M Thomas Apple Author Page

Science fiction, actual science, history, and personal ranting about life, the universe, and everything

Bringer of Light – pre-order now!

March 13, 2024
MThomas

See Children of Pella (series) for details.

Today’s quote

February 22, 2024
MThomas

Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right!

Lord Leto

On beauty

September 14, 2023
MThomas

“Ad pulchritudinem tria requirunter:

integritas, consonantia, claritas”

“Three things are needed for beauty: wholeness, harmony, radiance.”
(as translated by “Stephen,” i.e., James Joyce.)

Or more simply integrity, consonance, clarity.

Note that the original is a bit longer, in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica:

Ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur: Primo quidem integritas sive perfectio: quae enim diminuta sunt, hoc ipso turpia sunt. Et debita proportio sive consonantia. Et iterum claritas.

Dear Diary – October 5, 2003

September 5, 2023
MThomas

Today I talked to virtually no one for the first time in quite a while. It’s almost like meditation. Reminds me of what L said when we were out drinking Friday night (as usual). She and G were talking about scuba diving, about how being underwater hearing only your own breath and hardly being able to see anything unless it’s right in front of you gives you a feeling of being alone in the universe, a feeling of vulnerability and isolation, of insignificance. I commented, “That’s just like meditation.” No reaction.

I don’t need to go scuba diving in the Philippines to experience such a feeling. 

Synthetic human embryos – yeah, now *that’s* not controversial…

July 7, 2023
MThomas

The synthetic embryos – only days or weeks old – could help researchers study the earliest stages of human development and explain pregnancy loss. 

Nobody is currently suggesting growing them into a baby.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-65914934

Well, that’s a relief….

This is the first time that has been achieved using human material. Although, they are not truly “synthetic”, as the starting material was cells cultured from a traditional embryo in the laboratory.

Great, but…

She has already developed synthetic mouse embryos with evidence of a developing brain and beating heart.

Come on, BBC. I think you can see where this is going…

Meanwhile, scientists in China have implanted synthetic monkey embryos into female monkeys – although, all the pregnancies failed.

Yep. Straight to the monkey house.

Seriously, did scientists actually think this was not going to cause a whole lot of people to get upset all over again?

Natural embryo (top), synthetic embryo (bottom). They look pretty similar…

This may indeed be a good way to study infertility causes and how embryos develop, but even the possibility of creating an embryo from a stem cell should have set off warning bells. 14-day limit or not, somebody’s going to get really tempted to do something else with them…

I’m thinking up all sorts of SciFi stories from this…

Happy (Insert non-denominational festive day of chosen ethnicity/religious group here)

December 25, 2020
MThomas

When we fought against Nazis instead of being run by them…

June 6, 2020
MThomas

AllMyLove-FullCover NEW
 
Just in time for D-Day…
 
All My Love, Johnny: Memories and loss in Troy, New York
 

“Over sixteen million Americans served during World War II and this story offers in rich detail the story of two men in uniform and a woman they both cared about. A story of love and tragedy that is more representative of the experiences of many that served than the ones often told of generals and politicians. A story that needs to be told and remembered.”  

— Dr. Rick Derrah, Professor of Social Studies, Kindai University, Osaka; former US Army E-4 Specialist


“Not only is this a touching and interesting family story, it is a great snap shot of the war and its effects, as well as Trojans and Troy history connection.”  

Don Rittner, historian, former Albany City Archaeologist and founder of the Pine Bush Historic Preservation Project


(Paperback)  

https://www.amazon.com/All-My-Love-Johnny-Memories/dp/B089M2FNTW/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=  

 

(Ebooks)  

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1015969  

Have some Proxima Centauri with ESPRESSO

January 20, 2020
MThomas

“Proxima is our closest neighbor in an immense universe. How could we not be charmed by it?

Well, the planet may or may not exist (the confirmation data won’t be publicly available for another couple years).

And it is most likely not inhabitable — despite being dubbed a “Super-Earth” (which really only refers to size and not whether it’s “Earth-like” or not).

Still, regardless of these facts, the most important part of this article in Scientific American is the science:

“We tried different tools to prove ourselves wrong, but we failed. However, we have to keep the doors open to all possible doubt and skepticism.

Yes, the astronomers tried to prove their own discovery was a mistake. That’s how it works, folks. Challenge your assumptions, not jump to conclusions. Continue Reading

99.9999999% of Your Body Is Empty Space

January 14, 2020
MThomas

atoms gif.gif

Are you sitting down for this? Well, you’re not really. Your butt isn’t actually touching the chair you’re sitting on. Since the meat of your atoms is nestled away in nuclei, when you ‘touch’ someone (or something), you aren’t actually feeling their atoms.

Nobody has ever really touched anything in their lives.

Sleep tight…

(Not exactly a new article, but still interesting; and, yes, I might be using this to justify an awful lot of my soon-to-be-beta-read new novel 😉

Quantum downloading the brain

April 16, 2019
MThomas

scientists-quantum-material-download-brain-1200x630

The research is in early stages, but it invokes ideas like uploading brains to the cloud or hooking people up to a computer to track deep health metrics…

Hm. This sounds like an idea for a cool science fiction

Ah.

jwl8mezh-720

https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-quantum-material-download-brain?fbclid=IwAR0gsFggMSQ6RF-poI8QV5rNGpko5HylTbuZyCOM_Uxh0LhV5hnFkUv2xgw

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