Filed under: ISS, Music, NASA, Predictions, Religion, Science Fiction, Space, Violence, YouTube
This is from the end of Chapter Three, set on a space station in Earth orbit:
There was a knot of perhaps 15 people, all facing one another around a bunch of tables shoved together. They finished their song, and clapping was heard throughout the atrium.
Jon smiled at Gates, explained. “Spacers. Crew off those two ships docked outside. Choral music has become something of a tradition the last few years, and each ship usually can field a fairly good ensemble of at least a half-dozen singers.”
“Huh. I had no idea.”
Another song started, this time with more voices. “C’mon, let’s go on down there.”
Why do I post this? Because of this wonderful clip:
Not choral music, but flute as an accompaniment to a song. The provenance of her flutes is impressive in itself. But the fact that we’re seeing a highly-trained, wonderfully intelligent person in orbit doing this just really makes my day . . . and re-affirms my faith in humanity overall.
It is sometimes easy to be cynical and depressed at the things we do.
This makes up for it.
Jim Downey
While the music played you worked by candle light.
Those San Fransisco nights.
You were the best in town.
Just by chance you crossed a diamond with a pearl,
Then turned it on the world.
That’s when you turned your world around.
Did you feel like Jesus?
Did you realize that you were a champion in their eyes?
Jim Downey
High speed photography, explosions, art, music. Wow:
Jim Downey
Via BB.
Filed under: Art, Augmented Reality, Music, Predictions, Publishing, Society, tech, Weather, Writing stuff
Last night, in the middle of a particularly impressive blizzard, I came in to my office to check the weather online and get the latest news. I clicked on the link for my favorite weather website, and was thoroughly confused. No, they had the blizzard there. But they had completely changed the design of the site – the switch had been made while I had dinner and watched a movie.
There at the head of the newly redesigned site was a friendly little note that scared the shit out of me:
Notice Anything Different? Click here to find out what’s new and improved at Weather Underground!
Oh, no!!!!
* * * * * * *
Three classic anecdotes/sayings, all related, but each with a slightly different lesson to offer:
1. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
2. Two cowboys are working on a fenceline. Without warning, a rattlesnake bites one of the cowboys on the leg, and he falls to the ground writhing in pain. “Do something!” he shouts at the other cowboy. The other cowboy draws his revolver and first kills the snake, then takes careful aim and shoots his buddy in the leg – right where he’d been bit. The first cowboy screams, “why the hell did you do that??” The second cowboy responds, “I don’t know how to treat a snakebite. But I know how to treat a gunshot wound.”
3. One evening, a guy is walking back and forth under a streetlight, looking down and obviously searching for something. Another fellow walks up and asks “lose something?” “Yeah, my keys,” says the first guy. “I’ll help ya look,” says the second. They spend about a half hour looking all around the lamppost. Finally the second guy says “I don’t see them around here anywhere.” “Oh, I didn’t lose ’em here. I lost them down there by the corner.” “Then why the hell are you looking for them here?” asked the second guy. “Light’s better here.”
* * * * * * *
I clicked the link, and got the explanation: they were introducing their new design tonight! After 2 years of hard work and functionality testing, they were confident that everyone was going to LOVE! the new site!
They were wrong. I didn’t love it.
And seemingly neither did a bunch of other people, as I found out on their blog and FaceBook page. Sure, some folks liked the ‘clean, fresh’ look (what, is this a mouthwash or something?) but a whole lot of others didn’t. Gone was a nice large page which gave you everything at a glance – current conditions, a small radar image, and easy to understand graphics forecasting conditions for the next five days. There was a ton of information there, and you could see everything easily, then go into further detail with just a click. It had been replaced by a series of smaller boxes slightly left of center, which contained much less information and in a smaller font. You could still find everything, but you had to scroll down the page or click tabs to do so.
* * * * * * *
1. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
This is perceptual limitation. Quite literally, you see the world in just one way. There is no ‘other’ option – there’s not even an awareness that another option is possible.
We all have this for some things. It can be a religious belief. Or sexual orientation. Or how to cook. Or a thousand other things. We just see one way that things are, and are completely blind to any difference, usually very stubbornly so.
* * * * * * *
I couldn’t for the life of me understand why they had done this, why they had made the change they did. It was clearly an inferior product – harder to use, large amounts of whitespace on my monitor for no good reason. Until someone use said that the site had been “iPadized” – that is, formatted for the iPad.
Ah.
* * * * * * *
2. Two cowboys are working on a fenceline. Without warning, a rattlesnake bites one of the cowboys on the leg, and he falls to the ground writhing in pain. “Do something!” he shouts at the other cowboy. The other cowboy draws his revolver and first kills the snake, then takes careful aim and shoots his buddy in the leg – right where he’d been bit. The first cowboy screams, “why the hell did you do that??” The second cowboy responds, “I don’t know how to treat a snakebite. But I know how to treat a gunshot wound.”
Here is still a functional limit, but one based on an awareness that there are other potential choices. That doesn’t really change things – there is still only one thing to be done, at least in the current time frame, no matter how clumsy it is in practice. Perhaps later you can learn about the other choices, turn them from being purely theoretical into actual options.
* * * * * * *
After much complaining and gnashing of teeth on the part of many commentators, someone at Weather Underground added a “Classic Site” link to the above announcement. Word quickly spread of this, with people explaining how to change the necessary bookmarks and whatnot to get back to their preferred website design. I did – it was nice to have all the functionality I expected back.
Of course, others now started to chime in that they liked the new look, and that the complainers were just resistant to change.
* * * * * * *
3. One evening, a guy is walking back and forth under a streetlight, looking down and obviously searching for something. Another fellow walks up and asks “lose something?” “Yeah, my keys,” says the first guy. “I’ll help ya look,” says the second. They spend about a half hour looking all around the lamppost. Finally the second guy says “I don’t see them around here anywhere.” “Oh, I didn’t lose ’em here. I lost them down there by the corner.” “Then why the hell are you looking for them here?” asked the second guy. “Light’s better here.”
This one is really similar to #2, but I think with one subtle yet important difference: there is an awareness of the limitations of a given tool/choice, but it is nonetheless still so appealing that it gets used in ways which are really inappropriate or counter-productive.
* * * * * * *
And here I think the mistake was made by the web designers. Perhaps they didn’t intentionally set out to optimize the new site for devices such as the iPad – it is entirely possible that this has just become a prevailing design aesthetic because of such devices, and since they are relatively new, the whole aesthetic seems new and exciting.
Technology changes things. Long poetic narrative was suited for oral presentation or a scroll-format codex – with the development of the book form we know now (pages gathered together) back around the first century, that probably had an impact on the decline of that literary form, since the necessity to flip pages back and forth tends to break up pacing. Old 78 rpm records could only play for about four minutes – the slightly smaller discs about three minutes – and so that became the standard length for popular songs. LP records opened up musical possibilities and so saw experimentation with longer songs. There are countless other examples.
But that’s just my perspective – based on my preferences and expectations. I’m not used to using an iPad, and don’t own one, so do not consider it as an option. It could well be that such a format will become the standard – and those of us with large monitors still tied to a desktop machine will be nothing more than dinosaurs. Until the next big change comes along and redefines things again. (Perhaps the cyberware augmented reality systems I predict in Communion of Dreams? We’ll see.)
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, BoingBoing, Fermi's Paradox, Music, NASA, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech
Lee Billings, a science writer I was not previously aware of, has a really nice little introduction over at BoingBoing on the topic of searching for exoplanets capable of supporting life. Here’s a bit:
I’m admittedly biased (just look at my Twitter feed—it’s clear what my interests are), but my argument rests on facts: The research architectures and observational capabilities required to find Earth-like planets in our region of the galaxy, and determine whether or not some of them harbor life, are already reasonably well-defined. Public interest in (if not knowledge of) the search for alien life is high, and nearly universal. And, in comparison to tasks like finding the Higgs boson, establishing the precise nature of dark energy, or experimentally validating string theory, completing much (though not all!) of this “planetary census” simply isn’t that expensive.
* * *
What if we are cosmically alone, on a planet as anomalously unlikely and fertile as a fruit tree flourishing in an arid wasteland, or a flower blooming in a desert? What if worlds like ours are common as grains of sand? Does the universe hum and throb with life, or does eternal silence and sterility reign outside of our small planet? The truth is, no one really knows. But that will soon change. And when it does, this knowledge can only fill our lives, our world, and our future with more excitement, mystery, and awe.
Interesting metaphor – the flower blooming in a desert. And exactly the same one I use in the beginning of Communion of Dreams for exactly the same reason. Obviously, the man is brilliant.
OK, to be a little more serious here, I just thought people might want to know about this fellow, since he is going to be reporting on the results of the Kepler mission over the next couple of weeks.
Jim Downey
*Gratuitous Pink Floyd reference.
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Feedback, Marketing, Music, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction
Well. Post 999. Who woulda thunk it?
I started this blog one month short of 4 years ago, ostensibly to discuss the process of revising, then submitting for publication Communion of Dreams.
Of course, along the way it became something much more than that. Another book emerged from it. I made a lot of friends. I connected with old friends. I documented the twistings and turnings of my life and fortunes. Stared into my navel far too much. Stared into the bright sun upon occasion. Started a new project, and watched it become insanely popular (though not exactly remunerative.)
I’m still waiting for final confirmation of the publication date and details from the publisher who is interested in CoD – even at this late date in the whole process, things could fall through. But with a little luck, the book will actually be out sometime in the new year, and we’ll see whether the over 29,000 downloads it has had since I first launched this blog translate into actual sales.
Wow – 29,000 downloads. That still amazes me, given that it has all been word of mouth and informal promotion.
So, thanks for the ride, everyone.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Babylon 5, Gardening, General Musings, Music, Science Fiction
There is nothing wrong with referring at this point to the ineffable. The mistake is to describe it. Jankélévitch is right about music. He is right that something can be meaningful, even though its meaning eludes all attempts to put it into words. Fauré’s F sharp Ballade is an example: so is the smile on the face of the Mona Lisa; so is the evening sunlight on the hill behind my house. Wordsworth would describe such experiences as “intimations,” which is fair enough, provided you don’t add (as he did) further and better particulars. Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart will encounter these moments of revelation, moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. These moments are precious to us. When they occur it is as though, on the winding ill-lit stairway of our life, we suddenly come across a window, through which we catch sight of another and brighter world — a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter.
I’m reminded of a post from three years ago, and the words of a friend in it:
“Yeah, but it’s like the way that the people involved in your book – the characters – are all struggling to understand this new thing, this new artifact, this unexpected visitor. And I like the way that they don’t just figure it out instantly – the way each one of them tries to fit it into their own expectations about the world, and what it means. They struggle with it, they have to keep learning and investigating and working at it, before they finally come to an understanding.” He looked at me as we got back in the car. “Transitions.”
Gives me something to think about as I put the garden to bed this morning.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Music, Science, Science Fiction, Sixty Symbols, YouTube
“Now it’s complete because it’s ended here.”
That’s from Dune, of course. The context is that it sums up the practical attitude of the Fremen – no dithering, no misgivings, just figuratively take a knife and cut the thing off, so you have a conclusion.
But that is also the attitude of scientists, when it comes to 
, at least according to the Sixty Symbols video about infinity.
It’s a good vid, and I recommend it. No, nothing terribly impressive about the images or production values. But it has a clarity that conveys how scientists think: they may be theoretical, but they’re also practical. They don’t like the concept of infinity, at least not when it is applied to understanding the physical universe. They’d rather leave that to the mathematicians. As a number of the scientists say, when infinity shows up in one of their equations/models, then there’s something wrong with the equation/model.
Jim Downey
A hand mirror? I think I had forgotten that. Which is interesting, because I know full well what the symbol 
means, both in astronomical terms and otherwise.
Anyway, the bit about the mirror is about the only new thing I got out of this well done but very pedestrian video. But part of that may simply be due to the fact that I’m a space exploration geek from way back, and remember following the different probe missions sent to Venus when I was a kid. And the thing is short – less than five minutes – so if you need a refresher course about what we know about Venus, take a look.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 