientists). I expect there to always be another film so no one film MUST carry the weight of the entire African American community.
Let's keep writing complex characters in our science fiction and maybe, just maybe, they will find their way into a feature film.
