ideonexus

interweaving ideas

  • The Safeguard, A Creative Commons Comic Book Script

    Posting this on the off-chance that there is an aspiring comic artist out there who might be interested in collaborating with an aspiring writer. I had found a fantastic cartoonist to work with me on this project, but, unfortunately, real life was making too many demands on his time, but this is our start. The…

  • Homo sapiens as Long-Distance Runners

    As a child, I was a master at chasing the ice cream man. I remember one time when that big white truck got a good four-block lead on me before I leapt outside in a pavlovian response to its musical tunes (I still salivate when I hear them). That time, the ice cream man let…

  • DaisyWorld, A Fable of Planetary Homeostasis

    Screenshot of DaisyWorld Simulation Credit: GingerBooth.com Long long ago in a galaxy far far away, there was a cold, gray planet named DaisyWorld orbiting a star much like our Sun. On this planet some aliens scientists sprinkled some seeds that produced only white and black daisies. The aliens were performing an experiment just like James…

  • Human Life Goes on Sale Under Bush Administration’s EPA

    Michael Crichton, Glen Beck, the Washington Times, and the Randroids, have all equated environmentalism with eugenics, population control, and fascism. We environmentalists hate human beings, we want to exterminate the human race and have everything go back to a “garden of Eden,” to quote Crichton. So what about the anti-environmentalists? The ones who don’t believe…

  • Flash Fiction: Open-Source Minds

    “Break it up! Break it up! You’re in a feedback loop!” Ms. Moriah had grabbed the two boys by their shirt-collars and was wrenching them apart. Within moments, her thoughts were interceding between their minds, just as her arms were pushing apart their bodies. Alvin and Cory were both breathing hard, staring at one another…

  • The Internet is a Mirror…

    Hermit Tarot Card I test out INTJ (Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging) on the Myers and Briggs personality test, meaning I’m like Isaac Newton, Niels Bohr, and Ada Lovelace. My Riso-Hudson Type Indicator ranks me as Thinker(8), Peacemaker(6), Reformer(4), Skeptic(4), Artist(4), Motivator(4), Helper(3), Generalist(3), Leader(0). I am the Hermit Tarot Card. According to the Are You…

  • A Classic Chess Fable

    (Reposted in honor of Martian Chess (HT BMF)) Continuing the Chess train of thought from earlier this week. I was reminded of one of my favorite legends surrounding Chess. Before the game had a King and Queen, in Persia, where the Chess was invented, it had a Shah and Vizier. The Shah is a Persian…

  • Why a Base-10 Number System?

    In Olaf Stapledon’s 1935 science fiction novel “Odd John,” an evolutionary leap of a human child wonders why we built our number system on units of ten. After all, the number twelve has six factors, meaning it is divisible by six numbers, {1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12}, while ten only has four factors, {1,…

  • Cyberfeminism, Sadie Plant’s zeros + ones

    Then she got into the lift, for the good reason that the door stood open; and was shot smoothly upwards. The very fabric of life now, she thought as she rose, is magic. In the eighteenth century, we knew how everything was done; but here I rise through the air, I listen to voices in…

  • 10 Things in My Yard

    Following TGAW’s Thread responding to the No Child Left Inside Coalition’s claim that “young people could identify 1000 corporate logos but fewer than 10 plants or animals native to their backyards,” I decided to take a shot at naming ten things in my yard. FAIL. If I counted the fruit trees, the mimosa tree, and…

  • Flash SF Story: The Way of the Dinosaurs

    “I don’t understand why we have to leave Earth for a stupid space ship anyway,” Tory, my 10-year-old daughter, griped. She had been a muttering, grumpy bundle of joy all day as we loaded belongings into our assigned shuttle. “Because it’s time for the human race to grow up and join the galactic community,” I…

  • How to Turn Your PC into a Science TV

    Step the First Download Miro Player, the free and open-source RSS aggregator for video podcasts. I’m sure there are others, but Miro is, to my experience, the sleekest and most user friendly. Miro (Formerly “Democracy Player”) Step the Second Subscribe to the following shows: Nova’s Science Now presents engaging science from a longtime standard in…