Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad tastes funny

Author Interview – Philip Athans

What’s the ‘value’ of a cancer treatment? — A discussion of cancer treatments and costs in the UK. (Via Curiosity Counts —

Ecosystems shift as climate changes — By 2100, nearly 40 percent of land-based ecosystems – forest, grassland or tundra, for example – will have moved from one type to another. More liberal bias in the facts.

This poll tells you everything that’s wrong with American politics

The GOP’s Long and Winding Road — Primary politics on the Right.

G.O.P. Monetary Madness — Paul Krugman on Ron Paul’s fiscal policy.

Newt Gingrich: Gay People Choose To Be Gay Like Priests Choose Celibacy — Playing the bigot card always seems to go over so well with conservatives. Are you proud of your Republican party?

?otd: Do clowns taste funny to you?

12/19/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 13.25 (solid plus napping)
Weight: 209.4
Currently (re)reading: Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey

Tags: Cancer, climate, gay, gender, healthcare, interviews, Links, Occupy Wall Street, Personal, Politics, Science

Posted: 8:43 am Mon December 19 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad tries to wake up

Interview: Lilith Saintcrow, author of ‘The Hedgewitch Queen’

Could This Be The End Of Cancer? — It’s a disease that kills millions a year and a slew of hoped-for miracle treatments have gone nowhere. Now scientists say vaccines could hold the key—not just to a cure but to wiping out cancer forever.

Periodic Table of Swearing — Yes, this is NSFW, both visually and audibly. Funny as hell, though.

The assholocracy — Language Log with a useful new word.

Accidental Scientist Hawks ‘Online Marketplace for Brains’ — The headline on this very cool story is a bit misleading. This is about data science crowdsourcing.

Trillion-frame-per-second video — This story makes my brain hurt. In a good way. SCIENCE!

Augmented Reality for Six-Year-Olds — Toy makers bring augmented reality to the masses.

Next Big Bet for Space: Airborne Rocket Launcher — This is cool. More here.

A second life for Vietnam’s bile bears

Did walking evolve underwater? ‘Walking fish’ suggests that it did. — A study of the African lungfish suggests that our evolutionary ancestors first started walking before they migrated onto land.

Pakistan police rescue chained students from madrasa — Pakistani police say dozens of students were at the Madrasa Zakarya, an Islamic seminary, in Karachi. Several were reportedly chained in a basement, denied food and pressured to join the Taliban. The only difference between this and some Christian ‘schools’ in America is a matter of degree, not intent.

Tennessee family home burns while firefighters watch — Life in a fee-for-service conservative paradise.

What Perry gets wrong about religion in America — Everything, basically, outside the narrow box of Christianist bigotry so beloved of the GOP. Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson comments.

Post-American Iraq by the Numbers — In case you labor under the delusion that we somehow improved things in Iraq.

There Is Only One Issue In America — Hmm. Interesting article. I think he ignores the issue of faith-based social conservatism, which fatally distorts the compromise process essential to party politics, but still an interesting point.

?otd: Coffee or hot chocolate?

12/14/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 10.0 (solid, plus plus napping)
Weight: 208.4
Currently (re)reading: Return of Retief by Keith Laumer

Tags: Cancer, Christianists, Cool, Funny, health, interviews, Iraq, Language, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, Videos, weird

Posted: 6:03 am Wed December 14 2011 | Comments(1) |

[interviews] What you said

Yesterday I posted a few questions on my blog, interviewing you guys. The answers were by turns funny, delightfully mundane, sublime, and in a few cases saddening. They make for wonderful reading if you want to go page through the comments on the posts at: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ].

I decided it would be fun to post the answers to my fourth and last question all rolled up together. People thinking and talking and believing in things made for uplifting reading for me. I hope it does for you, too.

4) What would you tell the world if you could, today?

martyn44: And I would tell the world the words of Kurt Vonnegut. You just gotta be kind.’

reynardo: Hard as it is, you can’t shake the whole “Are you being a writer like your grandmother/father/whatever” until you show them you’re doing something totally different. Which means actually doing it. And that English teacher who mocked your wish to start off writing formula for Mills and Boon? Was a bitch and you shouldn’t have listened to her. Oh. Sorry. The second one was just for me.

e_underwood: We only get one shot on this spinning globe so make the best of it, be nice to people, be thoughtful, and stop wasting your time messing around with things that aren’t going to matter in the long run. Things are rarely as important as they may seem, and things that don’t seem important now, tend to be what you treasure or regret most later.

fledgist: Does the world need to hear from me? I want to say something about how Jamaica managed to keep its democracy going, redefine what it was about, define itself as a country, and do so in spite of screwing up its economy. This is more political theory than anything else, and so I want to say something about the ideas that made this possible and why those ideas are worth attending to today.

None of this is clever, but it draws as much on my creativity as it does on my analytic skill.

snippy: Figure it out for yourself, then nobody can take it away from you.

tsarina: Stop texting and driving, for the love of all that’s good in the world. Especially when you’re tooling through the grocery store parking lot where there are lots of people walking! How is this so hard to understand? This is dangerous and dumb.

madrobins: Stop being stupid. Be kind to the people around you–by which I mean those in other states, other countries, etc. Sharing the wealth and making sure your fellow humans have certain basic amenities does not mean there will be less for you. Unclench.

joycemocha: Greed is NOT good.

mastadge: “I know who you are and I saw what you did.”

kproche: Applies to all of them (and my day job): take some joy in and from your work!

makoiyi: No matter how cliche this sounds, to live every single moment because you never know if it will be your last.

jimvanpelt: What would I tell the world? Hmmm. Don’t vote Republican? No, that would be too easy. How about look at the facts before you vote.

autopope: I haz new varifocals!

vsherbie: Be generous, no matter how much you have. If you won’t at all miss what you gave, you were not generous. Give more.

feorag: antipope_cats(and Mafdet in particular) are wickle twaitors who have rejected the comfy cat basket in front of the (on) radiator in my study to sit with autopope.

klwilliams: No wisdom for the world, except possibly, “Pay attention. Respect each other.” At least that’s what I’m working on.

birdhousefrog: It’s a gorgeous fall day in Virginia.

sillylilly_bird: Be more compassionate and tolerant. also, mind your own business.

jennifer_brozek: Share the love. Really. By helping others succeed, you succeed too.

la_marquise_de_: Big Money is never your friend. It lies a lot and pretends it is, but in the end, it only serves itself.

jakobdrud: That humanity can accomplish much more if we work together than if we continue to make war on each other. Space should be our destination, peace should be our credo, and brotherhood should govern Earth and beyond. (I know, old-school statement, but the world needs a reminder now and then.)

talktoyouniverse.blogspot.com: That every cultural assumption is worth questioning, that what people try to tell us comes always out of their own vision, and that we should pursue knowledge on a deeper level, trying both to see greater detail, and to see how those details contribute to the bigger picture.

Stephen A. Watkins: “Writing is an act of love.”

Ken Davis: “Dig deeper.”

Matt H: You can have whatever it is you want but nobody is going to hand it to you.

Elf Sternberg: “It’s coming, it’s coming. Just gimme a little while longer.”

Steve Buchheit: Slow down, I’m having trouble with the brass ring.

frabjouslinz: Be kind to each other: everyone is fighting a battle. (And to paraphrase from The Bloggess, Also some of them might have knives.)

mmegaera: I have laughed more in the last month and a half since the new kittens moved in than I have in a very, very long time. Which I think is one reason I’m unstalled, to be honest.

jackwilliambell: Last night I had a dream. In the dream I was standing, stark naked, in front of a huge audience about to give a speech. The title of the speech was “Overcoming your fears.”

Don’t be afraid of anything that isn’t getting ready to kill or maim you right this second. Fear of success can hobble you just as much as fear of failure. Fear of not measuring up can lead you to never actually try. Fear of other people’s opinions is an utter waste of time better spent doing things you want to do.

silvertwi: Flu shots fucking hurt.

…More seriously, I would want to raise awareness of what it’s like to live with a chronic illness or other disability and hope that someone else hearing or reading it learns that they are not alone in feeling the many emotional and physical tolls such things take.

e_bourne: It doesn’t matter if you’re afraid. Everyone’s afraid. While there are mean people out there, most folks want you to succeed. Your efforts give them hope and happiness. So take heart.

jodysherry: After reading most commenters’ #4, to say what I thought originally would be preaching to the choir. See the commonalities not the differences. But don’t forget to celebrate the differences. Look beyond your horizon. We’re all in this together.

paulcarp: All of us are at a potluck. Don’t bogart the dessert.

Tags: interviews, Personal

Posted: 6:44 am Wed October 19 2011 | Comments(1) |

[interviews] Now I’ll interview you

Turnabout is fair play. Answer in comments if you like.

1) What creative project are you working on right now?

2) If you’re stalled, why?

3) How do you motivate yourself?

4) What would you tell the world if you could, today?

Especially clever and/or interesting answers may be promoted to blog posts of their own hereabouts.

ETA: Due to a server error at my Web host, the original version of this post was lost, with all its comments. This is a repost. However, many of the comments were preserved by me in another post here: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Tags: interviews

Posted: 5:50 am Tue October 18 2011 | Comments(0) |

[interviews] Reader interview of me

A week ago I posted a call for interview questions in comments [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]. Some were profound, some were funny, one or two were snarky. Nonetheless, I have answered them all.

Here under cut for reading mercy are the answers: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: interviews, Personal

Posted: 5:58 am Mon October 17 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad watches old movies

Don’t forget to drop me a question in my interview thread. [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Hearing Bilingual: How Babies Sort Out Language

Black Death genetic code ‘built’ — The genetic code of the germ that caused the Black Death has been reconstructed by scientists for the first time. What could possibly go wrong?

Scrivener’s Error is contrarian (what else!?) about Steve Jobs

Graf Zeppelin vs Goodyear Blimp — A classic photo via x planes. No, they’re not dogfighting.

Seal Beach shooting: Death toll rises to eight — Another patriot exercises his Second Amendment rights in defense of his essential liberties. Guns don’t kill, just ask any conservative. It really is about the guns people. This has to stop somewhere.

Speaker at Occupy L.A. calls for violence, gets cheers from crowd — ericjamestone points to a counterexample of an OWS protestor advocating violence. Fair enough. How many OWS protestors bring firearms to the protests? How many talk about Second Amendment remedies? Does a rare counterexample balance against the violence-soaked eliminationist rhetoric of the American Right?

Occupy Wall Street: Who Are the 1%?

Open Letter to that 53% Guy — I’m a liberal, so I probably dream bigger than you. For instance, I want everybody to have healthcare. I want lazy people to have healthcare. I want stupid people to have healthcare. I want drug addicts to have healthcare. I want bums who refuse to work even when given the opportunity to have healthcare. I’m willing to pay for that with my taxes, because I want to live in a society where it doesn’t matter how much of a loser you are, if you need medical care you can get it. (Via Via @gregvaneekhout.)

How I Communicate With People Less Right Than Me — A Tiny Revolution on talking to the 53%’ers.

Occupy Wall Street: A Banker Explains What Really Happened to America

Wagging the Dog with Iran’s Maxwell Smart — Juan Cole with a takedown of the alleged Iranian DC assassination plot. Pursuing this as a grievance against Iran, as they are currently doing, is going to make the Obama administration look every bit as clownish and incompetent as the Bush administraton was with respect to Iraq.

Let’s go out to the lake, Earl — Slacktivist Fred Clark on the social realities of the GOP blocking the jobs bill. You know, those real life stories conservatives never tell, or even believe. This is the kind of thing that stokes my notion that conservativism is rooted in a failure of empathy (for the problems of other people) and imagination (the inability to believe they might ever experience those problems for themselves).

The Tea Party vs. The Establishment — A conservative view of the GOP primary process. (Which includes the deeply hilarious assertion that 2010 Tea Party candidates like Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle were principled. That makes for a pretty warped worldview if you can believe that while also walking and chewing gum. Either that or you have a really strange idea of what principles are.)

?otD: What’s up, Tiger Lily?

10/13/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (WRPA, including 1,000 words on two small nonfiction projects)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 hours (fitful)
Weight: 222.8
Currently reading: The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod

Tags: Cool, Culture, guns, healthcare, interviews, Iran, Iraq, Language, Links, Occupy Wall Street, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, Tech, Videos

Posted: 5:42 am Thu October 13 2011 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad thinks about postage

Don’t forget to drop me a question in my interview thread. [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Prose to Poetry and an Interesting Technique to Evaluate Your Own Writing — jimvanpelt with an interesting proposition.

Book Jackets Defaced by Playwright Joe Orton in 1962 on Display in London — This is interesting at several levels.

No Cause to Fear an Attack — A hilariously strange 1952 magazine cover for Weird Tales from the Future.

“Am Bodensee. Großflugzeug “Do X” und Luftschiff “Graf Zeppelin” — Aw, man. Two of my favorite pieces of technology in one rather curious photo. This is so awesome.

Three years on Mars … in 3 minutes — A wow video.

Saturn: Shadows of a Seasonal Sundial — A pretty nifty photo of Saturn’s rings from APOD.

Mississippi Personhood Amendment — fledgist on a particularly disgusting piece of legislation from the forced pregnancy enthusiasts in conservative America. Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages.

We Need a New System — As someone recently observed to me, conditions in the United States today have some striking parallels to conditions at the start of the French Revolution.

Why Occupy Wall Street isn’t about a list of demands — The tone of at least some media coverage seems to be improving. Still, compare with the effusive fawning the Tea Party, which was only ever (and literally) a production of FOX News at its beginnings.

Occupy Wall Street shifts from protest to policy phase — Protesters face the difficult and interesting task of leveraging their influence to achieve concrete policy changes addressing their concerns.

Is an Iranian Drug Cartel Behind the Assassination Plot against the Saudi Ambassador? — Juan Cole on the unlikely ins and outs of the alleged plot.

A GOP assault on environmental regulations — Republicans, though correct that environmental regulations cost money, are oblivious to the public health consequences of pollution and the economic costs of inaction.

Dead Letter Office — The case that has even Antonin Scalia wondering what to do about incompetent lawyers in death penalty cases. When even that lunatic archconservative ideologue Justice Scalia thinks a capital defendant has been mistreated, you know something is seriously wrong.

Wagner’s Insane Demonology — Just read this, and reflect that people who think like this are important players in the conservative movement, their blatant insanity privileged by religious belief rather than on court-ordered medication.

Cain and “Gotcha” Questions — [Cain] has already been asked, and completely failed to answer, “gotcha” questions on such obscure topics as the war in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ah, the “gotcha” question. Claiming that is the refuge of the incompetent candidate.

Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs — [Republicans] assert that Barack Obama has unleashed a tidal wave of new regulations, which has created uncertainty among businesses and prevents them from investing and hiring. No hard evidence is offered for this claim; it is simply asserted as self-evident and repeated endlessly. Which is of course true of most Republican assertions, equally baselessly and endlessly propagated to the angry low information voters so zealously nurtured by their media strategy.

?otD: When’s the last time you licked a stamp?

10/12/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (2,100 words of outline)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Weight: 222.2
Currently reading: The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod

Tags: Art, Books, Christianism, Cool, gender, interviews, Iran, Links, Occupy Wall Street, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, Publishing, Religion, reproductive rights, Science, sex, Videos, Writing

Posted: 5:47 am Wed October 12 2011 | Comments(4) |

[interviews] Ask me some more questions, I’ll tell you some more lies

Inspired by Anthony Cardno’s interview with me, I think it’s time for another reader interview. Ask me questions in comments about my writing, your writing, life, death, cancer, parenting, advice to the lovelorn, whatever. Instead of answering them in-line, in a few days I’ll pull them together in an interview format and post it here.

So fire away. What are you itching to hear from me on?

Tags: interviews, Personal

Posted: 5:49 am Tue October 11 2011 | Comments(9) |

[links] Link salad wonders who needs a house out in Hackensack?

Interview with Jay Lake — Since the vampire wasn’t available, writer and blogger Anthony Cardno talks to me instead.

The Encyclodpedia of Science Fiction beta is live online — Weird but cool to be reading about myself there.

How to Finish What You Start: A Five-Step Plan for Writers — For them what needs it. My mind just doesn’t work this way. (Via @Ruth_Nestvold.)

How to Spot Circulating Tumor Cells — Cancer cells that have broken away from the main tumor can spread the disease. Now scientists are developing better ways to find them. My problem, in a nutshell.

“Kraken” sea monster emerges from mythological mists

Ancient Lake in Antarctic May Reveal Clues About Earth’s Future

‘Last Chance’ skywritten messages over NYC not warning but an art project — People are idiots. What terrorist organization would announce itself by skywriting?

#OccupyWallStreet is a lesson on listening

Occupied Wall Street, Seen From Abroad — In the past month, it has been odd to read Twitter and blog posts from the Middle East taking the Wall Street protests far more seriously than anyone here has.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things — Ta-Nehisi Coates on the sterling ethics of conservative journalism. In this case, a disruption of the Occupy Washington demonstration.

Panic of the Plutocrats — I love the word “plutocracy”. It should mean “rule by cartoon dogs”.

David Barton is more influential than Jim Wallis — Slacktivist Fred Clark on the Religious Right. Yes, they’re real. Yes, they’re out there. And yes, they want to run your life. The true sin of the Republican Party is giving these people so much political and social power in their trolling for votes.

Liberal bloggers did not stage the Values Voter Summit — Nope, that would be Christianism on parade, proudly showing its worst side. Not that it has a best side.

Elizabeth Warren: Refuting Straw Liberals — What Warren has done is to make a proper case for liberalism, which does not happen often enough (Via David Goldman.)

The Myth of Voter Fraud — The New York Times on the GOP’s wholesale efforts at voter suppression. When you can’t win on ideas, block the votes. It worked in 2000 with the Brooks Brothers Riot and Bush v. Gore. Now they’re taking the act pro, nationwide. Nice to see Your Liberal Media acknowledging this blatant tactic instead of nodding wisely along to the latest Frank Luntz talking point as usual.

Glenn Beck Warns of the Coming of the ‘Violent Left’ — Projection much, Beckster? Someone needs to up his meds and spend some time in his quiet corner. This is the same conservative mindset that believes that that secular Western liberals are conspiring for the implementation of Shariate law. Guys, when you say things this blatantly crazy, it tars everything else you say as crazy, even when you are actually making sense. Sometimes I think the whole body of right wing conservative rhetoric with respect to moderates and liberals boils down to projection.

?otD: Is that all you get for your money?

10/11/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (2,000 words of outline)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.25 hours (fitful)
Weight: 219.4
Currently reading: The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod

Tags: Cancer, Christianism, Cool, Funny, healthcare, interviews, Language, Links, media, Occupy Wall Street, Personal, Politics, Process, Publishing, Religion, Science, Writing

Posted: 5:41 am Tue October 11 2011 | Comments(0) |

[writing] A bit of this, a bit of that

kenscholes and I continued our excellent Hugo adventures over a nice Italian dinner at DeNicola’s yesterday. Suffice to say we have our schtick. More work to be done there, but I’m going to let the anticipation be.

I also worked on the current Sekrit Projekt yesterday. Interestingly, like the Hugo script, in this case I’m also writing outside my normal form. That’s an unusual and entertaining challenge for me. It also means all my metrics of throughput and productivity are invalid, so I really can’t predict how long this will take me. (I almost always know with a high degree of accuracy how long it will take me to write a short story or a novel. That’s part of how I manage my own schedule so well even in the teeth of cancer treatments.) It’s kind of like starting over.

Also of potential note, I had a very pleasant lunch a couple of day ago with Jonathan Alexander, a professor at UC Irvine. It was something between a conversation and an interview, but it’s always a real pleasure to delve into the art and craft of science fiction with someone who knows way more than I do. I think he was disappointed that I wasn’t wearing an aloha shirt.

My main goal for this week are to get this iteration of the Sekrit Projekt done before I slip back into chemo on Friday. Cancer fun really starts tomorrow, as I’ll have my port accessed (ie, the needle installed for the weekend) and my blood counts checked in the morning; and tomorrow evening I start on the lovely Zyprexa/Lorazepam combination.

What are you writing this week?

Tags: Awards, Cancer, Conventions, health, interviews, Process, Writing

Posted: 5:14 am Wed June 29 2011 | Comments(1) |