Filed under: Art, Astronomy, NASA, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, YouTube | Tags: art, Communion of Dreams, jim downey, laser, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mona Lisa, Moon, NASA, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, video, www youtube
I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, but here’s a passage from Chapter 15 of Communion of Dreams:
The moment the projector was set down and turned on, Jon could see what had them all so excited. There were flashes of light coming from the image of the ship, clearly directed back at the ASA.
“It’s brilliant. They’re using the point-defense lasers designed for clearing away debris in their path as strobes, to communicate with us,” said Gish.
Gregor nodded. “Yes, yes. Simple digital message, as fast as lasers can be switched on and off. Not designed for communications,so cannot transmit as much data as normal. But pretty good.”
Why do I mention this? Well, guess what’s just been done by NASA? Take a look:
Here’s an excerpt from the associated article:
NASA has turned the Mona Lisa into the first digital image to be transmitted via laser beam from Earth to a spacecraft in lunar orbit, nearly 240,000 miles away, thanks to a technology that may soon become routine.
The experiment took advantage of the laser-tracking system that’s in operation aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the moon for the past three and a half years. NASA sends regular laser pulses from the Next Generation Satellite Ranging station at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland to the space probe’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, or LOLA, to measure its precise position in lunar orbit.
I love to see my predictions come true.
Jim Downey
With thanks to Wendy for sending me the article!
Filed under: Apollo program, Astronomy, Connections, ISS, Man Conquers Space, NASA, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Survival, tech | Tags: Apollo, blogging, ISS, jim downey, NASA, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, video
It all depends on your point-of-view:
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Connections, Feedback, Health, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: art, Australia, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, health, jim downey, Karst, literature, Missouri, Nullarbor Plain, reviews, science, Science Fiction, writing
Sorry I haven’t posted much — been down with the nasty respiratory virus which is going around, and which has aggravated my torn intercostal muscle. So I’ve been devoting most of my energy to other things, like not hacking up a lung.
Anyway, thought I’d share a new review:
Oh dear; a shocker. Not only did this diatribe descend into fantasy rubbish, but the characters were as flat as the nullabor plain. The whole thing had about as much narrative flair as a year 8 kids English assignment
Ouch. Unsurprisingly, he gave it only 1 star. Though he did say that he wished he could give it zero stars.
Bad reviews are part & parcel of being a writer or artist or just about any other kind of public person. No biggie — Communion of Dreams isn’t to everyone’s tastes, and that’s OK. I do wonder a bit whether this review was intended for another book. Evidently a couple of other people wonder the same, given the comments.
Anyway, at least I learned something from the review: the Nullarbor Plain (which I think the author meant to say) is a geographic region of Australia. And it shares something in common with our property here in central Missouri: it’s a karst formation. So that’s kinda interesting.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go not hack up a lung.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Carl Zimmer, Connections, Emergency, Feedback, Flu, General Musings, Health, Kindle, Marketing, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, The Loom, Umberto Eco, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, antibiotics, blogging, Carl Zimmer, Communion of Dreams, Darnell Sidwell, direct publishing, fire-flu, flu, influenza, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, norovirus, pandemic, predictions, promotion, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, Umberto Eco, virus, Wordpress, writing
So, the WordPress Machine informs me that I’ve had a fairly busy year blogging here.
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As I mentioned a while ago, earlier this month I had fallen prey to the nasty bit of cold virus going around. Turned out that the damn thing was even more stubborn for my wife, who is still struggling with a hacking cough and various other annoying symptoms. We’ve been keeping a close eye on it, watching for signs of secondary pneumonia, which would call for antibiotic intervention, but I think she’ll get past this on her own.
Which is good, because there really isn’t much we can do to fight a virus. In this sense, medical science is at about the same place in viral treatments as we were in dealing with bacterial infection 70 years ago:
In 1941, a rose killed a policeman.
Albert Alexander, a 43-year-old policeman in Oxford, England, was pruning his roses one fall day when a thorn scratched him at the corner of his mouth. The slight crevice it opened allowed harmless skin bacteria to slip into his body. At first, the scratch grew pink and tender. Over the course of several weeks, it slowly swelled. The bacteria turned from harmless to vicious, proliferating through his flesh. Alexander eventually had to be admitted to Radcliffe Hospital, the bacteria spreading across his face and into his lungs.
Alexander’s doctors tried treating him with sulfa drugs, the only treatment available at the time. The medicine failed, and as the infection worsened, they had to cut out one of his eyes. The bacteria started to infiltrate his bones. Death seemed inevitable.
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You may not have heard much about it here, but the norovirus is causing all kinds of grief in the UK. Cases are up 83% over last year, and are estimated to have hit over a million people already. In the UK the norovirus is commonly called the “winter vomiting bug” whereas here we tend to call it “stomach flu”. As miserable as it makes people feel, it’s usually not a life-threatening disease for otherwise healthy people, and the best thing to do is just ride it out.
Of course, public health authorities have taken steps to try and limit the spread of the disease into populations where the virus could be life-threatening, and a lot of hospitals have curtailed or eliminated visiting hours. Furthermore, appeals have been made to the public to not to go see their doctors or go to emergency rooms for routine cases of the norovirus, since there is little that can be done to treat the virus and this just contributes to the spread of the disease.
Still, people get scared when they get sick, even when they know that it is a fairly common bug that’s going around — and one that most people have had before and gotten over just fine. So they tend to swamp available medical services, overwhelming the health care system.
Just think about what would happen if it was a disease which wasn’t known. And one which was killing people so quickly that they’d drop over in the street on the way home from work.
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I’ve been thinking about that a lot, since it is an integral plot point to St. Cybi’s Well. This isn’t a spoiler, since the advent of the fire-flu is part of the ‘history’ of Communion of Dreams.
But it is something which has had me in a bit of a quandary this fall, as I’ve been working on writing St. Cybi’s Well.
Howso? Well, because I kept going back and forth on making one final decision: where to end the book.
See, I know how the *story* plays out — I’ve had that all sorted since I first worked up the background for Communion of Dreams. But in going to write St. Cybi’s Well, I needed to decide exactly where in the story that book would end. Which is to say, I needed to decide how much, if any, of the onset of the fire-flu would be included. Because I could set everything up and have the book actually finish at the onset of the fire-flu — after all, the reader would know what was about to happen. Why drag the reader through that horror?
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A week or so ago I made my decision, and I’ve been chewing it over since then as I’ve been busy with other things, making sure that I was comfortable with what I have decided, and why. I’m not going to give you the details, but you can safely assume from what I’ve said in this post that at least some of the pandemic will be portrayed.
I decided this not because I have a desire to write about the horror (in spite of what I may have said previously) but rather because it is critical for character development of the main character.
Poor Darnell.
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So, the WordPress Machine informs me that I’ve had a fairly busy year blogging here. 293 posts (this makes 294), which is a faster pace than in some years. Of course, I’ve had a lot of promotional stuff do to with the launch of Communion of Dreams last January and everything to support that through the year, not to mention the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well.
And while I’ve cautioned that I won’t be writing quite as much here on the blog as I’m working on St. Cybi’s Well, well, it does make for a nice change of pace.
So thanks for being along for the ride this year. Together we can see how things go in 2013.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: blogging, CNN, Communion of Dreams, Hyperstealth, jim downey, News, predictions, science, Science Fiction, stealth, technology, video
This is starting to get some attention:
A Canadian company called Hyperstealth is reporting that it has developed Quantum Stealth, a material that renders the target “completely invisible by bending light waves around the target.” If the mock-up photos are to be believed, Quantum Stealth basically works like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.
Since 2002, Hyperstealth has been in the business of designing camouflage patterns for military uniforms, vehicles, and installations. In 2010, at the International Camouflage Symposium, Hyperstealth’s CEO Guy Cramer demonstrated SmartCamo — a material that could reportedly adjust its camouflage markings to match its surroundings. We say “reportedly” because Cramer apparently published a video demonstration of SmartCamo, but then US military intervened and asked him to take it down. Presumably Quantum Stealth is a follow-up from SmartCamo.
Again, for security reasons, Cramer is saying very little about Quantum Stealth. All of the pictures that you see here, and on Hyperstealth’s site, are mock-ups, because “for security issues we can not show the actual technology.” Cramer says that both the US and Canadian military have seen Quantum Stealth in action, and that they’ve also confirmed that the material obscures the target from infrared (thermal) imaging. Below, you can see Cramer talking to CNN’s Pentagon correspondent about Quantum Stealth.
In addition to the cited CNN video, there’s another news item from a paper which seems to be local to the company. In that article Cramer has more to say:
“That’s the thing that surprises most of the people at these meetings, that it works as well as we’re showing there. It only takes a few seconds for someone in these meetings to verify, yeah it obviously works for the visual spectrum.”
The invisibility cloak also conceals ultra-violet and infra-red heat rays.
“It actually masks the entire thermal signature from the user.”
Cramer added, “We’ve proven it, but I’m not about to show it because there’s no need to show you what works because the only people who need to see this are the people we have shown.”
Uh-huh. He has a magic, er, make that “quantum technology” cloak, but doesn’t want to show anyone outside of the military, even though he’s perfectly happy to discuss how great it is.
Is my skepticism showing? Or has that been masked by quantum effects?
OK, so he’s shown it to the military. Wouldn’t just about any special forces organization in the world literally kill for such technology? Here’s what one such officer said, again from the Maple Ridge News article:
Maj. Doug MacNair, with Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, confirmed that Cramer made a presentation to special operations within the last few years.
But there’s been no decision to follow through.
“We didn’t pursue it further, at least not at this time anyway.
“It wasn’t something we were interested in pursuing at the time. It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t in the future, necessarily. “We’re aware of the company, we have the information. But we don’t have a contract in place at the time.”
Maybe Mr. Cramer is asking too much money for his technology. Or perhaps this is some kind of ruse on the part of the military, to make it seem like the technology ain’t that big a deal. Because the clever thing to do is to promote this all over the web, and then deny that it is something that any government would want. That way no one will pay attention to it. Right?
Er, right.
Don’t get me wrong — I think such technology is possible, and I use something very like it in Communion of Dreams. This is from Chapter 18:
Jon walked to the edge of the pool. He heard a noise behind him, turned slowly to look at it.
From beside a large bush a pile of boulders shifted. The air shimmied, light danced, and a crouching figure emerged, covered in a fabric drape that tried to keep up with the changing surroundings. One hand pulled the drape to the side. Another was holding a very
large sidearm.
But that’s 40 years in the future. I don’t think that this is a tech which has come to be real quite so soon.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Brave New World, Failure, General Musings, Government, Man Conquers Space, NASA, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Violence | Tags: Apollo, blogging, Golden Spike, jim downey, Moon, NASA, Pearl Harbor, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space, technology
“Pearl Harbor” was 71 years ago today.
The launch of Apollo 17 was 40 years ago today.
That means that there was less time between the start of WWII (well, our involvement in it) and the end of humankind’s time on the Moon than there is between now and when Apollo 17 left the Taurus-Littrow valley.
That don’t seem right.
Yeah, sure, there’s a company saying that they want to send commercial flights back to the Moon.
Somehow, I doubt that it’s quite that easy.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Humor, NASA, Science, Space, tech | Tags: blogging, GRAIL, humor, jim downey, Moon, NASA, science, space, technology, video
I love the sense of humor:
GRAIL’s Gravity Tour of the Moon
This movie shows the variations in the lunar gravity field as measured by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) during the primary mapping mission from March to May 2012. Very precise microwave measurements between two spacecraft, named Ebb and Flow, were used to map gravity with high precision and high spatial resolution.
There’s more, including images and vid, at the link.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, NPR, Science, Science Fiction, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: anamorphosis, art, blogging, Brusspup, jim downey, NPR, perspective, Robert Krulwich, science, Science Fiction, video, writing, www youtube
This is not unlike the tricks that a good story-teller uses, though manifest in a brilliant visual form:
From NPR’s Robert Krulwich, who has this to say:
These illusions were created by an artist who calls himself Brusspup.What he does is an exercise in anamorphosis, a conjuring trick that takes advantage of how our brains make sense of the world. If you know how, you can create an image which makes no sense until the viewer happens onto a particular — and it’s a very particular — spot. Once the viewer finds the right angle — the only place where he or she can see what the artist intended — suddenly, boom!- the drawing leaps into three dimensions.
Getting a reader to that precise point of view in a novel is the hard part. Willing suspension of disbelief is a kindness all readers give any author.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Connections, General Musings, Government, Predictions, Privacy, RFID, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Travel, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, cell phone, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, jim downey, predictions, privacy, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, tracking, travel
So, as I am constantly blathering about, I’m spending a lot of time thinking through various aspects of St. Cybi’s Well. Things like characters, plotting, fitting in the storyline with what is already established in Communion of Dreams (while still making sure that the book can stand on its own, without someone having read Communion). Well, one of those things concerns an instance where someone wants to not be readily located. Which is a little harder in today’s world than most people realize, given two things: general surveillance, and the homing-device you’re probably carrying in your pocket.
Yeah, I’m talking about your cell phone/mobile device/tablet. Anything which can connect to a cell network or GPS is probably also capable of being used to track you. And chances are, it will do so even if it is ostensibly “turned off.” About the only good way to be certain to stop this use is to pull the battery out of the thing.
And that’s a PITA, if you want to be able to actually use it without a delay and hassle of installing the battery then booting the thing up.
So the other day I sent a note to a good buddy of mine who has a lot more physics/technical knowledge than I do:
Second, a thought I had: since privacy is a concern, and your cell phone is a tracking device even when ‘off’ (but it’s a hassle to have to pull out the battery and then reboot the damned thing if you need it), why not go with a simple solution to isolate it? To wit: turn the phone off (or put it into ‘airplane mode’), drop it into a small Faraday cage. Just a simple bag or wallet with the right construction would do it. I know there are such things for use with passports/credit cards (I use a wallet for such when traveling overseas), so why not just extend the design a bit to accommodate a phone/tablet?
I got back a response which indicated that it should work, though you may need to tweak the construction specifics to be sure to block out the proper wavelengths most effectively.
And today, just for grins, I went to look for something like this. Guess what I found, which is just now available (actually, it won’t ship for a couple weeks):
Go Completely Off the GridThis cleverly designed, superslim pouch for your wallet and phone blocks transmissions, as well as cell-tower and GPS tracking, and protects personal information from RFID readers. Ripstop nylon. Imported.
Bingo. Like an invisibility cloak for your phone.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 