According To Hoyt

Here, Spot! C’mere, Spot!

By Stephanie Osborn

Written July 4, 2016

 

A late Happy Independence Day to you all! As I write this, it IS Independence Day. Casa Osborn plans on some good summertime food, and maybe fireworks this evening, if the weather cooperates (storms are expected) and we can fight through the crowds to the display.

So…I’m back, folks. And I’m talking more about the Sun. It’s time for an update, because some slightly unusual stuff has been happening.

According to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (and per my own observations), the Sun has been unusually quiet for over a month now. In June, there were two periods of zero observed sunspots — a short one of four days that ran from the 3^rd through the 6^th, and another that started on the 23^rd and is continuing (total of 11 days and counting).

More, though the STEREO spacecraft were lagging badly, there seemed to be no real activity on the solar far side, either. The problem is that the two STEREO craft have to be angled to view the far side, in order to get telemetry from them. So there are periods of time when we simply can’t get data from them because they’re BEHIND the Sun as viewed from Earth, and intervals on either side of THAT when we might get data downloaded once in every week. So for this current batch of spotless days, we had a farside image from June 24^th, and one from July 2^nd, and that was all we had to work with. But of the 3 spot groups STEREO saw on the 24^th, none have rotated around to the near side — and the longest interval expected for that was 11 days. It’s the 11^th day, and no spots have rotated around. I think it’s safe to say that we went a good part of those 11 days with no sunspots, anywhere on the solar photosphere.

That does seem to be changing, as of last night…maybe. (For whatever it’s worth, astronomical days are counted as beginning at midnight in Greenwich, England. Except it isn’t actually measured at Greenwich anymore; it uses an atomic clock set to what is now called UTC, or Universal Time Coordinated. At any rate, that places it at around 6pm the evening before in the Central time zone.) As of 1:58am CDT 4 July 2016, there is one sunspot group on the farside, another possibly forming, and a teeny-tiny spot group forming near the equator on the nearside, pushing toward the western limb of the solar disk. Boulder has still not given it an official spot number, however, and the Boulder sunspot number (one of two sunspot counts, and the only one that hasn’t been tweaked to try to eliminate certain “inconvenient” periods) still rests at 0. If it holds up and doesn’t immediately deteriorate again, then it’ll get an official group number, and the Boulder number might just go up.

I am thinking it may well be a done deal, however, that the next solar minimum is gonna come early, and be deep. And possibly longish. Will it go into an extended minimum? Well, it’s not supposed to…not yet. Let’s get back to that shortly.

Many of you may have heard of the relatively new model for solar activity, dubbed the double-dynamo model.[1] Since the Sun is a giant ball of rotating plasma — charged particles — this effectively constitutes a current loop. A coil of electrified wire without the wire, if you will. And those generate magnetic fields. Hey presto, the Sun has a magnetic field, and it is, very loosely, bipolar — a bar magnet. But where it gets complicated is that the Sun IS a big ball of plasma — it isn’t a rigid body. Instead, each individual ion is obeying Kepler’s Laws of orbital motion[2], if we neglect the effects of collisions between ions — of which there are many, so it isn’t negligible by any means. This additional effect would dump us into the realm of magnetohydrodynamics, but is not that pertinent to our current discussion, so I’m not going to unduly complicate the thing and give y’all a headache. Kepler’s Laws are:

1. The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci. (A circle is a special case of an ellipse, where the foci merge.)
2. A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
3. The square of the orbital period of an orbiting body is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

Now, what that boils down to, for our purposes here, is that the different parts of the Sun do NOT all rotate at the same rate. Unlike Earth, a rigid body all of whose parts sweep out the same angular velocity, the Sun…doesn’t. The volumes around the core rotate at a different speed than the photosphere; the polar regions rotate at a different speed than the equatorial regions. So if we look at the magnetic field lines being generated by that bar magnet, we see a couple things happening. One, that bar magnet can get really, I mean REALLY, distorted. And two, the field lines have a tendency to wrap up and up and up, over and over again, around and around the rotational axis. Over a period of time they can get tightly compressed in some areas, and then magnetic reconnection can occur — the field lines snap and then reattach someplace else. This generates literal but invisible kinks, snarls, and knots in the magnetic field. When these reach the “surface,” or photosphere, they form sunspots. When the reconnects occur in the photosphere, we see flares.

This is a rather complex dynamo model.[3] And it predicted solar activity…to a point. But recently researchers proposed a double dynamo[4] — one dynamo “located” in the lower regions of the convective layer (the Sun’s “mantle”), and another a little way below the photosphere. More, while they have almost exactly the same period of variation, they don’t have QUITE the same period, and this causes them to go “out of phase” periodically. The model predicts extended minima as a result (which the old, single dynamo model did not). There is support for it in the magnetic data obtained from the Sun by the various space-based solar observing platforms.

The data indicate that we may be in a downward swing from an extended maximum. According to Wikipedia (which in this case lists numerous legitimate astronomy technical journals to support the statement, and I am quite familiar with all of said journals), “Sunspot numbers over the past 11,400 years have been reconstructed using Carbon-14-based dendroclimatology. The level of solar activity beginning in the 1940s is exceptional — the last period of similar magnitude occurred around 9,000 years ago (during the warm Boreal period). The Sun was at a similarly high level of magnetic activity for only ~10% of the past 11,400 years. Almost all earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.”[5]

We’re also currently on the downward swing from Solar Max toward minimum in Solar Cycle 24. “The [double-dynamo] model predicts that the magnetic wave pairs will become increasingly offset during Cycle 25, which peaks in 2022. Then during Cycle 26, which covers the decade from 2030-2040, the two waves will become exactly out of synch, cancelling one another out. This will cause a significant reduction in solar activity. ‘In cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other, peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun. We predict that this will lead to the properties of a “Maunder minimum”,’ says Zharkova.”[6]

But the current cycle is starting to diverge even from the 97+%-accurate double-dynamo model; though the model indicates a reduced number, it doesn’t predict a minimum until around 2018-19. But we are already dropping well below all predicted values. The 10.7cm radio flux curve is also slightly below predicted, indicating that at least in some frequencies, solar output is below norms.[7] This could mean a much steeper descent to an earlier Solar Min than forecast… or the Sun could hiccup, and spots will appear again. But the fact that the solar nearside was spotless from June 3-6 (4 days) and again from June 23-July 2 (11 days and counting as I annotate this)[8] is certainly significant. It also yields a mean sunspot number for the entire month of June of just over 16.

[Monthly and yearly sunspot averages: “monthly average” is the mean of the daily means; “yearly average” is the mean of the monthly means.[9]]

What all this means is anybody’s guess and probably watching and waiting is the best thing. However, Dr. J. K. Woosley and I are not convinced that the Sun has only two dynamos; this would not completely account for the complexity seen in the extended sunspot/solar activity record, which extends back (one way and another) for nearly 1000 years. Notable are the nearly back-to-back-to-back extended minima of the Wolf, Spörer, Maunder, and Dalton Minima.

There is decent evidence for additional extended or “Grand” minima, going back many millennia,[10] as I already mentioned. These include, but are not limited to:

• Homeric ~950BC-800BC (possibly continued until as late as 720BC; possibly two overlapping extended minima)
  • delta ~410yr or 330yr
• Unnamed 1 ~390BC-330BC
  • delta ~980yr
• Unnamed 2 ~650-720AD
  • delta ~320yr
• Oort ~1040-1080AD
  • delta ~200yr
• Wolf ~1280-1350AD
  • delta ~110yr
• Spörer ~1460-1550AD
  • delta ~95yr
• Maunder ~1645-1715AD
  • delta ~75yr
• Dalton ~1790-1830AD
  • delta to present ~186yr
  • delta from Dalton to double-dynamo forecast minimum ~210yr

These “Grand” or extended minima can be traced back past 9100BC using various means, for more than 11,000 years of data.[11]

My consideration, upon studying that list: Shouldn’t only 2 dynamos produce much more regular spacing of extended minima?

I turned to my resident physics expert consultant and sometime beta reader, Dr. J. K. Woosley again. (He and I go all the way back to grad school together, where we worked in the joint Astronomy & Physics Department; we are old and dear friends, adoptive siblings of a sort. And while I do have a degree in physics, sometimes I want a different set of brain cells than mine to corroborate — or disprove — my conclusions. He’s good for that.) So I sent him the double-dynamo paper — not because he hadn’t already read it, but because I suspected he’d need to refresh his memory, and I had it to hand so he didn’t have to hunt for it. And I sent him the papers on the paleoastronomical reconstructions of extended minima…and I asked him for a quick-scan opinion. In other words, “Don’t spend a ton of time running calculations; just give me your educated opinion.” And he replied the next day. (I’m used to most of my replies being the next day; not infrequently I send the queries at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning! So okay, it’s NOT the next day for the respondent, but it is for me!)

“At the level of a quick skim (all I can afford today), the occurrence of all three extended minima in the last millennium, combined with a current highest-ever solar maximum, do not seem to me to be supported by a two cycle model. I think a three cycle model is the minimum that would be supported, and if I recall correctly, 5 could be supported. Conversely, everything before the Maunder minimum is based on climatological surrogates for sunspot activity (e.g. trapped carbon-14). Determining solar activity trends based on modulation of C-14 production by increased cosmic ray flux during extended minima requires a number of assumptions.[12] Untangling the bias of those assumptions is more than a day’s work for a non-expert.”[13]

Now, all that said, there is evidently no obvious magnetic data to support even one additional dynamo in the model. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there, though — if it has a long enough period, it may be difficult to recognize, for instance. And the current double-dynamo model still misses out on a good 3% of the observations, and doesn’t fully account for the irregularity of the extended minima occurrences.

So my overall conclusion is this: I believe we have not yet managed to fully model the Sun sufficient to accurately predict all of its cyclic behavior. I think that there is at least one additional dynamo hidden in there someplace. And that, in turn, is going to affect the start/stop times of the next extended minimum. To go back to one of the statements I made early in this article, and to which I promised to return: are we about to go into an extended minimum? To this question, I say, “Possibly.” If indeed there are additional dynamos, the onset of the next extended minimum may not wait fifteen more years to start. It is certain that the last three sunspot cycles have been diminishing in intensity; if this trend continues, it may start sooner. If the Sun continues flatlining, as it has in the last month, it may start REALLY soon.

What does that mean for us on Earth? Well, historically and prehistorically, there is a correlation between solar activity and worldwide climate. Solar activity goes up, worldwide temps tend to go up. Solar activity goes down, worldwide temps tend to go down. Slap multiple minima running for half a millennium only a century or less apart, worldwide temps tend to go down a lot. Now, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. But it doesn’t disprove it, either. As I pointed out the last time I visited Sarah’s blog, there are a LOT of very interesting coupling mechanisms between our atmosphere and what’s going on in space, attached to a lot of very complex equilibrium cycles, and we are nowhere close to having modeled all of that yet.

So let me end by saying that I’m not the only astronomer to be thinking about this. One popular science blog specifically asked one of the double-dynamo researchers her opinion on the hyperbolic statements made by the media upon the news release of the model.

“‘We didn’t mention anything about the weather change, but I would have to agree that possibly you can expect it,’ she informed IFLScience…Zharkova compared the Maunder Minimum with the one that her team predicted to occur around 15 years into the future. The next minimum will likely be a little bit shorter than the one in the 17th century, only lasting a maximum of three solar cycles (around 30 years).

“The conditions during this next predicted minimum will still be chilly: ‘It will be cold, but it will not be this ice age when everything is freezing like in the Hollywood films,’ Zharkova chuckled.”[14]

My recommendation? Maybe start stocking up on firewood and long underwear.

It can’t hurt.

~Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

 

[1] https://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2680-irregular-heartbeat-of-the-sun-driven-by-double-dynamo

[2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion for more information.

[3] http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/dynamo.shtml

[4] ApJ: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/795/1/46;jsessionid=7E411F44E9D9A2D14C663CC35E4829AF.c1.iopscience.cld.iop.org

 

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#Cycle_history ; you can go to Wikipedia to obtain the nearly-half-dozen technical article links upon which this statement was based.

[6] http://astronomynow.com/2015/07/09/royal-astronomical-societys-national-astronomy-meeting-2015-report-4/

[7] http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression

[8] ftp://ftp.swpc.noaa.gov/pub/indices/DSD.txt

[9] http://www.sws.bom.gov.au/Educational/2/3/6

[10] A&Ap: http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/aa7704-07.pdf

[11] http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/aa7704-07.pdf

[12] http://bit.ly/29jWrPX (Sorry for the bitly link, guys; the original wrapped through four full lines!)

[13] Dr. J. K. Woosley, personal communiqué

[14] http://www.iflscience.com/environment/mini-ice-age-not-reason-ignore-global-warming/

I must be allowed to get it off my chest.  I know it’s not … precisely true, but it captures the essence of how I feel whenever I’m abroad.

We’re the king sized, bad assed kings and queens of creation, and I realized last night that I was pulling all my movements, speaking lower than normal because I was afraid of breaking… well… everything.  In fact, I’m afraid of denting the country if I stomp my feet, I’m afraid of causing a riot if I work up to a really good yelling fit, I’m afraid of crushing everything I touch without meaning to.

I realized this morning most of that is a psychic impression, so to put it.  I just came from a con, where I can be the most myself, because I’m among my people who get the eccentricities and quirks of an Odd, and I plunged straight into a society in which no one is allowed to be Odd, and in which I must — in vain, largely — try to pass.

So I woke up with PJ O’Rourke’s rant running through my head, and I’m having a hard time not translating and shouting, so I’m posting here to allay the need.

“I was having dinner…in London…when eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about “Your country’s never been invaded.” And so I said, “Let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go. You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying ‘Cheerio.’ Hell can’t hold our sock-hops.
We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.”

P J O’Rourke

And that’s about it.

This AAR of Liberty con is coming to you from sunny Portugal, now with more sun, where I’ve spent the last twenty four hours — give or take a couple of hours where I sleep walked through a family gathering — asleep.

The sleep was necessary to recover from a truly epic Liberty con.

We left Colorado early on the sixth, so we could avoid traveling during Robert’s birthday on the 7th.  This meant that we got there halfway through the sixth and then spent time driving to Chattanooga and having dinner and such.

We’d decided that we were going to get two cakes and some of Jonathan LaForce’s magnificent barbecue to celebrate Robert’s birthday, and we’d invite people to drop by our room if they wished at 7 pm.  We thought we’d get a dozen people or so.  In fact we had forty in the room at any time along the three hours, except that there was more than that, because people rotated.  In the end, I think we had over 100, and the last left after midnight.  This is not what I intended, but it was good, anyway.

The rest of the con had few panels (for me) but the Hoyts and their long lost cousins the Correias (true story, showed Larry’s picture around here and the opinion is, uniformly, that he’s a lost member of the family.  There aren’t many Portuguese families, after all, that run to over six feet in height or are built like brick sh*thouses. I got to spend some time with David Weber, whom I like immensely, and whom I hadn’t had time with in years.  This is probably bad for us, since every time we get together we try to figure out how to privatize sidewalks, metaphorically speaking.

There was less time with Ringo than usual, not due to any design on either of our parts, but because he was very, very busy.

To compensate I got to hash out Guardian with Larry (really, guys, I have about 70% buy in on Grant’s novel.  He says he doesn’t want me to write it, in case he can’t approve it.  I said… I think my exact answer was bwahahahahah.  But I have the right to try.  Also to show you snippets provided you understand it’s not cannon.)  I also get to write the Black Tide Novel in Portugal.  Combine that with the still unnamed novel with KJA, and with the fact I have to finish the vampire musketeer trilogy and … and a lot of other stuff (not to mention Darkship Revenge and other stuff) and I am busier than a one-armed fidller at a music convention.

Though I suppose the books are good news for you.

I met with many of you, including Orvan, Jonna who fixed a dress for me (thank you Jonna) Tully and a bunch of others, but spent most of my time with Dave Pascoe’s children, my adopted grandchildren.

I am already working on Darkship Revenge while I’m here, at my parents’ place, though I’ll confess most of what I’m doing is sleeping (variations on a theme) this time logically because of jet lag.

My dad… is much better than I could have dreamed of.  He looks, except for being a little thinner, as he did at sixty.  I want to figure out how he does this (other than walking a lot) so I can steal the secret, because people around him are aging normally but he looks like he did, save for his hair being more white.  It’s a secret I’d like.

Other than the fact that I’ve eaten all the things I shouldn’t, and paid for it in eczema last night, we’re doing fine, and I’m settling in to do some work.  I had to explain to mom I had to come and type at you and let me tell you, explaining the Huns in Portuguese is less than easy. So to put it.  To coin a phrase.

So tomorrow there will be a coherent post, and the day after there will be some form of story for Through Fire, hopefully.

For now, I’m going to take a nap.

 

*I should be in Portugal by now.  Keep your fingers crossed I get connected today. – SAH*

The Victorious Garden – Cedar Sanderson

I used to have a book on Victory Gardening. It was published during WWII, and it was intended to help people who had never raised their own vegetables cope with rationing and reduced goods being available in wartime. If you can find a copy, it’s neat, but there are better ways, now.

We aren’t at war. But the cost of food is going up, and wages aren’t so much. I went to the market yesterday and found eggs at a mere $0.69 a dozen, limit 4 dozen. I got 4, and I’ll probably go back again today for more. We use eggs a lot for protein here, as the price of meat keeps going up (especially beef) and I can pickle eggs, fry them, angel them (sort of like devilling…), make them into custards and quiches, and… but this isn’t a post about eggs. Nor is it about keeping chickens. Frankly, by the time you buy chicks, build a predator-resistant (there is no predator-proof) coop and run, and feed the chickens to layer age, you’re paying more for your dozen eggs than you will at the market – even when the price of a dozen eggs approached $3. This isn’t the post where I’m going to talk about the supposed health benefits of grow-your-own versus commercial, either.

No, this one was sparked by Sarah’s comment that she could grow potatoes. This really isn’t an easy feat – you need the right conditions, space, and a bit of know-how. When I talked to her about it, she told me that her grandfather taught her how to plant potatoes. Me? Well, I learned gardening from my parents, and they learned it from… well, Mom learned from her mother and grandmother. Dad learned it from books. Specifically, Dad was a very early disciple of some revolutionary gardening methods and it was those principles I grew up with, and want to recommend to those of you who want to garden but have physical issues, little space, and less time.

Why garden? Well, this summer despite having a tenth of an acre (with the house on part of that) I put in a garden. A tiny garden. I could probably, if I had time and energy, produce all our vegetable needs (and given a year or two, berries!) on the available land here. Yes, I’m quite serious. No, I haven’t got the time to do that. I have books to write, and other stuff. But with planning, even a little land can be coaxed into bounty. And a balcony or sunny window box can produce fresh herbs for the kitchen. I’m going to suggest that you take a look at the prices of produce, and plan your garden accordingly if you are short on space (or time, or whatever). So herbs – a tiny packet of, say, fresh thyme (shoot, I need to get a plant of thyme!) is about $2 at my market. I can buy a pot of it, a perennial, for less than $4 and put it in the ground and pick that summer, and for years after (if you put it in a container, bring it in if you live in zone 6 or colder, I didn’t, which is why I need a new plant). Growing your own herbs just makes good sense.

What about peppers, and tomatoes, and snap peas? All are relatively easy to grow, and expensive to buy. On the other hand, some things are cheap, tedious to grow (I don’t bother with cilantro, for instance. It bolts if you look at it funny.) Plan your garden accordingly. And don’t plant things your family won’t eat. If no one in the family will touch eggplant, don’t grow it! There’s no set rule that all gardens must have… whatever. I don’t plant carrots because they need special growing conditions and they are dirt cheap (Hah!) at the market. I do plant and enjoy cucumbers because I like the smaller pickling cukes which tend to be harder to find and more expensive.

So once you have an idea of what you want to grow, you need to get a feel for the conditions you have to grow in. You’ll probably have to give up some of the things you want to grow… but that’s ok. First, take a look at your local hardiness zone. I have gardened in everything from zone 8 to zone 2. Yes, you can have a good garden in zone 2 – but it’s a challenge. On the other hand, the tropic zones of 8-10 have their own challenges too. Now, take a look at your land. If you have an acre or more, you’re golden. For the more suburban dwellers, like our current house, you’ll have to figure out where the sun is, and work with what you have. Dropping a few trees and making more sun hit the garden might not be possible for most of us. At our house, I have a sunny front and side yard, and a shady back yard. If you don’t have any south aspects with no trees to shade, then you’ll want to consider growing shade lovers like greens.

What about HOAs and annoying neighborhood snobs who would look down at a vegetable garden in the front yard? Well, now I come back to the methods I learned from Dad about gardening. Dad was caught by the concepts of Permaculture, as developed initially by Bill Mollison in Australia. Now, there are tons of books, forums, and even (I think) a magazine devoted to it. But the basic concept is to use perennials, a mixture of edible and decorative plants, and the growing conditions you have to produce the most with the least effort. At my house this summer my vegetables are right out front with all my herbs and flowers. It doesn’t look like a ‘garden’ it looks like a flowerbed. Edible flowers are fun to eat, and look lovely. This is how you get around invasive neighborhoods who don’t want anyone to look different (geeze, talk about intolerance of diversity…)

What about limited mobility? Raised beds. With a raised garden bed you get a lot of bennies, and I recommend it for any family-sized kitchen garden. Market garden becomes less practical although it can be done – but that’s not what this post is about. I have used post and boards, railroad ties (stacked at least two deep), cinderblocks, and other creative methods to create a raised bed. You can build these right over grass if you lay down a layer of weedcloth, then the dirt/compost/manure to build the bed. Weed control is easier in a raised bed. Plan your beds so that you can sit on the edge and reach into the center easily. For most people this means the bed will be about four feet wide, more means you have to stretch and could overbalance. In the paths between beds, you could leave it wide enough to run a garden cart, or lawnmower, down it, or make it narrower and lay a layer of mulch over weedcloth. I like weedcloth! If you have worries about watering, and don’t care what it looks like, planting through a layer of black plastic (don’t use clear! It works like a mini greenhouse for weeds) is a great way to hold moisture in, warm plant roots, and keep the weeds to a bare minimum. Put a layer of mulch on top and it will look more attractive, too.

How about maximizing a small space? I can’t recommend enough Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening. This was my gardening bible, growing up, and I have used his methods for twenty years and more. I’m not going to try and go through it all here. If you can’t afford your own copy, hie thee to your local library. And don’t wait until spring. Start your garden planning now, for next summer’s harvest. Although I think this blog is early enough for more northern climes to still get something this year. Now, one of the things that people balk at is the dirt in their gardens, so… well, here’s the thing. The key to gardening is your dirt. My Dad boasts that not only is he older than dirt, he’s made dirt. So have I. We built on rocky, poor New England soil until we had two feet of rich loam on top. It took several years to do this on a third of an acre… but it was worth it. And most people don’t need that much dirt. We also used bales of peat moss in the high tunnel, but that’s a whole different thing.

If you plan to grow in your own existing soil, you still need to start a compost pile. Or use a barrel, in limited space. I think there are plans to build your own out there for cheap… and there are, including the one I remember from Mother Earth News (from the days when they were actually chock full of useful goodness). The, you need to go play with the dirt. When it’s wet but not mud (the hose will help with this if need be!) grab a fistful and squeeze. When you open your hand, if it all stays in a clump and you can even see your fingerprints… congratulations, you’ve got some lovely clay there, might want to look into a kiln and a throwing wheel. Gardening in that… not easy. If your handful of dirt falls apart and looks sandy, well, potatoes and carrots like that. But it won’t hold moisture well and you’ll have to water more. If it’s somewhere in between, you’re going to have it easy. There are ways to work with clay or sandy soils, but raised beds solve that problem.

Once you have beds, and dirt… plants. I buy my plants right now. I don’t have the space inside, or the time, to start from seed. Flats of seedlings need a lot of care, and a fair amount of trial-and-error to get them off to a healthy start, so the beginner might be frustrated with them. Keep in mind – light, more light, and even more light. Leggy seedlings won’t thrive. Damp will also kill seedlings – as will drying out. If you’re planning a sizeable family garden, it’s a much more economical way to go, but do your reading and plan before you start out with it. For a little garden like mine, buying nursery starts works fine and means I don’t have to find a place for a flat of plants! Also, I have a tendency to overplant and this keeps me from having a half-dozen zucchini plants. I highly recommend Pinetree Seeds for cheap packets of seeds that are more northern friendly (yea, that does matter). If you’re really planning in bulk, Johnny’s Seeds is the way to go. Avoid the oldies like Burpees and Gurneys, they sell poor quality at high prices. If you really are on a budget, you can indeed buy and grow with the ten-cent packets of seed from the dollar store. You may have poor germination rates and limited selection, but it’s a start. And of course for heirloom varieties you’ll want to check out Seed Saver’s Exchange. They aren’t cheap but the variety is amazing.

I’ve always gardened according to organic principles. Not because I object to pesticides and fertilizers, I don’t. Nor because I planned to sell organic produce – the regulations and red tape involved were prohibitive for a small market gardener. Now, it was simply because we were small scale, using chemicals wasn’t really necessary. There are ‘natural’ alternatives that are easy to use – soapy water for aphids, hand picking for squash bugs. For fertilizer, brewing manure tea from horse manure (ok, manure’s a whole ‘nother topic. Briefly – don’t put raw cat, dog, people, or chicken manure on the garden. Cow and Horse are good. Rabbit is fantastic. Sheep and goat are harder to collect. Moooving on…) is a good way to give the veggie garden a healthy boost. So are shovelfuls of compost at the base of perennials like rhubarb. Asparagus wants like a foot of it every spring. Heavy feeder.

And this is really really long. But hopefully I’ve given you some ideas for growing your own herbs, vegetables, and reducing the food budget a bit. You really can do it, even if you live in the city.

The Horsemen of the Hypocalypse: A Revised Guide for Evil Overlords

Tedd Roberts

 

My friends and I have often been called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  After all, between us we have mad scientists, mad medic, mad pilot, mad students and mad beer guy.  Oh, that’s five – no wait – really, it’s eight.  Eight Horsemen – except two are women…  Of the Apocalypse – well, only theoretically… and as scientists, that should really be “hypothetically” since we haven’t actually tested it…  The Hypothetical Apocalypse, then – the Hypocalypse.

The Eight Horsepersons of the Hypocalypse…

…Because these days, a mad scientist needs friends: a safety officer (medic), emergency transportation (pilot), minions (students), and refreshing adult beverages (beer guy)!  When the time comes to unleash our zombie plague and take over the world, we have someone covering all bases – entomology for insect vectors; medic for the human vectors; the “thingy in the brainy”; Intel, for, well, intelligence; transport and aerial vectors, and a musician to create a truly epic soundtrack!

—

Being an evil mad scientist sure has changed from the “Good Ol’ Days” when an extinct volcano, piranha pools, big red button on the laser and a white Persian cat were all that were required to be a “good” Evil Overlord.  OSHA regulations and Workplace Safety have decertified volcanic lairs due to silicosis and radon.  Piranha pools require yellow-painted safety rails, a protective screen cover, water-surface motion alarm and Animal Care and Use certification that the piranha will not be mistreated in any way.  The Big Red Button which triggers the City Destroying Laser or rockets requires positive action locks, should be in a separate room behind multiple security stations, and should be painted a psychologically-soothing mint green.  Don’t *even* get started on the Environmental Impact Statements, Notice to Airmen (NOTAM), Unmanned Aircraft System registration and space treaties!

Oh, and by the way, cat hair and delicate electronics don’t mix.  An Evil Overlord with a cat will have to strip, shower and don a clean-room suit before entering the Control Room.  It’s rather difficult to be seen as an imposing Evil Overlord while wearing white footie-jammies and a hair net.  [Not to mention that a truly hairless cat just doesn’t set the right tone. – the Entomologist]

What’s an up-and-coming mad scientist to do in this age of regulation, oversight and Environmental Health and Safety Inspections?

Sure, there’s a list out on the Internet of Evil Overloard Do’s and Don’t’s – Don’t monologue, don’t have a big red button, do hide the self-destruct, do provide a generous retirement plan for your minions.  However, it is the opinion of the Eight Horsepersons of the Hypocalypse that the list just doesn’t go far enough!  Consider the following, instead…

Volcano Lairs:

No, no, a thousand times, no!  Have you every *been* in an extinct volcano?  They are hot, dirty (black dust gets *everywhere*) and too far away from civilization.  Merely “dormant” volcanoes are prone to become un-extinct when the so-called “Hero” sets off your Doomsday Bomb and releases the plug holding back all of that pent-up magma.  Extinct volcanoes tend *not* to have that pressure, rather, they have a disturbing tendency to collapse into the empty magma chamber, ruining all of your laboriously collected artwork and tasteful interior decorating.

Instead, consider a nice tropical island *without* a volcano!  Waterfalls are nice.  The sound of water falling is an excellent white noise cover for your activities and they provide a natural way to get rid of the waste heat from your laboratory, manufacturing and electronics.  They are also just plain soothing – after a long, hard day of planning World Conquest, don’t you deserve a relaxing frozen drink beside a beautiful waterfall?

On the other hand, tropical paradises with waterfalls – like extinct volcanoes – are usually so darned far from civilization.  It’s awfully hard to pop into Trader Joe’s or Starbucks when it’s a minimum 8 hour flight back to the city.  [Of course, you will need to have your own pilot – be sure to treat them well – but that will be covered later! – the Pilot]. Consider finding a nice inner city neighborhood that can use a tidy influx of jobs and capital.  [Call it ‘Urban Renewal,” renovate historic buildings, and you can probably get the government to pay *you* for the job! – the Biomedical Graduate Student]

[Indeed, revive that urban area enough and the Starbucks and Trader Joe’s will come to you! Plus if you revive say Detroit, which is already an international shipping port, who’s going to notice your large shipments of weird things required by your plan? – the Entomologist]

[Invest in state of the art transportation equipment – or better yet, invent your own! But ensure that your transportation staff is given plenty of time to learn and practice upon said equipment before any sort of evil plan is put into place. And remember, ergonomics is not just the study of human transactions! Design your badass escape vehicles to work well with their human operators. Style counts! – the Pilot]

[Better yet, form your own charity that has an air wing which provides airlift capacity to other charities in cases of emergency or hard to reach areas.  Other charities and the government can help fund your private air force! – the Biomedical Graduate Student]

 

IACUC and IRB panels

These days, a Biomedical Researcher can’t scratch their nose without filing regulatory paperwork [What is the duration of scratching?  How many layers of dermis will be disturbed?  Is the scratching device FDA approved?] One advantage of being an evil genius mad scientist is doing away with all of the regulatory burden and oversight of the academic and corporate researchers.  Unfortunately, that is a dangerous precedent, considering that the Hero can shut you down with a simple phone call to the USDA!

Create your own certification authorities: Environmental Health and Safety department (EH&S, with Chemical Safety and Radiation Safety review boards), Institutional Animal Care and Use committee (IACUC, for animal research), and Internal Review Board (IRB, for human studies).  The committees need a charter, a set of standard operating procedures to be employed throughout your organization, regular meetings and minutes, and both internal and external advisors who are experts in the field – clinicians for the IRB, veterinarians for the IACUC and a Health Physicist/Chemist for EH&S.  The beauty of this plan is that as long as the committees follow appropriate regulations for their review procedures, they can decide that creating Rodents of Unusual Size is a perfectly legitimate and ethically sound laboratory procedure and the government cannot say otherwise.  In fact, you can probably get government grants to pay for the administrative costs and compensate your external advisory board members!

 

No Outsourcing

Sure, it’s a cost-saving measure, but absolutely no outsourcing.  Hire professionals to build your headquarters [Note, *not* a “lair,” you need to avoid keywords such as this to maintain a low profile in the intelligence databases – the Intel Graduate Student].  Professionally designed interfaces will avoid many of those inconvenient “back doors” which can be exploited by the Hero and Government Agents. [However, beware that this is no guarantee! – the Intel Graduate Student]  Keep in mind that there have been cases in the news lately in which government has ordered a company to unlock or provide an “official” back door into the system.  This is why you want to hire your own developers!  A good Design Engineer will ensure that the Weapon Activation and Self-Destruct mechanisms are totally separate – preferably in separate rooms, cities or even continents!

Have a business plan and stick to it.  If you don’t have a business plan, check with your bank, your insurer, you investment counselor for a recommendation.  Don’t have any of those?  Get them! Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance!  Seriously, there’s a Wharton Business School graduate out there desperately in need of a job.  Hire the help you need.

Invest in small businesses.  Monopolies are not necessarily a good idea.  You won’t face resentment from local business owners if you are their main customer. [Nobody wants to go out of business because the company that they relied on for income got forced into divestiture by the court! – the Biomedical Grad Student]

In addition to Design Engineers, don’t forget the Architects!  [Remember that architecture affects morale.  Do not give into the temptation to build ugly buildings based on the Brutalism of the 1970s.  Instead look at the factory and lab designs of the Victorian Era with an eye towards modern OSHA requirements. If the research permits it, install windows for natural light.  Use tasteful (and tactical) landscaping around your buildings.  Build paths and gardens, perhaps with outdoor lunch shelters. – the Entomologist]

Hire the best.  Pay the best.  Get the best.

 

The Peasants are Revolting: Improving Minion Morale

Unless you have a few million cloned little yellow – um, creatures – to do your bidding, you need to consider an investment in the health and well-being of your minions.  Slave labor is not a good idea.  It is against international conventions, breeds resentment, offers too many opportunities to the Hero, and in the long run can cost more than you save. [Not to mention, it attracts the attention of every law enforcement agency between here and Interpol. – the Intel Grad Student]

Pay well.  Happy minions are loyal minions.

On the other hand, be very careful with termination procedures.  If a minion needs to leave your service, it is counterproductive to simply eliminate them.  It’s bad for morale.  Instead, offer a generous retirement plan and build a retirement village within your “arcology” [Note: *not* a “compound” – see above re: specific Intel trigger phrases! – the Intel Grad Student]

[Offer retaining fees for minions.  If injured on the job or unable to continue due to, say bad knees, don’t just pay the insurance claim, pay for retaining fee.  Even if they can’t continue with your company after they can serves as sources of information if they go elsewhere. – the Biomedical Grad Student]

Promote healthcare and good hygeine – have a generous health plan, low deductible insurance, well equipped hospitals and clinics, health education plans and outreach clinics.  Don’t neglect your own health and hygiene, either. Get some rest. After all, “if you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything!” Get the best treatments for yourself – medical and cosmetic.  A bald head, pointed goatee and a penguin-like waddle are dead giveaways.  Visit the health club, get a trainer.  Stay fit so that you can outrun anything.  Keep in mind that the Hero is looking for the bald, fat guy with the white cat – be the ripped rock star and mess with his head.

Cover the relatives as well as your minions:  A sick relative needing an expensive surgery can lead to a serious security breach.  Counter-intelligence loves to find a weakness in your minions’ home lives.  Close those gaps and secure your borders.  [*Always* listen to the medic/doctor.  If the Doc says “avoid this condition” – you’d damn well better avoid it lest they decide to enforce their orders with creative pharmaceuticals and genetic agents! – the Medic]

[Partner with a local university, preferably a research university.  Support their research in fields that you are interested in – it’s not outsourcing if it’s supported by your generous endowment!  But, don’t forget to fund other areas so that it is not obvious what you are interested in.  – the Biomedical Grad Student]

Endow scholarships for all students to compete for, but also offer tuition remission programs as a benefit to employees. Provide jobs and vocational training.  When the Hero comes looking for information, your investment will pay off in security and loyalty.  When everyone works for you, *wants* to work for you, and is happy and satisfied, they’re pretty much guaranteed to tell the Hero that “there’s no one here by that name!” [Nothing ensures loyalty like paying for someone’s kids to go to a high quality university! – the Biomedical Grad Student]

Support local churches, law enforcement, emergency services, and the military.  The community is going to have a hard time seeing you as a bad guy if you are the sponsor of the local interfaith council, the guy that bought the town a pair of police dogs and the new fire truck, as well as the guy that accidentally ran over, backed up over and ran over again the incompetent head of the local VA hospital.

Invest in charities.  [Don’t forget to sponsor feel good legislation – it’s for the children. – the Medic].  Sponsor the local fair, scout troops, 4H, FFA.  [Sponsor summer internships for promising future plant and animal breeders and skilled tradespeople – after all, even Jabba had a skilled (and loyal) handler for his Rancor! – the Entomologist]

[Sponsor internships in research labs with genetic engineering as well as veterinary medicine and animal behavior – what’s the point of creating vicious attack-sea-bass with “fricken’ lasers” if you can’t control them? – the Beer Guy]

Invest in quality martial arts and weapons training.  No one needs site security that can’t hit a bullet with the broad side of a barn.  Remember: “only stormtroopers could be so precise” and that “storm troopers can’t hit anything”?  It’s a fine balance between merely *appearing* incompetent (while being supremely competent) to lull the enemy into false confidence – and appearing competent to discourage the enemy instead.  Hire the best trainers – better yet, send your own minions off to train and achieve certification as trainers.  It will be a sound investment in your own security, and the morale boost from intramural competition is another plus.  Martial arts promotes defense and is a healthy activity.  Skill academies for the kids will help raise the next generation of loyal minions, and provide stress relief for the adults in a safe [and secure – the Intel Grad Student] environment.

 

Patents and Intellectual Property:

Learn from Monsanto – use lawyers, but also maintain good public relations.  [Don’t hire, clone your own legal staff and send them off to the best schools and internships – the Beer Guy]

Have your scientists and/or engineers come up with some interesting things as a result of their research for you?  Why not help them patent those products? [An additional revenue stream will benefit you and your researchers! The Entomologist].

Diversify, diversify, diversify.

All of the above takes money.  If your factories and laboratories are producing high-demand products *in addition* to your secret weapons, zombie virus and potent hallucinogens, you’ll have multiple built-in revenue streams to support your core business and provide jobs and job security for your minions and their extended families.

 

Monologuing:

Avoid overly long explanations. We understand – you wouldn’t be an Evil Overlord if you weren’t smart and a bit egotistical. You’ve worked hard for this moment, and it’s important to take a little “me time” to really enjoy it. All well and good – but make sure you’re gloating is short and to the point.

Use bullet points or an outline, no more than can fit in 10 point Arial on a 3 x 5 index card [Avoid Powerpoint! A bored audience is a dangerous audience. – the Medic] Stick to your card with very little variation. You don’t want to give your nemesis any way to derail your train of thought to distract *you* – studies show that’s when the nemesis is liable to use a hidden gadget to escape his bonds. [The main thing you have to keep in mind is this: Is the euphoria of gloating worth the potential of losing everything? – the Beer Guy]

If you really *want* to monologue, you can do it as long as you keep operational security in mind!  Details of your secret plan?  Oops, that was the one you discarded six months ago.  Location of the bombs?  Sorry, I forgot that my GPS was malfunctioning!  [Remember to have fun with it, too.  If the “hero” does escape, there is nothing funnier than watching him try to get to sub basement 13 to disable the hydrogen feed for a project cancelled 6 months ago.  It will keep him occupied and out of the way while you finish your real plan. – the Biomedical Grad Student]

[A good counterintelligence campaign works wonders even when you don’t monologue.  Having the hero chase after superweapons or headquarters that don’t exist is extremely helpful for accomplishing your goals without interruptions.  – the Intel Grad Student]

 

Your Own Epic Soundtrack

Be a patron of the arts. Don’t steal that Rembrandt, buy it.  Support the auction house.  Endow the Museum and get them to build a branch in your community – that way you *and* your minions get to enjoy the fine art.

Support the symphony.  Endow music and art scholarships, encourage the company band, orchestra and chorus. [Not to mention the company softball team and family picnics. – the Pilot]

Hire a composer to write your theme music. [There are composers writing *awesome* music for commercials, video games and Twitch streams.  They can write one for you, too. – the Music Intern] Remember the individual themes that John Williams wrote for Star Wars?  Whose theme was more epic? Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker?  Luke’s theme was pretty and inspiring, but The Imperial March was *majestic*!

Hire that composer.  Like that movie music?  Find out who composed it and go from there.  [Go to You Tube and Twitch.  Pick something, listen, try again.  When you find something you like, track down the composer.  They’d be happy to make some money doing what they love. – the Music Intern]

Always have music in your offices, factories and labs.  It sets the mood and reduces stress.  The same goes for art – you’ve had a designer create the perfect workspace, now fill it with things that are pleasing to the eye!  Avoid too much abstract, though, it might give that rare disgruntled employee too many ideas. [Not to mention motive, concealment, weapons of opportunity! – the Intel Grad Student]

 

Be the Hero of Your Own Story

Finally, keep in mind that YOU ARE THE GOOD GUY in this community.  You’ve provided jobs, education, health care and retirement plans.  When the Hero (or Government) comes calling, the community is *not* going to sell out their greatest benefactor.

To the lab tech whose wife was cured by the medical miracle your own labs produced, you are the Hero.

To the single mother of 3 whose kids received full-ride scholarships to Med School, Law School and Business School, you are the Hero.

To the Artist and Musician who can afford rent, meals and health insurance, you are the Hero.

Most of all, remember that being an Evil Overload is not just a job, it’s a calling.

Hypothetically speaking.

[Many thanks to Phil, Chris, Cathe, Kacey, Brent, Stephen and Brian.]

First a brief note: I have said I’m sleeping a lot.  Make that A LOT.  Also things are falling out of my head faster than rain.  If I promised to meet you somewhere and I’m not there, for the love of heaven, text me.

I have no idea what is causing this.  I’m certainly NOT overworked, and I certainly am not nearly as ill as I was last year.

The only thing I can figure out is that I’m going through what used to happen when I finished a novel and I had “novel flu” and would sit in front of the TV without moving for three days.  Only this isn’t finishing a novel (I’m hoping to on the plane.  Certainly if we can get an upgrade, but even if the plane has a modicum of space, which sometimes happens in international flights — did on my last — and I can open my laptop.  It’s ten hours, undisturbed, which I haven’t had in a year give or take.)  This is the two years of packing/moving/packing/moving/repeat ad infinitum.  Oh, sure, when I get home I still have stuff to unpack (if I can at all swing the money — it will take about 1k, and frankly part of me would rather spend it on tiling the bathrooms or something more permanent.  On the other hand, getting done with unpacking is essential so I can concentrate and WORK — I’ll get a helper or a couple of them, so we can be done, before Robert’s school starts, and so I can finish the fantasy novel with Kevin J. Anderson, MHI Guardian, MHI… is that a snerk collar guys? Puts two fingers in for air, MHI Dark Fate, and aughhhhhhhh  damn snerk collar, and then the Dragon trilogy.  (I haven’t forgotten.  No. First thing Oleg asked me.)

But first I need the house unpacked and to get in people to fix the stuff that will get worse if we wait, like the gutters and the porch.

That’s the treadmill I’m on and have been on.  Unpack, clean, unpack, clean, see if I can find money and people to do x y and z (yeah, I know, money will come as I work.  You see the catch 22, particularly as Colorado has maybe two months to get outdoor work done before the snow flies?)

But for the time I’m here, and to an extent the time I’m in Portugal, the treadmill has stopped.  I CAN’T physically unpack or even deal with contractors from a distance.  I suppose the last few days in Portugal I can order things I’m going to need at home.  But until then, there’s not much doing.  So part of me has decided it’s time to pay back sleep debt, and boy that account MUST have been overdrawn.

I suspect most of what I do in Portugal is sleep.  (Other than finish Darkship Revenge, and Royal Blood (I also didn’t forget that, or that I owe you Eternal Blood shortly thereafter, but that’s a known world, and books that have been pushing for five years, so it should be easy.  Pie in the sky I do both of those in Portugal.  And I resume Rogue Magic — now edited — when I come back.))

How this affects you: sometime in the next week, supposing I don’t lose internet access in Portugal, and Dan tells me I won’t (fingers crossed) I will have a Through Fire Short Story, to help it along as it comes out in paper in August.  I also have permission to post UNCANNONICAL, UNAPPROVED, UN-LARRY-SEEN snippets of Dark Fate while I’m in Portugal.  what this means is that though I have permission to play with Grant after I’ve done the Julie book, and send him to Portugal, and get him a gf, Larry hasn’t OBVIOUSLY read the result much less approved it or said “Hey, we’ll publish this” — that will take a while IF it happens — until then, this is a weird parallel world where Grant goes to Portugal and gets a girlfriend, and becomes much more human (poor thing.)  I’m hoping of course at sometime that the owner of the toybox of MHI makes it cannon, but when I post it here, it won’t be.

My posting hours get REALLY weird.  As in majorly weird.  I’ll be about eight hours ahead of where I normally am, I’ll be accommodating family business/time, and this means that sometimes I won’t be sure what time it is in EST where this blog is set.  Which means you might see posts pop up at eight pm and three am.  I’m sure you’ll deal.

Okay, that’s a note longer than the post, I think.

Yesterday I was talking with gentlemen who are starting an indie company, and hoping to do to movies what indie is doing to writing.  I THINK the tech is there, and I wish them all the best of luck (to them and others like them.)  BUT I had to try to explain a really weird mechanic.

They were talking about movies and things Hollywood no longer does well, like Romance, (they don’t you know?  It’s all romantic comedies, as though love must be laughed at, like kids do) and saying that the market must be there for it.

Indeed it is, I’m sure it is.  Just as it’s there for historical mystery, or Heyer’s type of romance, with lots of sizzle and none of the anatomy, or–

The POTENTIAL readers are still there.  We didn’t vanish in a poof of smoke as the major publishing houses thought we did when they decreed the genres were dead or “double plus ungood” like milsf and cozy mysteries.

The thing is Mil SF still has a market, not potential, but actual.  This is because Baen kept the flame burning through the dark night, and fed the appetite enough that people look for more of the same.  In fact, because Baen has such an ebook side, they look for ebooks.  And Baen, though of course, still publishing these, doesn’t produce two to three books a day, which is what super-readers consume.  This is why most of the big money made by indies is in Mil SF.

And that will tell you what the problem is with Romance movies — or books, if you don’t like describing what went where how many times and how lubricated it was — or historical mystery books.  Or cozy mysteries that are not craft mysteries, or I’m sure a dozen other genres and subgenres you guys could name:

The audience wandered away or, worse, was never formed.  I.e. the people who are still looking for historical mysteries are more likely to be looking in the bookstores, which are still an area of low indie-penetration.  Which means you’re still swimming against the current in building an audience and making a living.

For instance, the last time I looked at historical mystery to check the covers, most of the successes were indie.  But I also know from my own sales how few sales it takes to get to the top of that particular pile.

Do I mean you shouldn’t do it?  Oh, hell no.  You should do it with both feet, castanets and one of those little tambourines to show your way.

Those genres had a huge audience, before they became vehicles for preaching/whatever idiocy captured the establishment and were shut down.  That means the potential audience is HUGE and no one is harvesting it.

But you’ll have to grow it.  The field is destroyed and the younger readers now transitioning/reading in e-reader, don’t even know they existed as healthy genres one day, or that you could enjoy them or in the case of Romance (which has become equated with “lady porn”) do it any other way.

So it will take a while to grow those audiences.  It’s a matter of steady effort, of putting things out, of getting the word out (here, and Charlie and I are going to bring back the Friday push at PJM I promise.  And other places) and of not giving up.

There is a line in the i-ching (my friend Charles — Hi, Charles — is a practitioner) that goes “Work on what has been spoiled by the father.” If I understand (I’m not a practitioner) it denotes that a lot of work will need to be done just to get things to a functional state.  That is the case here.  Work on what has been spoiled.  Don’t expect miracles.  If you need the money while you’re re-growing the fallow field, force yourself to do a UF (which the mains have declared dead NOW, and are shutting down, but which still has an audience and a young one) or a mil sf, or something else you enjoy but which still has an audience of e-book readers actively looking for it.

And don’t give up.  Never give up.  The task before us is enormous.  Many fields have been thoroughly trashed by MBAs without a clue, or by humanities graduates with a crazy agenda, but people are still people.  Genres that attracted a certain type of people will still attract a certain type of people.  Because people in general don’t change, nor do their inclinations.  Sure, they might want it in more modern or glitzy packet, but if their parents wanted it, they still want something very much like it.

Work on what has been spoiled — in writing, in society, in politics. — It is the destiny of our generation to labor at this, and it might be that we never even see the results.  We will surely never see the FULL results.

But if our grandchildren (blood or of the heart) do; if they inherit a more vibrant, richer, marginally saner world?

Then we are justified.

Work on what has been spoiled.

 

 

I totally forgot I hadn’t posted today.

Yes, I have guest posts, some astounding ones, and I could have put one of them up, except I forgot I hadn’t posted.  Until I was in the middle of the Baen road show.

Orvan Ox said to blame it on him (and also “moo”)  I’m not sure how, but he says it’s all his fault.  More tomorrow/later today, depending on liberty con parties and how alive I am or not.

So yesterday we got WAY more people than we counted on for our little improv party for #1 son.  Not that this was a bad thing.  I’m glad though that we decided to have TWO cakes, and 20 lbs of chicken legs, or we’d have been left in the lurch.

The party completely overrode our tiny little room and spilled out all the way down the hallway.

The last person left after one am — partly my fault as we engaged in conversation — and the boy is most thoroughly 25 now, which still makes me a little confused.  He still has five to seven years to finishing his degree fully and be a fully productive member of society.  Which is hard on the hyper-responsible young man who wants to pay his own way, but that’s the path he chose.  (And he’s borrowing most of it, but we’re paying his living expenses, of course.)

Woke up way too late this morning, which means we just had brunch and we have a panel at four.

This is not how I intended things to go today.  I have a Portuguese sf anthology I promised to read, look over the bilingual editing, and write an introduction for, which will probably mean I’ll be burning the midnight oil today as well.  I intended to get that done by noon today.  It won’t happen.

But it will hopefully get done by midnight — I got to talk briefly with Larry at the party yesterday and he approved my plans for Grant (mwahahahahahaha) — and I might get to meet with/talk to Larry int he meantime.  IF not that will be tomorrow.

One day at a time.  I won’t say I don’t often get furious at things going slow.  The little time I’ve had to devote to writing in the last two years of packing and moving moving moving moving, has cut down on my production to ridiculous levels, on top of the slow down of illness the two years before that.

I get annoyed and impatient, but there isn’t a hell of a lot more to do than take it a day at a time.  You know the thing about the journey of a thousand steps?  And the only way to accomplish it is to take that single step and then go on putting a foot in front of the other.  Just a foot in front of the other.  Sure, sometimes you’ll jump back to avoid a tiger, or take a detour around an obstacle.  But you try to generally keep moving.  One step at a time.  Towards your goal.

We all understand this in our private lives, even if sometimes the setbacks and detours make us despair.

Why is it so difficult to do in politics?  Why do people start from “I want it all and I want it now” like they all become Freddy Mercury?

Oh, I know, it’s because the history we learned telescopes all those steps into “and then the glorious conqueror walked a thousand steps and won.  The end.”  And because movies and books have conditioned us to this, too.

But Narrativium isn’t life, except in very small and marginal effects.  Life is a lot of boring, small things that push, push, push, getting us to the goal in steps so small that you sometimes don’t see yourself taking them.

And that’s what happens in politics, writ large.  You push push push and sometimes you don’t see the results for generations.

Our current clusterfilk is the result of pushing that started more than 100 years ago.

To want it all now, no setbacks, not halting, no walk arounds is to have no concept of the rate at which societies move.

It’s to want to toss the baby AND the bathwater out, in return for —  This is not clear as none of that will achieve the goal.

Though I suppose as a Latin woman I do understand how satisfying grand tantrums and dramatic exits are, in the end you just have to restart the journey again.

One step at a time.

It’s not grand or dramatic or interesting.  It is however what we have.

One step at a time.  One day at a time.  You do the best you can and you discard regrets.  And you move forward, though sometimes you can’t even see it, towards the goal that’s always far away.

One step at a time.  Here’s my hand.  I’ll help you on, if you help me on.

Towards those lofty goals.

Our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.  We’ll bet them all, and we might lose them all.  But we’ll move forward.

One step at a time.

Yesterday I spent the day in flying out to Liberty Con, which is funny since the actual flight is about 3 hours.

But you know how it goes.  It involves getting up way too early, trying to muster luggage and cats, driving to the airport, standing in the security theater line — now with dogs! Coming soon, robotic probes! — for (in this case) an hour and a half, making a perfect target for terrorists, making it to the plane, crashing because you are too exhausted, then stopping for food, getting caught in rush hour on the way to Chattanooga, we got in late in the evening.

The actual travel portion of the day was miniscule, and yet it confused the entire day from getting up to getting our behinds back in bed.

I was thinking about this, as I realized our older son turns twenty five today.  For perspective, that’s 3 years less than I was when I gave birth to him.

He just finished his first year in medical school, knows things I never even thought about, much less learned, and has an entire life which is none of our business, much less our not being a part of it (I don’t mean just romantic exploits, but his friends, their favorite restaurants, their favorite books/shows, the habits and traditions they’re starting to form, the things that fill his days and aren’t and shouldn’t be reported to mom and dad.)
And all I can do is scratch my head and wonder where time went.

Like the traveller who left home at six am, I find myself at dinner time, in a different city wondering where the time went.

I’m not complainig about the destination, mind you.  I found myself singing “all the women call him treetop lover, all the men just call him sir,” after an interaction observed in the grocery store last night.  And he’s — obviously — responsible and hard working, smarter than your average pair of socks, has this weird compulsion to want to help sick people, and is ugly as sin, in that undeniably masculine and not unattractive way some guys are.

BUT the question is, where did my cute little toddler go?  He was here just a minute ago!

And we didn’t see him growing, not really, on account of we were busy with careers, and keeping the house sorta clean, and the occasional vacation, and how are we going to (help) pay for college?

So how did we arrive here?  I’m not complaining, except why is the sun setting?  We didn’t spend that much time in the travel?

This is apropos since I’ll be going to Portugal too, right after Liberty con, and I’ll be faced with the other side of this.  You know how that goes.  You’re a little kid, and you know you’re going to grow up and be your parents’ age.  BUT all the time, they’re also aging, so that when you’re an adult the age you remember them at, they’re elderly.

This is not fair to them or you, or the multitudes of humans who came before.  But it is yet true.

The act of living your life spends your life away.  You can’t hoard time.

I’m a science fiction writer and can — and eventually will — write this in a a fairer way.  And then see what results.

But until then happy birthday to #1 son, Robert Anson, and to the person we named him for, and whom we never got to meet as a colleague, due to that unfairness of time.

May you shine brightly, and your light be seen for generations and never fade.

Even if my son is what happens when you lose sight of your toddler for… I swear it was a few minutes.

Music and the Hugos:  Accounting for Taste

by Alpheus Madsen

While I was in my early days, I fell in love with what I would now call “Symphonic” music, but what most other people would call “Classical”.  I love the rich tones, the combinations of melody, and the wide range of emotion; I love the music that tells stories (such as “Symphonie Fantastique”, by Hector Berlioz) and music that is cerebral–music for its own sake–such as most of the works of Johann Brahams.  And I wanted to be able to compose that music, too!  (I still do, actually; I just don’t have the time to do everything I want to do…)  With that desire, I decided to earn a Music Minor while in College.

Now, I have a confession I must make:  much of the music I love, I was introduced to in my Music Appreciation and Music History classes.  It is also, incidentally, why I call the music I love “Symphonic”, because “Classical” music is pretty much limited to the time period of the lives of Mozart, Hayden and Beethoven, while “Symphonic” includes Baroque and Romantic periods…as well as Rachmaninoff, and Movie Scores.  Indeed, I say “Symphonic” because I specifically want to include movie scores, because movie scores are particularly what I have come to love in music.

The funny thing about earning a music minor, however, is that I wasn’t just exposed to the “Symphonic” music I loved.  I was also introduced to “Atonal” music:  music that deliberately took our expectations of harmony, chordal progressions, and rhythm, and threw it all out the window, in favor of experimentation.  Arnold Schoenberg, Charles Ives, and John Cage were the leaders of this movement.  Sergei Rachmaninoff was technically a member of this movement, too, although he eschewed atonal music, and insisted that he was born in the wrong era:  he should have been a part of the Romantic era years before.  Rachmaninoff was despised because he refused to reject tonality.  He was also despised for being popular with his audience!

This isn’t to say that atonal music was completely useless.  Schoenberg composed a lot of music for movies–apparently, it’s fantastic for inducing tension and fear in the audience.  And it can be a bit of an acquired taste.  At the end of a recital where I suffered through an atonal piece that I would describe as the warblings of a dying bird, I remember one of my professors telling this singer that she thought the piece was very beautiful.  At another time, I remember two professors discussing a piece by Schoenberg that was written to describe life in the ghetto of Warsaw…and how a class that was required to listen to that piece over and over again, couldn’t believe that the piece they listened to at the end of the semester was the same one that they listened to at the beginning.  (And no, I was not a part of that class, so I can only imagine what it was like!)

So, what does all of this have to do with the Hugos?  It’s a matter of taste.

As I have looked over the controversy over Sad Puppies, I have seen many comments to the effect of, “I don’t see what your problem is.  Don’t you like work X?  What about work Y?  Don’t you think Z deserves an award?”  Well, no, I don’t like works X and Y, and I especially didn’t think Z deserved an award–at least, not a Hugo.  Just because you like those works, doesn’t mean that I would.  Tastes differ, and you shouldn’t expect me to like a work because you do.  Indeed, if I started asking some of the same questions about the Sad Puppy works, what would your reaction be?  Don’t they deserve recognition, too, might I ask?

The problem is even deeper than that, though:  in order for me to appreciate “atonal” science fiction, I have to acquire the taste for it…but I don’t want to spend the time to acquire that taste!  I enjoy science fiction because it explores new ideas, generally recognizes the intrinsic value of the individual, celebrates heroes, has a sense of awe and wonder, and has a generally positive outlook towards the future.  Granted, I don’t mind the occasional dystopia (we need to remember that our actions can lead to dire consequences)…but I don’t want to be hit over the head, again and again, with such things.

(As an aside:  this is why I won’t want to become a Graduate Student to study Music.  I want to learn to compose music, and I want to compose that music in the styles of John Williams, Danny Elfman, Rachmaninoff, Berlioz, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Hayden, and Bach!  Even if my music will never become popular, if it languishes, I want it to languish because I cannot refine my skill to match the levels of these giants, and not because I deliberately sabotaged it for the sake of “art” and “academics”.)

Even beyond that, I want science fiction to thrive!  In order to thrive, it has to be popular–at least, it has to be popular enough, that authors can make a living–and “atonal” science fiction isn’t doing that.  Indeed, “atonal” art has almost killed off art, it has certainly nearly killed off “Symphonic” music (except in movie scores, heh), and it has pretty much killed off modern literature and poetry (I have yet to figure out how “free verse” is all that much different from “prose”).  I do not want to see science fiction to fall victim to “atonality” as well!

And, incidentally, this is why the Sad Puppies will likely win in the long, long game:  the Hugos are supposed to be the democratic “We are fans and this is what we like” awards, after all, and the Sad Puppy campaign’s initial purpose was to demonstrate that the Hugos have been controlled over these last few years by a small cabal of insular voters…and that, because of this, it is surprisingly easy to tip over the apple cart with a simple “get out the vote” campaign!  It won’t matter how that insular cabal attempts to change the rules of voting, because our message is clear:  “Here are works that are worthy of your time, and here is how you vote for them.  Now go, enjoy, and tell all your friends!”

So let us go forth, and show that perhaps there is accounting for taste after all..