Horton Deakins's Blog, page 13

Be we Englishmen, or Norsemen?

This map shows my DNA matches for the first 12 selected markers on my Y chromosome, meaning it goes back only on the male line. The UK matches don’t surprise me, but I was completely unprepared for the matches in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and  Finland. The red pins indicate a exact 12-marker match, of which there are only two: One in the northern UK and one in northern Norway.

You can get more info from the key at the bottom, but understanding it is a bit complicated.  At least, now I know where my ski-slope nose comes from.  I resisted the urge to draw longboats crossing the North Sea toward Scotland, but it does explain my affiity for hammers and hats with horns.

I also did tests for 25 and 37 markers, but when you filter on those, the number of matches decreases drastically.  Hmm.  England, Scotland, Scandinavia, myths and mythical lands, traveling back to the land of my forefathers… a little romance… sounds like a story in there somewhere.

Ah, yes.   I googled it and there have been some 264,000 novels on the subject in question.  I’m off the hook, and good thing, too, because my muse lies a-mouldering in the grave and I have no magick with the power to revive her.

Lord Kelvin will have to wait

Hello my friends, mes amis, mis amigos, watakushi no tomodachi, meine Freunde,

I had promised you some interesting and curious statements from Lord Kelvin, but he will have to wait just a bit.  This evening I wish to give you the wisdom of Max Planck, originator of quantum theory and 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics:

“Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: ‘Ye must have faith.‘”

There has been a resent resurgence in the concept Professor Planck is implicating here, namely the exposing of and elimination of myths of science.  There is a very good discussion of the same here: http://amasci.com/miscon/myths10.html

Of the ten myths of science described on that website, the third is one of my favorites and reads thusly:

Myth 3: A General and Universal Scientific Method Exists

You can read the discussion on the site I gave earlier, but this myth is so commonly held as absolute truth that, well, in somewhat less than sophisticated terms, it blows me away.

 

I was shot with a 44 this morning — and I liked it.

Oh, dear.  Spell checker does not catch errors in intent.  There is a bit of a problem with the title of this posting that gives the spell-checker no problem at all.  Let me explain.

My weight loss program seemed to have reached a plateau.  It had slowed to about three pounds per ten days, and appeared to be continuing to slow.  Having lost that “third” pound by yesterday morning, I decided to splurge a bit last evening with popcorn, of which I ingested not a little.  But no butter.  Never the butter, just a small amount of healthy oil in the microwave popper, and more salt than the doctor would approve of.  And things to drink the doctor would frown upon, also.

Given this demonstration of Dionysian depraved debauchery, I fully expected the digital display this morning to show a greater number than on the previous day.  Much to my surprise and elation, it had gone the other way!

So, title, aside, I was shocked by the number 44—I was 44 pounds down for the year.  And that, my friends, is why I liked it (and there was no blood to clean up).  I’m certain a .44 magnum would be considerably more painful and likely more lethal than the time I stabbed myself in the side with my samurai sword—but that’s another story for another time.

Yoisho!

My review of JUST ADD WATER, by Jinx Schwartz

I recently finished this very entertaining and well-written book.

Click here to see my review on Amazon.

The glorious steam engine

This is for you Steampunk fans out there.  Consider this thought:

The steam engine has given more to science than science has given to the steam engine.

All right, enough waterboarding, I must confess that I did not say that.  Credit goes to Lord Kelvin (who said many curious things, by the way—some of which I shall share with you in the coming days).  Therefore, and by no power whatsoever invested in me, feel free to use this quote for your own purposes.  You may send me $100.00, nonetheless, if it makes you feel better.  It would certainly make moi feel better.

FREE BOOKS !!! NO, REALLY !!!

.goodreadsGiveawayWidget { color: #555; font-family: georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-size: 14px;
font-style: normal; background: white; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget img { padding: 0 !important; margin: 0 !important; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget a { padding: 0 !important; margin: 0; color: #660; text-decoration: none; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget a:visted { color: #660; text-decoration: none; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget a:hover { color: #660; text-decoration: underline !important; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidget p { margin: 0 0 .5em !important; padding: 0; }
.goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink { display: block; width: 150px; margin: 10px auto 0 !important; padding: 0px 5px !important;
text-align: center; line-height: 1.8em; color: #222; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold;
border: 1px solid #6A6454; -moz-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; font-family:arial,verdana,helvetica,sans-serif;
background-image:url(http://www.goodreads.com/images/layou... background-repeat: repeat-x; background-color:#BBB596;
outline: 0; white-space: nowrap;
}
.goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink:hover { background-image:url(http://www.goodreads.com/images/layou...
color: black; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;
}


Goodreads Book Giveaway







Time Pullers



by Horton Deakins

Giveaway ends October 03, 2012.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Your choice: Book, movie, or both?

If you heard that a certain movie was just released and that it was an accurate depiction of a book you had not read but wanted to read, would you see the movie first, or would you read the book first?   If you saw the movie first, and it spoiled all the twists and turns of the book, would you bother reading the book afterward?

Two goats were in an alley behind the cutting room of a movie studio, eating the pieces of film from the trash.  One goat said to the other, “How’s yours?”  The second goat replied, “Not baaaaad, but I liked the book better.”

I am such a loser

Exclamation point! As of today, I have reached my intermediate weight loss goal of dropping forty pounds this year!  That means I also get to see a “1” as the first digit.

Let’s get some perspective here. 40 lbs. is about that same weight as: 5 gallons of water, 53 12-oz packages of cheese, 160 quarter-pound hamburger patties, a five-year-old boy, or 2.857 stone (for the British blokes in the crowd).

I have already reaped phenomenal health benefits : My blood pressures is 110 over 74, I can walk for several miles with no pain anywhere, stairs are a breeze, and I am not awakened early in the morning by pain in my hip.  I can even sit at the computer and type for longer periods, should I need to—that is, were my muse find some way to resurrect.

There will be no resting on my laurels, though—I’m only halfway to my goal.  I still have miles to go before I sleep… and another 53 packages of cheese to shed.

“Why so much?” you may ask.  Even at less than half my current age, when I worked out regularly and appeared to be—I thought—normal-sized, I had an immersion density test done and was found to have an extremely high body fat content for a male.  If you are not familiar with these tests, the subject is weighed under water and that is compared with the dry weight and calculations are made.  I don’t remember my exact fat percentage, but I think it was nearly twice what it should have been.  It is much higher now, I’m sure.  And since I have learned that I have a thin (usually termed, “small”) frame, i.e., I’m not “big-boned,” unless I can develop very large muscles I will necessarily look thin should I ever achieve a normal body fat percentage.  This is indeed challenging for a person my age, but I’ve got to get weight off my frame to make it easier to deal with my arthritis.  What I have lost so far has virtually worked miracles with my pain levels, so I press onward.

“Nothing tastes so good as being thin feels.”  — Unknown author

Yoisho!

You call that “science fiction?”

Was anyone else upset upon discovering that science-fiction had been merged into one genre with fantasy?  Does the shortage of science in science-fiction bother you?  And since when did horror alone qualify as science-fiction?

Fine—interject a little horror into your sci-fi tale (there is a morsel in my own book), but don’t make it primarily about zombies and call it science-fiction, unless, of course, it’s about how the zombies were created in the first place, or how the zombies were brought from mars, etc.

And forgive me, but despite the strong case that can be made that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (thank you, Mr. Clarke), elvish parlor tricks do not constitute science—you cannot reverse the saying.  Our modern word, “science,” stems from older words meaning “knowledge” or “learning.”  Fantasy is, well, fantasy.  There’s not much about learning or knowledge there, now, is there—except the generic learning that accompanies the reading of any genre.  Of course, well-written fantasy can be a great thing–I’m not knocking it by any stretch—I enjoy it myself. But why must we so adulterate the great genre of science fiction that it is now indistinguishable from the phantasmagorical?

A surreptitious usurping blood-sucker surrogate

Guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren. Consider this: Perhaps a blood-sucker surrogate has arrived already, given the advent of the apocalyptic dystopias.  Try saying that rapidly five times.

Now, what is the name of that popular book?  My memory fails me. The Peckish Pastimes?  The Famine Fetishes?  The Starvation Stories?  Or was it the Deprivation Diversions?  No matter; I think you got it.  Mayhaps zombies are your your new cup or tea (or glass of guts)?  But can you kill a zombie with a bow and arrow?  Perchance you prefer more pragmatism and less supernatural savor in your sour societal soup?  Are zombies dead, so to speak, or will they—and the vampires–vex us forever?  Or do you believe, as do some, that the very existence of these dystopian novels creates a dystopia in our own time—a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy?

Does the prospect of another Hunger Harangue make you want to take a harpoon to the head?  Have I stepped on toes here?  Am I being unfair? Have I divulged my ignorance?  Will vampires and young female archers every be able to coexist?  Are role-playing games the cause of eating disorders?  I refuse to eat until I have answers!

Spock… give me your thoughts.