Raymond Gaynor's Blog, page 66
April 20, 2020
Chicken or Egg?
Which came first, lack of infrastructure to handle a pandemic like COVID-19, or the COVID-19 pandemic? I can't think of a more cogent question today. Virtually everything today that isn't "working" well is being blamed on COVID-19, and, well, maybe to some extent that's true. COVID-19 is the spark that ignited interest in all the failings of our current infrastructures from politics, to government, economics, transportation, education, social services (my furloughed partner has been waiting for over a month for any federal or state unemployment assistance), agriculture, petroleum industries, small businesses, retailers...need I go on? But I believe COVID-19 is only the spark. The infrastructure problems existed long before COVID-19, and, sadly, during this opportunity to explore, identify and "fix" our broken infrastructure, we aren't doing this. Not as a nation. Not in cooperation.
Is the answer to ignore COVID-19 protection, and just "get on with business?" Is it really business and money that is the answer? Again, I don't think so. First we need to address those broken infrastructures, something that will pay off in the future, and eventually bring business and money back, this time, in correct relationship to the myriad facets of activity our nation engages in.
Is it about federal verses states' rights? Immigration? Gun rights? Again, I don't think so. These are smoke veiling the real, and decidedly difficult, issues. So how can I as an author help address these underlying problems? I'm busy working my way through the third, and I hope, final edit of my new Savant Books and Publications' novel, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos, in preparation) in which I address many of these infrastructure issues including some truly novel fixes.
March 13, 2020
A. G. HAYES AND ME
Since then A. G. and I have ended up in almost daily conversations about Koski and Falk, and most recently, his developing five-book Kate Keenan Special Assignment series, the first work being FINDING KATE (Savant 2019), the second QUANTUM DEATH (Savant 2019) and the third so far, 68 VIA CONDOTTI: BOOK ONE - ETERNITY LTD (Savant 2019).
I'm completely engrossed right now, not only in bringing "The Edge of Madness" (currently in editing for Aignos Publishing - an imprint of Savant Books and Publications) to publication, but also in helping scope out the storyline for "68 Via Condotti - Book Two - Vatican Inc" and possibly co-authoring it. Think you know everything about AI (artificial intelligence) in the future? Then prepare to be blasted out of your seat in the third, fourth and fifth books in A. G. Hayes' Kate Keenan Special Assignment series. A. G. Hayes books are "a new breed of thrillers!"
"DIS" MISSED!
So what's happened to that mouthful? The path humanity was on took suddenly and unexpectedly yet another detour, not completely unlike those preceding and during World Wars I and II. I think of these detours (in modern-speak) as a return to "dissing:" dis-ruption and dis-traction leading to dis-integration, dis-order and dis-trust. In broader terms (that I don't like to think of) another Dark Age. Still, Dark Ages are primarily of the mind, propagating and resulting in "dissing" and can be changed simply by a mental return to the path to global integration.
Interestingly, I think that the current COVID-19 pandemic is our chance to stop and rethink the detour I sense we're currently taking, thereby lifting ourselves by our own bootstraps out of the impending Dark Age. Humanity has a smorgasbord of "good" laid out before it, but this time, we have to individually reach out and choose to participate in our collective evolution.
Interestingly, that's some of what my book, TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2013) with William Maltese and its sequel, the manuscript entitled "The Edge of Madness" currently in editing with Aignos Publishing (the avant garde imprint of Savant Books and Publications) are all about.
March 12, 2020
THE END OF ANOTHER ERA?
Once again, history repeats.
Ushered in by birth control, the 60s through the 70s was the era of “Free Love,” until in the 80s when innocence was lost to the HIV epidemic.
Fast forward to the 00s when Facebook, taking advantage of computers, cell phones and the internet, ushered in a new era: one in which people could establish social connections and physical relationships with others easily anywhere on the planet. Our recently enjoyed era of “Connection” innocence is now being lost to socio-political dis-integration, spearheaded by the appearance of Covid 19. At least for now, no more physical amassing together to enjoy the rush of the crowd.
The sad thing is that with each loss of innocence comes new, pragmatic responsibilities, and, once lost, such innocence can’t be entirely recaptured. Even sadder, with an ever shortening attention span, I fear it likely that society will not only forget the individual joy of the era of being part of a mass physical gathering, but we will both lose interest in and almost as quickly become unable to recall what it actually felt like to live “back then/now.”
If so, then what’s next? In my newest work, “The Edge of Madness,” currently in editing for publication by Aignos Publishing (an imprint of Savant Books and Publications), I explore the possibility and implications of a new era in which humanity becomes enamored with individuality and isolation, a harbinger of traveling into space, establishing orbital settlements and colonizing other planets. After all how does one go shopping, go to university or hospital, or gather information when the mass organizations these depend on no longer exist? In a twist of fate, perhaps it the end of one era that catapults humanity, willing or unwilling, rejoicing or cursing, into the next?
March 11, 2020
AM I QUANTUM CRAZY OR IS THIS WORLD CHANGED?
I've been thinking a lot about this lately as I edit "The Edge of Madness" for Aignos Publishing, the avant garde imprint of Savant Books and Publications, and I think I've finally convinced myself it's not San Francisco, that place and time on the little blue marble existing in a sort of "liberal" alternate world of its own. That's not to say that the Bay Area hasn't changed. I was looking at a blue and red political map of California the other day (blue = Bernie Sanders; red = Joe Biden) and was shocked to see the lower Bay Area in red. Huh? Then it hit me: Technology in Silicon Valley has changed. It's no longer about innovation as much as it is about money now. Money. Joe Biden. Donald Trump. Business as usual, or perhaps more correctly "Same old, same old." Shock!
No, what's changed in the Bay Area is just a reflection of a much greater change that's been slowly growing over the last several years: It's a change from world integration to dis-integration. Not nationalism. Dis-integration at every governmental, societal and human level. Not necessarily increased competition, as some are saying, either. They're different, competition and dis-integration. The former can lead to either the later or, oddly, more integration and cooperation. Dis-integration about just dis-integration, whether it be on the big (responsibility for care of our little blue marble) or small (e.g. individual ethics). And I'm both disappointed emotionally and shocked morally at where it's leading us human inhabitants. Wasn't it our religious responsibility to protect and nurture our planet? Or do I have that somehow wrong, and it's our business responsibility to squeeze everything of value from our planet for immediate monetary gain? Is this a weird, generational reaction to dealing with mortality?
I've begun wondering which is fastest approaching "the edge of madness," my newest work currently in editing, or contemporary humanity?
Not strange enough? Then how about this: Recently, I read a scientific paper posted on arXiv.org, describing "quantum math" and its strange ability to quantitate the veracity of solutions to unsolvable problems. "Quantum Truth" I've dubbed it. So, I'd like to know if what I think humans are doing to our sorry blue marble today is true, even if only Quantum True.
August 8, 2019
TAKING WRITING TO THE EDGE OF MADNESS
WORKING WITH SOUL
Our collaboration has greatly helped me in answering a key question raised in my newest manuscript I'm working on, tentatively entitled "Shadow: The Way of the Soul" in which my protagonist, a burned out M-Superstring physicist, now street person suffering from psychotic breaks accompanied by hallucinations, explores whether at least some mental illnesses, like his, might be caused by untethering from this universe and brief experiential moments in others. The question in my writer's mind is the nature of the link between multiple universes, and I think the answer is the soul. Can't reveal the details without spoiling the plot, but it strikes me that this may be one of the many social effects of M-Superstring physics, which is still largely being explored.
July 27, 2019
WORKING WITH THE SOUL
Our collaboration has greatly helped me in answering a key question raised in my newest manuscript I'm working on, tentatively entitled "Shadow: The Way of the Soul" in which my protagonist, a burned out M-Superstring physicist, now street person suffering from psychotic breaks accompanied by hallucinations, explores whether at least some mental illnesses, like his, might be caused by untethering from this universe and brief experiential moments in others. The question in my writer's mind is the nature of the link between multiple universes, and I think the answer is the soul. Can't reveal the details without spoiling the plot, but it strikes me that this may be one of the many social effects of M-Superstring physics, which is still largely being explored.
July 6, 2018
DIMENSIONS, UNIVERSES AND THE COSMOS
Redefined, it the sum of an infinite number of universes, one of which is our. These universes can be imagined as spheres with rippling surfaces that are, we assume, expanding like ours and so close to each other, that occasionally in cosmic time, they interact. This interaction is what we call a "Big Bang" and when it occurs, it creates another "parallel" universe. Except, of course, it's not really parallel. It's more like the baby that results from two people. All three share some commonalities, but each are unique to some extent. I can imagine a very "noisy" cosmos with "Big Bangs" being more common than rare or singular.
This all exists, of course, not in three dimensions, even four (time being the fourth dimension), but in exactly 11 dimensions, of which we can only sense the first four. That means we can't easily sense another universe even if it exists literally pressed against our universe. So why do we have only seven sensory transducers, then (smell, taste, touch, hearing, vision and, if you believe, Dr. Daniel S. Janik's UNLOCK THE GENIUS WITHIN (Rowman & Littlefield 2015), "gut feelings" and time consciousness? Actually they can't directly sample different dimensions or universes but only select areas of the electromagnetic spectrum within our universe according to it's unique composition and processes.
What fascinates me as an author is the possibility of M-Superstring Theory explaining some here-to-fore unexplainable phenomena such as psychosis and death. In the first case, perhaps "mentally ill" individuals are simply not strongly grounded in our universe to be "all here." Instead, they are partially here and partially grounded in one or more other universes. That would require a completely different approach to the treatment of mental illness. In the second case, perhaps our concepts of dying and moving on to heaven or hell simply reflect our innate sense that when we die our spirit leaves this universe (it's no longer grounded in it) and can travel to other universes, where, as primary spirit, it can inhabit some physical object or, if there are bodies, another body or something like that. If the similarity between our and this new universe is close (especially if it serves the spirit better than our universe) it would be experienced as a kind of heaven. If the new universe is considerably different (especially if it doesn't sere the spirit better than this one) it would be experienced as a kind of hell.
I tapped lightly into M-Superstring Theory when I wrote QUANTUM DEATH (Savant 2016) with A. G. Hayes. The M-Superstring Theory Hitchkok MacGuffin in the story was the ability of quantum effects to "ripple" through our universe, in this case the USA, and, where they intersected, gain intensity and effect.
February 19, 2018
Savant Bookstore Honolulu MARCH MADNESS SALE!
MARCH MADNESS SALE
exclusively at Savant Bookstore Honolulu
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50% off Suggested Retail Price (SRP) of select, in-house display books at our in-house bookstore throughout March 2018 while stocks last,
OR
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AND
Up to 90% off Suggested Retail Price (SRP) for all our Amazon Kindle eBooks starting 5 March and ending 12 March 2018 via a Kindle Countdown Deal. No discount code necessary. The earlier you buy, the greater the discount!
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