The Most Beautiful Artifact

The seeds of ingenuity morph out of the nothingness of quantum creativity and bloom into such beautiful blossoms of ideas. It never ceases to amaze me. Now just to channel the energy! This is art!

I replicate what I see. I can learn your language. I can tell you my story.

I saw you in Amsterdam just over a year ago. I hear Memories of Green, your inspiration accompaniment.

Starry, starry night

"But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you. " - Don McLean

The NaNoWriMo Monster

The real question is: who will ever read the 2.8 Billion words that were churned out of the month of November last year? Greasy little slippery words squeezed out under pressure and blessed with perfunctory thought. Sentences cobbled together hastily in a mad dash to spew as much verbosity as may be required to lunge the literary athlete across the 50,000 word finish line. Paragraphs and chapters pummeled together in the Large NaNoWriMo Collider. Fiction fusion. Fission of the imagination. Starfield of alphabet letters precipitously poised upon the chasm of meaningless chaos. Bland postulations despertely trying to reach the escape velocity required to leave mediocrity behind in it's gravity pool of banal everydayness. Cold little specs of dust ejected violently into the intergalactic wasteland of nobodies space. Spindly wisps of yesterdaylight fading in the tepid glow of dying stars. Stillborn suns.

We Oort to know better

Wikipedia is not the best place to find information on serious topics and especially not topics which court heated debates from people who have different points of view.

It is also a bit temperamental as a reference because things change each time someone makes an edit and what you are referencing may not be there next time someone goes looking for it.

So it is with reluctance that I link this topic on the Oort cloud to Wikipedia because I really ought to know better.

Surprisingly we Oort to know more about the Oort cloud but we don't. It's a hypothetical construct which has only been indirectly observed as an explanation of where long peroid comets and centaurs come from. It is thought to be spherical and isotropically distributed.

The mystery is understanding what mechanism dislodges comets from this theoretically isotropically distributed zone.

Editors on Wikipedia claim: "The outer Oort cloud is only loosely bound to the Solar System, and thus is easily affected by the gravitational pull both of passing stars and of the Milky Way Galaxy itself. These forces occasionally dislodge comets from their orbits within the cloud and send them towards the inner Solar System". I'm not entirely convinced.

Two people independently thought of this cloud as an explanation: Öpik and Oort. This is also interesting because there are many other instances where more than one person has independently come up with an idea at the same time. Is this an example of thought entanglement?

Plot Development in 10 Easy Steps

Various sources seem to indicate that most stories follow a plot development path, which has essentially become a suggested formula. This summary comes form a chap called Harvey Chapman, the Chapman chap.

He describes the formula in 10 steps as follows:
1. Start with the status quo
2. Something changes the status quo
3. The Character makes a decision to act (or is forced to)
4. & 5. A series of mini plots then ensue following action and reaction phases
6. Anti-climax. The character's goal appears to become unobtainable
7. Metaphorical death - how the character reacts to the loss
8. Rebirth or revival
9. The goal is achieved (or not)
10. A new status quo emerges.

The following plot diagram is displayed on Chapman's website:


















The problem with a formula plot is that the story becomes predictable.

Chapman then goes on to discuss some advanced elements of plot that deal with time.

Five Elements of Story Writing

Basic stories are comprised of five essential elements.

Characters,
Setting,
Plot,
Conflict, and
Theme.

Characters can be people, animals, aliens, planets, deities, force fields, invisible intelligent forms of existence, an Ai or personality uploads. The character must be able to interact with other characters.

Setting is important because this is how we perceive the world. We can relate to a situation and a character if we can perceive or visualise their setting. It sets the environmental context within which the characters interact and gives the plot and anchor.

Plot is essential and is the way in which the train smash happens. Careful planning helps to make it plausible and detail makes it believable.

Think of these five elements as taking a journey:

The plot is the vehicle that enables the journey to be taken. The characters are those who take the journey and the reader needs to relate to one or more of the characters and want to travel with them. There is a driver and there are passengers. As complexity increases there is more than one vehicle, multiple drivers and potentially multiple passengers. The setting is the landscape through which the journey is taken. Conflict is not essential but makes the journey interesting and helps to keep the reader engaged. I think this can also be achieved through mystery and in my genre I think a combination of mystery and conflict is essential.

The reason for taking the journey is the motive that drives the plot but the sum total of the journey reveals the theme. The theme is the main message. It's the meta-reason, a second derivative version of the the reason for the journey. It's the reason for the reason of the journey. We are not always aware of what the reason behind the reason is but this is essentially the nature of life itself. How we reveal theme is where the art of writing lies. Anyone can bang a story together, but it is the deftness with which we can reveal the theme through the execution of the other elements that delineates our efforts into chasms of banality, layers of mediocrity and polished slithers of sheer genius.

Fortunately, just as Einstein wasn't brilliant at maths you also don't have to be a grammar specialist to be able to write good stuff. It helps, because it gets you through the shit-deflectors of those erudite groupie gate keepers who have slaved over books and know how to cross their t's and dot their i's. They expect others to meet the same standards before they will consider your five elements. If the gap is not too big you should be able to get a good editor to help you build a bridge.

No one is perfect. We all have strengths and weaknesses and it's important not to let our weaknesses overwhelm our strengths. Instead find someone to help you fix the gaps left by your weaknesses and focus on exploiting your strengths. Don't waste your time trying to improve weaknesses, rather accept that there are somethings that you cannot do alone and find the help you need to make the package deal work. It you're a good batsman and you spend all your time trying to become a better bowler then you will only become an average bowler and risk becoming an average batsman too. Learn to exploit your strengths and don't allow your weaknesses to hold you back or become an impediment to you realising your true potential.

Mars500 Reality Dysfunction

Finally the Mars500 project comes to an end today (4 June). After 520 days in simulated mission to mars reality six men will emerge from a large pipe to discover that they never left planet Earth at all. It was all a mind bending experiment.

During their first awakening they may have seen images of the planet, star fields, and instrument readings showing speed, altitude, and orbital parameters. They were immersed in deep troughs of unfathomable dark emptiness between massive gaps of nothingness separating the occasional dust particle or hydrogen atom and then finally presented with the incongruous gargantuan notion of a planet sized new world of rock and dust and thin feeble atmosphere.

During their second awakening they discovered a network of steel pipes, a few wooden surfaces, cables and displays all hooked up to a computer on the other side of the artificial boundary of illusion created by the design team. The tinkers of the trade. The illusion artists. The reality manipulators.

Deep seated in their psyche will forever lie the reality dysfunction of a discontinuity in logic, time, space and reason. They will carry this shrapnel shard of splintered black obsidian in their minds for as long as their memory can weather the passage of time.

The splinter. The itchy splinter, that just won't go away. What really happened back then? Which reality was true? The one they believed in, the one that created the illusion or maybe both. Yes, both were simultaneously true but paradoxically incompatible with each other. Oh the splinter, the itchy splinter. It taunts the mind and tortures the memory.

Happy Harry's Fast Food Joint

Skulking about in the infinite blackness of intergalactic space is a lump of rock that looks dead but is somehow alive.

Where exactly is Happy Harry's Fast Food Joint and what secrets does it hide?

All will be revealed...

Hubble Heritage Site - Stop and Swoon

There is so much going on on the internet that it's easy to get lost or even worse, get stuck in the same places and loose navigation routes to the gems.

Recently I stumbled across this website. I've known about it in a subliminal sort of way. Subconsciously I have seen references to it but it was never really in my face. Recently it jumped out at me, not the website itself but rather a stunning picture that is hosted by the website.

That's when I discovered the hidden gem. Not the picture that had intrigued me, nor any other pictures tucked away in it's dark seductive recesses. No, it was the design of the landing page that struck me as beautiful. Pilots like landing on flat, hard surfaces with enough space to slow down on safely. The cyber navigator in me simply gushed at the lush landing zone that this page offered. Slow down, have a look around or just stare at the beautiful elegance and be inspired, the navigator suggested. I think I'll do just that!

Hammering Bundle Theory on the Anvil of Thought

I sometimes think of myself as an educated barbarian. I know so much about things that I don't use or don't make use of. Education systems are fantastic at shoveling things down your throat just in case you'll need them when you start working in that field. Inevitably we don't seem to use most of it either due to the nature of the work or the quality of the management who don't realise your potential or simply don't know how to utilise what you have to offer. A barbarian because there are so many other things I could learn about and get to know. Things that could potentially be useful.

The one thing holding me back is the sheer volume of information blossoming from the collective minds of millions of educated individuals, each gnawing on their own portion of the endless fractal bone of knowledge. Time would quite happily bludgeon us to death with PhD's, MBA's and M.Phils in anything to everything minus one golden nugget that is always missing because Godel had the foresight to open up Pandora's Box.

Abraham Maslow once said "If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail". Thank Tim Berners-Lee for the internet and making it easy to find those types of quotes.
Back to hammers. One of my respected authors (who shall remain un-named, unless you have the time and inclination to follow this link) mentioned the concept of Bundle Theory.

Having studied Systems Theory (ever so briefly in one of those many M.Phils floating around in the universe of 'why did I sacrifice so much time to do this?') I can only conclude that bundle theory is an emergence phenomenon based on the fact that multiple sub-systems co-create new systems with collections of attributes that give it a unique identity.

Architecturally our universe is made up of multiple sets of interactive sub-systems built on top of each other from minus infinity to plus infinity. Systems theory may just be my hammer but it's a pretty eloquent hammer especially when you watch the Quantum Monkeys smashing atoms to bits and trying to come up with a Theory for Everything. M-Theory... smashed into finer splinters. At one stage even I was thinking that super strings of Plank length sounded pretty elegant. However, Plank length may be just another emergent property blossoming from the interaction of co-creating sub-systems.

The Higgs particle will soon be followed by the Super-God particle, then by the meta-physical Super God Particle, and then by the "We never Thought of That" particle, which will be followed hot on it's heals by the "We Should Have Seen It Coming" particle and then the "Okay, We're Really Embarrassed About This" particle.

And on a different tack, talking of hammers: the answer to the climate change problem is Jove's Hammer. Unfortunately there isn't enough space in this margin for me to fully describe it.

New Moon Discovered!

It's not every day that you learn something new... or is it?

Today's discovery (albeit a few months old to some) is that the diminutive kingdom of dwarf planets is rapidly acquiring moons. The Hubble Space Telescope (or at least those operating it) recently discovered that Pluto has ANOTHER moon orbiting it (that we
didn't know about until a few months ago).

In an exclusive interview with Alex Dawson a PR rep for Star Quark Enterprises was very happy to announce the delivery of moon Styx (P4) to the generation of evolutionary organisms that have elected to inhabit the planet in the near future. SQE was very keen to show Walter and his friends et. al. at Hubble just how quickly and efficiently a moon could be delivered. Unfortunately persistent disbelief in the existence of life beyond "planet Earth" remains one of the developmental stumbling blocks of the Bluopolous scientific community and their observations were incorrectly interpreted as a lack of sufficient exposure time.

Author Alex Dawson Website Launched!

Finally, Alex Dawson launches his website!
Congratulations - may this be the start of great things.

Perseid Meteor photographed from ISS

This NASA image of a Perseid meteor was photographed from the ISS. Most shooting stars are spotted from the earth as bright streaks against a black star-studded background. This is an exciting development in the field of astronomy - or should it be called Earthomotory. I think I'll bag that one and use it in one of my books.


NASA have put a lovely video together to describing how this picture came about:



I love the image of Arcturus shining through the green airglow of the post solar excited atmosphere at night.

I often wonder how much damage a pea of 1cm would do to the ISS if it struck at 211,000 km/h.

Star Quark Enterprises have strict rules on no-fly zones in the vicinity of planets populated by intelligent life. The last thing they would want to be held responsible for is left over dinner bits wrecking expensive space technology equipment and holding a civilisation back from becoming full members of the intergalactic community.

Back to Jupiter

Like most kids I was mesmerised by the idea that there had once been dinosaurs living on our planet years ago and was perplexed that they had become extinct.

This, however, was eclipsed overnight by a new discovery. I was six years old when I discovered Jupiter. I didn't find it in the heavens or while looking through an astronomers telescope. I discovered Jupiter on the cover of a book in a book shop. Once I knew there were planets out there I wanted to know more.

I'm not sure where I found out what the correct order of the planets were and what there names were but I learnt this at about the same time. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto became my mantra. I found out about the asteroid belt later, and then Kuiper's belt, and then the Oort cloud, and later even more.

I recall being very disappointed with a friend at school who was building y-wing Viper fighters from Battle Star Galactica. That's not real, that's just fiction I chastised. I'm interested in the real stuff. There are real planets and real stars out there. I did come to appreciate his fantastic model making skills and attempt to copy his fine work.

Despite the fact that Voyager & Pioneer both made close calls on Jupiter several years ago, this giant still captivates our interest. So it was with glee that I watched an Atlas 5 Rocket launch the spacecraft Juno on a mission to Jupiter on 5 Aug 2011 (short video here and long version here).

Having read the objectives of the mission I am a little perplexed.

* Determine how much water is in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which helps determine which planet formation theory is correct (or if new theories are needed
*Look deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere to measure composition, temperature, cloud motions and other properties
* Map Jupiter’s magnetic and gravity fields, revealing the planet’s deep structure
* Explore and study Jupiter’s magnetosphere near the planet’s poles, especially the auroras – Jupiter’s northern and southern lights – providing new insights about how the planet’s enormous magnetic force field affects its atmosphere.

Don't we already know this? Why would we really want to know about these things in more detail? Clearly there is more to this than meets the eye - and I will have to do more research into what's happening. Are we on the brink of a new Space Odyssey?

Last one to leave the shuttle, please shutdown the DOS machines

It's difficult to choose a favourite mission from all the missions NASA have undertaken over the years. The most audacious must have been landing a man on the moon. The most inspiring is probably the Voyager and Pioneer missions.

What surprised me is how many missions are still current.

However, the one that grabbed my attention when I was old enough to understand what all the fuss was about, was the Space Shuttle mission (April 12, 1981). I recall taking time out of my holiday as a school kid and watching the first launch of Columbia thinking this is the most important development in space exploration and is the future of space technology.

So I was a little sad to see it come to an end. Nasa: "The final space shuttle mission, STS-135, ended July 21, 2011 when Atlantis rolled to a stop at its home port, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida."

It was a programme filled with triumphs and tragedies.

Simplistically: We put men on the moon with slide rules, the shuttle was launched on DOS - there will be no future missions because of Windows. Commander: Houston we have a problem, Windows: would you like to try our new virus scan now, Houston: can you guys reboot your computer? Commander: O2 levels at 9% & dropping, we won't get through the reboot sequence before the O2 has run out. Houston: Sorry Commander, we have to run diagnostics and refrag our disks first. Do one of you have a spare slide rule?

Future missions will probably fly mac's. Next generation ishuttle in Apple green?