Cool Stars Come in out of the Cold

ScienceDaily (June 29, 2010) — Astronomers have uncovered what appear to be 14 of the coldest stars known in our universe. These failed stars, called brown dwarfs, are so cold and faint that they'd be impossible to see with current visible-light telescopes. Spitzer's infrared vision was able to pick out their feeble glow, much as a firefighter uses infrared goggles to find hot spots buried underneath a dark forest floor.

Link
Coolest Stars Come out of the Dark: Spitzer Spies Frigid Brown Dwarfs

Independence Day

Today is the Fourth of July, Independence Day in the United States. This is a day to display unashamedly our love for this, our home, the greatest nation in the world.

On the other three hundred and sixty-four days in the year we can grumble about the glaring problems, deplore and protest the mistakes and stupid actions of our leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike (Stupidity is an equal opportunity employer.). Today we celebrate the beauty and grandeur of this land that reaches from sea to shining sea and beyond, the friendliness, generosity and ingenuity of her people, her many successes. Today is the day to sing America, to sing our love for her. Tomorrow we can get back to the business of setting her to rights.

Still Stewing and Brewing

I’m still struggling with “World Enough and Time.” It’s pretty much settled in my mind at this point that Mark knows what he’s doing. That is, he actually builds, not a time machine, but a device to move between realities, parallel universes. Conveniently for him, Kathleen is not terribly interested in Quantum Mechanics, and doesn’t know the difference. So far so good. Here’s the rub. Kathleen is the first person narrator. Not only does she not understand Mark’s work, she doesn’t understand his motivation for that work. Not understanding his motivation, she can’t convey it to the reader, not directly at any rate. And, without understanding Mark’s motivation, the reader only gets half of the story.

The obvious solution is to recast the story in third person narrative. The problem with that is grammar, even language itself on the most fundamental level. There’s a scene in which Kathleen, the Cat who is narrating the story has a mind meld with the Kathleen in a parallel reality. The grammar gets extremely tricky for a few lines, but between first and third person, it remains possible to tell who’s who. If the story were written in third person, this passage would be unintelligible. So, the narrative has to stay in first person; which brings me back to the problem of Mark’s POV. The circumstances in which the characters find themselves do not allow for him to write her a thirty page letter explaining everything, a handy if sometimes slightly forced device. There is a point at which he could make a speech, a point at which her sudden understanding of what has been going on is handy for the plot development but stands, just now, totally unsupported by any kind of previously laid information or clues.

Hmmm... That might work, though a speech, like a letter, has to be handled carefully to prevent its seeming forced. Also, there is the danger of its becoming something of an infodump. I guess the thing to do is to have a speech to pull everything together and spell it out for Cat while placing clues throughout the rest of the story, things that she reports without understanding their significance. Yes, that might work.

Again, writing out my ideas and difficulties has helped me work through them. Or, at least, it has helped me realize that the problem may not be insoluble.

How It's Done

Doris Day is one of the most genuinely nice people on the planet. This note in response to a tabloid smear from a little over a year ago shows how it's done. The lady is the epitome of style and class.

In the note she mentions always calling John Denver by his real name, Deutschendorf. That reminds me of a darling clip of Doris and John from her 1975 special, Doris Day Today.

Enjoy!

The Dark Is Rising Sequence

I’ve been reading Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising sequence. Finished the fifth and final book, Silver On The Tree last night. They are delightful books, vaguely Arthurian (and I’m a pushover for anything Arthurian, however vaguely), wholly delightful Fantasy Adventure novels.

Two of the books are set in Cornwall, two in Wales and one in the author’s native Buckinghamshire, which is where I lived during my three years in England. Five children are brought together over the course of the sequence, under the direction of Prof. Merriman Lion, to help him in his long fight against the Dark. It very soon becomes clear that Great Uncle Merry is rather more than he seems, and by the end, all the children know him for who he really is, and they understand exactly what he is fighting.

The charm of these books lies not only in the “magic,” and the ancient lore, most of it Celtic, Cooper weaves into the narrative, but also in her descriptions of landscapes and of ordinary life, especially family life. The people and places are vividly drawn. Though I’ve never been to Wales, I could see the mountainsides with their granite outcrops and hear the baahing of the sheep and the high call of the curlews. Though I’ve never been to Cornwall, I could see the grassy headlands and the golden sanded beaches. The characters, too, are well drawn. They are individuals, each doing what is appropriate for him or her. The reader understands them and cares about what happens to them.

And, quite a lot happens to them during the course of the sequence, both in the here and now and in other times and other places, some of which are historical, some out of the mists of legend.

The NLS notice on each book says, “For grades four through seven and older readers. I don’t hesitate to recommend them to readers of all ages.

The Dark Is Rising Sequence
Over Sea, Under Stone
The Dark Is Rising
Greenwitch
The Grey King
Silver On The Tree

Word Verification

Because of the high number of spam comments on this blog, I have reluctantly instituted word verification for comments.

I apologize for this unpleasant necessity and for the inconvenience it will cause. Please be assured that I've done it as a last resort.

Engelbert

The past few days, I've been on a kick of listening to a lot of Engelbert Humperdink. YouTube has a number of clips from his 1969-70 television show and a program he did in 1972 which, if I understand correctly, was shown in Germany, as well as various other TV and concert appearances through the years. There are also the ubiquitous homemade videos and slide shows to songs.

I've always loved Engelbert. I grew up listening to him and Andy Williams and Julie Andrews. In my teens I discovered Vic Damone *swoon* and Johnny Mathis *dreamy* and of course I liked the pop music of the day: I loved the Carpenters, really, *really* liked Barry Manilow and, well, I shudder to think of it, but I was well and truly mad for Donny Osmond. Oh my goodness but I was obnoxious about him. I don't know how my parents managed not to murder me. *wry grin*

But, you know, the first record album I ever saved up for and bought with my own money was Engelbert's After the Lovin' album. I like to think this means that, underneath the silly, obnoxious teenybopper, I had good taste all along.

Here's Engelbert from his 1972 show singing "Another Time, Another Place." If he's not the definition of a heartthrob, I don't know who is.

Happy Birthday Aung San Suu Kyi

The Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's birthday is today.

All of us who accept our freedom without a thought, who live in peace and prosperity and democracy owe an incalculable debt to heroes like Aung San Suu Kyi.

Link
Aung San Suu Kyi, Birthday and Freedom

Flag Day

As listener reminds us with this photo, today is Flag Day.

A Family Outing

This cute photo is by listener.

Exoplanet Caught Mid Orbit

Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) have caught an unprecedented glimpse of an exoplanet moving in its orbit around a distant star. Called Beta Pictoris b, the exoplanet has been directly imaged in two separate points covering nearly half of its orbit. The achievement could prove a significant stepping stone in our understanding of how planetary systems, including our own solar system, formed.

 Exoplanet caught on the move

Jacques Cousteau's Centenary

Gulf Project

Obviously, BP can’t cap its runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

What I want to know is, why hasn’t the call gone out to every university, college and institute, to every federal, state and local government agency (especially in Gulf states) and to every NGO in the United States that has expertise with oil, marine environments and/or engineering for the best and brightest to assemble in a Manhattan Project style endeavor to solve the problem. Surely, preserving the ecology and economy of our Gulf coast states and the Mississippi River is more important than working out how to build a goddamn atomic bomb!

I don’t know who would be the most appropriate person to send out such a call, whether it would be the President, the Vice President or the Secretary of the Interior. All I know is, the call has to be put out now. Hell, it ought to have been put out as soon as the search and rescue operation concluded. What are they waiting for? This accident is a matter of acute national interest and economic and environmental security

Environmental Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill

Renowned environmentalist Jean Michel Cousteau on The News Hour discussing the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Thinking about Time

In the course of reading The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, I came across an intriguing concept, that travel to the past may perhaps be possible, but that changing the past is not. The reason for this is, more or less, that each moment is its own immutable now. Sound familiar, fans of Walt Whitman and St. Augustine? I wrote a paper in grad school dealing with the eternal nature of now in relation to the Tree of Charity in The Vision of Piers Ploughman. It's a subject that interests me.

In particular just now, however, I found Greene's idea provocative because one of my current active projects deals specifically with time travel to the past that goes awry. The traveler ends up in a couple of different parallel realities rather than going straight back in her own. One of them is pretty far removed from her own timeline, and I've been wondering how such a major mistake could have happened. Her friend, the “time machine’s” inventor is a talented and highly skilled quantum mechanician. How did he land her so far from her home reality?

Since reading Greene's remarks, though, it occurred to me to wonder if it really was a mistake as such at all. Maybe the operator of the "time machine" meant to send the traveler to a parallel reality all along. The story is told in first person narrative by the traveler, a person who knows next to nothing about Quantum Physics. The operator could have told her a fib, an oversimplification...His goal might have been to send her to a parallel reality all along, since he knew that changing the past, as such, is impossible.

I'll need to chew on the idea some more, but it presents possibilities. It may mean that the story is more complicated, and thus more interesting, than I initially anticipated. That's good, since simple stories don't sell.

The Beach Boys - California Girls ( with Bob Hope and Jack Benny )

This can make you smile, even on a really down day.

Key Stakeholders Agree on Measures to Protect Blind Pedestrians

I saw this on one of my NFB listservs today.

Urge Passage as Part of Motor Vehicle Safety Act

Baltimore, Maryland (May 19, 2010): The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the American Council of the Blind (ACB), the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM), and the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers (AIAM) announced today that they have agreed on proposed legislative language that will protect blind pedestrians and others from the danger posed by silent vehicle technology.

The four organizations are urging Congress to adopt and pass the language as part of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010?which is currently pending in both houses of Congress?as quickly as possible. The proposed language would require the Department of Transportation to promulgate a motor vehicle safety standard requiring automobiles to emit a minimum level of sound to alert the blind and other pedestrians.

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “The National Federation of the Blind commends the automobile industry for its leadership on this issue and for its genuine concern for the safety of blind Americans, cyclists, runners, small children, and other pedestrians. We look forward to working with the parties to this agreement, the United States Congress, and the Department of Transportation to ensure that America’s streets remain safe, both for those who drive and for those who do not.”

"Good policy is a collaborative effort, and this is a good approach for pedestrians and automakers," said Dave McCurdy, President and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

Because blind pedestrians cannot locate and evaluate traffic using their vision, they must listen to traffic to discern its speed, direction, and other attributes in order to travel safely and independently. Other people, including pedestrians who are not blind, cyclists, runners, seniors, and small children, also benefit from hearing the sound of vehicle engines. New vehicles that employ hybrid or electric engine technology can be silent, rendering them extremely dangerous in situations where vehicles and pedestrians come into proximity with each other.

A recent report released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) stated that hybrid and electric vehicles are nearly twice as likely to be involved in accidents with pedestrians as vehicles with internal combustion engines.

CONTACT:
Chris Danielsen
Director of Public Relations
National Federation of the Blind
(410) 659-9314, extension 2330
(410) 262-1281 (Cell)
cdanielsen@nfb.org

RIP Lena Horn

I was sorry to hear this evening that Lena Horn has died. She was ninety-two.

RIP

The News Hour's obituary

Moving Right Along

Marooner’s Haven has comfortably past the 50,000 word mark; so, I’m justified in referring to it as a novel rather than a writing project. It’s going well too. There’s still a great deal of work to be done on it, but at last I’m cautiously optimistic that I might actually finish it one of these days.

Maybe it’s my Celtic melancholy or maybe it’s something else, but my pleasure in how well MH is going devolved today into uncertainty and even mild gloom. It’s all very well to write a novel, but when it’s written, will anyone buy it? It’s a simple, quiet book with no violence, no sex, little strong language. There are no chases or explosions or murders, no espionage or space exploration or rampaging aliens. I’m fond of the characters; I find the story absorbing, but will publishers and readers?

I don’t hold with writing what the market dictates. I believe in writing what’s inside you, the stories that demand that you write them. It seems to me that only in that way can a piece of writing be true and genuine. I also understand the concept of toiling for twenty-five years in order to become an overnight success. But I’ve been working that long and longer and have yet to make my first “professional” sale. Is the problem that I’m a bad writer or that I don’t write material that has commercial potential? The question that has begun to trouble me is, are they the same thing? If I can’t produce work that a commercial editor will buy, can I consider myself a good writer?

So, despite how well Marooner’s Haven is going, I find myself downhearted and doubtful.

Part of the problem might, of course, be organic. I haven’t been sleeping well, which lowers the defenses.

Because of the insomnia, though, I’ve been doing a good deal of reading. This Spring I’ve read The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Finished Changes, book 12, last week. I wish there could be further books in the series, but don’t really see how that would be possible. It’s an excellent series. Someone has called it Harry Potter meets The Rockford Files, which seems to me an apt description.

The series really hits its stride with book 3, Grave Peril, but from the beginning with Storm Front it is at one and the same time a well realized world of its own and a riff on, sometimes a spoof of, Fantasy and Hard Boiled Detective conventions. There are vampires and werewolves, madams and gangsters; and there’s a hard nosed but cute and golden-hearted police detective, Karen Murphy, with whom Dresden never quite manages to get off. There’s also magic, magic which is viewed in a very down to earth, practical way.

The interpersonal relationships that develop over the course of the series are complex and realistic, many of the recurring characters finely drawn and nuanced, people the reader cares about. I would recommend the series to both fans of detective fiction and those who enjoy stories about magic.

I’ve also been reading, and in a few cases rereading, Agatha Christie and Mary Roberts Rinehart. One Rinehart book that I particularly enjoyed is The Amazing Interlude. This is not a mystery. Instead, it is set in 1915 Belgium, I presume based on the author’s experiences as a war correspondent. It deals not with the conduct of the war but with a young girl from Pittsburgh, Sarah Lee Kennedy, who opens a soup kitchen and rest stop just behind the lines. Though others may read it differently, The Amazing Interlude seems to me very much an antiwar book. In any case, it is an absolutely lovely story.

Besides reading old standbys, I’m also au current. As well as Changes which, if I’m not mistaken, came out this year, I’ve read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and started The Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson, both of which were all the rage on Library Thing last year. They are excellent books, though extremely violent. I’ve preordered The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which isn’t out from Audible yet.

I’ve also been reading Robert J. Sawyer. In the Winter I readCalculating God, went on to Starplex, my favorite of his books I’ve read so far, and devoured The Neanderthal Parallax. The first volume, Hominids, was serialized in Analog some years back; but, I read it again before proceeding to Humans and Hybrids. Now I need to reread Wake before tackling Watch. I also read Rollback when it was serialized in Analog.

I like Sawyer’s books. They’re more laidback and thoughtful than some. I tend to attribute this difference to his being Canadian, but it may simply be due to his personality. He is one of my FaceBook friends, or I am one of his. From what I’ve seen of him there, he seems like a really nice guy.

Of course, his success is depressing... No. I’m not going to go back there!

I Am A Nerd