Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, Emergency, General Musings, Government, Humor, movies, Politics, Science Fiction, Society, Survival | Tags: Bill Gates, blogging, Democrats, Donald Trump, humor, James Cameron, jim downey, Mark Zuckerberg, Micheal Bloomberg, movies, politics, Republicans, Science Fiction, Skynet, Terminator, Warren Buffett
Three billion bank accounts ended on August 29th, 2016. The survivors of the monetary collapse called it Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the War of the Billionaires. The cartel which controlled the money, Ca$hnet, sent several Terminators back through time. Their mission: to leverage the buyout of the remaining political system. The first Terminator had taken the form of Donald Trump, who quickly moved to consolidate power in the Republican Party. The second Terminator was known as Micheal Bloomberg, who sought disruption and control of the Democrats. By the time Terminators Gates, Zuckerberg, and Buffett showed up, the working republic which had struggled for decades was finished.
Then the Billionaires began to war among themselves …
Jim Downey
(With apologies to James Cameron.)
[I can’t believe I just said that.]
Filed under: Connections, Emergency, Flu, Government, Health, Louis Pasteur, NPR, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, cytokine storm, Ebola, fire-flu, flu, health, influenza, Jason Beaubien, jim downey, Louis Pasteur, NPR, pandemic, Peter Sands, predictions, science, Science Fiction, Spanish flu, St. Cybi's Well, Wikipedia, writing
Last week I wrote the following excerpt from St Cybi’s Well:
Megan came out of the bedroom, dressed, but still toweling her hair. “Done. Bathroom’s all yours. What did the BBC have to say?”
Darnell glanced over at the stereo system, then back to her. “The government is asking people to just stay home if they have any indications of illness. There’s talk of a week-long ‘bank holiday’, so people don’t go in to work or school; we’ll probably hear more about that later today. And there have been more anti-immigrant riots in London and some other places. And not just the so-called ‘Tommys’.”
“People are frightened.”
“Yeah, no surprise.” Darnell nodded at the stereo again. “There was also some science reporting about VCS [Viral Cytokine Syndrome, which is the initial name for the spreading illness] itself. Looks like it is caused by a flu strain which is similar to the 1918 virus, but one which is even more virulent.”
Megan paused, her hands lowered. The towel hung limply by her side. “Didn’t that kill millions, world-wide?”
“Yeah.”
“And this looks to be worse?”
“Yeah,” Darnell repeated. “This seems to spread just as easily, but kills faster. Well, kills healthy adults faster – that cytokine storm thing, which is basically the immune system going crazy, creating high fever and complete exhaustion. Anyone who is young, or old, or otherwise has a compromised immune system, can get the flu and there’s a good chance that they’ll develop pneumonia which can kill them in a week or so without proper treatment.”
“But there are treatments for pneumonia.”
“There are. And even some things that can be done for someone with Cytokine Syndrome, if you get to them soon enough.” He sighed. “But how well do you think the health system here or anywhere will be able to handle such a fast-moving epidemic, particularly if health workers are among the most vulnerable group? Do you remember how devastating haemorrhagic fevers like Ebola have been in isolated areas, because health workers are often among the first victims of the disease? And those require direct contact with bodily fluids … this flu is airborne.”
Today, from NPR’s coverage of a new global health risk report:
Sands says the Ebola outbreak of 2014-15 was a wake-up call. It showed that the world is not prepared to deal with a rapidly spreading disease.
“The alerts were raised too slowly. Local health systems were quickly overwhelmed. The international response was slow and clumsy,” he says. “We lacked many of the medical products we needed, either therapeutic or vaccination or indeed even effective diagnostics.”
* * *
If an outbreak like the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed more than 50 million, were to happen today, the economic damage would be in the trillions of dollars. And the psychological toll could make things worse. Sands says news of a deadly, highly contagious pathogen could prompt people all over the world to panic.
“We are much more connected not just physically but by media nowadays,” he says. “Hearing about and seeing infectious disease outbreaks on TV can spread fear even more rapidly than the disease itself. That in turn can grow changes in behavior and policy which magnify the economic impact.”
*sigh*
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Connections, Google, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, bluestones, Carn Goedog, Castell Mawr, Craig Rhos-y-felin, Craig Rhosyfelin, Dalya Alberge, excerpt, jim downey, Mike Parker Pearson, Pentre Ifan, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Stonehenge, The Guardian, Wales, writing
Excerpt from Chapter 8 of St Cybi’s Well, titled “Pentre Ifan”, which I wrote 18 months ago:
Darnell nodded. “Sure. Now let’s take a look at that satellite map.”
He pulled out his phone again, tapped it a couple of times. Soon they were looking down at their current location centered on the map, with the resolution such that Pentre Ifan was off on the very left edge of the screen. St. John pointed at a slightly lopsided ring due north of Craig Rhosyfelin about the same distance from Pentre Ifan. “There. See?”
Darnell zoomed in on the image. The ring expanded until it was about half the size of the screen. It was actually a double ring of trees, bisected by a chevron of a single line of trees. “Yeah, OK. Not a perfect circle. Looks like it has a bit of a pinch on the east side, almost as if pointing that way.”
“Exactly!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t follow you.”
St. John pointed at the screen. “Points due east. That’s because before it was made into a hill fort, there’s evidence to suggest that it was a henge.”
“Huh.” Darnell looked at the image again. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“And I think that it wasn’t just any henge. I think that it was the precursor to Stonehenge.” St. John looked at Darnell, and there was a slightly mad gleam in his eye. “In fact, I think that the henge which was there was disassembled and then transported to Wiltshire and rebuilt as the iconic structure we all know today.”
Go ahead, take a look for yourself.
Then take a look at this item from yesterday. Here’s a good excerpt:
“We have dates of around 3400 BC for Craig Rhos-y-felin and 3200 BC for Carn Goedog, which is intriguing because the bluestones didn’t get put up at Stonehenge until around 2900 BC,” he said. “It could have taken those Neolithic stone-draggers nearly 500 years to get them to Stonehenge, but that’s pretty improbable in my view. It’s more likely that the stones were first used in a local monument, somewhere near the quarries, that was then dismantled and dragged off to Wiltshire.”
The dating evidence suggests that Stonehenge could be older than previously thought, Parker Pearson said. “But we think it’s more likely that they were building their own monument [in Wales], that somewhere near the quarries there is the first Stonehenge and that what we’re seeing at Stonehenge is a second-hand monument.”
I scare myself sometimes.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, Expert systems, Health, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Scientific American, tech | Tags: blogging, Communion of Dreams, cyberware, Elizabeth Gibney, health, jim downey, medicine, predictions, science, Science Fiction, Scientific American, technology
Good article at Scientific American about the coming medical monitoring technology. Excerpt:
“Why don’t we have a similar vision for our bodies?” wonders Gustafsson, an engineer whose team at the Swedish electronics company Acreo, based in Kista, is one of many around the world trying to make such a vision possible. Instead of letting health problems go undetected until a person ends up in hospital—the medical equivalent of a roadside breakdown—these teams foresee a future in which humans are wired up like cars, with sensors that form a similar early-warning system.
Working with researchers at Linköping University in Sweden, Gustafsson’s team has developed skin-surface and implanted sensors, as well as an in-body intranet that can link devices while keeping them private.
Gee, that sounds familiar. Here’s a passage from Chapter 15 of Communion of Dreams about the remote-monitoring of a ship’s crew through their cyberware, documenting medical conditions during a crisis:
“Main drive has been disengaged, transit rotation to new heading begun. All human crew members of the ship are now experiencing severe physiological stress. Attempting to identify source of this event . . .”
“My god,” gasped someone.
“. . . expert Stepan has become unresponsive. Experts Rurik and Rika attempting to establish control of transit. Several human crew members have expired. Medical telemetry indicates cerebral hemorrhage in most cases. Other crew members experiencing symptoms of shock and heart attack. PC systems attempting to cope. All human crew members seem to be affected. None of the standard emergency protocols sufficient to counteract whatever is occurring. Transit has been stopped. Expert Stepan remains unresponsive. Source of event is indeterminate. There have been no detectable changes to any ship systems, nothing abnormal in environmental controls. Only eight human crew members remain alive, all are critical and unconscious. PC systems reporting imminent death of five of those crew members. Prognosis for remaining three is not good, death is expected within an hour. All medical telemetry will be compiled and transmitted on second channel. ”
Another excerpt from the SA article:
To get around that, Strano’s lab has developed synthetic, long-lived detector materials that can be mixed with a water-based gel and injected under the skin like a tattoo. The ‘ink’ for this tattoo consists of carbon nanotubes coated with dangling polymer strands, which have a lock-and-key chemical structure that recognizes biomarkers by dictating which molecules can dock with them. When biomarkers bind to the polymer, they subtly change the optical properties of the nanotube: shine a light on the tattoo, and a glow reveals the presence of the biomarker.
Again, from Communion of Dreams:
She nodded. “You know how the palmkey is installed and works, right?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s a thin film injected just under the skin, forms a fluid web across the palm that is programmed to function as a close-range transceiver. Simple enough.”
Predictions, predictions …
Jim Downey
Thanks to Tim for the heads-up!
Filed under: Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Flu, Government, Harry Potter, Pandemic, Predictions, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Terrorism | Tags: Bend the Arc Jewish Action, blogging, civil liberties, Communion of Dreams, Constitution, Darnell Sidwell, excerpt, fire-flu, flu, influenza, jim downey, pandemic, predictions, religion, Science Fiction, society, St. Cybi's Well, Stonehenge, terrorism, writing, Yahoo News
I wrote the following for Chapter 12 of St Cybi’s Well some months back. It’s set near the visitor’s center at Stonehenge, and occurs just as the pandemic influenza* is getting started in the UK, when people aren’t quite sure yet what is happening. The main character, Darnell Sidwell, sees a group of protesting people, and finds out that they’re members of the ‘British Defense League’, my fictional version of this group.
Before he got to the front of the protest, he looked over the fence, saw something of a party going on. People drinking, dancing to music from a portable sound system, standing around smoking. A couple of young men were standing beside the fence, watching the crowd flow by, passing a bottle back and forth.
One of the men saw him looking at them. “Wotcha lookin’ at?”
Darnell walked over to them. He stopped a couple of paces before the fence. “Nothing, really. You?”
“Oh, a Yank, are ya?” The man seemed to relax a bit. His friend, who had been looking down the road, turned to look at Darnell as well. “Jus’ watchin’ this lot go by. Havin’ a bit of a laugh. You got any cigs?”
“No, sorry, I don’t smoke. Yeah, I’m a Yank.”
The friend spoke. “Your lot got the right idea, I say.”
“Howso?”
“‘Bout the illegals.” He turned to his mate. “We should do that.”
“Yeah, kick ‘em all out,” agreed the friend. “All the Pakis and Blackies. They the ones what got this flu goin’. ‘Cause they’s dirty.”
“Uncivilized,” added his friend, taking a long pull on the bottle, then handing it over to the other.
“Flu?” asked Darnell, feigning ignorance.
“Yeah, the flu. What’s got ever’one comin’ here.” He gestured towards Stonehenge. “All the nutters lookin’ like Druids or Harry Potter. Ain’ you heard of it?”
“Um, no, I was just coming over to visit Stonehenge. Isn’t it always like this?”
“Nah. There’s a flu goin’ ‘round. Bad one,” said the man.
“People dyin’,” said the other. “Gov’s tryin’ to hide it, but word’s out.”
“Me aunt’s a nurse o’er London. She tol’ me mum.” He gestured behind him, towards the party going on. “Others heard ‘bout it too. Then some heard th’ nutters were coimin’ here, thought that we’d have a chance to make th’ telly.”
“Ah.”
The first man tilted up the bottle, drained it. “Say, got anythin’ t’ drink in your bag, there?”
“Just water.” Darnell smiled. “It’s a bit early for me.”
“Yeah, well,” said the second man, “ain’ for me. Drink’ll keep the sickness out. Alcohol kills it. Ever’one knows that.”
“Sounds like good advice,” said Darnell, turning to walk away.
“Hey, Yank,” called one of the men.
“Yeah?” asked Darnell, pausing.
The two men exchanged glances. The first one said “You seem OK. Word to th’ wise: don’t stick around too long.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From the news yesterday:
Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures.
“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Following that news item, Bend the Arc Jewish Action issued the following statement:
“Registering everyone of a certain religion to a list? We’ve seen that. It doesn’t end well.
“There is no way American Jews will ever find it acceptable for anyone – anyone – to be registered, singled out, profiled, discriminated against, or in any way mistreated by the government on the basis of their religion in this country. Mr. Trump’s suggestion is as terrifying as it is abhorrent.
“This runs counter to everything we believe in as Americans and Jews and we will not stand idly by as fear and bigotry are used to dominate our politics.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
St Cybi’s Well is set in an alternate time-line to our own, where the United States has become a ‘Constitutional Theocracy’ in part as a response to the 9-11 attacks. It’s fiction.
At least, I intended for it to be fiction …
Jim Downey
*What is referred to as the ‘fire-flu’ in Communion of Dreams, set 40 years later.
Filed under: Art, Astronomy, Augmented Reality, Connections, Light pollution, Man Conquers Space, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Wales | Tags: art, astronomy, augmented reality, blogging, excerpt, jim downey, light pollution, Pennant Melangell, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, Tanat, Wales, writing
It’s been a couple of months. Let’s have a bit from the current chapter I’m working on.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was full dark before he passed through Llangynog again, and headed up the Tanat valley. It was just past the first quarter Moon, and the sky was clear and brilliant. One of the things he always loved about visiting Wales was that the light pollution was minimal and he could see the stars almost as well as when he was on a shuttle run. About halfway up the valley to Pennant Melangell he stopped the Rover, shut it off and got out.
He stood there, leaning back against the cold metal and glass, and looked up, letting his eyes adjust. Slowly, more stars emerged, and he was able to trace the passage of several satellites in low orbit. There were plenty that he couldn’t see from the ground, ‘darks’ which were in the service of different intelligence agencies and military forces, but he knew they were there, watching, listening, perhaps even waiting to hunt on command.
And it struck him just how much this echoed something Megan had told him less than three weeks previously: “Look at it with new eyes,” she had said. “Try and see it as the believers see it.”
Was this the same thing?
He could pull out his hand-held, call up the appropriate app, and hold the camera pointed at the sky, and it would show him the satellites his eyes couldn’t see. But to do so would necessarily block his direct vision, his direct experience of the real sky above.
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket to protect them from the cold, and relaxed a little as he leaned against the vehicle. For now, he’d just take in the whole of the now-visible Milky Way as it arced high above.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This image will give you an idea of how dark the skies can be in Mid-Wales:
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Connections, Failure, Feedback, Gardening, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, feedback, gardening, J.H. Moncrieff, jim downey, Kickstarter, Legacy Bookbindery, predictions, reviews, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
It’s an annual ritual. Salvaging what I can of the deer netting, pulling up the long lengths of rebar which pin the support towers in place, packing up chickenwire. While it wasn’t as good a year as it could have been, it was a better year than I thought it would be, and I hope that the next year to come will be even better yet.
* * *
This is good. Relevant excerpt:
You know what writers feel like when they’re not writing?
Guilty. Incredibly guilty.
Miserable.
They don’t need anyone to come by and kick them while they’re lying there, writhing in the seventh circle of hell, telling them, “Oh, remember those ten books and multiple short stories you wrote? Well, sorry, you stopped writing for a year so none of that counts. You’re no longer a writer.”
* * *
We live in a disposable world. Disposable electronics (when was the last time you tried to fix a tablet, laptop, or television?). Disposable water bottles. Disposable people.
Last week, I did this:
That is, I detached the deer netting I had put on my tomato towers, folded it up, secured it, and stowed it away to reuse next year.
This, actually, was a stupid thing to do. That’s about $20 bucks of deer netting. It took me about 90 minutes to salvage it. The amount of my time (in terms of billable hours) which went into doing that is literally 10x the value of the netting I saved. Stupid.
I don’t mention this to tout how environmental, enlightened, or noble I am. None of those things explains why I did what I did.
Well, OK, I try to be environmentally conscious. But I’m not fanatic about it.
No, I did that because in this instance it wasn’t about economics. Gardening, in purely economic terms, is fairly dumb. I don’t do it to save money. I do it to save my sanity.
* * *
By nature and profession, I save old things. It’s just part of my life. And I’m good at it.
Now, that deer netting above isn’t old, or valuable. And how does spending 90 minutes on a weekday morning fiddling around with rusty twist ties and uncooperative lightweight netting save my sanity?
Well, because it gives me time to think.
And thinking is how I spend the vast majority of my time & energy writing.
* * *
It’s an annual ritual. Salvaging what I can of the deer netting, pulling up the long lengths of rebar which pin the support towers in place, packing up chickenwire. While it wasn’t as good a year as it could have been, it was a better year than I thought it would be, and I hope that the next year to come will be even better yet.
Yeah, I’m talking about my garden. But I’m also talking about St Cybi’s Well.
I should have been finished with the book two years ago, according to my Kickstarter plan and promises. Hell, even at that point, I thought I would be done with the manuscript early in 2013.
But writing is a process of discovery. Self discovery. I knew this, but having it driven home during the last couple of years has been … sobering.
Other than periods when I’ve struggled to sort out some particular issue with the book, I haven’t suffered the writer’s block which J.H. Moncrieff discusses in her blog post linked above. But upon occasion my writing has made me feel miserable. And guilty.
Part of that is just a sense of failure because I grossly misunderstood what it was going to take to finish this book. Yeah, I’m talking about the time & energy commitment. But I’m also talking about the psychological challenge of writing a book about the onset of the end of the world we know. Thinking through the details of that takes a toll.
Recently I asked an old friend to read the book so far, and give me feedback. As I told him, I have been so deep in this thing that I had lost my bearings — I could no longer tell whether the thing was any good or not. And that was true.
But the deeper truth was that I could no longer tell whether I was any good or not as a writer.
He says it is. We’ll see if I am.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Faith healing, Gardening, Habanero, Predictions, Science Fiction, Survival, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Bhut Jolokia, blogging, Carolina Reaper, Communion of Dreams, ethylene, gardening, Habaneros, hope, hot sauce, jim downey, Llangelynnin, Moruga Scorpion, predictions, Science Fiction, Sriracha, St. Cybi's Well, Wales, Wikipedia, writing
I took advantage of the cool but beautiful Spring day and did this yesterday:
That’s about 40×40. Good deep churn to about 10″ depth. The soil conditions were just about perfect. Now it’s prepped for me to plant things in a couple more weeks (it’s still a little too early here for tomatoes and Habaneros). And surprisingly, I don’t hurt nearly as much today as I expected.
Back to work on St Cybi’s Well. All that time tilling yesterday gave me a chance to think through some things.
* * *
From page 261 of Communion of Dreams:
“Who, Darnell? Who was she?”
The old man blinked, focused on Jon. “My sister, Megan. Somehow, she found th’ courage t’ step up, t’ look past th’ things that they’d always taught her about science ‘n medicine, t’ trust a small blue-white light that she could feel grow under her skin whenever she came close t’ someone with th’ flu. That light would seep out ‘n into ‘em, givin’ ‘em strength ‘n th’ ability t’ fight th’ virus.
“That was hope. That was real. Some of us were able t’ learn t’ find th’ light ourselves, ‘n she showed us how t’ allow it t’ grow, t’ become strong enough t’ reach out ‘n heal th’ others.
Guess what happens in the chapter I am currently writing.
* * *
Hope isn’t always real, or realistic. I’ve seen far too much of life to think otherwise. Likely, you have as well.
But sometimes it is. I picked these today:
That’s probably about 250 peppers. Most of them Bhut Jolokia. But a fair number of Carolina Reaper and a few Moruga Scorpion peppers. All three are recent or current “world’s hottest pepper” record-holders. And like last year, I’m going to box them up for a few days so that they can become fully ripe. I have not quite as many others I picked earlier and have frozen.
So, what does hope have to do with these?
Well, we had a *very* wet spring and early summer. Enough so that I thought that this year’s Habanero crop would be a complete loss. The plants were stunted, sickly, and very late to blossom.
But sometimes late bloomers will surprise you.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Feedback, Humor, Publishing, Science Fiction, Slate, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, direct publishing, Elena Ferrante, fate, feedback, George R.R. Martin, jim downey, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Laugh-In, Laura Miller, literature, reviews, Scarlett Thomas, Science Fiction, Slate, St. Cybi's Well, writing
Good article, worth reading the whole thing. Here’s an excerpt:
The fate of most books is a fragile thing; readers and the media get distracted easily. Any author’s beloved brainchild is more likely than not to slip through the cracks because it came out on the eve of a huge news event, or when the reading public was preoccupied with some other time-devouring darling, whether it be by George R.R. Martin, Karl Ove Knausgaard, or Elena Ferrante. If a novel does seize that fickle attention, it had better deliver on its promises, or the author may never get a second chance. Even when a novelist scores a big hit, the book that follows it isn’t guaranteed anything more than an advantage in garnering review attention. Pop quiz: Can you name the titles of the novels that Alice Sebold, Yann Martel, Mark Haddon, and Patrick Suskind published after The Lovely Bones, The Life of Pi, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Perfume?
This also applies to self-published work, of course. Another factor that scares the hell out of me as I keep writing St Cybi’s Well.
But I *think* I’ve just finished the current chapter. I’ll take another look at it tomorrow, and decide. Slow, uneven steps, but forward progress nonetheless.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 
