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F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

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Technology

We Need To Care

March 12, 2014 by fpdorchak

By The Onion Router (Tor) Project, Naval Research Laboratory, US Department of Defense, Washington DC [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
By The Onion Router (Tor) Project, Naval Research Laboratory, US Department of Defense, Washington DC [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
I recently got involved in an online thread, when I asked about how to leave the Amazon.com contest. It was an interesting conversation, but what kinda disturbed me was how the money was the big motivator in the decision to partake in such contests at the expense of rights. Then, I watched a 60 Minutes piece about data mining. See this link for privacy protection information. I’m not naïve about data mining, but I was definitely raising my eyebrow about the extent of data mining. How is any of that even remotely legal, what with all the protection-of-privacy decrees we have out there? With all our indignance over domestic spying? If we get all ruffled over our own government agencies directing their spying efforts on ourselves, how to do we even remotely allowed commercial spying on ourselves?

There is so much to go into, here, on this subject, but the point I want to narrow down to is that we need to care what we sign away for our rights, for our toys. I read all those pages of terms before I get any app…and have dumped some apps because I didn’t like the terms. But does this even really matter, given the indecent lengths to which commercial companies are mining all of our data and actively selling it to other companies? Data as personal as what diseases you have, your sexual orientation, whether or not you use drugs (and how much), and what web sites you visit, and for how long?

It is also not made any easier by companies increasingly doing more and more business online, asking extremely and increasingly more personal questions online that are becoming mandatory before you even use their online functions. Even now, we are losing large leaps of privacy in the name of ease-of-use and accessibility.

Many argue it’s an inevitability. We can’t win.

I’ve asked a handful of people about this kind of thing off and on over the past few years, and I’ve received a disturbing amount of “I don’t care.”

Good Lord, that scares the crap out of me!

You do not care that your personal rights-to-privacy are quickly eroding, just so you can tweet you’re taking a shit at a Pink concert?

You just want to take the money and run, and not care how a novel your poured your heart and soul into will be treated forevermore in the future?

Have we become so shortsighted a race in the  name of the goddamned Internet? Instant gratification, where everyone’s a superstar on Twitter?

There is so much good about the advancement of technology and the creation of computers, but I guarantee you will regret it sometime in your future. You will. You will regret you did not take better control of what you let go in the frenzied grab of the next useless toy and app you installed on that toy, and it will be far too late.

But there are agencies out there fighting this uphill battle, and I applaud them. They realize the logical conclusion to all this insanity. Just because you can do something, does not mean you should. Just because you use the Internet does not mean others out there are granted the inherent right to snoop in on you. To market what they mine to others because it better suits them in their marketing (i.e., they can make more money off of you—the almighty friggin profit-driven society).

Again, there is so much to say on this topic, but I just want to bring it before you now, and implore you to pay attention to what you’re doing. Don’t give away your freedoms. Say NO. Encourage others to do the same. And it doesn’t matter what’s already out there. It’s never to late to stop, to say No, and attempt to put an end to this heinous use power.

We need to care.

Filed Under: Technology, To Be Human Tagged With: 60 Minutes, Data mining, Personal freedom, Privacy, Rights Grab, We Need To Care.

The Global Consciousness Project

February 1, 2014 by fpdorchak

This guy, “hardware hacker” Adam Michael Curry, has a dream. A global one.

To borrow a little from the article, and Gregory Weinkauf, Mr. Curry sees that the world reads news together…even listens to music together…now, he queries, can the world feel together? And furthermore, can this shared awareness, this collective consciousness, actually impact our physical world?

Can we affect reality?

The basic idea is that there’s all this “new” research out there being done by laboratories, like Princeton University’s PEAR lab and the Institute of Noetic Sciences (among others) to investigate how deeply our collective consciousnesses are connected to “the fabric of physical reality.” It’s called The Global Consciousness Project (GCP; which is, curiously, like my Psychic novel’s, “Global Foundation for Peace,” or “GFP”…), employs random number generators spread around the world, global events that “polarize human attentions,” like 9/11, earthquakes, or Princess Diana’s death, and analyzes the results that manifest the “unexplained ordering affect on chaotic systems.” And, furthermore, this research suggests that the odds that “the combined GCP data” are “due to chance” is less than one in one hundred billion, which implies that there’s a “deep connection” between the mind and physical reality.

That’s one hundred billion.

Wow, lots of cool phrases. And “one hundred billion.”

Oh, and Mr. Curry is pushing a smartphone Consciousness app.

Okay, why does it always have to be about a smartphone?

I applaud Mr. Curry and the others in this area of exploration, but I have to inform them that this line of investigation is nothing new. Not at all. And it’s not even a question…but a fact. I also understand how science always lags in this department, the Department of Mind over Matter. At least in the public displays of research.

There have been many texts written over the history of Humankind about the association of the mind and matter, aka, “reality,” aka what we think affects reality, and it’s largely and roundly been poo-pooed and publically “discredited.” But one set of books have done an incredible job of discussing this reality and has been out since the sixties. This is the work of Jane Roberts and Rob Butts (both deceased). They did this by tapping into their own inner world, through one of Jane’s “entities,” called “Seth.”

Oh, now, see, I hear the eyes rolling!

I talk about it and the eyes roll, but science talks about it—and throws in a frigging smartphone—and you’re all over it.

The basic concept of the Jane, Rob, and Seth view is that we create our own reality. That’s it. No smartphone needed. Just intent and focus. You want a good life, focus on it. Believe in it. Live it. You want wars and poverty or peace and riches, then go ahead, focus on it.

You get what you focus upon, there is no other rule.

But Mr. Curry wants all of us to download an app where we apply our minds to random number generators during life’s great, polarizing events.

Fifty years, it was said, research has been going into all this (not Curry’s work, but others), and this is as far as they’ve come? Random number generators?

One the one hand, quite disappointing. Well, on both, really. What the heck have they been doing all this time, when all this corroborating material has been out there, like Jane, Rob, & Seth’s work? Has it even been looked at, or, again, dismissively poo-pooed? Essentially, what science seems to be doing, is reinventing the wheel. Oh, sure, you could say, they’re just applying the scientific method, and are just duplicating claims in scientific settings. Perhaps, but people are people wherever you go, no matter what they wear, what they do, or languages they speak. Prejudices come into play (yes, even in the scientific community). And, not the least of which, is science itself. Science measures the observable, which seems obvious, but what happens when what you want to observe isn’t, well, observable? What if the targets of your investigation can only be examined by the mind itself, and not under some electron microscope or injection into some CERN collider?

This is the problem with prejudices and attitudes with any so-called “psychic” disciplines, like remote viewing.

It’s not quantifiable.

Sure, we’ll be able to find all the physical links and manifestations, and the like we can using all of our best equipment, but we’ll also be missing out on the best parts that simply cannot be viewed using physical instruments. As much as I’m dismayed at the use of remote viewing for spy-type activities, these Hal Puthoffs, Dale Graffs, Russell Targs, et al (including Stanford Research Institute), made the leap into looking into the mind with the mind. The mind is a nonphysical entity, how the heck are you going to look at that with a microscope of any kind?

Quantum physics comes the closest with all it’s weird micro-behaviors, like entanglement and wave/particle theories, and this has given rise to some really earth-shattering theories…but nothing ever seems to “come of it.” It all just seems to stop short of “going there” by saying we all affect and effect our own realities by the thoughts we think.

But, really, all you only have to do is examine your own life and the lives of those you know. Look at how your beliefs color and mold and form your own life. Do you believe life is hard, unfair, and controlled by others? And has it been? Do you know others who are happy and carefree and seem to have a fun life—and has it been?

How can it be both ways? Either it’s one way or the other. Sure, one can definitely get into circumstances and privileged lives, and whatnot, all kinds of other variables, and, yes, all of this knowledge from entities like Seth come from the “nether regions” of life, the nonphysical, the spiritual, where we mortals wrapped in corporeal form cannot really venture (though we’re told we can…), and what of all the other religions, etc., and yes, it does get rather sticky, here. Billions of rabbit holes. But what I did was look for explanations that didn’t matter what the belief was…just the mechanics that are behind all beliefs. And it is up to each of us to do this. It is part of our growth. But my point to all this is not to preach, but to show that others have already gone there with the whole “our thoughts affect reality” thing, investigations have been ongoing for fifty frigging years, and all we have to show for it is a smartphone app? I really don’t want to slight and dismiss Mr. Curry’s investigations into the mind/matter arena, but, come on, people, so much has already been done on the topic, don’t keep reinventing the damned wheel! Don’t keep starting over from scratch by ignoring already existing work! Build on it! Take it, take its tenants and expand upon them.

Sigh.

Yes, I may have been a bit smug and smarmy over this post, but overall…I am enjoying the scientific entrance (however late) into all this, because it does show a broadening of consciousness on other levels…i.e., that of hard-nosed science. Where this goes will be interesting, but it’s up to each of us to employ this in our everyday lives, like I’ve discussed before. We create our own lives…how we look at life is how we live our lives. It’s that simple. And if you want to change something, you have to begin inside your own head—how else can you effect change? If you don’t believe in the change you seek, then you’re not gonna give it any thought, not gonna write it down, not gonna further “transmit” its concept into the world or tell someone about it, or write that book or movie, not create that patent, not gonna discover that new theory.

It all starts in our minds…and before that damned smartphone…was the concept of that damned smartphone in someone’s mind.

Related articles
  • The Invaders (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)
  • Crackers (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)
  • The Unmaking of a Psychic (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)
  • The Way Forward (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)

Filed Under: Metaphysical, Technology, To Be Human, Writing Tagged With: Adam Michael Curry, Create your own reality, Dale Graff, Gregory Weinkauf, Hal Puthoff, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Jane Roberts, PEAR, Psychic, Remote Viewing, Rob Butts, Russell Targ, scientific method, Seth, Stanfor Research Institute, The Global Consciousness Project

Amazon.com Against the World!

December 3, 2013 by fpdorchak

I watched a recent interview on 60 Minutes with Jeff Bezos, of Amazon.com fame, and it was most interesting. Once again, it showed the forward thinking aspect of the Amazon.com Mindset.

No wonder traditional businesses hate them!

Why?

Because traditional businesses are stuck in antiquated mindsets, that’s why. Plain and simple! I don’t agree with everything Amazon does, but I do agree with how they’re thinking outside the box. How they’re customer-centric. How they’re delaying immediate gratification. Good Lord, if other businesses applied the same or similar mindsets, it’d be a far different (and hopefully better!) world!

Now, do I really know what’s in the heart of Mr. Bezos? Not really, all I can see is what’s presented. But, if actions speak louder than words, what we see is what we’re getting. Sure, news is slanted toward whoever’s paying the bills, but we see, everyday, how Amazon operates, and they operate in a way traditional businesses do not operate and therefore cannot understand, because traditional businesses are driven purely by and for profit and immediate gratification at the expense (pardon the pun) of the customer.

Do I want drones cluttering our airspace and depositing packages at our homes? No, I don’t. It’s just more clutter. Above our heads. They claim they want a 30-minute fulfillment ability, and these drones could very well deliver that…but not before 2015. So, would you have to be right there to collect your delivery? Is that the plan? If not, imagine this…people-of-ill-repute seeing these drones…following them to your home…and stealing your goods.

Okay, but it is cool on a Science Fiction level…but I still cringe at the thought of the air above our heads cluttered with low flying drones everywhere! Bird strikes! Small aircraft! Maybe getting fired upon by military drones from above, oh my!

Well, fact of the matter is…though not every idea at Amazon meets with success…successes at Amazon do seem to be more frequent than not. They are thinking outside the box and attempt to do what stodgy, traditional businesses seem unable to do: reimagine.

Related articles
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Filed Under: Leisure, Technology, To Be Human Tagged With: 60 Minutes, Amazon, Amazon.com, Business, CBS, Distribution center, Jeff Bezos

ERO—Trade Paperback Now Available!

August 8, 2013 by fpdorchak

ERO (2013, F. P. Dorchak, Don McCall, Lon Kirschner)
ERO (2013, F. P. Dorchak, Don McCall, Lon Kirschner)

Well, the trade paperback edition of ERO has arrived!

The 6 x 9 trade paperback edition of ERO is now available at CreateSpace, courtesy of Wailing Loon. I’m asking $14.99 for it. It hasn’t yet migrated to Amazon.com and other distributors, as of this writing, but do keep checking!

And (I must say…) the complete, full jacket is every bit as stunning as the front cover! It might be the young buck on the back flap, it might be the really cool faux organizational patch…or could it be le très cool Wailing Loon imprint image? Oh, yeah, I hope the story kicks butt, too. Yeah, the story. Anyway, I’m really not sure which is more stunning-er. You be the judge.

The nifty patch above is courtesy of two friends of mine, Don McCall, who created the patch at my request several years ago, and Lon Kirschner, of Kirschner Caroff Graphic Design & Consulting, my cover artist for ERO. I’ve been dying to use this patch and put it out into the public “eye”—ha, pardon the pun!—ever since Don created it (thanks, Don, for that kick-ass patch—there’s a free, autographed book in it for ya)! Lon had to do some “graphic artist wizardry” to use it on the book, but we also had to change some things cause: 1) NRO stole my motto, and b) had to add some extra “pop” for the cover. Oh, yeah, I do plan on going Cafe Press with it. But that will be a little while. My original motto was “Above and Beyond,” in various versions of Latin, but a fellow writer friend pointed out that NRO (the bastards) already had the phrase. Since they’ve been around a little longer, and are, well, scarier than me, I decided not to fight the issue. I changed the motto to “IN TÉNEBRIS,” which is supposed to translate into “Into the darkness.” I used a couple of Internet translators for this and they seemed to agree, so I hope it’s correct. It better be correct. If it isn’t, don’t tell me and allow me to live in my little Fantasy Land….

And then we have…the rest…of the cover:

ERO Paperback (2013, F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)
ERO Paperback (2013, F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)

Yeah, that’s me, 26 years ago. As a captain in the U.S. Air Force.

Where the hell does the time go, maaan?

The Air Force and I parted a long time ago, but I thought the picture germane to use for the cover, since the main character is me—I mean, the main character is in the Air Force, in the same timeframe (and, no, Conspiracy Theorists, do not read anything into that—all the weird shit is made up, period; those who deal in real Weird Shit know this, but I don’t need the added grief of some weird shit mythology building up around me as some kind of weird shit guru, cause I’m not—I’m just a writer trying to get by…writing weird shit…). And Lon was cool enough to incorporate Don’s extraordinary efforts of the ERO patch onto the cover. Thanks, again, man. Ever consider consulting?

So, there it is, my friends and kindly readers, the e-book and trade paperback editions of ERO, a story I began back in 2006, based on a weird idea, and helped along by various individuals, including my ex-agent (who I still can’t thank enough), incredible content formatter, Pam Headrick, incredible Cool Cover Dude, Lon Kirschner, and CreateSpace, Smashwords, B&N, Amazon, and all the other outlets and platforms and people out there and are mentioned in my acknowledgments page. I hope you enjoy the read and, if you do, please, talk, tweet, blog, and whatever the hell out of it. Yes, you can use these images—just, please attribute the appropriate people and/or links to their creation. Then could I also ask of you to post reviews of your read when done? Thanks. I’d greatly appreciate it.

See my website (www.fpdorchak.com) for other books.

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Filed Under: Art, Leisure, Space, Technology, To Be Human, UFOs, Writing Tagged With: A Thirsty Mind, Action Adventure, Conspiracy Theories, Cover Art, ERO, Exoatmospheric Reconnaissance Organization, fiction, fpdorchak.wordpress.com, Kirschner Caroff, Lon Kirschner, Pam Headrick, Science Fiction, SF, Smashwords, Wailing Loon

Incredible Shuttle Launch Video

August 1, 2013 by fpdorchak

Footage is from STS-117 and 127. Thanks to fellow writer, Matt Bille for posting this to his blog, and thanks to the incomparable Steve Saffel for posting it to Facebook for Matt to discover!

All sounds are real.

Check out the launch and SRB contrails in the background.

The other booster in the background.

“The graceful tumble.”

Reentry!

Mesmerizing!

Filed Under: Fun, Space, Technology, To Be Human Tagged With: Incredible Shuttle Launch Video, NASA, Skywalker Sound, Space Shuttle, STS-117, STS-127

ERO—On Sale Now!

July 20, 2013 by fpdorchak

ERO (© F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)
ERO (© F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)

Well, my team and I have done it—Lon Kirschner, Pam Headrick, Cherry Weiner, and all the other readers and people (see Acknowledgements/Author Note in the beginning of the book) who have read and commented and helped out in any way—ERO is finally available through Smashwords, Amazon, and soon, Nook (not yet processed; please, keep checking back)! Thanks, for everything, folks! I’m charging $5.99 for this book. It’s bigger and I have more money invested in it. I will shortly be working on getting the physical copy out there; it takes more coordination.

Wow, what a sprint. As with The Uninvited, it’s so weird to actually, finally see this out there after so many years (seven). I have in my writing log that I started plotting for the novel on March 6, 2006, and started actually writing the manuscript itself “in earnest” on March 9th, around 4 p.m. (Mountain Time). I’d called the working title of the manuscript Brilliant Eyes. You’ll see that tile in the story. I also note in the log, that a few days later—March 11th—my wife and I took a trip to Roswell, NM. Yeah, that Roswell. That was an interesting trip. Met and talked with some very interesting people, including an “Earth Station Roswell” guy who took us into his back room to spend a serious amount of time talking with us about his plans for a huge Roswell conference center using advanced/state-of-the-art technology in creating this center…basically, making it like a huge UFO mothership for the conference center itself. It was so cool. Incredibly cool. And we thanked him for the honor of his taking the time he did talking with us. He and I had to have been talking about an hour or more. Anyway, I’d kept tabs on him for a couple years, but last heard he’d been fighting not only water rights issues, but his fellow locals, for him pulling the “UFO business” out of downtown Roswell, and to the “front” of Roswell. I’ll have to check up on all this, now, that I’m reminding myself of it. Maybe interview him for my blog.

This also reminds me of the woman behind That Crazy Lady Down The Road, Judy Messoline (I have a signed copy of her book; will now have to give her the same, since I’d been talking up my book with her for years), and her UFO Watchtower. We’d gone down to see her many times over the years, and would just hang out and B.S. with her at her place, in the 90+ degree heat…watching the summer thunderheads roll in and out, talking about UFO sightings and, once, even getting some violin lessons from another lady also hanging out with Judy. This lady also went on to play some violin music. That was sooo cool, the four of us and Judy’s dogs, out in the middle of nowhere, violin music gracing the airwaves! After visiting her the first time, my wife and I then went around the area asking residents whether or not they’d seen anything weird, and, boy, did we hear some stuff. One was told us from a person who told us their grandmother used to sit on their front porch and watch UFOs rise out of Blanca Mountain (the prominent peak down there). Their grandmother’s time was the late 1800s.

Well. Here it is. My opus. My space opera. My signature work, as I’ll call it, because that’s how I look at this one. Of all I’ve written, and those who have read all of my work (including my ex-agent), this is the one everyone loves the most. This is my “Big Book.” It’s got it all: intrigue, love, conspiracies, UFOs, aliens, thinky stuff, scary stuff, funny stuff. Parts of my life. My DNA.

Thoughts for our future.

And I give it all to you.

I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for stopping by, and I thank you all in advance for taking a chance on it.

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Filed Under: Metaphysical, Space, Spooky, Technology, To Be Human, UFOs, Writing Tagged With: Amazon.com, ERO, Exoatmospheric Reconnaissance Organization, Nook, paranormal, Roswell, Roswell New Mexico, Smashwords, The Uninvited, UFO, UFO Watchtower, Unidentified flying object

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