Thursday, January 28, 2010

Does Geothermal Drilling Cause Earthquakes?






Can engineered geothermal system drilling cause earthquakes? According to some engineers, it can. But other believe that the seismic events caused by the fracturing of rock deep beneath the Earth's surface will only cause seismic events too small for anyone to notice. But what happens when one of these small events chain reacts into something larger and catastrophic? Get the true story here.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Suspense Insider Blog

Publishing's New World Order
by Vincent Zandri

The book publishing industry has changed drastically in the eight years between my last commercially published novels, As Catch Can (Delacorte Press/Dell) Godchild (Bantam/Dell) and my newest indy press noir effort, Moonlight Falls (RJBuckely). The most obvious of which is the utter explosion of social media and the tremendous marketing opportunities available there.

Eight years ago I had a single AOL account where I’d receive email and, on occasion, peek at the news. The internet back then was more or less an extension of both the television and the telephone. But today, I have a website (www.vincentzandri.com) which can be updated instantly. I’m on Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. And this article is appearing for you not in newsprint but on your computer screen. See the hyperlinks? Just click onto them. A whole new universe opens up to you with each double-click.

Articles are no longer articles. They’re interactive, multi-media, multi-dimensional “blogs.” I have no idea where the term comes from, but I do know that the blog is a way to express participatory journalism in as real-time as possible. Eight years ago, I had to put my journalism on hold since writing articles and sending them out to pubs via snail mail along with an SASE, was exceedingly time consuming. I concentrated on writing fiction, the old fashioned way. When a manuscript was ready, I printed the hardcopy, packaged it up, pasted a bunch of stamps on it, and sent it out to my agent.

Back in those days, I had no other income source than my fiction. Today, not only do I make money from my fiction, I’m a professional blogger. As an experienced photojournalist, blogging is something I simply fell into. Check out a couple examples of my blogs here: Embedded In Africa, The Vincent Zandri Vox, and Dangerous Dispatches. You don’t need to do anything other than double-click on the link. It’s that easy. When I complete a new fiction manuscript, I simply add it to an email as an attachment and send it electronically to my agent, whom I’ve never met in the flesh. She will then read the book on her Kindle. Suggested revisions will be emailed back to me as an attachment with computer generated corrections. When the book in finally completed, she will query publishers by email. Welcome to the new world publishing order.

I now deal with CMS systems, podcasts, and video links. I submit photos as “gifs” or “jpegs.” Meetings with my editors and fellow freelance writers from around the globe are conducted via Skype or Webinars. If I’m not at my computer, I can utilize my Blackberry touch-screen as a fully capable mini-computer. In fact, I often send photographs directly from my phone to Facebook in preparation for a new food blog my girlfriend and I are thinking of starting.

For my first couple of books, I drove around to bookstores where I signed copies of the novels. I drove to new York City, flew to Philly and L.A. Come February I begin my first ever “Virtual Tour,” because after all, my new novel is gauged not necessarily by how well it’s doing in the independent bookstores, but what my Amazon rating is. The Virtual Book Tour of interviews, guest blogs, reviews, flash trailers, websites and more, will assure me success as a traditionally published author in a non-traditional online, cyberspace environment. Which leads me to the news I got just this morning. Moonlight Falls has just been released on Kindle. I’ve never even seen a Kindle in person.

But despite the publishing world wide web and the electronic revolution, you can’t replace a good old fashioned literary reading. You know, the kind where the writer makes the walk to the podium with all the visible anxiety of a man walking the plank. You can see the sweat beading on his forehead, see the fear in his eyes, hear the crack in his voice when he begins to read. Oh, hey wait just one moment. This is the new world publishing order we’re talking about here. See for yourself. This me reading from Moonlight Falls. Just double-click on the link: Youtube.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Don't Send Clothing to Haiti!






The disastrous earthquake in Haiti has devastated a city and a people. But don't send clothing. It would be another disaster. Check out the story here at RT.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Iran’s First Strike Ambitions






November 4, 1979: The free world watches in collective disgust as 53 Americans are taken hostage by a group of Iranian Islamist student radicals and held at gunpoint inside an overrun American embassy in Tehran. Nightly television news broadcasts display painful-to-watch video footage of blindfolded and wrist-bound embassy workers being dragged and paraded in front of a jeering, unruly, hateful mob chanting anti-American slogans like “Death to America” while burning the stars-and-stripes in the streets.
Thus begins the Iranian Revolution. It also begins the dismantling of a difficult Carter presidency already tarnished by skyrocketing inflation, unemployment and recession. When nearly a year and a half of negotiations on behalf of the administration breaks down, the lame duck president has no choice but to enlist the help of the military to conduct a rescue operation.
But for Carter, a diplomat and future Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and anti-military liberal, soliciting help from his own military is a final option tentatively entered into. It’s no wonder that when Operation Eagle Claw, as it’s called, is enacted, its results are disastrous, culminating in the crash of two aircraft and eight American servicemen. As the world watches stunned, the once powerful US is now looked upon as weak and sadly out of touch with the new radical thugs who look upon their Islamist leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, as a living Allah.
Fast forward three decades, dozens of deadly terrorist attacks in America and abroad, and Iran is once again poised to take more hostages. Only this time, instead of grabbing hold of 50-plus embassy workers, they’re going after something a little more ambitious. Nothing less than global domination. In other words, Iran is about to take the world hostage by bringing online a nuclear weapons arsenal that is not only designed to obliterate Israel, but also Western Europe and the US.
Just yesterday, the New York Times reported that Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, issued a warning to the West “that it had one month to accept Iran’s counterproposal to a deal brokered by the United Nations aimed at slowing the Iranian nuclear program, or else Iran would begin further enriching its nuclear fuel stockpile on its own.”
Mottaki, who issued his “ultimatum” before state television cameras in Cairo only two days after missing their UN deadline, stated explicitly that his country, acting on orders from its radical leader, President Mahmoud Ahmadinjad, that it has the ability to “enrich its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to 20-percent.” If Mottaki is indeed telling the truth, a 20-percent enrichment will at least be enough to produce a crude version of modern nuclear warhead.
With Iran’s nuclear program said to be as much a symbol of national pride as is their radically Islamist anti-West beliefs, some world leaders view Mottaki’s swagger as a diversionary tactic meant to shift attention away from the country’s ever-crumbling social order that’s come about in the wake of Ahmadinjad’s having stolen the presidential election back in June. With anti-Ahmadinjad protestors being yanked off the streets, beaten, jailed and in some cases, killed, Iran is looking more and more like the Nazi Germany of pre-World Way II, say, less than a year before Panzers Blitzkrieged their way into Poland.
Iran’s official stance on building up their nuclear stockpile is for energy needs. But given the government’s tendency towards bullying anything and anyone who stands in their way of destroying the West, perhaps they should look into more green and sustainable energy alternatives like solar and wind power. Since it looks like Tehran is not going to abide by the UN proposal and abandon their nuclear ambitions under any circumstance, Obama, like Carter thirty years before him, is going to attempt to impose “harsh financial sanctions” on Iran.
But will sanctions hurt the Iranian people?
Almost definitely, which is why Washington is trying to tiptoe it’s way around the harsh reality of war, trying to figure out a gentler way of imposing penalties on government institutions and officials, rather than the general public at large. Kind of the diplomat’s version of the “smart bomb.” How realistic is this scenario? On a scale from 1 to 10, sanctions aimed at specific government targets probably weighs in at around a minus 3.
What should be done to stop Iran’s nuclear ambition in its tracks?
Nothing short of military intervention, should it come to that. Unlike Iraq nearly a decade ago, at least this time, we know for certain a nuclear stockpile exists and that its purpose is none other than to destroy the peace-loving free world.
Iran’s defiance is not based upon its energy needs. It’s based upon its lust for a nuclear arsenal with which is can terrorize the globe. The fact that the defiance is occurring during political upheaval which includes the outright killing of eight protestors alone this past Sunday, is not indiscriminate. According to one anonymous Washington, DC-based Iranian official, “I am sure that, in light of the recent events much more than in the past, the Revolutionary Guards and Ahmadinejad would love the new heightened tension with the US and the West.” He also goes on to say that harsh sanctions could work against the free world by unifying the Iranian people.
The people who were arrested, tried and executed within a matter of hours this past Sunday were charged with “desecrating the values of the Islamic Revolution.” Those values are none other than the fiery annihilation of the West and Israel. While members of the Iranian press and media are being arrested and no doubt face their own lengthy jail sentences and/or execution, Tehran will continue to defy the UN and proceed with its nuclear ambitions. Not for energy, but in order to achieve a first-strike capability.
Back in the late 1930s, while Prime Minister Chamberlin received an appeasing “nonaggression” promise from Hitler which he was certain would guarantee “peace for our time,” Ernest Hemingway was warning the world that the recent Fascist-backed revolution in Spain was just the precursor to a “long planned murder” which would no doubt engulf the entirety of Europe and the world. Obviously, unlike Chamberlain and other would-be diplomats, Hemingway had the gift for being able to look something in the face and knowing exactly what it was. That face bore a tiny, if not comical mustache, and it personally authorized the murder of millions.
“I expect the regime to further intimidate the people,” says Abbas Milani, a critic of Ahmadinejad and his murderous band of revolutionary thugs and criminals. But what President Obama should expect is that unless he takes a good hard look at his Nobel Peace Prize and realizes that sooner than later, a military option just might be the only true solution to preserving that peace, he might wake up one night to a nuclear mushroom cloud rising above Israel and the West.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Flight 253: A Wakeup Call to War!





On Christmas day, a Muslim radical who was allowed to fly on a commercial jet deliberately set out to commit mass murder by attempting to blow the plane out of the sky. Is Obama being tough enough when it comes to national security? Does he need to personally declare war on Muslim radicals? Check out the story here on RT's Dangerous Dispatches: