ConDor

I had a good time down at our local ConDor convention last last weekend. After being in a funk for over a year, the poetry workshop sorta twisted my arm into writing my first new things in a while. Always nice to see Debbie Kolodji, Samantha Henderson, Deborah Flores, Sheila Finch, and the other usual suspects. Got to talk some astronomer with real astronomer David Lee Summers. Also had a nice talk with Denise Dumars about how the two of us used to get into opinionated debates back in the 80s in places like Scavenger's Newsletter ... before I ever suspected I'd end up in California; was nice to reminisce, and comically it turns out she's from the same CA town my wife grew up in.

There was a world religion conference at the other end of the same hotel, but I only felt at home when I turned a corner and saw the first person in Victorian costume. Such is normal.

Saucer blossoms for all!

The night we didn't see Tron (a dream)

Funny dream just now. We went out to the movies (Tron was playing), but after getting the tickets & popcorn and settling down, there was no movie, just a lecture on socialism. But even that was a lie. It was clearly just some new age babble, some darn cult looking for stooges. The audience put up with it, grumbling a bit and slurping their now-empty sodas with some disdain, but surprisingly okay with it. Then the cult guys in their silly cult outfits started passing around collection plates (old Jiffy Pop containers). When one got within reach, I grabbed it and threw it across the room, a wobbly aluminum frisbee leaving a trail of other people's pocket change.

"Hell no," I said. "You already stole our money, now get lost and show the movie."

Cult guy said, "We didn't take your money, the theater did. We're here to help you see the light. Our service is free."

I translated this for the crowd: "Well folks, that's all you need to know about socialism and cults that make you dress funny. Someone else took your money, and they'll help you for free, except that it'll cost you anyway. And I bet the doors are locked, too!"

It seems like my reveal struck a nerve. Ten minutes later the whole theater was on fire, and a week later City Hall banned movies from our town forever, citing some obscure precedent about how Hollywood is trying to subvert decency and family values, and how everyone knows there are no such things as cults. People dress funny and say uneducated things of their own free will.

Get yer tentacles here!

Here's an odd item ... The Book of Tentacles. It was my top-secret project of 2008 to 2009, edited with the help of Edward Cox over in the U.K. It's a fun romp, all kinds of stories, poems and sketches, from all kinds of genres, all centered on the theme of "tentacles."



The book is now available, and here's a rather cute website to tell you more. Enjoy.

Quantum beaches

"Quantum mechanics describes what a system might do in the future, whereas classical mechanics describes what it has done in the past." This is a quote attributed to Freeman Dyson in an early 1990's lecture. [CC, p.272]

Right or wrong, every now & then you hear a line that brings ideas together in a provocative way. One of the central quirks of quantum mechanics is that things are undecided until an observation is made, but it's not really clear what constitutes an observation. Surely there isn't a list of "valid devices for observation."

What if the elusive observer is universal? What if it is simply the arrival of the present moment? In other words, all quantum waves collapse at the present moment, making the past a deterministic record of what has happened. The waves crash on the quantum beach.

There are one other big idea here. One is the illusion(?) of the flow of time in one direction. This is now solved ... once the quantum waves have crashed, they are irreversible, there's no going back to an unobserved state. Water doesn't form itself into waves and rush off into the distance.

Food for thought.

Reference:
CC. Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen, "The Collapse of Chaos" (Viking Books, New York, 1994)

Food for thought: DNA is not the whole story

DNA is not the blueprint for life. Sorry. If you put a piece of DNA in a jar, it will do nothing. It's only part of the picture. In order to function, DNA needs to be in a compatible living cell where all the required chemicals are available. But if you take a fertile living cell and put it in a jar, under most conditions it will die. Each cell can only survive in a certain range of temperature, pH, gravity and pressure, and needs just the right nutrients to survive.

Does DNA contain the information to create its own optimum environment? No. It is only part of the blueprint of life, and it has a lot of dependencies. It is certainly where most of the information is stored, but there's a bigger picture to ponder.

DNA is badly misused in science fiction, especially in TV and movies where everything has to happen in a hurry. If we beamed a human genome to an alien civilization, would they be able to make human? No. But if we beamed them a complete scan of a cell, and how to nurture it, maybe (just maybe) there would be a chance of success.

Food for Thought: Sex and mutations

Sexual reproduction is a line of defense against mutations. If one parent has a damaged gene, the other parent (hopefully) has an undamaged gene. If all genes had equal weight, there would be a 50/50 chance of the offspring getting the undamaged gene. In reality, genes can be dominant or recessive, and other factors are probably at work.

The natural next question is how creatures started shooting genetic material at each other in the first place.

There are many events in the ocean of massive releases of genetic material. That some creatures found ways to get up close and make a more personal delivery does not surprise me.

I have seen pine trees release clouds of pollen at the touch of the wind. It boggles my mind that some of those spores might land on a receptive cone and start the long process that makes a seed. It seems like such a waste to have the rest of the cloud fall dead somewhere. It is also pretty wild that I can pick up seeds when I walk in the woods, and hold entire potential trees in my hand.

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Note: "Food for thought" is going to be an ongoing series of speculations and science commentary.

2009 resolved

Comically, after splitting up my blogs last year, trying to make more sense out of them, I ended up with no place to put my sci-fi/fantasy/weird clips and news. Sure, the dark stuff goes in Dark Windows (which has now posted over 70,000 words!), and the "weird news" goes into Unlikely Times. But there's this big gap. And I resolved to resolve it in 2009, so here it is ... while I may still add strange science notes here, I can put futuristic/odd story, dream and poem bits here as well.

I also decided to be bold and launch my blog of word lore ... WordFixx!

I hope this whole mash-up keeps you entertained.

Just a Cheezburger

Oh no, if there's one thing you don't want, it's to give me a tool where I can add smartass comments to photos ...


moar funny pictures

Just a light moment. More of my oddities can be found here.