Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad eats Indian

AutoCrit Editing Wizard — Hmm. A potentially interesting tool. Rather spendy, especially given the ridiculously short word count limitations on the lower level subscriptions (do these people actually know any working writers?), but does some things I’ve long wanted a tool to do. (Thanks to lcd_cow.)

A Point of View: In defence of obscure words — (Via danjite.)

Mathematics of Eternity Prove The Universe Must Have Had A Beginning — Cosmologists use the mathematical properties of eternity to show that although universe may last forever, it must have had a beginning. Man, those guys must be fun at parties.

Missing rocks may explain why life started playing shell games — Warning, facts not valid for Young Earth Creationists.

Meteor Over Crater Lake — Wow.

Photos Find Fictional Fun in Amateur Space Program — I find this rather haunting, actually. (Via danjite.)

How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death — Wow. FWIW, hallucinogens were the only class of recreational drug that ever appealed to me. So much so that I’ve avoided them for the past 25+ years, because I suspect I’d go down the rainbow colored rabbithole and never come out. (Via a friend.)

Debt Collector Is Faulted for Tough Tactics in Hospitals — Nope, no need for healthcare reform here. Move along, citizens, the private sector has your best interests at heart at all times.

Liars for Jesus: A recent sampling — Because when you have eternal, divine truth on your side, of course you must lie out your ass to get people excited enough to donate to your cause.

Fox News’ Steve Doocy Corrects Fabricated Obama Quote — Well, sort of. Much more convenient for conservatives to lie about liberals and progressives than to acknowledge the truth.

Romney’s plan to govern country so vague, allies question intentions — Ya think? That’s because no one likes conservative policies when applied to them personally. Not even, and perhaps especially not, conservatives. Punishing the “other” ain’t nearly so satisfying when you become the “other”.

?otd: Do you like naan bread?

4/25/2012
Writing time yesterday: 3.25 hours (1.25 hours and 2,500 words on Their Currents Turn Awry, including a little bit of outline work; 2.0 hours of WRPA)
Body movement: 60 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones (graphic novel), George R.R. Martin with Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson

Tags: Cancer, Christianists, Cool, healthcare, Language, Links, media, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, Religion, Science, Writing

Posted: 6:30 am Wed April 25 2012 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad wanders into Monday

John Cleese on Creativity — (Thanks to danjite.)

Post-Prozac Nation — The Science and History of Treating Depression.

Why North Korean ‘racist dwarfs’ really are three inches shorter than their cousins in South Korea — Headline from the Daily Mail.

Quantum Rainbow Photon Gun Unveiled — :: wamts ::

How science failed during the Gulf oil disaster

Wal-Mart probe could cost some executives their jobs — Now, if they were Wall Street execs, these guys would just get bigger bonuses.

Former presidential hopeful John Edwards faces trial — And he was supposed to be one of the good guys. Of course, if he’d been a Republican, this never would have gone to trial. See Vitter, Craig, etc. for what happens to GOPers with sex scandals.

Mitt Romney’s secrets — Mitt Romney’s contemptuous attitude toward the importance of public disclosure is increasingly troubling. Whether it involves the details of his personal finances or the identity of his big fundraisers, the presumptive Republican is setting a new, low bar for transparency.

?otd: Huh? What happened?

4/23/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (2,800 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.75 (solid)
Weight: 241.4 (!)
Currently reading: Somewhere Else by Sally McLennan

Tags: Cool, Culture, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Process, Science, sex, weird

Posted: 5:23 am Mon April 23 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad likes both kinds of music

Endurance by Jay Lake — A review of my most recent Green novel from a feminist perspective. As it happens, this comes fairly close to my own view of the book.

Ancient language controls crime rings — Some gang members serving prison sentences are using an ancient language to try to keep control of their criminal organizations on the outside as corrections officers work fast to crack the code. (Via @lilithsaintcrow.)

Pop Culture’s 40-Year Itch

Europe as seen by… — (Snurched from Andrew Wheeler.)

Can You Make Yourself Smarter? — Maybe.

It gets to me, sometimes — Anonymous Doc on the endless round of struggle and pain he sees in the hospital. This line caught at me: That there are lots of people out there living their lives and enjoying them, and not waiting for the next shoe to drop. People who aren’t professional patients. People who aren’t just biding their time until their diagnoses come to get them. I’ve been a professional patient these last four years, especially these past three, and even now am biding my time until my diagnosis comes to get me. I’ve seen this bitterly from the other side.

Silent Hives — Colony collapse disorder and pesticides, fifty years after Silent Spring.

Global Warming & Climate Change Myths — Denialism, whether of global warming or evolution or just reality in general, is like criminal defense. The denialist pecks away at the evidence in individual chunks, never responsible for providing a coherent framework to explain the aggregate hypothesis. Each point the denialist attempts to make is under no obligation to interact sensibly with any other point. So large, well supported bodies of evidence can be safely ignored by otherwise intelligent people blinded by ideology or faith, who are being manipulated by cynical opportunists. Sort of like the OJ trial. (Snurched from Slacktivist.)

Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle — …a prolonged struggle at the highest levels of Wal-Mart, a struggle that pitted the company’s much publicized commitment to the highest moral and ethical standards against its relentless pursuit of growth. See, this is precisely why we need less government regulation of business, so companies will be free to cover up their misdeeds and protect their profits. Conservative paradise! Industry self-regulation for the win!

Can young evangelicals move beyond the Religious Right? — You know, it would be very easy for me to be snarky and cynical about the message of this piece, but I really want to take it seriously. Maybe this is a step in the right direction. (Snurched from Slacktivist.)

The Bourbon Democrats rise again? — “The Bourbon [Democratic-written] constitution of 1875 was a victory for prosperous . . . Alabamians who did not want to pay taxes to improve the lives of those less fortunate than themselves and who did not want to finance commercial development that did not benefit them directly.” What contemporary political party comes to mind?

Romney blames Obama for factory that closed under Bush — Considering that the entire Tea Party movement is founded on blaming Obama for things Bush did, why is this even news?

Sheriff Joe’s world crumbles — The controversial Arizona cop is prepping for a possible trial. But already, his closest allies have fallen. This amazes me. I always thought Arpaio was one of those conservative Untouchables, the real life version of what Republicans liked to pretend Bill Clinton secretly was.

?otd: Country or Western?

4/22/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (3,500 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: 239.8
Currently reading: Somewhere Else by Sally McLennan

Tags: Books, Cancer, climate, Culture, Endurance, Funny, Green, health, healthcare, Language, Links, Mexico, nature, Personal, Politics, Religion, reviews, Science, weird

Posted: 6:20 am Sun April 22 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad is as stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay

Neal Stephenson on Science Fiction, Building Towers 20 Kilometers High … and Insurance

Any kind of physical activity lowers Alzheimer’s risk

Reversing a heart attack: scientists reprogram scar tissue into working muscle

The Screech Owl Cam is Live Again (at Last!)

‘Extreme Universe’ puzzle deepens — The mystery surrounding the source of the highest-energy particles known in the Universe has grown deeper.

Neutrino Communications: An Interstellar Future?

Racism vs. the Race Card — Ta-Nehisi Coates is thoughtful on conservative views of racism.

Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes — Review finds thousands of papers detailing shameful acts were culled, while others were kept secret illegally. As usually, destruction of the evidence is a lesser crime than what is being concealed. Anybody remember the Iran-Contra raid where the FBI politely waited for Oliver North and Fawn Hall to finish shredding documents?

Phony Mommy Wars — Yep.

The most amazing Supreme Court chart. Maybe ever. — This should go right next to a chart about the ideological fixations of the Court’s conservative wing.

The Bush National-Guard Story Rises from the Dead — The story itself was never discredited or disproven, quite the opposite in point of fact, but the conservative smoke screen around it, enthusiastically abetted by Your Liberal Media, has ensured the truth will never be taken seriously.

Romney’s Foreign Policy Could Be More Ideological and Reckless Than Bush’s — As someone who, apparently unlike every single likely Republican voter in the United States, can actually remember the decade just past, may I say, “Holy crap!”

?otd: Are you sentimental, if you know what I mean?

4/19/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (2,500 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
Weight: 239.6
Currently reading: Somewhere Else by Sally McLennan

Tags: Cool, Culture, gender, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, race, Science, Tech

Posted: 5:27 am Thu April 19 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad toddles off to the oncology unit again

Because This Point Cannot Be Made Often Enough — Actually, I thought romance was bigger than that.

The Challenge of Going Vegan

Cadet: We’re Not Sleeping Here, There Are Dead Cows — Forest Service Considers Blasting Out Dead Cows With Explosives. From the department of real life being much weirder than fiction. (Via danjite.)

The Difference Between UX and UI: Subtleties Explained in Cereal — Hahahah. (Thanks to daviddlevine.)

Buried Treasure: World War II Spitfires To Be Unearthed in Burma — Cool! (Thanks to oldcharliebrown.)

Man strips naked at Oregon airport in TSA protest — Ah, Portland.

How Will Humans Fly to the Stars? — Naked?

‘Rogue’ Alien Planets May Circle Billions of Stars — Billions and billions!

Did Einstein’s First Wife Secretly Co-author His 1905 Relativity Paper?

Tupac “hologram” merely pretty cool optical illusion

Sound familiar? MSNBC article about the military getting ready for melting polar cap — [The] biggest preparers for global climate change are the military. Those damn hippies. Yep. Because national defense can’t be bogged down in pernicious ideological lies. Once again, the facts are biased against the conservative position.

De-legitimizing Christians outside the evangelical tribe — Even while they bemoan their alleged oppression with self-valorizing congratulations, the Christianists have been winning the media war.

Wealth & Righteousness? — Do we [Mormons] really believe that just because one is rich one is blessed by God? Cripes is that a vile and pernicious meme. Thank you, John Calvin. (Via theresamather.)

Catholic Bishop Claims Obama Is ‘Following a Similar Path’ To Hitler — One of the many, many reasons I am an atheist is moronic lunacy like this from the mouths of religious leaders. This isn’t some fringe nutcase with a trailer park chapel, this is a Prince of the Church speaking.

The Democrats’ Duty: Bring the GOP Back from Crazy — Interesting piece from the perspective of the angry left.

If Health Insurance Mandates Are Unconstitutional, Why Did the Founding Fathers Back Them? — That’s the problem with history. It rarely matches ideology unless you’ve been able to edit it yourself. Hence Christian “colleges” and the pathetic joke that is Conservapedia. Because the conservative version of reality hardly ever stands up to the facts. (Snurched from Slacktivist.)

Bush was wrong about his tax cuts, even to the name — Just this single piece of Bush’s GOP agenda pushed through in the first term of his presidency — his tax cuts, enacted in 2001 and 2003 — have added more dollars to the nation’s debt and deficit than almost all of the rest of his horrible policy initiatives combined. Remember kids, cutting taxes increases economic growth. Just ask any Republican about how that worked out in the past decade. They’ll proudly tell you that all our economic woes today are Obama’s fault.

?otd: Got tumors?

4/18/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (2,900 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.75 (solid)
Weight: 240.2
Currently reading: Somewhere Else by Sally McLennan

Tags: Christianists, climate, Cool, Culture, Food, Funny, healthcare, Links, music, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, Travel, weird

Posted: 5:31 am Wed April 18 2012 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad looks down upon the smiling faces

10 Epic Steampunk Cats — A funny little project for which I was both the initial inspiration and the writer of the introduction.

About Female Characters (or as I like to call them, Characters) — Adrienne Kress Is Wise. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Writer’s Block — Hahaha. (Via willyumtx.)

In Defense of “Nutty” Commas

What fictional character shares your birthday? — In my case, Forrest Gump and Freddie Krueger. (Snurched from Andrew Wheeler.)

Lots of planets have a north — Language Log on planetology and Dr. Who. Also, the comment section on this post is hilarious and well worth looking through.

Ways to Throw Your Sandwich Away — The Niece is funny. (Thanks to lillypond.)

Getting a sense of the census — A nifty slideshow about the 1940 census.

Cancer Medicine is Stuck in the Past — The chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society calls for a genomics-based approach.

Discovering the Mutants Among Us — Last year, the Sanger Institute boldly announced “We are all mutants” when a study was published showing that healthy individuals carry around 60 new mutations from their parents. I’m not sure why this is a bold announcement. I find it interesting but utterly unsurprising.

Emperor Penguins Counted From Space—A First — Um, wow…

The Wrong Stuff: North Korea’s Failure

The Messerschmitt Me 323 Gigant — A photo of one of my favorite WWII aircraft.

This Is, In Fact, Your Grandfather’s Safe Sex PSA — Whoo! (Thanks to danjite.)

The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement — (Thanks to tillyjane.)

Breath-taking climate denial nonsense, this time aimed at NASA — [O]f the 49 signatories on that letter, not one is an actual working climate scientist. That should give you pause. The overwhelming majority of scientists who study the actual data and work with the actual climate models concur on climate change. (Much the same as with evolution.) Denialism only comes from those with ideological or personal axes to grind. Which, to a denialist, is a valorizing endorsement of their position as a courageous outsider battling the conspiracy. To the rest of us, that’s a strong clue about where reality actually can be found.

How Washington Forgot Where The ‘Buffett Rule’ Came From — Parrots for everyone! No, wait, wrong Buffett.

Catholic group criticizes Paul Ryan — Obviously, Catholic leaders who disagree with the Republican stance on any issue are Communists and secret Muslims.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker Breaks Into Building, Abducts Woman Inside — A hilarious spoof of what the conservative talking points would be on Cory Booker. This comes perilously close to violating Poe’s Law.

On taxes, Republicans repudiate Ronald Reagan — More of that justly famed conservative intellectual consistency. Conservatives are about Reagan the way Evangelicals are about the Bible: the icon means whatever they want it to mean, despite the actual words and deeds. Inviolably so, until the next time they change their minds.

Do Republicans realize they’ve just called for the repeal of welfare reform? — Slacktivist Fred Clark on the logical consequences Republican party’s brand new discovery that motherhood is hard work. Not that conservatives are ever responsible for the logical consequences of their positions.

Hilary Rosen was right: Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life. — Yes, the party that demonized and vilified Hillary Clinton with a tissue of lies is shocked when someone accurately challenges a candidate’s wife. Mmm, conservative principles in action.

Obama: Spouses should be left alone — Nice sentiment, and one I happen to agree with, but you are talking to the same conservative politicians and punditocracy who’ve spent the last two decades shredding Hillary Clinton. They certainly don’t agree with Obama, unless, of course, the spouse in question is a Republican spouse. In that case, basic fairness insists that no GOP candidate’s spouse ever be treated the way Democratic candidates’ spouses routinely are.

?otd: Did you polarize the pumpkin-eaters, static-humming panel-beaters, freshly day-glow’d factory cheaters?

4/14/2012
Writing time yesterday: n/a
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 9.25 (solid)
Weight: 242.2 (!)
Currently reading: Somewhere Else by Sally McLennan

Tags: Antarctica, Books, Cancer, climate, Cool, Culture, Funny, gender, healthcare, Language, Links, media, Niece, occupy, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, Publishing, Religion, Science, sex, television, weird, Writing

Posted: 6:32 am Sat April 14 2012 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad is magically bored on a quiet street corner

The Sound of One Shoe Dropping — Scrivener’s Error on U.S. v. Apple, Inc., et al., the shiny new lawsuit alleging ebook price fixing. (Disclaimer, Macmillan, my own publisher via my Tor relationship, is a defendant in this lawsuit.)

Airplane Lavatory Self-Portraits, in the Flemish Style — Hahaha. (Via willyumtx.)

I remember you — Roger Ebert on the meaning of death.

Why Scientists Are Fooling Animals With Virtual Reality — New technological developments in virtual reality allow researchers to study the neurological basis of decision making in insects, rodents, and other animals. But do roaches truly think the simulation is real, or are they just playing a video game? It’s the Matrix! (Snurched from @DavidBrin1.)

Computer Scientists Build Computer Using Swarms of Crabs — Logic gates that exploit the swarming behaviour of soldier crabs have been built and tested in Japan. The future is here, and it has claws…

Bits of the Future: First Universal Quantum Network Prototype Links 2 Separate Labs — Physicists demonstrate a scalable quantum network that ought to be adaptable for all manner of long-distance quantum communication.

‘Universal’ cancer vaccine developed — A vaccine that can train cancer patients’ own bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells has been developed by scientists. (Via shelly_rae.)

Closer to using aspirin for cancer prevention — Not that it helps me now… (Via bravado111.)

Saving Lives in a Time of Cholera — (Via tillyjane.)

Now This Is Interesting: A Climate Prediction From 1981 — Hey. Guess what. They were right. Amazing, how those facts just line up against the conservative worldview over and over again. (Snurched from Slacktivist.)

Born This Way — The new weird science of hardwired political identity. Speaking of yesterday’s post. (Via AH.)

Which Way Does Your Blog Lean? — An analysis of political discourse online. The practices of the left are more consistent with the prediction that the networked public sphere offers new pathways for discursive participation by a wider array of individuals, whereas the practices of the right suggest that a small group of elites may retain more exclusive agenda-setting authority online.

Allen West: I’ve ‘Heard’ 80 House Democrats Are Communist Party Members — Tell me again that conservatives aren’t bugfuck crazy?

Tennessee “Monkey Bill” Update — Speaking of bugfuck crazy. Ah, conservatives. Ruining education for all of America’s children, not just their own. Yet another reason I can never be a conservative. I just don’t have it in me to force such massive intellectual inconsistency and deep counterfactuals on generations of young minds.

Ann Romney takes to Twitter to defend herself — Take a public stance, deal with the public response. Just be glad you’ll never get the Hillary treatment from Your Liberal Media, Ann. As a conservative, you’re immune to that level of investigation and harassment. Nancy Reagan and both Bush first ladies proved that in spades.

Santorum stands down — Ah, Senator Frothy Mix, we hardly knew ya’.

Remembering Rick Santorum: Obama’s Secret Weapon

Re-Election Would Allow Obama to Ignore the Left More Than He Already Does — The conservative idea that somehow Obama’s “inner leftist” will be unleashed is just another one of their bizarre fixations. I’m one of those people who voted enthusiastically for Obama from the left last time around, and has been repeatedly disappointed ever since. Trust me, he’s no leftist.

?otd: Are you out of your brain on the train?

4/12/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (3,000 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
Weight: 239.6
Currently reading: The Bone Doll’s Twin by Lynn Flewelling

Tags: Art, Cancer, climate, Cool, ebooks, education, healthcare, Links, media, nature, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Science, Tech, weird

Posted: 5:39 am Thu April 12 2012 | Comments(2) |

[personal] Cancer, privilege and dialect

I was thinking yesterday about privilege and experience in our society, specifically in the context of my cancer journey. It’s an interesting intellectual trail, at least to me. Most of this is stuff I’ve said before, but this iteration of my thoughts gave these ideas and this personal history of mine some added dimensionality.

Both on the face of it and deep down, I am the beneficiary of most forms of transparent privilege in contemporary American society. I’m white, male, slightly taller than average, with a short English name and a college education. To put it in one framing, I am a card-carrying birthright member of the patriarchy. To put it in another framing, I fit into many people’s default conception of responsible authority. As I’ve sometimes joked, if I were 50 pounds lighter and $500,000 richer, I would be The Man. (Well, and maybe dress a little more formally and wear a little less ink on my skin.)

This privilege shows up in everything from the way I’m treated at shop counters to my well-paying high tech job. And believe me, I’m very, very aware of that. I try quite hard to not leverage my position in society when that’s under my control. There are surely far more places where it is not only not under my control, but completely invisible to me. That’s why they call it “privilege”, after all.

Yet even in those terms, I’m not quite what I appear to be on the surface. There are some important invisible differences. Born and raised overseas, I’m a Third Culture Kid, which gives me a worldview fairly lateral to that of the average American white dude of my generation. As a survivor of sexual abuse in my early grade school years, I embody psychological, emotional and sexual characteristics that aren’t reflective of a stereotypical middle class upbringing. As a long-time sufferer from chronic depression (roughly age 12 through age 25), including one hospitalization for a suicide attempt, I have a nonstereotypical mental health history. And though I am a straight-identified cis-gendered man, my sexuality is a lot more complex and dimensional that the heteronormativity implied by those labels.

None of that stuff is visible from a casual encounter with me, nor can it be discerned in most of what’s written about me on the Internet. Yet those experiences and aspects strongly inform who I am. Even so, they’re pretty holistically a part of me. I don’t have a special sense of identification as an “abuse survivor” or a “Third Culture Kid” or whatever. They’re just me. An inherent component of my acculturation and socialization.

Cancer, on the other hand, has been very different.

For the first time in my life, I’ve had a major portion of my privilege revoked. That’s the privilege of being healthy (and not having to worry about my continued health). Like most forms of privilege, it’s invisible to the people who possess it. The privilege of health was certainly invisible to me until I lost it. While I wouldn’t pretend for a moment to complain that the chronically ill are an oppressed minority, we do pay huge prices for our conditions. Many of those prices aren’t obvious outside the privacy of our own lives, and many of them unappreciated or misunderstood by others.

As a simple and obvious example, the entire conservative framing of the debate around healthcare reform is profoundly insulting to someone who actually has to deal with pre-existing conditions, out of pocket payments, lifetime treatment caps and end-of-life issues. You’re worried about Sarah Palin’s completely fictional death panels? Try an insurance company’s policy review process sometime. The private market is not your friend once you become a net healthcare consumer. As we all do, eventually.

Cancer has also dragged me through emotional and mental terrain every bit as dreadful as what put me in the hospital back in 1980. The depression this time isn’t chronic. Rather, it is savagely situational. And no less hideous or damaging for that.

Cancer has imposed costs on me that are largely invisible to others but no less staggering. These range from the trivial (increased home heating expense due to decreased cold tolerance) to the substantial (lost income from months of writing time lost, delaying book production). Not to mention the horrendous direct costs of out of pocket expenses, deductibles and co-pays ranging as high as $200 per week while on chemotherapy. And all that with good health insurance, conservatives opposed to HCR take note.

Even there, I am very lucky. My white, male, middle class privilege has brought me to a profession and a job where I can perform my duties even when too sick to leave the house. I am paid well enough to address most of those extra costs, even though it strains me financially.

Most of all, cancer has brought me to a new domain of experience. This is one I wouldn’t wish on anyone, anywhere for any reason, but here I am.

So many of the markers of status, success, and vulnerability arise from the conditions of our birth. We’re all born into an ethnic identity, a gender, a social and economic class. Any of those things can potentially be changed, some at much greater personal cost than others, but none of them are easy to revise.

But there are also experience domains that change and shape who we are. Women who’ve undergone pregnancy and childbirth have something in common that no one who hasn’t been on that journey can really understand. Likewise combat veterans, or emergency responders, or emergency room physicians, or the desperately poor. I have been none of these people, I have done none of these things.

So it is with cancer patients. We share an immediacy of mortality that’s unknown among the healthy, and differently shaped for people with other illnesses. We share a medical experience in the form of chemotherapy that is brutal beyond description, one of the most barbaric frontiers of contemporary healthcare. We share a profound sense of loss — loss of innocence, loss of hope, financial loss, emotional loss.

And that gives us a common dialect that cuts across lines of ethnicity, gender, class and really anything else. I can participate in conversations with fellow cancer survivors that have profoundly different meanings than even those exact same words shared with someone in baseline health.

This experience, cancer, is the first time in my life that I have felt different. Even those other lateral aspects of my character and upbringing that I noted were and are just part of me. Like being right-handed, or having pale eyes. Cancer feels imposed, unignorable, impossible to evade or escape or outlive. It’s a gut-wrenching lesson in being on the other end of life’s big stick.

Most of all, perhaps, cancer gives me far more to say, and far less time to say it in. If I do die of this soon, which seems rather more likely than not these days, I will regret most what cancer kept me from them by stealing these years away both before and after my death.

What must it feel like to have such regrets from the moment of one’s birth?

Tags: Cancer, Culture, gender, health, healthcare, Personal, race

Posted: 5:50 am Tue April 10 2012 | Comments(5) |

[links] Link salad might as well jump

Rejecting Creationism: Building Better Monsters Through Evolution — Yeah, baby! (Via deborahjross‘s LJ here.)

Social rank ‘linked to immunity’ — A study of rhesus macaque monkeys may have solved a long-standing puzzle on a link between social rank and health.

A pair of geologic clocks get updates — Unlike either faith or ideology, science is self-correcting. For people with starkly dualistic world views, this looks like a bug. For those of us in the reality-based community, this is a feature.

Sequencing and Mouse “Avatars” Personalize Cancer Treatment — Yeah, well.

Drive-Through Colon Cancer Screening — Huh?

Tightening the Lid on Pain Prescriptions — Personally, I detest opiates and their effects on me. But everybody’s needs are different.

The Taint of ‘Social Darwinism’

Keeping it Weird in Austin, Texas — Aren’t the residents of the proudly hip city of Austin, Texas, just traditionalists at heart? I lived there for eighteen years, and sorely do miss the place. (Thanks to Dad.)

Gay Mormon students risk excommunication with ‘It Gets Better at Brigham Young University’ video

It’s already been a very record-breaking hot year — Man, Al Gore and all those Ferrari-driving climate scientists have been really busy with their climate change conspiracy, haven’t they? Imagine that, getting even the actual weather to trend. Thank god we have Rush Limbaugh and the Republican party to protect us from the facts on the ground.

The Anxiety Over America’s Shifting Spirituality

The Thinking Liberal? — New research finds that “low-effort” thinking about a given issue is more likely to result in a conservative stance. This, fundamentally, is why so many conservatives are opposed to education. They know that if their kids are exposed to wide range of ideas, they will think for themselves, and the reflexive easy answers of rigid ideology and faith don’t measure up to the nuanced reality of the world.

The Gullible Center — Paul Krugman on Rep. Paul Ryan.

Gun Sales Booming: Doomsday, Obama or Zombies? — (Via danjite.)

NRA expands its role from fight for gun rights to conservative causes — Because there wasn’t enough batshit to go around already in America, apparently. (Via danjite.)

President Reagan Backs The Buffett Rule — Reagan was a well-known socialist. Why, he was even president of a union for a while, and we all know what conservatives think of that. Ask yourself the same question every Republican would when confronted with inconvenient truths. “What would Reagan have done?” No, wait… Shit!

NH GOP Senator Says The Mentally Ill Are ‘Defective People’ That Should Be Shipped Off To Siberia — Republican State House Speaker William O’Brien said that “at Harty’s age [90 years old], he has earned the right to say what he think.” Well, this is America. Anybody can say what they think. It’s that little thing we have called the First Amendment. However, neither old age nor Constitutional rights excuse arrant bigotry and willful ignorance. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Paging Justice Scalia to the “Defer to the Executive Power” Courtesy Phone — Y’know, I’ve got this niggling feeling — in the back of my mind — that there was some political party that used to scream all the time about “judicial activism,” and how unelected judges were trying to make law, which was evil and wrong, and that judges should just defer to the power of the executive and the legislative power. If only I could remember who that party was…

Trying to Further Vilify Abortion Doctors By Implying They’re Also Cannibals — Because reasoned and principled positions are the justly famed hallmarks of conservative thought.

My Version of “The Talk” — Some 41% of our fellow Americans identify as “conservative;” this is why we can’t have nice things. By “nice things,” I mean things like universal health care, marriage equality and a sane foreign policy.

Obama levels straight shots at Supreme Court and Ryan budget — Conservatives are not accustomed to being on the defensive. They have long experience with attacking the evils of the left and the abuses of activist judges. They love to assail “tax-and-spend liberals” without ever discussing who should be taxed or what government money is actually spent on. They expect their progressive opponents to be wimpy and apologetic.

Taking Credit Where None Is Due — As Friday’s jobless numbers showed, the economic recovery has been listless and fragile, but its upward trajectory has been clear enough that Republicans have been forced to acknowledge it. To avoid giving President Obama the slightest bit of credit for the improvement, however, they have come up with increasingly convoluted explanations that have little relationship to reality. This is news?

?otd: How high? How fast?

4/10/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (3,100 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.25 (solid)
Weight: 241.2 (!)
Currently reading: The Bone Doll’s Twin by Lynn Flewelling

Tags: Cancer, climate, Funny, gay, gender, guns, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Process, Religion, Science, Texas, Videos

Posted: 5:34 am Tue April 10 2012 | Comments(0) |

[cancer] Watching the avalanche rumble

After my semi-epic meltdown of Saturday night, I flew pretty low Sunday. Which wasn’t hard, I only had one piece of programming at Norwescon, and then skeedaddled for home and a late afternoon Easter dinner with my parents, lillypond and the Niece. (the_child remained behind in Seattle with friends.)

I’ve slept pretty well, which is usually emotionally restorative for me. This morning I still feel drained, flat and melancholy. Most of the issues I can point to are things I know I’d deal with pretty well if I were in my normal energy state. The real pressure on everything in truth revolves around next week’s tests and oncology consultations.

A bargain I need to make with myself this week is not to take things too seriously and not to make any major decisions until after I’ve cleared next week’s hurdles. As I’ve noted here a number of times before, waiting to know what happens next is the hardest part of this process for me. There’s something oddly comforting about having a definitive diagnosis, even if it’s a bad diagnosis. Certainly that seems to be more cope-able for me personally than this Schrödinger’s tumor of mine.

Overwhelming dread and fear are not conducive to solid emotional thinking.

I am rock bottom pessimistic about what will happen next. This is a statement of my emotional outlook, not a viewpoint based on clinical data. I just seem to keep drawing the joker from the deck over and over on this cancer progression. “Relentless” would be a good word to describe how it feels to me, albeit slow enough that we have time to deal with each outbreak. I feel the relentlessness now. I can watch the avalanche rumble, though so far all I’ve experienced are the emotional foreshocks.

So much more to come.

Tags: Cancer, Child, family, healthcare, Personal

Posted: 5:46 am Mon April 09 2012 | Comments(2) |