Independent self-publishing, or blogging, here to stay I’m afraid

16 February 2015

A prominent blogger, or independent self-publisher, if you will, decides to stop writing online, and next thing we’re hearing about the imminent demise of the medium.

Sure, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Medium, and the like, have all come along and splinted the domain of the blog/personal website. But, as a media property, or communications tool, a writer’s own website has one distinct advantage over many social media channels. It belongs to the writer, and not some other autarchic entity.

And so, to be clear, when I speak of the “blog” I am referring to a regularly-updated site that is owned-and-operated by an individual (there is, of course, the “group blog,” but it too has a clearly-defined set of authors). And there, in that definition, is the reason why, despite the great unbundling, the blog has not and will not die: it is the only communications tool, in contrast to every other social service, that is owned by the author; to say someone follows a blog is to say someone follows a person.

Originally published Monday 16 February 2015.

Artificial Intelligence, nothing to worry about, just yet anyway…

13 February 2015

Much is being said about artificial intelligence, or AI, and how AI powered entities stand ready to take over the world. Well, this might be a concern in the future.

But right now? Maybe not. That’s if Twitter page INTERESTING.JPG, “a smart computer looking at popular human images”, and the commentary it offers of the photos it sees, is anything to go by.

According to INTERESTING.JPG, this image is of a number of birds flying through the sky in front of a cliff. Mind you, INTERESTING.JPG can sometimes be on the mark, but not too often by the looks of it.

For now, at least, there’s not a whole lot to worry about…

Originally published Friday 13 February 2015.

Stories about ghosts that nurses have seen

29 October 2014

Photo of ghostly woman in abandoned building, by Maximiliano Estevez

Image courtesy of Maximiliano Estevez.

I once spent a month staying at a hotel when I was somewhere or other, and every evening when I came in there’d be a young woman with straight blonde hair, sitting on the stairs. She’d always be engaged in a FaceTime conversation, speaking in Spanish, with, I came to notice, the same male.

I never saw her at any other time. Curious as to who she was, I asked the manager about her one morning. He looked blankly at me. He knew of no such guest, especially one who had been staying there as long as I had. Predictably, I never saw her again.

That’s not quite how things unfolded, and that’s not quite meant to be a ghost story, but I thought I’d tell the tale nonetheless.

Anyway to bookmark for later tonight… ghosts may well contravene the second law of thermodynamics, but these ghost stories, as told by nurses, may have you doubting the axiom that nothing unreal exists, for a spine chilling couple of minutes at least.

Originally published Wednesday 29 October 2014.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a film by Anthony and Joe Russo, with Chris Evans

9 April 2014

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), the diminutive man who was transformed into the far sturdier Captain America as part of a World War II experiment, probably wouldn’t have had the chance read George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Even if he had, it couldn’t possibly have prepared him for the state of surveillance some latter day leaders had in mind.

Corrupt government official Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) is determined to implement a security program that will endanger more people than it claims to protect. Working with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Captain America sets about trying to thwart Pierce’s plan.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, trailer, co-directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, ticks over at breathless pace, yet still takes the time to flesh out a little of Steve Rogers’ character, while the story’s parallels with the world we live in today are blunt. Despite the sometimes heavy overtones, as escapist fare there isn’t too much to fault here.

Originally published Wednesday 9 April 2014.

Planet X? No, that idea can be crossed off the list then

18 March 2014

For a long time astronomers believed, or hoped, there was a Jupiter, or Saturn, size planet lurking out in the distant reaches of the solar system. The presence of such a body, commonly referred to as “Planet X”, they thought, might account for the odd orbital paths of some of the other outer planets, dwarf planets, and various other Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO).

But no, a NASA backed mission, that has spent just over a year scanning the sky, did not find any evidence of a such planet:

This news comes from a paper analyzing observations by WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, a scrappy little mission that spent 13 months mapping the entire sky in infrared wavelengths. This is where warm objects are bright, things like dinky stars, asteroids, galactic dust, and more. WISE was very sensitive and was able to see objects that were pretty faint. For example, it found tens of thousands of previously undiscovered asteroids, some of which get pretty near the Earth. These glow in the infrared, heated by the Sun. What it didn’t discover, though, was another giant planet in our solar system. And it’s pretty definitive: It would’ve seen a planet the size of Saturn out to a distance of 1.5 trillion kilometers, more than a tenth of a light year! A planet the size of Jupiter would’ve been seen out to twice that far.

I imagine it’s possible there are other, much smaller planets, or dwarf planets, yet to be detected, out in the solar system’s far reaches though.

Originally published Tuesday 18 March 2014, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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A map of the solar system for your own grand tour of the planets

4 February 2014

Back in the 1960’s the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a US space agency, was keen to organise a “Grand Tour” of the solar system’s outer planets, by taking advantage of a planetary alignment that would occur in the late 1970’s. They hoped to send up to four automated probes to take a closer look at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

Funding cuts thwarted the idea, though NASA deep space probe Voyager 2, launched in 1977, was able to fly by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

There won’t be another such alignment of the outer planets until well into the twenty-second century. But thanks to Pasadena based designer and illustrator Paul Rogers, who has created a map of the solar system for tourists, you may be able to plan your own jaunt about the planets in the meantime.

Originally published Tuesday 4 February 2014, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Not every moon is a moon, most are captured objects

9 January 2014

Here’s a 2010 photo, taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe, of Phobos, one of two… moons orbiting Mars. But that’s not a moon. And nor is Deimos, Mars’ second so-called moon. In reality they’re merely random rocks captured by the Red Planet at some point in the past.

Take a look at Earth’s moon. The Moon. It’s elegant, sizeable, and spherical. The same cannot be said of the rocks orbiting Mars, a couple of unfortunate asteroids that once strayed a tad too close to the fourth planet. Most of the outer planets of the solar system have moons similar in stature to Earth’s satellite, but they also host a bunch of minuscule, oddly shaped rocks, called moons simply because they orbit the planet in question.

It makes me think it is time to consider what really constitutes a moon. If Pluto can no longer be regarded as a planet, why then must every last rock that has been pulled into orbit by a planet, be called a moon? Surely such bodies should adhere — like planets, real planets — to some sort of criteria before being called a moon.

Being pretty much spherical, and of a certain size and mass, could form basic benchmarks, and anything under a certain size should be referred to as a captured object rather than a moon. Sorry Mars, but both your orbiting companions, Phobos and Deimos, are captured objects, not moons.

Originally published on Thursday 9 January 2014.

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I doubt that our lives are merely the sums of our possessions

12 December 2013

This piece I read on Kottke last week had me wondering about the way we… measure someone’s achievements, success, or net worth, upon their death. In October US comedian and author David Sedaris wrote about the suicide of his youngest sister, Tiffany, earlier this year. Judging from her will, Tiffany appeared to have become estranged, to some degree, from her family, but it was Sedaris’ reference to his late sister’s possessions, or lack thereof, that caught my eye:

Compared with most forty-nine-year-olds, or even most forty-nine-month-olds, Tiffany didn’t have much. She did leave a will, though. In it, she decreed that we, her family, could not have her body or attend her memorial service. “So put that in your pipe and smoke it,” our mother would have said. A few days after getting the news, my sister Amy drove to Somerville with a friend and collected two boxes of things from Tiffany’s room: family photographs, many of which had been ripped into pieces, comment cards from a neighborhood grocery store, notebooks, receipts.

In response, Michael Knoblach, a friend of Tiffany’s, chastised Sedaris in an article he wrote for the Wicked Local Somerville. Among other points, Knoblach wished to make clear that Tiffany’s estate amounted to more than just two boxes of belongings:

I found David Sedaris’ article, “Now we are five,” in the Oct. 28 New Yorker to be obviously self-serving, often grossly inaccurate, almost completely unresearched and, at times, outright callous. Some of her family had been more than decent, loving and kind to her. “Two lousy boxes” is not Tiffany’s legacy. After her sister left with that meager lot, her house was still full of treasures. More than two vanloads of possession were pulled from there and other locations by friends.

Tiffany may have been troubled, but it is clear her life had value far beyond her possessions, regardless of their quantity.

Originally published Thursday 12 December 2013

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Alone Time, a short film by Rod Blackhurst, with Rose Hemingway

27 September 2013

It looked like the perfect weekend away, camping in the wilderness, far from the stresses of the city and career. Until the twist at the end. That’s Alone Time, a short film by American filmmaker Rod Blackhurst, starring Rose Hemingway as Ann.

Based on actual such events by the way, but don’t read about it until you’ve watched the video.

(Thanks Sarah)

Originally published Friday 27 September 2013, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

A guide to making a career out of looking busy in a job that is not a job

1 August 2013

Doing nothing is hard work. Constantly maintaining the pretence of looking busy is a full time job in itself, and for one American worker has virtually become a career.

Nine years later, someone calling himself the “forgotten employee”, still occupies, and is paid for, a role his employer apparently abolished very early into his tenure with the company.

So I arrived, acquired a large office in a remote corner of said facility, and continued with my march towards greatness. Then, something strange and wonderful happened. In outlook, an EMail appeared with my name in the “Courtesy Copy” field. Apparently, a new Vice President had decided to delegate the responsibilities that once were mine to another department. Immediately frightened for my job and my well being, I was tempted to scream out —yet, thankfully, I remained silent. I continued to come into the office on time every day, picked up the random pieces of my old job that were left scattered in the transition, and waited for the word. That, my friends, was 4 months ago to the day. After 30 days, I became convinced that I was a forgotten, non digestible entity in the corporate stomach. No man ever comes over to ask me for anything — although I am but a Manager, and Directors roam the hallways like rabid hyenas, I am much too senior to all of them for them to attempt an attack. Every once in a while, the phone will ring, and an old acquaintance will ask for help solving a problem — I gladly comply. Sometimes, I let the phone ring… but the voicemail light never comes on. They move on to the next target, under the false assumption that I am much too busy to be bothered.

I don’t know if this is for real, though I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it were, but there has to be a screenplay in it. The more you read, the better it gets.

(Some language possibly NSFW.)

Originally published Thursday 1 August 2013, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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