Thursday, March 19, 2015

Plastic Grocery Bags, Love 'em or Hate 'em

The debate has come to the Valley of the Sun: ban plastic grocery bags!

How about ban the fascists? Are we allowed to do that? I think we need to start considering it.

When I piped off on our local news's Facebook page, I read another person's comments that said: grocery bags have been biodegradable for the last twenty years. Twenty years? I had to check it out.

Low and behold, I find this company: Alibaba in  China. It is true. Then why the issue? Cities and towns do not want to spend the money to recycle these bags properly so the campaign begins to outlaw them.

Can you say stay out of my beeswax?

Governments should not be legislating my light bulbs or grocery bags, politicians should be doing the people's business, not trying to parent us.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Mind, Body, and Soul

My old art and poetry blog/website is now going under rapid changes.

Mind, Body, and Soul is a place where someone who is sick with Environmental Illness will find books, research, and much, much more.


Have a great and wonderful day!

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Jumping through Hoops

I love when you have your life set up and then someone updates your browser.

I had everything set up: information fill in the box, so I did not have to remember and type all the time. Then Firefox updated and the add-on I used was no longer useable. I lost password access to many different places including this blog.

@#$%^&*!!!!!

You can fill in the blanks from there. 

So I had to send information to my email, then my phone to verify that is it indeed me. 

I am happy to say that all my memory is not all fuzzy. I had a decent recall for items long forgotten. I know am going to reimage my old blog. I think I know the perfect creative measure. I will return and give you the blog name and url. 

Have a great and wonderful day!


Saturday, March 14, 2015

Would You Like Some Whine with Your Dinner?

Funny how people will whine about doing something instead of actually doing it.

"But I don't want to... Can you do... Why should I have to..." We have all heard the excuses of someone who does not want to pull their weight. It is like if they whine, carry on, or waste time, a fairy god mother will swoop down and do whatever it is that is causing the two year old tantrum for them. 

I do not get it. If you did not whine and bellow like a dog on his last legs, the chore or item you did not want any part of would already be done. 

People do it all the time. Procrastination, they say. Unmotivated, others say. But who's to say?

Sound like anyone you know? Just like in real life situations, characters in our stories have the same faults and behaviors. When creating characters make sure to give them an attribute of someone you know.

Have a great and wonderful day!

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Miscommunication or Misdirection

I had an informative conversation of late.

Someone believed that bullying me and acting as a martyr would somehow convince me of something that was not reality. I had the empirical data. I had done the research. What was I missing?

In the course of that evening, I learned a valuable lesson in what people will do to get their way.

I ended the conversation with we'll agree to disagree. The other person decided to act like I threw unfounded accusations at him. Yeah, good luck with that. I can deduce quite nicely by myself, thank you.

When these types of situations arise, I like to walk away the best that I can and give myself time. Heated discussions never end well. So I just end them.

Even in adversity, a writer can learn from human interactions. Just like the article: Immersion Reading is Good for the Soul, delving into the human psyche as one or more characters can also help you understand real humans. Plus you can create three dimensional characters in your stories.

So this conversation went south, but there are ways to glean positives from the negative.

Have a great and wonderful day.
 

Monday, March 9, 2015

Immersion Reading is Good for the Soul

Have you ever loved what book you were reading that could not put it down? You did not hear the phone? Or could not finish your book until you spent 24 hours reading it all the way through the first time?

In the article: Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer, Time Magazine explains that ""Deep reading" is vigorous exercise from the brain and increases our real-life capacity for empathy."
“Deep reading” — as opposed to the often superficial reading we do on the Web — is an endangered practice, one we ought to take steps to preserve as we would a historic building or a significant work of art. Its disappearance would imperil the intellectual and emotional development of generations growing up online, as well as the perpetuation of a critical part of our culture: the novels, poems and other kinds of literature that can be appreciated only by readers whose brains, quite literally, have been trained to apprehend them.
So go ahead, enjoy your book binges!

It just means you have a better understanding of the world around you.

Have a great and wonderful day.


Source: Time

Friday, March 6, 2015

Humans, We're Not so Human After All

So, you think you are human: Homo sapien sapien. 

You may not be so human after all. In the article: New Ancient “Mystery Human” Species Identified Shakes Up The Theory Of Evolution, humans discover that our DNA is not so human, but a collection of interbreeding species from long ago. 

Just face it: your ancestors were sluts. 
“What it begins to suggest is that we’re looking at a Lord of the Rings type world – that there were many hominid populations.” - (1) Mark Thomas, evolutionary geneticist at University College London.
According to DNA samples and cave excavations, more than one type of hominids exists along with our ancestral links. 

What information can be gleaned for today's writers?  Even humans are crossbreeds from different times and peoples. With science fiction, alien races would have the same impurities. In horror, zombies, vampires, and werewolves could harbor from a different sect of the human, or inhuman ancestry. What combinations could be exploited to develop new horrors and aliens for readers.

The Lord of the Rings could be reality. 

What can a writer, artist do to show how these influences have changed the way we look at ourselves in genres that reflect our own natures back onto us?


Source: Collective Evolution

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Dressed to Express Discontent

So there was a bit of a controversy surrounding a blue and black dress on social media recently.

Did you see a blue and black dress, or a gold and white dress? 


The middle dress is the example placed on social media that made everyone lose their minds. The dress on the right and left of the middle dress are the two color differences that created the uproar. 

I personally see the gold and white dress.

Wired says that makes me wrong because the dress is actually blue and black. I say no. I am correct. If I have to change my RGB settings to view the color of the dress then something is wrong with the image to begin with. When I shop online, I buy clothes and accessories, each has come as I have seen it on my monitor. Why should I have to change anything?

My brain and ocular receptors pick up light differently. Perhaps my blue eyes have more rods than cones, or the other way around. That brings up another fascinating point... what iris color predicted which color duo? 

It is known that brown, blue, green iris colors affect image perception. The question is how much? That should be a study about how we view images.

In writing, a character with color blindness or a species from another planet that cannot see a shade of a certain color would be a fine example on how a writer can use the differences in the way humans see and reflect those differences back at us.

Have a great and wonderful day! 



Source: Wired

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Geek Supply Run

Someday when I defeat brain inflammation, injury, and damage, I will again need geek supplies.

Oh, who am I kidding? I always need geek supplies. Someone had this link: http://www.cognitive-surplus.com/ on their facebook page and I snatched it! So now I pass on the website to you.

Everyone needs a little geekiness in their life.

Have a great evening!

Babylon 5 News, Fanfiction

Remakes, reboots... re my asteroids.

From my understanding this reboot will be in movie form and not about Babylon 5 the station. It will be about something else. Someone in the comments section yelled: Psi War!  Since JMS likes to shine the light on history and politics, I think we are going to be in for one hell of a ride.

Or, I will be doing a lot of fanfiction writing. 

If you like Babylon 5 and fanfiction, I have a neat story for you. It is called Circles We Find Ourselves In.  Take a read. You won't be disappointed. 

Until then... hey, JMS: why not do a reboot of VR.5? Fox left that unended and unsatisfying.  

And, one word of advice on the B5 reboot: leave us a happy ending this time... after Marcus Cole died, I pretty much lost interest in the coming fifth season. So remember to throw the audience a bone, not all love in unrequited. 

Thank you! and have a great day.


Source: Blastr

Monday, March 2, 2015

Feline Domestication: It's All About Them

Cats are really their own best friend, but they like us nonetheless.

My friend had made mention that she read an article that made the declaration: cats domesticated themselves. So much for dogs. The cats have it! 

With human agriculture and grain storage attracting rodents and mice, cats entered our world over 12,000 years ago. Let the cat worship begin! Well, they did start it. 

Today's domestic cats come from a small variety of wildcats. 

This study also explains why my little grey tabby calico wanted outside so bad. She lives out there with the others who have wandered my way. While the study explains her genetics, it also explains the indoor, never want to go outside, cats I have as well. 

Good to know it is not me.

Have a great and wonderful day! 



Sunday, March 1, 2015

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

The North American Southwest is in for a rainy few days.

The clouds, actual real clouds, have inundated the skies causing the sun rays to weave in and out of them as well as give some passing showers. Nothing too heavy, rain to make the day feel soggy. 

I have spent my weekend watching Babylon 5, seasons 3 and 4. Pivotal, prophetic, and masterful, this television show from the 1990's is a gem. I wish more science fiction shows would be so informative. What is happening now is history repeating itself and MJS loved to write from historical context.

When I write, I love to base some of my aspects on writers I believe have a very keen intellect when it comes to human nature, historical perspective, and philosophical inquiry. I remember as I write what makes me want to watch the show more, or reread a section of a novel. 

MJS of Babylon 5 and Timothy Zahn of the Star Wars Extended Universe are two of my favorites. Not my only favorites, but if I feel I am stuck, I can always pop in a DVD or read a chapter and feel better about what needs to be done in my story. 

Inspiration is key. It is priceless. Anything that removes a block is just as awesome. 

Have a great and dry weekend!
 

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