Quark Cognition: October 2012

Friday, October 19, 2012

A Poem About Tomatoes

     I'm taking a writing course and the instructor is a fan of poetry. At the beginning of each class, he hands out poems. We then read them and make attempts to interpret the meaning(s). The instructor explained that learning poetry is good for longer writing projects because every word must count when writing poems. Thus, learning poetry can help one write with less filler.
     Last class period, the instructor asked us to write a poem about tomatoes and we were given 7 minutes. This is what I wrote:

Tomatoes
by Bryan Singleton

I used to hate you
your bitter taste and slimy texture
were the scourge of my childhood

At the dinner table with no dinner
you and I alone, we met many times
but never because of friendship

but now I know you better
with lycopenes and with pizza
you are a friendly feast

     I read my poem aloud in class and the instructor asked if I had any experience writing poems. I said that I just "made it up" and had no experience. This is true; I have no formal training in poetry. What I do have is years of reading, so that may explain why I can write "good" poetry with no experience. The instructor and everyone in the class liked my poem.
     I then went on to explain the poem to the class. When I was younger, my parents made me eat tomatoes as punishment when I got bad notices from school. I really hated tomatoes, so it was an especially brutal punishment.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Science Fiction Author Pen Names

     Several years ago, I decided to read the short novel "One of Our Asteroids is Missing" by an unknown author, named Calvin M. Knox. It was on an Ace Double, along with "The Twisted Men" by A.E. van Vogt. I figured it would be terrible, but it turned out to be a very smooth read. Calvin Knox suddenly became an author worth checking out and I wondered why I had never heard of him before. Within 10 seconds of investigative work, I discovered that Calvin Knox is a pseudonym of Robert Silverberg. I had heard of Silverberg, but I had never read any of his work previously.
     I went through my science fiction book collection and made a list of the pseudonyms I discovered, along with the real names.

PSEUDONYM                                                       REAL NAME

Charles Beaumont	Charles Leroy Nutt
C.J. Cherryh	Caroline Janice Cherry
John Christopher	Samuel Youd
Curt Clark	Donald E. Westlake
Hal Clement	Harry Clement Stubbs
David Grinnell	Donald Wollheim
F.A. Javor	Francis Anthony Jaworski
Calvin M. Knox	Robert Silverberg
Murray Leinster	William Fitzgerald Jenkins
John Lymington	John Richard Newton Chance
Charles Eric Maine	David McIlwain
K.M. O’Donnell	Barry Malzberg
John Rankine	Douglas Mason
Arthur Sellings	Robert Arthur Gordon Ley
Cordwainer Smith	Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
Bart Somers	Gardner Fox
Don A. Stuart	John W. Campbell, Jr.
William Tenn	Philip Klass
James Tiptree, Jr.	Alice Sheldon
Jack Vance	James Holbrook Vance

About Me

I am made of particles, known as quarks and electrons, that are at least 13.72 billion years old. Although my body is very young, the constituents are very old and come and go as they please. It's astonishing that individuality exists when each one of us are made of the same basic parts. It's even more astonishing that self-awareness exists, since even objects as simple as paper clips are made of the same parts as human beings.

My body was here before I was born and it will be here after I die.

So while I am in this brief configuration known as life I try to learn as much as possible, since my personality enjoys it. My first fascination in this short life was dinosaurs; I won a Dinosaur Expert Award in kindergarten. For most of my childhood, I read about the Animal Kingdom. I also read more than 100 Choose Your Own Adventure books and numerous other young adult fiction from my school library. Since age 5, I have been reading at a sometimes voracious pace. I didn't start seriously reading science fiction until age 19, though.

My interest in politics is as great as my interest in professional sports and I drink alcohol as often as I get lung surgery. I am heterosexual, but I rarely date women and prefer to read a tale, rather than chase some tail.

Qool Quotes

"The brain, knowing that a person can't live forever in this world, rationalizes a future, or other-dimensional, world in which immortality is possible. In other words, religion is the earliest form of science fiction."
-Philip Jose Farmer (1977)

"Forget Jesus, the stars died so you could be born."
-Lawrence M. Krauss (2009)

"When you ask what are protons and electrons I ought to answer that this question is not a profitable one to ask and does not really have a meaning. The important thing about electrons and protons is not what they are but how they behave - how they move. I can describe the situation by comparing it to a game of chess. In chess, we have various chessmen, kings, knights, pawns and so on. If you ask what a chessmen is, the answer would be that it is a piece of wood, or a piece of ivory, or perhaps just a sign written on a paper, or anything whatever. It does not matter. Each chessmen has a characteristic way of moving and this is all that matters about it. The whole game of chess follows from this way of moving the various chessmen."
-Paul Dirac, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1933

"You will be astonished when I tell you what this curious play of carbon amounts to. A candle will burn some four, five, six, or seven hours. What, then, must be the daily amount of carbon going up into the air in the way of carbonic acid! What a quantity of carbon must go from each of us in respiration! What a wonderful change of carbon must take place under these circumstances of combustion or respiration! A man in twenty-four hours converts as much as seven ounces of carbon into carbonic acid; a milch cow will convert seventy ounces, and a horse seventy-nine ounces, solely by the act of respiration. That is, the horse in twenty-four hours burns seventy-nine ounces of charcoal, or carbon, in his organs of respiration to supply his natural warmth in this way, by the conversion of carbon, not in a free state, but in a state of combination. And what an extraordinary notion this gives us of the alterations going on in our atmosphere. As much as 5,000,000 pounds, or 548 tons, of carbonic acid is formed by respiration in London alone in twenty-four hours. And where does all this go? Up into the air."
-Michael Faraday (1860)

"In modern war, one individual can cause the destruction of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. He could do so by pushing a button; he may not feel the emotional impact of what he is doing, since he does not see, does not know the people whom he kills; it is almost as if his act of pushing the button and their death had no real connection. The same man would probably be incapable of even slapping, not to speak of killing, a helpless person."
-Eric Fromm (1955)

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that people don’t have to experience it."
-Max Frisch

Quark Cognition

I may not seem like it, but I am a human.

Friday, October 19, 2012

A Poem About Tomatoes

Monday, October 15, 2012

Science Fiction Author Pen Names

Labels

Total Pageviews

Links

Followers