This is based on an interesting bit I read on a university site. Don’t read the article or the rest of this blog entry until you’ve voted in the polls. No cheating!

If you're standing on the moon and let a pen go, it will:

• float away
• float where it is
• move sideways
• fall to the ground
• none of the above

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When the Apollo astronauts were on the Moon, they did not fall off because:

• the Earth's gravity extends to the Moon
• the Moon has gravity
• they wore heavy boots
• they had safety ropes
• they had spiked shoes

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You’ve answered both polls? Great! Now read the article. Please also note that both of my polls are straight out of the article, which, by all appearances, was written by Steve Dettweiler, professor of physics at the University of Florida.

Basically, there seems to be a fundamental flaw in how some people regard gravity on the moon. There seems to be a major disconnect between basic (to me, anyway) physics as taught in, what, junior high school and how it applies in actual situations.

If only 47% of the adult population understands that the moon has its own gravity, how does this affect you? Not just specifically about the moon’s gravity, but about misconceptions and misunderstandings and other forms of disconnect.

If you’re a reader, how does this affect you? If you’re reading something that’s factually incorrect, how do you respond?

As a writer, how does this affect you? Does it change how you write? Does it change how you present certain ideas? Can you use this kind of disconnect to your advantage?

Do you see this sort of disconnect in other areas, or is it confined to science?

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This definitely falls into the bizarre-for-me category of information.

Thanks to Twitter and @Carl_Ingalls, I learned today that farmers – in the west, at least, not sure about Sri Lanka – feed magnets to their calves at branding time. That magnet then stays in their rumen or reticulum and stays there for the life of the cow.

Why? Yeah, it sounds odd to us non-farmers, but really, it’s a very good idea.

That magnet then attracts the odd bits and pieces of barbed wire, nails, staples, and so on that cows will eat. Left to their own devices, that barbed wire, nails, staples, and so on can cause the cow medical problems – and it’s called hardware disease.

That’s interesting bit of information number one.

Now for interesting bit of information number two and me wondering how related they are.

Cows, when left to their own devices, will align themselves north to south. Magnetic, not geographic.

BUT when the cows stand next to power lines, which have a mild electromagnetic field of their own, cows are geomagnetically confused and point in whichever direction tickles their fancy.

Do the magnets in the cow’s rumen or reticulum affect this geomagnetic tendency in cows? Why or why not?

What happens to cows that are near super magnets? What if there was a super magnet in a space ship that was transporting cows and it was turned on? Would the weight imbalance cause the ship to… what? Have steering problems?

And, more importantly, how can or will you, as a writer, work information like this into your stories?

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Does it feel like your Internet is slow? Depending on where in the world you are, it could be because of cut sub-marine cables. This time, the cables that were cut are in the Mediterranean Sea and there are three, SMW 3, SMW 4, and FLAG.

While this article at USA Today doesn’t mention Sri Lanka specifically, it does say that 65% of traffic to India is thought to be down, and Singapore, Malaysia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and Pakistan are also heavily affected. This article at PCMag says that 82% of India is down. A Google news article states that Maldives is completely down, while Qatar and Djibouti are losing over 70% of their traffic.

Causes for the cut cables is unclear – could be seismic activity, although ship anchors have been to blame in the past.

Repairs are estimated to take either a few days or until 31 December, depending on the news source. Ouch!

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It hardly seems possible, does it, given all we’re hearing now about global warming, except that what I’ve been learning seems to indicate that calling it global warming is actually very inaccurate. Calling it global climate change is better and, honestly, would make it more easily understood by the masses, including me.

Leaving aside their bad site design, which means there’s no border padding, so text is right up against the left side of the browser window, making it more difficult to read, the article is well worth reading.

What I find really interesting is that, according to their research, had humans not come along, the planet would have entered a semi-permanent ice age.

Even more interesting than that, to me, is the idea that this planet could alternate between Hothouse Earth and Ice Age/Interglacial. Hothouse Earth is when a hot climate with no ice at the poles with the Antarctic covered in forests while huge amounts of Europe, Africa, and America (they don’t indicate whether they mean America as in the USA or America as in North America and South America, although I’m guessing the latter).

Anyway, go read the article.

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AdesClrPicker – capture colour codes from anywhere on your screen. Extremely useful for those times you find the perfect colour in another application or image and want to transfer it to your web design or such.

Link Popularity Check – lets you check your own website’s link popularity through a few search engines.

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You can read about it at SFSignal.

Astronomers captured images of three planets around one star (infared picture) and a fourth around a second star (visible light photo).

Personally, I find this very cool and can’t wait to see what other planets we’ll get photographic evidence of over the next year or ten or twenty.

The one with the three planets is located in the Pegasus constellation. And those planets are huge and far from their sun! And their distance from their sun could change how planets are defined.

All in all, very interesting! Go read the article if you haven’t already.

How do you think this and discoveries like it will change how we view ourselves, our world, and the galaxy around us? How will it change science fiction? How will it change how YOU write science fiction?

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I’ve got one nitpick with the article. Or, at any rate, one right now. We’ll see if I find more.

The title for the article is:

The Army’s Totally Serious Mind-Control Project

But if you read the article, they’re talking about the experiment/device/thingamajummy as a way to communicate, not control. Sensational titles can attract readers, it’s true, but if the device that’s being created is not about control, don’t bill it as control unless you care that there will be many who will misunderstand what the article is about.

And if there is a control aspect to the device, that leads to a whole heap of other questions, like who, then, would be held responsible if a controlled person committed murder, let’s say. Yeah, major moral conundrums, methinks.

And then there’s this little tid-bit:

Users also will have to be trained to think loudly.

I, apparently, already have that skill. I say this with all seriousness. There are those around me who can pick up my thoughts very easily because they can almost hear them. True, I’ve got a loud voice anyway, as do all my sibs – we can be heard from a couple of miles away when we want to be, truth be told. Evidently this also translates to thought.

But back to the article.

From my read, it looks more like they’re talking about a built-in communications device for more efficient communication. And that has all sorts of interesting possibilities. Instant communication between user and computer? GPS readouts in the brain. How about covert ops? What about communications between a scientist and a lab rat?

And this bit:

And don’t overlook potential civilian benefits. "How often have you been annoyed by people screaming into their cell phones?" Schmeisser asks. "What if instead of their Bluetooth earpiece it was a Bluetooth headpiece and their mouth is shut and there’s blessed silence all around you?" Sounds like one of those rare slices of the U.S. military budget even pacifists might support.

Ah, yes, blessed silence. That, I could definitely get behind.

What else can you come up with? How would you use technology like this in your stories? What other kinds of technology will technology like this lead to in 10, 20 or 50 years?

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Write or Die is a software application that could be useful to you if you’re a. a writer and b. procrastinate writing. As their slugline says, Putting the "Prod" in Productivity! Hopefully not a juiced-up electric cattleprod, though…

With Write or Die, you type your text in their text editor, and whenever you switch from the text editor to, say, a browser to research canaries in Papua New Guinea, it starts a countdown. Or even if you just stop typing. If you don’t return back to writing in the time you’ve set, there will be consequences.

Like your text will start disappearing, word by word. Of course, that’s Kamikaze Mode.

Gentle Mode pops up a reminder to continue writing. Normal Mode will cause an unpleasant sound to play on your computer, and the sound won’t stop until you start typing again.

Plans include an Electroshock Mode.

Caveat: The text box for this program is not an editor. You still have to copy and paste what you wrote into a word processing program if you want to keep it.

Even though I’m not sure if I want to use this, I sure do appreciate the programmer’s sense of humour.

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Or so the review goes…

Disclaimer: Fahim Farook is my husband and I love to poke fun at him. No fishies, birdies, or other animals were harmed in the making of this post. Honestly.

Fahim wrote a book called Honest, The Martian Ate Your Dog (I wanted to say homework instead of dog, but, you know, my anal retentiveness got the better of me ). Science fiction humour. He’s a major fan of Terry Pratchett and reads a lot of old science fiction. But one author who’s books he hasn’t read – ever – and believe me, I’ve tried getting him to read them, but he’s pretty stubborn and resistant – is Douglas Adams. I love Douglas Adams. I think Douglas Adams is hilarious. Spankingly nose-snortingly hilarious. But Fahim? Not so much.

So when we stumbled across this review, I kinda did a bit of a double-take:

The author has a vision (albeit one heavily inspired by a certain Douglas Adams) and some good ideas, but, unfortunately, he knows it and he will remind the reader of it constantly.

In all fairness to the person who did the review, I, uh, *cough* do kinda *cough* agree with her. *cough* Kind of.

But I think one difference between her complaint versus mine is readability (mine) versus irritability (hers). And honestly, a lot of people hate footnotes in fiction, so either way, I think the complaint is a fair one for those people.

But the funny part for me is the part in the quote that I bolded.

Fahim wasn’t inspired by Douglas Adams. Can’t have been. But he was heavily inspired by Terry Pratchett, who is, in many ways, Douglas Adams’ fantasy counterpart, so the misunderstanding is excusable.

Oh, yeah. One other nitpick. The book is labelled as fantasy. It ain’t. It’s science fiction.

And to the book.Honest, The Martian Ate Your Dog is available for free download from Lulu, so you can read it without shelling out a cent, buck, dollar, rupee, riyal, franc, euro, or pound.

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It’s called Bionic Eyes, but really, it doesn’t seem to me at all the same as the bionic eyes that Steve Austin had. That is, these eyes don’t make objects appear that much closer. Nope. These are contact lenses fitted with integrated circuitry.

Don’t get me wrong – still very very very cool. But I guess describing it as a computer in the eye would bring visions of pain and busted eyeballs more so than anything else.

And this reminds me of those glasses – prototype, at any rate – that came out a few years ago that also had displays all over them. Also very cool.

What I find interesting is this bit:

Although the lenses have only been tested on animals

Um, this just leads to so many questions. Like how do you get feedback?

When using animals to test if a product is carcinogenic or otherwise harmful, it’s pretty easy to tell when the cancer tumours show up.

But how can you tell if the animal is having a useful experience with an integrated circuit in their eye? Just how much feedback can an animal give? Two barks for "great!" and one for "oh cwap!" or "the css styling needs some work"?

At any rate, it’s still very interesting and I, for one, am curious to see where this kind of technology can go. And the writer in me wonders how this is going to affect science fiction stories. Which leads to the next question…

What would you do with technology like this if you were to write a story?

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