Filed under: Alzheimer's, Art, Babylon 5, Ballistics, Bipolar, Failure, Harry Potter, Hospice, Humor, John Lennon, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society
“Vir, do you believe in fate?”
“Well, actually, I believe there are currents in the universe, eddies and tides that pull us one away or the other. Some we have to fight, and some we have to embrace. Unfortunately, the currents we have to fight look exactly like the currents we have to embrace.”
Recently, I came up with an audacious idea. This is something which happens to me now and again. Most of the time, I chuckle over it, consider the possibilities, then let it slide back into the creative froth. But every now and again I get an idea I take somewhat seriously, and consider practically – not so much on whether I think it will work, but on whether I think I can convince enough other people that it will work.
Through the last couple of decades I’ve done better at this than you might think, batting about .500. Here’s a list of the big ones, along with a synopsis:
- Opening an art gallery. This *almost* worked, but remains my most expensive failure to date. It’s very sobering to lose money that belongs to family and friends who trust your judgment, not to mention all the work of yourself, your partner, spouses and employees.
- Writing a novel, and getting it published. Looks like this one will actually work.
- Paint the Moon. My biggest artistic success to date.
- Glass Canopy. This caught the imagination of a number of people, and generated a lot of discussion locally. Now such structures are used elsewhere for exactly this purpose. A failure, but not a total one.
- Nobel Prize for JK Rowling. A debacle, in that so many people hated the idea. But perhaps I was just premature.
- Ballistics By The Inch. A huge success. This was in no way just my idea, and I only did part of the work, but I think the vision I had for how the project would be received was largely mine.
- Co-authoring a care-giving memoir. Still early in the evaluation period on this, so can’t say whether it is a success or not.
And looking over that list, thinking about it, one of the clear things I see which helps make something a success is the amount of work I (and others) put into it. When presented with a zany idea, most people will be amused, say why they think it is crazy, and then more or less forget about it. But if confronted with the fact of an idea made manifest, a lot of that skepticism disappears (or never occurs to people in the first place.)
This isn’t very profound, of course, and certainly isn’t at all new. But I am still somewhat surprised to see how much it actually operates in the real world. It’s like imagination is so difficult for people that they just can’t get past their initial dismissal. I asked for comments on my latest idea, and so far have only heard from one person, who pointed out potential problems with it (this was actually a very helpful response). I can only guess that most other people consider it too nutty an idea to even bother with – but in my gut I’m pretty certain that if this resource existed it would be hugely popular and widely used.
But who knows? Was the voice a ghost or just hallucination? Do you embrace the current or fight it? Failure is real – both due to risk as well as inaction.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Emergency, George Orwell, Government, Politics, Predictions, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Terrorism, Travel, YouTube
The Miami-Dade Police Department recently finalized a deal to buy a drone, which is an unmanned plane equipped with cameras. Drones have been used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war against terror.
* * *
MDPD purchased a drone named T-hawk from defense firm Honeywell to assist with the department’s Special Response Team’s operations. The 20-pound drone can fly for 40 minutes, reach heights of 10,500 feet and cruise in the air at 46 miles an hour. “It gives us a good opportunity to have an eye up there. Not a surveilling eye, not a spying eye. Let’s make the distinction. A surveilling eye to help us to do the things we need to do, honestly, to keep people safe,” said Miami-Dade Police Director James Loftus.
This quotation, slightly altered, is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
(CNN) — If you get arrested in California, better hope there are no incriminating texts or e-mails or sensitive data stored on your phone.
On Monday, the California Supreme Court ruled that police in that state can search the contents of an arrested person’s cell phone.
Citing U.S. Supreme Court precedents, the ruling contends that “The loss of privacy upon arrest extends beyond the arrestee’s body to include ‘personal property … immediately associated with the person of the arrestee’ at the time of arrest.”
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Metro anti-terrorism teams will immediately start random inspections of passengers’ bags and packages to try to protect the rail and bus system from attack, transit officials said Thursday.
Police using explosives-screening equipment and bomb-sniffing dogs will pull aside people carrying bags for the inspections according to a random number, Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn said. The searches might be conducted at one location at a time or at several places simultaneously. If people refuse, they will be barred from entering the rail station or boarding a bus with the item, Taborn said. The inspections will be conducted “indefinitely,” he said.
“You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.”
If you’ve ridden the subway in New York City any time in the past few years, you’ve probably seen the signs: “If You See Something, Say Something.”
In Washington, D.C., Metro riders are treated to a recording of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging them to report suspicious sights to the proper authorities.
Now, Wal-Mart shoppers across the country will see Napolitano’s message in a video as they stand in the checkout line.
“We are expanding ‘See Something, Say Something’ in a number of venues,” Napolitano tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. “It’s Wal-Mart, it’s Mall of America, it’s different sports and sporting arenas, it’s transit systems. It’s a catchy phrase, but it reminds people that our security is a shared responsibility.”
“All this means that the people of any country have the right, and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities or are consecrated by time and custom. Here are the title deeds of freedom which should lie in every cottage home. Here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind. Let us preach what we practice — let us practice — what we preach.”
In ancient times, Gorgon was a mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them. In modern times, Gorgon may be one of the military’s most valuable new tools.
* * *
This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
Bryce Williams wasn’t expecting to walk through a metal detector or have his bags screened for explosives at the Greyhound bus terminal near downtown Orlando.
But Williams and 689 other passengers went through tougher-than-normal security procedures Thursday as part of a random check coordinated by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.
The idea is to keep off guard terrorists and others who mean harm, thereby improving safety for passengers and workers. There was no specific threat to the bus station on John Young Parkway south of Colonial Drive.
I can’t help but feel that we took a wrong turn somewhere.
Jim Downey
*Of course. Cross posted to dKos.
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Health, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Yesterday, we had an Open House for our neighborhood.
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It’s a curious thing. The novel has now been available online for four years. You’d think that it would be dropping off a bit in terms of popularity. But using the same criteria I’ve used in the past, total downloads of the book this last year have jumped by almost 50%.
Yeah, it had been very consistent in the first three years, averaging a bit over 6,400 downloads. But for 2010 the total downloads were 9,631. We’re now over 29,000 total copies of the book downloaded altogether.
Huh.
* * * * * * *
I hate “spring cleaning”. It seems like an artifact of a different age, perhaps going back to when coal was used as a fuel source for most homes, and following the winter everything needed to be cleaned thoroughly to get rid of the coal dust.
But I like having a clean home. I’m not a neat freak, but doing an in-depth cleaning always feels good. That’s one of the reasons why I like having an Open House on January 1 – it gives impetus to go through everything you might usually let slide, putting things away or getting rid of them, getting into the nooks and crannies you might otherwise ignore.
* * * * * * *
Got a note from WordPress this morning, a summation of the last year’s blogging. Here’s a bit:
The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.
In 2010, you wrote 204 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1007 posts. You uploaded 23 pictures, taking up a total of 12mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.
Your busiest day of the year was April 18th with 156 views. The most popular post that day was #2, so I’ll try harder.
Curiously, last year the BBTI blog beat this one for total visits for the first time. But then, BBTI itself had a Monster year.
* * * * * * *
Yesterday, we had an Open House for our neighborhood.
It was a relaxed gathering, not as large as some recent years. But quite enjoyable.
After, as I was cleaning up the dishes, I had a chance to think about where I was, what was on the horizon. Little stuff, bills to pay this week, conservation work to be done. But bigger things, too. Communion of Dreams to be published by Trapdoor Press sometime in the next couple of months. Hopefully some progress on finding a publisher for Her Final Year. Getting going on My Father’s Gun.
And I’ve started thinking again about the prequel to Communion of Dreams. What I had written previously needs to be scrapped completely, though the basic idea I had is still there. I’m feeling . . . strong enough . . . to again consider creating a work of fiction.
It’s an interesting place to be. 2010 wasn’t bad, really, though it had some rough patches. But I really feel like I am on the verge of something with 2011. I suppose we’ll see.
Jim Downey
This is clever. And I mean that in a positive way:
“They’re made out of data.”
“Data?”
“Data. They’re made out of data.”
“Data?”
“No doubt about it. We picked them up as holonomic extrusions, sent in an amnesiant isomorphic scout party, and checked them out up close. They are completely data.”
“That’s impossible. What about that page?”
It’s a riff on the classic short story by Terry Bisson, of course. And speaking of that, I’ve always loved this version:
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
This morning, after our walk, I took some time and replenished the firewood ric on our front porch. It hadn’t gotten down too far, but with the possibility of significant winter weather ugliness later this week, I thought it a good time to top it off. When done, I paused a moment and looked at the supply, felt comforted.
* * * * * * *
I’ve always been an information junkie. I blame it on wanting to be a mentat when I was a kid.
And the way you control a mentat? Control the information he gets.
I hate being controlled.
* * * * * * *
It had been eight weeks.
Eight weeks since I had last heard from my editor. We had been nearing the close of contract discussions, most everything sorted out just fine. There were only a couple of points we needed to settle.
Then . . . nothing.
I knew he had his hands full with a bunch of other stuff. More tech being developed. At least one more book scheduled to be out before mine. This, that, and the other.
So it was just likely that he got busy.
But . . . nothing.
After a couple of weeks, I dropped him an email.
Still . . . nothing.
I figured it was no big deal, he’d get back to me when ready. A couple more weeks passed, and I sent another email.
Again . . . nothing.
But that was right before Thanksgiving. I figured after the holiday he’d write.
Yet . . . nothing.
* * * * * * *
Finances have been tight. Nothing horrid, but tight. Because of the downturn in the economy, my conservation work from private clients this year has been way down. And since I lost a large institutional client last year, I didn’t have that work. Still, I’ve had work enough to keep me busy, the cash flow positive.
Except when my other institutional clients screw up the way that bureaucracies do with annoying regularity.
Such as has happened with MU recently. They have managed to lose/misplace/futz around with invoices such that I haven’t been paid for work done for about two months now.
And of course, trying to get an answer about what is going on from the Business Office is just an exercise in frustration.
I’ve danced this dance with them many times before. I know they’ll come through in the end, but they’ll take their own sweet time about it.
In the meantime we manage with savings. We’re lucky in that regard, and I know it – a lot of people right now can’t do the same.
* * * * * * *
This morning I sent another email to my publisher, asking whether they had reconsidered whether to publish Communion of Dreams, or what.
See, the lack of response . . . the lack of information about what was going on . . . was starting to drive me nuts.
I can deal with pretty much anything. At least, that’s been my track record to date, and I’ve had enough tough things to deal with to trust that ability. That is, I can deal with pretty much anything so long as I know what the hell is going on.
Because if I don’t know, I tend to imagine the worst. And I have a very active imagination.
In fairness, I’ve had enough tough things to deal with that this somewhat pessimistic inclination has been borne out repeatedly. So I’m not just neurotic.
Anyway, I got a response right back with an apology. Everything is cool, he’s just been insanely busy with the various projects I’d mentioned (and then some), and things had just slipped past more quickly than he intended. Looks like the book will now be out in February – though it won’t surprise me if that gets pushed back a bit.
And that’s fine. ‘Cause now I know what is going on.
* * * * * * *
I stood there for a moment, looking at the stack of firewood on the porch. A good supply, easily enough for a couple of weeks of casual use, even if the weather gets ugly. And there’s more in the big stash elsewhere in the yard.
I don’t know what will happen later this week. Will we just get some snow for Christmas? Or will dire predictions of sleet and freezing rain translate into reality?
We’ll see. Because even though I don’t know what will happen, I know I’m ready for it. Well, as ready as you can be for anything.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society
It’s been a while since I’ve written much of anything about economic conditions; frankly, the whole mess was just too depressing no matter how I looked at it, and I knew (and said) that the end result was going to be that we would wind up transferring more of our wealth to the bastards who caused the economic collapse.
But it is worthwhile to look at what happened and why. And this is perhaps the best examination I’ve found yet of the systemic, structural problems which are behind the latest mess. It’s a somewhat dense and jargon-packed piece on finance, but here’s the money quote:
For the time being, we need to accept the possibility that the financial sector has learned how to game the American (and UK-based) system of state capitalism. It’s no longer obvious that the system is stable at a macro level, and extreme income inequality at the top has been one result of that imbalance. Income inequality is a symptom, however, rather than a cause of the real problem. The root cause of income inequality, viewed in the most general terms, is extreme human ingenuity, albeit of a perverse kind. That is why it is so hard to control.
Another root cause of growing inequality is that the modern world, by so limiting our downside risk, makes extreme risk-taking all too comfortable and easy. More risk-taking will mean more inequality, sooner or later, because winners always emerge from risk-taking. Yet bankers who take bad risks (provided those risks are legal) simply do not end up with bad outcomes in any absolute sense. They still have millions in the bank, lots of human capital and plenty of social status. We’re not going to bring back torture, trial by ordeal or debtors’ prisons, nor should we. Yet the threat of impoverishment and disgrace no longer looms the way it once did, so we no longer can constrain excess financial risk-taking. It’s too soft and cushy a world.
“Too soft and cushy,” indeed. I must admit (and have before) that one of the reasons that I wrote the backstory to Communion of Dreams the way I did was, as Umberto Eco said so well, “I wanted to poison a monk.” A certain part of me thinks that a good round of ‘off with their heads’ would be really healthy for our society overall, though somewhat less so for Wall Street.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube
Man, I so love to see technology advancing to exactly what I was envisioning for Communion of Dreams. And when I say “envision”, I mean that literally:
That’s from Word Lens, a company who came up with instant-translation software you can use on your smart phone. And it’s just brilliant.
That’s *exactly* the sort of tech I projected for CoD – there is a reference early on to the main character asking his AI “Expert” to load a program to allow him to understand Mandarin in real time, and to provide him with an augmented-reality text for responses that he could read in order to allow him to communicate with a young girl from China. Yeah, that is more advanced than what we see in the vid above, but not that much moreso.
Wow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech
Way back in the lost mists of time, someone, somewhere on Facebook decided that they would post something in recognition of friends and loved ones struggling with a disease. Someone else liked what they said, and so in solidarity, cross-posted the same item, perhaps tweaking it just a little. This process continued, and a meme was born. Here is the latest version of it:
Most people have 1000 wishes for Christmas; a cancer patient only has one, to get better. I know 97% of you won’t repost this to your status, but my friends will be the 3% that do. In honor of someone who has passed, is still fighting, or survived cancer.
OK, it could have just been a year ago that this particular meme started. I’ve only been on Facebook for about six months. But I have seen multiple variations of this thing sweep through my ‘friends’, each time with a different disease or cause substituted for “cancer”. My guess, however, in watching the social dynamic, is that this sort of thing has been going on forever.
Harmless? Just a bit of social bonding, people taking a moment to express a concern they have?
Probably. And perhaps it is only because I’m coming up on the anniversary of my father’s death that this latest item rubbed me the wrong way. I know I get sensitive about such things about this time of year.
But I don’t think it is harmless. I think it is a form of emotional blackmail: “Do this or you don’t *really* care about cancer, you heartless bastard.” And because people don’t want to come off as being a heartless bastard, they fall for it.
I’ve considered driving this point home by going through and posting every single variation on this meme I can think of, just to point out the absurdity of the practice. There’s cancer. Diabetes. Heart disease. Violence. Child abuse. Automotive safety. Terrorism. Et cetera, et cetera. I could spend the whole next month doing nothing but posting status updates which are variations on this theme.
Of course, all it would do is just alienate everyone who knows me. And that pretty much defeats the purpose for my signing up for Facebook to start with.
But that is exactly my point – why I don’t think these things are harmless. Because they prey upon the social lubrication through which the site functions, leeching away real emotion and connectivity. In some ways, this is an artificial lifeform, the online equivalent of a parasite.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Arthur C. Clarke, Astronomy, Humor, movies, Neil Armstrong, NPR, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff
What topic could possibly warrant being the subject of post #1,000?
None.
I have no big announcements to share, no news, not even a scrap of intelligent musing on something obscure. Things are pretty much just what passes for routine here currently: getting conservation work done, waiting to hear from the publishers/agents, going through the day-to-day of life.
So, I’ll just break the tension (well, *I’ve* been feeling tension over it) and share this amusing item:
Neil Armstrong Talks About The First Moon Walk
Well, this doesn’t happen every day.
In yesterday’s post, I talked about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s walk across the lunar surface back in 1969 and wondered, how come they walked such a modest distance? Less than a hundred yards from their lander?
Today Neil Armstrong wrote in to say, here are the reasons:
He also posts the entirety of Armstrong’s email. It’s not often that you get to read history from one of the men who actually made it – it’s worth a look.
So, on to 1,001: A Blog Odyssey.
Jim Downey
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
Communion Of Dreams 