…in the blink of an eye.
A husband and his wife decided to start taking a picture of themselves and then infant child starting in 1991 with the same photographer, lighting, and background. They took a photograph of themselves from that year all the way through the present, amounting to 22 years worth of photography and (gulp) aging.
Fascinating stuff. Check it out if you’re curious:
http://mom.me/toddler/10736-one-family-one-pose-22-years/item/1991/
Fascinating article by Eric Stern for Salon.com relating to a question I had when Colorado eased up on their marijuana laws: What happens to all those who are in jail and/or are being prosecuted by incidents involving marijuana yet happened before this new eased regulations were instituted?
In many ways I’m a real “square”. Throughout my life I’ve hardly ever had alcohol (I have never been drunk and I don’t drink because I don’t like the taste of most alcoholic beverages), I don’t smoke (tried it for at most two days in high school before giving up), and have never taken any illegal drugs (though like many I certainly had the opportunities to do so, again in high school as well as college). That last bit obviously includes the use of marijuana, which I haven’t so much as had single puff of. In fact, during the years when I was exposed to its use via friends, I was very much against it though I don’t recall ever pontificating against its use (I could be wrong but throughout my life I was never much of a “strident” type).
Over the years I’ve come to the opinion that drug laws in this country are both too harsh and ineffective. It is also my opinion our society is repeating the mistakes of Prohibition. Drug laws, like the Prohibition laws of the 1920’s, have spawned a vast criminal underclass devoted to selling these illegal items, some of which are clearly more damaging than others. The bottom line remains the same as it was during the Prohibition years: If people want to use an illegal substance, they WILL find a way. Many may get caught while many others won’t, but the use will continue.
So now that marijuana, an illegal drug many consider no stronger and less damaging than alcohol, is essentially “allowed” in Colorado (there are fine lines in the new law, which are addressed in the article) while “medicinal marijuana” is looked upon more and more favorably in other states, a very legitimate question is raised: What happens with the people of Colorado who are in prison specifically for the use and/or distribution of marijuana?
Should they be immediately freed? Should their records be wiped clean? And what if this legalization seeps into other states? What happened to all the others in prison for similar offenses?
Culturally, we’re in interesting times and the above article offers some food for thought.
The following article, from Newsweek, is about Airbnb, an upstart (small) Hotel company that is going after the “big boys”. Although this may sound like something only those in the Hotel business may find interesting, the article touches upon something that has intrigued me for several years now: the evolution of businesses in the age of the internet.
Read the article and you’ll see what I mean:
http://www.newsweek.com/end-mass-production-225700
If you’re not interested in reading the whole thing and/or too lazy to click the link, let me offer you this quote which neatly summarizes what the article has to say about the current business world:
Information technology is eroding the power of large-scale mass production. We’re instead moving toward a world of massive numbers of small producers offering unique stuff – and of consumers who reject mass-produced stuff. The Internet, software, 3D printing, social networks, cloud computing and other technologies are making this economically feasible – in fact, desirable.
Let me repeat one small part of this great paragraph: Massive numbers of small producers offering unique stuff.
I see this today in Amazon whenever I check out my books, for am I not very much a part of this very game? I’m one small independent writer out there offering my wares (books) to everyone out there. At this point there is no major publishing company distributing my works.
Back when I first got into the publishing business in the 1990’s, being an “independent” publisher involved considerable investment and therefore potentially big loss. Why? Because the only way to publish works was to actually publish them at certain minimal quantity levels and on actual paper. If you were publishing “Book X”, you could list it in the trades and pay good money for a full page add. Eventually you’d get your order and you hoped it would be a sufficient quantity to pay for the publishing costs and still make you a little bit of money.
If the orders were too low, however, you could do one of two things: a) cut your losses (both in terms of money and time) and cancel the book or b) go ahead and publish it at a loss and hope that over time you can recoup your publishing costs and sell whatever material you were forced to over-produce.
This changed radically with the advent of the various tablets. Now, you can “publish” works that can be read on your computer and tablet via Kindle or Nook or any other e-reader. There are now “print to demand” companies that do just that, print your book in the numbers you need them printed without any minimal orders.
But even more importantly, the internet has given regular folks the ability to review the works of others. Moving away from books for the moment, we as consumers can comfortably go to a McDonalds restaurant in all corners of the United Stated to get a meal and we know what we’re going to get. Yet we may avoid the small, independent (and mythical) Billy’s Burger Joint right next door to a McDonalds for the opposite reason: We don’t know what we’re going to get. The food may well be far fresher and tastier than that found at McDonalds yet as consumers we may shy away from this place because we simply don’t know if that will be the case.
In the book world, you may avoid a book authored by one E. R. Torre because you haven’t the foggiest idea of whether this fellow has any talent whatsoever (if you should even stumble upon him!) and time is money and you have neither available in healthy enough quantities to devote to this “newbie”. Yet you buy novels by, say, Big Author X because s/he has a track record of sales and past successes which make you as a consumer more likely to try his/her latest novel out.
This in spite of the fact that you may not have enjoyed any of this author’s books in many years.
The wonderful thing is that the internet is in the process of changing all this.
Now, if you see Billy’s Burger Joint and are not in the mood for a Big Mac, you pull up your smart phone or any other internet device and see what others say about Billy’s Burger Joint. If the reviews are good, you feel more comfortable in giving the place a try.
The same may well benefit someone like me.. I’ve been blessed with mostly good reviews for my books and I suspect that makes it easier for others who are not familiar with the works of E. R. Torre to give them a try. While sales of my books certainly are not on the level of, say, a Stephen King I can’t help but feel each positive reviews has to encourage potential buyers. And the reviews have the bonus effect of encouraging me to keep writing and releasing new works!
Perhaps the end of “mass production” is the future of not just the food, lodging, and writing industries but of all fields.
We will certainly see!
…still dreaming…
I know other parts of the country experience a deep freeze. Around these parts, it seems the rain just won’t go away.
Love this website. Interesting mix of both Informative AND hilarious articles. A few I’ve checked out recently:
First up is a list of 5 Movies That Shamelessly Ripped Off Obscure Ones:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19852_5-famous-movies-that-shamelessly-ripped-off-obscure-ones.html
Fascinating list, particularly the #4 movie displayed, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The “look” and some aspects of that very famous film sure are similar to the far more obscure Charlton Heston 1954 film Secret of the Incas.
Another movie, the classic 1979 horror/sci-fi hybrid Alien, clearly owed plenty to the atmospheric 1965 film Planet of the Vampires, as well as the other movie presented (I’ll leave that for you to discover!). When I first saw Planet of the Vampires, I already knew that it had been an “influence” on Alien. Seeing it proved a revelation. While Planet of the Vampires is very low budget (and it shows at times), it features several sequences that seem to have been taken almost whole in Alien, including the crashed alien craft complete with a dead alien pilot!
Interesting stuff!
Next, 20 Most Amazing People You’ve Never Heard Of:
http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_753_the-20-most-amazing-people-youve-never-heard-of_p20/#20
Really fascinating list, including the person who created the first video game/video game system, the first jet airplane, the first porn film (!), the actual First President of the United States, and the man who influenced both Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.
An eclectic and fascinating list, though you may find some examples far more interesting than others.
Finally, here’s a podcast exploring the question of why some music and movies go “bad” over time:
The topic to me is fascinating because I’ve certainly experienced film/music that in my younger years really enjoyed but as I grew older didn’t. Meanwhile, there are other examples of film/music that you enjoyed as a youth that you still enjoy tremendously.
What makes one still work while the other no longer does?
Again, interesting stuff. Enjoy!
This seems to be the day of finding oddball stories. In this case, a pair of Physics Professors scoured the internet for any evidence of…time travelers. SPOILER ALERT: Sadly, they found no evidence of any:
As a fan of science fiction, one of my favorite concepts to explore both in my writings (my own personally written favorite time travel story can be found in the short story collection Shadows at Dawn. The story is titled Dreams Do Come True) and in the works of others is time travel. There are plenty of really good stories out there featuring this idea and plenty of others that somehow screw the concept up.
The reality -and allure- of time travel as a concept is that it is so very cool yet also so very messy. The “grandfather” paradox, which if applied broadly explores the concept of changing your future via traveling to the past, is perhaps the biggest issue regarding any time travel story. The original concept is that you go back in time and accidentally or on purpose kill your grandfather…before your father was born. That being the case, how can you (the time traveler) in your present even exist if in the past your grandfather was dead before your father was conceived?
The concept of killing a figure in the past can thus be expanded to others, the most noted one being Adolph Hitler. So the story goes that you’re in the future and have a time machine. You go back in time and target and kill Adolph Hitler well before he comes to power in Nazi Germany (perhaps you murder him as a child, perhaps you make sure his parents never meet, etc).
Yet by doing so, you’ve made your “present” Adolph Hitler free. That being the case, why would you want to go back in time and eliminate this man? Your present would thus be a whole different one, perhaps one where another figure took over the vacuum left behind by Hitler’s death (there were other geo-political events in motion during that time and it is possible if Hitler didn’t come to power someone else might well have in his place…perhaps someone much smarter, bolder, and crueler -if such a thing is possible). Or perhaps your future would be so radically altered that there was no time travel…or perhaps no “you”!
Which begs the question: If time travel is possible, can you alter history? Can you eliminate yourself if you do so? If not, could time travel actually be some kind of alternate dimensional trip, where instead of going “back” in time you’re actually traveling to an alternate universe that is currently experiencing a different year than yours? And this brings up another, even more deeply philosophical issue: Is our future thus pre-determined? While we affect history in the present, does the idea of not being able to “change the past” essentially mean the future is also unchangeable? If we can’t go back and kill an Adolph Hitler and make a more peace-loving alternate 1930’s era Germany, then could whatever happens from this day forward is also written in stone on some God/alien/Supreme Being’s mountain? Is our fate pre-determined?
Anyway, getting back to the original article: No evidence of time travelers.
Bummer. 😉
According to a study in Frontiers in Zoology (and presented in this article from i09), dogs align their bodies along a North-South axis when they poop:
http://io9.com/dogs-align-their-bodies-along-a-north-south-axis-when-t-1493457072
…Ohhhhkay…
Very odd finding, to say the least. Even odder that someone noticed this and decided to check it out. The findings, however, did give me pause. There are so many things out there that we don’t know and are only discovering if we open our minds and look into them…as silly as they may be.
The upshot of the study is actually quite fascinating, the idea that dogs have some kind of inner awareness of the Earth’s magnetic field.
How interesting is that?
Sorry for the dearth of new blog posts. Have been on the road and am now back!
First up, a fascinating look back -and forward!- by noted sci-fi author Isaac Asimov. Way back in 1964 he wrote an article making predictions about the technologies available to us fifty years later…in the far flung year of 2014:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/isaac-asimov-2014_n_4530785.html
Pretty fascinating, and at times eerily prescient, stuff. There were a few misses along with the hits, naturally, but given the time frame and the years between, one has to respect Mr. Asimov’s thoughts.
Before getting into the next article, a little side note: Is it me or are many of yesterdays “big” sci-fi authors slowly being forgotten? Sure, while many hardcore sci-fi fans are familiar with either Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein (to take two of the bigger names), it just seems like their individual stars have faded with the passage of time. When I was younger, you couldn’t mention sci-fi literature without mentioning either individual yet today I wonder how many casual fans of sci-fi literature know about Mr. Asimov beyond his Robot stories -and the rules- or the Foundation series. These books and stories, while arguably the cream of Mr. Asimov’s literary crop, are a small fraction of the over 500 books he’s listed as having written. As for Mr. Heinlein, perhaps he’s mostly known today for Starship Troopers, and that may be more because of the cult film that deviated a good deal from his actual story. While I wasn’t a big fan of either books, Mr. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress were at one time considered absolute must reads for sci-fi fans yet today I hardly hear mention of either. Were the novels too much “of their time”? Did they not translate well for modern audiences?
As always, getting older brings new wisdom. Things that were very popular at one time don’t necessarily retain that popularity forever, while others that might have slipped “under the radar” sometimes come back strong. You can never tell what audiences will flock to over time.
Next article is about a fragment of a letter discovered stuffed in the wall of Abraham Lincoln’s Springfield home. It would appear that researchers have discovered who the author of this letter was, and what it was about. Very fascinating stuff so give it a look:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/03/lincoln-letter-andrew-johnston_n_4537845.html
As always, its my hope this year is better than the last for everyone out there, even those lucky souls who had a terrific year.
As for me…I’m most looking forward to releasing the next book in the Corrosive Knights series and getting to work on what follows!
Soon. So very soon…
I was looking at one of my favorite websites, Slate magazine, and found this article by Rebecca Onion regarding five of her favorite websites of 2013. Check them out:
I point out the link because within it is a great websites called “Small Town Noir”, which features mug shots and history of people arrested in New Castle, Pennsylvania between “1930 and 1960” (this description isn’t entirely accurate as I’ve found some mugshots from the 1970’s).
The thing that makes this website so fascinating is that not only do you get a mugshot of various criminals and a description of their crime(s). The website’s administrators have been able to get a decent history of many of the individuals both before, during, and after their crimes, in some cases all the way up to their passing. I’ve always been fascinated with these sort of things, to see if someone who did something bad at one time long ago might have “cleaned” themselves up and led a better life. And if not, what happened to them?
Check it out, it is really fascinating: