Dreamt last night that I was living in an alternate world just like ours with one major exception. The only fonts that existed were Cooper Black and Comic Sans.
Talk about a screaming nightmare…
Posted: 9:13 am Sun February 05 2012 | Comments(2) |
Yesterday afternoon, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1){kind=small}
the_child
The teams were pretty evenly matched, and the game was a lot better than that somewhat lopsided score implies. And she slammed in two three point shots, for a 100% completion rate in this game. So good on my kiddo!
However, I sustained a game-related injury during the course of play. Go figure.
The gym at her school has regulation sized basketball court, but not much sideline. The bleachers are against the north wall, and if you’re sitting on the bottom row, your feet are about twelve inches from the north boundary of the court. Our little group — me, Mother of the Child, Dad, (step)Mom and tillyjane
For whatever reason, play of game kept running right up into our faces. Dad caught several balls that had gone out of bounds. We all flinched back more than once when charged by a player from one team or the other. But the coup de grace came when a knot of defense and offense careened right toward me and I had to lean back avoid feet and elbows, and slid right off the bleacher bench and into the footwell of the row behind me.
I got stuck there and had to be pulled out. My back hurts, I’m pretty sure I bruised it right on one of my lower spinal knobs, and my left hip aches.
It’s all part of the business of being a dad, and a price I’ll cheerfully pay. But really, when did watching middle school girls play sports become so dangerous?
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.
Posted: 6:37 am Fri February 03 2012 | Comments(1) |
Five Authors + Five Questions : Goals — Shimmer‘s blog on various writers on various issues. Including me.
Darwin Day — Portland celebrates the Antichrist one of the heroes of modern science on February 12. (Via threeoutside
DNA Turning Human Story Into a Tell-All — Humans and Neanderthals and Denisovans, oh my. I especially liked this bit: [O]ur modern era, since H. floresiensis died out, is the only time in the four-million-year human history that just one type of human has been alive. (Thanks to Dad.)
Steampunk Pocket Watch Winds Via Solar Power — So to speak… Some neat lateral thinking here. (Via markbourne
Experts Build Crab-Like Robot to Remove Stomach Cancer — Huh. (Via danjite
How Neutrino Beams Could Reveal Cavities Inside Earth — Commander Laforge to the bridge.
Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake
Team to investigate underwater ‘UFO’ – is it sunken ships or Millennium Falcon? — Duh, of course it’s a life size replica of a completely fictional starship. At the bottom of the ocean.
Far side of the moon filmed by Nasa spacecraft — One whole face of the Moon can never be seen from Earth because it does not spin on its axis, meaning we always have a view of the same side. Umm… stupid much?
Bill legalizing same-sex marriage passes Washington state Senate — Someday fairly soon, opposition to gay marriage will have all the social panache and credibility as opposition to interracial marriage, and for much the same reason. This shameful bigotry will be the province of bitter, aging cranks, largely behind closed doors.
I Don’t Care About Your Invisible Jeebus — But from where I stand these days, the only thing I see religion doing in the public sector is gay bashing and telling women, mostly poor and desperate and in deplorable financial and personal situations, what to do with their bodies. I see busybodies deciding what drugs they can dispense to which customers, or deciding that they don’t have to issue a marriage license because of some petty deity that I don’t believe in told them to hate their fellow citizens and ignore the law.
Indiana Senate passes bill putting religion in science class — Conservative America: driving all our children deeper into ignorance every year. Yet another of the myriad reasons I can never be conservative, and honestly don’t understand how any thoughtful, self-aware person can be.
Teleprompters are stupid … only when Obama uses them — Ah, conservative “logic”.
The Conservative Backlash That Isn’t Coming — Some thoughts from conservative commentator Daniel Larison. I will observe that since no one in the GOP seems to remember the eight years of the Bush administration, preferring to blame the disastrous outcomes of his governing on conservative principles on Obama who inherited Bush’s mess, how could there be a backlash?
Have Democrats Succeeded in Pre-Destroying Romney? — A conservative leaning narrative complaining about the Democrats using the same tactics that have been so successful for the GOP these past decades.
?otd: Are you ever bored? Why?
2/2/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.5 (solid)
Weight: 227.2
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor
Posted: 6:32 am Thu February 02 2012 | Comments(1) |
Bruce Arthurs left a comment on my blog yesterday.
One of my odder random thoughts recently was the idea of Henry James and Ernest Hemingway rewriting each others’ stories: A Hemingway version of “Turn of the Screw” and a James version of “The Killers”.
This reminds me of an anthology concept I’ve been noodling with for a few years. I don’t have the time or funding these days to the editorial work to organize this, but I’ve always thought it would be funny as hell. Basically, it would be titled something like Crossdressing, and would feature about a dozen or so authors writing in each other’s styles. Could be parodies, could be more serious homage.
This works best with authors with fairly distinctive voices, but I think it would be hilarious to see Jeff VanderMeer writing as Ken Scholes, and Ken Scholes writing as Mary Robinette Kowal, and Mary Robinette Kowal writing as Charlie Stross, and so forth.
Someday I’ll have an entire bookshelf of anthologies that never were.
Posted: 6:33 am Tue January 31 2012 | Comments(1) |
“But I must be advised, how I be over-liberall, in publishing these wonderful mysteries, till the Sages of our State have considered how farre the use of these things may stand with the Policy and good government of our Countrey, as also with the Fathers of the Church, how the publication of them, may not prove prejudiciall to the affaires of the Catholique faith and Religion, which I am taught (by those wonders I have seen above any mortall man that hath lived in many ages past) with all my best endeavors to advance, without all respect of temporall good, and soe I hope I shall. ”
| — | Francis Godwin, “The Man in the Moone, or A Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales The Speedy Messenger”, 1638; reprinted in The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor |
Reading this book is almost like reading a foreign language. Fascinating precursors to the science fiction of the modern era. I’m just glad I wasn’t Godwin’s copy editor.
Posted: 6:21 am Mon January 30 2012 | Comments(1) |
Just in case you were wondering…
Photo © 2012 Lizzy Shannon, reproduced with permission.
Posted: 6:18 am Mon January 30 2012 | Comments(1) |
The Rules of Magic, According to the Greatest Fantasy Sagas of All Time — (Brought to my attention by willyumtx
You Eat That? — Disgust is one of our most basic emotions—the only one that we have to learn—and nothing triggers it more reliably than the strange food of others.
Honda revives Ferris Bueller — Zombie Matthew Broderick?
Genetic or Not, Gay Won’t Go Away
Testicular zap ‘may stop sperm’ — A dose of ultrasound to the testicles can stop the production of sperm, according to researchers investigating a new form of contraception.
U.S. may rely on aging U-2 spy planes longer than expected — The Pentagon has proposed delaying a plan to replace the U-2s with RQ-4 Global Hawk drones because of Defense Department cutbacks.
Too Much of a Bad Thing: Monsanto Did NOT Buy Blackwater — Hmmm. (Via danjite
Newt Gingrich’s moon base plan a ‘cheap trick’ to get votes, space experts say — Experts call Gingrich’s plan a gimmick that is too expensive to work. I am shocked that Newt might have said something deliberately misleading. Shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
Gingrich’s Absurd Outsider Pose — But it works with the low information voters who make up the GOP base. Who cares if his claims are true?
?otd: What are you working on this week?
1/30/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.5 (fitful)
Weight: 227.8
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor
Posted: 6:16 am Mon January 30 2012 | Comments(0) |
Northern lights: Huge solar flare may trigger Saturday night show
Cartels Are an Emergent Phenomenon, Say Complexity Theorists — Under certain market conditions, cartels arise naturally without collusion. This raises important questions over how the behavior should be controlled.
Are Pirate Ransoms Tax-Deductible?
Stephen Colbert holds rally for Herman Cain in South Carolina
?otd: What’s your next Con?
1/21/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (revisions to Sunspin)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.75 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: The Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross
Posted: 6:43 am Sat January 21 2012 | Comments(0) |
A reader reacts to Mainspring — I think they liked it.
Only Forward — Paul McAuley on writing first drafts and the perils of revising. This. (Thanks to Rick York.)
Ghillie Suit — Art guru James Gurney with an interesting entry, including an IKEA ghillie suit.
Depression Defies the Rush to Find an Evolutionary Upside
Computer Model Replays Europe’s Cultural History — A simple mathematical model of the way cultures spread reproduces some aspects of European history, say complexity scientists. Paging Hari Seldon.
X and Y chromosomes — A beautiful photo of our gender-selective chromosomes. (Via scarlettina
Dracula-esque monkey long thought vanished reappears
NASA still not hiding aliens: Triangular ‘UFO’ debunked — Well, darn. Where are they?
Picture of the Day: The Planet Heats Up — More of that pesky, liberally biased data from the reality-based world. More on this from NASA’s Earth Observatory.
Gingrich’s Ex-Wife and the Republicans’ Predicament — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on Gingrich. If they were voting based on character, they wouldn’t have chosen him in the first place. I’m old enough to remember when the GOP was angrily telling us (about Clinton) that “character counts.” Not so much when it’s your own guys, eh?
?otd: Chilly yet?
1/20/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.5 hours (revisions to Sunspin)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.25 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: The Atrocity Archive by Charles Stross; The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore<
Posted: 8:31 am Fri January 20 2012 | Comments(1) |
Albert Einstein on the intuitive mind — Reminds a lot of how I, and many others, think about writing.
Apostropocalypse Now — Language Log is funny about linguistic peevery.
Our new basic ‘Portlandia’ image: One, two, twee
Project to pour water into volcano to make power — What could possibly go wrong?
After Fukushima, fish tales — The possibility of radioactive contamination in Japanese food exports.
Elusive particles could help to stem climate change
Survey: U.S. Protestant pastors reject evolution, split on Earth’s age — Proof that theological education is no barrier to willful ignorance. (Via shsilver
Evangelicals, Seeking Unity, Back Santorum for Nomination
Untruths, Wholly Untrue, And Nothing But Untruths — Paul Krugman on GOP rhetoric and reality. Mind you, he’s talking about objectively, provably false statements, not political spin.
?otd: What are you reading today?
1/15/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (2,500 words on short story)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 (solid)
Weight: 219.0
Currently reading: Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross<
Posted: 7:21 am Sun January 15 2012 | Comments(1) |