Some questions were boldly stated.
Filed under 2015, cartoon by author, CarToonsday
There once was a writer from Spokane, /
Who knew not where his stories began. /
No matter how hard he’d fiddle — /
Even stating at the end or the middle; /
It’d all end up in the trash can.
***
Three lobbyists walked into a bar last night. The politicians were waiting.
Filed under 2015, Monday morning writing joke, poetry by author
It is the first or second weekend of the month and time, once again, for a new word to live by. This is a word or phrase not currently in use in the U.S. English lexicon, but might need to be considered. Other words, such as obsurd, crumpify, subsus, flib, congressed, and others, can be found by clicking on the tags below. Today’s New Word is a compounding of word and a suffix two words. Without further waiting, citybilly and hill slicker are the new words / phrases for this month.
Old Words
Hillbilly, n. a person from a remote or backwoods area, usually meaning somebody from the Appalachian Mountains in the southern U.S.
City slicker, n. a term, often meant disparagingly, for a natty dressed, worldly focused city dweller.
New Words
Citybilly, n. second, even third generation hillbilly who has moved to the city but retains many if not most of their hillbilly ways. Also, those who act like hillbillies in the city even if they have been city dwellers for some time/generations.
Hill slicker, n. city person who has moved to the country, but still retains many of his or her city ways and expects the same big city amenities in the country setting. Think of the wife, Lisa Douglas, in TV sitcom Green Acres.
Filed under 2015, new word, New words to live by
Sci-fi becomes reality: 10 books about our future with Pluto
Pluto photographed during New Horizons flyby.
“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.”
–William Arthur Ward
by Andrea Sefler
Source: http://www.popmythology.com/10-sci-fi-books-about-pluto/
Stargazers are having a momentous week with the Pluto flyby of New Horizons. With this success we have now made close inspection of most of the largest objects throughout much of our solar system, from the sun and all the planets, even the tiny one 4.67 billion miles out. And I refuse to engage in any “size matters” arguments here; I grew up learning nine planets, and nine planets there be.
While scientists will spend many years analyzing data from the mission making new discoveries, there is already a great deal of impressive accomplishments from the mission. Let’s just take the spacecraft itself. Are you one of those people impressed with and lusting after a high-tech Tesla? Well the New Horizons probe engineers managed to pack everything needed for the 9.5 year journey and the data collection upon arrival at Pluto into a craft smaller and lighter than many automobiles. Not to mention the fact that this baby was ripping along at more than 50,000 mph. Okay, maybe we can’t get the benefits of a gravitational assist from Jupiter on our highways, but this still makes a battery life of ~265 miles on an electric car seem weak.
Many will disparage this mission’s $720 million price tag and the space program in general as a waste of taxpayer money for esoteric and useless knowledge about places far too distance to be of concern. But the data collected at the destination is almost hardly more than icing on the cake. The real value lies in the journey and what needed to happen in order to make it a possibility. Most of our public companies, even those considered to be our most innovative, such as Apple, are concerned with small, incremental product changes, e.g. a few more pixels in the camera, a little bit larger screen. With NASA and the space program, the absolute necessity for small, robust, energy efficient components compel designers to push things to the limits. And then we all get to benefit from the successes as the designs find their way into our everyday devices.
Whether this gets done through solely at government agencies or through public/private consortiums, the point is to have these big, shared dreams and goals. My earliest datable memory is of the Apollo 11 moon launch. I am still staggered ever time I visit the Kennedy Space Center by the Saturn V rocket and all the incredible infrastructure developed to build, transport, and launch this behemoth, including the Vehicle Assembly Building, which is so large it sometimes rains inside.
The dream of sending a person to the moon united people to a common mission and, as such, everyone had a part in the success. Even better are the missions involving international collaborations, such as Apollo-Soyuz where we can begin to imagine ourselves as citizens of planet Earth and not Greeks or Germans or Americans or Russians.
But these missions all begin with dreams: dreams that came straight out of the pages of science fiction novels, leapt into the minds of curious, adventurous men and women, and wound up at the far end of our solar system. Many a great scientific discovery throughout history has been preceded by a fictitious imagining of it. Jules Verne published From the Earth to the Moon in 1865, and then in 1969 we did go from the earth to the moon via Apollo 11. H.G. Wells imagined tanks in The Land Ironclads (1903), and tanks were invented in 1915. There are many more examples, and whether these works of sci-fi were merely prophetic visions or actually served as inspiration in some direct or indirect way, the point is that the ability to imagine something comes before the actual doing. And in this respect sci-fi often has stronger ties to the real world than some people give it credit for.
One of several novels about Pluto
Details about the books at: http://www.popmythology.com/10-sci-fi-books-about-pluto/
Awaiting the picnic.
Filed under 2015, photo by David E. Booker, Photo Finish Friday
It feels like Thursday. /
Beauty stepped into my life, /
Parted the humdrum.
Filed under 2015, Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
Amanda O’Connor of Trident Media
Amanda O’Connor
Amanda is continuously building her client list in general-interest and upmarket nonfiction, spirituality and wellness, and literary fiction. She looks for the “wisdom factor” across genres and disciplines, especially authors who have an expertise they are eager to share with the world. Her favored subjects include (but are not limited to) history, religion, popular science, sociology, culinary arts, and creativity. In spirituality, Amanda’s approach is truly ecumenical, seeking leaders of all faith communities from Catholic nuns to Sikh entrepreneurs, from practical self-help to inspirational memoir. Literary fiction is a pursuit of passion. She gravitates towards works that address timeless concerns of the soul through the lens of modern life. Above all else, Amanda loves a well-crafted sentence.
Please submit through Trident’s online form here: http://www.tridentmediagroup.com/contact-us, directing its attention to Amanda O’Connor. Unsolicited queries should include a paragraph about yourself, a concise and thoughtful summary of the proposal, and your contact information. Please do not send a manuscript or proposal until you have been requested to do so.
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Mallory C. Brown of TriadaUS
Mallory C. Brown
She is seeking: young adult, new adult, women’s fiction, and nonfiction. She is especially drawn to pieces with strong character-driven plots and witty humor. She loves contemporary fiction, low fantasy, and romance. Mallory also appreciates a well-placed comma and hopes you do, too.
How to submit: E-query mallory [at] triadaus.com. When querying, please include the first ten ms pages in the body of the e-mail after your query.
Filed under 2015, writing tip, Writing Tip Wednesday
Sometimes those cracks on the sidewalk weren’t much help, either.
Filed under 2015, cartoon by author, CarToonsday
There once was a writer from Nashville, /
Who wrote enough songs to fill up a landfill. /
He’d write lyrics all day /
As if he had something to say /
Then sing them for an audience of daffodils.
***
Three creationists accidentally walked into a tar pit last night. In 6,000 years nobody will care.
Filed under 2015, Monday morning writing joke, poetry by author
Eric Brown on Chris Beckett’s Mother of Eden; Becky Chambers’s The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet; Stephen Palmer’s Beautiful Intelligence; Ian Sales’s All That Outer Space Allows; SL Grey’s Under Ground; Alex Lamb’s Roboteer
by Eric Brown
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/31/science-fiction-roundup?CMP=twt_books*gdnbooks
Chris Beckett won the 2013 Arthur C Clarke award for his novel Dark Eden, about the survival and adaptation of human colonists on a world without light. The sequel, Mother of Eden (Corvus, £17.99), begins generations later, charting the growth and political divisions between the colonists. It follows the rise of Starlight Brooking, a humble fishergirl, and her quest to bring equality and revolution to Edenheart, a settlement ruled by a conservative patriarchy. Beckett doesn’t do traditional heroes and villains: Starlight Brooking is contradictory and flawed, at once brave and vulnerable, and likewise his villains are portrayed with sympathy and understanding. He also eschews easy answers and formulaic plotting; where a hundred other writers would have Starlight triumph over her enemies, her victories are on a more profound and personal level, and not without tragedy. Mother of Eden is a masterpiece.
When the captain of the Wayfarer starship is offered a job travelling to a faraway planet that could make him and his crew financially secure, he agrees despite the dangers involved.Such a precis might suggest that Becky Chambers’s first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99), originally self‑published and shortlisted for the Kitschies awards, is an action-adventure space opera. But this is a slow, discursive novel of character as the motivations of the diverse and likable crew, comprising humans and aliens, are laid bare for the reader’s delight. It is a quietly profound, humane tour de force that tackles politics and gender issues with refreshing optimism.
Stephen Palmer’s marvellous ninth novel, Beautiful Intelligence (Infinity Plus, £8.99), posits a beleaguered 22nd century in which oil has run out, water is scarce, and in a neat inversion of the contemporary world order, Europe is an economic ruin and Africa the promised land. Two techno wizards abscond from a Japanese laboratory, each attempting to develop artificial intelligence according to their own philosophies – one based on the social intelligence theory of consciousness, the other on a linguistic approach – but billionaire tech-mogul Aritomo Ichikawa will stop at nothing to get them back. What follows is a thrilling chase across a ravaged Europe, a burgeoning North Africa and balkanised US, interleaving excellent action set-pieces with fascinating philosophising on the nature of consciousness. A gripping read to the poignant last line.
More at: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/31/science-fiction-roundup?CMP=twt_books*gdnbooks
Filed under 2015, book review, books
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