[cancer] Being there, at the Nebulas
So, the Nebs. I’m still processing a lot, specifically in the context of my cancer journey. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m going on my farewell tour these days. Which is essentially true, barring some extremely unexpected developments. Even if I hang on past the current prognosis, I’ll either be wrapped in the misery of treatment or I’ll be wrapped in the misery of my terminal decline. I don’t expect to travel again much if ever after this summer. That means that while it’s reasonably possible I’ll still be alive at the time of next year’s Nebula Awards Weekend, it’s highly improbable I could attend.
Everyone who knows me knows this, too.
I received an amazing amount of well wishing. Almost all of it was delivered tactfully. I got to have worthwhile conversations with most of the people present whom I know personally. I got to see a lot of a few people, and a little of a lot of people. I had hella fun, as did my family and friends. But all of those memories are overlain by sadness.
At least I lived long enough to go as one of the nominees. This is something I’m quite proud of. And it was very gratifying to be able to give Aliette de Bodard her well-earned short story Nebula.
But beyond that rather pointless melancholy, I can’t yet tell you what it means. I can only tell you I was present, at this time my life.
Sometimes that’s enough.
Tags: Awards, Cancer, Conventions, Family, friends, health, Personal
Posted: 6:34 am Mon May 20 2013 | Comments(5) |
[events] JayFest sponsored by Powell’s Books
Mark your calendars! Powell’s Books will be hosting JayFest, a group signing and book fair in support of, well, me.
DATE: Thursday, June 13, 2013 (two days before JayCon XIII)
TIME: Book fair 6:00-9:00 pm, group signing 7:00-8:00 pm
PLACE: Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing in Beaverton, Oregon
Authors in attendance will include David D. Levine, Phyllis Irene Radford, Devon Monk, Barb and J. C. Hendee, Shannon Page, Mark Ferrari, J. A. Pitts, M. K. Hobson, Diana Pharaoh Francis, and Tina Connolly.
Ten percent of the proceeds for each book sold during the book fair will go to the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund, which helps professional science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery writers living in the Pacific Northwest states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska deal with the financial burden of medical expenses.
Please see http://www.powells.com/events/5348/ for more information and updates.
Tags: Books, Cancer, Conventions, events, friends, health, Northwest, Oregon, Personal
Posted: 4:42 am Fri May 17 2013 | Comments(16) |
[links] Link salad wonders how it can dance when our earth is turning
JayFest — Sci-Fi Book Fair & Group Signing — My friends at Powell’s are hosting a group signing in support of my cancer journey, book sales to benefit the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund. The evening of June 13, 2013, two days before JayCon, at Powell’s Cedar Hills in Beaverton, OR.
Almost All the Way Home From the Stars: Seven Science Fiction Stories — An ebook of my collaborate work with Ruth Nestvold is now available. Includes the story we had in SCI FICTION together.
Vintage Book Jacket Art — (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)
Two uncomfortable truths: New Merida looks a little whorey. Fewer people care about this than you would think.
Brain Training Helps Clear Cognitive Fog Caused by Chemotherapy — The mental fuzziness induced by cancer treatment could be eased by cognitive exercises performed online, say researchers. I play sudoku online rather obsessively when I am in chemo, as a form of cognitive self-check.
Ranbaxy: Looking Under the Rock — Why generic drugs do not always stack up. (Via David Goldman.)
Eyeball — A throwable building-mapping sphere from Bounce Imaging was recently chosen by PopSci for a 2013 Invention Award. The “throwable, expendable, baseball-size probe,” in PopSci’s words, “has a shock-absorbing shell embedded with six cameras, plus clusters of near-infrared LEDs to light up dark rooms (for the cameras).” Wow.
Opportunity Breaks NASA’s 40-Year Roving Record
Danish Teenager Makes Rare Viking Find — Cool!
Thrilling video of Portland PD high-speed chase… wait for it… — Ah, Portland.
Survey of 12,000 studies finds strong agreement on climate change — We already knew 97% of climate scientists backed the scientific consensus. It’s amazing the lengths liberals will go to in order to spread their climate change lies, even to the extent of using reality-based “facts” and “data”.
GOP raffling AR-15 “Sandy Hook”-type rifles as macabre pro-gun stunt — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best.
CBS: It was congressional GOP who faked Benghazi email — Conservatives can almost never win on the facts, so of course they lie. That’s the entire idea behind FOX News. And the Bush administration. (WMDs in Iraq, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) Why should it be any different in the GOP congressional delegation? Water is wet, too.
QotD?: How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
5/17/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (0.5 revisions on my novella for METAtropolis: Green Space, plus WRPA)
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 249.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Tags: Books, Cancer, climate, Cool, events, Funny, guns, health, healthcare, Iraq, Links, Mars, media, Personal, Politics, Portland, Publishing, Science, stories, Tech, Videos
Posted: 4:36 am Fri May 17 2013 | Comments(4) |
[cancer] Field notes from Cancerland, heading out of town tomorrow edition
Generosity of Spirit
More generosity flows my way. @howardtayler has done some amazing things for me this week, with an able assist from his colorist Travis Walton. Howard teases his work here. Suffice to say this will be public soon, and you can all marvel at Howard’s skill and wit, and understand how impressed and humbled I am by his support.
Airline Mileage
Yesterday’s airline mileage appeal was a bit of a fiasco. I’d not checked into the airline policies for a while, and they have both monetized and restricted mileage transfers between private individual. Thank you so much to everyone who made the effort. Another reader found points.com, which I will be investigating today or tomorrow in hopes of arriving at a more useful solution. In the mean time, the original Big Project has proceeded down another path. I have several other Worthy Projects in mind, so if I can get this straightened out, the appeal will continue, albeit on slightly different terms.
Regorafenib
I’ve been told that my prescription for Regorafenib has been approved. This drug is a specialty pharmacy item, which means it falls outside the usual infrastructure of pharmaceutical benefits. This includes pre-approval letters and me dealing with a designated mail order pharmacy for my medication supply. It also potentially included a whopping co-pay, but it turns out my carrier’s pharmacy plan treated this as simply being at the high end of the formulary. Which is modestly annoying, but that’s same $50 co-pay I have for Celebrex, Levitra, et cetera.
My Next Scan
I have been corresponding with my oncologist about my next CT scan. Those are supposed to be eight weeks apart right now. That’s the minimum spacing recommended for clinical benefit. I also believe there are significant radiation exposure concerns with excessive scanning. In my case, I won’t live long enough to experience that set of problems, but nonetheless the health and safety guidelines exist. The problem is, they want me to have the next CT scan eight weeks after I start taking the Regorafenib. As I am going out of town tomorrow for eleven days — the Nebulas in San Jose, then Rio Hondo in northern New Mexico — I won’t be able to start taking the Regorafenib prior to May 27th at the earliest. And even that date assumes the specialty pharmacy comes through in a timely manner. Which puts me to eleven weeks or longer between CT scans. And creates the situation that we have 3+ weeks of tumor growth prior to the beginning of any hoped-for effects from the Regorafenib. I think we’d have both a growth rate assessment and a clean baseline for evaluation the new medication if we did a scan shortly after May 27th, but that is far too soon per the generic clinical guidelines. No answer yet, but it’s one of the things I’m worrying about.
Tasking All the Things
Remember that big list of mine, of things that need doing before I die? [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] Well, it’s grown. And we’re doing them. So an enormous amount of administratrivia is happening around Nuevo Rancho Lake. So far, most of the customer service reps, managers and whatnot we’ve dealt with have been very gracious. I feel like Robert DeNiro’s Harry Tuttle in Brazil [ imdb ] being consumed by paper. Still, progress is being made.
My Coping
I’ve had several people note that I’m pretty cheerful lately. The not very hidden subtext is them wondering why I’m not wailing and rending my garments. Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m not wailing and rending my garments. I suppose because there’s no time for that sort of thing. I don’t have much life left to live, especially in something like normal health, and I have too much to do. Love my child, write my stories, be good to Lisa Costello and Jersey Girl in Portland and mother of the child and my family and my friends and my fans and my co-workers and and and. It is true that my current good nature is a very thin veneer, subject to cracking at even a glancing blow. Beneath that is a bubbling stew of anger, grief and terror, spiced with a catalog of other negative emotions. Nonetheless, here I am. And forward is the only direction for me.
Thank you all for reading, for caring, for reaching out.
Tags: Art, Cancer, Child, Family, friends, health, jerseygirl, Movies, Personal, radiantlisa, Travel, Videos
Posted: 5:48 am Thu May 16 2013 | Comments(17) |
[links] Link salad knows there’s no love inside the icehouse
Rick Novy interviews me
The Canadian Who Won’t be Returning From the Stars — ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1)
specficrider on a joint project of ours.
Will insurance cover genetic testing, preventive surgery? — Women who discover they carry a hereditary gene mutation that dramatically increases their risk of breast and ovarian cancers face big decisions and the possibility of tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs. This story is a version of what I went through.
12 Tips from 12 Years Sick — Yep. I’m only barely into year six, but, yep. (Thanks to Lisa Costello.)
Star Trek: The Search for Science — The Bad Astronmer is much with the hilarity.
The secret laser-toting Soviet satellite that almost was — Here’s a little Cold War alt.hist for you.
Billion-Year-Old Water Found in Canada Holds Clues About Ancient Life — You really need to read the expiration dates on those gas station water bottles.
Hunting Pesky Pigs in Paradise — Ham sandwiches on the hoof, where they don’t belong.
Terahertz Image Reveals Goya’s Hidden Signature in Old Master Painting — Darkened varnish obscures Goya’s signature in a 1771 masterpiece, according to a new analysis using terahertz waves
The Spies Who Blundered — Alleged undercover CIA agent Ryan Fogle is one of many spies to bungle the job.
My Despair — Another of those sad, strange posts on Feminist Mormon Housewives where someone of apparent intelligence and progressive sensibilities finds their common sense and observations of the real world in profound conflict with their faith. If I were a faith-holder, I don’t think I could tolerate that much cognitive dissonance.
When did you choose to be straight? — Heh.
Christian denominations and marriage equality: A simple quiz — Slacktivist Fred Clark makes a point that many anti-gay bigots in pietist clothing would prefer to ignore. Christianists find it so much more comfortable to hate inconvenient people than to actually pay attention to their own morality.
What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’ — In a world where Kevin Garnett, Harold Ford, and Halle Berry all check “black” on the census, even the argument that racial labels refer to natural differences in physical traits doesn’t hold up. Ta-Nehisi Coates is far more elegant than I ever could be on this topic.
Tullahoma father being reckless when baby daughter shot, police say — Because guns make us all safer. Without the smiling protection of the NRA and the GOP, this dad wouldn’t have been able to exercise his theoretical defense of essentially liberties by blowing away his own child.
QotD?: Can you remember getting any older?
5/16/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (0.5 revisions on my novella for METAtropolis: Green Space, plus WRPA)
Hours slept: 8.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett
Tags: Art, Books, Cancer, Christianists, climate, Funny, gay, guns, health, healthcare, interviews, Links, Movies, nature, Personal, Politics, race, Religion, Science, stories, Tech, Videos, weird
Posted: 5:20 am Thu May 16 2013 | Comments(3) |
[cancer|travel] Something you can do for me
ETA: There may be a fee for sharing or donating miles. If your airline tells you this is true, please ignore this request. My apologies for faulty research.
A lot of people have asked what they can do for me. Unless you’re physically and socially close to me, my answer to that has generally been an appreciation for good will and best wishes. Cancer is a journey that I ultimately must walk alone, no matter how many people are prepared to walk beside me. No one but me goes under the needle or the knife, and it’s my personal extinction out on the table now.
That being said, you have been profoundly supportive. The Sequence A Science Fiction Writer fundraiser was a runaway success. (And watch this space for some details about how I am planning to do some giving back with that.) Likewise the letters and comments I receive via email and social media and the US postal service. All that love and support means a great deal to me.
However, there is something else you can do for me. I’m trying to plan something pretty amazing for the_child (and hopefully Lisa Costello) this summer, and I need some more frequent flyer miles to make it work.
If you’re fortunate enough to have mileage in either American Aadvantage or United Mileage Plus, or allied programs within the OneWorld and Star Alliance networks, I am soliciting mileage donations for my plans. Can’t spill the beans quite yet, though I will provide full disclosure as soon as circumstances permit. If I am donated excess mileage beyond my needs, that mileage will eventually be donated in turn to charity.
Should you be interested, please contact me directly for my account number and related information. And thank you so much for even considering this.
Tags: Cancer, Child, health, Personal, radiantlisa, Travel
Posted: 5:29 am Tue May 14 2013 | Comments(38) |
[writing|cancer] We can write the gospels so they’ll still talk about us when we’ve died
Some years ago, I was in a discussion with the mighty, mighty Tim Pratt about why we write. At this point, I cannot recall if it was private conversation, email, a Con panel, bar chatter, a joint interview or what. What I do recall quite strongly was me making some fairly high flying statement about literary ambition and being read even after my time as a writer had passed. Tim claimed that he wrote to pay the rent.
To this day, I’m not certain how serious he was. I absolutely deserved to have my leg pulled at that point. I’m pretty sure I was overfilled with my own sense of self-importance in the moment. Pegs needed to be taken down, and whatnot. But even so, there’s a valid discussion here.
For one, I don’t write to pay the rent. I have a Day Jobbe for that. It pays reasonably well, is moderately entertaining, minimally stressful, and I like what I do while working with good people and for a good employer. Chances are pretty strong that if we ever talked about it, I’d bore you to tears, but I like my work. That’s what counts.
But the writing? I write because I want to write. I write because I’m in love with the language. I write because the buzz I get from doing a really nifty thing on the page is tangible. I write because I like to be read. I write because I like having readers. And, yes, in I write for posterity. (Which statement could be argued to mean that I write to make an ass of myself, but that’s the English language for you: riddled with half-baked puns and deceptive etymologies.) Money is mostly a way of keeping score, and far from the only method of doing so.
Literary posterity is a funny thing. The author of The Epic of Gilgamesh is anonymous. Most people with much of an education can name Homer as the poet who wrote the Odyssey. Some people know about the Illiad, or that he was supposedly blind. I don’t think anybody but Classicists knows much else about him, even in terms of what tradition says. By the time you get to Sophocles and his lot, there’s at least a little biography attached to the texts. William Shakespeare has entire fields of study around him, complete with academic controversy, revisionism and all the other fun of postmodernist thought.
Who writing today will be subject to that kind of literary posterity? Not me, certainly. But it’s hard to tell. Edward Bulwer-Lytton was the great hope of nineteenth century English letters. Today, his work is literally a joke. His contemporary Charles Dickens was widely reviled by the academic and critical establishment of the day as a hack. Who is the more widely read now?
My guess is of twentieth century authors in popular American letters, we’re most likely to see Stephen King and Nora Roberts on college reading lists a century from now. Not the only ones, of course, but I cannot pretend to know which critical darlings and academically significant authors will also be read.
What I can and do know is that I will not be among them.
I’m okay with that. My vanity is a little disappointed, of course, but my common sense knows better.
What I do hope for is to stay on the shelf a while after I pass. It comforts me that some people love Mainspring or Green or some of my short fiction. It please me that I’m in translation across at least a dozen languages. It pleases me that my work will always be at least footnoted in the history of various awards. It pleases me that people have read me, and for a while at least, will continue to read me.
In a way, that’s always been why I write. To raise my voice a little higher, and have it heard a little longer. The end is coming, and I won’t write all that much more in my life, but I’m happy with what I’ve been able to do. I only wish I could have done more.
Tags: Cancer, friends, health, history, Personal, Publishing, Writing
Posted: 5:24 am Tue May 14 2013 | Comments(17) |
[links] Link salad prove to you that it’s no fool, walks across your swimming pool
It’s hard to rely on my good intentions, when my head’s full of things that I can’t mention — Lisa Costello on how my cancer news is affecting her.
Game Theory and the Treatment of Cancer — Thinking about cancer as an ecosystem is giving biologists access to a new armoury of mathematical tools for tackling it, such as evolutionary game theory.
The History of Typography – Animated Short — This is kind of nifty. (Via threeoutside.)
Alice E. Kober, 43; Lost to History No More — Ancient languages and eccentric professors. It doesn’t get any better! (Via my Dad.)
Dull Flag and Tongue of Gangsta: The Laugh-out-loud Place-names of Shetland and Orkney
Beatnik JFK: 1957 — For some reason, I find this photo very funny.
Researcher Analyzes Oldest Fossil Hominid Ear Bones Ever Recovered
Fossil Amber Challenges Theories About Glass — Scientists discover that glass doesn’t flow like a liquid.
Kangaroos have three vaginas — Mmm, marsupials. (Via David Goldman.)
One Small Step for Geoengineering — or Is “Ecoengineering” Better?
Space Oddity — David Bowie’s Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station. We are indeed living in the future. (Via David Goldman and others.)
‘Einstein’s Planet’: New Alien World Revealed by Relativity
Climate Sensitivity Stunner: Last Time CO2 Levels Hit 400 Parts Per Million The Arctic Was 14°F Warmer!
The Dark Art of Racecraft — Jason Richwine’s place in the long history of research on race and IQ. Ta-Nehisi Coates is powerful on race and racism in academic tradition.
Infographic: Is Your State’s Highest-Paid Employee A Coach? (Probably) — I’m so proud of America at moments like this. With all the budget problems of government, and all the human suffering in our debated economy, we still have our priorities straight. (Via danjite.)
Japan WWII ‘comfort women’ were ‘necessary’ – Hashimoto — A prominent Japanese politician has described as “necessary” the system by which women were forced to become prostitutes for World War II troops. Oh, God. Really? Not only seven kinds of wrong, but disgusting and morally depraved. China indignant at Japanese politician’s “comfort women” statement.
Homophobes Might Be Hidden Homosexuals — A new analysis of implicit bias and explicit sexual orientation statements may help to explain the underpinnings of anti-gay bullying and hate crimes. Also, this just in: water is wet. Inside a great number of angry conservative bigots is a fabulous gay man struggling to get out.
Naked TSA Protester’s Appeal to Be Heard Tuesday — A story of local interest here in Portland. It would be pretty funny if it weren’t so darned serious.
Police search for 19-year-old man shooting, wounding of 19 at New Orleans Mother’s Day parade — Because an armed society is a polite society, and guns make us all safer. Think how much harder it would have been for this shooter to exercise his theoretical defense of essential liberties without the smiling protection of the NRA and the Republican Party.
Right-wing media check up: still crazy — The right-wing media hasn’t learned anything from its failures in 2012. It’s the same-old ‘Obama is evil’ conspiracy theories.
Gates: Administration Critics view of US Military Capabilities in Benghazi “Cartoonish” — Former Bush and Obama administrations secretary of defense Bob Gates, a lifelong Republican, replied to some of the GOP fantasies about the possibility of a US military mission into Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. The Republican obsession with Benghazi is just as bizarre and counterfactual as the vast majority of their other obsessions. Not that bizarre counterfactuals stopped Whitewater from morphing into the Clinton impeachment. Essentially, the GOP has been unable to accept the legitimacy of any Democratic president since LBJ.
Government secretly obtains phone records from journalists — Prosecutors targeted the Associated Press in an attempt to learn who leaked information about the CIA and an apparent terrorist plot in Yemen. If proven out, this is seven kinds of wrong. I don’t care what your politics are, this isn’t what our government does or should be doing. Should these allegations be substantiated, Attorney General Eric Holder needs to go, and Obama needs to answer for this. If nothing else, can this administration give us accountability? And some counterpoint on this.
QotD?: What is it that you have got that puts you where you are?
5/14/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (1.25 hours of revision, plus WRPA, editing METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 5.0 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: m/a (forgot)
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett
Tags: Cancer, climate, Cool, economy, gay, guns, health, history, Japan, Language, Links, media, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, radiantlisa, Science, space, sports, Travel, Videos, weird
Posted: 5:15 am Tue May 14 2013 | Comments(4) |
[cancer] All my trials and tribulations, sinking in a gentle pool of wine
Sometimes being a clean-and-sober atheist kind of sucks. Take this little cancer hobby of mine, for instance.
People of faith have a higher power to turn to, both for aid and comfort in their times of trouble, and as a causative agent to help explain and justify their experiences. People who drink find another approach to escaping the troubles of their lives. Likewise my stoner friends. All of those behaviors are for some people paths that for a while help abstract them from the trials and tribulations of their everyday life. They can go some place where the pain either has less meaning, or is completely transformed.
I’m not a faith holder. I’m not wired for it. I’m too literally minded, too invested in the empirical universe, to hold a mythic truth without experiencing serious cognitive dissonance. There are times when I recognize this as a loss on my part. Comfort denied is comfort delayed, after all. But faith comes at too high a price for me to willing to pay. I won’t betray my reason, not even for the example of the best of faith holders. And frankly, the fact that most faith holders visible in American culture are far, far from the best of faith holders does nothing to set an example for my reconsideration. In other words, religion is not my opiate. (As for real opiates, the less said the better. I am boggled as to how anyone can do that vile shit recreationally.)
Likewise drinking. Alcohol just makes me stupid and loud. I don’t like being stupid, not one tiny bit. And I certainly don’t need to be any louder. Furthermore, the temptations to even minor misbehavior while drinking are strong for me. I can be mean or petty without even realizing it. Kindness is a social virtue I value far too highly to trade it away for a buzz.
Pot, too. Marijuana just makes me stupid and slow. That’s a slight improvement over booze, in that I’m less likely to say or do something regrettable, but I still don’t like being stupid at all. And slow isn’t really in it for me, either. I live in my head way too much to tolerate that.
The only other class of drugs I ever tried was hallucinogens. I dropped acid once, and ate mushrooms once. I liked each of them so much that I realized instantly I would never be able to indulge again. I wouldn’t have the willpower to stay off them, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life tripping balls in a refrigerator box under a bridge somewhere.
Never coked up, never smoked crack, never shot heroin, et cetera. I think I did ecstasy once, but mostly that gave me an erection the size and density of a two-by-four which would not conclude in any satisfactory method whatsoever, despite enthusiastic assistance.
As a result of all this, for many years, reality has been my drug of choice, with an assist from fiction. The trials and tribulations of my life have been faced with a clear head and open eyes, and no higher power than myself to turn to for either comfort or to assign responsibility to. I have always faced the world on its own terms and mine, owned my responsibility as best I could, and taken the steps to move on when required.
Cancer, especially now at the beginning of my end game, has been one of the greatest trials of my life. Believe me, I really do understand why people self-medicate or turn to God or half a hundred other solutions. I can’t. So I don’t get see all my trials and tribulations sinking in a gentle pool of wine. They ride me now, they will ride me into the grave.
I see cancer. Cancer sees me. No one and nothing stands between us.
Tags: Cancer, cultural, health, Personal, Religion
Posted: 5:10 am Mon May 13 2013 | Comments(41) |
[links] Link salad wonders what’s the fuss
Save Trent’s Teeth, Save His Life — Trent Zelazny needs help with a medical fundraiser of his own.
The Algorithm That Automatically Detects Polyps in Images from Camera Pills — Analysing the footage from camera pills is a time-consuming task for medical professionals. Now computer scientists are attempting to automate the process.
The British ‘Atlantis’ is mapped in detail — Using dual frequency identification sonar, the ruins of Dunwich rise again.
8BBC News – Close-up on Japan’s amazing lunchboxes — Mmm, bento. (Via willyumtx.)
Watch 32 discordant metronomes achieve synchrony in a matter of minutes — Huh. (Via David Goldman.)
‘Junk’ DNA Mystery Solved: It’s Not Needed — I am dubious of this story. National Geographic with more.
Happy whatever — Blogess Jenny Lawson says some very important things about women in general and mothers in specific.
Transgender woman wins right to marry in Hong Kong — Not exactly a noted hotbed of progressivism, that.
Dalai Lama Calls For Care For Our ‘Only Home’ Earth
‘Dramatic decline’ warning for plants and animals — More of that liberal conspiracy to keep the climate change hoax going.
Researchers Create “Hate Map” of the U.S. With Twitter Data — The same researchers previously mapped racist Tweets about President Obama. In both cases there’s reason to be a little skeptical.
Pediatricians take on gun lobby – carefully — Well, the NRA is better armed, and unlike doctors, some NRA members have a habit of publicly threatening people.
QotD?: Tell me what’s a-happening?
5/13/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (1.0 hours of revision, plus WRPA, editing METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 249.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett
Tags: Cancer, China, climate, Cool, Culture, Food, gender, guns, health, Japan, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Science, sex, Tech, UK, Videos, weird
Posted: 4:36 am Mon May 13 2013 | Comments(3) |
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