A change in format:
Many years ago I wanted to be a writer. I figured I would have a busy life, so if I wanted to write I would have to develop the skill and then use it when need arose. So I took a year off from my medical career and did some creative writing. The results were not encouraging even though in those days it was not unthinkable that one simply sit down and write something and get it published – unlikely but not unthinkable.
With the year mostly done, a book or two under my belt and a number of stories written, I received a letter. It ran as best as I recall, “While it would be wrong to suggest your work is of any commercial value or to encourage you in any way, the fact is that we have enjoyed reading your last story so much and passing it around the office that we wondered whether you would send us a few more.” I soon resumed working on my medical career.
Well the novel The Newton Enigma has at last been fully posted, so I shall return to posting main stream science and things closer to that than simple fiction. I do notice that the novel had no impact at all on the number of people visiting this website, and I am grateful to the editor who put an early end to what was a doomed writing career.
Meanwhile it seems to be time to change the layout a trifle. There are many languages in the world. Some write from left to right. Some write from right to left. Some write from top to bottom. There was even a time in ancient Greece when they would write “as the ox plows.” The line would run across, and at the end of the line it would drop down and run back the other way. An educated friend of mine said this was done for convenience when writing large inscriptions on a wall. The reader did not have to keep track of the line while walking back to resume reading at the next line. I used to notice that jumping back to the beginning of the next line did not always go smoothly even on a printed page.
I used to remark that nobody writes from bottom to top. That, however, has now changed. In blogs and chat rooms and on the internet generally, the most recent addition appears at the top rather than at the bottom. That always confused me. Besides, at the outset I tried to put the most critical information up front. However with more than two years gone by that is proving to be a little clumsy, so I think it is time to get with the crowd and start adding new material at the top.
The next posting will be about The Stork. Then I shall post the first hour of the lectures I am giving at the Necronomicon convention. It is the lecture on updates to exobiology since the lecture last year. The first half or so will be my latest summary of the evidence I think most clear and compelling for the subject of this site. After all, the principle at stake here is very basic and would apply to any advanced life forms despite any difference between the biology of that life form and our own. Then I shall go on and give the latest information I have found on what you might call “mainstream exobiology.”
The next posting will be the Steam Punk Stealth Telescope. It is totally off topic. I just thought the science fiction fans might like to learn a low tech mechanism that is an improvement over other optical methods. It is a different class of telescope from the Galilean, the Keplerian and the Newtonian, or the catadiatropic reflector for that matter.
After that I plan to resume reviewing new evidence as it comes out. If the past is any guide, the new evidence will continue to roll in but at slightly less than one topic per day, so within a few weeks I suppose I shall return to posting things every other day rather than every day.
I can use the break
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