Late Winter Reading

New Venture -

Two young men stake their future on settling an asteroid out in the Kuiper Belt.  But they soon encounter something that changes the course of human history.      (adult material contained within.)
https://www.createspace.com/5346916

The Osmotics

A young man decides he does not want to be a part of a reverse-evolution experiment, and goes off in search of reversal surgery.  On the way, he encounters life-changing experiences.  (LGBT title).
www.createspace.com/4661301

A Strange Enterprise

A collection of speculative fiction.  What if we skipped Mars altogether and went for Jovian Moon exploration?   An alt-history romp, and other tales for your enjoyment.    (general reading)
www.createspace.com/4281639

Whatever you end up reading, enjoy it.

Discontent

It was 2015 already

and

The winter would just not quit...

There was that local city councilman who

called and got a ticket fixed – exposed by local news.

The tax hike pushed and passed by Republicans –

Then they promptly announced a new highway project.

Washington, D.C. legalized marijuana – and the mayor

got threatened by members of Congress.

There was Obama trying to get immigration reform done,

being fought tooth and nail by opposing forces.

That NFL player getting slapped down for swatting

his young son with a wooden stick.

Another famous person stripped down on stage,

during the Oscar awards celebration no less.

Scandal after scandal fueled much discontent.

and oh, yes, the weather was bitterly cold;

The outdoor environment was lousy too.

But –

Spring is right around the corner;

hopefully things will improve,

indoors and out.

 - end

Incremental wins the day

     It caught my attention the other day when some government RFP circulated for “game-changer” technology proposals for something or other, on a technology mailing list. Well, seems to me that most significant progress has been made in small steps. Rocketry had to start with black powder, then with rudimentary cryogenics. Scaled up to say, the V-2, it still took years to perfect. Then, scaled up further still, to orbit an astronaut. More years of hard work were required. From the early days of rocketry up to the first orbiting “Sputnik” took around 100 years.

The Internet could be said to have started with Morse code – the first effective transmission of information over wires, predating voice transmission. Sometime later the Baudot code was adopted for most teletype transmissions. This was a five-bit scheme of sorts. This was surpassed by other, denser communications technologies, culminating in the TCP-IP protocols used in the Internet today. From the earliest adoption of Morse Code up to early Internet experiments took over 100 years. (1844 to 1969-70).

The natural laws of physics we all are enfolded and entrapped by require us to go about things in a certain way. There is no “free lunch.” We must incrementally walk our development forward, in small steps. Eventually we get there. But the huge, amazing breakthroughs? Very rare, far and few in between. And often it seems we only make a major breakthrough because researchers have painstakingly laid the groundwork for us to do so.

Stunning game-changers would be nice. But it is the incremental groundwork that wins the day – in my humble opinion. Thanks for reading.

Cuttting Edges

Isis is the name of a two-edged sword,

with ideology to kill those it cannot convert.

The sword that slices will turn on its owner,

who will be diced and chopped by the errant

hands of fools wishing for paradise.

They rolled the dice and instead will be sliced,

sent to hell by those they would stick with malice.

The two-edged sword will turn on its owner,

slicing and dicing authors of religion by force.

Armaments of the west will crush the life out

of these desert vermin, leave remains for insects.

Sword that would slice, eaten by mere lice.

The worst human vice is to kill for paradise.

More charred, burned bodies in the desert.

Human flesh waste rots in the name of what?

No sense nor logic in fanatic religious beliefs,

they always seem to bring suffering and grief.

- end

distracted

Cold
Vacation fun
in a land of warmth and cacti and traffic.
Distracted
by all that life has to offer
and everything thrown at me

Takes time to duck and run,
or confront and deal with.
Takes all of my energy
to cope with the necessary.

So if you do not find a lot written lately,
it is because the author is on the front lines of life
dodging bullets
and firing a few of his own.
Peace out peace out peace out.

The state of Space Exploration

On the occasion of the good news I saw the other day – the fact that Obama is going to actually request an increase for the FY 2018 NASA budget – it seemed as good a time as any to ruminate on the state of all things space nowadays.

When one thinks of the unmanned probes and rovers, things are looking pretty good. Between the ESA and NASA, we have recently visited or are orbiting nearly every planet in the Solar System.   (The Voyager probes did fly by every outer planet except Pluto)  Messenger went to Mercury recently. The ESA orbited Venus with a sophisticated imaging probe for quite a while. Of course, NASA has rovers crawling around on the surface of Mars, and a couple of orbiters as well. The ESA sent an orbiter-lander combo a few years ago (Mars Express) , and their orbiter is still working. There is a JPL probe around Jupiter. Cassini was orbiting Saturn until very recently, and sent back huge amounts of information. The Huygens probe successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan, and sent back photos.

In the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the Dawn spacecraft is approaching Ceres, after visiting Vesta. These are the two largest planetary bodies in the “inner belt.” Then you get all the way out to Pluto, where the New Horizons spacecraft is rapidly approaching to snap some photos. A lot of robotic spacecraft are gathering reams of science data and images these days.

There are also some sun-orbiting observatories, and many Earth-observing craft.

The manned, or human-crewed expeditions are far fewer. Crews of three will travel to and from the ISS from time to time, and they are working on many science experiments. As of this writing, a Russian and an American are going to spend a full year in space, to see how people can do for that long in weightlessness.

Living in space weightless is hard on the human body. Bones degrade, fluids move around, sleep and well-being are affected. We need to better understand how to counteract these problems before more folks can live and work in space permanently. But the upshot is, there are currently no human missions to anywhere other than low earth orbit. There is always talk of visiting Mars with astronauts, or going back to the Moon. Testing is going on with NASA's Orion spacecraft, with a Human-crewed test slated for around 2017.

It is easy to envision a future filled with Asteroid mining, space colonies orbiting the Earth or on the Moon, or on Mars. Getting there will be a long, hard road. But it should be a fascinating journey, and this old baby boomer will be watching as long as he can draw a breath.

For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Solar_System_probes

or just go to www.space.com or www.spacedaily.com .     Thanks for reading.

Taking Stock

Oh the soaring hopes felt with each purchase,

“how fine it will be to make easy money!”

You just know those companies will go

up in value, and make thousands for you.

But then reality comes crashing in,

with each day of triple-digit loss.

They drop and your heart sinks too.

“Patience,” counsels a better voice.

To participate in a financial world

run by minds far sharper than ours

is always a risky proposition...

seems like we only make money if they do.

Everyone has a stake in the markets,

and even experts cannot fully predict

which way it will go for sure. But

it is not a game for faint-hearted souls.

As I clench my desk with sweaty hands,

seeing each new days losses, I am left to

wonder: Just how faint-hearted am I?

   - end

Bad Moves in River City

It is not a good thing to be poor in Des Moines, Iowa. Poor as in working poor all the way to unemployed and broke. You see, there used to be some outlets for a guy who is bored but with not very much cash. You could go fishing along the river near downtown. Or walk some wooded trails along the river, taking in nature. There were some options for the not-so-rich and not-so-pretty folk, of whom there are a lot. Even if all you had was a broken-down jalopy or bus fare or a bike to get you to the river area – you still could enjoy the water and greenery.

But then at some point in time, the city fathers or powers that be decided they wanted a chic new sparkling riverfront. The first to suffer the consequences were the homeless people. All they wanted was to live simply, outdoors by the river. But the new trail-user class decided they were unsightly and had to go. All of a sudden, after around 150 years of being incorporated as a city, the powers that be insisted that the homeless pay “rent” or get out.

Oh sure, there is a splendid homeless shelter. You can make use of it if you reserve a bed by 6 PM, refrain from any use of alcohol and adhere to various other rules. (I'm sure the powers that be are not always refraining from alcohol use in their homes.) What they don't seem to understand is that for a certain subset of people, they cannot tolerate rules. They are not any kind of threat, but rather they want to make good the promise of living in “freedom.” Freedom to do what they want, even if it is destruction of their bodies through substance abuse. Who are others to tell them they cannot? They are adults, after all, making adult choices.

So the homeless were evicted from riverfront wooded areas. Then, the people who fish along both sides of the Des Moines River downtown were next to go. They left trash and dead fish, it was said. They were loud and obnoxious, it was said. We just can't have that next to our pristine walkers and joggers. So the fisher-people were forbidden to fish along the river. Another segment of the public was denied access to our river areas downtown.

Now, recently, they have removed the drive on the east side of the river as part of a beautification effort at the Botanical center. And barricaded portions of West River Drive. More areas of the river cut off from the simple folks. No, you have to own a dog and go to the dog park, or be a paying guest of the botanical center on the East side of the river. No longer can people drive to the riverfront to fish, or simply take a walk along the water and clear one's head. No, this is a new city now, a special city. Only the elite can go to areas formerly open to everyone.

I'm wondering when they will charge tolls to ride the bike trails, or do inspections of your bicycle to ensure it is up to the standards of some uptight committee. Inspect your person perhaps? We have become so risk-averse and panicky today, we cannot allow public access to our own 'wilderness' areas. This is an affront to the principles our nation was founded on, and an insult to the public who must pay taxes and obey rules, but is now denied the enjoyment of public areas. Bad moves, Des Moines. 

     - end

Deflationary Trend

Gas prices drop at the pump,

give us all some happiness;

Natural gas also takes a dump,

helps maintain US consumer bliss.

Some other prices have dipped,

even though many remain high.

Beef buyers feel they are gypped,

small herds are a stated reason why.

But one object was never meant

to be deflated at a crucial time:

A Football is a key instrument,

Not tampered with, left sublime.

When 11 are deflated in one game,

the offending team is truly defamed!

They should all be ashamed.

- end.

Expensive lesson

The innocuous look on the young lady distracted me. As did her conversation about liking clothes. I thought, “OK, a bored young person, stuck working on a Saturday. Fine – whatever.”

She finally finished recording my purchases, then said, “Ok, you are done,” and I just moved on. She was obviously not very experienced at her job, or did not care. I missed the fact that she rang up a shirt twice.

So, after visiting with some friends in a nearby city, I returned to the huge outlet mall. I took my purchases and receipt in, and asked a kind young man who was at the register to take off the charge. He did so, without a problem. But he had removed the shirt from my bag to scan the tag, and then apparently forgot to return the shirt to my bag. There were other people coming up in line, and so on. So, after he had finished, I thanked him, and moved away, not aware that my nice new shirt was missing. I had neglected to make sure my shirt was returned to my sack, and he had apparently missed it too.

Lesson learned for me. An expensive lesson. Watch what they are doing, watch the amounts, and make sure you have your purchases in hand. For I have reached the age of easily lulled that all is well. The age I have to be doubly on guard. The age that the young think I am old and stupid (in the last case they would be right). I have reached the age of unfortunately needing to be constantly vigilant when making purchases.

I realize that you can't always trust retail situations. And it may be an innocent mistake on their part. Fatigue from checking people through all day, boredom, etc. I need to watch out for myself, and watch them. Unfortunate. It would have helped if a manager would have been around, keeping an eye on the employees and all there – they might have caught that.

Watch those clerks :-) 

 

Book teaser

Thanks for taking a moment to check out my books for sale:

Experimental Tales www.createspace.com/4973862

The Osmotics www.createspace.com/4661301

Mirror Worlds www.createspace.com/3633147

A Strange Enterprise www.createspace.com/4281639

Future Property www.createspace.com/3859469

Shadow Intersection www.createspace.com/4113022

- and hope you have a good day.

A Frozen State

Politicians love to pontificate,

Sum up all their accomplishments;

They call this speech the “state of the state,"

Ignore the other party's admonishments.

The state of our state

would be first-rate

if only the subzero cold

would get gone post-haste.

Springtime will bring the best

that Iowa has to offer – bless

our winter-weary souls as much

as politician-free TV would impress!

Stay warm everyone.

- end

What everyone else is talking about

Some links of interest of all kinds.  Have fun  :-)

Over-policing mania proves flawed

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/10/americas_over_policing_bombshell_how_new_data_proves_stop_frisk_critics_were_right_all_along/

Trans Teen and pancakes inspire the internet.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gay-voices/''

Possessed and out with it now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/domenick-scudera/i-am-possessed-by-a-demon_b_6436274.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices

Bad gay porn acting

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/bad-gay-porn-acting-is-all-you-really-need-right-now#.axDbw20V3

Cumber baby OMG

http://www.buzzfeed.com/elliewoodward/omg-a-cumberbaby-im-not-okay-someone-hold-me-oh-lord-my-feel#.olEQ4wYNK

31 photos that are kind of, well, uncomfortable...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukebailey/uncomfortably-silver#.vqE34PVge

Last surviving rescue dog from the 9-11 disaster

http://i.imgur.com/UwW5cCn.jpg

Australian newspaper publishes Mohammed cartoon

http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2015/01/10/australian-newspaper-publishes-mohammed-cartoon/

Catch!

http://i.imgur.com/h1WXhp9.gif

Taken off my pants in most malls

http://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/2r0ek6/ive_taken_off_my_pants_in_most_malls_that_ive/

- never ending

Je Suis Charlie

Terrorists fleeing a printing plant got shot full of holes today.

Good riddance to more of the scourge of humankind.

They don't stand a chance against democratic traditions;

Their hatred rages, uncaring and blind.

Freedom of expression, especially speech, is a cherished value of democracies. Even though it often seems  offensive, vile, repulsive and repugnant, nevertheless it is important to allow people this freedom. Dictatorships over time have tried to repress it, without success. They have fallen every time. Democracies, however, appear to have stood the test of time. 

The danger in the West seems to have been, up until now, a major corporate or political interest affecting the media, putting forth a too-conservative or too-liberal message. The terrorists in Paris showed us there is a greater threat to ourselves than each other!
     Fanatical religions that advocate violence are a real threat to us all, no matter what religion it is they claim. If they force their will upon the weaker members of society, using some supposed interpretation of a holy book, they are wrong. If they mutilate or torture women in the name of some pride or prophet, they are wrong. Religion and government should always remain separate – when someone tries to combine the two, disaster always seems to follow. Fanaticism is a threat to us all.

We all stand with France against the evil that these terror groups represent. I am glad they finally got the terrorists today, and am sorry that innocent lives had to be lost. I hope we can rid the world of these terror-pushing vermin and make it safer for everyone else. Time will tell. Thanks for reading.

Hawks Shot Down

Off they go,

our heroes in black and gold.

Ready to play in a bowl game;

Also to brave sunny elements

on Florida beaches and taste

delicacies in restaurants.

They have fought hard all year,

gone through grueling practices,

even won some games on the road.

Now they face the most difficult

opponent of all – their own selves.

The warming sun saps their edge,

good food and drink puts them at ease.

Their coach gladhands the press

trying at the very least to appease.

So they take to the field,

full of good hospitality,

their hard edges blunted...

And lose horribly.

Run after run penetrates their lines,

score after score puts them behind.

They attempt rally after rally,

finally scoring on sheer will.

But the damage is done, victory

easily won by the opposition.

Maybe next time we might want

to confine them to their rooms until

after the game.

A victory would be rewarded,

with beach time, meals and fun.

A defeat would be met with a

silent plane or bus ride home.

Something to consider as our

beloved Hawkeyes flap home

with tail-feathers drooping.

Either way, they have the

rest of their lives to

recover from defeat,

or celebrate victory.

      - end

Happy New Year

A year of new possibilities,

fun experiences with friends,

travel to warm places,

seeing some new faces.

Adventures,

vacations,

work ordeals aplenty.

Cool waters in hot sun,

happiness radiating everywhere.

Intimacy amidst the joy.

Shared moments of warmth

poetry

of physical release,

motion, action, reaction,

rest –

bliss.

Sleep,

repeat,

endless...

life is fun,

and then the rest;

a bright future beckons us.

     - end

I see

I see the smiling faces, warm greetings of loved ones to each other.

I see the happy scampering kids running around mothers.

I see the occasional frown of a shopkeeper beneath their smile.

I see many entrepreneurs, all offering free samples, all hoping for a good day.

I see smiles painted on, plastered on, varying, waffling – facades strong and weak

I see gray skies and gray ground outside of the warm pleasant shopping mall.

I see reality underpinning artifice everywhere I look.

I see we have done a good job applying our veneer of civilization.

I see a few birds swimming in a thawed December river; they are in formation.

I see formations everywhere, in nature and humankind.

I see a military world at war with itself, and yet wondrously holding together.

I see blurs in the morning before the cyber-news impresses and depresses my soul.

I see pictures of despair and occasional shoots of hope.

I see greedy markets gyrate, resonating with the greed in me.

I see little hope, but sometimes I see a little more.

I see the endless stretch of days and wonder how to make them mean something.

I see how fortunate I am, at least some of the time.

I see how powerless I am to change, and wonder that I have done as well as I have.

I see you, and how sometimes that makes this day truly special.

I see the priceless value of another human soul resonating with mine somehow.

I see how little an artificial currency really means when I have the real you.

I see a thrashing universe, and sometimes tiny bits clinging together.

I see time slowed to a crawl, and us clinging so tight we cannot separate.

I see darkness and I see light.

I see.

Vast new resources

Out at the edge of our Solar System lies the Kuiper belt. Thought to be full of the leftover material from the formation of our Solar System, this is an area studded with millions, perhaps billions of small worldlets and planetoids. Many are thought to be coated with water ice, as well as frozen hydrocarbons. This class of objects is also known variously as Trans-Neptune Objects, or Scattered Disk Objects (referring to the gravitational effect from Neptune's orbit). We are discovering more and more about this region of space all the time. There are undoubtedly a lot of valuable metal ores on many of these bodies. Someday in the distant future, humanity will be out there, studying, surveying and eventually mining and colonizing them.

Closer in, orbiting Saturn, are also many moons. We have discovered a total of 53 natural satellites so far, many in just the last ten years (thanks to the Cassini probe and ground observations). Each one has unique characteristics. Some sweep through or near the rings, creating gaps between the rings. There may come a time when we have automated outposts on the stable moons in Lagrangian orbits surrounding Saturn.

When humanity is able to construct outposts along the way, perhaps on Jovian Moons, and then Saturnian Moons, the way will be paved to go all the way out the Kuiper belt. Even then, we will have barely “scratched the surface” in finding and harvesting resources. For beyond the Kuiper belt, surrounding it and the rest of the Solar System, is an even larger mass of cosmic debris called the Oort Cloud. It is theorized that this cloud, which overlaps the Kuiper belt at its closest point, extends all the way out to a half of a light-year from the Sun or more.

The distance between the Earth and our Sun is 93 million miles. This is also known as “one AU” for astronomical unit. The Kuiper belt is around 50 AU distant from Earth. The Oort cloud is theorized to extend all the way out to 100,000 AU. These asteroids, worldlets and planetoids are not densely packed, but rather a fair distance from each other. Remember, we have sent several space probes through the inner asteroid belt, just beyond Mars, without hitting any rocks. These have made it to Jupiter, Saturn and even to the edge of the Solar System and beyond (Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft).

Our Solar System is so vast, and contains so much wealth, it boggles the mind.

The vastness and richness of Space makes our Earthly problems seem tiny in comparison, at least to me. All this wonder is beckoning the human race to come and partake. Here is hoping that we will discover the resolve and will to do so.

My upcoming book, “New Venture” will touch on some of the possibilities – and of course,the perils and dangers too. New Venture is due out sometime next year. Thanks for reading.

(Facts and figures taken from Wikipedia and NASA informational pages freely available on the Net.)

Universal Shorthand

Quote from a song:

“Mathematics is the language of love”

In the spirit of fascination with math's ability to describe our universe in shorthand, here are a few old formulas – and some new stuff from the imagination.

π – Greek letter and symbol meaning the ratio of a circumference of a circle to its diameter. The number goes on forever, but a popular designation is 22/7 (22 over 7) or 3.14159.... One of the irrational numbers, and mentioned in such movies as “Contact” based on the book by Carl Sagan.

An irrational number is any real number that cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers. Most real numbers are therefore irrational. Some have theorized that someday a “superior mathematics” will arise where most irrational numbers become rational.

Einstein's famous formula: E=MC2 or energy = matter converted, squared. A small amount of matter can be converted to a large amount of energy, especially in nuclear fission and fusion, or even nuclear bombs.

Euler's Identity:

eix π

e denotes exponential progression, and π denotes the perfect symmetry of a circle. Both are “transcendental” numbers – they go on forever. Someone named Euler combined their quantities to describe space and time. There is an article in the current issue of Wired magazine that goes over it in detail – very fascinating stuff.

For someone with patience and smarts, mathematics offers endless challenge and entertainment – a miniature universe in our minds, reflecting the macro universe 'out there' . And with major discoveries, for instance the discovery and usage of the value zero, new vistas open up. There is no telling what we will discover in the future. But if the past is any guide, there is no real limit to the expansion capability of the human race.

While thinking about things like math formulas, I came up with an idea for a shorthand for emotions. There is another person who wrote a book on this subject, but I'm just throwing out my 2 cents (not for profit. )

If we assign a symbol or value to common emotions, say a delta symbol for happiness, or a minus symbol for sadness, then it may become possible to run some simple “emotional equations” to reduce common human emotional experiences etc to equations. Then it is not such a stretch to assume one can program a computer with said equations, and have it (or a robot face) express said emotions.

It is all mathematical symbols and equations, and as people have shown, these can be coded and run on computers very well.

We Feel emotions, at a foundational level inside. But deep in our brains, are they not simply patterns of electrochemical pulses, ordered surges of chemicals? Serotonin, dopamine, norepinepherine. Sodium and potassium. Ordered firings and surges of chemicals. Someday we may reduce emotions and feelings themselves down to seemingly simple mathematical formulae. At that point we may be said to have evolved from homo sapiens sapiens, since we will have codified and resolved our own emotional processes. The same could be said for memory encoding in the brain. And researchers are working on deep understanding of these processes as I type this. 

When all this will happen, however, is anybody's guess. I get emotional just thinking about it! 

Thanks for reading.

Sinuous no more

I was born in an analog world,

clock faces, radio signals, even car ignitions.

Electromechanical ways were sophisticated 

enough to drive society.

Today I sit and survey the past,

here in a world where every moment

of time is sliced and diced into a million

million pulses. Music is digitized,

sampled and played back -- yet still sounds good.

Pictures, sound, videos, news all streams of

discrete bits, on and off and on again.

Present reality is digitized from top to bottom.

No gentle undulations, only harsh divisions.

Segmented, separated experience so efficient

but in a way so much less mysterious.

Abundance in an absence of romance.

Little did we know – so we took the chance,

bet our future on cybernetic controls.

Here we are, like it or not.

But it is not so bad, really, most of the time,

with the world at my fingertips. 

Loss of analog technology 

seems insignificant today.

     - end