Angel's Promises by Nina Munteanu

"Angel's Promises" is a short story that is aptly in keeping with misunderstanding, apparent abandonment and hopeful resolution. It's all about promises: to others and ultimately to oneself. The story was originally published in Dreams & Visions (Skysong Press). It was nominated for an Aurora Award and included in a "Best of" anthology by Skysong. Angel's Promises will appear in a short story collection entitled "Natural Selection" by Pixl Press (an imprint of Starfire World Syndicate).

This is a love story set in a time when AI and humans have settled on an uneasy truce of cooperation.

Dragonfly to “Robobug”... Where is Science Taking Us?

Picture that you’re a reporter for the Times and you’re at the garden party of some large conglomerate CEO who you know is into some shady business… As you shoulder your way among the glitter, smiles and chatter, you notice that the CEO is having a serious discussion in the corner by the freezias with a burly man whose suit stretches tautly over his barrel frame like an alligator’s skin. The CEO looks pale and brushes his hand nervously across his face. You strain to hear just a snippet of their tense conversation but fail to catch anything. Then, you glimpse a dragonfly hovering behind them rather persistently. If it only had a built-in microphone, you think…

The possibility is plausible, or already exists.

Blog Action Day--Truth

In honor of Blog Action Day on the Environment, I submit my issue here and now…My issue is TRUTH: Living with it and acting upon it for the environment.

This post is dedicated to the spirit of what Al Gore has been so courageously and tenaciously doing: presenting the “truth” on Climate Change and the health and future of our beloved planet Earth, and providing numerous key solutions that we can embrace.

Many skeptics, naysayers, and self-motivated individuals have criticized Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth” as alarmist myth, perpetuated by a bitter man with ambitious motivations for office…or at the least a man who was terribly misinformed and who presented a case that was replete with inaccuracies and hence useless and untrue. Scientists and politicians and various others have cited many inaccuracies in the movie, so much so that various educational institutions have removed the film from their scholastic libraries. I find this appalling and am dismayed by the shallowness of their actions.

I submit that the hardest (actually the easiest) lesson one can learn is that a greater truth can embrace many smaller untruths—and still be true. This is the paradox of life on Earth. One we must embrace if we are going to prevail as a species on this ever-changing planet (yes, global warming being part of it). What am I talking about, you may very well ask?

I’m suggesting that we all strip down and consider our hearts in these matters, even—nay, particularly—when science is involved. The heart is where the truth really lies within each and every one of us, whether or not we are educated, informed or intelligent. The truth does not reside in your pocket book. Not in your neighbor’s opinion or in the newspaper. Not in your pride or your insecurity. Not in your knowledge, even. Don’t let ten…heck…thirty, forty, fifty “experts” persuade you or dissuade you. If your heart tells you that it’s wrong or right, then listen to it. Your heart is your true compass to the truth.

Albert Einstein, in discussions with Max Wertheimer (1959) about the theory of relativity and his thinking which led to it, said:

…during all those years there was the feeling of direction, of going straight toward something concrete. It is, of course, very hard to express that feeling in words; but it was decidedly the case, and clearly to be distinguished from later considerations about the rational form of the solution.

In 1913, the French scientist, Henri Poincaré stated that “it may be surprising to see emotional sensibility invoked a propos of mathematical demonstrations which, it would seem, can interest only the intellect. This would be to forget the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance. This is a true esthetic feeling that all real mathematicians know, and surely it belongs to emotional sensibility.” Poincaré also suggested that “pure logic would never lead us to anything but tautologies. It is by logic that we prove. It is by intuition that we discover.”

Rosenblueth and Wiener (1945) emphasized that:

An intuitive flair for what will turn out to be the most important general question gives a basis for selecting some of the significant among the indefinite number of trivial experiments which could be carried out at that stage. Quite vague and tacit generalizations thus influence the selection of data at the start.
What Rosenblueth and Wiener were saying is that when scientists (like me) report on the “truth” we are using our scientific judgment, along with our tools in scientific method and logic. We are using our sensibilities and our feelings (whether we like to admit it or not). In the end, science is often just the tool to prove a truth you already know through intuition. Al Gore knows. And so do you.

So, while it might be ignorant to discount the very real effects of extra-planetary and solar cycles in the current global warming phenomenon, what is it to ignore the cumulative role of 6.5 billion people and associated industry in what is happening to our planet's ecosystems on a global scale? Who are we kidding?

So, my challenge is the truth…the LARGER TRUTH. I exhort us all to seek it in our own way. Watch the movie. Make up your own mind. From the heart. Because, with truth comes conviction. With conviction comes responsibility and action. With action comes change. And each of us can change the world. In our own small but not insignificant way.

Recommended Reading/Watching:
“An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore.

Shavinina, Larisa & Michel Ferrari (eds). 2004. Beyond Knowledge, extracognitive aspects of developing high ability. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, London.

Climate Change & the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007

Today's Friday Feature is dedicated to our beloved Planet Earth and theNobel Committee in their choice for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007.

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Chaos Theory: One Person's Chaos is Another's Order

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy—William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5)
Physicists like to say that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?—Richard P. Feyman

When the Greek poet Hesiod wrote Theogony in the 8th Century, he stated that “first of all Chaos came to be,” and then the Earth and everything stable followed. The ancient Greeks seemed to have accepted that chaos precedes order; that order comes from disorder—the opposite of what current science postulates. The dragon in Chinese myth represents the principal of order, yang, which emerges from chaos. Yin and yang, the female and male principals, create the universe and retain the qualities of chaos; too much of either brings back chaos.