Podcast Up!!!

It was waaaaayyy harder than I imagined, but the very first podcast episode of The Longevity Thesis is up!!!!! It can be found at:

http://jrahn.podshow.com

I did have fun amidst all the frustrated swearing, but in the end, I'm quite pleased with the result. I had the music recorded last summer when the promo vid was made, but I still had to read the chapters and record that, edit out all the goof ups, and put in some promo spots for friends. Cellist Aurealis has agreed to play some more Tchaikovsky for me, this time on the cello instead of a keyboard. It's gonna be awesome!!!

For those who are interested, the sound recording and editing was done using a free linux-based program called Audacity (have I mentioned before my unending love of all things open source?) and later on, Justyn, the EDGE marketing manager pointed me towards a nifty little program called the Levelator to smooth out the sound levels.

Now I'm too tired to blink, but still raring to make the next one!!

Book give away finished.

I'm happy to announce the three winners of The Longevity Thesis book give-away:

1) Bill
2) Karen
3) Janet

Congrats and enjoy your prize!

Mini Movie Reviews

Blockbuster has been sending me these evil little coupons that make me keep going into their store. Damn 3 for 2's and $1 early return account credits!!

Anyway, here are quick impressions of some movies they manipulated me into renting and watching.

Rush Hour 3: Jackie and Chris have an adventure. They need to recover a list of mob bosses, which turns out to be a human being. Chris Tucker has a fast mouth and makes you laugh out loud. There are martial arts, guns, slapstick humour scenes and such through out the movie. At one point, Jackie sings, and he's surprisingly good.

Overall Impression: A fun, fast paced movie. I enjoyed it, although I wasn't as impressed with it as the first two in the series.

3:10 to Yuma: Christian Bale and Russell Crowe ride around on horses with guns and hats and . . . stuff. Crowe is the bad guy and has to prove he's really not evil by continuing to be a bad guy. People die for not very good reasons. Supposed to be tragic or dramatic or something.

Overall Impression: Meh. Vacuuming is slightly more interesting.

Battlestar Galactica Razor: OK, these people are messing with me. They put out a DVD that you think is supposed to be some sort of TV movie semi-pro thing, and it turns out to be the best SF movie I've seen since The Fifth Element. It had everything: twisted psycho relationships, smack you in the face pathos, dramatic gore, some of the best CG robots ever, extremely well done military scenes, tremendous story, kick ass characterisations, awesome soundtrack, and a very satisfying ending.

Overall Impression: Seriously addictive hard core SF. Don't watch it if you're supposed to be doing something else.

Give-away

I've decided to give away two signed copies of The Longevity Thesis to (1) the first person to enter, and to (2) one person randomly drawn from the first 50 entries. I may give away a third, depending on how things go.

To enter, just contact me through my webpage, blog, MySpace or Facebook and tell me you're entering. If you win, I'll ask for your mailing info. And of course, you have my assurances that this is only to promote The Longevity Thesis, and I am not interested in polluting the internet with more spam.

Thanks to everyone who enters!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Monday, 7:39am. The first copy has been claimed by W.Sumner Davis, author of Heretics. (Check out his MySpace.) Congrats to Dr. Davis!

18Feb08 Update: The last two copies are being given to Karen and Janet. Thanks for entering!

Open Source Desktop Publishing

I thought this was cool:

"Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.

Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation."

Kudos to the open source programming community.

Wee Hoo!

Geez, forget ramblings about alternate spiritual forms, check this out:

http://sfcrowsnest.com/features/arc/2008/nz12201.php

Arconna really is a superhero!

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7:13 pm

. . . and the feed is picked up by comic-news-now.

I am chortling.

Boy, am I ever procrastinating.

I wonder what it's like to be dead. I don't mean that in the morbid sense, but when you read about traditional or speculative or rational expectations of what happens when you die, it seems we have three options: (i) one passes into some sort of afterlife, good or bad, (ii) one spends some time in the "in between" prior to selecting or being assigned the next incarnation, or (iii) that's it. Nothing more happens.

Is the equation oversimplified? I can readily accept that our physical bodies are the result of evolution. Our minds, I think, are much more complex, and develop from pressures applied from the environment, nutrition, and genetic expression – but, what "evolutionary" pressure causes us to be able to appreciate, say, a painting? What is the selective force that encourages us to express ourselves through art in the first place? Judging from the monetary traffic that passes through Hollywood or MTV, we clearly value such things intensely. Perhaps it's nothing more than a viable aberration that arose randomly, and since it didn't interfere with homeostasis, there was no negative selective force against it.

I still ponder the question of there being something else we cannot perceive scientifically. If matter cannot be destroyed, only be changed in form, is that the same for consciousness? If the brain runs on electric impulses, and matter can convert into energy and vice versa, then can the electrons that power our thoughts also convert into a different form of energy -- perhaps one that melds into the thoughts of some other physical entity? Is the origin of consciousness a particular collection of energy that changes form depending on what mortal coil it inhabits? And if that is possible, what evolutionary force would select for that?

I guess I'll eventually find out. There's a 2/3 chance I'll find it interesting, and a 1/3 chance I won't be able to care.