Light occupies a central place in our understanding of the world both as a means by which we locate ourselves in nature and as a thing that inspires our imagination. Light is what enables us to see things, and thus to navigate our surroundings. It is also a primary means by which we learn about the world – light beams carry information about the constituents of the universe, from distant stars and galaxies to the cells in our bodies to individual atoms and molecules.
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Made from 20 Business cards you send:
www.PetrinaCase.com
Tom wakes up to find a guy in mechanic’s coveralls sitting in his back yard eating a pumpkin – as in using his teeth to consume a straight-out-of-the-garden raw orange gourd – and making soft smooching sounds every time his face dives back in.
Refugees Tom, Clay, and Alice witness the scene through the window with a mixture of curiosity, concern…and a sort of relief, because yesterday the mobs of crazies like this one were using their teeth to rip out people’s throats, and the guts they’d eaten had been of the seedless human variety.
Now the day before that, the crazies were normal folk; George the pumpkin-muncher here, for instance, was still George the mechanic down at Sonny’s Texaco. But at 3:03 pm, he had the bad luck to be on his cell phone when WHORLM (that’s the sound my imagination attributes to the pulse) he and thousands of others had their brains turned to pulp. Kinda like pumpkin guts.
Because isn’t horror always about the guts?
Well, if you’ve got ‘em, read Cell and find out if Alice, the newly-orphaned teenager, Clay, the finally-successful graphic novelist, and Tom, the quietly strong, bespectacled man, can save the world.
But if you’re hungry for ‘em, wait until October 1st…and start dialing. ;)
12 days of sci-fi, day 8:
Back on earth again, we switch gears to a story with a modern day setting that seems it could be straight out of today’s news…except the humanitarian aid workers aren’t quite what they seem to be. Parents should be advised that one of the themes to the plot is the abuse of very human-like female droids as sex slaves.
Tin Servants by J. Sherer
Patience
Editor’s comment: “He’d (the author) read a lot of stories about robots trying to act human, but humans acting as robots?”
This is a solid, fast-paced action drama set in Ghana nearly 50 years from now. The trauma and tragedy of a war-torn African nation, as well as risk to the protagonist, are realistically told almost as if we were watching an award-winning film. The beauty to reading stories instead of watching them in film is that the reader has the benefit of the character’s self-talk. We sense Paul’s, a/k/a TK-19’s, yearning to help the refugees with every cell in his body. Or at least the ones that are still human…
Don’t miss out. Pick up a copy of Infinite Space, Infinite God II at Amazon http://ow.ly/4F48e .
(J Sherer lives in Southern California and works as a marketing supervisor for a large credit union. When he’s not writing, he enjoys playing sports, catching up on his favorite stories, and working with others on business strategies and tactics. His blog, Constructing Stories (www.jsherer.com), is a place where writers of all levels can engage in meaningful dialogue about the writing and storytelling process. He also partners with Nathan Scheck to present a free online science fiction adventure experience called Time Slingers (www.timeslingers.com). J Sherer’s past publication credits include Infinite Space, Infinite God; Dragons, Knights, and Angels Magazine; and the West Wind.)
I absolutely HATE text language. Nothing in the world annoys me more than seeing someone type in text language. Okay, I do use the occasional text language phrase like ‘you’ becomes ‘u’ and ‘are’ becomes ‘r’. I do use the occasional acronym like ‘to be honest’ becomes ‘tbh’, ‘laughing out loud’ becomes ‘lol’ and ‘by the way’ becomes ‘btw’. I think a text language vocabulary of up to 20 words should be tolerated. (Mine only reaches like 5 which is better but…! ) But when situations worsen to a point where you see someone write ‘I am busy right now’ in text language and it looks like ‘i m bc ryt nw’, at that point, you really want to bang your head on the nearest wall until your eyes pop out and even Homer Simpson seems as attractive as Brad Pitt.
Here is my list of why text language spelling should officially be allowed to get a criminal record (or better still - imprisonment) if exceeded by 20 words in its vocabulary list:
- It makes you sound like a 2 year old. 2 year olds can’t type and when you type text spelling, it looks like you can’t type, thus making you look like a 2 year old.
- It makes you sound illiterate. It feels like your mum and dad denied you the basic education you should have deserved.
- It makes you look like you are so poverty stricken that your keyboard has been bashed by a cow but you still won’t replace it.
- Text spelling seems to worm its way to exam papers and other official pieces of papers and THAT is despicable.
- It looks like jumbled letters. It really looks like you are trying to teach little Molly how to read and write.
- Using text language is denying other people the right to read. When they look at random letters, no punctuation and no use of the teensiest bit of decent grammar, then their mind goes into delirium whether what they are reading is proper or not, thus corrupting their minds.
- Children will become weird because of text language and will take over the world with signs and posters and literally everything sounding that way.
- Teachers won’t be able to correct exam papers because if the students use text spelling and the teachers can’t (I’m pretty sure half the teachers think ‘lol’ means lolling about because we find something funny, which really, makes no sense at all) that’s illiteracy stepped up a notch and a waste of doing exams anyway. As it is, the British government education folk are worried exams are getting easier by the second.
- On a much more realistic note, text spelling is going out of fashion. More and more people shun it and funnily enough shun those who still use it, so if you use it, stop. Or you’ll find yourself tied to a pole near the bus stop getting thrashed by a bunch of geekily cool teenagers.
I know that was a pretty angry rant but, let’s face the facts, text language spelling isn’t great! If anything at all, it is wasteful. People say it reduces the effort to type but it increases the effort to read. Let’s all type decently and read decently and not become slaves to ‘txt lngage splng’ (or for normal people, text language spelling).
I absolutely HATE text language. Nothing in the world annoys me more than seeing someone type in text language. Okay, I do use the occasional text language phrase like ‘you’ becomes ‘u’ and ‘are’ becomes ‘r’. I do use the occasional acronym like ‘to be honest’ becomes ‘tbh’, ‘laughing out loud’ becomes ‘lol’ and ‘by the way’ becomes ‘btw’. I think a text language vocabulary of up to 20 words should be tolerated. (Mine only reaches like 5 which is better but…! ) But when situations worsen to a point where you see someone write ‘I am busy right now’ in text language and it looks like ‘i m bc ryt nw’, at that point, you really want to bang your head on the nearest wall until your eyes pop out and even Homer Simpson seems as attractive as Brad Pitt.
Here is my list of why text language spelling should officially be allowed to get a criminal record (or better still - imprisonment) if exceeded by 20 words in its vocabulary list:
- It makes you sound like a 2 year old. 2 year olds can’t type and when you type text spelling, it looks like you can’t type, thus making you look like a 2 year old.
- It makes you sound illiterate. It feels like your mum and dad denied you the basic education you should have deserved.
- It makes you look like you are so poverty stricken that your keyboard has been bashed by a cow but you still won’t replace it.
- Text spelling seems to worm its way to exam papers and other official pieces of papers and THAT is despicable.
- It looks like jumbled letters. It really looks like you are trying to teach little Molly how to read and write.
- Using text language is denying other people the right to read. When they look at random letters, no punctuation and no use of the teensiest bit of decent grammar, then their mind goes into delirium whether what they are reading is proper or not, thus corrupting their minds.
- Children will become weird because of text language and will take over the world with signs and posters and literally everything sounding that way.
- Teachers won’t be able to correct exam papers because if the students use text spelling and the teachers can’t (I’m pretty sure half the teachers think ‘lol’ means lolling about because we find something funny, which really, makes no sense at all) that’s illiteracy stepped up a notch and a waste of doing exams anyway. As it is, the British government education folk are worried exams are getting easier by the second.
- On a much more realistic note, text spelling is going out of fashion. More and more people shun it and funnily enough shun those who still use it, so if you use it, stop. Or you’ll find yourself tied to a pole near the bus stop getting thrashed by a bunch of geekily cool teenagers.
I know that was a pretty angry rant but, let’s face the facts, text language spelling isn’t great! If anything at all, it is wasteful. People say it reduces the effort to type but it increases the effort to read. Let’s all type decently and read decently and not become slaves to ‘txt lngage splng’ (or for normal people, text language spelling).
The microscopes existed as tools of observation since the end of the sixteenth century;
The Englishman Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703) constructed a microscope and observed slices of cork;
In 1665 he published a book on the train that used cell (small cell);
Different plants and animals observed under the microscope and found that all living beings were formed in small vital structures;
In 1838, the German botanist Matthias Schleiden (1804 - 1881) and the zoologist Theodor Schwann (1810 - 1882), formulated the cell theory which states that “cells are the basic unit of life and that all plants and all animals are made of cells “;
In 1885, Rudolf Virchow (1821 - 1902), stated that “every cell comes from another cell.”
In 1878, the biologist Walther Flemming (1843 - 1905) proved that “the division of a cell produces two cells from the mother cell”
Just feeling like drawing a lot of prehispanic stuff lately, it seems theres a lot to draw...
and to all you new members welcome to SFG!, hope to see some goo stff from you all.
Keep em coming man. You are on a great creative roll here. This new style really works for you and i am tempted to try it. But I don't know "what" it is. Just something very.. YOU.
keep it up.
hey pozca thanx for your comments, i am glad you like it that is tha idea..hope to put this piece on vectors soon....and by the way check out the new Ciclope!...