Filed under: Amazon, Astronomy, Connections, Emergency, Feedback, Health, Hospice, Kindle, Marketing, movies, NASA, NPR, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Survival | Tags: Amazon, appendectomy, appendicitis, blogging, bookbinding, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, David Casarett, direct publishing, emergency, feedback, free, health, hospice, jim downey, Kindle, leather, literature, movies, NPR, Philip James Bailey, predictions, promotion, reviews, science, Science Fiction, space, travel, video, Voyager
This morning, NPR repeated the story of Voyager 1 having apparently left the solar system.
I wonder why?
* * *
Philip James Bailey, Festus:
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
Life’s but a means unto an end; that end
Beginning, mean, and end to all things,—God.
* * *
We went shopping yesterday.
Big deal, right? Actually, it kinda was. It was the first time my wife had been in good enough shape to do so since her emergency appendectomy. Things are slowly returning to whatever passes for normal.
* * *
Dr. David Casarett is the director of hospice care at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He works with families as they try to navigate end-of-life decisions.
At least once a week, Casarett says, one of his patients expresses a desire to end his or her own life. “It’s a reminder to me that I have to stop whatever I was doing … and sit back down to try to find out what is motivating that request,” he says. “Is it really a carefully thought out desire to die, or is it, as it is unfortunately many times, a cry for help?”
It’s a good story.
* * *
Tomorrow’s the last day this month to get the free Kindle edition of Communion of Dreams. And this week is the last one to get entered into the drawing for a hand-bound leather copy of the special edition. Remember, you have to have posted a review on Amazon of the book, and then post a comment with a link to that review in this blog entry. There are currently 65 reviews on Amazon, but only 8 entrants for the drawing — don’t delay, as the end will come sooner than you expect.
As it usually does, for good or ill.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Emergency, Health, Humor, movies, Science Fiction, YouTube | Tags: appendicitis, Galaxy Quest, health, humor, jim downey, movies, Science Fiction, video, www youtube
A bit of an apology to any who feel they deserve it: I intentionally understated just how bad my wife’s acute appendicitis was earlier this week. Once she had surgery and was admitted to the hospital we knew that she was going to be fine with a few days of intense care, and I didn’t want to get people overly concerned about what her condition had been. Which was, frankly, really bad. Following the surgery, this is pretty much how the surgeon characterized it:
Seriously, that’s what happened. The surgeon said that the appendix hadn’t just ruptured, it had “basically exploded, with pieces all through her abdomen. A real mess.”
So, now that she’s been cleared to return home tomorrow, I thought I’d offer my apologies. Earlier I wanted to let people know that she was in the hospital, and why, but I didn’t want to get everyone too worked up over a crisis which had already passed. Sorry about being misleading. And thanks for your support.
Jim Downey
*If you didn’t instantly think of this scene just from that phrase … well, you need to watch Galaxy Quest again, as it has obviously been too long. When I discussed posting this with my wife, we both had a good chuckle over the fact that she had also thought of the exact same scene when the surgeon told us what had happened. Yeah, we’re weird like that.
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, General Musings, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Music, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Weather, YouTube | Tags: A Tale of Two Cities, Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, care-giving, Charles Dickens, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, Fred Hoyle, free, Her Final Year, humor, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, Led Zeppelin, literature, movies, music, October The First is Too Late, predictions, promotion, Science Fiction, Sean Carroll, St. Cybi's Well, time travel, travel, video, www youtube
Partially related to stuff which happens in St. Cybi’s Well, but also I suspect because I just turned 55, I’ve been thinking about “time” a lot. The perceptions of it, how it ‘works’, how it is portrayed in books and movies. This topic is hardly new for me, though, since tropes about time travel are so common in Science Fiction.
Anyway, one interesting little side-track I was considering this morning was what you could do with a series of stories/books premised on a slightly different concept of time than what we commonly work with. Specifically, I was thinking of time as a manifestation of other aspects of the universe, analogous to how weather is a manifestation of other physical characteristics on a planet. You could have something like a “time forecast”, wherein changes in the quality of time itself had an impact on the story/characters. Perhaps our little corner of reality has long been in a ‘calm’ period of time weather, with things moving along smoothly and placidly, so that we’ve come to expect that it will always be that way. What happens when there’s a change? Perhaps a new front moves through? A storm? A tornado? Does everything get jumbled, a la October The First is Too Late? Perhaps it could literally be the best of times and the worst of times simultaneously.
Something to play with. But for now, I need to get back to work. And you, if you haven’t already, should take advantage of this last day of the week-long promotion and go download Communion of Dreams and/or Her Final Year.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Connections, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Science, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube | Tags: blogging, Boing Boing, Communion of Dreams, free, Her Final Year, jim downey, Kindle, levitation, magnets, Möbius strip, physics, promotion, Royal Institution, science, Science Fiction, superconductor, technology, video, www youtube
Via BB, fun with physics:
I think it’s particularly clever that they made the track a Möbius strip, in order to demonstrate how the gravitational field can be used to both float and suspend the superconducting magnet. Reminds me of this bit from chapter 5 of Communion of Dreams:
The man was a bit of a lunatic. But he was a brilliant engineer who had an almost intuitive understanding of the Apparent Gravity phenomenon, and was the first to propose that it could be adapted for use as a propulsion system. He figured out a way to trick an AG field into thinking that it was in a stable inertial reference by projecting it in front of a ship, and thereby essentially have the ship – and generator – continuously ‘fall’ into the field. The Hawking was the first ship equipped with the new reactionless drive system.
Remember, both Communion of Dreams and Her Final Year will be free all next week …
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: Augmented Reality, BoingBoing, Brave New World, Health, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: augmented reality, BoingBoing, Facebook, health, jim downey, predictions, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, video, writing, www youtube
Via BoingBoing, this fascinating application of scanning and augmented reality technology:
Access to good dissection models is always problematic, but is absolutely crucial for medical education. Donor cadavers are often in short supply, and they have the problem that they’re, well, dead. Meaning that they died from something. And under even the best of circumstances, that will have an impact on the suitability for the student’s experience in studying a healthy body.
But with this kind of technology, a student can encounter a wide variety of body types: young, in the ‘prime of life’, aged, with any number of different medical issues (or none at all). Male. Female. Pregnant. Potentially, even as the body is “living”.
Amazing.
Jim Downey
(PS – the writing of St. Cybi’s Well continues. Occasionally I post fragments to the FB page, if you’re interested.)
Filed under: Astronomy, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, ISS, Man Conquers Space, Music, NASA, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, YouTube | Tags: Chris Hadfield, David Bowie, ISS, music, NASA, science, Science Fiction, space, video, www youtube
How cool is this?
How cool is Chris Hadfield?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Humor, movies, Reproduction, Science Fiction, Society, Space, YouTube | Tags: humor, jim downey, movies, Peter Serafinowicz, Science Fiction, space, video, www youtube
No, really … whoa.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 