Boring News and Awesome Research Link(s?)

I spend a goodly amount of time doing research for my writing, so I decided to start a new category which is full of things I am researching on. That way just in case someone knowledgeable drops in, they might feel charitable toward me in my ignorance and point me in a good direction. I begin today with…

(flourish)

The OODA Loop, which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. It’s a military (and business!) strategic concept which was recommended by my good friend and partner in mindcrime Kledon. I’m toying with a concept involving some future urban warfare and he recommended this as a good way to envision the future of combat. I will blather about it more later.

My (mostly crap) short story “Transmission” is in the process of revision, thanks to the help of one of my scientist pals who thought I could do a little more with it. I’m going back, back, back in the life and times of humanity and learning about mitochondria and HERVs. Mitochondria are the organelles inside of our cells which make ATP (there’s a link on wiki) and which are passed down through maternal lines only. This isn’t to say paternal mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) doesn’t get passed to a baby, it just doesn’t make any lasting impact because it gets deaded (or something similar). HERVs are Human Endogenous Retroviruses which is a fancy way to say “germs which leave their tracks in our DNA and can be found there to this day” for the most part, and is an interesting topic of study even when I’m not inventing a deadly imaginary disease.

Yes yes I link to Wikipedia a lot but that’s because it’s a decent springboard for the basics whereas I doubt many would be terribly interested in the sometimes-bland things I wander around in. That’s not to say I won’t link them, because oh, I will.

For my final link I present this site here about human migration across the ages and the world. Recommended by the same scientist who spurred my story work on “Transmission.” It’s brilliant and very *very* interesting, tracing the journey of humans across the globe. Should you read “Transmission” you might spot the magical locations where the preceding information will be handy in the revisioning.

That is all for now. Well, just one more link. GeekNexus is a new kind of social networking site for, well, geeks (nerds too I’d say!) which is sort of like twitter, sort of like Facebook, but a lot like its own thing. Very new, very “just beginning”, but it’s where I like to post things I’m not putting here or at UnMo. If you drop in I’ll friend you, I’m Gaudeamus there.