…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.
Category Archives: General
More from Cracked…
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!
Seriously…?! Part Deux
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. 😉
Seriously…?!
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?
Couple of interesting articles…
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
Oh…and Happy New Year!
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…
Small Town Noir
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:
The 10 Most Interesting Things People Said About the Future…
…at least according to Patrick Tucker for Salon.com:
Some of the quotes presented really make you stop and think, like the very first one:
As much as 45 percent of the jobs that currently exist in the United States will be taken over by computers or artificial intelligence systems by 2045.
This quote, by Nick Bostrom director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, is a quote that I think we’re beginning to see as reality today. While there are those in political spheres quick to blame one party or the other for unemployment, I’ve felt that part of the reason -a big part- may well have to do with the complete change in how so many people buy things today.
As I’ve mentioned perhaps too many times, there are no longer music stores because you can now download just about any music you want legally and, unfortunately, illegally via the internet. The same is happening to books and movies, which makes it not all that surprising that once very big stores like Blockbuster and Borders have gone under. Once these stores are gone, so too are the jobs they provided to local economies.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
As much as I love Amazon.com, the reality is that you can order almost everything you want from that online store and that means, again, that local stores will suffer. There was a news clip on CNN about the problems UPS has had with delivering gifts during this holiday season (amounting to delays of perhaps a day or two). They interviewed one person “on the street” who noted most of the gifts arrived on time but one intended for him has yet to show up. While he wasn’t too worried about the delay, he noted “I don’t go to stores to buy anything anymore.”
A chilling statement to local retailers, for sure.
Another interesting comment:
Big business decisions will be made not be experts or intuition but by big data and predictive analytics
Virginia Rometty, CEO and chairwoman of IBM made this statement and it reminds me of another interesting thing I read, this time about sports and how metadata on athletes are beginning to be used/available to everyone.
The impact is clear: We’ll get a better understanding of all things (not just in sports) by analyzing bulk data. Will Product/Athlete X be a success? We can chart Product/Athlete X to an astonishing degree nowadays and will gradually come to a better understanding of what might work…and what will not. In sports, the effect on gambling should be quite interesting as we’ll have a far better chance of predicting winners and losers.
But also, with big data we can predict if a business or a product will make it as well. The old adage about Hollywood that “nobody knows anything” might eventually get turned on its head and movies may become better conceived and targeted for maximum profits.
However, where does this end? Will products become better or more and more average (or worse!)? After all, what everyone likes may well be something that is pleasing enough yet not all that great to begin with.
Anyway, enough of me. Give the list a look. There are plenty of fascinating quotes there to mull over.
Happy Holidays!
And now, one of the more bizarre -yet ultimately quite affecting!- duets ever…David Bowie and Bing Crosby sing (after a bit of playacting) “The Little Drummer Boy”:
How do you follow that up? How about with a parody of the same. The boys mimic the original word for word for the most part…until the end:
…whatever…
According to Reuter’s Kevin Murphy and an opinion poll conducted to check this out, the word “Whatever” is considered by Americans to be the most annoying word out there:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/19/usa-annoying-idUSL2N0JY1BX20131219
Just thought you’d like to know.
(And I was so temped to end this with “Whatever“)