Your Sunday moment of zen.
Flower along Williams Lake trail, about 11,000 feet, Taos Ski Valley, NM. © 2006, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 6:30 am Sun November 15 2009 | Comments(0) |
Charles A. Tan with a takedown of International Science Fiction Reshelving day — What he said. (Via Andrew Wheeler.)
Superconductors to Wire a Smarter Grid — More than you probably wanted to know about the US power infrastructure. Still, cool stuff.
Bad Science on the Iraqi bomb detection wands — This is as insane, and in its way deadly, as Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS denialism. US conservatism have their global warming denial and evolution psychoses, liberals have their antivaxers, but it’s nice to know that antiscience lunacy is not just for Americans.
China’s fear of a black president
?otD: Which way to Pismo Beach?
Posted: 6:27 am Sun November 15 2009 | Comments(0) |
Just yesterday finished reading an ARC of the new Daniel Fox book Jade Man’s Skin, Del Rey, February, 2010. This is the book two of a trilogy begun with Fox’s 2009 Dragon in Chains.
This is a fantasy based in a secondary world analog of Medieval China. Many readers may be familiar with Barry Hughart’s brilliant Bridge of Birds as an example of Sinocentric fantasy, but where Hughart was telling a very Westernized, tongue-in-cheek story, Fox has chosen to follow a much more traditional Chinese path with the story and his characters. These books cover the range from Imperial intrigue to ocean-spanning magic to the smallest lives. Brutal, brilliant, complex and startlingly clear all at once, this series does a magnificent job of taking the reader into a culture, a time and a place that most of us have never considered.
I’m eager for the third volume, and these first two come highly recommended.
Posted: 11:18 am Sat November 14 2009 | Comments(1) |
Your Saturday moment of zen.
My high school dorm room, Hill House, Choate Rosemary Hall, ca. fall, 1979. © 1979, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 11:02 am Sat November 14 2009 | Comments(0) |
I am interviewed by Michael Ventrella
Greenland’s ice sheet lost 1500 gigatons of mass from 2000 to 2008 — Another liberal traitor in the global warming conspiracy.
NASA finds reservoir of water ice on the Moon! — In case you missed this. Big news!
Sunrise over DIA — A nice image from APOD.
?otD: How much up would an woodchuck upchuck if a woodchuck could chuck upchuck up?
Posted: 10:59 am Sat November 14 2009 | Comments(0) |
About to hop on a plane and head west to San Francisco. Don’t take any wooden pickles while I’m gone.
Posted: 2:58 am Fri November 13 2009 | Comments(0) |
Your Friday moment of zen.
Williams Lake trail at Taos Ski Valley, NM, about 11,000 feet of altitude. © 2006, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 2:50 am Fri November 13 2009 | Comments(0) |
Call for masks — A way of sticking it to my cancer.
Strange Horizons reviews Green [ Powell's | Amazon
The Speed of Online Conversation — The Web, Twitter, and you.
Rosetta takes home some pictures — Bad Astronomy with some serious wow factor.
Backward star ain’t from around here — Fun with astrography. (Snurched from the Twitter feed of @jstephenyork.)
Hoekstra Helps Al Qaeda — A Republican congressman gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Waiting for the media explosion… waiting… waiting… (Just as a thought experiment, imagine if Barney Frank had done this.)
?otD: How many dances can an angelhead pin?
Posted: 2:46 am Fri November 13 2009 | Comments(1) |
Well, today was not exactly made of win. We drove 50 miles in the remnants of Hurricane Ida to reach our client. We arrived early, made a coffee stop to kill a little time and prep for the meeting. Driving into the client site, my co-worker spilled a 16 oz latte on my pants and shoes. This was not good meeting prep, frankly. (Though the meeting went just fine.)
On the way back, we stopped for gas near the Philadelphia Airport. Weather was still wet and raw, and so due to my continuing efforts not to catch a respiratory illness, my co-worker got out to pump, and nearly got rolled by a dude in a black parka.
So, erm, just as glad to be safely back in my hotel room. Tomorrow, San Francisco and
Posted: 6:35 pm Thu November 12 2009 | Comments(0) |
When I’m very stressed out, I show it in specific ways. For example, I can’t work a Sudoku puzzle. I make a lot of arithmetic errors. My sleep habits get wonky.
This is to say, I’ve been diligent about exercising lately, and I wake up on time, without the alarm clock even now, and can still work Sudokus. That’s how I know that even in the face of emotional anguish, nonstop talking about it, and comfort eating, still much of the cancer stress is me processing stuff, rather than me cratering in the face of it.
When I stop being able to wake up on time is when the shit will really have hit the fan.
Posted: 5:52 am Thu November 12 2009 | Comments(5) |
