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[links] Link salad is the new black
Book Review: Green by Jay Lake — A reader with some very mixed reactions.
A reader reacts to Mainspring — Very much not with the liking. Clearly I am not winning the Internets today.
Dice & Deadlines: Your Internet Presence — Advice for authors from editor Jennifer Brozek.
A Book By Any Other Name… — Scrivener’s Error with a ‘prescription for publishing’, including a number of trenchant observations about the current state of the industry. He also calls to mind my comment that a book is essentially a license rather than a product.
Nerds Try to Drive Studio to Madness — Fans petition Universal to make Guillermo Del Toro’s dream Lovecraft project. (Via Justin Steele.)
Vintage Infoporn — Some cool history of graphic visualization of data, from Infographics.
Printing a human kidney — A TED talk. (Via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1){kind=small}
lt260.)
Mont. judge orders hysterectomy, patient appeals — This is a challenging story. A wide array of peculiar behavior, ranging from the eccentric to the pathological, is privileged under the guise of religious belief in our society, but when that’s where the question of competency hinges, it’s a tough pass. If this were treatment being refused on behalf of a child, I would stand firmly against the parent’s claim. But an adult refusing for themselves? Much tougher call. People really are entitled to go to hell in their own way, so long as they don’t take others with them.
The Forbes 400 vs. Everyone Else — In case you were wondering where the money went.
?otD: Visigoth or invisigoth?
3/9/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (2,500 words on Sunspin)
Body movement: 30 minute suburban walk (trailhead was closed)
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (interrupted)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: The Falling Machine: A Society of Steam Novel by Andrew P. Mayer
Posted: 4:56 am Wed March 09 2011 |
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You are reading the blog of Jay Lake, speculative fiction writer and author of hundreds of short stories, many novels, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award.
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Cora
March 9th, 2011 at 5:59 pmAs for the woman with the forced hysterectomy, I believe that every sane adult has the right to make medical decisions, including medical decisions that strike others as wrong, for him- or herself. Forcibly ordering someone to undergo a very invasive operation is as wrong IMO as forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy she does not want to term. Of course, it must be checked whether the woman in question is mentally ill to the point of incompetence. But religious conviction, however we might feel about it, is not necessarily a sign of mental illness.
Besides, no one has a problem with honouring “living wills” in which people refuse lifesaving medical treatment, even if those “living wills” are decades old and the people in question are unconscious and cannot be consulted about whether they wish treatment or not. And a lot of people sign living wills with very little background information. So why is a woman consciously refusing a treatment an issue, when an unconscious person refusing treatment in a years or decades old document is not?
Children are a different case, because children are, depending upon age, not able to make medical decisions for themselves. And I do not believe that children should suffer or even die for their parents’ religious believes – and yes, this includes the Jehova’s Witnesses refusal of blood transfusions for their children. Older teenagers are a borderline case, e.g. while a six-year-old is obviously not able to make medical decisions, a sixteen-year-old should at least be heard. I had a medical procedure carried out against my explicit will as a teenager and the way that my arguments (and I had reasoned arguments, I did not just scream “I don’t want this”) were ignored and discounted was humiliating. Never mind that the medical professionals in question did not consult my parents, they just went ahead.