Jay Lake: Writer

[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) |

[links] Link salad watches the moon ride the sky of a morning

Walk The Fire: a shared-world SF anthology series — An interesting Kickstarter.

Willie Nelson’s Audition Tape for “The Hobbit” — Hahahahah.

The ultimate cancer taboo: Sometimes it kills you — We keep talking about battles, warriors, miracles and hope. Meanwhile, those with metastatic cancers are ignored. That would be me.

In Germany, a U.S. beer invasion — This seems improbable.

The World’s Largest Rubber Duck Arrives in Hong Kong — Wow! Hahah. (Via threeoutside.)

The Data Made Me Do It — The next frontier for big data is the individual.

5 Ways to Make Google Glass Better — Number 6, make it possible to use them with prescription lenses.

High-tech camera acts like a bug’s eye

Space Ape Parody Shows Why Aquatic Ape Theory Is All Wet — (Via David Goldman.)

Religious Knowledge Quiz — You answered 14 out of 15 questions correctly for a score of 93%. Which puts me in the 99% percentile. Not bad for an atheist. I also note that when this survey was done with the general public on an outbound basis, atheists came in second only to Jews in their knowledge, well ahead of a number of different identified Christian groups, though the Mormons were a close third. This is parallel to the science quiz I recently posted. (I missed the First Great Awakening question.)

Man shot and killed at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport, authorities say — Thank god for the NRA and the Republican party, or the shooter wouldn’t have had the right to exercise his theoretical defense of essential liberties in such a fashion. Where would we be as a society without our guns?

Even Counting Votes too Scientific for North Carolina — Typical conservatives. They cannot win on their ideas, so they cheat. Egregiously, in this case. (Via corwynofamber.)

QotD?: Would you go to the moon if you could?

5/3/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.75 hours (WRPA editing work on METAtropolis: Green Space, plus audiobook prep)
Hours slept: 8.75 hours (interrupted)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (foot hurts)
Weight: n/a (away from home)
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Cancer, China, Cool, Funny, Germany, guns, Links, Movies, nature, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, Videos

Posted: 6:13 am Fri May 03 2013 | Comments(6) |

[dreams|cancer] Voyaging in the undiscovered countries of my heart

I had one of my science fiction dreams again last night. I was flying on a 747 with some other writers. Gardner Dozois was the flight attendant, and did about what you’d expect Gardner to do in that situation. His safety spiel over the p.a. system was more along the lines of “Keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times,” which is not comforting to hear aboard a pressurized aircraft.

The plane eventually landed at the World’s Tiniest Airport™, an artefact of the geography of my subsconscious rather than any particular airport in real life. I walked alone down the airstairs and into the terminal to find the departure lounge crowded with science fiction writers, artists, critics and fans. Jenn Reese, Greg van Eekhout, and Sydney Duncan, just to name a few. Plus most of the Pacific Northwest genre community. I stopped to talk to them, but they were all leaving on Gardner’s plane. I begged people to stay a while longer, or to take me with them, but the plane was full and the place was emptying out. Soon I was left behind alone.

Later I dreamt I was in China with my family. Except they had checked into one hotel and I was supposed to be in another. I went to a store to get a few groceries, and became frustrated that they did not have Mexican Coke in China. The checker turned out to have been educated in America, and fluent in English, so after the store closed we went out to watch the Communist youth groups in their midnight parades. We started making out, then she went off to do something, and I found myself stark naked on the nighttime streets with nothing to clothe myself but Communist party banners. This seemed like a bad idea.

I am dreaming of my own death, clearly. And separation from two of things which matter most to me. the_child, whose heritage is Chinese; and the genre community in which I have become so deeply embedded. My sense of loss is palpable even in my day-to-day moments, and the dreams underscore a deep sense of abandonment.

That last is a tad odd, as it is I who is doing the abandoning by contracting a fatal illness. Nonetheless, this is how my dreaming mind has chosen to interpret the matter somewhere beyond the Gates of Horn. The country of my dreams is treacherous terrain, but no more so than the country of my waking life these days.

Tags: Cancer, Child, China, dreams, Family, friends, health, Personal, Publishing, Travel

Posted: 5:40 am Tue April 30 2013 | Comments(14) |

[links] Link salad likes to talk about fiction

Punk in Burma: Cultural Appropriation & Resistance

First Enzyme-Based Memory Created in the Lab — Some clever biochemistry has led to the world’s first enzyme-based memory capable of learning, say biochemists.

Questions over Gene Patents Shake Diagnostics Industry — The impending Supreme Court ruling on gene patents is creating uncertainty in the fledging genetic diagnostics sector. I have never understood the logic of allowing patents on genes. That’s like allowing patents on minerals or seawater.

Making of Europe unlocked by DNA

Pictures: Extreme Algae Blooms Expanding Worldwide

Understanding the brain of a man with no conscious memory — Of course, my immediate question on reading this article was to wonder how the heck they ever got informed consent to perform all these tests. I think I’ve been a patient too long.

China’s cancer crisis — Wow. Sigh. (Via mikigarrison.)

About the Obamacare ‘train wreck’ — Insofar as the Republican Party has a strategy on Obamacare, it’s goes like this: The law needs to be implemented. The GOP can try and keep the implementation from being done effectively, in part by refusing to authorize the needed funds. Then they can capitalize on the problems they create to weaken the law, or at least weaken Democrats up for reelection in 2014. In other words, step one: Create problems for Obamacare. Step two: Blame Obamacare for the problems. Step 3: Political profit! That’s the GOP’s strategy on everything. Remember, these are the same civic-minded solons whose number one legislative priority in the face of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression was to ensure that Obama was a one-term president. Are you proud of your Republican party?

Delaware House passes marriage equality — And another step taken in rolling back the arrant, unthinking bigotry of homophobia. Not mention Nevada, France and other places.

Today’s Political Thought — Andrew Wheeler on the Second Amendment. Yup.

Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights? — When the law gets bent out of shape for him, it’s easier to bend out of shape for the rest of us. We used to have this thing called “the rule of law”, before the fear-based conservative narrative about terrorism took over our national consciousness.

QotD?: What’s the title of the most recent short story you read (or wrote)?

4/24/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (2,300 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin)
Hours slept: 5.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (very carefully on the stationary bike)
Weight: 248.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block faking evidence for climate change: 0
Currently reading: Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Boston, Cancer, China, Cool, Culture, gay, guns, healthcare, law, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science

Posted: 5:07 am Wed April 24 2013 | Comments(6) |

[links] Link salad hurts its foot

The Digital Public Library of America Opens its Doors — A new website is the start of a bold project to digitize America’s cultural heritage.

Trigger Happy: roleplaying in a World Which Hates You. — Caias Ward is running a gaming Kickstarter.

Terminal Illness: Readers’ Best and Worst Airports — In which my opinion of the Newark airport is quoted.

When oversharing online can get you arrested

Startup uBiome Will Catalog Your Microbes, Again and Again

Illegal loggers continue to threaten Amazonian tribe

When Dinner Has a Gleam in Its Eye — China’s economic boom is driving a culinary revival, as chefs rediscover dishes that haven?t been seen for decades. (Via Dad.)

Fish’s DNA May Explain How Fins Turned to Feet

Opalized wood — Petrified wood is basically fossilized wood that has had it’s organic matter replaced by a mineral such as agate, bit by bit, as it decomposes. The wood structure is maintained, but the wood fibers are slowly changed into stone. Sometimes a jasper, quartz, pyrite or even opal(shown above) can be found fossilized in wood. Wow. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Super Storm Sandy Produced Tiny Vibrations in Earth’s Crust

Dust over the Four Corners Region — My pareidolia caused me to see this as a cowboy waving his hat, even before I realized what region of the world the orbital photograph covers.

Samsung Demos a Tablet Controlled by Your Brain — An easy-to-use EEG cap could expand the number of ways to interact with your mobile devices.

Small Government: Texas Fertilizer Plant that blew up not inspected for years — The Texas fertilizer plant that suffered a massive explosion had not been subject to an OSHA inspection for many years. The current American obsession with deregulation and ending inspections has claimed yet more victims, as The Nation shows. And Texas has also cut funding for first responders like firemen. See? The Republican party is right. Regulation is bad for business, and taxes to pay for things like fire departments are an evil theft of your hard-earned money. Too bad about all those dead people, but at least they died for conservative principles.

Conservative radio host: Families of Newtown shooting victims can ‘go to hell’ — Ah, compassionate conservatism intersects with the measured, rational tenor of the American gun culture. You guys must be so proud of yourselves.

QotD?: Ow?

4/19/2013
Writing time yesterday: 4.0 hours (60 minutes and 1,600 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin, plus 30 minutes of WRPA to produce 1,100 words of nonfiction, and 2.5 hours of Reddit interviewing)
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (injured foot)
Weight: n/a (couldn’t stand on scale due to injured foot)
Number of FEMA troops on my block checking the magazine sizes of gun owners: 0
Currently reading: The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, China, ebooks, finny, Food, games, guns, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, Tech, Travel, weird

Posted: 5:17 am Fri April 19 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad sorrows for Boston

War of the worlds: who owns the political soul of science fiction? — In the sci-fi genre, two diametrically opposed ideologies are battling it out as leftwing writers embrace otherness, while the rightwingers look up to authority. Although my personal sympathies should be blatantly obvious, why should anyone own the soul of SF, so to speak? Right wing fiction has as much to say as left wing fiction, regardless of my individual opinions. (Via an interesting linkdump from Cora Buhlert.)

Literature from Librarians: Great Reads Written by the Experts

Landfill Harmonic: An Upcoming Documentary About the ‘Recycled Orchestra’ in Cateura, Paraguay — People are amazing. (Via threeoutside.)

This is your brain on music

Google Glass hits production — The first Google Glass devices have been finished and are expected to ship imminently, the company has confirmed. I would love to have these, but even if I did, I couldn’t use them until they’re available with prescription lenses.

The Planetary Super-Surface of San Bernardino County — BLDG BLOG gets interestingly weird about commercial architecture.

Is Nasa looking in the wrong place for life?

Dark matter experiment CDMS sees three tentative clues — Researchers have revealed the first potential hints of the elusive material called dark matter at an underground laboratory in the US.

Human cycles: History as science — Advocates of ‘cliodynamics’ say that they can use scientific methods to illuminate the past. But historians are not so sure. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Duplitectural Marvels: Exploring China’s Replica Western Cities — Wow. This is strange. (Via scarlettina.)

Margaret Thatcher and misapplied death etiquette — The dictate that one ‘not speak ill of the dead’ is (at best) appropriate for private individuals, not influential public figures. This bit is especially to the point: Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms. (Via goulo.)

Are there Any Solid Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage? — The case against same-sex marriage seems, to me at least, muddled, odd and paltry. A Christian blogger talks about the opposition, and finds the same point progressives have made for years. When you take away bigotry cloaked in religious freedom as an excuse, there is no rational opposition to same sex marriage. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

The Limits of Good Faith — Ta-Nehisi Coates on Rand Paul. Rand Paul went to Howard University, lied, and then got his ass kicked. That’s not so bad. I got my ass kicked regularly at Howard. That was the reason my parents sent me there. But having gotten his ass kicked, his answer is to not to reflect but to make an allegation of racial discrimination.

John Kerry: Foreign Students Aren’t Studying In U.S. Because They Fear Guns — From a certain conservative perspective, I suspect this is good news.

Guantanamo Commander Orders Single-cell Living For Detainees — Lifetime imprisonment without charges or trial, in solitary confinement. Yes, America is definitely a beacon of liberty and the rule of law the world over. (Via danjite.)

Patriots Day bombings in Boston — Slacktivist Fred Clark with some modest wisdom.

PSA: Ignore the news — The brilliant Charlie Stross is wise about the Boston bombings in his own lateral way.

Boston Marathon Calamity Shows Value of Social Media — It might be no surprise that immediately after the explosions at today’s Boston Marathon, social media sites became the best way for the public to obtain on-the-scene reports. But notably, it also became the best way for classic news media to report. Even more than that, the long minutes after the news broke showed just how superior social media is for finding answers to your own personal concerns. (Via David Goldman.)

Can the Boston Bombings increase our Sympathy for Iraq and Syria, for all such Victims? — Terrorism has no nation or religion. But likewise its victims are human beings, precious human beings, who must be the objects of compassion for us all.

Trapped by the Base — I see little reason to believe that the staunch conservative bloc will wither away or splinter; it will remain a dominant force in the GOP and on the national stage. At the same time, however, I see no indication that its ideas about policy, governance and social issues will gain new adherents. They are far beyond the mainstream. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

QotD?: What do you think?

4/16/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (60 minutes and 1,700 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin, 15 minutes of WRPA)
Hours slept: 8.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 246.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block checking the magazine sizes of gun owners: 0
Currently reading: The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Boston, China, cool videos, Culture, gender, history, law, Links, media, music, Personal, Politics, Publishing, race, Science, space, Tech, UK

Posted: 5:26 am Tue April 16 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad mumbles through the weekend

Ben Wolverton’s Recovery Fund — Author Dave Wolverton’s son Ben has been seriously injured, and the family is without insurance. I’ve donated some of the money all of you donated to me, as part of my commitment to pass on 5% of the funds to other charitable purposes. Go check this out.

The Young are the Restless — On generational change.

USB Typewriter — Oooh. (Via a mailing list I’m on.)

Apparently Dogs Wearing Pantyhose Is All The Rage In China Right Now — Um, ok… (Via danjite.)

How the sky would look if the planets were as close as the moon — Oooh, cool. (Via danjite.)

The Moon’s Saturn — Oooh.

Volcanoes on Jupiter’s Moon Io Are All Wrong, NASA Says

First magic mushroom depression trial hits stumbling block — The world’s first clinical trial designed to explore using a hallucinogen from magic mushrooms to treat people with depression has stalled because of British and European rules on the use of illegal drugs in research.

The anti-drone hoodie that helps you beat Big Brother’s spy in the sky

Revealed: The secret deal that launched drone assassinations

The Real Reason for Climate Change Denial: Oil Cos. Would lose 60% of their Value — Capital protects itself. That’s also why we can’t have single payer healthcare finance in this country. It would be saner, far cheaper for doctors and hospitals, more efficient for everyone, provide more effective healthcare delivery, and be much kinder to patients, but the health insurance industry represents a $650 billion per year industry that would almost completely vanish with single payer. Our social and economic system privileges capital above all else.

Mourning with those who mourn — Slacktivist Fred Clark on Christianist attitudes towards mental health care. Wasn’t it Pat Robertson who said back during the Clinton-era effort at healthcare reform that Christian families didn’t need mental health services? And now the tragedy in Rick Warren’s family puts the lie to that assertion for the zillionth time. That kind of self-deluding denialism is both tragic and fatal. Much like the Soviet assertion early in the AIDS epidemic that Communist citizens could not contract the disease, or various conservative regimes around the world stating there is no homosexuality among their people.

QotD?: Is this your Sunday?

4/7/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (1,100 new words plus some outlining and research Original Destiny, Manifest Sin)
Hours slept: 9.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: n/a (forgot to weigh)
Number of FEMA troops on my block enforcing Agenda 21 by closing down golf courses: 0
Currently reading: Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

Tags: China, Christianists, climate, Cool, healthcare, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, Religion, space, Tech, weird

Posted: 6:55 am Sun April 07 2013 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad sees that morning mists are parting to reveal

The cover art of my German editions of Mainspring and Escapement has been nominated for the Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis in the Beste Grafik category &mash; Which doesn’t really have much to do with me directly, but is still pretty cool. Kudos to illustrator Max Meinzold.

Why Do We Hate Certain Words? — The curious phenomenon of word aversion.

‘I’m Google’ by Dina Kelberman: A Visual Exploration of Google Image Search — A very cool digital art project. Direct link here. (Via threeoutside.)

A Japanese medical blog reports on my Whole Genome Sequencing

End-of-life talks lacking between doctors, patients — I’ve already begun to have these conversations with my physician.

Cancer Drug That Shrinks All Tumors Set To Begin Human Clinical Trials — Huh. This is a treatment for primary tumors, not for metastases, so it probably isn’t relevant to me personally, but it’s still pretty damned cool.

Messenger RNAs Could Create a New Class of Drugs — New partnerships could help bring a novel class of biopharmaceutical to patients.

Steampunk iPad: 1922 — Another Shorpy classic. Hahah.

Scientists successfully create living embryo of an extinct species

Collision Course? A Comet Heads for Mars — Could have a significant impact on NASA programs there. (Via threeoutside.)

Melt may explain Antarctica’s sea ice expansion — Climate change is expanding Antarctica’s sea ice, according to a scientific study in the journal Nature Geoscience. This is what science does. It looks at contradictory evidence and tries to work out the contradiction. Ideology simply says, “If I believe this, it must be true”, and ignores contradictory evidence. Guess which view is based in reality?

Oceans continue to warm, especially the deeps — Altered patterns seen over past two decades. Amazing how the liberals can convince the entire planet to join in their climate change fraud. Any good conservative can tell you this is all wrong, no matter the evidence.

A New Map Of The U.S., Created By How Our Dollar Bills Move — Identifying functional regional boundaries through analysis of movements of paper currency. This is cool. (Via AH.)

1,200-year-old Egyptian text describes a shape-shifting Jesus — “Everybody need a mood lifter, Everybody need reverse polarity.” (Via shsilver.)

Google and white Christians’ search for ‘persecution’ — Christians will never be happy until they stop being the kind of people who, as TBogg put it, “can’t sleep at night because they can’t wait to see how the world will offend them the next day.”

Elite in China Face Austerity Under Xi’s Rule — Good luck with that. (Via my Dad.)

While GOP Elites Soften On Gay Marriage, Local Leaders Haven’t Gotten The Message — That’s what happens when one of your political cornerstones is irrational bigotry with no objective or principled value. I see a principled opposition to abortion, for example, though it’s sadly obvious most opponents aren’t actually standing on principled objections. I see a principled stance in favor of widespread private gun ownership, though again it’s clearly based on willful ignorance, promulgation of bad data and wholesale suppression of the reality of firearms in private hands. But opposition to gay marriage? Nothing but a combination of religious bigotry and personal ick factors. There simply is no principled opposition to be found, other than nicely rationalized versions of bigotry and ick.

New GOP plan: Guns for domestic abusers — As president Obama visits Colorado to discuss guns, state GOP launches fight to protect batterers’ gun rights. Because nothing says compassionate conservatism like protecting a violent man’s right to a firearm.

Jim Carrey: Fox ‘News’ is “A media colostomy bag… a public health issue” — Well, duh. The polling on how misinformed (strongly in the direction of conservative bias) FOX News viewers are is remarkably consistent. It’s almost like media isn’t liberal or something.

QotD?: Ever been to the Blue Mountains?

4/2/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (WRPA, specifically critique)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 245.6
Number of FEMA troops on my block building solar arrays to undermine the American fossil fuel industry: 0
Currently reading: Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Awards, Cancer, China, Christianists, climate, Cool, Culture, economics, gay, Germany, guns, health, healthcare, Japan, Language, Links, Mars, media, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Religion, Science, Tech

Posted: 5:20 am Tue April 02 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad gives an online course today

‘Ungoogleable’ removed from list of Swedish words after row over definition with Google — I see Sergei and Larry and the boys are staying classy. Whatever happened to “Don’t be evil?”

Victoria’s OTHER Secret: Designer creates world’s first lingerie colostomy bags as they often put partners off — Yes. This. (Thanks to danjite.)

Continued DNA synthesis in replication checkpoint mutants leads to fork collapse — I love this headline. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Why IBM Made a Liquid Transistor

Into the Oort Cloud: A Cometary Civilization?

Astrophysicists Test Cosmological Defect Detector — Astrophysicists have built and tested the building blocks of a global detector capable of spotting topological defects in the cosmos as the Earth passes through them. I think I left mine behind the couch.

Amid Tsunami Debris, Something Sacred Washes Ashore In Oregon — [T]he arch from a Japanese Shinto shrine’s sacred gate has washed ashore in Oceanside, Oregon.

USPS Discrimination Against Atheism? — Appears to be a marketing troll, but pretty funny nonetheless. (Thanks to houseboatonstyx.)

China Bans Reincarnation Without Government Permission — Ah, the intersection of politics and religion. (Via Lisa Costello.)

Cold Dead Hand — Jim Carrey with some seriously funny mockery of gun culture. Hahahaha. As the bug said in Men in Black, “Your proposal is acceptable.” (Via Scott Frey.)

Suspect in custody after neighborhood sprayed with bullets — Yep. Definitely safer with more guns. Uh huh. Ask any of this man’s neighbors.

Birth certificates and bathrooms in Arizona — Conservatives just can’t keep themselves from discriminating. Slacktivist Fred Clark explains why this can be tough to accomplish.

QotD?: How good are your first ten pages?

3/27/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (genomics lecture)
Hours slept: 6.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 242.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block building solar arrays to undermine the American fossil fuel industry: 0
Currently reading: Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

Tags: China, Cool, Funny, gender, guns, healthcare, Language, Links, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, sex, Tech, Videos

Posted: 5:15 am Wed March 27 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad whispers to the Children of the Corn

1200 dead pigs fished from Chinese waterway

Mummies With Heart Disease Show That Clogged Arteries Aren’t Just Modern Ailment

Global Warming Brings Trees to Arctic Tundra — I’m pretty sure I saw Al Gore out there planting them.

How to Resurrect Lost Species — Genetic experiments could bring back passenger pigeons and other extinct animals.

What are the chances of an American pope? This time, not zero

What’s behind the display of embalmed world leaders? — Kind of like when we had Ronald Reagan on display in the White House for eight years.

QotD?: Omaha or Kansas City?

3/11/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (2,100 words to draft complete on a requested short story)
Hours slept: 7.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (slept in due to late arrival)
Weight: 240.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block escorting ACORN thugs to steal the votes of “Real Americans”: 0
Currently reading: Eric by Terry Pratchett

Tags: China, climate, health, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, weird

Posted: 6:27 am Mon March 11 2013 | Comments(3) |