Filed under: Emergency, Preparedness, Society, Survival | Tags: blogging, crime, jim downey
“Did you hear all the excitement yesterday?” asked our back-fence neighbor when we saw him on our walk this morning.
“Um, no, what happened?”
“Guy walked in my front door about 4:15, holding a knife.”
“Good lord, what happened?”
“He said ‘Give me your keys.’ And I threw him my keys. He took my truck, and headed out.”
“What the hell???”
“Yeah, he’d evidently assaulted someone at one of the ‘gentleman’s clubs’ up off the highway. So the cops were already looking for him, and caught him a little later. He was pretty drunk. I got the truck back – it didn’t have any damage.”
“Damn.”
* * *
So, a friendly reminder: lock your doors, people. Be prepared, even when you’re enjoying a pleasant holiday afternoon. There really are nuts out there.
I’ll update with a link to the actual story when it shows up in the local press. UPDATE: Here it is.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Apollo program, Astronomy, BoingBoing, Connections, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Mars, movies, NASA, Paleo-Future, Politics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Travel, Wales | Tags: Amazon, Apollo, ars technica, blogging, BoingBoing, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, jim downey, Kindle, Mars, movies, NASA, politics, predictions, promotion, reviews, science, Science Fiction, space, technology, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, travel, Venus
Imagine three astronauts, 125 million miles from the Earth, talking to Mission Control with a four-minute time lag. They have seen nothing out their windows but stars in the blackness of space for the last 150 days. With a carefully timed burn, they slow into orbit around Venus, and as they loop around the planet, they get their first look at its thick cloud layer just 7,000 miles below.
It might sound like the plot of a science fiction movie, but in the late 1960s, NASA investigated missions that would send humans to Venus and Mars using Apollo-era technology. These missions would fly in the 1970s and 1980s to capitalize on what many expected would be a surge of interest in manned spaceflight after the Apollo lunar landings. They would be daring missions, but they would also be feasible with what was on hand.
Somewhat surprisingly, I don’t remember this at all. Though of course these were just “proof of concept” studies which were put together for NASA. Still, they were fairly well thought-out, as the article on ars technica demonstrates. As is often the case, technological limitations are less of an absolute factor in accomplishing something than economic/political limitations are. To borrow from a favorite old movie: “You wouldn’t believe what we did. It’s possible. It’s just hard work.”
What isn’t hard work? Getting entered into the drawing for a leather-bound copy of Communion of Dreams. Full details here. Yesterday’s Kindle promotion pushed us over 500 copies of the electronic version given away this month, and that puts the total number of copies out there somewhere in the neighborhood of 26,000. There are already 65 reviews posted to Amazon. Yet so far only 9 people have entered the drawing. You have until midnight this coming Saturday.
Jim Downey
Via BoingBoing.
Filed under: ACLU, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Government, Society, Terrorism, Travel, Writing stuff | Tags: civil liberties, Constitution, government, jim downey, NSA, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, travel, TSA, writing
I’m not sure which is more depressing: that this happened, or that I find it completely unsurprising that it happened. What’s that? This:
…a harrowing story from Aditya Mukerjee about his recent attempt to fly from New York to Los Angeles. After being pulled aside in the security line, he faced hours of interrogation by uncommunicative officials from several different agencies. When he was finally cleared, his airline, Jet Blue, wouldn’t let him on the plane anyway. When he got home, he found evidence that it had been searched.
The entire sickening story, told by the man it happened to, can be found here: Don’t Fly During Ramadan.
To be perfectly honest, I’ve almost given up even mentioning the absurdity of the TSA’s latest actions. Like the revelations about what the NSA has been doing, it seems like there is really little point in it. I just keep filing away the latest news items and go back to adjust what is included in St. Cybi’s Well. Because no matter how egregious the violations of our civil liberties, there’s always someone to come along and say that they’re happy to have the “security” which is being provided.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Feedback, Health, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, health, jim downey, Kindle, promotion, reviews, Science Fiction, technology, writing
Some follow-ups to yesterday’s post.
* * *
My wife’s surgeon ordered another CAT scan and assessment, so this morning at entirely too early a time we got up and got her over to the hospital. Once all was said and done, the indications are good and it looks like the oral antibiotics she is taking are finally cleaning up the remaining infection in her abdomen. With a little luck, from here on out she just needs the usual post-surgery recuperation and she’ll be fine.
One curious thing I noted, though. When referring to this latest and the previous CAT scans she’s had done, everyone kept calling them “films”. The nurse in the radiology clinic did it. The radiologist performing the procedure did it. The nurse in the recovery area (where we had to wait following the latest scan, to see whether the surgeon wanted to do another invasive procedure) did it. And then the surgeon did it, specifically saying “I reviewed the films of this latest and the previous CAT scans with Dr. Radiologist, and …”
Which is odd, because I don’t think there’s ever been a practical CAT scan system which uses actual film. Certainly, none of the modern systems use any kind of film — they’re all digital systems and record data on a variety of different digital media.
Yet everyone referred to the results as “films.” I’m not sure whether this was because of their age (all were about my age, +/- a decade), or ours (thinking that middle-aged patients would still think of the technology in those terms).
Strange.
* * *
Speaking of reviewing, yesterday’s post also seems to have elicited three new reviews of Communion of Dreams on Amazon. Each is short, but together they would be a bit much for this blog post. So I’ll just note the links, and encourage you to check out what they have to say.
Remember, you have until Midnight (OK, 11:59:59) CDT on August 31 to get your entry in. Full information in this blog post.
Thanks, everyone — for your reviews, your interest in the novel, and most of all for your kind thoughts/prayers/good vibrations for my wife through her recent illness.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Connections, Feedback, Health, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech | Tags: Amazon, art, blood, blood magic, Blood Tea and Red String, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, economics, feedback, free, health, humor, jim downey, Kindle, movies, printing, promotion, reviews, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, writing
While on my morning walk, I was enjoying the beautiful day, the glint of sun on the dewdrops, the company of my dog.
And thinking about blood.
Specifically, about the old notion of a “contract signed in blood.”
Well, what if you had a culture which took books so seriously, that they were always made using blood as the ink?
Just off the top of my head, I could come up with all kinds of justifications for how such a culture might arise, from fantasy (‘blood magic’) to Science Fiction (books could always be traced back to their source through the DNA in the blood) to the plain creepy (“we do honor to our ancestors/enemies/icons by using their blood to write history”).
Yeah, it’s a little scary how my brain works sometimes.
* * *
And after I come up with something like that, usually within just a few seconds, my mind races off to consider what the practical ramifications would be to such a thing.
Economically, there’s some fun stuff you could do with it. Books could be purchased with the buyer’s own blood: “Price – just 750ml – get yours today!” Which also implies blood as the basic economic unit, but that wouldn’t necessarily be the case.
Mechanically, blood itself wouldn’t be a great printing ink without some other elements. So you could have the whole printing revolution based not on the development of a printing press, but on the discovery of how to make blood suitable for mass printing.
As a book conservator, dealing with books printed in blood would present some additional challenges. Depending on what else was added to it to make it suitable for printing could make it damage the paper it was printed on (this is actually a big problem with some printing inks used in history). And if I needed to do restoration work, would I need to find blood of the same type, in order to match the original ink?
* * *
Usually about this point in such speculation, I start to wonder just what in the hell got me thinking about these things in the first place. What was my subconscious chewing on?
I could perhaps tie it to the odd little movie we watched last night.
Or that my wife had a close call last week. There wasn’t a lot of blood per se, but the symbolism is kinda hard to ignore.
Both good candidates. Both likely elements.
But in the end I decided that it was just that I’ve been thinking a lot about writing. About printing. About bookbinding.
All those things are measures of my life. In some very real sense, they *are* small, tangible pieces of my life.
Not unlike blood, I suppose.
The Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams will be free all day tomorrow. And remember, if you would like a chance to win a full-leather, hand-bound copy of the special edition, you need to write a review on Amazon and post a link in the original blog entry about the drawing. That’s a $250 – $350 value.
Even more, it’s part of my life.
Maybe it will be a part of yours.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Expert systems, General Musings, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Violence, YouTube | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, jim downey, Neatorama, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, video, www youtube
Sometimes I see a cool tech, and think that it is just a perfect example of how progress makes for a better world. Yesterday’s post was one of those.
And then sometimes a see a cool tech, and am just certain that it will be used to make the world a worse place, at least for some people. Via Neatorama, this is one of those:
Because I just know that once these are developed a little more so that they can run off wire, that it won’t be long until someone thinks that they would make excellent “homing landmines” or “land drones”. I mean, seriously.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Constitution, Expert systems, Government, Heinlein, Humor, movies, Philip K. Dick, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Religion, Reproduction, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech | Tags: augmented reality, Heinlein, humor, jim downey, movies, NSA, Philip José Farmer, Philip K. Dick, predictions, privacy, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, simulated reality, simulation, technology, The Matrix
Everyone is thinking about the whole “NSA Spying” thing all wrong. This isn’t about surveillance. It’s not whether there is a trade off to be made between security and privacy. It isn’t a question of how much the government is watching you or that you shouldn’t worry at all if you have nothing to hide. Nope. It’s not about any of that.
It’s about whether you want to live forever or not.
The idea that we’re living in some kind of ‘simulated reality‘ has been a mainstay of Science Fiction for just about forever, whether you want to credit it to Philip José Farmer, Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, or for that matter, Genesis. One popular twist on this perhaps best seen in The Matrix where at some future time hyper-intelligent computers have re-created our reality for their own purposes, using the best records available to run simulations and better understand us.
So don’t think of it as the National Security Agency. Think of it, rather, as a records-keeping entity. One which is doing everything possible to record as much of this world, and your life, as possible so that later it can be used to make an accurate simulation. Just call it the Nascent Simulation Archive, and rejoice that our government is being so ecumenical in trying to document as much as possible about not just America, but the whole wide world. Because it means that you’ll live forever.
And you want to live forever, right?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, Government, Health, Marketing, Politics, Predictions, Science, Society | Tags: CDC, health, jim downey, politics, predictions, salt, science
<sarcasm> Gee, I’m stunned </sarcasm>:
No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet
In a report that undercuts years of public health warnings, a prestigious group convened by the government says there is no good reason based on health outcomes for many Americans to drive their sodium consumption down to the very low levels recommended in national dietary guidelines.
Not only did they determine that there was little benefit in pushing for such low levels of overall salt intake, there might actually be health risks associated with such low levels. From the same article:
One 2008 study the committee examined, for example, randomly assigned 232 Italian patients with aggressively treated moderate to severe congestive heart failure to consume either 2,760 or 1,840 milligrams of sodium a day, but otherwise to consume the same diet. Those consuming the lower level of sodium had more than three times the number of hospital readmissions — 30 as compared with 9 in the higher-salt group — and more than twice as many deaths — 15 as compared with 6 in the higher-salt group.
Another study, published in 2011, followed 28,800 subjects with high blood pressure ages 55 and older for 4.7 years and analyzed their sodium consumption by urinalysis. The researchers reported that the risks of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and death from heart disease increased significantly for those consuming more than 7,000 milligrams of sodium a day and for those consuming fewer than 3,000 milligrams of sodium a day.
OK, current CDC guidelines, dating back to 2005 (though based on research going back into the 1980s):
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), 2010 recommend reducing sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams (mg) per day. The DGA’s also recommend you should further reduce sodium to 1,500 milligrams (mg) per day if:
- You are 51 years of age or older.
- You are African American.
- You have high blood pressure.
- You have diabetes.
- You have chronic kidney disease.
The 1,500 mg recommendation applies to about half of the U.S. population overall and the majority of adults. Nearly everyone benefits from reduced sodium consumption. Eating less sodium can help prevent, or control, high blood pressure.
How does this compare to what people actually consume? Well, sodium consumption from salt around the world is about 3,400 mg per person per day. This amount is pretty consistent across cultures, and has remained pretty stable over decades. In other words, the current governmental recommendations say you should be ingesting half to two-thirds of what people have been consistently ingesting. And there have been efforts by governments to impose increasingly strict limitations on salt consumption, usually through limitations on salt use in prepared foods.
There are two problems with that: one, there really isn’t good science to back up the limitations (as noted above). And two, limiting salt in prepared foods changes not only the flavor of the foods, but also the “mouthfeel“. And one of the easiest/most common ways to correct this is with the increased use of lipids (usually fats of one sort or another), since they have a similar effect to salt in creating food density. Meaning that people are probably ingesting more calories in response to prepared foods which has less salt in it. And since obesity is increasingly problematic …
Talk about your unintended consequences. Such is the danger of social engineering of just about every sort.
I started this post with the <sarcasm> </sarcasm> cues because I’ve long been skeptical of the science behind strict salt limitations. As I have noted previously, the evidence backing up strict limitations has been very mixed for decades. And there has been indication that for at least a substantial segment of the population, salt sensitivity wasn’t a problem at all. Now seeing that there is little evidence that lowering salt levels is beneficial for the general population, and that indeed there may be real risks in doing so?
Pass the salt, please.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 