Using Science Fiction in the Classroom. Plus Media Thoughts - and Coolstuff!

== Using Science Fiction to Excite the Future (minds) ==

Young people - and the teachers and librarians who work with them - can benefit from the inspiration and imagination of Science Fiction.

Do you know any educators who might want to learn more about the genre of literature that is fascinated with change and looking to the future? And that does more than any other to inspire children to strive for success?

* Teachers interested in using Science Fiction should check out the extensive resources at www.AboutSF.com to access excellent materials that teach about the literary genre of bold ideas -- one willing to discuss the inevitability of change.

*Also, see a collection of articles assembled at Teaching Science Fiction -- with links and resources for incorporating Science Fiction into the classroom to improve literacy, reading and writing skills.

*An article, Science Fiction Resources for Young Adult Librarians, describes several ongoing efforts to help educators learn about this field. It includes a short note, as well, from one of your favorite authors. On my website, I have an article, Using Science Fiction to Help Turn Kids on to Reading ...and the Future!

 *Science Fiction can be used to illustrate scientific concepts. See this collection of resources related to Using Science Fiction to Teach Science, with links to stories and books that may help convey concepts in physics and astronomy as well as the life sciences. See also a list of Movies that help teach science.

*Julie Czernada's website has a wealth of useful resources for teachers, as well as anthologies for use in the classroom.

*Plus see a list of my personal favorite novels for teens: recommended Science Fiction novels for Young Adults.

Sometimes the right book can ignite a fire that lasts a lifetime -- you never know.

==A Trailer for Existence==

Before diving into media and strange science, here’s a tentative announcement.

I’m thinking about a contest to create a mini-trailer  for my new novel (coming in June) - a great big near-future science fiction saga called EXISTENCE.

I've already sent feelers to the Computer Graphics society, whose members made some shorts based on my uplift books for an earlier contest. I’m also pondering a call for folks interested in doing a live action version.  Like this one done by my friend Jeff Carlson for his terrific book Plague Year.

Can't afford to offer a huge prize for the winner and time is short. But I can promise a nibble... plus publicity and loads of fun. And a chance to read the novel early, for free! Starting with these novellas already posted online.

The Smartest Mob (a parable about times to come!)
Shoresteading --a novella
Aficionado --a novella from Existence.

Later Note: You can now see the marvelous trailer, by web artist Patrick Farley!

== Fanboy Gushing about Firefly ==

Okay, I have spoken before about that great - if tragically brief - sci fi miniseries.  My kids (and wife) adore Firefly. But one episode stands out, written by Joss Whedon himself.  “Mrs. Reynolds” is just plain dazzlingly well-written from beginning to end.  Every sentence - even those just tossed aside - sparkles with cleverness and fun and even (sometimes) real depth.  That’s a fellow I’d buy several beers.

== More Science! ==

* A hundred years late, is Oswald Spengler finally proving right about the Decline of the West? Take this factoid:

”It isn't just Americans concerned about science, though Europeans seem a little dramatic about it.   Currently, America can only employ 16% of its Ph.D.s in academia, what most academics regard as 'science', so there is a glut of post-docs and not enough grants to give them all jobs, but Europeans have a different sort of problem - young people are not going into science at all.”

* In about 18 months a newfound object that’s probably a small, compact gas cloud, will draw near the cosmic orifice at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Its orbit will carry it to within about 36 light-hours of the black hole, roughly twice the distance now separating NASA's Voyager 1  from the sun. If it is a cloud, then some of the material will get sucked in! (A mere star would likely plunge on by, in a very tight orbit.) Very exciting, if this makes the Beast come alive!

* To gather material from asteroids or comets (re my doctoral thesis!), NASA is developing a sample-collecting space harpoon which could be projected "with surgical precision" from a spacecraft hovering above the target.  Seriously, this is what I would have done with my life, if you folks hadn’t bribed me into the arts, instead.

* Best-yet candidate "life-world"? The host star lies about 600 light-years away from us toward the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus. The star, a G5 star, has a mass and a radius only slightly smaller than that of our Sun, a G2 star. As a result, it is about 25% less luminous than the Sun. The planet orbits the G5 star with an orbital period of 290 days, compared to 365 days for the Earth, at a distance about 15% closer to its star than the Earth from the Sun. This results in the planet's balmy temperature of around 72 degrees Fahrenheit.  It orbits in the middle of the star's habitable zone,

This new exoplanet is the smallest-radius planet discovered in the habitable zone of any star to date. It is about 2.4 times larger than that of the Earth, putting it in the class of exoplanets known as super-Earths. Alert! When you read estimated “temperatures” for such planets, remember it is the raw, black-body calculation based on the albedo of rock and the net insolation at that distance from its star. As we’ve seen on Earth, Venus and Mars, the greenhouse effects of an atmosphere change everything!


== The Frontiers of Life! ==

* Know any researchers or organizations that might be very interested in a possible Conference on Uplift?  Yes, regarding “the plausibility of altering the problem-solving or linguistic intelligence of higher animals or humans.”  Oh it would spark a HUGE row! And get everybody on TV.

* Dolphin language? Here’s new research that pretty much verifies my own hypotheses. “Researchers in the United States and Great Britain have made a breakthrough in deciphering dolphin language in which a series of eight objects have been sonically identified by dolphins. Team leader, Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com, ‘spoke’ to dolphins with the dolphin’s own sound picture words. Dolphins in two separate research centers understood the words, presenting convincing evidence that dolphins employ a universal “sono-pictorial” language of communication.

“...(he) recorded dolphin echolocation sounds as they reflected off a range of eight submersed objects, including a plastic cube, a toy duck and a flowerpot. He discovered that the reflected sounds actually contain sound pictures and when replayed to the dolphin in the form of a game, the dolphin was able to identify the objects with 86% accuracy, providing evidence that dolphins understand echolocation sounds as pictures.  Kassewitz then drove to a different facility and replayed the sound pictures to a dolphin that had not previously experienced them. The second dolphin identified the objects with a similar high success rate.”

Sonic glyphs based on shape reflections? Quick!  To the Predictions Registry!

* Proof that the unconscious ponders complex matters that affect WHEN or IF we consciously become aware of things.

* Woolly mammoth to be brought back to life from cloned bone marrow 'within five years'.  Um... predicted in both EARTH and  EXISTENCE.

* Remember the “arsenic life” that was claimed from a poison lake in California?  A year later, it is still very interesting, but arsenic has NOT replaced phosphorus in the crucial sites along the spine of DNA. Hyped up? Well... probably.

* Two bitingly funny comics online: A History of the World (according to The History Channel) from Tree Lobsters, and Life After College, from Abstruse Goose.

== Politically Relevant ==

* Federal regulators have tentatively approved a nuclear reactor designed by Westinghouse Electric Co. that could power the first atomic plants built from scratch in the U.S. in a generation.

* In terms of weather, 2011 has made it into the record books. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that during this year, there have been 12 different weather disasters that cost more than $1 billion. The previous record was nine in 2008.

Given these two facts -- um, who are the flexible pragmatists and who are the dogmatists who drove us off a cliff in the first decade of the century?

== And the Land of the Bizarre ==

* Afterlife is a system that involves turning a deceased human body back into its core chemical energy. The decedent is placed into the special Afterlife coffin which features small drains in the bottom. The drains lead to microbial fuel cells beneath the coffin that thereupon charge batteries that loved ones can recover and emblem "Dad" and use for some purpose stated in dad's will.

* Smell your way to intuition? "Participants in the study assessed, with some degree of accuracy, how outgoing, anxious or dominant people were after only taking a whiff of their clothes. The study is the first to test whether personality traits can be discerned through body odor."

== Useful?  Or Chilling? ==

* LocAid can use your full cell phone number to figure out exactly where you are right now. Banks and card issuers are interested in checking where their customers are—as a way to reduce fraud—and of retailers interested in sending deals to people nearby.  Currently, the company claims to have a very strongly protective privacy policy in which each request for the info must be presented to the cell phone owner on an opt-in basis.  A reasonable model, if it works and if it is maintained with power in our hands.

* New research published in Science suggests it may be possible to use MRI to induce brain activity patterns to improve performance on tasks involving visual performance, such as playing the piano. This worked even when the subjects weren’t aware of what they were learning. Inspiring or creepy?

== The Paranoia Lamp is Lit! ==

"The commentator says there's "absolutely no explanation" for the nearly Mercury-size mystery object other than that it's a spaceship. "What object in space cloaks itself and doesn't appear until it gets hit by energy from the sun?" siniXster asked.”

Hmmm. well, the official explanation is convincing.  Notice how the “ship” is aimed right at Mercury, and happens to lie over the pixels where the planet had been the previous day or two.  The supports the STEREO spacecraft managers’ explanation that they “subtract the previous day’s pixels in order to enhance the coronal mass (which is normally quite dim). That subtraction creates a visual artifact where the planet had been, the day before.

Still, these “Aha!” moments are fun! They show how excitable amateurs with keen eyes can interact non-destructively with the professionals.  That is exactly the process for a society that blends common-sense skepticism up-top with a T-Cell approach for swarming those low-probability events... one out of a million of which might turn out to be way-huge.

What is criminal and insane has been the recent trend by cynical media to pit us against each other. And especially the recent campaign to turn 1/3 of Americans against every profession of intellect, knowledge and skill.

Space, Moon, Mars, Artificial Intelligence! Brains! And using SF to help kids.

I was invited by Astronaut Nicholas Patrick to attend his coming shuttle launch... one of the rare night takeoffs. I am sure I will kick myself for decades for turning down this spectacular opportunity to watch one of the greatest sights or/off Earth! But my Google trip, plus other matters, just made it hard to drop everything and go.

Nick is carrying draft copies of some of my chapters and stories into orbit with him, though. So I will be along for the ride.

(Another astronaut, Mike Foale, once left a manuscript of mine in the abandoned Spektr capsule on Mir, on the day a cargo ship collided with the station, and there it languished for a decade before burning up. A couple of days later, Mike’s wife asked me to fedex a replacement, to be sent up with a new toothbrush and sleeping bag. To this day, I am the only author to have his work sent into space as “emergency cargo.”)

In any event, to Nick and his comrades, Godspeed and much success! Return home safely. You are the slender grasp that we still have upon our dreams.

===  ===  ===

Other related news. Yesterday, NASA released photographs that reveal bright new deposits in two gullies on Mars, suggesting water has flowed in brief spurts on Mars within the last seven years. The Planetary Society congratulates the Mars Global Surveyor team for yet another significant scientific discovery. The fact that Mars Global Surveyor lasted so far beyond its projected lifetime has allowed this type of discovery that requires observing the same area over and over again. If this discovery holds, it is very significant. Only a few years ago, the common belief was that liquid water last flowed on Mars over a billion years ago. Now, we see evidence that liquid water may be flowing today and may currently exist in the subsurface. Glimmers of possibility.

Then there is the plan to “return to the moon” by 2020, only fifty or so years after we left. I once worked for James Arnold, who predicted that there would be ice in the lunar south pole crater, where they are now thinking of planting the base. I heartily approve.

And I wish we could add one month’s Iraq War budget to this endeavor, in order to make other fine dreams come true.

And another months worth for energy research. And another to study climate change. And another vs our kids’ mounting debt. And another to rebuild the reserves. And another for readiness. All the things we have neglected in favor of the war game of a pack of nasty little boys.

Heck. At $20 million a day, let’s take ONE DAY’s worth of Iraq wastage and just give a million dollars to twenty americans. It would do more good.

But no, let’s get back to science....

===  ===  ===

When Vernor Vinge and I had dinner with investment guru John Mauldin and his son back in July, we discussed my opinion that -- even as raw hardware -- the brain is radically underestimated. I feel, for example, that Artificial Intelligence (AI) zealots like Ray Kurzweil steeply underestimate the difficulty of matching our brain computational power, and therefore the difficulty we face in matching it.

For one thing, the main estimates for “computer break-even” are based upon the assumption that our brains compute only at synapses. These flashy junctures between axons and dendrites are said to play a role somewhat analogous to the on-off nature of binary switches, in a computer. And so, extrapolating according to Moore’s Law, AI optimists estimate that a supercomputer will have the same number of “switches” as a human brain has synapses, around the year 2025 or so.

Ahem, well for one thing, that won’t make a bit of difference if advances in SOFTWARE don’t rapidly catch up. (My Google visit had something to do with hopeful ways to accomplish that.)

And yet, even if software advances are prodigious... and assuming that a lot of our brain power is redundant or “wasted... even so, I am a bit dubious. This skepticism is based upon my own crackpot notion that synapses aren’t everything.

Yes, they can reconfigure and re-wire and strengthen or weaken and do many non-linear things that binary switches cannot. Another reason to expect to need MORE binary switches than we have synapses. Maybe many more.

But even that isn’t my chief reason.

The way I see it, this model neglects to consider the neuron itself, as a -- well -- cellular automaton... or independent calculating entity... that follows its own complex set of rules in reacting to environmental stimuli. STimuli that include the state and actions of its neighbors, but also chemical washes in the surrounding substrate and so on. There may be hundreds of complex rule sets, each of them interacting with each other non-linearly and mediated/moderated by INTRACELLULAR structures that we, even now, know very little about.

If I am right about this, each neuron could have thousands of potential inner conditions!

Moreover, it makes some sense that, while synapses may be important -- firing a “standing wave” of consciousness and rapid calculation -- memory itself (at least the long term kind) has no business being stored in transitory flashes.

A much more likely place for long term memory to be stored would be within the neurons themselves. (Consider, people who receive powerful electric shocks probably experience disruption of vast numbers of neuron firings. Yet many of them recover without severe long term memory loss, even if short term losses are severe.)

Vernor responded to my hypothesis with skepticism. And yet, always honest and openminded, he wrote to me recently that ”... I ran across researcher(s) who figure that even a single neuron might have the computational competence of a supercomputer.” Here is the reference:

Rasmussen, S. _et al._, "Computational Connectionism within Neurons: a Model of Cytoskeletal Automata Subserving Neural Networks", in _Emergent Computation_, Stephanie Forrest, ed., pp428-449, MIT Press, 1991.

Yipes. I never claimed exactly supercomputer status for neurons. Nevertheless, I have long believed that the available neuronal response set is not JUST in the 1-to-1,000 synapses that they link to. Those synapses don't change position all that often. And they don't add up to enough variability to explain the depth and richness of human memory... at least, not by my figuring.

Reiterating: what could possibly switch very rapidly is the internal rules followed by each neuron itself. There needn't be that many of these variable rule sets. Say, a hundred, for the combined flexibility of response to be tremendous. Maybe on the scale of an old hand calculator. Per cell. If so, zowee.

And it means that calculations showing digital computers reaching our level of computational power by 2025 are way off -- maybe by maybe a century!

-------

(Dang, that coulda made a good commentary column in a journal like WIRED and I’d’a got paid for it. Some folks deliver less than that. I hope you guys are appreciative.)

----- Science Fiction and Education ----

From time to time, the topic of Education comes up. And people sure have strong opinions!

One of my own endeavors has been to help promote SCIENCE FICTION as a resource and helper in stimulating agile thinking in today’s students.

Are any of you at all interested in this?

The latest effort can be viewed at the AboutSF site, where a variety of lesson plans and other resources are now gathered in a convenient place.

One example curriculum site that was developed for The Postman is way cool. (For the sake of safe archiving, would anyone care to file away a source code backup of this entire site? Just asking. I think the creator is retiring. Would be a pity if it vanished.)

I confess I helped to fund and establish AboutSF. Look especially at the Speculative Speakers portion, that can get great authors to speak at your local (or national) events.

(Of course, if it is a BIG event, that can afford a top-rated national speaker.....)

Back to education and science fiction.... hey we could really use skilled volunteers. (Especially teachers!) Those who are interested in getting active in this effort are invited to visit the “Reading For The Future” web site. http://readingforfuture.com/

See also a collection of articles on my website related to teaching Science Fiction and Using Science Fiction to Teach Science.

A Call for Help From Experts/Sci Fi Fans... (plus misc items)

I am helping the University of Kansas Center for the Study of Science Fiction set up an online Science Fiction Resource Center, including the following projects:

* Helping authors and fans to set up tests for the Accelerated Reader Program that currently controls the reading choices of tens of millions of American school kids. AR lists in most states are currently profoundly bigoted against science fiction.

* A new Speaker’s Bureau for Science Fiction Authors and Futurists that will offer a web site where anyone from a local librarian to a Fortune 500 CEO might search for speakers/consultants who have something to say about tomorrow. The database (any experts?) will be sortable by distance from the venue (by zip code), topic, range of speaker’s fee (adjusted for travel) and some other factors. This should have existed during the run up to 2000. Experts on database management, or people with serious experience in public relations, would be welcome to help out.

* A new accredited course for teachers, educating them about SF and how it might help to reach students. (I was once quite active in this. I formerly sponsored a contest aimed at using new tools - and science fiction - to benefit both teachers and kids. The resource list (and concept) are still useful!

*See a collection of resources for Teaching Science Fiction
as well as Using Science Fiction to Teach Science.

Those who are interested in the general topic mixing Science Fiction and Education might consider joining the Reading for the Future discussion group. (Or telling your SF-enthusiast teacher pals.)

Sometimes the topic also comes up on the “Brin-L” discussion list.

==Finally, some misc items==

A massive global increase in the number of strong hurricanes over the past 35 years is being blamed on global warming, by the most detailed study yet.   The US scientists warn that Katrina-strength hurricanes could become the norm. Worldwide since the 1970s, there has been a near doubling in the number of Category 4 and 5 storms – the strength that saw Hurricane Katrina do such damage to the US Gulf coastline late in August 2005. Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, says the trend is global, has lasted over several decades and is connected to a steady worldwide increase in tropical sea temperatures. Because of all these factors, it is unlikely to be due to any known natural fluctuations in climate such as El Niño, the North Atlantic Oscillation or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Now here’s a creepy item that should go in a novel. UC Berkeley researchers were able to take several 10-minute sound recordings of users typing at a keyboard, feed the audio into a computer, and use an algorithm to recover up to 96 percent of the characters entered. The researchers used spectrum analysis, statistical learning theory, spelling and grammar checks, and learning trials to obtain...

And now, under the category of “how much noise would this have caused, if it happened under Clinton?” Largest Theft in History: $1 Billion Missing in Iraq .The money missing from all ministries under the interim Iraqi government appointed by the US in June 2004 may turn out to be close to $2bn. Of a military procurement budget of $1.3bn, some $200m may have been spent on usable equipment, though this is a charitable view, say officials.

As GOP senator Everett Dirksen once said (back when “conservatives” believed in fiscal responsibility): “A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon, you’re talking about real money!”