My fellow authors and writers – this infographic can be instructional for you. The number one reason readers toss books aside – SLOW OR BORING. Yep, you have to hook them in the first few chapters. See below for more good statistical information:
Monthly Archives: July 2013
Interview with Cassandra S. Kyle
Patti Hulstrand of KWOD Radio and yours truly, Michael Bradley, interview local cosplayer Cassandra S. Kyle on life as a cosplayer. Her outfits are varied and she is one of the nicest people I know. You won’t believe my voice, I grew up at the beach in California and then lived in Hawaii, so I sound like a twenty year old surfer. Here is a link to the interview:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/kwodradio/2013/07/09/cosplay-corner-with-cassandra-s-kyle
Cassandra S. Kyle with Michael Bradley at Phoenix Comic Con 2013. I am twice her age and she is a size 0, so I look huge lol.
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- Cassandra as Catwoman takes on Spiderman
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- Cassandra modeling corsets for an Etsy store.
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- Cassandra as a Fairy
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- Cassandra as Catwoman wiht Justice League Members
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- Cassandra as Catwoman
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- Cassandra as a Fairy
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- Cassandra modeling at Fairy photoshoot
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- Cassandra S. Kyle and Twig the Fairy at a Renaissance Festival
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- Cassandra S. Kyle with Jessica Nigri
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- Cassandra as Wolfsbane of the X-Men
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- Cassandra and Justice League
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- X-Men photo shoot
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- Cassandra at home working on her Wolfsbane Head
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- Cassandra in Fairy attire
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- Cassandra S. Kyle in custom Steampunk Catwoman outfit
Filed under Humor and Observations
Pictures of Crumbling Soviet Union Bases
Italian photographer Eric Lusito visited and photographed abandoned Cold War Soviet Union military bases. It is strange for a child of the Cold War to see in my own lifetime such a change in world fortunes and tensions. A welcome sight. For more information, see the link at the bottom. Each has a description in the full article, including air bases, early radar warning sites, missiles sites, a tracking station for Sputnik, and a base in Mongolia that once created a city of over 300,000 where fewer than 30,000 live now.
“These sites of power… are mostly doomed to disappear in the course of time.”
Like an archaeologist entering the ancient tombs of pharaohs for the first time. That’s how Italian photographer Eric Lusito describes visiting these abandoned Soviet military sites; places that have been brought to ruin, but which remain – and contain – fascinating relics of their now-collapsed empire. “I had the feeling of discovering a new world,” Lusito tells us. “But one that was already starting to disappear.” Even the Cyrillic alphabet appeared to him like ancient hieroglyphs, before he had any clue about how to decipher it.
Yet, language aside, it was Lusito’s intention that his pictures spark people’s imagination. “The ruins and images have the power to let everyone build their own stories,” he says. These haunting photographs, which have so brilliantly captured the crumbling shells of buildings against their stark landscapes, are certainly evocative enough to make us wonder about the people who inhabited them. Wonder – and then some.
Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-haunting-photographs-abandoned-soviet-military-bases-0?image=0#6hsvVM48LCEvrDuL.99
Filed under Humor and Observations
Cute Dogs for Your Monday Blues
More pictures of cute dogs for your Monday blues. Enjoy!
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- Cup of Joe, if the dog’s name is Joe…
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- Smart Dog
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- Dapper dog
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- High Paw
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- Nature dog
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- Cleaning the baby
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- I love fetch!
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- Yoga dog doing downward looking dog and upward looking dog
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- Dog consoling goat
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- Awww
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- Ready for play time
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- A kid’s best friend
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- What are you doing up there?
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- Huh?
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- Dog umbrella
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- The population is ballooning
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- Couch hoggers
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- Hat dog
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- Dog disem “bark” ation
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- Birthday dog
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- Too cool for school dog
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- Taking the dog for a drag
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- Best Friends
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- Awww
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- Carry ons
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- Water bottle dog
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- Blue/Brown
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- Baby sitters
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- Three balls at once
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- Cool spot
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- Guilty dog
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- Turtle wants to join the pack
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- Supervising dinner time for the pups
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- NOooo, not bath time…
Filed under Animals
Science Fiction Serial Story – Part Two
If you missed Part One, search for “The Drifter” in the Search block on my home page.
The Drifter
A Sci-Fi Serial Story
By Michael Bradley
Part Two
Tony paused, staring at the light stick in his hand as he illuminated the large screen in front. Where am I? He looked behind him at the amphitheater filled with his graduate students. His TA, Monica Salazar, stood operating the computer panel. She gave him a look of concern.
Tony remembered now, he was explaining the latest problems experienced with neural retrograde physiology. It was easier to modify children than to remove the troublesome thoughts and memories from an adult. The class murmured as he continued to remain silent.
“That is all class. Remember, the hurdle we face for peaceful coexistence is no longer in our next generation. Our children will be better than us. We must rise to the challenge to make ourselves better as well. Go ahead now, we are stopping early.” Tony put down the light stick and hurried from the auditorium. Monica followed close behind.
“Professor Perez, are you alright?”
He remembered her too, but not young like this. Yes, she had been his brilliant assistant, but now she was his lab manager. She had just told him twenty years from now to think about his index finger. Why?
“Yes, I’m fine. I figured it out, the block, the problem!” Tony Perez rushed to his office and started clicking away on his screen.
Monica looked on in awe as she saw him display the formula, the chemical compounds and the surgical procedures to isolate conflict and expiate them from the adult mind. “Professor, that looks like it will work. You have made peace on Earth possible in our life times.” She forgot decorum and jumped up and down, then lunged onto him, giving him a crushing hug.
“Monica, easy now, people will talk.” Her hug was so fierce she scooted his chair against the desk, crimping his finger between them. He held it up, his index finger was bleeding. My index finger?
Monica saw blood on the tip of his finger. “Oh, I am so sorry, let me get the first aid kit.”
Tony smiled, “No need Monica. You know, this is the only time I ever hurt this finger?”
She looked at him puzzled.
Tony explained, “I think I understand my index finger now.”
“Those are some deep thoughts Tony, you understand your finger?” The Earth President laughed at the control wheel of his private plane. “You crack me up Tony. This vacation in Maine is going to do us both a world of good.”
Tony was back in the co-pilot chair on the sleek jet, flying over New York City, the World Headquarters, with his friend. Tony’s mind reeled. It was just eighteen years ago, back in my office, or was it?
“So Tony, now that we have world peace and are colonizing space, what do you have planned? I mean, it must be kind of a let down, solving world peace and all.” The Earth President laughed. “I mean if I did something like that in my first term, I don’t know what I would run on next. Maybe it’s different for you brainy types.”
“Yeah…maybe…” Tony tried to get some perspective. He looked at his index finger. It had a tiny scar barely visible.
The President looked over, smiling, “I thought you said you had that finger figured out?”
Tony turned, “Yeah, it’s just…”
“It’s just what?” The rescue responder was shaking him.
Tony looked at himself, he was in the same clothing, but it was torn and tattered. “Who am I? What happened?”
“He’s a bit confused, let’s get him into the rescue pod and over to the PeaceCenter. The Peacekeepers will fix him up in no time.”
Tony protested. “Wait! My name is Tony Perez, I am a friend of the Earth President.”
The crew laughed. “Yeah, and I’m Moon President, that guy there is Mars President. Come on fellah, you ain’t the inventor of world peace and you sure ain’t with the President. His plane crashed yesterday and he’s dead.”
Tony felt tears drip down his face. “Dead? I was just there a minute ago?”
He felt a hard shelled case click and hiss as it was sealed over him. Outside he heard one more comment before the sleep gas took him.
“Yeah, this guy is definitely brain scrambled.”
Filed under Humor and Observations, Writing
Human head transplants soon possible
It’s alive! Scientist claims Frankenstein-like human head transplants are now possible
Published July 02, 2013
FoxNews.com
One neuroscientist may soon get the nickname Dr. Frankenstein after making an ambitious claim about a completely novel medical procedure that has many experts’ ‘heads spinning.’
In a recent paper
in the journal Surgical Neurology International, Dr. Sergio Canevero, a member of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, asserted that it soon may be possible to conduct full human head transplants, noting that they have been done in animals for the past 40 years, Quartz reported.
According to Canevero, the technical barriers that come with grafting one individual’s head to another person’s body can now be overcome. However, the main issue scientists have had with animal head transplants has been being unable to connect the spinal cord of the head to the donor’s body. This leaves the animal paralyzed from the neck down.
But recent medical advancements regarding the reconnection of surgically severed spinal cords has lead Canevero to believe the procedure can be done.
“It is my contention that the technology only now exists for such linkage,” he wrote in the paper “….[S]everal up to now hopeless medical connections might benefit from such a procedure.”
In his paper, Canevero details a head transplant procedure similar to that of Robert White – a neurosurgeon famous for his head transplants in living monkeys. In order for the process to work, both the donor and recipient must be in the same operating room, and the donated head must be cooled to between 54.6 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, surgeons must rapidly remove both heads at the exact same time, reconnecting the new head to the recipient’s body and circulatory system within one hour.
Once the new head is connected, the donor’s heart can be restarted – and the surgeons can continue to reconnect the head to the body’s spinal cord and to other vital systems, Quartz reported.
Canevero said that encouraging the body’s natural healing mechanisms help to connect the spinal cords together, but it’s imperative that the spinal cord be cut with an extremely thin knife.
“It is this ‘clean cut’ [which is] the key to spinal cord fusion, in that it allows proximally severed axons to be ‘fused’ with their distal counterparts,” Canevero wrote. “This fusion exploits so-called fusogens/sealants….[which] are able to immediately reconstitute (fuse/repair) cell membranes damaged by mechanical injury, independent of any known endogenous sealing mechanism.”
This type of procedure could not be used to help those with spinal cord injuries, however. Also, the ethics surrounding this type of surgery are hotly debated.
Filed under Humor and Observations
75th Anniversary of Mallard’s Steam Train Speed Record of 126 mph
How to drive the world record-breaking steam train Mallard: Locomotive gets a final clean and polish ahead of celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of its 126mph landmark journey
- LNER Class 4 engine broke the world speed record of 126mph along the East Coast Line new Grantham in July 1938
- The locomotive has been reunited with its five sister trains at the National Railway Museum in York
- A ‘Great Gathering’ to celebrate the Mallard’s achievement is taking place until 17 July
A world record-breaking locomotive has received its final clean and polish ahead of its 75th anniversary celebrations.
On 3 July 1938 the Mallard steam locomotive reached speeds of 126mph along the East Coast Main Line near Grantham and broke the world steam record – a record which still stands today.
To celebrate the anniversary of this record-breaking success, the LNER Class 4 steam engine is being reunited with its five sister locomotives, including the Dominion of Canada and the Dwight D. Eisenhower, for a ‘Great Gathering’ at the National Railway Museum in York.
To drive the Mallard, driver Joseph Duddington would have squeezed the release handle on top of the reverser (D) lever and pushed it forward from the floor. He then would have then opened the cylinder drain cock (L) by turning the valve clockwise. Duddington would then have blown the whistle (C) a couple of times using the whistle handle to announce the train was about to move forward. To start moving, he would have released the brakes (B) using the brake gauge (G). The top lever would have been moved from right to left to release the brakes on the engine and then he would have opened the throttle (A). During the journey, Duddington would have monitored the train using the main boiler pressure gauge (E) and the steam chest pressure gauge (F). The injector steam and boiler water gauges are at (H) and (I), the manifold isolation valve is shown at (J) and the fire hole is pictured at (K)
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2353575/How-drive-world-record-breaking-steam-train-Mallard-Locomotive-gets-final-clean-polish-ahead-celebrations-mark-75th-anniversary-126mph-landmark-journey.html#ixzz2YKnZ3190
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Filed under Humor and Observations
Construction of Neuschwanstein Castle
The Mad Prince Ludwig II of Bavaria had built the beautiful castle of Neuschwanstein during the latter years of the Victorian Period. It was used as inspiration for the Disney Cinderella’s Castle. Here first are the original photos taken during construction, then the pictures of it now, inside and out.
1868-1884:
Construction of Neuschwanstein Castle
“Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Germany, was commissioned by Ludwig II as a homage to Richard Wagner.
“In 1868, the ruins of existing medieval twin castles were demolished; the old keep was blown up. The palace was built in brick and later encased with other types of rock. For about two decades the construction site was the principal employer of the region. The heirs of the 30 construction casualties received a small pension.
“In the end, Ludwig II only lived in the palace for a total of 172 days.”
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- Interior
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- The Castle
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- The throne room
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- Sitting room
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- In winter
Filed under Humor and Observations
Anamorphic Sculptures
ANAMORPHIC SCULPTURES
Art · Jan 30, 2013
London-based artist Jonty Hurwitz creates ‘Anamorphic Sculptures’ which only reveal themselves once facing a reflective cylinder. Hurwitz took an engineering degree in Johannesburg where he discovered the fine line between art and science. He has lived in England for many years, working in the online industry though he quietly levitated into the world of art inspired by a need to make ‘something real’. Hurwitz discovered that he could use science as an artistic paintbrush. Each of his sculptures is a study on the physics of how we perceive space and is the stroke of over 1 billion calculations and algorithms.
All images © Niina Keks, Otto Pierotto, Richard Ivey
Filed under Humor and Observations
Bio-feedback Amusement Rides
These Amusement Rides Know When You’re Scared, and React
Imagine an amusement park where no two rides on the roller coaster were the same, because the speed was determined by your personal level of panic—as measured by your increased heart rate, or rapid breathing.
New Scientist reports on research coming out of Nottingham University in the U.K. where a playful team—part artist, part engineer—is testing out the possibilities of bio-feedback, making machines that are controlled by biological acts, like breathing.
Above, in a performance piece called Breathless by Brendan Walker (one of the researchers) and the Mixed Reality Lab / Horizon a motorized swing is controlled by a special breathing-sensing gas mask. It could be the rider who wears it, or it could be a malevolent onlooker who pants to shake the swinger silly.
The audio of the breathing is played out through a speaker for enhanced emotional effect—the apparent goal of all this.
Walker and his partner in bio-feedback amusement, Joe Marshall, built this Broncomatic which spins in different directions depending on your breathing. Riders (attempt to) stay on the “bronco” by controlling their own breathing, something that gets harder as the bronco bucks and spins, creating a formidable positive feedback loop. Watch the video below for a rather successful example of someone staying on the horse.
This pair is doing a fine job of cultivating a little novelty and surprise by disorienting riders and viewers with this new way to operate machines. But as the sensors and controls get more refined—and less obvious—the possibilities of this technology become pretty terrifying. Imagine roller coasters that accelerate until you’re panicked, there’s no escaping the result. Would more people ride it?
Learning applications would also abound—no child gets dissuaded or scared away from a ride (or game, or puzzle) that will only gradually increase in difficulty or frustration to just the right point. Making that kind of experience though requires far far more knowledge of the human condition than a belt that senses a deep exhale. But we’ll get there eventually, if we want.
Filed under Humor and Observations
Michael Bradley - Time Traveler 