#I got inspired by a book about the history of astronomy where this object was mentioned sooo hi

[celestialdaily]

The celestial object of the day is E0102!

a supernova remnant located in the Small Magellanic Cloud. This object helps scientists study the chemistry inside stars, and it contains thousands of times more oxygen than the entire solar system!

[jasper-pagan-witch]

As far as book recs, what books are the least "suspicious"-looking title-wise, like in a won't weird your family out too much way?

This is an interesting question because I'm objectively the least weird person in my immediate family as far as books go. But I'll give this a shot! I'm gonna avoid books with "witch" in the title, but honestly, I have no idea how wary your family may be of books.

The Farmer's Almanac of the year: Once you get past the advertisements, there's a lot of practical growing advice and a surprising amount of magic-related stuff. Well, astronomy/astrology-related stuff, but still. I started using these as of earlier this year and have both the 2022 and 2023 editions. Jasper Category: Regional/Personal Practices.

Roots, Branches & Spirits by H Byron Ballard: My first introduction to the concept of folk magic was this wonderful book on Appalachian folk magic. It inspired me to look a lot more local and eventually led to me finding the Ozark Magic series by Brandon Weston. I'm not sure if it's particularly telling to the casual observer, but it's a fascinating look at someone's personal journey into their local magical tradition. Jasper Category: Regional/Personal Practices.

Badass Ancestors by Patti Wigington: I've gone over this book before, but if you're trying to learn about ancestor work (or even just your ancestors), it has some valuable resources and ideas of where you can look. It's useful enough that it's made it into my reference stacks. Jasper Category: Miscellaneous.

Willow and Sage Homemade Bath and Body: More of a magazine than a book, my May/June/July 2022 edition is a very practical guide for making all kinds of products. I look forward to actually trying out the recipes. It's not magic by any means, but it's helpful. Jasper Category: Miscellaneous.

Pretty much any mythology or history book: We all have those periods of time that we go absolutely batshit over mythology and history, right? Right? Yeah. This is also where my copies of the Homeric Hymns, the King James Bible, and others are located. Jasper Category: History, Religion, and Mythology.

Do I Have To Wear Black? by Mortellus: Likewise, this is an in-depth look at the various religious funerary and mourning practices, especially in modern contexts, brought to us by someone who actually works in that field. Jasper Category: History, Religion, and Mythology.

Regional ghost stories: I happen to have several Missouri-based or Mississippi River-based books on ghosts. These help take a look at folklore, history, and how things evolve and change over time, as well as how they stay in the public consciousness. Jasper Category: History, Religion, and Mythology.

Regional farming/planting guides: Similarly, I'm in Missouri, so a good number of my gardening guides are either about planting indoors, planting edible plants, or planting things that work great here in Missouri. Jasper Category: Gardening and Plants.

Historically- or locally-significant books of folktales, poetry, and fiction: We've got Edgar Allen Poe's complete works, we've got the Brothers Grimm, we have five great Greek tragedies in one book, we've got Horrible Phobias Lovecraft's works (may he rest in the racist squallor box and may he spin in his grave over everyone wanting to kiss his monsters), we've got Dante, we've got the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, we have "Jasper ran out of money but keeps trying to wipe out the book store's shelves of any significantly-old book with a new or fancy cover EVEN IF THEY ALREADY OWN IT." We've got the range. These are great for summoning up specific feelings or memories, for coming up with chants, for pop culture magic, for everything! And if anyone asks, you're just a fan of the classics! Jasper Category: Old Shit.

Unfortunately, most of my beginner-focused books, my tarot books, my spellbooks, and my correspondence-based books are a lot less low-key.

I hope this gives you a few ideas! I'm sorry if this isn't particularly helpful, I'm just not in a place where I have to be worried about people seeing that I practice magic. I mean, I have 62 tarot and oracle decks lined up on my shelves, it would be foolish of my family to NOT notice.

~Jasper

[ganzeer]

MAKING THE INTANGIBLE TACTILE Scripps College Frederic W. Goudy Lecture, Spring 2018

Let's get one thing straight: I'm not a printmaker, nor am I a bookmaker. I might've cranked the lever on a letterpress machine two, maybe three times. Which makes even first year students at this here institution far more knowledgeable about printmaking than I can ever hope to be. You are probably a lot more clever as well, because anybody who goes off to study things like printmaking and bookbinding in the year 2018 is likely wise enough to avoid the manipulation of today's mass media, which seems far too taken by the virtual and augmented. Regardless of how useless these technologies have proven to be so far.

But let's not forget that when printmaking first came into existence, it too was considered "mass media". A new and revolutionary way to share ideas with a great many people.

Before Gutenberg printed bibles using movable type in 15th century Europe, there was the movable type invented by Pi Sheng in 11th century China. A detailed description of Sheng's invention was described in Shen Kuo's THE DREAM POOL ESSAYS, a seminal work that covered everything from astronomy, geology, and natural phenomena to architecture, philosophy, and even UFO sightings.

Some might find it surprising that this massive book was printed using tried-and-true woodblock methods rather than the new emerging technology of movable type, but I don't think its weird at all. After all, we still shoot movies on traditional film even with the advent of Virtual Reality. And we still walk into brick-and-mortar stores to buy books printed on paper, even when armed with the power to download them onto our more convenient Kindles. Not to mention the comeback of Vinyl, which absolutely no one could've anticipated.

What this tells us is that the advent of one technology doesn't necessarily have to spell the end of an older one. There's room for coexistence, there's room for variety.

Many will tell you that printmaking began with block-printing in the Far East, and they wouldn't be wrong. But prior to woodblocks there was the stamp or seal. Evidence points to cylinder seals originating in Mesopotamia around 7000 years BC. Often carved out of stone, these seals would be rolled onto soft clay, leaving an impression that could be replicated an endless number of times.

Seals dating back to Ancient Egypt were also found. Egypt is also where the art of stenciling was common practice. Hieroglyphs were stenciled onto stone walls, which were then chiseled by sculptors. An ingenious method that allowed for the speedy reproduction of information without skimping on the tactile qualities of 3-dimensional materiality. But perhaps, the greatest mass media device invented at the time was likely Egyptian paper, what the Greeks called: papyrus, which was produced as early as 3000 BC if not earlier.

A lot of craft and labor went into the making of papyrus, which made it valuable. So valuable that a scribe would not be allowed to write on papyrus prior to spending several years honing his craft on discarded pieces of wood and shards of pottery. Once a scribe was ready, he or she would use papyrus for religious texts, official documents, letters and love poems, erotica, technical manuals, record keeping, spells and medical texts as well as, rebellion.

The image of seated mouse draped in fine linen being serviced by wild cats is a fine example of rebellion in Ancient Egypt. So powerful is this satirical image that it is immediately understood regardless of language, regardless of culture, regardless of time. The prey ruling over the hunter. The hunter serving its prey.

It should come as no surprise that this fragment is dated back to the 19th dynasty, between 1295 and 1186 BC. Which coincides with the first known strike in recorded history - carried out by the artisans who worked on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. These artists knew they were more powerful than kings and queens and shamans and aristocracy. They knew they were more powerful because it was their artwork that propped up regimes and made legends out of ordinary men. They knew that they were the cats in this story, and their rulers no more than mice.

This rebellion must've been organized, or at the very least, significantly infectious, because we find variations of this same image surviving on more than just one fragment, all dating to the exact same period.

What we're looking at here, may be the earliest surviving form of the protest flyer, or even... the meme.

This is also significant because the Ancient Egyptians believed that the act of writing and drawing was no less than magic. That by putting a rather abstract thought in writing on a tangible object in the physical world was a way of making that thought become reality.

Which is perhaps why we find sculptures of scribes carved out of ever-lasting stone, a material usually reserved for the statues of gods and pharaohs.

I think about this often. About the special power of materializing ideas, of putting them out into the world, physically. I think it was 2011 when I started thinking about it seriously, when I created this image known as the Mask of Freedom. Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was recently ousted, and the military took over, promising it would only be temporary. A transitional period in which the military oversaw the country's transformation to a legitimate democracy. Referendums were held and people went out to vote in unprecedented numbers. Inspiring montages flickered on television screens and proud patriotic music took over the airwaves. The ushering of Egypt's newfound democracy was on everyone's lips, with the role played by the country's honorable military never going unmentioned. It seemed like... a good idea to question that. Hence the Mask of Freedom, with accompanying text reading: "NEW! The Mask of Freedom! With salutations from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to sons of the beloved nation. Now available for an unlimited period of time."

I first posted the image online, and it got its generous portion of likes and shares and what have you. It was all good, but then... about a week or two later, I hit the streets armed with stickers of this image and proceeded to put them up on lampposts around Downtown Cairo. And within an hour, I was arrested.

Luckily, I still had Twitter on my phone back then (I don't anymore), and I was able to tweet about it before getting thrown in the back of a police car. The reaction to this was something akin to Kim Kardashian's ass breaking the internet, except... instead of Kim's ass, it was the Mask of Freedom. 

Within hours, thousands of people changed their profile pictures to the image of the Mask. And Cairo's very acute activist community managed to stage a protest where I was taken for questioning. Before I even got there. And they were armed with fresh printouts of the Mask of Freedom, a hi-res image of which was already available online. And within hours, I was released without charge.

That wasn't the end of The Mask of Freedom. Within two days, bootlegged T-shirts sporting the mask were being sold in Tahrir square. In fact, different versions of the same shirt were going around, and the image was seen often at protests over the next couple years.

This is the difference between putting a picture on the internet and giving it a physical manifestation in the real world. The internet, believe it or not, isn't as important as some make it out to be. I keep coming across college art magazines where students frequently talk about the power of clicks and "engaging content", and it is one of the saddest, most disheartening things I've ever seen. As someone who has participated firsthand in a revolution described by US media as a social media uprising, let me tell ya: online activism is bullshit. Egypt's dictator would have never been ousted had people not taken to the streets and occupied public squares, and I would've never been released from military-police custody had activists not showed up at their doorstep.

Even the term "online activism" is ridiculous. It's a little akin to saying "telephone activism". There's no such thing, it's just a communication tool. Sure, it's a pretty good one, but a rather pointless one if what is being communicated does not seep into the physical world in some way or function.

Realizing the rather versatile applications of the Mask of Freedom, in that -much like the ancient Egyptian image of mouse ruling over cats- it could work in a range of situations regardless of time, place, or culture, I found myself using it more than once.

Poland, 2012 - After joining the EU, Poland's market really opened up to big multinational corporations. And after years of suffering under soviet dictatorship which lasted til 1989, you could now see the Polish embracing consumerist culture with intense fervor. My response was to use the Mask of Freedom in a stencil on a wall in Katowice, historically known to be a big mining town in Poland. Hence the figure equipped with mining tools, while clad in Gap, Adidas, and Converse.

The text in Polish reads, very simply: "Beware the Mask of Freedom."

Fast forward to 2015, and the Mask of Freedom reemerges as a very applicable American critique, in a 3-color screenprint on wood at a solo exhibition at Leila Heller Gallery in New York City.

Of course, having come from a very old place, where dynasties have fallen, and others have risen, where Gods were no longer worshiped in favor of other Gods, and where culture has shifted and changed and altered more than once, I find it quite easy to look at everything with a critical eye, whether they be old... established, often deemed unquestionable things... or new.

Of course, as much as I'd like to, I don't always get to do this sort of work. The unfortunate reality of being a working artist is that every so often you're gonna have to take on commissions. One such commission  was a sort-of art-video I did for Irish rock band, U2. This was part of a big campaign where they got 11 artists to do visual companion pieces to songs from their latest album. The band had stated that their inspiration for this particular album, Songs of Innocence, was the punk rock of the 70's. And in thinking about that, it occurred to me that music videos weren't yet a popular artform in the 70's, and one's visual experience of a band pretty much relied on the artwork on record sleeves and gig posters. So I thought why not make a video made up entirely of posters. This would also bring a very physical, very tactile quality to the video which I thought would be cool.

862 posters. Designed over 3 weeks. Filmed in 1 day.

Okay, I have one last project I'd like to talk to you about. For a museum in Germany, I was asked to do an exhibition based on my current work-in-progress. A sci-fi graphic novel titled THE SOLAR GRID. Now I didn't want to just take pages from the graphic novel and display them on the wall. It's really not how the pages are meant to be experienced. They're meant to be in a book that you could curl up with. And I really didn't think it would make for a very compelling exhibition. What I wanted to do was create something specific to the museum experience. Not something meant for a book, and not something meant for the internet, but something really specific to entering into a museum space.

The premise of the graphic novel is that, after a major environmental catastrophe on a global scale, a lot of people leave Earth and settle on Mars. Over time, Earth becomes a de facto factory for Mars, exporting goods that are produced in solar-powered factories that never stop. This is made possible by a network of satellites, called The Solar Grid, that orbit the planet and keep it basked in eternal daylight. Effectively eliminating night on Earth.

Not everyone has migrated to Mars. In fact, most people haven't. And they are left on a nightless Earth to suffer the consequences. Not just that, but they have the waste that Mars sends back to deal with.

So, there are a lot of somewhat abstract ideas here. Ideas that I wanted to bring to the museum's space in a tangible way. The result was this installation.

So we built this room, and covered it in blown up panels from the graphic novel. This particular scene shows the sun setting, and then the sky lighting up with a great many smaller suns. And where there would've been another panel from the book, instead you have actual light blasting out of the room. Once inside the room, you see the walls covered in all the waste that the characters in the book would have to go through to survive. And right above your head, the ceiling is covered with these very harsh overhead lights, giving you a bit of the actual experience of being within the world of the graphic novel.

Now you'll notice that all the examples I've cited here show work where the form and the content are closely related. I first think of an idea, and then I figure out the form it should take.

A lot of the time I come across book-arts and printmaking where the materials used are the extent of the artist's idea. Where, rather than... the form an artwork takes being informed by an idea, the tools themselves become the idea. Where there's an almost kind of fetishization that this is a letterpress on top of a screenprint or whatever. Please don't do that.

Remember than not everything written in verse is poetry, and not everything covered in paint is a painting. What is being expressed is what truly elevates something to a work of art. How it is expressed is of course equally important. But before you get there, you must first consider what it is that needs expression, that demands expression.

That is your starting point.

Because that is what makes you unique, what makes you powerful. More powerful than kings or pharoahs or presidents. More powerful than CEOs or advertising executives or even Kim Kardashian. Remember that. Remember that every time you set pencil to paper–or even stylus to tablet–because that line you draw... has the potential to change the world. Every time.

Good luck.

Ganzeer March 19, 2018 Claremont, CA

[marcusssanderson]

50 Inspirational Neil Degrasse Tyson Quotes About Endless Life

Looking for the best Neil deGrasse Tyson quotes?

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a known American astrophysicist and science communicator who’s also the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Tyson, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Columbia,  is a popular TV science expert today with a fanbase of more than 12 million followers on Twitter. Over the years, he has written columns for popular magazines, published his own books, hosted podcasts and served in government commissions.

Tyson discovered his love for the stars at an early age and has made it his mission to encourage science and space exploration. In 2015, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded the Public Welfare Medal for his “extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science”.

A cheerful and vibrant character who loves to share his knowledge and enthusiasm for astronomy, Tyson has clearly managed to tap into his Everyday Power. In that respect, here are some beautiful Neil deGrasse Tyson quotes that will inspire, entertain and teach at the same time.

  Inspirational neil degrasse tyson quotes about endless life

  1.) “The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  2.) “Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  3.) “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  4.) “Rational thoughts never drive people’s creativity the way emotions do.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

    5.) “The only way you can invent tomorrow is if you break out of the enclosure that the school system has provided for you by the exams written by people who are trained in another generation.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  6.) “If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it’s not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  7.) “No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don’t ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  8.) “Passion is what gets you through the hardest times that might otherwise make strong men weak, or make you give up.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  9.) “Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  10.) “We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out—and we have only just begun.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Neil Degrasse Tyson quotes to inspire and motivate

  11.) “Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  12.) “There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

    13.) “During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore — in part because it’s fun to do. But there’s a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us.”  – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  14.) “It’s the inspired student that continues to learn on their own. That’s what separates the real achievers in the world from those who pedal along, finishing assignments.”  – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  15.) “Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees, but then thinking a new thought that has never been thought of before and expressing it somehow.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  16.) “The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there’s any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  17.) “Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  18.) “Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we’re still at the mercy of nature.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  19.) “Sometimes I wonder if we’d have flying cars by now had civilization spent a little less brain energy contemplating Football.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  20.) “Everyone should have their mind blown once a day.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Neil Degrasse Tyson quotes about science and the universe

  21.) “The very nature of science is discoveries, and the best of those discoveries are the ones you don’t expect.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  22.) “Perhaps we’ve never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there’s no sign of intelligent life.”  ― Neil deGrasse Tysonnature

  23.) “Science literacy is the artery through which the solutions of tomorrow’s problems flow.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  24.) “Math is the language of the universe. So the more equations you know, the more you can converse with the cosmos.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  25.) “Science is a cooperative enterprise, spanning the generations. It’s the passing of a torch from teacher, to student, to teacher. A community of minds reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  26.) “We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  27.) “I am trying to convince people — not only the public, but lawmakers and people in power — that investing in the frontier of science, however remote it may seem in its relevance to what you’re doing today, is a way of stockpiling the seed corns of future harvests of this nation.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  28.) “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

    29.) “We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.” ― Neil DeGrasse Tyson

  30.) “Whenever people have used religious documents to make accurate predictions about our base knowledge of the physical world, they have been famously wrong.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Thought-provoking Neil Degrasse Tyson quotes that will make your day

  31.) “Principles of modern law assert that you’re innocent until proven guilty. Yet airport security is the exact opposite of this.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  32.) “If each dead person became a ghost, there’d be more than 100-billion of them haunting us all. Creepy, but cool.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  33.) “Geek e-mail signoff: No trees were killed to send this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  34.) “Without physics there’d be no Fashion Channel — there’d be no TV. But w/o fashion, physicists might just be naked. Not good.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  35.) “Dreams about the future are always filled with gadgets.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

    36.) “I never want you to quote me citing my authority as a scientist for your knowing something. If that’s what you have to resort to I have failed as an educator.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  37.) “A bullet fired level from a gun will hit ground at same time as a bullet dropped from the same height. Do the Physics.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  38.) “Just an FYI: If scientists invented the legal system, eye witness testimony would be inadmissible evidence.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

  39.) “We spend the first year of a child’s life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There’s something wrong there.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  40.) “We all want to Make America Great Again. But that won’t happen until we first Make America Smart Again.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Other inspirational Neil Degrasse Tyson quotes

  41.) “If the surviving miners are heroes (rather than victims) then what do you call the NASA & Chilean Engineers who saved them?” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  42.) “We think scientific literacy flows out of how many science facts can you recite rather than how was your brain wired for thinking. And it’s the brain wiring that I’m more interested in rather than the facts that come out of the curriculum or the lesson plan that’s been proposed.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

43.) “Not enough of us reflect on how modern civilization pivots on the discoveries of just a few intellectually restless people.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  44.) “Kids should be allowed to break stuff more often. That’s a consequence of exploration. Exploration is what you do when you don’t know what you’re doing.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  45.) “If your Personal Beliefs deny what’s objectively true about the world, then they’re more accurately called Personal Delusions.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  46.) “When students cheat on exams it’s because our school system values grades more than students value learning.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  47.) “Things you might say if you never took Physics: ‘I’m overweight even though I don’t overeat.'” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

    48.) “Every living thing is a masterpiece, written by nature and edited by evolution.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  49.) “Science needs the light of free expression to flourish. It depends on the fearless questioning of authority, and the open exchange of ideas.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  50.) “Just because you can’t figure out how ancient civilizations built stuff, doesn’t mean they got help from Aliens.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Which of these Neil deGrasse Tyson quotes was your favorite?

Tyson remains one of America’s best-known scientists. He has amassed a huge following thanks to his extraordinary ability to present complex cosmic concepts into ideas the layman understands and finds entertaining.

Known for his love of the universe and his cheerful and vibrant character, Tyson has spent much of his career sharing his knowledge with others. Hopefully, you have enjoyed reading and gained some interesting insights from these quotes just as much as we have.

Did you enjoy these Neil deGrasse Tyson quotes? Which of the quotes was your favorite? Tell us in the comment section below.

The post 50 Inspirational Neil Degrasse Tyson Quotes About Endless Life appeared first on Everyday Power Blog.

[loislaneinvestigatesauthors]

Rising to a higher plane: Bill Copeland’s Cosmic Swan

You draw upon a wide variety of themes and inspirations here: allusions to international forms of spiritual practice, geology, ecology, political and international relations, biology, etc. How did you develop the concept for this story?  ==> The Cosmic Swan story evolved over many years.   Growing up on the edge of desert, the usually clear sky over our part of southern California became a prominent part of my daily experience.  For much of each year clear skies and warm evenings invited us to enjoy being outside.  When I was a kid,  I started noticing how the sun position changed throughout the year, the moon went around the sky once a month. Most stars marched around the sky locked together as if printed on moving sheet.  Some bright stars were not fixed on the sheet but moved along the background stars.  What made them do that?   

A real mind blower for a kid was the huge vision of a comet that appeared about 1955 in the evening sky.  It spread from the horizon to the top of the sky with a tail that pointed away from the setting sun.  As it moved away I wondered where it was going.  Nobody I knew could or would try to explain all that movement in the sky.  So I went to the library and got some books on astronomy.  

I found the moon goes around the earth and the earth goes around the sun, and the stars that moved against the background sheet of the sky were actually hosting other planets like the earth. When I looked at the sun as it was going down I came to see the big orange ball was the center of most of the movement in the sky.  I pretended I was very big so I could reach out and grasp those planets and watch them from different places.  I loved the experience of seeing and moving in the three dimensions.  Finally putting the moon, earth, planets, comets, fixed stars together in one connected 3-D picture was, and still is, a thrill. Of course the explanation I got from church and the Bible contradicted a lot of the picture I developed in my head, but early on I realized that the old testament explanation was the best the ancient people could do with their limited scientific heritage.  Rather than becoming cynical, I realized their understanding of the sky served them well enough to manage their farming, hunting, harvesting, traveling, and birthing babies.  I enjoyed the spiritual feeling I got when I sang, so I joined the choir.  What I got from church was the feeling that the sky created a sense of wonder in ancient people.  All those objects in the sky suggested a commanding cosmic consciousness, a spirit beyond us, and the human events on the earth seemed to be related to what goes on in the sky.  I love the feeling that there is a deep spirit which we all share.  No matter how much I have learned about the physics and math of astronomy, I have kept the feeing we are all a part of a spirit. Hiking around the county I explored hiking trails, rabbit trails, even very narrow little bug trails that snuck through the grass and roots of the chaparral.  In our dry climate I discovered how the fragrant chaparral, grasses, and animals coped with the long dry seasons and the occasional wild fire.  The rock forms showed me clearly the layers over time of sand, cobblestones, and deeper layers of sea shells, and hard rock.  An older boy across the street studied geology and had a great collection of rocks.  He was quite ill for years but finally was well enough to go on hikes. With the help of his geology books, we tried to understand what the hills, cliffs, and stream beds showed us about how different eras created different layers in the earth. When I went to San Diego State College, I started out with a major in astronomy and took geology and a lot of history.   I was particularly fascinated with ancient history, 18th century England, the American Revolution, and the process of creating the US Constitution.  As a science major I took a full load of math, physics, biology, and of course astronomy.  When I finished my first year, I sought out the lead professor in astronomy for advice.  I caught him in the observatory working on a government project to photograph certain stars to discover their movement, and what they are made of.  I didn’t get the advice I expected.  He said, if I really wanted to study astronomy, I should take math.  Astronomy and physics are mostly math, he advised.  What they could teach at SDSC was descriptive astronomy, not astrophysics.  So I changed my major to math and still keep up with the physics.   At the suggestion of my uncle, went to SDSC before me, I took computer programming classes on the computer he helped to set up.  When I graduated with a BA, I had three different big computer companies offering me a job.  So I went to work at Univac.  After a year I was offered a job at the Univac site in Houston at the Manned Spacecraft Center.  We worked on the Apollo communications system.  While there I helped fix bugs in the software, but also saw early pictures of the Moon and Earth from the spacecraft.  One series in particular of the earth rising over the limb of the moon sort of blew my mind.  The earth looked like a marbled blue and white egg.  What kind of bird would hatch out of that egg, I wondered.   I came back to California and settled in Silicon Valley.  I worked for various computer companies while working on an MS cybernetics degree program at San Jose State College.  For my masters project I recruited three other student in my class to work on the four-part design for an interstellar ark that could fly to the nearest star system.  I worked on the spaceship design.  For the rocket ship motor, I selected the interstellar ramjet.  It inhales the sparse hydrogen from space, compresses it and uses it for fuel.  A woman student worked on the social organization and genetic diversity issue since travel for many generations would be required.  She described the required for a minimum of 10,000 people, so genetic drift would not result in freaks, monsters, and other undesirable companions.  A student of government wrote the section on how to govern the people on the ship.  The final section described the infrastructure, living space, animals, food production and other accommodations. While working over the years I also traveled.  I traveled with two guys to England and Scotland, where I explored where my family came from.  I traveled to Spain to study guitar and took a side trip to Morocco.  Silicon Valley was pretty intense at times so I looked into a Zen Buddhism meditation group.  A friend asked me to sit with a group following the teachings of swami Muktananda.  I became more self aware of ways to be calm and explore how to be more creative and productive.  When Muktananda ‘left his body’, I went to his home Ashram in Ganeshpuri to see his shrine and study.  On a recommendation from a swami, I took a trip Muktananda had taken and went to Kashmir.  I wanted to see the area just south of Tibet in India called Little Tibet.  I saw the glaciers, Himalayas, the people, their food, yaks, camels, and so on.  I wanted to go farther, but the Indian Army had hot operations in northern Kashmir.  I spent a lot of time in meditation and learning about the spiritual paths.  I was noticed that Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and other spiritual groups regard Mt. Kailas, which is shaped like a pyramid, as the Crystal Mountain in which the God Shiva resides. I noticed that such spiritual groups attracted a lot of wealth.  I started telling a story of how a guru felt she needed to be closer to God when meditating so she sponsored the development of an orbiting meditation ship with a dome that allowed her to see only the stars.  She was launched and while meditating, the knowledge came to her of a catastrophic threat to earth.  She convinced her devotees to build an ark.   I traveled to India five times.  I visited a dozen ashrams and learned practices in Delhi, Kerala, Srinagar, Udaipur, Ganeshpuri, and Menar.   I was invited twice to weddings of family members.  Kusoom was the name of the first bride.  Asha was the second and her brother, Jagdish is the magistrate of Menar and a good friend.  I visited Pune on company business. Despite the poverty in the tribal areas and inner cities, I found the Indians to be very civilized and ready to take care of each other, no matter what the circumstances.  I followed the conflicts and territorial issues over the years — especially with China and Pakistan.  How did real science play a role in this story? I know some of the story is real and the rest is possible given what we are pretty sure we know at this point about our planet.  ==> Yes.  I merged well-established science with more speculative physics and astronomy.  One key conjecture that I got from Halton Arp and other scientists is the development and structure of our galaxy.  The alternate theory is that the universe did not start with a big bang but is infinite in time a space.  Dr. Arp is a famous astronomer who published many papers describing what he saw and recorded through the biggest Mt. Wilson and Palomar telescope.  Mt. Palomar and Mt. Wilson are in southern California.  I visited both and truly felt like I was in a temple to heaven in each.  

I visited Mt. Hamilton many times over the years while I worked in Silicon Valley.  Dr. Arp did an extensive study of unusual galaxies, their quasars, stars, their black holes.  He helped discover that virtually every galaxy has a black hole at its core and ejects jets of plasma and clumps of extremely dense matter. This led me to consider that black holes are the engines of cosmic evolution, sweeping in matter and energy, concentrating it in the core, and feeding the black hole until it spits out protogalaxies into space.  The protogalaxies serve as the core of new galaxies as they fly into space. So I imagined a creature, a Cosmic Swan, that lives for billions of years and flies and explores around the galaxy.  They lay their eggs on planets in the comfort zones around stars.  The eggs hatch and carry animals, plants, and comfortable habitats on their backs as required symbionts.  They closely monitor the black hole.  When it is ripe to send out a jet of material that will become the seed black hole of a new galaxy, young cosmic swans fly with the jetted material and live to become residents of the new galaxy.  Of course the interstellar birds can fly faster than light by my physics (which scientists object to) and I have a good rationalization (conjecture) about how they can do that. I love to imagine what can live in the atmospheres other gas giants like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune.  There is no end to where imagination can go in our infinite space. Of course Star Trek is one of my favorite TV programs. How did you decide to set the story in part in Tibet?  ==> Mt. Kailas is in Tibet close to the border of India.  It plays a central role in many Eastern religions.  I didn’t make it to Mt. Kailas, but I got close. I took a bus from Srinagar into the Himalayas north toward a region call little Tibet.  Because of Indian Army activity had to stop at a high pass near Sonamarg but took a walk out on the nearby glacier.  The landscape is spectacular. Are you a fan of sci fi and fantasy in general? Who are some of your favorite authors?  ==> Yes.  Of course.  I have watched most of the Star Trek movies and TV programs.  Here are a few favorite Sci-Fi authors I have read:  Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Gene Roddenberry, Frank Herbert, Asimov, Orson Scott Card, Tolkien, LucasFilm, Heinlein, Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Do you think that our world could come together to solve a planetary challenge? 

The world could come together only if the source of information on the planetary challenge came from a credible source, and the defense group set up to save us was lead by an internationally respected scientist diplomat who is also an excellent speaker, and inspiring leader.  I believe world organizations such as United Nations, major religions, and economic blocks would have to sign on.   Years ago I participated in an online forum about astronomy.  The topic came up about the threats from asteroids, comets, and other events like a plasma burst from the sun or even a nearby star.  I was surprised that virtually all the people on the forum thought the chances were so close to zero that it wasn’t worth troubling ourselves about.  I asked how much do we actually know about the risks. I was very certain that such threats were serious risks over time — centuries.  We have to plan way ahead to handle world risks.  I asked them to do trade-off analysis.  How much do we value a city, a whole nation, the whole earth?  Most came to agree that we should at least monitor the near earth objects closely.  We do that now, and have a few scientific studies on what a planetary defense project would cost in terms of money, manpower, and research.   But as I mention in Cosmic Swan, there are many different world views, cultural and religious beliefs about God’s will, heaven and hell, and who is worthy to survive.  An announcement from the United Nations of a credible threat from a large asteroid, for example, would initially create chaos and anarchy, but I believe if we had enough forewarning, then wisdom would prevail.   What do you think it would take to inspire that level of cooperation?  ==>  I hope a world-class scientist-diplomat would gather enough credibility and supporters to lead us to a humanitarian solution that did the greatest good for the greatest number.  Such people are rare.  They would find themselves the target of suspicion, misunderstanding, merciless attacks, and disbelief in his or her motivations.  Someone like Gandhi.  I don’t know of anyone today on earth who could or would take that role, but often such people arise to meet the challenge. Such persons would have to be able to understand the science of the threat and be able to articulate the actual facts and risks to general earth population.  He or she must be able to manage a very large project.  They must wisely, kindly, and diplomatically convince the leaders who control critically required resources to work together to design and implement the agreed upon strategy.  

Bill Copeland’s The Cosmic Swan can be ordered here.  =======================