Filed under: Ad Astra, Apollo program, Art, Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Heinlein, Man Conquers Space, movies, NASA, Paleo-Future, Phil Plait, Predictions, Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Slate, Space, Space X, tech, YouTube | Tags: Apollo, art, blogging, Destination Moon, Grasshopper, jim downey, Lunar Module, Moon, movies, NASA, paleo-future, Phil Plait, predictions, R is for Rocket, Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, science, Science Fiction, space, Space Shuttle, SpaceX, STS, technology, video, www youtube
I grew up reading stuff like this:
And even had a really cool metal rocket based on the images from Destination Moon which one of my relatives made and gave me. For the longest time those sleek rockets landing and taking off again (what NASA calls ‘Direct Ascent‘) defined what space travel meant, and I loved watching early launches which hinted at Things To Come.
Then space technology advanced, and I got a little older. Rockets were no longer cool. With all the wisdom and knowledge of a 14 year old, I dismissed the idea that anyone would want to use them for anything other than lobbing other things into orbit, and even at that they would be soon surpassed by more efficient and reusable shuttles and aerospace vehicles.
I’m glad not everyone was so easily distracted:
Welcome back to the future of my youth.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Ballistics, Blade Runner, Brave New World, Connections, Expert systems, General Musings, Google, Government, Guns, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Violence | Tags: artificial intelligence, augmented reality, Communion of Dreams, drones, Expert, Google, government, guns, Guns.com, jim downey, MADSS, NSA, predictions, privacy, science, Science Fiction, Seth, technology, TrackingPoint, Watson
… and sometimes it is just chilling.
First, meet Seth’s grandpa:
Watson is a cognitive capability that resides in the computing cloud — just like Google and Facebook and Twitter. This new capability is designed to help people penetrate complexity so they can make better decisions and live and work more successfully. Eventually, a host of cognitive services will be delivered to people at any time and anywhere through a wide variety of handy devices. Laptops. Tablets. Smart phones. You name it.
In other words, you won’t need to be a TV producer or a giant corporation to take advantage of Watson’s capabilities. Everybody will have Watson — or a relative of the Watson technologies — at his or her fingertips.
Indeed, Watson represents the first wave in a new era of technology: the era of cognitive computing. This new generation of technology has the potential to transform business and society just as radically as today’s programmable computers did so over the past 60+ years. Cognitive systems will be capable of making sense of vast quantities of unstructured information, by learning, reasoning and interacting with people in ways that are more natural for us.
Next, consider the implications of this idea:
Now think of another way of doing this. Think of a website that is a repository of all these IDs, and is government-owned or certified. Why can’t I just visit a police station once, pay a fee (so the government doesn’t lose money on this), show all my documentation, have the government scan and upload everything so that all policemen and pertinent authorities can have access. Then my car insurance company, my health insurance company, the car registration agency can all notify this government repository if I stop paying, or if my insurance policy is not valid anymore.
Imagine a world in which the police has tablets or smartphones that show nice big pictures of you, in which whatever they currently do secretly with NSA-type agencies they do openly instead. If they find you without an ID they ask, “who are you?”, and once you give your name, they can see your photo and a ton of information about you. It would be so hard for anyone to impersonate you. I find it paradoxical that while some government agencies spy on you and know all about you, others pretend to know nothing until you show them a piece of plastic that if you lose, somebody else can impersonate you with. We need to evolve from this. We need to evolve into a system in which we have no wallets and a safer world!
Yeah, safer …
TrackingPoint, the biggest name in “smart” scope technology today, is rolling out their next big project. Not too surprising, it is a military endeavor. Called the “Future of War,” TrackingPoint is gearing up for a new market.
The company has been getting a lot of attention with their high-end big-bore hunting rifles that are designed to track targets up to 1,000 yards away. The “smart” aspect of the scope technology is a host of rangefinders and sensors that, combined with optical image recognition software, calculate the ballistics of the shot and compensate for it automatically.
TrackingPoint’s hasn’t exactly concealed their intentions to develop arms for the military market. That was always a possibility and something they all but confirmed when they began talking about their second-generation precision guided rifle systems that, chambered for .50 BMG, are expected to be effective well over 3,000 yards. The cartridge, .50 BMG, is a devastating long-range anti-personnel and anti-material round.
From TrackingPoint’s website:
Target handoff can be achieved by leader touching a smart rifle icon and map location at which point the designated user will see an arrow in his scope directing him to look at handoff location. Whether from shooter to shooter, leader to shooter, drone to leader to shooter, shooter to leader to drone, handoff is a simple touch interface via a mobile device and mobile apps augmented by the appropriate a la carte communications gear.
Emphasis added, because:
The MADSS is one mean robot. Developed by defense industry leader Northrop Grumman and currently being showcased at the Fort Benning, Ga. “Robotics Rodeo,” the MADSS is a 1 1/2-ton unmanned ground vehicle designed to provide soldiers with covering fire while cutting down targets.
Make no mistake, it’s an automatic shooting machine, But it requires people to operate it and set targets. The MADSS — Mobile Armed Dismount Support System — tracks and fires on targets only once it gets the green light. It won’t shoot unless a soldier is directing it.
It’s half killer robot, half killer giant remote-control car.
But you know, not all cars need someone in control of them these days:
In Silberg’s estimation, the reason is that Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz drivers are “already accustomed to high-tech bells and whistles, so adding a ‘self-driving package’ is just another option.” Throw in the possibility of a special lane on highways for autonomous vehicles and the ability to turn the system on and off at will, and premium buyers were sold on the option full-stop.
Considering that Audi, BMW, Cadillac, and Mercedes-Benz all plan to have some kind of semi-autonomous, traffic jam assistance feature either on the market or coming in the next few years, and it’s obvious that luxury brands are well aware of what their buyers want.
Draw your own conclusions.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Connections, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff | Tags: astronomy, Communion of Dreams, exoplanets, Gliese 1214 b, jim downey, Norio Narita, science, Science Fiction, space, Space.com, St. Cybi's Well, writing
Got an email from an old friend and fan of Communion of Dreams which consisted of a link and this comment: Couldn’t resist…when I read this, all I could think was, “they’ve found the gel!!” 🙂
From the article at the link:
A nearby alien planet six times the size of the Earth is covered with a water-rich atmosphere that includes a strange “plasma form” of water, scientists say.
Astronomers have determined that the atmosphere of super-Earth Gliese 1214 b is likely water-rich. However, this exoplanet is no Earth twin. The high temperature and density of the planet give it an atmosphere that differs dramatically from Earth.
“As the temperature and pressure are so high, water is not in a usual form (vapor, liquid, or solid), but in an ionic or plasma form at the bottom the atmosphere — namely the interior — of Gliese 1214 b,” principle investigator Norio Narita of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan told SPACE.com by email.
You should read the whole thing, it’s pretty cool.
And yes, there is a reason why the prequel to Communion of Dreams is based around visits to holy wells in Wales … 😉
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, General Musings, Humor, Music, NPR, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: Alwyn, blogging, Darrell Scott, Fat Tire, humor, jim downey, Lake of the Ozarks, music, New Belgium, NPR, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Tim O'Brien, travel, writing
At about 7:45 in this interview:
NPR: “I wonder: your original CD together Realtime is so beloved by your fans, does that make you just a tad nervous about how this much-anticipated follow-up might be received? Or do you just block that stuff out?”
O’Brien: “Ah, you know, I’m gettin’ over that.”
NPR: “But not yet? You’re still working on it?”
* * * * * * *
It was a hard week. He may have been only a dog, but his absence was entirely too distracting.
* * * * * * *
The other night I played supportive spouse and accompanied my Good Lady Wife to a professional meeting she had at the Lake of the Ozarks.
The Lake (as people in Missouri almost universally refer to it) is an interesting sort of place, from a purely anthropological perspective. Originally built to help generate electricity, it then became a tourist trap in the 1960s, then evolved into something of a Spring Break party spot for college kids throughout the state. It still has something of that reputation, though it has now branched out a bit into being a general purpose convention/resort area. I’ve written about it previously.
Anyway, like these sorts of meeting things go, the first night there was a cocktail party with an open, but limited selection, bar. I walked up to the bar, nodded to the nice very clean cut young man behind it, asked “Got any Fat Tire? ”
“Sorry, just domestic beer. ”
I blinked, a bit stunned.
He explained further “We don’t have any of those Belgium beers.”
* * * * * * *
At about 7:45 in this interview:
NPR: “I wonder: your original CD together Realtime is so beloved by your fans, does that make you just a tad nervous about how this much-anticipated follow up might be received? Or do you just block that stuff out?”
O’Brien: “Ah, you know, I’m gettin’ over that.”
NPR: “But not yet? You’re still working on it?”
O’Brien:“Well, there is a sort of a fermentation that happens in people’s minds, and I guess it happened in my mind too, that you know, what, can we do that again? Can we go back to that? And then, at some point I just said ‘well, you know, if we don’t try we’ll never do anything together again'”.
Scott: “To me the word is ‘fearless’. Putting it out there, and then, with the right ingredients it’ll probably turn into something edible.”
Something edible, indeed. Back to work.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Brave New World, Fermi's Paradox, NASA, Phil Plait, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, tech | Tags: Adam Becker, Bad Astronomy, Communion of Dreams, Drake Equation, Fermi's Paradox, jim downey, Kepler mission, NASA, New Scientitst, Phil Plait, predictions, science, Science Fiction, space
How many Earth-like planets are there in our galaxy? Ones which are reasonably like ours, in terms of size, density, and location relative to their sun’s ‘habitable zone’? That’s one of the basic components of the Drake Equation, and until fairly recently all estimates were little more than speculation.
Enter Kepler:
Expanding our view from Kepler’s corner of the galaxy to show more of the Milky Way, the sky fills with billions of potentially life-bearing worlds. If we showed them all, the sky would be a mass of green. So now the green dots illustrate stars that might host such planets, visible with a good pair of binoculars on a dark night here on Earth.
From this perspective, the chances that we’re alone in the cosmos seem very slim, indeed.
The final answer? 15 – 30 billion Earth-like planets.
Of course, that doesn’t include the rest of the Drake equation values. Such as: what percentage of planets which could potentially develop life actually do so? Then what percentage of those planets develop intelligent, technologically sophisticated life? Then what percentage of such intelligent species develop interstellar communication capabilities? Then how long will such a civilization survive, out of the billions of years of history?
The last time I played with the numbers, the best guess from Phil Plait was that there were some 2.5 billion potentially habitable planets. Kepler indicates that number was too conservative, by something on the order of a factor of 10. Running the rest of the equation is largely just an experiment in gut feelings (since we don’t yet have any real data), but what is impressive is that at each stage as solid data has become available, we’ve had to adjust our “best guesstimate” numbers *upwards*. Meaning that the the total number of technologically sophisticated civilizations capable of interstellar communications out there at this point in time also goes up.
From Chapter 4 of Communion of Dreams:
“But in any event, as Arthur Bailey said this morning ‘where are they?’ Where are the aliens? That’s what’s bothering me.”
Where, indeed? I came up with my own answer, explained in Communion.
But I wonder what the real answer will be.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Augmented Reality, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Gardening, General Musings, Government, Habanero, Italy, Predictions, Psychic abilities, Religion, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction, Society, Violence, Writing stuff | Tags: art, augmented reality, Beccaria, Communion of Dreams, Constitution, dreams, gardening, Habaneros, Italy, jim downey, law, legal, literature, Marc Hermann, photography, predictions, Prometheus, Roman, Science Fiction, sculpture, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Voltaire, writing
Remember these?
Well, yesterday afternoon I got around to prepping about half of them to dry:
Overnight I dried the peppers.
* * * * * * *
An interesting take on incorporating an additional dimension into photography:
Photographer and historian Marc Hermann has done a beautiful job pulling historic crime scene photos from the New York Daily News archive to blend them with photographs of the same locations today. For those who live in New York now, it may be easy to forget just how rough the city was in the not-too-distant past.
Grisly violence is an undeniable part of New York’s DNA and the juxtaposition of the old, black and white images with the modern “Times Square” version of what most people expect today is incredibly fascinating – truly making ghosts walk amongst us.
* * * * * * *
Remember this?
What has also been my plan, but which I hadn’t quite been able to sort out how to accomplish, was that in St. Cybi’s Well much of the story will revolve around *how* this character came to have those dream-visions in the first place. This is further complicated by the fact that I don’t necessarily want the character to realize the full import of what he experiences within the context of the story – the reader should be able to draw out conclusions which the character wouldn’t, especially if the reader had already read Communion of Dreams.
OK, got all that? So, here’s what I experienced at Baia Castle: the revelation that the classical sculptures of Greek and Roman mythology could themselves be the conduit for the dream-visions. I got this by walking through the collection – not just walking through it, but by seeing the juxtaposition of different sculptures within the somewhat under-lit and under-stated layout of the museum.
See, like in most of the museums we had visited, the climate control there was non-existent. And whether in order to keep down temps a bit, or just to save money on electricity, the only lighting throughout the space was from windows along one side of the building. And the layout of the building was a series of almost cave-like ‘bunkers’ – rooms which were kinda long & narrow with a relatively low ceiling, and done up in neutral grey tones.
It was perfect. And in a moment my mind made the leap to imagery for St. Cybi’s Well. Because, like many of the different ‘holy wells’ in Wales, it dates back to the middle of the 6th century – not that long after the fall of Rome. And, in fact, the spread of Christianity to the Celtic lands was part of the cultural transference which took place. It’d be easy to tweak the history just a bit to include ‘lost’ sculpture & myth.
I felt in that moment the same way I feel now: like laughing maniacally.
And an appropriate (and somewhat telling) image from that same blog post:
Prometheus. Not Ridly Scott’s version. The original.
* * * * * * *
A passage from an excellent essay on the roots of Enlightenment thought about justice.
Rarely in the history of thought do I have a chance to say the outcome was so simply good, but it worked. Within their lifetimes, Voltaire and Beccaria saw real reform, a sincere and solid transformation of the legal codes of most of Europe, the spread of deterrence-based justicial thought. Within decades, judicial torture virtually vanished from European law. The laws of America, and of the other new constitutions drafted in the latter 18th century, all show the touch of Beccaria’s call. It worked. The change was not absolute, of course. Torture, the primary target, retreated, as did the notions of retributive justice, avenging dignity, and purging sin. But prisons were still squalid, punishments severe, and other things Beccaria had campaigned against remained, capital punishment primary among them. But even here there was what Beccaria would call progress. The guillotine lives in infamy, but it too was a consequence of this call for enlightened justice: a quick, egalitarian execution, death with the least possible suffering, and equal for all, giving no advantage to the noble, who had long been able to hire an expert and humane headsman while the poor man suffered the clumsy hackings of an amateur who might take many blows to sever a writhing neck. Most states judged death still necessary, but agreed that law and punishment should bind all men equally, and that unnecessary pain did not serve the public good. It is strange to call the guillotine a happy ending, but it was in a small way, and even more victorious was the dialog it that birthed it.
* * * * * * *
Overnight I dried the peppers. Here they are this morning:
Why, yes, all of these things are connected. 😉
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Civil Rights, Connections, George Orwell, Government, Heinlein, Humor, movies, Predictions, Privacy, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: 1984, augmented reality, George Orwell, Heinlein, humor, jim downey, movies, NSA, predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Steve Jobs, surveillance, technology, writing, Zombies
I wouldn’t have the nerve to include this kind of thing in a novel … no one would believe that such an agency would have such a twisted sense of humor.
The magazine printed several slides alleged to have come from an NSA presentation referencing the film “1984,” based on George Orwell’s book set in a totalitarian surveillance state. The slides – which show stills from the film, former Apple Inc. chairman Steve Jobs holding an iPhone, and iPhone buyers celebrating their purchase – are captioned: “Who knew in 1984…that this would be big brother…and the zombies would be paying customers?”
Jim Downey
*Referencing this, of course.
Filed under: Humor, Marketing, Promotion, Science Fiction | Tags: 1554, beer, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, free, humor, jim downey, New Belgium, promotion, Science Fiction
This is post number 1554.
One of my very favorite numbers. If you ever get a chance, be sure to tour the New Belgium brewery.
Sometime today or tomorrow we should hear the results of the latest drawing from the official judge. In the meantime, enjoy this holiday weekend — maybe with a nice beer. I think I know one I’m going to enjoy …
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 