Philip Chen's Blog: The Eclectic

Today is Corduroy Appreciation Day

Today is a truly important date in the annals of sartorial splendor. Today is this century's (you heard it right) Corduroy Appreciation Day, Friday, November 11, 2011 or 11|11|11.

There will be celebrations all over the world on this day of days. I hope you will honor today by wearing your very best corduroys, and wear them proud. This day can only be appreciated once a century so if you miss it you will have to wait another hundred years for 11-11-11 to come again.

The most revered of all Corduroy Appreciation Days was November 11. 1111 or 11|11|1111. Unfortunately that day passed by without celebration as corduroy had not been invented as yet.

A New Legal Duty?

We wake up this morning to find that a person who is not the witness to a crime, but merely the recipient of third hand information that a crime may have been committed now may have a duty to call the police and report it.

If you strip away all the horrific facts surrounding the allegations of child abuse and the people who are involved in the Penn State debacle, that is what the Board of Trustees of the Pennsylvania State University said today as they found Joe Paterno culpable for not immediately reporting to the police, not the campus police or his direct supervisors within the Athletic Department.

This means that if someone sides up to you and says that a third person may have committed a crime, you are now obliged to report it to the government.

Think about it.

The Stasi of East Germany could not have developed a better system.

My Views on the Penn State Controversy

The current controversy swirling around whether Joe Paterno did the right thing is weighing heavily on my mind.

Recently, SCOTUS determined in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations must be treated like any natural person for First Amendment purposes, State law also typically granted corporation’s “legal person” status. This has profound implications in law as the wall between legal persons and natural persons are slowly being chipped away. But can a corporatios ever be a “natural person?”

I submit that no corporation can ever be a natural person for the simple reason that they are creatures of legal construct and, as such, have no inherent moral compass. If you ever examine how a corporation works this becomes abundantly clear. Rules and bylaws will always govern the corporation. The guardians of the corporation (its board of directors and the executives) will always meet as a committee in determining what is right for the corporation. They will be governed by not what is right, but what is right for the corporation in the context of that entity’s goals and corporate objectives. Not what is morally right.

How does this analysis (albeit simplified as it is) pertain to Joe Paterno and the current controversy swirling around Penn State football? Paterno is being taken to task for not having done the right thing with respect to his actions in 2002 when told that a trusted colleague was doing something horribly inappropriate to young children.

What Joe Paterno did was to advise the appropriate hierarchy within the Athletic Department at Penn State of the allegations. He did nothing more. The question is bluntly put, should Paterno, having satisfied his internal corporate obligations, taken that next step of alerting the police?

I’m not so sure.

If I may use an example from my own life. Sometime in the 1980s. I took a group of fellow employees down 100 floors of Two World Trade Center, when I saw smoke coming out of the elevator shaft. I simply said that I was not going to wait and started down the fire stairs, and a large group of employees joined me. For that action, I was severely reprimanded for having endangered the lives of my fellow employees with my reckless actions. I was read the rules of 2WTC which stated that only official emergency personnel could make a decision to walk down the stairs. We were supposed to wait for further instructions no matter how hot or smoky it got.

Did I do the right thing? I still think so to this day. Did I do the right “corporate” thing. According to my management — emphatically NO!!

I remembered that reprimand when the second tower, 1WTC, collapsed on September 11, 2001, and wondered how many people lost their lives because of that corporate rule. My fears were answered when I spoke with a friend who had offices above the floor in 1WTC that the second jet hit. To my horror, he said that his last (he was out of the office on that day) communication with his office was that his people had been told by WTC management to stay put and not attempt to leave the floor even though 2WTC was in flames. All his employees died, because once the second plane hit, there was no escape.

So what does this all have to do with Joe Paterno and CorporateThink?

Simple:

1. CorporateThink is not rational think nor does it offer a moral compass.
2. Joe Paterno would have likely been told to not do anything else once he reported the allegation to the Athletic Director.
3. If Joe Paterno had taken the next step (the moral step, if you believe the critics), he would have likely been severely reprimanded, if not fired.

Just my two cents worth.

Phil Chen

Astronomers Identify Near Earth Asteroid

Astronomers are warning us that a near Earth asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier will be coming very, very close to us this weekend. This asteroid will be passing by Earth 15 percent closer than the moon, which in astronomical terms is pretty darn close!

Interestingly, these astronomers describe the asteroid as a dark sphere. Wait just one minute, did they say dark sphere? Where have I read about a dark sphere falling from space and crashing into the ocean. Could it be another incident of life taking a page out of my novel Falling Star?

Latest on Falling Star

I recently completed a statistical analysis of the reviews that Falling Star has received since its release in August 2010. I am pleased to point out that the yays greatly outnumbered the nays. I didn't even include the marvelous recommendation that noted book critic Alan Caruba gave Falling Star.

The results are:

Five Stars -- 24
Four Stars -- 26
Three Stars -- 10
Two Stars -- 6
One Star -- 3

The book has been purchased over 4,400 times. If you hurry, you can be amongst the first 5,000 people to have purchased and read this very realistic science fiction thriller about mysterious objects discovered in the ocean and what happened when they woke up and started sending signals to outer space. Hope you will check it out at Amazon

Today is a Sad Day

On an Amazon forum, someone asked me how I was affected by the events of September 11, 2001. The following is my answer.

I worked on the upper floors of 2WTC (100-106) for about six years in the eighties and early nineties. In 1990, I had a series of very disturbing nightmares about gangs of what looked like ordinary Americans wreaking apocalyptic havoc on their fellow citizens and destroying buildings. In these dreams I saw skyscrapers collapse in flames and people dying horrible deaths. I wrote and copyrighted a story in 1991 about foreign spies who hid in plain view for decades to strike out on orders of their overseers. On September 11, 2001, I watched CNN in horror as first 2WTC and then 1WTC were struck and then destroyed by terrorists who had lived amongst us, some for decades as it later turned out. Although I do not personally know any of the victims, I had business dealings with some of the people who perished (I had been in their office in 1WTC the summer before the attack) and I have friends who lost loved ones on that day. Even for someone like me, who was not directly affected, that day was seared into my consciousness.

Last October, author Suzzane Tyrpak ran a contest for 55 word stories. I subconsciously wrote the following:

*****

United

He regularly came to this overlook with its view of Manhattan. One day, he noticed an attractive woman, several benches away. For many weeks, he sat at his bench; she hers. They both sat quietly staring at Manhattan. He finally decided to say hello; she got up and walked away. He never saw her again.

*****

That piece of flash fiction sums up my profound sense of loss. Had I been in my former office on that brilliant September morn, I would not be here today. It was part of my life, gone in an instant in a singular act of senseless brutality.

Last summer I was in a park in New Jersey when I saw something that gave me hope. A chipmunk had chosen a rock garden as its new home. The rock garden had been erected by the county as a memorial to September 11th. That scene gave me a sense of hope and I took a snapshot of the chipmunk and submitted it as an iReport to CNN who decided to elevated it to official CNN status.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-669877

Happy Birthday, Falling Star

My baby is one-year old today. She has learned to crawl, has taken her first steps, and is now ready to run.

On August 4, 2010, I released my first ever effort at self-publication. I had thought long and hard about doing so, constantly reading about this new-fangled device called a Kindle, but holding out hope that a publisher would discover my twenty-year old story about mysterious objects buried deep in the ocean and undercover spies hiding in the open in America for decades.

Then I got the kick in the posterior that I needed. On June 27, 2010, America woke up to find out that authorities had arrested ten Russian spies who, among other things, had lived as ordinary Americans for decades, married innocent Americans, raised children, bought homes in suburbia, held mundane jobs, and used purloined identities -- just like the fictional spies that I had written about in 1990! With that, I rushed ahead and took the plunge to release a Kindle version of my novel.

It is now one year old and has sold over 4,035 copies. This highly realistic science fiction thriller has received 44 four and five star reviews in Amazon US and UK and many more in Nook, Smashwords, Goodreads, and other places.

Many readers finish the book wondering, "if this story might not be fiction at all, but something very real and very disturbing." A noted book critic, Alan Caruba, gave it a rare and extraordinary recommendation when he said, "If you read just one novel in 2011, make it Falling Star."

Thank you readers for disproving the twenty-year shunning of my prescient book by the legacy DTB industry.

The most wonderful thing from this first year is the many friends that I have made in these and other forums. Your thoughtful comments have been most encouraging as I embark on a major transition. Once I am at my new location, I hope to get started on the promised sequel to Falling Star.

Phil Chen

Mysterious Object Discovered on Bottom of Baltic Sea

According to the news, Swedish explorers have just discovered a large mysterious object in the Baltic Sea. They do not believe that it is natural. http://on.io9.com/BalticSeaObject

Sound familiar?

They used side scan sonar, just like in my book. The following is an excerpt from my novel at the moment that the first mysterious object was seen on sonar on-board the USS Marysville. I can almost guarantee this is how it played out for the Swedes, as well.

*********

The sound of the sonar systems filled the darkened instrumentation room on-board the U.S.S. Marysville as she maintained a straight heading under the skillful watch of Captain George Vander.
Up on the bridge behind Vander, Evans poured over the charts with Vander's navigator. Using dividers and rulers to plot their current position, Evans satisfied himself that their course was exactly the same course the Lockheed P-3B Orion had flown months before. The task was not that easy.
Consider trying to remotely tow a car using a cable deployed from an airplane over three miles up and several miles ahead. A rather formidable job that challenged even the time-tried skills of Vander, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and a steaming cup of hot black coffee in his weathered left hand.
In the instrumentation room, several levels below deck, designed to be at the center of gravity of the vessel, Mike, McHugh, and Sevson crowded behind the Western Light sonar technician. The only moving thing in the tight cabin was the greenish trace on the cathode ray tube as it displayed the line by line return of the side scan sonar.
The only sounds other than the "blips" made by the sonar in the darkened room were the scratchy noises made by the pen registers as they recorded the images now being laid out on the cathode ray tube or CRT. If it weren't for the soft rolling of the Marysville, there would have been no indication that Mike was even at sea.
The trace on the sonar's oscilloscope held steady, a faint greenish line followed the brighter green dot that ran left to right across the circular screen. Except for occasional jiggles of the trace, which could be accounted for by changes in the local magnetic background of the ocean bottom, nothing unusual had occurred.
"Any more theories on the magnetic anomaly, Bob?" asked Sevson.
The ever present half smoked cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth, McHugh was absorbed in thought. The stale cigar smoke competed with the sweet smell of "Barking Dog" tobacco emanating from the corn-cob pipe in the corner of Sevson's mouth. The tinfoil packet from which Sevson constantly refilled his pipe had the subtext, "Barking Dogs Never Bite."
Absentmindedly, McHugh replied, "Nothing radical, Tom. If it is Russian, then we are in deep trouble. We won't be able to deploy a sizeable station at that depth for any period of time. Based on the magnetometer readings this thing, whatever it is, is substantial. If your Nematode, or whatever you call it, can help us locate the source of this anomaly, we can get down there with the Trieste for a look."
"Don't we have sonar arrays deployed at those depths?"
"No, our SOSUS nets are generally deployed at much shallower depths. No submarines are known to be able to dive to the depth associated with the anomaly. If the Russians have a submarine capable of that depth, they could hide in the submarine canyons off Santa Catalina Island and be within thirty miles of Los Angeles and not be detected by our SOSUS nets."
"Holy [ ]!" said Sevson, sinking into a chair. "[ ], it's Cuba all over again!"
"Let's not jump to conclusions, Tom. We have no knowledge that the Russians have that kind of technology. If they did, I think we would have heard by now."
"Bob, I think you'd better see this," interrupted Mike, who had been looking over the shoulder of the Western Light technician.
"Commander, we have a reading," called out the sonar technician. McHugh walked across the small room to stand behind the technician. On the CRT, the greenish lines were definitely displaying something.
The green trace was rising steadily, not in dramatic jumps, but steadily as each trace ran across the face of the oscilloscope, the tension in the instrumentation room grew. Evans and Sevson joined McHugh and Mike. More lines were painted vertically on the screen. Each new line gave a better indication of the shape and size of whatever the side scan sonar saw.
As the object began filling the screen of the CRT, McHugh asked the operator to turn on a backup plotter. McHugh went to the plotters and what he saw was something big, as big as a football field, and oval in cross section. This was not a natural feature like a rock outcropping or fault line.
"[ ]!" uttered Frederick Evans.

***********

If I get too many more of these "coincidences" I may have to re-list my book as non-fiction.

http://amzn.to/Falling-Star

500 Word Improv at Amazon

This was my contribution to a 500 word improv invitation on the Amazon Forums:

Kenneth Jameson was in a hurry. In his hurry last night he forgot to set his alarm, so there wasn’t time to do much more than shower and get downtown for that meeting on the Roritan Generator financing. Those idiots at the firm can’t ever get these things straight, he thought as he rushed through his morning routine. Can’t eat now, but I can grab an energy bar at the newsstand in front of the office.

Kenneth threw on his jacket, grabbed his very expensive Moroccan leather briefcase, luckily he had stuffed all the papers in before finally turning out the lights early this morning when he finally put the finishing comments on that poorly written brief. I’m going to have to talk with Jones’ boss about his lack of attention, he muttered to no one in particular.

Closing and locking the door to his penthouse apartment on Central Park West, Jameson walked briskly to the elevator. The shining bronze doors of the elevator opened onto the white marbled lobby of his apartment house. Alfred, the door man, held open the massive brass doors for Jameson as he hurried through.

“Have a nice day,” said Alfred; a comment left unanswered as the partner in Crumbly & Seversin bolted through the door to the waiting black Lincoln Town Car.

As the Lincoln Towncar weaved its way downtown, Jameson went through his papers one more time, marking further comments in bright red ink, so much so that the document soon looked as though it had been riddled with buckshot and was uncontrollably bleeding its life away.

The Lincoln quietly slipped up to the curb of the skyscraper that served as the world headquarters of Crumbly & Seversin, a global investment firm. Jameson had clawed his way up the organization and was now a senior managing director.

He walked briskly toward the front doors of the building, but hesitated remembering that he needed his energy bar. He walked over to the newsstand on the curb and asked for a Power2go bar. “Are you new?” he asked the operator of the stand, “Where’s the regular guy?”

The operator said, “Tomas had to go visit his sick grandmother, so I am sitting in for him.” The newsstand operator handed Jameson the energy bar wrapped in its shiny silver foil.

“Tomas? Was that his name?” replied Jameson absentmindedly. He took the energy bar and walked toward the building. Without thinking, Jameson unwrapped the small chocolate covered energy bar and put it to his mouth.

As he bit into the high calorie, artificially sweeten energy bar, it exploded. Jameson’s head was explosively transformed into a Roman fountain of blood and gray brain matter; his lifeless body slumped to the pristine sidewalk of Crumbly & Seversin.
The newsstand operator quietly slipped into the crowd walking slowly westward on Wall Street as people ran eastward to the scene of the violence. Sirens screamed as police cars and ambulances fought the morning rush hour, trying to fight through the congestion.

See thread here

Why do reviews of indie books look like graded term papers?

One thing that I have noticed and am curious about is why reviewers of independently published books focus microscopically on errors, typos, and formatting. I grant you that in the flood of books now available many will have been rushed out without the introspection that a traditionally published novel might have gone through (though I wonder if that is actually a canard). However, I have noticed in my limited time on earth that professional reviewers of traditionally published fiction very rarely, if ever, go through the exercise of counting errors as a way of deciding the merits of a work. It seems, however, that it is de rigueur for a reviewer of any independent book to make some comment about formatting and/or typos even if the book had none, e.g. “I found no typos or formatting errors in this novel.” Why is this?

This is not a screed to give independent authors a pass on this very important issue. After all, if a professional reviewer found a traditionally published work to be unreadable, I suspect that a comment to that point would be made, such as, “this novel was unreadable.” I doubt that the professional reviewer would count the dropped commas, grammatical mistakes, etc., as though the reviewer were grading a college essay. I just wonder uf this is a major distinction in the way independents are reviewed versus how traditionally published books are reviewed.

I suspect that many reviewers of independent books are themselves new at the game of reviewing. Perhaps, things will change as traditional book reviewers start taking notice of the many wonderfully written books now available through the marvels of the internet.

Just my two cents worth.