Customize Your Chimp

A few weeks ago, a reader here at Chimpwithpencil asked if I would install an email subscription button since she doesn't use RSS feeds.  I'd never thought of it until she brought it up--thanks, May!

I want to make it as easy as possible for you to get your Chimp content.  And to get it the way you want it.  So here are a few options.

How do you want your steak cooked?

On the right of this page, near the top, is the Email Subscription.  Enter your email, click 'Submit,' and get the latest post sent right to you.  Just like me throwing your newspaper onto your front steps.

If you prefer RSS Feeds, scroll down to "Subscribe to Chimp" and you can pick Posts, or Posts and Comments.

Two sides come with that.

Facebook.  If you're always on FB, maybe you'd like to hit my author page and share your thoughts.  Search for:  Author Mark Boss.

Twitter.  I promise not to Tweet every time I make a snack.  Because I snack a lot.  @markbosswriter

See the row of tiny boxes under each post? You can click those to Email the post, Blog it, Twitter, Facebook or Google +1 it.  If you find a post interesting, your friends might, too.  So share.  That's what makes the Internet fun.

Did you save room for desert?

If you want to try my novels, hit the "Learn About My Novels" button next to the huge cover of DEAD GIRL.  Or click the individual covers--they take you to Amazon, where you can download a free sample.  Sample first.  If you don't like, you haven't lost any money and you won't be bitter.

Goodreads users can find reviews I've written of other books that are often a lot better than mine.

I hope these options help, and if you have other suggestions, please leave a Comment.

Thank you.

mark@chimpwithpencil.com

(The pic is of a robot monkey.  I found it on Crofty'sBlog.  The best part of the picture is the guy standing next to the robot, talking on his cell phone.  He's like, "Hey, dude, guess what? I built a robot monkey! No, seriously.  Why? Um...'cause...uh...Dude, I built a robot monkey!")

The Materials Genome Initiative: or How Long Will the Battery on My New Cell Phone Last?

WHAT IS IT?

Okay, the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) sounds like an episode of the SyFy show "Eureka," but it's real.  In June of 2011, the President of the United States and the Office of Science and Technology Policy committed $100 million dollars to improve the discovery and applied use of new materials.

We associate genome with human DNA, but in this case we're talking about the chemical composition of new materials.  Advanced materials can be used for all sorts of things, from more efficient solar power, to better batteries for your phone and laptop, to lighter, stronger components for vehicles.  The problem is that creating and testing new materials takes a long time, and it may be 18 to 20 years before a new material reaches the marketplace as a product.

The idea of MGI is to speed this process up.  One way to do this is to run virtual tests on computers for hundreds or even thousands of chemical combinations, rather than running physical tests on everything.  If you can narrow down the material combinations that look most promising, then you can do full tests on those.

SHOULD WE DO IT?

As you know from reading this blog, l love science and technology.  But when there are people going hungry, I'm not sure putting $100 million of taxpayer money into a government program like this is wise.  I'd rather see innovation come from the private sector.  Let the corporations develop their own materials.

However, the basic idea of getting materials from the idea phase to the applied phase faster is sound.  The initial funding was slated for four agencies:  Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Science Foundation.  Overall, the idea is for government to work with universities, private companies, and professional societies to share information and techniques.

IT'S BEEN A YEAR, SO WHAT'S BEEN DONE?

A government report from May 2012 details some of MGI's progress.  On the government side, $17 million went to the Department of Defense for research, and $12 million to the Department of Energy to combine computational and experimental tools.

In academia, partners include Johns Hopkins University, Harvard, the University of Utah and the Berkeley National Lab.  They will work with both government and corporate partners on various projects. 

For instance, Johns Hopkins is joining with the Department of Defense to, "develop new materials that have been predictably and reliably designed to protect Soldiers in extreme dynamic environments." (Fact Sheet: Progress on Materials Genome Initiative, May 14, 2012)  Other partners include Lockheed Martin's work on carbon nanostructures, and General Electric's Summit on Additive Manufacturing.

Will the eventual results justify the spending of taxpayer money? I have no idea, but I hope so.  I know I wish our troops overseas had better protective gear and bomb-resistant vehicles.  I wish cars here at home were safer.  And yes, I wish the battery in my cell phone lasted longer.

If you invented a new material, what would you use it for?

(Feel free to Comment or use the buttons below to share on your social network.)

(Sources include:  Office of Science and Technology, MaterialsInnovation, and Fact Sheet: Progress on Materials Genome Initiative.  The pic of a carbon rope and some buckyballs is from: britishcarbon.org)

Time Watch: How knowing what time it is changed everything, and nothing.

SDRZNH7CV622 "Time wasted is existence, used is life." -- Edward Young

The quote above may make you pause and think.  It's like the old story about a lieutenant preparing to lead his troops into battle.  He told them, "I won't waste your lives, but I will spend them to accomplish this mission."

Minutes, hours, and days are your troops.  How you spend them is up to you, but you must not waste them.    

These days you have to know what time it is.  What time you do have to be at work? How many hours did you work this week? What time is your child's school play? How many seconds are left in the game? How many days until your next chemotherapy treatment?

Time as measured is rigid, but time as perceived is flexible.  A boring flight seems to take forever.  A fun day at the beach feels like it's over too soon.  Travel west and your day gets longer.  Go east and your day gets shorter. 

Time is one of the most valuable things you have, and yet for most of human existence, no one knew what time it was.  It's only in recent history that people could even organize their time, agree on how it should be measured, and establish devices to keep track of it. 

In the third century BC in Egypt, Eratosthenes used sundials set in Alexandria and Aswan to make a surprisingly accurate estimate of the Earth's circumference.  Yet it wasn't until 1335 AD that one of the earliest public clocks was placed in a church tower in Milan, Italy. 

CLOCKS AND WATCHES by Johann Willsberger contains an introduction by Arnold Toynbee.  Toynbee describes sailing ships' necessity for precise chronographs to navigate the seas because the sun and stars only tell your latitude, not your longitude. 

In 1714, the British government offered a huge prize of 20,000 pounds to anyone who could build a chronograph capable of keeping time for a voyage lasting six months.  The prize wasn't awarded until 48 years later!

During the Middle Ages, Christians relied on church bells to guide them through the Liturgy of the Hours, and Muslims waited to hear the call to prayer to know when to face Mecca and pray.  In the last few centuries, people checked public clocks found in church or government towers, and listened for chimes and bells. 

As the technology spread and costs came down, businesses and then homes purchased clocks, and eventually pocket watches and wrist watches.  It's weird to think that watches only had one hand until the 1700s.  The first quartz crystal clock wasn't built until 1929, and the first battery-powered wrist watch came out in 1957.

Now calendars and clocks rule our lives, and we all have access to personal timepieces--items previously affordable only to kings and queens.  Technology has provided us a means to measure our time, but not a way to control it.

We have to choose how we spend our hours on this Earth.  Will we use them, or waste them? That's up to you.

(Sources include THE HISTORY OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES by Kenneth F. Welch, and CLOCKS AND WATCHES by Johann Willsberger.  The pic of the public clock in St. Mark's square in Venice, Italy, is from: traveljournals)

(Please note:  Just under the Welcome on the right is a new widget that enables you to follow Chimp via email. Just type in your email address.  Thanks!)

Try Something New

Last night while I sat eating soup in Panera Bread, I spotted a writer pal of mine.  He told me he'd just uploaded his first ebook to Amazon.  Ed has written for years, but like me, he didn't have much luck with the conventional route of agents and big publishing houses.  But he kept writing, and taught himself to format his work for ebooks, and now he has a book out--THE PHANTOM CADET.

I really admire Ed's determination.  It's a quality you see in creative people who work outside the usual big-business framework.  You see it in musicians, artists, writers and more.  Today at chimpwithpencil, I'm putting up links for folks who are hard-working independents. 

Do you like art? Check out Jayson Kretzer's work.  You can see a bunch of samples on his Deviant Art page, plus he has a web comic, Wannabe Heroes.  Also check out Melike Acar.  Like Jayson, she does some amazing sketch card work.  Sketch cards are small art that pack a big punch!

You're reading this blog, so I suspect you may like blogging.  (Yes, I have Sherlock Holmes-level deductive powers.)  BookedUp is a book blog that features a lot of self-published novels with thoughtful reviews.  For a combo platter of recipes, books and sewing, visit Milinda Jay's site.  If you're into crime fiction and writing, take a look at AshEdit by writer and editor, Elaine Ash.

Visit Meow Press and see what writer/editor Anthony Buoni is up to.  I know he's taking submissions for his next anthology of ghost stories, and he has a new screenplay/novel out titled CONVERSION PARTY (warning:  site contains stuff not suitable for folks under age 18.)

Delve into the world of blogger/writer Tony Simmons on his site The Word.  I particularly recommend his novel THE BOOKOF GABRIEL.  If you want to try some of what I'd call Southern Gothic literature, see Nick May's novels MEGABELT and MINUTEMEN.  For a taste of the traditional American South, see THE LADY AND HER PORCH by Carole Bailey.

In their own way, each of these people is working to put their creative work into your hands, so help them out. 

(I probably forgot someone, so if I left you out, I apologize.  It's hard to keep track of everyone and their current projects.)

Brain Eaters: Parasites and Amoeba in Your Brain

(Picture of tapeworm brain cysts from Theodore E. Nash, M.D.)

The new science-fiction movie "Prometheus" just arrived in theaters.  The movie is an Alien prequel, and the Aliens movies always bring to mind the image of the alien face-sucker latched on to some poor dude's face.  He screams and tries to peel it off, but can't, and it implants an alien in him.

It's the sort of thing that makes your stomach hurt.

The good news is we haven't encountered any such aliens (yet).  The bad news is we have plenty of weird creatures here on Earth waiting to invade your brain.  Let's look at some examples!

Ever eaten undercooked pork? Next time you're eating barbeque, make sure it's cooked done.  In the usual process, a person who eats undercooked pork may also eat tapeworm cysts found in the meat.  Eventually, these cysts grown into tapeworms in the person's intestines. 

But here's the twist.  As that infected person poops, their poop contains tapeworm eggs.  And if the person has those eggs on their hands when they prepare food for others (whether at home or in a restaurant), the eggs get into people's food.  The eggs then travel through the bloodstream where they can end up in your brain.  They grow into cysts that can cause blindness, fluid on the brain, seizures, coma and even death. 

According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), there are millions of cases of this disease worldwide.  (The formal name is neurocysticercosis.)

What's more fun on a hot summer day than plunging into your local swimming hole? You may want to pinch your nose or wear a nose clip.  Naegleria fowleri is an amoeba that can enter through the noses of people who swim in warm, stagnant ponds.  Although rare, if this amoeba works its way up to your brain, it causes flu-like symptoms, followed by seizures and loss of balance.  Without medical attention, the victim will die in less than two weeks.

(On a side note, doctors now warn Neti pot users to use distilled or boiled water to flush their sinuses, and to keep the Neti pot clean and air dried.)

Parasites and amoeba can do more than just kill us.  They can also affect our brains in less lethal ways.  If you eat unwashed vegetables with cat poop on them, or eat raw or undercooked meat, you might also get toxoplasmosis (or Toxoplasma gondii).  Toxo is a parasite that can form brain cysts.

Toxo affects the production of dopamine, which is an important chemical in your brain.  There is a statistical link between cases of the mental illness schizophrenia and toxo, and dopamine plays a role in both.  Healthy people may carry this parasite and be unaffected, but pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems are at risk.  This is why doctors tell pregnant women not to change the cat litter box.

What can you do? Well, this information may freak you out, but it shouldn't.  A lot of these problems can be avoided by washing your hands, washing your food, and cooking your food until it's done. 

Above all, avoid visiting planets full of alien face-suckers.

(Here's Discover magazine and ABC news on tapeworms.  ABC news on amoeba.  Science Daily and The Atlantic on toxo.)

(If this article helped you, please consider helping me by buying one of my novels.  Thanks!)

Catch an Iridium flare and see a satellite!

The other night I went for burgers with friends.  While we sat talking, I noticed my buddy, Patrick, monkeying with his phone.  He consulted an application, and told us the Chinese space station would pass over in 4 minutes, and an Iridium satellite would flare in 11 minutes.

All of us jumped up at the same time.  We stood outside the restaurant and consulted phones, maps, apps and the North Star to get us pointed in the right direction.  Upon seeing a half dozen guys staring up at the night sky, various random people came over to see what we were doing.  Our explanations produced blank looks and the random people wandered off.

Honestly, although I knew about the Chinese station, I'd never seen it.  And while I'd seen flares from the International Space Station (ISS), I'd never watched an Iridium satellite flare.  There were scattered clouds that night, so we didn't see the Chinese station, but the Iridium satellite treated us to brief, but bright show.

What is a satellite or space station flare? When an object in orbit above the Earth turns at just the right angle to the sun, it reflects the sun's rays and is visible from the ground. 

With the ISS, you have an object as long as a football field floating in space.  But with the Iridium satellites, the antenna providing the reflection is only about the size of a door.  It's pretty amazing to think you can see the flash of a door-sized object that's 485 miles (or 780 kilometers) up in space.

If you'd like to see a space station or a satellite flare, go to Heavens Above and enter your location.  This site provides the time the satellite will pass over your location, plus the magnitude (or brightness), the altitude and the azimuth (or direction.)  Strangely, when it comes to magnitude, negative numbers are better, so look for flare events that are listed as -2 to -7.

There are applications for smart phones that will help you find a flare in your area.  With over 80 Iridium satellites still in orbit, flares happen frequently, so as long as it isn't cloudy where you live, you can probably see one this week.

(Here is a site called "Catch a Flaring/Glinting Iridium" which explains Iridium satellites and their flares in detail.  Astrosat also has an explanation and data for observation from major world cities.  The cool picture is from: epod.usra.edu by photographer Sean M. Sabatini.  The cool idea for this post is from Patrick.)

(If you enjoyed this article, please leave a Comment, or hit one of the buttons in the box below and share it on Facebook or Twitter.  Thanks!)