M. Thomas Apple's Blog

I wrote some time ago that there was a ghost in the family.

I guess it’s finally time to write about it. Sorry for the wait! Maybe I should hold off on this until Hallowe’en…

Abigail Platte (or Platt) of New Milford, Connecticut, married William Barber West of Rhode Island in or just before 1783. They then set out for what is now Queensbury, New York, to start a farm and a family. Eventually, they had six children, one of which whose daughter would marry into the Langworthy family (my mother’s maiden name; hence Abigail is her 3x-great grandmother).

What happened in August of 1811 is somewhat of a conjecture, and I have not been able to track down any sources other than the story posted on the City of Glens Falls web site (which erroneously claims the incident occurred in May). Apparently, she was up on the mountain (probably where the family’s potato farm was) when a storm arose. She took shelter under a tree, which, as you all know from elementary school firefighter training sessions, is a bad idea. The tree was hit by lightning and fell on top of her.

Badly wounded, she crawled for a mile down the mountain, looking for help. Too late. She died. (Some online blogs claim her body wasn’t found “for weeks,” which seems unlikely).

Other local versions of the Legend of Abby West claim she was directly hit by lightning, or that her body was inside her house and her spirit was wandering when the house caught on fire. In these versions, her body is never found – because she was a witch.

But the witch stories didn’t start until much later, well after her family actually buried her. When her descendants moved their family cemetery plot years later, they couldn’t find her body under her stone. So only her stone was moved to its current resting place, and from then, the “witch” stories began.

Local legend says that she comes back every night to haunt her old home, of which only the fireplace and chimney have survived, looking for her children, most of whom left the area with her husband. Some people say the air feels “dense” near there. Others have claimed that doors randomly shut and sewing machines randomly start up. One group of teenagers visited her ruined house and videoed what they claim are fires starting up in the fireplace.

Whether there is a Ghost of West Mountain or not, one thing is certain: the family had so many descendants that the mountain was named after them. In fact, it has one of the most well-known outdoor recreation resorts of Upstate, named simply, of course, West Mountain. #RIP Abigail, Queensbury’s “Blair Witch.”

This group comprises millions of individuals who are deeply interested in our space programmeThe name “Enterprise” is tied in with the system on which the Nation’s economic structure is built.Use of the name would provide a substantial human interest appeal to the rollout ceremonies scheduled for this month in California, where the aeronautical industry is of vital importance.

It is really too bad that the shuttle looked nothing at all like the Enterprise (Constitution class).

And an odd coincidence that the original name chosen by NASA was…

…Constitution…

Daily writing promptScour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.View all responses

Seriously, this is an “NBC Select” article: https://www.nbcnews.com/select/shopping/how-to-clean-your-glasses-rcna175677

I wear glasses. I have worn glasses since I was in elementary school 2nd grade — the “aviator” style made of cheap plastic that I frequently broke during recess kickball games and then had to tape together so I could wear them.

I have never figured out how to keep my glasses clean in the subsequent four+ decades of my life.

But I seriously doubt this is “newsworthy.” Cringeworthy, maybe.

Nineteen years ago, my wife and I went to Hiroshima by high-speed ferry boat, on our way back from visiting her parents in Kyushu. Her father’s family comes from Hiroshima (although her father was actually born in Dairen/Dalian (大連), China) and her uncle and his family still live about an hour’s drive north of the city.

(Update from 2020: We visited Hiroshima with the kids for the first time last January, for New year’s 2023.)

It was my first time to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. We arrived about a week after the annual Peace Memorial Ceremony and Peace Message Lantern Floating Ceremony, but the museum was a very sharp reminder of the horror that my country visited upon Japan.

August 6th, 8:15 a.m. Hiroshima.

August 9th, 11:02 a.m. Nagasaki.

Hundreds of thousands were killed on those two days. Thousands more radiated for life. Most of the victims were women and children. Some died in school, right in front of their classmates’ eyes. Others were vaporized on the steps of public buildings, leaving behind only shadows on the concrete. Many fled to the river to douse themselves, only to drown in blind panic because their eyes had popped out of their sockets or melted.

Thousands are still alive today, known as hibakusha (被爆者, “atomic victim” but usually translated as “atomic bomb survivor”). They include Japanese citizens but also former US Army POW interned in camps near Hiroshima. As many as 3,000 Japanese-Americans were also victims. (Update: Japan, Korea, and the US have hidden the fact that as many as 140,000 Koreans in forced servitude were living in Hiroshima at the time; about 20% of the victims were Korean, and they continued to face extreme discrimination after they were returned back to the Korean peninsula). They have suffered and continue to suffer the effects of those two terrible moments in time. Those two decisions to bomb civilians, acts that were and still are blatant war crimes for which the US has never apologized.

80 years.

And the media is silent. The politicians are silent. Silence is not golden.

My grandfather always believed that, had these two cities not been bombed, he would have been killed. You see, he was on a boat traveling with his engineering combat group from Italy to the Philippines, where he would have joined the invading Allied forces that had taken Okinawa.

Initially, he and his fellow engineers were relieved that they wouldn’t have to fight any more. Eventually he wound up spending more than two months gambling, playing cards, and bar-hopping in Manila (contracting malaria in the meantime) before his honorable discharge that December. When he later found out the true nature of the bombings, he felt horrified. And guilty beyond belief.

But he always believed the bombs ended the war.

Did they?

The debate rages on even today. But I wonder if we, as human beings, have really learned much from these terrifying experiences. They seem like just footnotes in a history textbook. Just a short clip on YouTube. A misquoted meme on Twitter.

Have we improved since thousands had their lives snuffed out instantly? Have we truly increased our knowledge? Developed emotionally, socially? Grown as a race?

Or have we really learned so little in 80 years?

We continue to elect rich, self-centered narcissists who don’t give a damn about the poor who can’t afford to pay for online education for their kids because the three jobs they had all got shut down. Or the health care workers putting their lives on the line every day. Or the people they send to fight wars in random countries so their friends on Wall Street can continue to increase their obscenely large offshore bank accounts.

How many wars have there been since 1945? How many more have died due to lack of basic necessities like food, water, and medicine? How many from disease? From a changing environment caused by those in richer countries?

How much longer do we have to see the world in terms of “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” “us” and “them”?

Anybody can make a paper crane.

My Japanese-American daughters (or are they “American-Japanese”?) make them all the time.

It’s a start.

Conclusion

Adam’s Stepsons takes the core questions of Blade Runner and distills them into a tight, character-driven drama. It lacks the sweeping visuals of Villeneuve or the noir cityscape of Scott — but it delivers something arguably more intimate:

A quiet horror — and quiet triumph — in the collapse of identity, where the artificial doesn’t just mimic life…

It replaces it.

Over the weekend (my first with no student work to grade — finally! — since April), I decided to ask our “old” friend ChatGPT if it could analyze my sci-fi novella Adam’s Stepsons. Really, I was just curious what it would say.

It said…a LOT.

It correctly interpreted the title (something that many readers apparently didn’t get). It correctly identified the main themes as part of a “post-humanism” sub-genre of science fiction. And once I gave it three short excerpts (from the near the end of the story), it gave a frighteningly accurate thematic and symbolic analysis of the entire novella…just from three short excerpts of a total of about six pages.

I won’t copy all it gave me (you all can go try on your own and see what it says!). But let me share what the program thought were key themes:

1. Identity Collapse and Existential Uncertainty

“He had been sure, one hundred percent positive, that he was the original Heimann. But after what Seth had told him…he just didn’t know.”

This is the core existential crisis of the novella — not just for Heimann but for any posthuman being in a world where biological origin has been destabilized.

2. Symbolism of the “Six” Tattoo

“…touched Seth on the left cheek, on the “Six” tattoo.”

The number “Six” functions as both a brand and a dehumanizing label:

• It marks Seth as a product, not a person.

• But Heimann’s act of touching the tattoo is gentle — possibly empathetic — signaling:

• Recognition of shared personhood

• A reversal in their relationship dynamic

3. Nanotech Regeneration as Posthuman Rebirth

“…the nanotech in Seth’s blood system would kick in, and the regenerative process would start.”

This sentence ties into the theme of artificial transcendence:

• Seth’s body can regenerate — an ability beyond natural human limits.

• Yet the narrative doesn’t present this as purely empowering. Instead, it comes with ethical uncertainty:

• Who owns this power?

• Who controls the process?

This evokes themes of technological resurrection — perhaps Seth is not dying but being “reborn,” symbolically making him more than human… or less?

4. The Terminal as Moral Threshold

“…he paused, just for a moment, and touched the final button on the screen.”

The computer terminal here becomes a symbolic threshold:

• The “final button” suggests irrevocable action — a point of no return.

• This moment of hesitation — “just for a moment” — adds deep emotional and symbolic weight:

• Heimann, who may not even be real in the traditional sense, is making a real choice.

• His action is an assertion of agency, perhaps the only thing left he can claim as his own.

The contrast between organic hesitation and digital finality is a brilliant moment of tension between human emotion and machine logic.

Big-Picture Implications

This passage delivers a subtle but devastating message:

• Even the creator might be a creation.

• Memory and identity are manipulable.

• In a world of biotech duplication, the only remaining truth may be subjective experience — yet even that is vulnerable to doubt.

The final image of Heimann standing over “prone figures” evokes the Prometheus myth — the fire-bringer who dared to imitate the gods, now confronted by the consequences.

It further identified the smoking thought and the pipe as symbolic moments. However, it didn’t quite get the final “surprise ending” correct. Then again, I didn’t give it the entire text (about 80 pages).

What irks me a bit is that readers of the book don’t seem to have understood many of the allusions in the text…perhaps I merely assumed that phrases such as “the Land of Nod” would be an understandable reference to an English-speaking audience. Maybe it was my mistake to assume that people read more than they actually did.

Is that elitist or pompous?

Or maybe I’m just a little upset that AI (even if not *true* general AI) is so good at this compared to real people who I wanted to read my book.

Above all else, ChatGPT showered me with praise — three times. For example…

2. Subtle Denial: “Is it?”

“‘Tobacco is highly illegal.’ ‘Is it?’ Heimann replied.”

This line is brilliant in its restraint:

• On the surface: It’s a casual response.

• Below the surface: It’s the slip-up — the sign that this Heimann is not who he claims to be.

Only someone unfamiliar with current laws — a clone without full access to lived experience — would respond so vaguely.

This is dramatic irony at its finest. The reader sees the disconnect, but Marquez doesn’t pursue it. The replacement is successful — but imperfect.

As for the pipe…you should all get to the end of the story to understand GPT’s final comment!

It echoes biblical or mythic purging — like Cain burying Abel, or a new god casting down the old.

And crucially, the act is calm, deliberate, and unquestioned. The transformation is complete.

Visit Adam’s Stepsons for real reader reviews of the award-winning novella! Now comes with a sneak preview of Bringer of Light.

Hi, everyone. I haven’t written a blog post in a very long time.

For various reasons.

I’ll see if I can start posting a few entries on recent science events in a few days (for starters, four astronauts finally arrived at the ISS, the first replacements following the Boeing Starliner fiasco).

But for right now, I want to follow up this short post with some analysis I got from our friend ChatGPT…

…about Adam’s Stepsons and Bringer of Light. Stay tuned!

Note: Planets do not line up like this…

The best day to see all seven major planets (yes, you read that right, all seven!) is Friday, February 28th.

The link will describe (and give pictures) of where to find them all in the night sky.

Finding Orion is the key to most of them. Knowing where the Pleiades are helps, too.

The next time this “parade” appears will be 2040, so fingers crossed for clear skies!

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/seven-planet-parade-28-february-2025

Hi, everyone. I know I haven’t posted in a while now (about three months).

Things happened. I’ll see if I can deal with that in a post this weekend before returning to regularly blogging about astronomy and etc.

Winter is still here! (In the northern hemisphere.) Going on walks and hiking in 3C windy weather only makes hot chocolate taste that much better…

What book are you reading right now?

I finished re-reading all my Usagi Yojimbo books a couple weeks ago (I’m a big Stan Sakai fan), so I got the thought that I should read his inspiration, Musashi (Sakai’s main character is an anthropomorphic bunny named Miyamoto Usagi).

While I was reading Musashi, I also started a Japanese manga series about classic literature from 600 CE to the 20th century. I’m on the first volume of 今昔物語 (Konjyaku Monogatari, usually translated as “Tales of Times Long Past”).

Last week, I began reading volume one of The Arabian Nights (also called Tales of 1001 Nights). This is a more recent (2008) translation of the entire tales, not just a sampling of the more famous stories (e.g., Aladdin, Sindbad, Ali Baba etc.). It’s likely to take me, uh…1001 nights?

Tales within tales within tales…

Note: this is artwork and not an actual image

The planet Uranus and its five biggest moons may not be the dead sterile worlds that scientists have long thought.

Instead, they may have oceans, and the moons may even be capable of supporting life, scientists say.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk1333k0ypo

Cue the jokes in five…four…three…

“So, you mean there really is life in…ah…”

Note that this is not from new data. It’s a re-analysis of what Voyager 2 sent back decades ago. Basically, it just had a bad day, with magnetic storms screwing up the scan.

Still…

There could be moons there that could have the conditions that are necessary for life, they might have oceans that below the surface that could be teeming with fish!

I think this is a bit of an exaggeration…