Monday, January 27, 2020


Irresponsible reporting

     Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, Jim Jones, Anders Breivik, and Dylan Roof were all stone-cold killers, and thanks to extensive and unrelenting media coverage they’ve all become infamous, their places secured in dark history. We remember their names and even their faces.
    
     But what do we remember of their victims? Sadly, nothing at all. Not their names. Not their faces. Not their accomplishments. Not their unrealized aspirations.

     Sixteen-year-old Brenda Spencer took up a .22 rifle one day in 1979 and began shooting at an elementary school across the street from her home, killing two adults and wounding eight kids and a policeman. She had told friends to watch the news because she was “going to do something big to get on TV.” She’s still featured in several sites on the Net 41 years later.

     Nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz declared that he wanted to become a “school shooter” before he realized his twisted dream and shot 17 dead and injured 17 more in a bloody rampage at the Parkland school, though he fell short of his desired death goal of 20. A video he proudly made is still up on the USA Today website, along with news stories about him on other sites. We see many other similar instances of notoriety all over the news these days, and in too many cases, that’s exactly what those killers were seeking. We hear about new shootings with gruesome frequency, each shooter competing for their special chapter in the book of infamy from our obliging media.

     Partly because my mother was an ethically and morally responsible newspaper reporter for many years, I’ve long abhorred how the increasingly blatant irresponsible and shallow media use their considerable power to slant the news in favor of this agenda or that and to whip up violence of all kinds, both by harping endlessly on society’s divisions, discontents, and hatreds, and by lavishly giving criminals the very publicity they so desperately seek in order to gain lasting notoriety for themselves.

     There is a movement to stop this senseless, sensational “reportage.” It’s called No Notoriety. It seeks to, “Recognize that the prospect of infamy serves as a motivating factor to [some] individuals to kill.” It urges media to at least limit the name and likeness of a killer and to instead elevate the names and likenesses of the victims, to help people remember those who have fallen and to send the message that their lives were and are important. A fine example is New Zealand’s treatment of the Chistchurch mosques shooting. They refused to give any publicity to the shooter at all and instead celebrated the lives of the fallen.

     I think this movement is long, long overdue and is to be applauded.

     For specifics, please see the website: www.nonotoriety.com

    Please urge the media to take note of this movement—and to begin taking moral responsibility for the effects of their reportage.

Phil





Monday, January 20, 2020


Our Strange Visual Universe

    Last post, we thought about what a sound really is, requiring both a pressure transmitting source and a receiving ear assembly to satisfy the definition. Hearing is akin to reading, which requires both a written page and a person who can interpret those marks on the page. Writer and reader are inseparable, and each must trust the other in that symbiosis. Created scenes do not take place on the page but only in the imaginations of the partners. The page merely serves as a transmitter and preserver.

    Now let’s think about what sight really is and how it applies to our writing.

    We know from high school science there is a broad electromagnetic spectrum that includes a generous range of transmitted and reflected frequencies. We make extensive daily use of this phenomenon. From lowest frequencies to highest, there are radio waves (including TV, microwave, and radar), infrared radiation, ultraviolet radiation, x-rays, and gamma rays. Sandwiched between infrared and ultraviolet there is a relatively narrow frequency band we call visible light. Within that band our retinas can receive frequency waves and our optic nerves can transmit them as electrochemical messages to our astonishing brains, which can instantly differentiate and interpret them as all the millions of things we “see” around us.

    It’s a wondrous evolved skill, although it exists not in surrounding nature at all but always and only within our brains and in the brains of many other species as well to varying degree. Eagles can see far better and farther than any human so they can spot prey from altitude. Bees can see in ultraviolet so they can find the flowers that make the best honey. Some creatures, including bats, hamsters, raccoons, and whales, can only see in shades of black and white because that’s all they need to survive and thrive.

     There is no color in the Universe. None at all. There are only different frequencies. A rainbow can always and only happen within our minds.

    If we could “see” the Universe as it really is, it would be a bewildering chaos of multiple transmitted and reflected electromagnetic frequencies. All the frequencies. We’d see the colors and things we normally do. But we’d also see cell towers and our smart phones bristling with waves. Transmissions beaming at lightspeed to and from passing jetliners. Radar waves bouncing off our vehicles and returning to highway patrol cars. Infrared waves emanating from vehicles and all the people around us and the dogs we’re walking. Gamma rays zooming in from far-off galaxies. Ultraviolet rays streaming from our own private star and attacking our exposed flesh. TV waves filling the air and being soaked up here and there by our rooftop antennas. Flowers in many more hues than we ever thought possible. It would be bizarre in the extreme. But it would be what’s really going on at this moment all around us—and even through our building walls and us.

    But thankfully, miraculously, evolution has endowed us with this brain skill we call sight. The ability to interpret just a skinny band of frequencies as colors and myriad shadings and shapes. We even have two eyes to provide critical three-dimensional sight so we can judge how far away things are, although an alien creature might never realize this from observing the daily mayhem on our highways.

    The scenes we writers create in our stories are largely visual, although we can and should also call on our other four senses to enhance realism.

    The more we visually study the world around us, the more we will perceive in it, and thus the more original and powerful our imagined scenes will become in the imaginations of our readers.

    As a delightful secondary benefit, we ourselves will increasingly experience the wonderful world of human-selected frequencies around us as never before.

Phil






Monday, January 13, 2020


The Impossible Question

    Surely, you’ve heard someone ask, “If a tree falls in the woods with nobody around, does it make a sound?”

    It’s an impossible question. One we’re not even allowed by logic to ask.

    Here’s why:

    If a tree falls in the woods, the impact it makes with the ground generates a pressure wave in the atmosphere, which—not unlike a ripple on the surface of a pond caused by a dropped pebble—expands in all directions at a speed of 767 mph. As it spreads it loses intensity until it eventually dissipates altogether. This happens whether anybody is around or not.

    If somebody does happen to be nearby, the pressure wave impinges on their eardrums and an impulse is transmitted through the inner ear connection to the brain, which has the ability not only to differentiate between thousands of other such impulses, but also, because of input from two spaced eardrums, determine the direction of the impulse origin and whether it is in motion or not. The variety of pressure waves we can instantly detect and analyze is amazing, everything from a passing ambulance siren to a country brook to complex music to a whispered endearment.

    In other words, and by definition, for a sound to occur, both a pressure generating source and a human receiver are necessary. One cannot exist without the other within this definition, and what we perceive as a sound takes place not in the woods or anywhere else in the world but rather always and only in our interpretive brains.

    The impossible sound-in-the-forest question is akin to asking, “If you leave an open book on a table in an empty room, is any reading going on?” Reading requires both a written or printed page and a viewer with the learned ability embedded in the brain to interpret those marks on the page. One cannot exist without the other within the definition of reading. Both page and viewer are required.

    And therein lies a crucial tip for us writers. We should always have our readers in mind and work considering their imaginations as well as using our own to its maximum potential in creating engaging stories. Neither readers nor writers can exist outside this necessary partnership.

    Next post we’ll think about another such symbiotic relationship as it applies to writing and reading.

Phil
p.s. Check out the recent interview author/editor Jaden Terrell kindly did on her CrimeReaders site: http://crimereaders.com/2020/01/06/phil-bowie-killing-ground/





Monday, January 6, 2020


The changing months

    Looking ahead to this new year, I began thinking about the months and how different each is. All their names were derived from early Roman culture.

    January was named for the two-faced god Janus, who could look into the past and the future simultaneously. February came from the Latin februa (to cleanse). The Februlia festival of purification and atonement lasted all month. March was devoted to the war god Mars. A time for renewing military campaigns that had been suspended over the winter. April came from the Latin aperio (to open or bud) for the plants coming alive again. May was named after the goddess Maia, in charge of plant growth. June was the Roman goddess Juno’s month. Her duties included sanctioning marriages and looking after women’s welfare. July honored dictator Julius Caesar, who with a little help developed the whole Julian calendar, which became the Gregorian calendar we still use. August was emperor Augustus Caesar’s turn for glory. September was from the Latin septem (seven), for the seventh month of the early Roman calendar. Likewise October, November, and December were simply named for their calendar order of eight, nine, and ten (octo, novem, and decem).

    All this worked fine throughout the Roman Empire and eventually in the whole northern hemisphere, but did not exactly fit the southern hemisphere, where they’re wintering while we’re summering, and while we’re budding they’re beginning to bundle up. But the whole world settled on the Roman system, nevertheless.

    It would be nice if we could agree on a few other things as well, since we’re all hitching a ride on this same big ball together.

Phil

Don't forget Killing Ground is out in e-book and print on Amazon. It's being well received. More info on my website: www.philbowie.com