[personal|photos] This, that and the other thing; with bonus ranting about architecture
Some generally unrelated squibs for your amusement…
Writing
In between bouts of napping in a Lorazepam-induced haze, I got through about a quarter of the Kalimpura copy edit on the plane yesterday. So far it seems to be a pretty clean manuscript. There’s a little mental game I play with myself on copy edits, which is to count how many pages I get without a single markup. Those pages are the ones I “won”. So far, in 104 pages processed, exactly two have been clean.
This isn’t as bad as it might sound, as many of the CEM markups are typesetting notes and whatnot, so for example, every manuscript page with a scene break on it has markup. Likewise some basic usage stuff which doesn’t reflect errors on my part or copy editors queries, but rather conformance to Tor’s house style. However, for my little mental game, only clean pages count, regardless of the reason for the markups. 2/100 is about average for me, I think.
Go, me!
Weight
I hate part of this monster for dinner last night:
Terminator sandwich from the Rock House Grill at Cartlandia.
This may have something to do with me weighing in this morning at the highest weight I’ve been at in several years. So, time to get very serious about diet and exercise. The frustrating thing is that chemo has apparently changed my metabolism. (Again.) Despite yesterday’s sandwich, I’ve been eating and exercising at levels consistent with my behaviors prior to this last round of cancer, which were sufficient to keep my weight down in the 220s. That same level of diet and exercise now seems to peg me around 240. So I’m going to have to work more and eat less to maintain where I used to be. Which is both irritating and discouraging, to say the least.
Architecture
So my hotel bathroom in Columbus, OH had apparently been designed by an architect who’d never actually shut a bathroom door, or taken a shower. This was a nice, upscale business class hotel, where I wouldn’t expect such weirdness.
The bathroom was sort of triangular in shape. I’m not sure why, as the building itself was a pretty standard 15- or 20-story box like most hotels of its class. Because of the triangular shape, the bathroom door was hinged down the middle, as well as being hung from the doorframe in the usual fashion. Sort of like one of those bifold closet doors gone freelancing. So you pushed open the door and folded it at the same time.
The bathroom door
However, that is a solid core door. It’s fairly heavy, and only made heavier by all the hardware. Not so hard to open from the outside, but if you’re inside the bathroom and have managed to close the door, in order to open it again, you have to do a little dance around the vanity and the toilet. There’s simply no place to stand when the door is swinging open or shut. And if there’s a bathmat on the floor in the usual place one might put a bathmat, just outside the shower, it’s pretty much impossible to open the door again because it snags on the bathmat. God help you if you’ve dropped a towel on the floor.
The pièce de résistance, however was the shower.
It’s quite elegant looking. That’s a long shower pan on the floor, with a floor-to-ceiling pane of glass blocking the water splash in lieu of a shower curtain. However, in order to turn the shower on, you have to step into the enclosure and reach forward to the water controls. This results in an unavoidable blast of water in the face, as there’s no other way to approach them. In an unfamiliar hotel, you have no idea how hot it’s going to be on any given setting. In my case, nearly scalding water nailed me in the face, which I then had to reach through, twice, to adjust to a tolerable temperature.
There’s no damned way to control the water except by standing in it, thanks to that pane of glass.
Not to mention which, once you insert your corpus delecti in the shower stream, all the water splashing off your body goes right out the step-in opening and soaks the bathmat.
Which makes the damned door that much harder to open.
I’m sure someone thought they were very clever when they designed this bathroom, but I have to say, the architects were idiots, as were the hotel execs who approved this design. People who design this stuff ought to be forced to use it before it can be foisted on an unsuspecting public.
That’s all the ranty I got this morning.
Photos © 2012, 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.
Tags: Books, Cancer, Food, Funny, health, Kalimpura, Photos, Process, Travel, Writing
Posted: 6:47 am Sun May 13 2012 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad celebrates its moms
You don’t have to read my books — Justine Larbalestier explains this very well. I take a nearly identical position. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)
Absolutely worth the drive — John Booth on Friday night’s open dinner in Columbus, OH.
Langweil’s model of Prague — This is cool. Of course, as a writer, I know nothing whatsoever about obsessive creative behavior.
Searching for meaning in distant solar systems — Is it better for a science writer to be technically correct or understood? These questions apply to SF writers as well, albeit with a slightly different slant.
Weird deep sea creatures — Art guru James Gurney with some bizarre images. In case you needed to write about aliens today.
New Study On Manta Rays Reveals Their Hidden Life
We’re all mutants now — There are a lot of us now, and most of us are a little bit off The headline is hilarious if slightly misleading.
Off the Charts: Shrinking Government — As Andrew Wheeler says, “[G]overnment spending has dropped substantially under Obama, while the private sector has surged. But you know what they say about facts’ obvious liberal bias.”
Many blacks shrug off Obama’s new view on gays — I have always been baffled by this intersection of racial issues and gay issues.
Sen. Rand Paul: Didn’t think Obama’s view ‘could get any gayer’ — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best.
An open letter to the right wing in the wake of the passage of Amendment One in North Carolina — As usual, the people who most need to read this never will, and if somehow they do, they will reject it out of hand. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)
Bullying and Business — Scrivener’s Error with more on Romney and bullying from a business analysis perspective. Dovetails nicely with my post of yesterday [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] on Romney and bullying.
Mean Boys — While I have real reservations about holding senior citizens to account for what they did as seniors in high school, I have no reservations about expecting presidential candidates to know how to properly address the mistakes they once made. More on Romney in the New York Times.
In address at Christian university, Romney to urge graduates to honor commitments to family — It’s not like I was going to vote for Romney anyway, but lending his name to the educational and intellectual fraud that is an Evangelical institution like Liberty University does not improve my opinion of the man one whit.
Romney’s Anachronism Problem — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison remarks on how Mittens is running against a now-distant past.
?otd: How’s your mother?
5/13/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.75 hours (Kalimpura copy edits)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (solid, plus 4.0 hours of fitful airplane napping)
Weight: 244.6 (!!!)
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo
Tags: Art, Books, business, Christianism, Cool, Food, Funny, gay, Language, Links, nature, Ohio, Personal, Politics, Process, race, Religion, Science, Travel, Videos, Writing
Posted: 6:15 am Sun May 13 2012 | Comments(0) |
[food|travel] The open dinner in Columbus, OH
The open dinner in Columbus, OH was fun. We met at the Northstar Cafe at Easton, which turned out to be a grievous error as the combination of the (apparently) usual Friday night crowds and some sort of outdoor festival rendered parking there pretty deeply toxic. Nonetheless, all persevered.
Scott met me at the door, and Chris (@barstoolbabe) and John (@jrbooth) appeared shortly thereafter. We enjoyed good food, and about two hours of conversation, including a number of fun stories.
I love getting out and meeting people. The folks here in Columbus are welcoming and friendly, and except for the hellish parking, quite easy to get along with.
Photographic evidence:
Scott his own self
Chris (@barstoolbabe) her own self
John (@jrbooth), slightly underexposed
Photos © 2012, 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.
Tags: Food, Ohio, Photos, Travel
Posted: 2:28 am Sat May 12 2012 | Comments(0) |
[food|travel] Open dinner in Columbus, OH today Friday, May 11th (repost)
Repost: I am in Columbus, OH today on Day Jobbe business. Due to my meeting schedule, I’ll be spending the night here before flying home tomorrow morning. I’m declaring an Open Dinner in Columbus, at 6:30 pm today, Friday, May 11th.
Per a suggestion from Scott, we’ll be meeting at Northstar Cafe at Easton, a short distance north of the airport. [ Google Maps ]
Please let me know in comments if you can attend. Doesn’t matter if we’re old friends, acquaintances, or we’ve never met. If you can read this and will be in the Columbus, OH area that day, you’re invited.
Tags: Food, Ohio, Repost, Travel
Posted: 3:51 am Fri May 11 2012 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad ties another one to the racks, baby
Aussie Delicacy Vegemite Loses Some of Its Savory Appeal
Path Dependence and the Stupidity of LED Light Bulbs — Why are we cramming 21st century technology into a socket designed by Edison? I found this pretty interesting.
The making of modern humans — If some of our ancestors interbred with Neanderthals, are we really modern?
Vesta asteroid is ancient protoplanet
Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 “Doomsday” Myth — Yeah, because the course of the planet was otherwise going to be controlled by the myths of a long-decayed Mesoamerican civilization.
USB tampon flash drive — For when you never, ever want anyone else to touch your business. (Via David Goldman.)
Can I Trust Those Evil Pharmamancers With My Life? — ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1)
cathshaffer (who knows whereof she speaks) on Big Pharma. Interesting read.
Someone has hacked Google News. Check out this screen shot I took this morning. Look carefully at the cutline beneath the headline, then check out the story. (Or, as Charlie Stross has pointed out, more likely someone has hacked the Seattle Times.)
Missing words from 9-11 tribunal: CIA and “big-boy pants” — Because, um, yeah. I got nothing. Feel safer? (Via danjite.)
Romney Apologizes For Bullying In Prep School, Says He Didn’t Know Victim Was Gay — I can and do say a lot of negative things about Romney, but I’m not sure very many of us could stand up to being accountable as mature adults for what we did in high school. (Via my Aunt M.)
?otd: Hey kids, where are you?
5/11/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (WRPA, mostly galley edits)
Body movement: 60 minute urban walk
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo
Tags: Australia, Cool, Culture, Food, Funny, healthcare, Language, Links, media, Personal, Politics, Science, Tech
Posted: 3:42 am Fri May 11 2012 | Comments(7) |
[links] Link salad drives that hot rod Lincoln
The frequent fliers who flew too much — Many years after selling lifetime passes for unlimited first-class travel, American Airlines began scrutinizing the costs — and the customers.
Eating Well Without the Flavor of Shame — Diet and flavor. Interesting.
The Quantum Biology Conundrum — If quantum mechanics plays an important role in biology, we’ll want to copy it. If it doesn’t, we’ll want to know why not.
Jewel Caterpillar — Weirdly beautiful. (Via willyumtx.)
Light from Alien Super-Earth Seen for 1st Time — This is so damned cool.
Unmanned vessel could soon be working for Navy — What could possibly go wrong!? (Via David Goldman.)
Methane Leaking through the Cracks — The fragile and rapidly changing Arctic is home to large reservoirs of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. As Earth’s climate warms, that methane is vulnerable to possible release into the atmosphere, where it can add to global warming. Once again, the natural world joins in the liberal conspiracy that is global warming.
Jon Stewart, Religion Teacher Extraordinaire — (Snurched from Scrivener’s Error.)
The Myth About Marriage — Those who do not want to let gay partners have the sacredness of sacramental marriage are relying on a Scholastic fiction of the thirteenth century to play with people’s lives. Walking through Seatac Airport this morning, I caught thirty seconds of some Christianist talking head desperately clinging to the notion that marriage was between one man and one woman, and had been so for five thousand years of human history. (My slight paraphrase.) Taking that statement in purely religious terms, I’m an atheist, and even I know King Solomon had more than a few wives, and that modern religious traditions from Islam to Mormonism support polygamy. In other words, his statement was blatant, knowing lie. What the Bible likes to call false witness, right there in the Ten Commandments. Why do the Liars for Jesus get to on television and spread this counterfactual crap in support of their personal bigotry?
Obama says same-sex couples should be able to marry — This is what being a liberal-progressive means. Standing up for what is right regardless of the bigotry and intolerance of others. Conservatives were wrong about slavery. They were wrong about women’s suffrage. They were wrong about child labor. They were wrong about segregation. They were wrong about interracial marriage. They were wrong about birth control. And just as they’ve been on the wrong side of every major social issue of the past two centuries, conservatives are wrong, dead wrong, about gay marriage. I’m glad to see our leader leading from the front. Slacktivist Fred Clark with a good link roundup on this.
White House Tours Do Not Require Fetuses To Be Counted As Full Humans — The fact that this is even a story is further evidence that conservatives are basically nuts.
Bipartisanship Is a Lost Cause — I still remember Barney Frank’s comment about “unilateral bipartisanship“.
?otd: Gonna drive your daddy to drink in’?
5/10/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (brain break)
Body movement: n/a (airport walking to come)
Hours slept: 4.25 (fitful, and yes, that is not a typo)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton
Tags: climate, Cool, Food, gay, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Religion, Science, Tech, Travel, weird
Posted: 4:44 am Thu May 10 2012 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad has never been more ready in its entire life
One in six cancers worldwide are caused by infection
Bandersnatch Cummerbund: not a typo, not a cupertino — Hahahah.
An Economic Lifeline of Barley and Hops — An interesting story about beer and small town economics in rural Oregon.
Abraham Lincoln Filed a Patent for Facebook in 1845 — As it were. Weird. (Via danjite.)
Space weather expert has ominous forecast — Mike Hapgood, who studies solar events, says the world isn’t prepared for a truly damaging storm. And one could happen soon.
Pacific ‘garbage patch’ changing insect mating habits
Physicists Store Short Movie In A Cloud of Gas — Sometimes the jokes just write themselves. (Though this is in fact a cool science story.)
Shuttle Enterprise Over New York — Very nice photo from APOD.
NC pastor created lies about gay sex because of his ‘religious views’ — This is why ‘real Americans’ vote Republican – for the moral leadership provided by conservatives. What are a few bald-faced lies so long as they validate your worldview, right? That bit about bearing false witness in the Ten Commandments isn’t nearly as important as God’s hatred of gay people, right?
North Carolina voters approve amendment defining marriage as union between a man and woman — Another victory in the conservative march toward a closed and intolerant society. I really don’t want to live in their America. Do you?
Moving the economic goalposts — But the other concern here is historical — over the last three decades, the unemployment rate has dipped below 4% just four times out of 496 months. Each of those four months was during Bill Clinton’s presidency. In other words, Romney’s goal was achieved, but only after a Democratic president raised taxes in 1993. Ah, conservatives and their cherished ignorance of history.
The Opportunity Society — Does Tagg Romney actually believe that his dad had nothing to do with his successful entry into the private equity game, and the millions he has made and will continue to make are the result only of his own merit? That his life is radically different from those of the millions of people struggling to get by only because they don’t work as hard as he does, or have his gumption and entrepreneurial spirit? (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)
Romney: I Take Credit for the Auto Rescue — Wow. He’s not even pretending to consistency any more. This would be the same Mitt Romney who wanted to let the automakers fail, right? Good thing for him that likely Republican voters are largely divorced from reality and will fall for the Etch-a-Sketch routine every time. It must be nice to have a low-information, ideologically blinkered base like the GOP does. Helps avoid those pesky requirements for accountability and consistency.
?otd: Could it be nice to be alive?
5/9/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (brain break)
Body movement: 1.0 hour urban walk
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton
Tags: business, Cancer, Cool, Culture, Food, Funny, gay, healthcare, Language, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, sex, Tech, weird
Posted: 5:47 am Wed May 09 2012 | Comments(0) |
[food|travel] Open dinner in Columbus, OH Friday, May 11th (repost)
Repost: I’ll be in Columbus, OH, later this week on Day Jobbe business. Due to my meeting schedule, I’ll be spending Friday night there before flying home on Saturday morning. I’m declaring an Open Dinner in Columbus, at 6:30 pm on Friday, May 11th.
Per a suggestion from Scott, we’ll be meeting at Northstar Cafe at Easton, a short distance north of the airport. [ Google Maps ]
Please let me know in comments if you can attend. I’ll repost this a couple of times, along with restaurant info once I know what’s what. Doesn’t matter if we’re old friends, acquaintances, or we’ve never met. If you can read this and will be in the Columbus, OH area that day, you’re invited.
Tags: Food, Ohio, Repost, Travel
Posted: 5:37 am Tue May 08 2012 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad changes color like the sea
Steampunk weapons in real life — Or possibly dieselpunk. From Russia, with weird. (Via danjite.)
A Word Heard Often, Except at the Supreme Court — Fuck no! (Snurched from Scrivener’s Error.)
Organic Soda ‘Made in Germany’ Takes on the World — German reader Cora Buhlert passes on this story of localization and globalization in a comment response to my recent mentions of non-USAnian snack foods. And I do agree with her assessment of USAnian snack foods.
Gesture Control System Uses Sound Alone — SoundWave lets an ordinary laptop function like a Kinect sensor. Though I do wonder why this story about an experimental project from Microsoft shows an Apple MacBook in the accompanying photo.
NASA uses moon as mirror to watch Venus transit sun
Ouarkziz Impact Crater, Algeria — A spiffy skiffy photo from NASA’s Earth Observatory.
Sarkozy’s Loss in Part due to his Islamophobia — Interesting how his rhetoric so closely parallels American conservative rhetoric on immigration and crime.
Howard Dean: Women, Latinos “terrified” of GOP — “Women are terrified of what the Republicans are talking about. They’re talking about basically stripping away their ability to have insurance pay for their birth control pills,” Dean said on “Face the Nation.” “Latinos are terrified of the Republicans, because they seem to have a total tin ear when it comes to the basic needs of treating people with dignity.” Gee, I can’t imagine why this would be so.
Heartland Justice — Iowa, gay marriage, and the casually cruel intolerance of conservatives.
Biden endorses same-sex marriage, White House tries to take it back — And the open, tolerant society gets a walk back from the Democratic White House. Way to stand up for progressive principles, guys. One of the reasons I’m a liberal-progressive is that we’re morally better than the haters. Don’t play to them.
?otd: Does the sea not change?
5/7/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.5 hours (5,700 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 0.5 hour stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (solid)
Weight: 240.2 (!)
Currently reading: The Blade Itself Joe Abercrombie
Tags: Cool, Food, gay, gender, Language, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, Religion, Science, steampunk, Tech, weird
Posted: 4:54 am Mon May 07 2012 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad’s flag boy and your flag boy, sittin’ by the fire
Angelesen: Die Räder der Welt (Jay Lake) — What appears to be a positive review of the German language edition of Mainspring.
A natural history — Roger Ebert with a moving essay on growing up, and lost friends.
“Crab” chips, fruity Oreos? They’re big overseas — More on on-USAnian flavors. Snack food crack for me is Maui onion flavored Hawaiian kettle chips in creamy French onion dip.
Tornado near Tokyo kills 1, injures dozens — I’m always a bit surprised when I read about tornadoes outside the North American Great Plains.
Reminders of Secular Authority Reduce Believers’ Distrust of Atheists — Many of my Christian friends seem to have grown fond of the self-valorizing myth that they are being oppressed or persecuted in modern America, but it is still true that atheists poll at the bottom of trustworthiness. Amazing, the power we secular types have as a small and least-trusted percentage of the population.
The ‘Big Four’ markers of the evangelical tribe — Slacktivist Fred Clark with some fascinating social history of the Evangelical movement.
Family Battle Offers Look Inside Lavish TV Ministry — This is precisely what our country needs more of, not those godless, immoral liberals.
Biden on gay marriage: ‘Absolutely comfortable with men marrying men, women marrying women’ — Good. As it should be, assuming you value an open, tolerant society. Which conservatives explicitly do not. Another of the many, many reasons I can never be a conservative.
Republicans! Get in my vagina! — Very sarcastic video, funny as hell decidedly not worksafe. (Via willyumtx.)
The Right-Wing’s 20 Biggest Sex Hypocrites — The ones who scream the loudest about how godly they are often turn out to be the exact opposite. Only twenty? But, but, but, Clinton had a blow job! (Via danjite.)
How to End This Depression — Paul Krugman is, as usual, sensible.
Republicans on ‘Politicizing’ Terrorism, Then and Now — Well, it was fine when Bush did it, just not when Obama does it. Like so many other things. Just ask any Tea Partier about deficit spending, foreign wars or corporate bailouts. Those only became a problem for conservatives after an African-American progressive was elected to the Oval Office. The GOP: setting the standards for intellectual consistency in political discourse since, well, never.
Schwarzenegger: GOP, take down that small tent — You didn’t mind that ‘small tent’ when it got you elected, Arnie. I despise so-called moderate Republicans almost more than I despise the whackaloon conservatives that dominate the GOP these days, simply because while in a lot of cases the whackaloons really can’t seem to help being who they are, the Republican moderates are people who know better and went along with the nuts anyway for electoral advantage.
Historic campaign collision of race and religion likely to arouse both pride and prejudice — Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney, an African-American and a white Mormon, representatives of two groups and that have endured oppression to carve out a place in the United States. How much progress has America made against bigotry? By November, we should have some idea. Hint: which man is running from a party that has built and sustains its political fortunes foursquare on bigotry and intolerance?
?otd: Jockamo fee na nay?
5/6/2012
Writing time yesterday: 3.5 hours (2.5 hours and 5,600 words on Their Currents Turn Awry, 1.0 hours of WRPA)
Body movement: 1.5 hour suburban walk
Hours slept: 9.25 (solid)
Weight: 240.0 (!)
Currently reading: The Blade Itself Joe Abercrombie
Tags: Books, business, Christianism, Culture, Food, gay, gender, Japan, Links, Mainspring, Personal, Politics, race, Religion, reviews, sex, Videos, weird
Posted: 9:38 am Sun May 06 2012 | Comments(4) |
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