technology Archives ~ From The Stratosphere

It’s 2019, Apollo 11’s 50th Anniversary

By hsrivney | January 27, 2019

Stop the world, I want to get off.

Earth from space — Northern hemisphere of Earth as seen from NASA’s deep space climate satellite

Well, just slow it down a little so I can take a breath!

So many things happening as 2019 starts. 2019 – does that slap you around a little? We were all supposed to be driving flying cars, instead of cars driving us. We do have quite a few technologies, and a few we never imagined before. It’s also the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic mission.

Remember just 10 years ago the smart phone came upon the scene – and nothing was ever the same in the industrialized world. I don’t think they’ve helped developing nations as much, but in my wildest imagination I never imagine that PHONEs would become portable computers. They can pinpoint your location on the planet as well as take excellent photos and videos, AND access the entire world’s information online. I mean, there’s an app for EVERYTHING.

Oddly, the one thing I wish a smart phone could do that it doesn’t is take your temperature. Why can’t we just stick it against our forehead and let it tell us if we have a fever worth going to the doctor or not?

the first iPhone from Apple — The first smart phone

If I’d had these technologies as a teen or young adult available! Broken down car – no worry, call someone from the side of the road. Call Lyft to come get you the next day. Look up the problem on the internet, buy the parts online, they’re delivered asap, take Lyft to work again, and the fix your beater over the weekend watching how-to YouTube video. And then there’s e-books.

Millennials, you grew up with this technology,

at least with cell phones, if not smart phones, and the internet. You take it for granted that everything will stream to you – music, food, friendship, entertainment, even money if you can build a web page with enough click bait on it. Work as you want – deliver for Amazon, GrubHub, FedEx, or become a Lyft or Uber driver, and all the work is just waiting for you to tap an icon, no set hours, no dry cleaning to deal with, and the money goes straight into a bank account – no standing in line at a bank from 10:00 to 3:00 to deposit a check and wait 3 days for it to clear before you get your money.

I’m fascinated.

Our most wonderful invention in 1980 was the ATM – money without the bank teller. Oh, yeah, and the video rental store, of course, in BETA, not VHS (what’s Beta you ask? Ask Siri). The hardest thing we had to deal with was programming the damn thing because in the 80s, television had you tuning in at their convenience, not the other way around. I like new technology, but I’m not the person who needs the newest of the new the moment it’s released – new phone, computer, television, stereo system, vacuum, car. Technology puttered for decades, even after the horseless carriage arrived. Things move so fast now writing science fiction is a challenge. I’m from the Boomer generation, and Gen Xers are between us and the Millennials.

I’m not certain, and no one else is either, when the cut off from one to the next is, but the Boomers ended in 1964, the year after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The world changed that day, not just America. No one saw themselves the same way anymore. The birth rate plummeted, and with good reason. The later half of the 60s was filled with Vietnam, riots, Nixon, more assassinations, and some of the most horrible fashions ever to walk a runway. At the same time, technology carried on, taking people to the MOON. This year marks the 50th anniversary of that giant leap.

Humanity has more heroes than Hitlers.

Give praise for the chutzpah of soldiers who stormed Normandy; of Martin Luther King, Jr., who inspired millions; of Truman, who bore the responsibility for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As we approach this milestone, remember their names.

They were the ambassadors of human technology, arguably the most courageous men of the 20th century. It takes a special kind of insanity to sit atop a Saturn V rocket, spend 3 days floating in a closet and using the strangest toilet ever invented. Then they must go into orbit, take a little module of a ship to this world, land, get out and take a walk, and get back in and hope the little module of a ship can get off the world, go back up and meet with the rocket engine orbiting the planet. And then COME BACK. Three more days in the closet, and this time they have to get back to Earth. This planet has an atmosphere (that could burn up the ship and passengers). They don’t land, but splash down using parachutes, and wait for the ship to come get you.

The boot print of a human left on the moon — Footprint from the Moon

Are you f*$#&* kidding me? The space program was the very definition of LUNACY. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins have every right to claim bravery above and beyond – why do we celebrate Columbus Day when we should celebrate Moon Day July 19th? It should be a worldwide holiday, like New Year’s Day; at the very least, an American holiday. Only a dozen humans have ever walked on our moon. That’s it. I lament that it may be another 50 years before humans can claim the honor of going to another world. Robots on both Mars and the Moon report that science and commerce could explode wide open, with new opportunities, to answer questions that have dogged humans from the beginning, and encourage the next 100 years of humans to grow beyond the narcissistic view that we are the apex of evolution.

But this is the year of Apollo 11’s anniversary, the 50 year milestone. Who knows what celebrations might spark the next step into the future.

After all, if we can go to the moon, we can do anything. I’m still waiting for that app that will take my temperature, though.

Using CRISPR on Human Embryos.

By hsrivney | November 26, 2018

Fictional results of using CRISPER — Augment Khan Noonian Singh

Using CRISPR as we feared could be here. I don’t want to alarm you, but it is here. The Eugenics Wars of Star Trek fame are just another example of Trek fiction about to come true. I’d love to know what your thoughts are on the subject.

Evolution by natural selection is about to end for Homo sapiens. CRISPR BABIES

I have interrupted my writing jag to bring you this article as soon as I heard about it. Of course, this kind of science is the foundation of my current series, The Jackson Saga. That aside, as this technology is honed and focused, which I think is marvelous, I also worry. I worry that someone “in charge” will be deciding what is a disease, what is a mutation, what’s worth fiddling with, and do we want to end up like the society in GATTACA?

OVERPOPULATION.

I expand on this theme with the biggest single threat

possible results of using CRISPER — Embryos of augmented humans

to humanity: Overpopulation. I’m not talking numbers of bodies here. I’m talking about the carrying capacity of the planet to support humans and their need for power (yes, both political and electrical). The United States, by the standards of carrying capacity, is the most overpopulated country on the planet. Americans are about 5% of world population and use 20% of the world resources. Americans waste more food, hence energy and political power, than some people have to eat in the whole day. We use more for cars (tires, gasoline, junkyards), trash (landfills), and especially electricity (air conditioners, big screen televisions, refrigeration).

This could roll on a tangent, but when India and China live their lives at the same standard as Americans (and why shouldn’t they?) overpopulation will finally move to the forefront as the foundation for climate change, food shortages, medical and elderly care issues, with a host of others, including poverty and war (power is both energy and politics).

Genetic Engineering

to remove harmful “whatever” is not my argument. In fact, as I said, Paradox is all about the risk of a genetically engineered vaccine. After administration it carries on in the offspring of vaccinated adults, but with unexpected results. Millions and millions of humans die prematurely or become sterile. When we play with Natural Selection, we must also play with Reproductive Rights. Are those with money, who can afford this medical technology, going to dictate who can and cannot have children without diseases? Will it be available to everyone regardless of their political views or the color of their skin or the money in their bank account?

From the article, I quote:

Gene-editing scientist, Fyodor Urnov* reviewed the Chinese documents said called the undertaking cause for “regret and concern over the fact that gene editing—a powerful and useful technique—was put to use in a setting where it was unnecessary.” Indeed, studies are already under way to edit the same gene in the bodies of adults with HIV. “It is a hard-to-explain foray into human germ-line genetic engineering that may overshadow in the mind of the public a decade of progress in gene editing of adults and children to treat existing disease,” he says.

Stop and Think

I find it a revolutionary tool, and worth exploring to the fullest possible good it can do. I wouldn’t want to wish disabilities on people just to keep the population from explosion, but clear, rules must be in place. We must prevent a group from using this to take power, placing genetic superiority in the hands of the wealthy alone, the political party of party alone, or, without looking forward to reduce the chances of a “Eugenics War”. If one race becomes so powerful the world over, humans will lose the diversity of our evolution. We are amazing animals, adapted to various climates, producing different cultures, and having the ability to see that we have so much more in common than we we have as differences. Let us keep what makes us human, and remove what hurts us most.

This is indeed a slippery slope, but an adventurous one to be sure. Talk about the Final Frontier. We should let Nature run the most of the show. It’s done a pretty fair job so far.

*associate director of the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences, a nonprofit in Seattle, Washington.

Books

More Science, Less Fiction, Man-Made Molecules

By hsrivney | July 10, 2018

Science and molecules go “hand in hand”.

Science is my passion. And by hand in hand I’m talking about the right and left. My first full length novel, Paradox: The Alien Genome, was first an ember from Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, a morsel from one of his The Incredible Universe science episodes. He discussed in some detail the nature of chiral molecules, their ‘handedness’, and how on Earth amino acids natural link up and tweak one direction, while the molecules that link up as sugars link in the opposite direction. He said he’d like to read a book about astronauts on a planet where the spirals were reversed.

science - caraway or spearmint? — Same molecule, different flavors?

So I wrote it. (By the way, Dr. Tyson, I’d love to send you an autographed copy!) And it was a journey of discovery as I researched DNA and chiral bonds. Thalidomide is a chiral molecule. Unbeknownst to its creators, if they could force the molecule in the other direction, it would not have caused birth defects in fetuses back in the late 50s. I found long and detailed information about this and I nearly took a vacation from my novel to investigate the science further.

Synthesized Proteins

Most molecules are chiral. We can make these things in the laboratory and change them, creating totally new things but with the same atomic structure. A couple months back, I received a link to an article about two MIT chemists, Zachary P. Gates and Brad Pentelute, who could synthesize millions of novel, non-natural proteins to be used as drugs against Ebola and other viruses. They call it Xenoprotein etching. Critically, these man-made structures don’t have to be kept refrigerated. This enhances not only their shelf life, but also their potential use. They can be delivered “in the field” where disease lurks. People wouldn’t have to travel to clinics or doctors. In developing populations, transportation is not always available. When time is of the essence, days could mean lives.

MIT Chemists Synthesize Proteins.

Why Science Matters

I had to reflect on their ingenuity and how their work ‘mirrors’ (sorry, I couldn’t resist) to some degree my imaginary DNA splicing Malaria vaccine that replicated itself into the haploid cells of the children of vaccinated humans. Through some complex biochemical, yet founded in reality, sci-fi technobabble, this leads to sterility. Humans were unable to create a molecule that was reversed (and which divided, not like sugar which is static). They embarked on a hunting trip in space that lasted two years. They hoped to finding living creatures with this reversed chirality in their DNA. If you’ve read the novel, you know the rest. If not, I won’t give spoilers.

Nevertheless, this article proves once again that no matter how far-fetched of a thing a science fiction writer can dream up, it might very well be possible. We may not be able to transverse space faster than light, but perhaps in the future. I’m sure the Greeks and Romans 3000 years ago never thought of flying commercially, or to another planet. Technology hadn’t come far enough. It’s barely been 100 years since we abandoned the horse and buggy for fossil fueled vehicles. And don’t forget the saying of the Boomer Generation: If we can go to the moon, we can (fill in the blank with any impossible task, like, cure cancer, go solar, stop war).

That’s what makes writing science fiction so much fun. I like to think we are more enlightened and educated enough to leap beyond our current civilization, to question all that we are, and what we could be. I refer to the forward thinking sci-fi, not the, apocalyptic, dystopian, doom and gloom, an earth ruined by war sci fi. And a wise person once said – “Be careful what you ask for. You might get it.” I certainly hope so!

Based on Reality

If you’re a Star Trek fan,enjoy the tales of Michael Crichton (Jurrasic Park, ER, Congo), the works of Isaac Asimov, you may discover just what you’re looking for here. Do you like hard sci fi, medical missions, runaway bacteria, asteroids, and aliens? You will enjoy my two series, The Pioneer Missions, and the as yet untitled full length novels about an intrepid star ship captain who finds his soul mate in an alien . Find all my work here.

A recent review

By hsrivney | June 20, 2017

Shameless plug: another 5 star review of Paradox. If you haven’t read it yet, what are you waiting for? Click the picture and get the e-version instantly! Read it? Rate it! Read more stories with many of the same characters: Jackson, Quixote, Rianya, Bala, Lee, Watson, Bailey, Dukvita, the Kiians, and a new species coming up – the Zlogers!

If you long for the days of Gene Roddenberry’s soulful Star Trek, or hope the Avatar movie might one day become a reality, then you are in for a treat with H.S. Rivney’s Paradox: The Alien Genome. The suggestion of a genetic cure from the world beyond captivated my imagination, as did the author’s writing style. For me, the vivid, unique descriptions illuminated this space odyssey to movie-screen proportions. A healthy dose of dialogue keeps the pace at warp speed with lots of techie jargon. But what really impressed me was the author’s sophisticated scientific knowledge—I would believe her to be an astronaut or a physicist in a previous life to dream up the concepts presented throughout the novel. The author creates a totally convincing world from ecosystems to geology, animal species to alien beings. One graphic scene was tasteful, accurate and evocative. But there’s a touch of intrigue and danger, as well as a softer side to this story, too. A great ending wraps up this exciting futuristic journey after traveling back to a nostalgic era of Kirk, Spock, and Sulu— I highly recommend the ride!

Patti Cavaliere, author of 5 star rated “Looking for Leo”, click me!

Quakes in Oklahoma?

By hsrivney | November 8, 2016

Damage to home in Pawnee Oklahoma, 9/2016

California is the land of quakes in North America. San Francisco gets an extra shout out for being at one end of a fault line known as San Andreas which runs vaguely northwest to southeast to Los Angeles, at the other end. When you grow up there, you know what to do when the ground begins to shake and the rumble of sound waves try to warn you out of bed or away from a window. You sleep with hard soled slippers next to your bed and keep trash cans full of survival supplies in your garage near the door, so if the building begins to crunch you can walk without stepping on glass and get to your container.

Don’t forget water. You need to keep a lot of water on hand because the old pipes will break and you will be SOL if that happens. Besides thinking about water, I’d get one of those portable device chargers and keep it in the emergency can as well, so you can text to your friends if you’re safe or not. When the thing hits, if you’re a native Californian, you wait before you act. It might just be a 4 or 5, and the epicenter might be anywhere. But sometimes it keeps going, and you realize it’s either closer or more powerful than you first hoped. It could be a 6, and that means you need to get up and stand in the doorway away from windows. Stuff will fall off shelves, roads will crack, a few landslides and lots of broken windows. But still not time to panic.

Then it could become a 7. Now it’s time for those slippers and to head outside if the walls might come down. Don’t forget, it’s time to curse the fact that you didn’t stock up on batteries or take my advice to keep a portable charger in your emergency can. A 7 can be downright exciting as long as you’re not on top of it. Lots of shaking, a few random broken water lines, the gas lines not so exciting, and when roads buckle, not so exciting either.

Yeah, I’m an old hat at riding out quakes. If I was transplanted to Oklahoma, I’d be significantly more terrified of tornadoes. Now those people have to worry about both quakes and tornadoes. Why?

There’s no tectonic plate under Oklahoma like the North American and Pacific plates that bump up against each other underneath California. It’s our need for those portable rechargers. It’s our addiction to electricity. America has worked hard to become energy independent, and hydraulic fracturing is a technology that supports the generation of electricity. It releases natural gas which is used to run turbines that create electricity for the grid. Also called fracking, for short, since 2008 when fracking began to seriously ramp up in Oklahoma, the number of earthquakes over a magnitude 3.0 has risen from 2 to almost 900. Half of all earthquakes over 5.0 have occurred in 2016, which isn’t over yet, in the last 135 years! Think that’s suspicious? The total number of earthquakes over 5.0 in Oklahoma in those 135 years has been 6. So, 3 happened in 134 years, and 3 happened in the last 10 months.

Fracking involves drilling into rock and injecting the hole with water and sand, the sand holding open tiny fissures to let the natural gas escape. That waste water allows the fractures to slip, causing the quakes. So far in 2016, Oklahoma has had 572 – about 2 per day. Coincidence? From 2 in 2008 to 889 in 2015. In fact the largest quake ever recorded in Oklahoma was a 5.8, which occurred just last September.

Humans are changing the face of the planet, even the dermis of the planet, for the sake of electricity. I don’t suggest it’s possible for Americans to make a significant lifestyle change in a short enough period of time to make a difference, but we can certainly see where this voracious appetite for energy is taking us. If we don’t abandon our need for non-renewable sources, (coal and natural gas), and exchange them for clean renewable sources (solar and wind, geothermal and hydro electric), we will find ourselves in dire straights when the planet is severely damaged and the black gold is gone.

Our planet will survive. It’s downright ridiculous for humans to think we can destroy the planet. We can destroy the climate that we love, we can destroy our ecosystem, force thousands of species into extinction, and find ourselves warring over resources, but Earth doesn’t care if we’re here or not. When the dinosaurs ended their 200 million year reign, the Earth didn’t care, and here we are. If they could have made changes to save themselves, would they have let their thirst for power and control shadow the possibilities of extinction? Can we evaluate ourselves and conclude that we have more intelligence than the dinosaurs, and make those changes before it’s too late?

Tag: technology