Rocket Scientist

With all the education talk this week and elder sibling stuff goin’ on, seemed like learning might be a good subject for quotes.  Let’s just dig into the Big Bag O’ Quotes and see what we find.

 He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

           –Sir Francis Bacon

Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.

                          –Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

                                                            –Winston Churchill

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

                                                            –Clarence Darrow

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.

                                                            –Gustave Flaubert

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.
                                                                        –Aldous Huxley

Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
                                                                        –Robert Green Ingersol

Experience, the most brutal of teachers; but you learn, my God do you learn.

                                                                        –C. S. Lewis

The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.

                                                                        –John Stuart Mill

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.

                                                                        –Wilson Mizner

If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

             –Ronald Reagan  [Ed:  might we remind the GOP of that now?]

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.
                                                                        –Bertrand Russell

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge — even to ourselves — that we’ve been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)
                                                                        –Carl Sagan

  For those of you wondering:  will she run out of quotes?  I’m on page 22 of 103 and I haven’t even used half of the quotes on those 23 pages.

So, in a last minute push, “Eldest Sibling” came leaping ahead.  Thanks for the last minute cheating.  I prefer to have dozens of votes no matter how I get them on my poll.

I am an eldest sibling.  I’m not only the oldest of seven children, I’m the daughter of an eldest sibling as my father was the oldest of 12 children.  My husband is also the eldest sibling, eldest of four.

What is being the eldest sibling like?  Well, it means having twice as many pictures taken of you than of your siblings, including pictures of things you never wanted to do.  It means being the recipient of most of your parents worry and hypochondria as well as all the experimenting they did to figure out that whole parenting thing.

You get to do everything first.  Every time you screw up it makes harder on the ones that follow.  Every time you do something good or over and above, they get the happy fallout.

The eldest is babysitter and example, defender and antagonizer of the younger ones.  We are bossy and demanding and impatient, as likely to snatch a job away from someone if they just aren’t doing it right.  They get blamed for what the younger one’s do and they always have more responsibility than the younger ones do (or, at least, almost always).

So, if you’ve always wondered what it was like for your older sibling, here’s a chance to ask.  If you have a eldest child that is giving you hell, here’s your chance to perhaps find the answer.

In any case, I’m here.  Now clean your room and ask me something!

(New blog poll is up!)

Ah, education.  I was telling this story to someone on IM yesterday, so that’s what I’m stealing.

Here’s my question.  Isn’t being able to apply what one learns in the real world what education is all about?  If our education experts in this country think that’s a “flaw,” what does that say about education in this country?

What?  Wait!  Don’t run away!  Sheesh, mention poetry and they all turn tail and run as fast as they can.  I’m not going to make your write poetry.  Ever.  I promise.

I have to completely give snaps up to my sister , the English Ph.D., for reminding me what fun writing on command is.  Yes, you heard me and I meant it.  Shakespearemom is a font of writing know-how on the collegiate level and I so encourage everyone to check out her website.  She also will do writing exercises from time to time and I’ll make sure to link whatever exercises she does on this Wednesday feature so you can’t miss ‘em.  (You know she’s an expert because she never shortens “them” to “‘em.”  And she reads Shakespeare - for fun!)  This week, it was one on adding detail to make emotions and feelings come alive and one on writing haikus , which was really cool because my inspiration for this feature came from the first and the second just played into it.  She added another one today .

Now, let me also preface this by saying I’m not nearly the technical expert on writing that she is.  My degree is in Engineering Physics and I tested out of all my English requirements.  My only college creative writing course was a waste of time for me (which the professor told me himself) and the only other English course I took in college (Physics in Fiction) wasn’t exactly a writing course.  But I’m going to run this feature anyway because I can write and write well.  I’m just mostly self-taught.

So, here’s the boring story.  See, in high school, I wrote poetry, lots and lots of rhyme and rhythm poetry, much of it long and epic-like.  I’m not advocating this path for everyone, but it taught me a few lessons (hence the poetry part 1).  In college, I moved from mostly poetry to mostly short stories.  The lessons I learned there were completely different than the lessons I learned with poetry.  When I made the switch post-college to novels, I had to work on a completely new set of skills, while still taking advantage of the ones I’d built doing the other stuff I’d previously learned.

So, in the interest of sharing the wealth, I’m going to start with lessons I learned writing poetry.  My sister’s blog mentioned the “magic” in detail for making an feeling come alive, rather than just telling how someone felt.  I entirely agree with it.  But sometimes there is something to be said for brevity, for pulling emotion with just the right words, for emoting with almost no words.  I know you’re laughing.  What would rocketscientist know about brevity (especially given the poetry she wrote was sometimes pages long)?  Well, just because a work is long, doesn’t mean the lines are brief and limited.

When I was on Gather, someone pointed out the story of Hemingway who was challenged to write a story in six words.  His answer: “For sale.  Baby shoes.  Never worn.”  He challenged us to do the same .(By the way, this is probably the only time I’ll ever use Hemingway as an example.)

You might be asking, why bother?  Because, sometimes, brevity is very powerful.  Take for instance, the following passage:

It wasn’t fair.  Children shouldn’t be wracked with pain, eaten with fever.  Mothers shouldn’t sit at the bedside, grieving for pain one can’t stem or heat one cannot quench.  To fight for days against a disease, a sickness, it wasn’t fair that the fever, in the end could win, could only be beaten by the boy finally gasping his last.

Or I could write:

The fever and boy both broke.

Both have their uses and there are times where the first one is the right one.  But, sometimes, the second works more powerfully because everything in the first is implied by the second.

I know, it seems scary limiting yourself to six words.  But, you know what?  When I tried it, it was much easier than I thought.  So, here’s what I want you to do.  Don’t write a story necessarily (though you can), but build an emotional response, an image that resonates in…just…six…words.

Here are some examples.

He’d promised he’d do better.  Again.

He never even heard the gunshot.

In an instant, she was gone.

Mommy, why don’t you love me?

You were never what I wanted.

Ms. Bastion, you don’t have cancer.

My babies are still in there!

He had never known such kindness

With one smile, her life opened.

Because of her, his life mattered.

He would never hurt anyone again.

She only said she loved me.

OK, now you.  And, if you need more inspiration, check out the link to the gather article I have up there.  There are some excellent examples (which I hope I didn’t accidently duplicate).

Have fun!

(By the way, if you were prompted to register to make comments yesterday, that should be corrected today.  Sorry about the trouble.)

This hasn’t been the best month for space doings.  I’ve put off mentioning and discussing the February 10 Iridium-Kosmos 2251 collision because, well, I was hoping to wait until we got a better picture of the real implications of this space catastrophe (and yes, that’s how I see it).  It’s a huge deal, partially because both satellites were fairly large, partially because, since they hit at right angles, the relative velocity was very high (~11.7 km/s – note that’s *per second* not per hour; a rifle bullet is more on the order of 0.5-1.1 km/s for reference) and partially because it’s up on the high side of an already crowded low earth orbit.  Everything, of course, will be coming down and spending time (of relative lengths) at all the altitudes below, including Hubble’s altitude and the Space Station.  So far, they’ve counted upwards of 500 trackable pieces of debris from this, which means there are many thousand of smaller untrackable pieces.  Because there is no atmosphere where the collision happened, there’s no friction to speed their reentry, so we’ll be living with that debris a long time. 

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the bad news.  Last night/this morning, the much-touted Orbiting Carbon Observatory launch failed, when a fairing failed to release (on the clamshell casing that held the satellite).  The added mass of the enclosure made it too massive for the existing fuel to propel it to orbit so the hapless satellite dropped into the drink near Antarctica.  The NASA program manager John Brunschwyler said, “We could not make orbit.… Initial indications are the vehicle did not have enough [thrust] to reach orbit and landed just short of Antarctica in the ocean.… Certainly for the science community, it’s a huge disappointment.”  *Sigh* It was the first flight for NASA with the Taurus XL, built by Orbital Science Corp.

It’s a timely, but costly, reminder that, as hard as it is to get something to function in space, getting something to space is still a nontrivial problem.

As someone deeply concerned about global warming and a scientist, I can’t help but be disheartened, but it’s not all bad news.  After all, the Japanese have already successfully launched their own Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite that is performing a similar function now (launched in January).  This satellite was designed to measure methane and CO² in the atmosphere and this data will be shared with NASA and other space and scientific organizations around the world.  Kudos to JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency). 

On the one hand, as a human being and a rocket scientist, I can’t help but be gratified at the worldwide interest in space activities, from Shenzhou in China to the reliable workhorse rockets in Russia to the many and varied ESA activities to those activities by Japan and India to join in the space fraternity.  Still, I’m a little saddened that the US is not always at the forefront any more and that, in this country, that drive to explore and that dedication to our space efforts does not seem widespread among the populace.  Unfortunately, events like this failed launch will hardly make that better.

More links on the OCO launch failure:

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20090224/49a38ce0_3ca6_1552620090224-458764158

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Satellite_mission_to_monitor_carbon_dioxide_fails_NASA_999.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco/main/index.html

Note that my sister, Shakespeare, has added another writing exercise today .  Check it out!

Not, however, in that order.  My sister, shakespearemom , has a blog here on today.com and, truthfully, she and flit are the reason I started a blog at all.  She’s a Ph.D. in English and often has little writing how-to’s and exercises and I think it’s a real pity that her very excellent (but quiet) blog get so little attention, not just because I like it but because she has so much expertise readily available.  She’s also very responsive.  Yesterday, she put up an excellent exercise on the writing staple:  do don’t tell.  I urge everyone interested in character or writing to take advantage and check it out. I liked it so much, I’ll be stealing the idea for Thieving Thursday to do my own writing exercise.

Ironically, since both my inspirations (flit and shakespearemom) are directly involved in education and I’m not, I want to talk about education.  Truth told, education affects us all and our future.  If we can’t educate our children effectively, rocket science will be a thing of the past.

According to this editorial in the New York Times , students in college are now feeling entitled to high grades based on whether they do the reading and attend school, regardless of what they learn.  Students maintain that grades should depend on level of effort, according to this article as opposed to demonstrating knowledge, expertise, or understanding of the subject.  I didn’t see this article when it first came out, but I did read the letters to the editor on the subject today. There, too, some students seemed to feel that effort was sufficient.  Someone mentioned that parents put pressure on kids to make their own investment worthwhile with good grades.  Some parents apparently are more interested in what letter’s on the paper than what their kids have learned.

Let me explain why that just ain’t so.  See, college is more than a drain on a parent’s pocketbook and a place to practice drinking games; it’s also an opportunity to learn and a chance to prepare for what’s coming - i.e. reality.  And, folks, in the real world you don’t get an A for effort.

Oh, sure, you can shuffle through life in a nowhere job, just filling in time, but you won’t be rated an “A” by anyone involved.  And, in the real world, there’s no makeup tests when you screw up.  One screw up, a really good one, can kill it all.  Truth is, no one’s going to care how much effort you (an accountant) put on a tax return if the IRS comes after the client and finds they’re in arrears.  No one’s going to sympathize if you pulled an all-nighter with your buds and say, “No problem” when you remove the wrong kidney.  No one’s going to understand and give you another chance if your forgetting to torque down lugnuts gets someone killed.

In the real world, it doesn’t matter how hard you work on a design.  If it’s bad, no one will buy it or, worse, you’ll get someone killed.  If you just let one kid slide as a social worker, it could be the one that’s on the front pages the next day and on your conscience the rest of your life.  Pilots have to deal with the real laws of physics, not their bud who runs a flight school.

Kids, I hope you’re never treated so dismissively that we confuse “being there” with learning.  I think the notion that people are entitled to rewards and adulation for “just getting by” is a factor in our high juvenile crime rate and in some kids who get through college completely unprepared for real life.  ‘Cause that real stuff is out there.

Oh, and parents, if you’re going to get angry over the high cost of college (which I absolutely agree exists), I’d be angrier at my kid getting an A in a class without absorbing any of the knowhow you’ve paid for.

Just my 2 cents.

So, who was wondering what I was doing when I disappeared last week?  No one?  Oh.

/Kicks dirt

Oh, well, I’m going to tell you about it anyway because it’s cool.  Not my part (which is mundane and completely down to the earth) but the equipment I’m doing my mundane work on.  See, I’m responsible for safety for the Instrument Suite on the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, basically the science part (AKA SMART, for “Solving Magnetospheric Acceleration, Reconnection, and Turbulence,”) of this ambitious set of four spacecraft.

You can find all kinds of good information on this mission at Southwest Research Institute and Goddard Space Flight Center .  Basically, it’s a mission to send four identical spacecraft, each attached to duplicate instrument suites, “that will use Earth’s magnetosphere as a laboratory to study the microphysics of magnetic reconnection, a fundamental plasma-physical process that converts magnetic energy into heat and the kinetic energy of charged particles.”  You probably want to know what that means.

Yeah, me too.  Fortunately for all of us, Wikipedia had an entry, too, which is written in more laymen terms.

Mostly, it’s a collection of instruments that measure magnetic and electric fields (on long booms), electron and ion plasma spectrometers, energetic particles, plasma waves, high temporal and spatial resolution and burst even recordings.

And, with all the cool stuff going on, clever computers, state of the art instruments, what do I do?  I look over everyone’s designs, procedures and make sure no one gets hurt.  Since most of this is heritage hardware and the mission is unmanned, safety is only a small part of a really cool whole.

Good stuff.

I like quotes in general.  but I also like quotes that look like they’re going to say one thing and then kind of twist it into something else.  Naturally, I have bunches of these and I’m going to include some today.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. –Dwight D. Eisenhower

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.  –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results. –Scott Adams

We easily forget that smog is the price of freedom of our streets from manure, and from the flies and diseases it brought. –Daniel Boorstin

 By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me. –Ashleigh Brilliant

Successful organizations are programmed to eat their own brains: it’s called bureaucracy and it’s the evil offspring of Operations and Accounting. It’s the silent killer of organizations; they become enfeebled before noticing that something’s gone wrong.  –Dale Dauten

I used to be indecisive, now I’m not so sure. –W.C. Fields

Ability will never catch up to the demand for it.   –Malcolm Forbes

Accident: Always “regrettable” or “unlucky” — as if a mishap might sometimes be a cause for rejoicing.   –Gustave Flaubert

I think it would be an excellent idea. (When asked what he thought of Western civilization)  –Mohandas Gandhi

My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group. There was much less competition there.  — Indira Gandhi

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.  — Edward Abbey

Adventure is the result of poor planning.  — Col. Blatchford Snell

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.  — Erica Jong

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.  — Wes Izzard

A friend of mine told me to shoot first and ask questions later. I was going to ask him why, but I had to shoot him.   — John Wayne

A grain of wisdom is worth an ounce of knowledge, which is worth a ton of data.  — Neil Larson

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. — Saul Bellow

A high-school teacher, after all, is a person deputized by the rest of us to explain to the young what sort of world they are living in, and to defend, if possible, the part their elders are playing in it.  — Emile Capouya

A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.  — Austin O’Malley

Alcohol is a good preservative for everything but brains.   — Mary Pettibone Poole

All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.   — Julius Caesar

All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner.   — Red Skelton

All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.   — Jane Wagner

All things are possible until proved impossible — and even the impossible may only be so as of now.  — Pearl S. Buck

A man can fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame someone else.   — Waite Phillips

Americans are people who laugh at African witch doctors and spend 100 million dollars on fake reducing systems.    — L.L. Levinson

An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.   — Orlando A. Battista

Remember folks, vote well and vote often.

So, at 6:55, Eclectic Music Lover was ahead.  I wonder, to an extent, if this was voted for because no one was sure what it meant.  Well, I’d love to help you out, but I’m just guessing myself.  To me, it means that I love music, but good luck guessing what music I’m going to like.

Of course, that also means I have no idea what kind of questions you’d ask an eclectic music lover but, hey, that’s your problem.  I’ll just answer to the best of my knowledge.

Being an eclectic music lover does not mean my knowledge of music is vast or endless.  It just means it defies prediction.  For instance, I like some classical music.  Admittedly, I favorite music that goes with singing (since I can’t sight read or play any instruments, but I can sing), but I like the Firebird Suite and “Night on Bald Mountain.”  I like Beethoven.  Of course, I also like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Fresh Aire, too, so there you have it.  But, really, my favorite classical music is opera and lieder, particularly Mozart and Schubert respectively.  And, my favorite classical singer of all time is a much-maligned baritone named Nelson Eddy.  If you want to know more about him, I strongly recommend reading my good friend Eleanor’s website on Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald .  I have copies of hundreds of his recordings, many of his films and, despite the fact he died before I was born, I’m a died in the wool fan.  I fell in love with him showboating in the song “The Owl and the Bobcat” in Naughty Marietta (which you can hear here, at 1:57 where I realized he was a bit more than a decent voice), but I completely adored him singing the “Song of the Volga Boatman ” in Balalaika (which is still my favorite arrangement of the song).  I’ve embedded it for your enjoyment.

But that’s not all.  If you go through my MP3 player, you’ll find Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline and the Carpenters, Prince, Michael Jackson, Jump 5, Pink, Destiny’s Child, Anne Murray, Kelly Clarkson, Loverboy, Journey, Yes, perhaps you’re noticing a lack of rhyme and reason.  This will probably become more pronounced when I include select songs from Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables and Jeckyll and Hyde.  And tell you that it also includes near complete collections of Abba and Backstreet Boys.  Yep, I like me that harmonizin’.  You’ll find Air Supply and Bon Jovi, Styx and Eurythmics, heck most anything (except rap, which I don’t actually count as music - sorry) as long as it’s singable.  Heck, I have multiple copies of two (but only two) Christmas carols: Carol of the Bells and Pat-a-pan

So, now you know.  Guess we won’t be swappin’ mp3 players.

New blogpoll is up so, feel free to vote often and make it interesting.

Also, I just noticed that this is my 150th post on this Blog.  Yay me?

Wow, folks, I pulled a complete absent-minded dimwit ploy and managed to go on a three day business trip with my laptop but without it’s power cord.  Fortunately for me, my daughter had used it last, also without the cord so it was dead as a doornail precluding my using it for five minutes to let anyone know the score.  I also managed to take the wrong cell phone charger and leave my eBook reader cord at home, too.  Fortunately, those both managed to work the whole time without food. Yay!

But, I did manage to get home just in time to write up a blog, and, yes, it’s a stolen comment blog, this time from a comment I left on gather.com (which I used to be very involved with, but, really, not much any more).  Some of you may recall when I explained my confusion on why there was so much antipathy towards fat people, why, in a world where people are very conscious of prejudice and snap judgments, the harshest and most vicious comments for fat people are still generally accepted.  Apparently, it’s still fine to judge a person by what they look like if they look fat.

Let my preface my response by saying I am not a fan or an enemy of Jessica Simpson.  I don’t know much if anything about her.  I’ve never seen a movie she was in (as far as I know) and don’t know anything about who she is as a person.  The real rage, apparently, was that she was such a celebrity based on nothing but her looks.  Alright, I can find that irksome in general, too, but, excuse me, why blame the individual involved?  She’s not a celebrity by putting a gun to anyone’s head.  Regular people and the media have glorified physical beauty and imbued those that have it with characteristics that have nothing to do with beauty.  How do you blame those glorified by the frenzy of others?

As for her becoming fat, are you kidding me?  I’ve been told she was 135 and is a size 8.  Is that what our country has come to?  Vilifying someone for being of perfectly healthy proportions?  She can’t be beautiful at that size?  What the hell?  You want to talk about something unhealthy as an example for our children, how about someone gaining sufficient weight to make them a normal size and then disappearing from public view out of shame.

To be honest, the fact that she has asserted she has no issues with her size to me is a good example for our children.  My teenage daughter is a size 3 and still constantly fretting about being too fat.  That scares the crap out of me.

Nor do I find it less reprehensible to rush to negative judgment on someone’s appearance than rushing to positive judgment when someone is pretty.  Isn’t the media frenzy still not Ms. Simpson’s doing?  Surely, I think we could all agree she’d just as soon the subject were dropped.  What’s with the hatred and anger and rage?

Surely, at some point, we, as a culture, will be grown up enough to do better than deciding who someone is at a glance.

And, you folks that think one can “shame” someone into becoming skinnier, our culture has been doing that for decades.  Clearly, it isn’t working.  Maybe it’s time for some other method.

And, since this is an interesting topic and I’m not around much, I’ll include some other exceptional African Americans born before the Civil War who accomplished things despite the many obstacles before them.

Lewis Latimer (1848-1928) was born twelve years before the Civil War, but he spent the bulk of his years drafting and inventing with some of the finest minds of that period.  Born in Massachusetts to a former slave, he learned mechanical drafting working in a legal patent office.  He invented a toilet system for railway cars, did considerable work on incandescent lamps and carbon filaments, and was also the draftsman for Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patent applcation.  He was the only African American as part of the Edison Pioneers, the team of exceptional long term inventors at Edison’s facilities.  In 1890 he published *Incandescent Electric Lighting*, a technical engineering book which became a guide for lighting engineers.  Did I mention he also painted, played the flute, wrote poetry and plays, taught mechanical drafting, English and drawing to immigrants?

I know, I know, you all thought I forgot it was Black History Month.  Well, I didn’t.  I get distracted here and there, but I don’t forget where we came from and all those who helped bring us to where we are now.  Today, I’m going to talk about some of the earliest African American scientists and inventors:  Benjamin Banneker and Norbert Rilleau.

Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) was a freeman with an interesting history and a interest in reading the stars that may be traceable to his African roots.  His grandmother purchased a slave, Banneka, perhaps from the Dogon tribe, who was so useful that she freed and married him.  The daughter of that union bore Benjamin to a first generation slave who fled his owner.  

In between working on his farm, Benjamin took advantage of a school run by a local Quaker as well as his extensive library.  Farming curtailed the education, but not Benjamin’s tinkering.  It is believed that Benjamin Banneker built the a clock out of wood and using a borrowed pocketwatch as a model.  He completed the clock at the age of 21 and it worked until his death.  

 His knowledge of astronomy helped him help the team to survey the area where Washington DC now stands.  He also used his knowledge to predict eclipses in his ephemeris, published as a six year series of almanacs much promoted by abolitionist movements and showcasing other African American talent.

I also thought I’d include Norbert Rilleaux , another American freeman, born in Louisiana to a white plantation owner and a free blackLouisiana Creole named Constance Vivant (which is just fun to say).  His family was fairly well placed and his cousin was Edgar Degas.  His father was also an engineer and inventor much like Norbert was.  Norbert was well educated in local Catholic schools and then in France, where he studied physics, mechanics, and engineering and eventually taught at his own school, École Centrale, instructing in applied mechanics. 

Originally an expert in steam engines, he used his expertise to devise the mutiple effect evaporator that not only revolutionized the sugar refining industry but is also used even today for other applications where large scale evaporation is necessary.  He also devised a method to reduce Yellow Fever in New Orleans that was rejected for political reasons (though a very similar method was implemented at a later date).  Disheartened by the racism in America, Norbert eventually returned to France where he spent the bulk of his remaining life.  

 I will be out of town the next three days, so I can’t promise to update as often as I generally do, but I will put up what I can.

One aspect of character building I didn’t mention before, but that’s important, is appearance.  One reason I don’t is that I don’t give it the kind of emphasis many writers do.  In fact, my physical descriptions of people are few and far between.  Why?

Beauty, of course, depends on the eye that beholds it.  And, more than that, there are so many kinds of beauty inside and out.  If you’re going to pick a beauty for your character, start with the inside.  The outside will take care of itself, believe me.

Given that it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d provide quotes on romance and love.  Of course, since I tend to favor sarcasm and cynicism, some of them might not be quite as romantic as you might have been expecting.  In any case, here they are.

Kagura: Here, Kyo! A chocolate heart stuffed with my love, all for YOU!

Kyo: KEEP IT! What man in his right mind would eat that girly sugary crap?!

Tohru: Ummm… Kyo? Do you really not like chocolates?

Kyo: NO! I hate it!

Kagura: (creepy voice) SHUT UP AND EAT IT!

Kyo: AH!

Kagura: I said EAT, damn you!

Kyo: NO!

Kagura: EAT!

Kyo: NO means NO, woman!

Kagura: EAT IT!!!

Kyo: You’ll have to kill me first!

                                    -From Fruits Basket anime

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

-          Albert Camus

Where there is great love there are always miracles.

- Willa Cather

One expresses well the love he does not feel.
– J.A. Karr

Women should be obscene and not heard.
- Groucho Marx.

Damn it, sir, it is your duty to get married. You can’t be always living for pleasure.
- Oscar Wilde

Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he’ll fall asleep before you finish saying it.                 - Helen Roland

Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffer-ring.
- Emo Phillips

I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home, which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night.

- Marie Corelli

My wife has a slight speech impediment. Every now and then she stops to breathe.
- Jack Durante

The only time my wife and I had a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge signed the divorce papers.- Woody Allen

Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love, though I’d stepped in it a few times.
- Rita Rudner

I’ve had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn’t.
- Patrick Murray

Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and give her a house.
- Lewis Grizzard

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.

                                                                        –Doug Larsen

Common sense could prevent most divorces; also a lot of marriages.

                                                                        –Joe Moore

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If I were, I would be looking up from a pool of blood and hearing my wife say: ‘How do I reload this thing?

                        – Rep. Dick Armey (when asked what he’d do in Clinton’s position)

 ”My wife is a sex object - every time I ask for sex, she objects” — Les Dawson

A woman who makes you feel good about yourself is never homely.  After a while, you realize, she always was beautiful.  You just hadn’t noticed it at first.

                                                                        –Robert Heinlein 

 Do enjoy them and remember to vote for next week’s ask column.

Wow, when someone comes through to cheat, they don’t leave anything to chance.  Or we have a multipersonality that let each persona vote.  Well, no matter, the bottom line is that, as of 7:12 Central time, Armchair Psychologist has won by a landslide (54 votes).  I hope those voting intend to ask a lot of questions.  I love questions.

Let me know and, as usual, vote well and vote often.

Well, it’s thieving Thursday and I have many choices.  However, I kinda have to go with a comment I made with regards to (a) something I never ever do in a book and (b) one of my all time biggest pet peeves in writing, which I’ll get to in a moment.

See, my friend, flitting on fiction , like so many of us, was commenting on reading Twilight , where she didn’t get the appeal.  I actually got the appeal, even though, on second read through, I got the flaws, too.  But she also noted that having someone able to read your thoughts and who came in to watch you sleep was creepy.  OK, putting it that way, it IS creepy in a Santa Claus kind of way, especially since our hero in Twilight is the one just saying “no.”  (And, no, no more spoilers).

I noted that there’s a fine line, actually, between romance and creepy and we see it all the time.  If he’s hopelessly in love with you and follows you on dates, dreaming about you from afar, it’s pretty easy to call it “creepy”.  If he follows you around to make sure you’re alright but also because he’s jealous of other guys even though he is your guy, that can be creepy or romantic depending on who’s doing the judging.  We can’t flirt with other fellows to get our guys jealous and not think it’s at least a little romantic.  And, let’s face it, that’s pretty common.

Jealousy, in small amounts, is sweet and romantic.  Big doses and it become creepy/dangerous/onerous.  Unfortunately, that distinction is often lost in books and other media, where things are portrayed black and white and where what is good and what is bad is more a matter of who’s doing it rather than what they’re doing.  Which brings me back to my pet peeve.

Rape.

See, I have two rules in writing.  One is, every longish work has to have at least one cat.

The other is rapists are always bad guys and die by the end of the book.  Always.  Those that target children don’t die pleasantly.

Why so vehement?  Two reasons.  Rape is one of those crimes that, in my opinion, never has an excuse.  I’m not talking about two sweaty teenagers where one (or both) is technically underage; in fact, it’s frustration to me that so many things get dumped into the same “term” - it cheapens it.  I’m talking situations where someone uses a woman’s (or a child or another man’s) body against her/his will.  I’m a relatively non-violent person (which, given I’ve written a book in the sword and sorcery genre, may be surprising), but I believe there is such a thing as justifiable homicide and justification for certain types of violence.  I just can’t think of a justifiable reason for rape.

As a woman with an ultra-feminist father, I haven’t faced it personally, but my father gave me just about every bit of rape literature he could find.  In his opinion, rape was the worst of the worst and he wanted me to be able to protect myself, which may be why I haven’t faced it personally.  But, if I have a well-ingrained prejudice, it’s against rapists.

The other reason?  I’m am appalled, disgusted, nauseated and dismayed at the tendency of women who write fiction for women to glorify and excuse away rape as romantic.  What kind of message do we send to impressionable young minds when we tell them that someone who can’t help himself and forces himself on you is a romantic hero, perfect to spend the rest of your life with?  And we wonder why date rape is so prevalent especially among our youth.

You want to be romantic, build a character who respects women, who is looking for a partner, someone who can challenge his mind not just inflame his body.  Inflaming one’s body is fine, too, but you can’t build a healthy romance on sex alone.  Protecting a woman from his overt desires, isn’t that really more romantic than overpowering her reservations through force?  So, sure, I could see Edward as creepy, but he never hurts her.  And that’s a pretty powerful message to send to girls who could use it.

And, yeah, I’m not objective

Also, if you haven’t read flit’s short story, Leaving , you should.  Seriously.

And vote.  There’s hardly any action going this week.  Don’t make me sick that baby on you!

One thing about that characteristic=character tendency that I discussed yesterday is that it can be utilized for good effect in fiction.  Which I’ll get to in a moment.

However, one thing that can be very effective is playing with the perceptions of one character with regards to another.  In books, you have characters doing what I’m telling people here not to do, judge people by a single characteristic, by what they are rather than who they are.  If you allow the reader to use their own judgment, you can provide a contrast between who the character is and who the other character(s) perceive him or her to be.  Aside from being useful in character development, it also can add to character interaction and plot development.  It also can be pivotal to another of Stephanie’s rules of great characters.  (The last rule , if you missed it, is that people who are nice to some people while treating others poorly are not nice people).

A great character isn’t static.  They must grow.

And that’s how I see it.

So, yesterday, I talked about expecting way more from celebrities than we ever had a right to as well as judging them on actions and characteristics that have nothing to do with whatever made them famous.  You might have wondered what that had to do with science or science fiction or writing or whatever.

Well, I’m getting to that.  See, the other side of that coin and tendency has a great deal to do with how people judge a person and why that’s different from how they judge a character.  See, in real life, people can be and often are as shallow in judging face to face people as they are in determining the actual worth of a celebrity.

Want the love of your life? Look for a cute butt.  Want someone to be a true friend?  Pick a popular kid.  Want to find an honest car salesman?  Pick the one that tells you what you want to hear.  WTF???  When it comes to thinking things through on what’s really important in another person, sometimes we are clueless.

Sadly, some people take that limited ability to judge the character of people with them as they read books or watch movies.  Handsome face, perky breasts: perfect mate!  They confuse rich with worthy, cultured with classy, show with substance.  They confuse poor with abused and pretty with innocent.  They confuse religious with virtuous and crusty with misunderstood.

But, as a writer, you don’t have to (or a discerning reader/watcher), you don’t have to.  Demand more!  For a start, there are some dos and don’ts this little character writer/reader follows.  That doesn’t mean that your list will be the same, but it’s mine.  And, since I’m like that, I’m going to be touching on this for the next few blogs, skipping my normal weekend specialties (probably).  To me, character is important and good characters are priceless.  And here’s the first one, courtesy of Dave Barry.

“A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person” - Dave Barry

That’s right.  People who treat some people well and others like dirt aren’t nice people.  They can be effective characters, but their roles as protagonists should be limited.  They aren’t nice people.  If you want to make one of these not nice people a protagonist, you should, in my opinion, either make ‘em grow up to realize the errors of their ways or you should rethink it.  Now, you can be a protagonist treating all people poorly (albeit, a difficult one) or treating all people well - or perhaps “fairly” is a better term.  But, if you choose to treat some people with respect and others without, there’s no really good way for you to be the good guy.  In my opinion.

Does that mean your protagonist can’t kick butt?  No defending oneself from bodily harm or rescuing others from misuse isn’t “treating someone like dirt” - that’s more like justice.  But it’s also a reaction to what someone has done, what they have shown themselves to be.  That’s entirely different than treating a woman like a possession or a servant like a piece of furniture.  That’s entirely different from treating a minority like a criminal or a someone poor like a leper.  Or even treating someone fat as a loser or someone ugly as a fool.  When we treat people based on a label instead of as a person, we are doing a bad thing.

It’s OK to learn better over time.  Not so much to let it be.  And that’s how I see it.

By all means, feel free to disagree.  Don’t worry, more of my opinions on character development will be coming.

Before doing anything else, you should got over to flit’s blog, flitting on fiction and read the short story she put up today.  It is, in my opinion, one of the five finest short stories I’ve ever read.  And I’m a connoisseur.  I love the classics like O’Henry and Sake, and some gems written by people no one’s heard of.  I can’t think of a short story that has impressed me more (or that makes me cry every time I read it).  Seriously.  Read it.Back to our regularly scheduled blog…Someone explain this drive for so many to idolize celebrity.  Or, more precisely, assign character traits to someone based on entirely different characteristics.  By the way, this is all my opinion, so just punctuate all the sentences with “in my opinion” as you read it.

I’ll give you an example.  Think about the movie Amadeus.  Here is this individual who maybe have been the greatest musical prodigy that ever lived, writing symphonies and operas while still a child.  Yet, Salieri’s opinion of Mozart (not his work) is completely tainted when he finds out Mozart’s an immature self-absorbed, impractical ass.  If Mozart had been a ditch-digger, no one would have cared if he were a jerk or had all kinds of personality flaws, but, since he produced such magnificent music, he should be some sort of paragon all the way through.  My question is: why?If he had been a saint walking the earth, would his music have been any sweeter?  (Is that possible?)  If he had spent his off-hours playing Sweeney Todd to street urchins, would his music have been less brilliant?  Why do we impose judgments on things that don’t have anything to do with us?

You made her cry.  One of the cutest babies ever, making her baby wisdom and insight available for all and she gets four sets of questions (and only one had more than one question).  There were 52 votes for cute baby on the poll.  Sure, some people probably forgot to come back but 48?  You’d think she could get at least one question per vote.  I mean, if you’re willing to cheat to get her out here, really, you should have saved up a few questions.

 She’s devastated.

 She’s probably wondering why she bothered to get up from her nap.  I can hear her blowing raspberries as we speak.  I mean look at this cutie pie:

Are you saying this baby isn’t adorable enough?

Look into those clear and calico eyes and tell me they’re not brimming with baby wisdom and self-awareness.

 Operators are standing by to field your questions.  Remember folks, she’s waiting to hear from you.  JD, Lola, flit and Bob are all in good graces with the Roxinator, but the rest of you, tsk, tsk, tsk!