Kate Rauner's Blog, page 48

Fatal Fashions #poem #poetry #chemistry #arsenic

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Victorians loved chemistry

A gorgeous pigment,

Lovely green,

Made dresses sparkle

Like emeralds.

Bonnets to display with pride

Brought happiness

So ephemeral.

The fanciest paper

On the wall,

To grace a baby’s nursery,

Or a parlor

Kept for guests,

Brought pain and death,

But no mercy.

Even books,

My comfort close,

Collected in old libraries,

Can curse a modern reader still,

As they did to their

Contemporaries.

Arsenic makes that glowing green

So irresistible.

Its compounds deadlier than sin

Their poison touch

Regrettable.

Kate Rauner

The Victorians knew villains used arsenic, but somehow missed understanding that not all victims were killed by a human murderer. Unless you count the manufacturers of these dreadfully beautiful pigments. Interested in the grisly details of death by arsenic poisoning? Read here.

Some Unintended Consequences Are Good for Wildlife and You Won’t Believe This One #wildlife #chernobyl #nature

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Wild fox accepts a tourist’s handout

A few years ago I remarked on the strange fact that wildlife is better off living in a radiation/contamination area where there are no people, than sharing a clean habitat with us. Recent studies show that’s still true.

You may recall that, in 1986, explosions destroyed a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine, and released huge amounts of radioactive fallout. Residents were evacuated and a large exclusion zone created, where no one was allowed to live. Scientists have entered, and recently the area was opened to tourists. Wildlife viewing may be a good reason to travel there, because removing people created a de facto preserve.

Initial studies were depressing. The radiation killed trees, and deformed animals and birds were spotted. Animal populations dipped for a while. But recent studies find that many species have multiplied enormously. The list is impressive:

wolf,
badger,
wild boar,
roe deer,
red deer,
moose,
beaver,
white-tailed eagle,
black stork,
western marsh harrier,
short-eared owl,
and herds of European bison and Przewalski’s horse introduced since the accident to take advantage of this “involuntary park.”

With Chernobyl, the first thing people think about are mutations, [however] we have no evidence to support that this is happening. It is an interesting area of future research, but it is not something I would worry about.

The nuclear accident was a horror, but this aftermath holds hope. Nature can bounce back if we give her a chance.

Summer Book Sale, All Kinds, Links Here, Leave Comments #books #ebook #reading #readingtweet

[image error]What a great response! You guys are snapping up my books! My links are below, and click here for loads more books in all genres!

Please do me a favor. Come back here and enter a comment on a book – one sentence is enough for me to share with other readers!

Here are my Smashwords links! The discount code is on each page. Thanks for your help

Summer Book Sale – All Genres – Please Help Me With a Comment #books #ebook #reading #readingtweet

[image error]What a great response! You guys are snapping up my books! My links are below, and there are loads more books in all genres!

Please help me and come back here to enter a comment on a book – one sentence is enough for me to share with other readers!

Here are the Smashwords links! The discount code is right on each page. Thanks for your help

Summer Book Sale – Yeah, there’s me, but lots more too :) #books #ebook #reading #redaingtweet

[image error]It’s summer! Time for great deals on books. I publish through Smashwords and they run a blow-out sale every July. Now’s the time to download your summer reading and find a new favorite author.

I’m running deals on half my books – go to my Kate Rauner page and click on the book you’ve been wanting.

Browse all the great Smashwords deals here.

Do it now – these deals expire 11:59pm USA Pacific time on July 31

Wildfire #haiku #poem #poetry #nature #wildfire

[image error]Forest souls drift by,

Ghosts of smoke through vallies dry

Whispering “Beware”

Poetry and fire go together:

Poetry of firefighters

Fire Season

Fire in a Neighborhood

and this haiku

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It’s International Asteroid Day – not “Happy” more like “Pensive” #space #asteroid #NASA#asteroid

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Frequency of small asteroids roughly 1 to 20 meters in diameter impacting Earth’s atmosphere, over 20 years. Bigger the dot, more reports. These mostly bur up in the atmosphere.

Commemorate the Earth’s largest recorded asteroid impact today, International Asteroid Day.

In 1908, a powerful asteroid struck the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in a remote Siberian forest of Russia. The event leveled trees and destroyed forests across 770 square miles, which is equal to the size of three-quarters of the US state of Rhode Island. The impact threw people to the ground in a town 40 miles away.

The first step is to detect and track Near-Earth Objects that might, some orbit, hit us. NASA will be looking for asteroids as small as 50 meters across, but if we find one, what will we do? Suppose NASA tells us something like, there’s a 40% chance that a given rock will impact the Earth in 75 years? If we get over 10 years warning, maybe that’s enough time to get our act together.



The chance of a major impact is small, but the consequences are huge, so how much should we spend? Maybe we won’t do much of anything for a long time. We accept low frequency/high consequence risks all the time. Ask anyone living on a major earthquake fault or at the base of a volcano. Taking the risk usually pays off. But a really big impact risks more than one island or coastline. It’s hard for us to come together by the millions to address such a thing, but maybe that’s what visionaries are for. Remember the dinosaurs.

Bowl of Heaven a bowl of rehash, doesn’t even have an ending #bookreview #review #scifi #sciencefiction

[image error]It’s not often I finish a book with the urge to throw it across the room, but that’s where Bowl of Heaven left me. I didn’t even get that satisfaction because I had a hardcover book and was afraid I’d break something.

With two popular authors, “science fiction masters” (so the blurb says) Larry Niven (best known for Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (best known for Timescape) I expected more. The story begins with grand ideas – an interstellar ship with most of the crew in hibernation and an amazing, huge ship-star, a variation on a Dyson sphere (and, therefore, a variation on Niven’s Ringworld from 1970) that is quite cool and fun to contemplate. Cool enough that the book seems to repeat descriptions and slack-jawed wonder of the contrivance (the authors like the word contrivance) from time to time throughout the book. But, okay, maybe some readers forget and appreciate the repetition. I noticed but wasn’t especially annoyed.

A landing party from the interstellar ship gets separated, one group captured by the enormous bird-like rulers and the other running and trying to learn about the vast contrivance. Some scenes are told from the Bird-Folk’s point of view and therefore comment on humanity’s weaknesses, though I couldn’t shake the image of Sesame Street’s Big Bird from my mind. The captured group escapes, so the story follows two groups on the run in the Bowl, plus those remaining on their ship above the contrivance. (I’m getting used to that word.)

The landings parties wander around the Bowl. Well, I guess wander isn’t fair – they are being chased. As the story progresses, they find more interesting technologies and species of Bowl inhabitants. Interesting, but not especially riveting.

What got me was – the book ends after 400+ pages, but the story doesn’t. There isn’t even a particular cliffhanger. It just stops – go buy the sequel. The blurb on Amazon doesn’t warn you that you’re buying half a story (at $8.99 for the Kindle version.) That makes me angry. I’m used to multi-book series, but I expect each book to have an ending. Scheisse. The next book is available. They call it a sequel. Sequel my eye – it’s part 2, and I hope the story gets to a conclusion, but I don’t expect to read it.

The Bowl gets 3.1 stars on Amazon (from a hefty 291 reviews the day I checked.) I’ve never seen a distribution like this – almost evenly divided among all five star rating levels! As many people hate the book as love it.

“Old themes rewarmed and mixed together,” “long, rambling, resolves nothing.” I agree with those comments. “Physics is solid and the engineering is great.” I agree with that too. Maybe that’s why the book returns to descriptions of the Bowl so often.

So after six years on Amazon Kindle, how can this book still rank #644 in its scifi category? With an overall Kindle store ranking of #118,990, someone buys the book every day. Those are awesome rankings that I, as a newbie scifi author, would love to have.

Come on people. Try something new! How about my near-future Mars colony? Find Glory on Mars and the rest of the series on Amazon and other favorite stores. Or join my Readers’ Club and get a coupon for a free download of Glory on Mars. Mars isn’t as big as the Bowl, but give the story a try.

If not my story, someone’s story. You can probably buy two or three ebooks from new authors for what the Bowl will cost you.

Looking for a Summer Read? Try Science Fiction – over 100 free previews and books here #sciencefiction #scifi #ebook #giveaway #

[image error]Summer is the time for reading, on the beach, sitting in the shade, or curled up in your favorite chair. Vacation or staycation, you gotta have a book.

Here’s over 100 science fiction freebies – previews and full novels. Check them out. Discover a new favorite author today.

Click YES when you download, leave your email address, and you’ll hear more from the author. Cancel anytime.

To say thanks, post a book reveiw wherever you hang out. A sentence or two is all that’s needed. If you want to help an author out and you have an Amazon account, post a review there. Most authors are on Amazon, so search for the book and post there. Amazon’s the Big Dog so it really helps an author find new readers.

Wise Ravens #poem #poetry #nature #wildlife #birdwatching #birds #raven

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One of my ravens, waiting

Morning chores they watch me do,

Weeds to pull and watering too.

The bowl of kibbles that I carry

Commands attention, so they tarry.

I feed the ravens every day.

No need to wait, is what I say,

Like chickens scratching at my feet

You’re welcome to come near and eat.

But wisdom in a raven’s mind

Says keep some distance from my kind.

A human who seems calm and mild

Might plot to hurt a raven child.

So I retreat when I am done.

On whispering wings, the ravens come

To share the bowl I left for them,

In a world I share

with feathered kin.

Kate Rauner

Not my usual science-inspired poem today, but I claim a poet’s prerogative to rhyme about whatever suits me