Limes with Orange

Okay, here's the deal. Sometimes I'm intrigued by things that I'm not sure I believe in; I may want to believe in them, but the sceptic in me is, well, sceptical.

When I went to hear Robert Sawyer talk, he said that time travel was one of the big sci-fi concepts that would never be feasible. His excuse was partly the grandfather paradox and partly that things like the Holocaust would never have happened if someone could go back in time to prevent it. Well, the grandfather paradox is an oversimplified analogy that I'll never buy as a scientific explanation. As for the second point, changing history would be a tricky business. How do we know that some time traveller didn't attempt to change something and just made everything worse instead of better?

My point? I have a hard time accepting in my logical brain that time travel will ever be reality, but I'll defend the notion of it because it appeals to me and I want to believe in it.

So why am I rambling on about scepticism and beliefs? Because I was just reading about the Dream Manifestation Wizard that claims to offer an exact scientific method to manifesting all of your dreams. My very first reaction was Holy New Age-ness, Batman. But then I read a little bit more and thought a little bit more and was intrigued.

While I was listening to the audio clip, I remembered the sports psychology seminars that I used to take when I was competing with my horse in Three Day Events. Visualizing yourself in each phase of the competition, imagining how it would feel to do everything to the best of your ability, picturing yourself clearing every fence or executing the perfect 20 metre circle. I am a firm believer in everything I learned in those seminars and wasn't that really just another way of manifesting dreams?

And then I thought of my cousin, who said that she thought about exactly what she wanted in a romantic partner and "put it out into the universe." She's currently with the person who truly manifests all of those qualities that she wanted. Mind you, she forgot to specify that she was looking for a man. But she and her girlfriend are very happy!

So I decided to be open to what the website had to say. And wouldn't you know it, they paraphrased my guru, R. Buckminster Fuller, saying that 99.9% of all science in the 20th century was invisible to our five senses. (For those of you in the peanut gallery, the exact quote is: "Now in 1969, 99.9 per cent of the accelerating accelerations of the physical environment changes effecting all humanity’s evolution are transpiring in the realms of the electromagnetic spectrum realities which are undetectable directly by the human senses." From Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.)

Then the website went on to talk about paradigm shifts, which I recently jotted a note about in my faithful notebook that travels everywhere with me... how one of my fundamental themes as a filmmaker is new perspectives and paradigm shifts. Now that little coincidence may not seem like much to you, but I'm rather fascinated by the synchronicity of all this. So yes, I am intrigued by the Quantum Method to manifest my life dreams. I wonder what magic this Wizard might work for me.

Labels: math and science, philosophy

I just came across a brand new site… think MySpace for brainiacs (or geeks, depending on your preferred vernacular). It's called Sci-edge and it offers social networking for science hobbyists, technology and gadget geeks and science fiction fans. (I'm not so much into the gadgets, but would consider myself a bit of a science hobbyist and a definite sci-fi geek.)

They've already got some games up (though I haven't played any of them yet) and a couple of polls (hey, maybe I'll revise my "Is Starbuck Really Dead?" poll and post an updated version of it on Sci-edge). There's also a place for quizzes (still empty, so far… it just launched today, remember) and chat. Plus there's a community blog that makes for some interesting reading. There's also this wish list genie that I haven't tried yet and I'm not quite sure what it's all about, but I'll let you know once I've played around with it some more.

But one of the cool things about the site being so new is that they really want suggestions from the users. So if you sign up now, you're getting in on the ground floor and could really help shape this thing. I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty cool.

Labels: cool sites, math and science, pop culture

I love it when people create sites that seem custom suited to me. That's how I would describe StudentOfFortune.com, a website for students, tutors, and anyone who either needs help with their homework or wants to make money helping students. Since I already tutor math for pocket money and I spend a lot of time online blogging, shopping, working, etc... well, it's just a marriage made in heaven. Or it will be heaven once someone posts a math question (I know, I have a strange idea of heaven).

For now, I suppose I could pull out one of those physics texts that we used for my short film last summer and try my hand at the physics question posted. Ow! Was that an apple falling on my head?

Labels: cool sites, education, math and science

Last Thursday, my friend and I went to hear Robert Sawyer talk, courtesy of the Calgary chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. The topic was "Astronomy and Science Fiction." I haven't actually read any of Sawyer's books, but I've heard good things about them. And I'm always game for hearing people talk about real science in the context of fiction writing.

Sawyer talked about new scientific discoveries as the launching pad for most science fiction authors. While the scientists are looking for the most likely explanation, the science fiction writer is looking for the most entertaining explanation. And good science fiction is based on theories that cannot be scientifically invalidated at the time that it was written. And that even when the theory has been proven impossible, that shouldn't lessen the literary merit of good science fiction. Because all literature should be read in the context of when it was written.

He went on to say that often in science fiction movies they lean more towards fantasy than hard science fiction, not worrying as much about the scientific accuracy of their story. So he suggested that fans of truly scientific science fiction should read more and watch less. Something that I used to do but seem to have drifted away from. But I think it's time that I return to more reading.

I found myself wishing that I had a notebook and could jot down things that he said or things that I thought as a result of what he said, but alas… no such luck. I have to assume that the points that are important to me have stuck in my head and that the points that I no longer remember weren't worth the real estate in my memory.

The only other thing that I remember, even though I don't recall the context, is when he spoke of our solar system with 9—then he corrected himself—8 planets. FYI, Mental Floss sells a "Pluto R.I.P." T-shirt that Sawyer might enjoy (I'm tempted to get one myself):



But the "9… I mean… 8 planets" made me laugh so hard because it reminded me of the scene in Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I when Moses comes down off the mountain with THREE stone tablets and announces the 15… crash… 10 commandments.

Labels: books and literature, math and science, pop culture

My sister introduced me to the cartoons of Nick Downes. Not all of his cartoons are math and science related (and, unfortunately, his site doesn't reflect his geekiest side), but he has published two books of science related cartoons: Big Science and Whatever Happened to "Eureka"?. Humour for geeks! Hurrah!!

Hey, someone's gotta fill the void since Gary Larson retired.

Labels: animals, humour, math and science

You know you’re a geek when...

You see a picture of a digital microscope and consider adding it to your Christmas wish list because it’s just so cool, even though you’re no longer studying veterinary medicine or doing anything that actually requires the use of microscopes any more.

Is it just me, or do other people experience pangs of jealousy when those C.S.I. guys talk about the science kits they received as Christmas gifts when they were kids? Don’t get me wrong, I loved all my horse stuff, but there’s a part of me that still wants that cool chemistry kit or this awesome Observe the World Science Gift Package for kids: a telescope, binoculars and a microscope just for kids. How cool is that? (Or there's the rather less pricey Learn and Grow Kids Gift Package which offers the same basic stuff but without the fancy schmancy fogproof, waterproof type options.)

And if you do follow those links to OpticsPlanet.com, be sure to check out their sister site Microsopes.com (that’s where I came across the really cool digital microscope). The pages are a little crammed full of information making them look too busy, in my opinion, but at least you can’t claim that they don’t provide enough information. Oh and they’ve got various gift idea pages: Holiday Gifts, Gift Certificates, Gifts for Children...

And so on, and so on...

Hint, hint, hint...

Labels: cool stuff, math and science

It's sometimes interesting to note where ideas come from. My screenplay collaboration is temporarily on hold due to this thing called life, but I'm picking up other story ideas from some unexpected places in the interim.

Last week, Jive Weekly had a story called "Wonder Woman" about a girl named Natalia Demkina who has "X-ray vision." There are no shortage of brief articles about her on the net: Teenage girl 'has X-ray vision' & Supergirl baffles scientists with her vision are just two such examples, but I can't find anything more substantial yet. Though I've become kinda curious about Yoshio Machi, the professor at Tokyo University who specializes in studying apparent superpowers in human beings. I wonder if this is something that can be used for the Superman-themed screenplay we're working on, or if it will inspire a story of its own some day. I won't know until it's percolated in my brain a little bit longer.

The next idea is also from Jive Weekly (in case you're wondering, I read it every week while waiting for my regular Vietnamese sub at Kim Anh). This week, there was a "Say What?!" that caught my eye: "Electrical storms will make a person dream more frequently in sleep." Since many of my story ideas have to do with the power of dreams, this is definitely a fact that I can use. It may just end up being added into the novel I wrote during NaNoWriMo, or it may end up as a full fledged story idea somewhere else. I'm not sure yet. But I like it.

The other two ideas both came from some research I was doing for one of the puzzles on The Stone. While Googling for keywords such as "MRI," "brain" & "cortex," I found an abstract of an article claiming that "susceptibility to migraine attacks appears to be related to brain hyperexcitability." Now, I've always been drawn to story ideas about "illnesses" being "powers," such as schizophrenics actually being religious prophets or brain tumours allowing a person to see or hear things that get "edited out" by most brains, etc. Having frequent migraines myself, those sorts of story ideas related to migraines have great appeal. So while I'm not quite sure how I'll apply the research connecting migraines to brain hyperexcitability, I know it'll be something along those lines.

That same Google search landed me on a page entitled "How the Brain 'Creates' God: The Emerging Science of Neurotheology." I haven't read the full text yet, but I'm intrigued by what I've read so far. Again, I'm not sure where this spark will lead, but I sense a story in there somewhere.

Labels: math and science

I realize this post will be of no interest to anyone but me... but I was just Googling information on the Isle of Man, where one side of my family hails from and my NaNo main character's great-grandmother coincidentally was born. The same great-grandmother who's journal — aka Book of Shadows — ends up in my main characters hands. (And, also coincidentally, has the same name as my great-grandmother... gee, what are the chances?) But this is so not the point of this post. For some strange reason, the very first site that popped up on my Google search was Mathematics and the Isle of Man. I am, of course, a total math geek... the target audience for the Dell Math & Logic Problems puzzle books, who tutors high school math as more of a hobby than for the money. Anyway, math and the Isle of Man just seemed like such an unlikely connection for anyone else to have (yes, I'm really that self-centered) that I had to write a post to commemorate it.

NaNoWriMo Word Count: 20,514 down ~ 29,486 to go
(I finally broke 20,000... woohoo!!! Next stop: 25,000 aka the half-way point!)

Labels: math and science

Can you understand the way my mind works?
~ fireflies in a windstorm ~
The way my thoughts connect?
~ fireflies in a windstorm ~
The synapses in my brain?
~ fireflies in a windstorm ~

***

While attending a lecture on math—

I'm off on a tangent
of an x,y,z curve
lost in three-dimensional space

When a girl I know speaks of death—

do you see the little bird?
do you hear the haunting melody?

When friends discuss 'responsibility'—

a match flares in the darkness,
someone lights a candle to see

***

Words speak images to me
and images speak words.
One becomes the other before my eyes
as they dance in chaos inside my mind.

I try to explain the song of poetry
that I hear all day,
but I can't.

I have lived so long inside my head
I forgotten the music of speech—
its rhythms,
its patterns,
its sequence.

I can see by your face that you make no sense of it, of me.
Have you never tried to catch
fireflies in a windstorm?

cm
march 11, 1993

Labels: math and science, poetry