An Afternoon with the Planet

Saw Earth today and loved it. Drew was transfixed through the first third of it then got a little antsy as the pretty pictures didn't enrapture him quite as much as they did Momma and Daddy. He enjoyed the whales the most. Momma teared up for a few of the beautiful shots they put together.

We certainly do live in a pretty special place.

Then my writer brain kicked in and tried to figure out just how in the world someone tried to piece together any sort of narrative to this kind of documentary. They advertised a "join three families" storyline that they kind of stuck to, and there were certainly good vignettes to go with the images captured. But as a storyframe to hang nearly 100 minutes on? Just wasn't up to the task. Given the immense scope of taking a concept such as the Planet Earth series and trying to distill that into a feature film, they certainly did a great job finding any sort of coherent structure. I found myself challenged by the idea of what could make it better and getting lost once again in the wonder of this ball of dirt we call home.

If you've got the $10, I highly recommend catching this in the theater to see the amazing footage they captured and the neat photography tricks they used to show the progression of seasons on a large (yes, even global) scale.

Collagen Run Amok

After several weeks of either increasing my hip pain/leg numbness or keeping it at a steady state, my physical therapist tried a different approach on Monday and the results have been startling. He decided to take a look at my c-section scar and see if scar tissue might be the culprit. Sure enough, while spending 15-20 minutes working on my scar, we discovered a correlation between prodding one area of the scar and numbness and pain in my leg.

Scar tissue is formed by collagen fibers laying down in the place of injured skin. When there's a lot of damage (as I experienced), or if the genes responsible for this part of the healing process aren't regulated quite right, the collagen fibers can go a little bonkers and keep laying down well beyond where they're needed. And, of course, the way collagen works is to attach itself at both ends: damaged skin to be repaired and an anchor elswhere in the body. In my case, probably intestines, bladder, muscle, and maybe even all the way back toward my spine.

So in addition to loosening my hip muscles, strengthening my abs, and improving my posture, we're going to start a regimen of intense scar tissue massage. And if I thought anything I had endured as part of my physical therapy before this point was painful, I was given a whole new set of data points to adjust my perceptions. Breaking down scar tissue, particuarly when it's built up and spread out as in my case (and anchored to a whole host of internal necessities), hurts like a mofo. Twice a week is what we're doing now, and my therapist is thinking it's probably not a bad idea to up the tally to three times a week.

While the idea makes me whimper, I will submit to that regimen, because if 15-20 minutes of pain 3 times a week means I get my body back to its (mostly) functional state, then bring it. But I think I might also schedule some time for curling up in the fetal position under my desk.

Feminism and Writing

I read this first thing this morning and have been letting it percolate, trying to come up with coherent thoughts. Actually, I had coherent thoughts immediately upon reading it. I spent the day trying to string them together into a coherent response. It seems I'm not up to the task. So here are the thoughts:

I'm very grateful that, when I decided to take reading seriously (more than just as fluffy break from all that Serious Stuff I had to read for school), I started with Anne McCaffery and Melanie Rawn.

I'm very grateful that, when I decided to take writing seriously, I was taking a non-fiction writing course taught by a woman who directed me to a writer's organization and encouraged me.

I'm very grateful that my first interactions with professionally published authors involved Holly Lisle, S.L. Viehl, and Carol Berg.

I'm very grateful that my first experience with a professional editor was with Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

I'm very grateful that my first experience with an agent was with Kristen Nelson.

I'm very grateful that it wasn't until I was four years into my journey of taking writing seriously that I first comprehended negative gender issues in my genre when Harlan Ellison groped Connie Willis at the Hugos.

I'm very grateful that I was raised in a family and an environment that I more often felt I was treated differently because I was smart, not because I was female and that it never occurred to me that my gender alone might cause issues.

I'm very grateful that it wasn't until I was a sophomore in college that I began to understand the more insidious ways our society perceives and enforces gender differences; it means I'm less likely to unconsciously enable the perceptions and enforcements, and that becoming aware of it when I did I felt more empowered to Do Something.

That being said, I probably wasn't nearly as removed from sexism as the above indicates seeing as how I am an Air Force brat (and the military ain't exactly known as a feminist beacon) and, out of a class of 24 biochemistry majors, I was one of five women. Mostly, I never quite processed myself as Other (not Other because I'm a girl; I processed myself as Other because I was a military brat, or because I spent nine years in a foreign country) or allowed society's labeling of me as such to stick or get in my way. The times it reared its head, I would more often than not personalize the encounter to make it more about my personality vs the personality causing the problem and found a way around it.

No matter how I managed to get through life without really letting gender issues bug me, it's not helping me deal with how I'm categorized now that I'm a mother who works from home part-time. My professional life is hidden compared to when I worked full-time out of the home. No one asks me "So what do you do?" anymore when I meet new people. They ask about Andrew. They ask about domestic things. They may ask if I still work or perhaps they'll ask what I do in my free time or what my hobbies are. I wasn't quite prepared for this subtle shift in how I'm perceived. (Nor was I prepared to deal with interacting with other mothers only in context of being mothers; one of the most uncomfortable conversations I had was at the mall's play area with a mother who had sat down next to me and whose child was interacting with Drew in some way; I could feel her hunger for adult conversation, and her absolute frustration that, when presented with the opportunity, she could only talk about her child; I could feel that hunger and frustration because it mirrored my own.)

I get fanfiction in that it's a response to art. It's the context of that response where I falter. For me, I get a response from art and I almost immediately remove it from the context that generated the response and put it in my own creative context. I may have to think on this further.

When Sciences Collide...

I'm having fun with the revisions to Ghost Story, which I think I may be renaming to Pinewood Fog (maybe). It involves taking basic physics and chemistry, which I recently reviewed while trying to nail down the magic specifics for Velorin, and melding it into a very broad and probably misunderstood concept of neurology. Add in a smattering of philosophy, and we have the first scene of the story. I have no idea if it works. In a perfect world, I would be a recognized expert in chemistry, physics, neurology, and philosophy and would know if I was talking out of my ass. In an ideal world, I would be able to send the scene to such experts and have them tell me if I'm talking out of my ass. In the real world, I have to submit this story (after more reviews and one or two beta-reads) and hope I don't get heckled too badly by fans (assuming it gets pubbed).

Regardless, I'm having fun with it, and I like the ways I've used the science and philosophy. It does serve to remind me, though, that reading more non-fiction would be a good idea.

Best Friday Ever!

I go home today. Despite the damn snow storm that's predicted for this evening. I was so excited about leaving today that my special treat to myself last night was to pack. I'm not kidding. Now I just have to contain my excitement until 1:30 when I leave to pick up Drew and then head over to the airport. T'ain't gonna be easy.

This week has been very difficult to get through. Early on, I was waiting on pins and needles to find out about the resolution of the matter I blogged about last Friday (see below). Then, I realized just how much more really needs to be done at the DDJ and that I was going to be leaving things dangling and working hard to accomplish them remotely next week. And finally, by yesterday, I was just plain sick of this whole mess and stopped being able to function at times, staring mindlessly at essay after essay on the rise and fall of Battlestar Gallactica.

The good news about this week, though, is that Mark's company got an extension on their project, allowing them the time they needed to optimize the last experiment for the project. And, in a late dose of the serendipity I called for a week ago, they discovered on Wednesday that the reaction they thought wasn't working that triggered them to ask for the extension (which, actually, getting the extension put the entire situation into a much more positive aspect for the company's future)...turns out it actually did work, they just had, basically, an ingredient past its expiration date or from a bad batch that tanked the results. There's still work to be done to make sure they slam dunk this project and leave no doubts to the future of everyone's job security. But things are looking very, very good that we won't have to worry about unemployment next month. Also, the crazy work hours may start to revert to normal, though Mark had to request Saturday off so he could spend it with me and Drew. Still has to work Sunday.

So it seems like our own version of March Madness will pay off quite well for us in the long run (did I mention the DDJ gave me a significant raise this week? and that all of a sudden there's tons of work to bring me back to full-time?). I don't ever want to go through this again, though.

The Word of the Day is Serendipity

If you've done any sort of study of the history of major scientific breakthrough of the past few centuries, you'll know that most of them have come from serendipity, pure luck, accident, etc. Mark and his insane project-to-save-the-company has hit a snag at the last step, the zero hour. It's the sort of setback that, given a couple of weeks, wouldn't be too big a deal. But they've got less than two days to figure out what the snag is, how to work around it, and how to optimize the step. And if they can't get things working in this very limited timeframe, then the big push will have failed after three weeks of very hard, remarkable work.

Please think happy thoughts. Please pray. Please concentrate on getting the universe to do its trippy science serendipity thing to make things work.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I Give You The Onion

Just when I thought I wouldn't be able to find anything interesting or wacky to link for this edition of Sunday Grab-bag (marking the resumption of normal blogging, barring further moving insanity), I wandered over to The Onion. There were a number of funny headlines, but this one just made my day.

Here's my favorite bit:

...data suggests Spirit is convinced that [sister rover] Opportunity has found water and isn't telling anyone.

Black Holes and Black Jewels

Last night Mark and I went to Fiske Planetarium to catch a lecture on black holes and special relativity. It was really good, although it tripped out in the end when they showed what it would be like to fall into a blackhole while listening to the Macarena on roids. The guy giving the talk did an excellent job, making it technical enough for the geeks in the audience, but simple enough that I, with my piddly understanding of physics and quantum mechanics, could follow very easily and comprehend a good deal.

I've also been reading Anne Bishop's Daughter of the Blood, Book One of her Black Jewels Trilogy. I really like this book. It's cut in a somewhat similar vein as the Kushiel books, which is really a eupehmism for "some darker sexual undercurrents". The book is good on many levels, but it took me a while to notice that there's not really a whole lot of "we must defeat the bad guys" action that is predominant in most fantasy. Mainly the book is a story about one girl's struggle with what she is and how those around her deal with it as well. I picked up the book based on some vague mention in a Forward Motion Think Tank. I can't even remember the comment, now. And I also bought the book knowing full well that I have a stack of 50 unread books at home. I picked up Rachel Caine's Ill Wind then too--another fabulous read.

Awesome

Now that SpaceShipOne has won the X-Prize, they're trying to make the competition annual. This is wicked cool, but just a tad scary. I'm a science fiction writer, and I spend most of my "imagining" time in space or on other planets, but the possibility that I could actually go to space by the time I'm 50 if I've got the moolah for it is a little unnerving somehow. Space seemed more safe and exciting when it was out of my reach. I must ponder this.

ET or not ET?

This is probably old news by now, but the SETI folks in Arecibo keep hearing something peculiar in the night sky. Nobody's getting really excited about it just yet, as the article does an excellent job of explaining. But there were a few chunks of it that made me scratch my head.

[The SETI project] uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through signals picked up by the Arecibo telescope.

I've got this ridiculous image of the Arecibo telescope using the flying toaster screensaver to determine if ET is out there.

The fact that the signal continues to drift after this correction is "fishy", [Paul Horowitz] says. "If [the aliens] are so smart, they'll adjust their signal for their planet's motion."

This probably reveals my own ignorance about radio technology, but why would aliens just transmitting something for the benefit of their own civlization (such as, say, light rock of the Michael Bolton persuasion, or would that be something they'd procast to the detriment of their own civilization? that triggers a story idea...), would they be thinking at all about planetary motion? Do FM stations here on Earth do this? No matter the reality of radio tech, Mr. Horowitz's statement indicates that any signal we hear must be the result of ET trying to communicate with us. That seems to be a very odd assumption. Especially since our very first use of radio technology on this planet was all about communicating with folks not living on this planet, right? Sheesh.

The signal could be an artefact that, for some reason, always appears to be coming from the same point in the sky. The Arecibo telescope has a fixed dish reflector and scans the skies by changing the position of its receiver relative to the dish. When the receiver reaches a certain position, it might just be able to reflect waves from the ground onto the dish and then back to itself, making it seem as if the signal was coming from space.

The possibility that the telescope has a problem that could result in a signal from the ground looking like it came from space strikes me as something that really, really, really needs to be addressed by the SETI people before they go any further. Also, the physics that would allow such a thing are starting to give me a headache. Thus, I must sign off.

I Saw the Moon Last Night

It's been raining a lot here this summer, making the usual talk of Colorado summer fires and droughts seem extremely ridiculous as they show up on the same page of newspaper where they describe recent flooding in the area. The other side effect of all this rain is that we rarely have clear nights. But last night, Mark and I left to go grocery shopping and stopped just outside our front patio. The sky was clear. We quickly took care of that whole "buying food for the week" task and returned home to see about setting up Mark's telescope. Living in the north Denver Metro area makes finding a dark sky difficult, but we decided to use some protected areas in our apartment complex to look at the moon.

I know I've looked through a telescope before. I must have. My brother had a telescope once. I think. But I don't really remember the experience. So when Mark put his swanky scope together and plopped on one of the high power pieces, I was a bit stunned to actually, really, truly see the moon. Not only could I study the craters and the other surface features, but I had to keep adjusting the scope to keep the moon in my field of vision because that squirrelly sucker of a celestial object was huffing it across the night sky. Unfortunately, there was way too much moisture in the air to really see anything else. Jupiter had already set by the time we got the scope set up, and the bleeding of Denver's light prevented us from getting a lock on Pluto or Uranus. But we have the scope assembled and on display in a corner of our dining room (along with the keyboard, the cookbook shelf, the display thingy for some crystal vases, and, of course, the dining room table; yes, it's cramped, but we'll survive).

If you haven't looked through a scope and studied the moon's surface, you just haven't lived. Check out your local astronomy hobbyist club or, if you're near a big university, see when they have their public viewings. It's a bit indescribable to be standing outside of your apartment, looking into a cardboard tube with mirrors and staring at the detail of the moon as it passes through the night sky.

And in other big news, Mark was able to update our website yesterday. He's even included a little sidebar of entertaining snippets from this humble blog. Check it out.

Cleaning is Grand

So today I went through and cleaned my desk hard core. It's almost completely empty. And I went through my computer, getting rid of any stray personal and/or useless files that may still be hanging around (resumes, etc). I found a link that I've been meaning to post here for quite sometime. It's a Grand Unified Theory for Everything in Nature. Very amusing, but I'm a nerd, so don't take my word for it.

Golden Onion

They've done it again. The headline for the Rover spoof is hilarious on its own, but you're really missing out if you don't read the entire article. Especially Golombek's quotes. My favorites of the Nanotechnology Infograph: "Mad scientists can build nightmarish, dystopic future too small to see" and "Scientists say nanotechnology could be used to fight terrorism, if that will get them some damn funding".

I have quite a few posts simmering in my brain, but this week has been pure and utter hell since Monday afternoon. I'm still in hiding a bit, hoping things settle soon.

The Value of Science

Last week's West Wing episode really did a neat job about the value of science and research. I didn't like that they made Ellie the stereotypical "give me a microscope and a solitary lab and leave me the hell alone" scientist attitude, but you can't win 'em all. I was stunned watching that episode when some congresswoman made a comment that revealed pretty clearly that she begrudged AIDS research - due to, I suppose, some implied perception of the lifestyle of AIDS-sufferers. I had no idea that certain people would willingly cut all funding for AIDS and HIV research. Granted, these persons would shove the money at breast cancer and Alzheimer's research and such, so they're not completely heartless, but still.

I saw this episode just a day after a two people in my crit group told me that they thought we'd be beyond Mars by 2075 and that it was silly to set my story there. They said it's been done to death, and we'd likely be someplace cooler. I was more than a little surprised at this response. I can understand the "it's been done, move on" reaction. But Mars isn't the point of my story. The point of my story is the social and scientific conundrums we'll be dealing with in 2075, a time that I think space travel will be moving out of infancy and into mainstream - or at least it's plausible for it to happen by then. And Mars and the Moon are the only likely places for us to be by then. I don't want my novel set on the Moon because that's too close to Earth. And I want it set on a planet, not a space station. So Mars is the only option. Unless we get some sort of miraculous discovery in space flight. I'm not holding my breath.

But their response got me thinking. Scientifically speaking, we have the capability to be on the moon already. We have the capability to have a better and bigger space station. We have the capability to have more drugs and cures for all sorts of medical maladies. But science doesn't exist in a vacuum (well, unless you're in space, I suppose). Science shouldn't exist in a vacuum. It's a bad idea for any one thing in this world to not have some system of checks and balances. Science is no different. If it means science gets held back in a lot of areas, we'll have to live with it and work with the reality of the world science exists in to make whatever progress we can.

That's why I don't get Andi's attitude about space exploration. I would think someone so concerned about the oceans would be very excited about the past existence of water on another planet. If we're so keen on saving Earth's waters, maybe it might help to know how the same waters vanished on Mars. But she's right, there are a lot of worthy causes that aren't getting funding they deserve. And it's a hard pill to swallow to watch money being spent elsewhere in a seemingly less important area of research. Here's the thing with science, though: it's hard to know where the big, life-improving, earth-conserving discoveries will come from. Science is nothing if not serendipitous. Who would've thought that past pollution of the environment with man-made chemicals would lead to the discovery of bacteria that can survive on such toxic substances? The negative effect of one area of research led to the positive result of another. Science is the pursuit of truth. Limit the scope of science, and you limit the scope of the truth you will find. Limited truth will not help humanity or the rest of the animal kingdom or the Earth as a whole. We have to go forward with our eyes wide open to everything. The little string that you find buried in the dirt could eventually weave its way far into the future where it turns out to be the trigger for a life-saving machine. To ignore the string when you see it out of the corner of your eye could be disastrous.

But watching good, promising research lose funding is hard. It's just as hard as watching education lose funding, or seeing the strange ways in which money is spent: billions of dollars for space exploration, but we've got a lower class barely surviving and the state of health care for even the middle class is frightening. If I had my way, we'd start our budgets by making sure good education and quality health care were available free for everyone. Then we'd hash out where the rest of the money would go.

Science has long-since gotten used to the vagaries of funding. Scientists know how to squeeze the most out of every dime. They know how to get to the bottom of their puzzles even with one hand tied behind their back. Every puzzle is worth studying. Even physics. I've hated electromagnetism since I first tried to learn about it high school. Yet here I am, applying for a job in a physical science department so I can help those scientists communicate their research. I have no idea why we should give a rat's ass about the heat capacity of a two-component superfluid Fermi gas. I can't wait to find out. Because science always has the potential for practical application. It may not be all that obvious, like the purpose of that string, buried in the dirt. But that potential is there, and it will be found and applied to something else that brings a step closer to something we need to know about the universe. I can't begrudge the funding this project gets just because a project that has a more direct practical application is losing funding. It's all going to balance out eventually. The truth will be found and put to good use. Maybe not in my day, maybe we'll get it horribly wrong in the process, but we'll get there and find a whole slew of new puzzles waiting for us.

Interesting Report

The Committee on Publishing Ethics (science and medical journals) reported on the fun things scientists do when trying to get their research into ink. For those of you who don't know, "publish or perish" is a very real thing for scientists trying to make careers for themselves in research. To make matters worse, the journals where you are published also factor into the way your career is perceived. There are tiers of journals: the excellent, the good, the so-so, and the jokes. If you've been published fifteen times, but only in the latter two of the four tiers, you ain't going anywhere. As the Nature Science article indicates, some scientists try to weasle their way around the system by getting one paper published in more than one journal. The numbers they toss out really are small. But it sounds more like this committee is focused on medical journals. I'd be curious to see the numbers on science journals and also read about what they deemed "unethical" and how they found their cases. There are a few subtle practices that aren't considered unethical, per se, but they certainly aren't above-board. I have no idea how some committee could ferret them out. And this report only studied cases where the editor of the medical journal in question smelled something fishy. It's great that people are looking into this and trying to find more ways to keep medical research honest.

Science ethics is a strange beast. And it's a bitch to study in your traditional lecture method. Case studies often evolve into an infinite series of "what-ifs" that drive even the most balanced person to strongly consider going postal in class. But if actually suffering through the class means we cut down on research misconduct, then I'm all for it. However, HD exists because of my own experiences with fellow students in a science ethics class. Some of the attitudes I heard expressed there truly terrified me - especially when we consider where science can take us in the next few years. Which brings me to the point of HD. Are we really taking the time and effort to ask the right questions of ourselves now?

Whoa

Forget that cool Mars stuff, tell me more about popcorn packers' lung, aslo known as bronchiolitis obliterans. I will never look the same way at my bag of microwaveable popcorn again. And, to complete the scientific hat trick, do you think the current dinosaur extinction theory is sexy? Gerta Keller thinks so, but doesn't buy the theory anyway.

Random Science Blogging

I just realized that it's been a while since I've wandered through Nature's Science Update. Found some neat items. Scientists are tinkering around with bacterial intercellular signaling, a very cool field. I remember asking my cell bio teacher about how a bacterial cell "knew" how to move toward a food source. All he told me was "signaling". I was very disappointed. I'm glad someone's studying this in depth.

By now, everyone's likely heard that South Korea has gotten stem cells for cloned human embryos, but what you haven't heard is that stem cells are being used in clinical trials not for diabetes or Alzheimer's research, but for something, erm, cosmetic. Granted, these are stem cells culled from the patient seeking augmentation, not from a human embryo, so the moral debate isn't concerned, and adult stem cells are rather tricky about differentiating into something more useful for the big name research issues. But, it still makes you blink.

Now that the politicians have decided it's vogue to talk about a space program in serious terms again, we can expect to see more of this. I'm just waiting to hear about the genetics and terraforming research. That's the groovy stuff.

And, of course, more cool Mars stuff. I also hope that someone is compiling a CD of the Rovers' wake-up songs. I'll bet it'll be one of those deals you see on late-night TV. "This collection is not available in stores! Call now to receive all five discs of 'Rovin' to the Music' for only $49.95! Operators are standing by!"

Egoboo

I just realized today that, since my thesis is in the University of Colorado library and available for checkout, I can plug my name into the library catalog's "author" search and find a book by me! Pretty cool, eh?

Mars Mania

I mentioned a while ago that my setting for The Masque is Mars. Now that the twins are safe and (relatively) sound, there's a ton of stuff to be found on the red planet, and much more to come. Some of the really neat (and really strange) links I've found:

• Chronology of Mars Exploration
  
• Labeled Map of Mars (with Adobe Acrobat)
  
• Tell Time on Mars
  
• Quicktime movies of Launch to Landing and Rover Navigation
  
• Europe's High Res Badass Mo-fo Orbiter
  
• Neat Theories from Topography
  
• Fast Food on Mars
  

I'm hoping to find more neat links and add them. I may even move this page to my bio's science page to immortalize it forever. The best part about this is that I can write all time spent on it as research. Cool. Writing is wicked cool.

The Funk is Over

My little Poor Me funk is on its way out. It was actually completely gone on Saturday. I did some revising, Mark and I took a pal out on a nice birthday dinner, and then we all went to a showing of Opportunity's landing at our local satellite lab. I was riding a nice buzz after watching NASA's live feed of the landing and clapping along with everybody and thinking about all the cool things we're going to be learning this year. And then I came home to a less than happy message on my answering machine, denoting the beginning of a small family crisis which consumed the rest of my weekend. I read a book, did the laundry, and made cookies instead of revising yesterday, mainly because I could just feel the tide of depression getting ready to break every time I looked at HD. Family matters have a way of consuming everything. And of keeping you up until 1 AM, sorting out the phone call you just finished at 12:30 AM. And of intriguing the muse, giving her a chance to scribble notes while muttering, "This is drama. I can use this. Much better than those silly plots she keeps insisting I inspired her to write." Staying awake so late also provides the opportunity of hearing your husband snore, gently prodding him awake enough so he stops, and then hearing him say, "Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to fall asleep." To which you can say, "No, it's OK. You're allowed to sleep right now." And then he'll respond, "OK, thanks," and mumble a nearly unintelligible "Love you" as his meager struggle with consciousness ends.