Eclectic Writer

Yesterday, I caught or rather my computer caught a worm, a nasty little thing that screwed up a number of files and caused more than a few problems.  It’s fixed now, but I can’t help but reflect on a few things about the experience. 

First, I am mystified at the motive of the creators. The Worm I caught was designed to bring down my computer on a certain date, and to reproduce itself as broadly as possible. This seems purely malicious. I can understand taking over a computer for monetary gain, or taking down a network in a conflict. I suppose my particular worm could have that purpose, but from what I gather looking across the various sites that discuss how to de-worm computers, it had none of this particular reasons.

Why spread had and discontent just for pure malicious glee? Is the personal gain in such acts just that feeling the creator gets from the accomplishment of mayhem. Without the motive of money or national pride, what is left?

Because I aspire to write, this brings to mind character, or characters. What are people like who write a worm and unleash it. Do they have children, and do they love them? What do their friends know of their exploits in virtual space? Is this a pastime that thrives in isolation or is this a group experience where people get off on what they do?

To me, these people are like the the teens that lived as vampires and killed their parents. There is something inherently wrong with these people, something dark. To write them you have to make them human. That is difficult, becasue a writer has to figure out what makes them tick.

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When is a picture worth a thousand words? When does it become a story, simply by the story it tells? The picture below was sent to me by a friend. It came with a rather light bit of humor about joining in a road trip to see Obama’s inauguration. But to me, that picture escaped the joke and evoked a whole string of ideas.

Where are these people going? Where did they come from? What would it be like to be one of them? What is buried in those bags in that truck? It is traveling across the desert. It evokes a sense of Africa, at least to me.  It could also provide a glimpse of some an updated Silk Road.  Imagine a caravan of these trucks. 

The potential here is limitless, and I will write a story that uses this truck as inspiration.

Nations rise and fall in a complex dance with history. Sometimes we think we have the reasons nailed down. Rome decayed overtime and, eventually, was destroyed by barbarians. Now, geologists have found information that may indicate that a long term change in climate my have been a contributing factor to the end of these civilizations.

Cave’s climate clues show ancient empires declined during dry spell
The decline of the Roman and Byzantine empires in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 1,400 years ago may have been driven by unfavorable climate changes.

Based on chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave near Jerusalem, a team of American and Israeli geologists pieced together a detailed record of the area’s climate from roughly 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. Their analysis, to be reported in an upcoming issue of the journal Quaternary Research, reveals increasingly dry weather from 100 A.D. to 700 A.D. that coincided with the fall of both Roman and Byzantine rule in the region.

They, of course, aren’t the only ones. Climate may have brought an end to the Easter Island Civilization and the Anasazi of the Southwest. For me, this puts the human world on equal footing with animals. We already know that climate change has disastrous affects on animals. Perhaps, those same climate changes echo through the human world. As a species, we are tied to the earth, and when the earth deals us a bad hand, our own populations and civilizations collapse.

As a writer of both fantasy and Science Fiction, this information gives me fodder for conflict. An entire civilization collapsing due to an inimical change in climate is an interesting idea: man against nature. How would a magical civilization adapt and survive? How would a civilization that relies on science overcome a change in their world? What technologies wold they develop?

As a thinker, it opens up other avenues of thought. If the Romans and other civilizations could have been done in by the weather, why not us. With global warming (call it climate change if you will) what will be the result? Will we rise as a world and find a way around it? Will our civilization crumble and give way to the next civilization?

You can’t smell them, taste them, or feel them.  They have no mass, no volume, or color.  They emit no form of energy, be it electromagnetic, light, sound, heat, or other more exotic energy.  They have no measurable characteristics, at least from a scientific point of view. Though we have no way of ascertaining their actual existence in any fashion, they are of immense importance to a majority of humans. A belief in these objects are ancient, as the image to the left testifies. Of course, I am writing about the human soul, and recently an archaeological discovery in Turkey has cast light on this belief.

The Human Soul: An Ancient Idea
The slab, or stele, was recovered from an Iron Age city called Sam’al in Turkey. It dates to around the 8th century B.C. On the 800-pound, three-foot-tall piece of rock was an incised picture of a man, the deceased, who was presumably cremated, and words that explained that the soul of this man now resided within the stone slab.

What is it with humans and the idea of a soul? The ancient Greeks, who were around about the same time as the slab was cut, also loved the idea of a soul, and most cultures and religions today buy into it as well. Yet there’s no evidence that such a thing really exists. But still, even the most cynical of us is always trying to save our souls, damn other people’s souls, and searching for soul mates.

The article discusses in a light hearted fashion the way this belief penetrates most cultures, as the discovery illuminates the ancientness of the belief. My thoughts, however, are less on the reality and more on the fantasy existence of souls.

Fantasy fiction, almost by definition, requires the existence of souls. I can not think of a single fantasy novel that doesn’t, at least in some minor way, presuppose the existence of souls. Think about it. Undead ghost, goblins, demons, angels, and other such fantastical elements could not exist without souls. Magic, the channeling of some supernatural power to create marvelous effects, exists within a world view that takes souls and other unmeasurable phenomena to granted.

Science Fiction is often, though not always, a soulless creation. Such ephemeral things as souls are unnecessary in most stories. When they do appear, such as with “The Force” in Star Wars©, or in “Dune” they fit neatly within the social/cultural matrix created for the story and are more implied than discussed.

In my own novel “Red Tears” souls are a critical aspect of magic. Without their existence, no magic could exist. Undead, marvelous magical spells, and miraculous prayers are all part and parcel of one, carefully thought out, magical system, they are the source of all energy within the world.

Black Holes Burp Big Bubbles?  Who’d have guessed such a thing?  Who would even ponder such an imponderable, such a marvelous strangeness.  Weren’t we told that a Black hole defies the basic law of all information, garbage in garbage out by taking everything in and giving nothing out.  But we knew, thanks to David Hawking, that that black holes evaporate over time due to a phenomenon called Hawking Radiation.  Over time, Black holes radiate a small amount of heat.  (And I do mean time, a lot of it, for a Black hole made from a collapsing star. Quantum Black holes, on the other hand, are here and gone in less than the flash of a young girls eye.)  But now we have a new activity that Black holes perform.  After a big meal of star gas and celestial mass they, literally, burp out huge bubbles of gas.

Black Holes Burp Big Bubbles
Like cosmic bubble makers, some black holes spew out behemoth blobs of hot gas into their home galaxies.

The bubbles ultimately pop, and their gassy contents keep both the black hole and its galaxy from ballooning to mega sizes, a new study finds.
***Snip***
They noticed huge bubbles, or cavities, of hot plasma (ionized gas) rising up from the tips of the black hole’s pair of laser-like jets. (As material falls into the gravitational clutches of a black hole, the energy can be spit out as jets of radiation and high-speed particles.) They estimate the bubbles are about 13,000 light-years across and they are launched from jets about every 10 million years.

What a strange behavior, just part of a very strange universe. If Black holes burp, what else do they do? How long will it be before we catch one farting in the celestial bathtub?

Another bit of news, this time decidedly non-science related, reveals that the US in in a recession and has been in said recession since December of 2007.  I could have told them that, of course my tell would have been decidedly un-scientific.  I observe the world, the actions of my neighbors, the passage of money through my wallet at near light speed, and come to a snap judgement.  The NBER and its group of “academic economists who determine business cycles” measure and proud the economy as if it were a rat in a maze.  Only after the rat squeaks the appropriate noises do they pronounce.  Their scientific tools do not measure human misery. 

 Panel says US has been in recession since Dec. ‘07
WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. economy has been in a recession since December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday.
The NBER—a private, nonprofit research organization—said its group of academic economists who determine business cycles met and decided that the U.S. recession began last December.

By one benchmark, a recession occurs whenever the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, declines for two consecutive quarters. The GDP turned negative in the July-September quarter of this year, and many economists believe it is falling in the current quarter at an even sharper rate.

But the NBER’s dating committee uses broader and more precise measures, including employment data. In a news release, the group said its cycle dating committee held a telephone conference call on Friday and made the determination on when the recession began.

The White House commented on the news that a second downturn has officially begun on President George W. Bush’s watch without ever actually using the word “recession,” a term the president and his aides have repeatedly avoided. Instead, spokesman Tony Fratto remarked upon the fact that NBER “determines the start and end dates of business cycles.”  

It would have been comforting if the current administration actually called a recession a recession and tried solving the problem with some preventative measures. But they apparently never heard of Shakespeare who said, “A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.” They call it a downturn and assume the people who lose their jobs just won’t notice if the economy is bad or that their children go hungry.