Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad wonders how it can dance when our earth is turning

JayFest — Sci-Fi Book Fair & Group Signing — My friends at Powell’s are hosting a group signing in support of my cancer journey, book sales to benefit the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund. The evening of June 13, 2013, two days before JayCon, at Powell’s Cedar Hills in Beaverton, OR.

Almost All the Way Home From the Stars: Seven Science Fiction Stories — An ebook of my collaborate work with Ruth Nestvold is now available. Includes the story we had in SCI FICTION together.

Vintage Book Jacket Art — (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Two uncomfortable truths: New Merida looks a little whorey. Fewer people care about this than you would think.

Brain Training Helps Clear Cognitive Fog Caused by Chemotherapy — The mental fuzziness induced by cancer treatment could be eased by cognitive exercises performed online, say researchers. I play sudoku online rather obsessively when I am in chemo, as a form of cognitive self-check.

Ranbaxy: Looking Under the Rock — Why generic drugs do not always stack up. (Via David Goldman.)

Eyeball — A throwable building-mapping sphere from Bounce Imaging was recently chosen by PopSci for a 2013 Invention Award. The “throwable, expendable, baseball-size probe,” in PopSci’s words, “has a shock-absorbing shell embedded with six cameras, plus clusters of near-infrared LEDs to light up dark rooms (for the cameras).” Wow.

Opportunity Breaks NASA’s 40-Year Roving Record

Danish Teenager Makes Rare Viking Find — Cool!

Thrilling video of Portland PD high-speed chase… wait for it… — Ah, Portland.

Survey of 12,000 studies finds strong agreement on climate change — We already knew 97% of climate scientists backed the scientific consensus. It’s amazing the lengths liberals will go to in order to spread their climate change lies, even to the extent of using reality-based “facts” and “data”.

GOP raffling AR-15 “Sandy Hook”-type rifles as macabre pro-gun stunt — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best.

CBS: It was congressional GOP who faked Benghazi email — Conservatives can almost never win on the facts, so of course they lie. That’s the entire idea behind FOX News. And the Bush administration. (WMDs in Iraq, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) Why should it be any different in the GOP congressional delegation? Water is wet, too.

QotD?: How do we sleep while our beds are burning?

5/17/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (0.5 revisions on my novella for METAtropolis: Green Space, plus WRPA)
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 249.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Cancer, climate, Cool, events, Funny, guns, health, healthcare, Iraq, Links, Mars, media, Personal, Politics, Portland, Publishing, Science, stories, Tech, Videos

Posted: 4:36 am Fri May 17 2013 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad gets ready to jet home

The Author Exploitation Business — A commentary on Penguin and Author Solutions. Penguin has been looking under the Author Solutions hood for 10 months now. Its conclusion was this: we can make this bigger. We can take this scam on the road and start exploiting writers all over the planet.

The Kitten Setting: An Experiment — On trollery, pace John Scalzi.

San Diego-Tijuana Region — A satellite photo from NASA’s Earth Observatory site. Mildly ironic, because I woke up this morning in San Diego. I think I can see myself waving from my hotel window.

Sunday Fun: Vintage Cockroach Racing Game — Uh…

Telomeres Affect Gene Expression — As telomeres shorten with age, genes as far as 1,000 kilobases away could be affected, including one responsible for an inherited muscle disease.

Why gamma-ray burst shocked scientists — I believe that Dr. Bruce Banner is on the case.

Mars Expedition Possible in 20 Years — Do you really want to go to heaven?

Gearing up to search for gravity waves — Hunt will be on in 2017, but finding the source may still be a challenge.

Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum Internet For Over Two Years — A quantum internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages has been running at Los Alamos National Labs for the last two and a half years, say researchers. I am deeply suspicious of any claim of “perfect security”.

Organic vapors affect clouds leading to previously unidentified climate cooling — Interesting.

No charges to be filed in accidental shooting of Davidson County 10-year-old — Because guns make us all safer. (Via danjite.)

QotD?: What did you have for dinner last night?

5/6/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (Con activity all day long)
Hours slept: 6.0 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (foot hurts)
Weight: n/a (away from home)
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

Tags: California, climate, Cool, Culture, guns, Links, Mars, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Science, space, weird

Posted: 7:16 am Mon May 06 2013 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad tools up to head to southern California

David: Illness and Death — Debbie Notkin with a thoughtful narrative on her brother’s death from cancer.

‘Death cafes’ normalize a difficult, not morbid, topic — Yeah, well. Welcome to my dinner table. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Genomics to reshape endometrial cancer treatment — This is very similar to what we were hoping to do for me.

Banned Baby Names: Justice Just As Bad As Anal And 4Real, One Country Says — Ah, New Zealand.

How to play chess properly — Hahahah. (Via willyumtx.)

The Robie Metric System — Because he could? Wow… (Thanks to Lisa Costello.)

Le cigare volant est Francais! — x planes with a particularly weird piece of French aviation concept art from the 1950s.

Nasa telescope has close shave with Soviet satellite

What’s Next for Curiosity? Mars Mountaineering

Bones reveal a tale of desperation — Scientists find evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, America’s first permanent English colony.

Bring Your Camera — Some stunning images of arctic ice, courtesy of NASA.

The Twitter Account to Watch If You’re Worried About Climate Change — More reality-based liberal lies, of course. Ask any conservative.

While Sequestration Cuts Programs For The Poor, The U.S. Ranks Second-To-Last On Child Poverty — That’s what conservative social policies get you. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

GOP fundraising video mocks grieving Sandy Hook mom who lost 6 y.o. — Ah, those moral stewards of compassionate conservatism. Are you proud of your Republican party? The gun culture has absolutely no shame or conscience.

2-Year-Old Girl Shot, Killed By 5-Year-Old Brother With Rifle He Recieved As A Gift — Because guns make us all safer, right?

Toomey doubts second Senate gun-control vote any time soon — The toughest thing to do in politics is to do the right thing when your supporters think the right thing is something else,” Toomey said. That’s the GOP in a nutshell. In their own words, the right thing isn’t what their own base thinks the right thing is. On guns. On taxes. On deficits. On education. On climate. On jobs. On immigration. And their leadership knows better. No shame. No conscience. Are you proud of your Republican party? Doing the right thing since never, once again in their own words.

Poll: 29% Think Armed Rebellion Might Soon Be Necessary — 44% of self-identified Republicans say that “in the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” Once again, are you proud of your Republican party?

Pat Buchanan joins Manhattan Declarers in ‘civil disobedience’ fappery — All this talk of “civil disobedience” from anti-gay folks like Buchanan and the Manhattan Declarers is just posturing. It’s part of the fantasy role-playing game in which they stroke their egos by pretending that they’re heroic champions of morality. Bigotry is bigotry, no matter how much you abuse the language of civil rights and victimhood to self-valorize. Gay marriage compels absolutely nothing upon people who disagree with it, and takes absolutely nothing away from them. The basic Christianist argument is “My right to take away your rights trumps your right to exercise rights that have nothing to do with me.” That’s about as un-American as you can get.

QotD?: Ever been to San Diego? Why not?

5/2/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (WRPA editing work on METAtropolis: Green Space, plus lots of time prepping for San Diego trip)
Hours slept: 8.5 hours (interrupted)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block helping welfare recipients buy cell phones and big screen tvs: 0
Currently reading: The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Cancer, Christianists, climate, Cool, Culture, economy, Funny, gay, guns, health, history, Language, Links, Mars, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, space, Videos, weird

Posted: 6:13 am Thu May 02 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad celebrates M’aidez

A reader reacts to Escapement — They liked it better than Mainspring.

Worldbuilding with Maps — Art guru James Gurney (of Dinotopia fame) is interesting.

Rob and Laura: 1963 — I’m not quite old enough to remember this as a prime time series, but it was in regular rerun rotation when I was a little kid, in the year or so I actually watched television during my childhood.

Could Body Armor Have Saved Millions in World War I? — The follies that led to poor helmets and a lack of torso protection for men in the trenches. (Snurched from james_nicoll.)

Google Glass: Let the evil commence — Glass has now been ‘jailbroken’ with a well-documented exploit. So what can you (or others) do with a hacked headset? Apparently, a whole lot.

More than 20,000 people apply for one-way ticket to Mars — Wow.

Would an antimatter apple fall upward from the earth?

Sun Plus Nanotechnology: Can Solar Energy Get Bigger by Thinking Small?

Atoms star in world’s smallest movie from IBM — Researchers at IBM have created the world’s smallest movie by manipulating single atoms on a copper surface.

A Sense of Where You Are — I have an excellent sense of both location and direction. I know people who have very little internal sense of either of those things. Finally, an explanation.

Prenatal DNA Sequencing — Reading the DNA of fetuses is the next frontier of the genome revolution. Do you really want to know the genetic destiny of your unborn child? I sure would. Also note, this story is about the company that did my own Whole Genome Sequencing.

Representing Transracial Adoptions — Wow. As a white parent in an adopted transracial family, just wow.

Pro-Environment Light Bulb Labeling Turns Off Conservatives, Study Finds — Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

Poll: Democratic edge for 2014 — Slightly more voters say they’ll vote Democratic in the 2014 congressional elections than Republicans, bucking a historical trend of the president’s party losing seats in his sixth year, a new poll Wednesday shows. I’ll believe it when I see it, but if true, this represents a welcome trend away from the fever swamp of destructive insanity that the GOP has become.

QotD?: Est-ce que vous êtes internationale?

5/1/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (WRPA editing work on METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block helping welfare recipients buy cell phones and big screen tvs: 0
Currently reading: The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Books, Cool, Escapement, healthcare, Links, Mainspring, Mars, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, race, reviews, Science, space, Tech, television, weird, Writing

Posted: 5:01 am Wed May 01 2013 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad dreams of electric sheep

Science and Technology Knowledge Quiz — You answered 13 of 13 questions correctly. […] You scored better than 93% of the public and the same as 7%. As I said in comments on james_nicoll‘s LiveJournal post about this, “One question I actually had to think about for a moment, the rest were general knowledge on a par with knowing the points of the compass or how to conjugate an English verb.”

Hundreds of Potential Drug Targets to Starve Cancer Tumors Identified — Huh. (Thanks to Bruce Taylor.)

Physicists Build World’s First “Magnetic Hose” For Transmitting Magnetic Fields — Magnetic fields decay rapidly and so have never been transmitted over long distances. Until now… I initially misread this headline as “Magnetic Horse”, which would be a lot funnier.

The Scientific Process Through Stock Photography — Hahah! I love nerd humor. (Via Gabrielle Harbowy.)

Penises on Mars? Grow Up, Internet. — At least it wasn’t cat .gifs.

Life’s Trajectory Seen Through Facebook Data — Data donated by Facebook users to Stephen Wolfram yields interesting patterns that may reveal how people change over time.

Why I Let My Students Cheat On Their Game Theory Exam — Teaching people game theory is good. Making them live it is even better, says UCLA professor Peter Nonacs. (Thanks to David Goldman.)

As they turn 150, Adventists still pray for the apocalypse — Adventist leaders say the apocalyptic pull is still strong at church headquarters, especially during planning sessions. “I see that in our education system,” said Beardsley-Hardy. “Not wanting to over-invest in building because Jesus is coming.” Religion doesn’t have to make you stupid, but it sometimes does an awfully good job of exactly that. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Jesus and Muhammad and the Question of the State — Juan Cole on scriptural authority for political power. Long but worth the read.

GE Halts Financing for Firearm Retailers as Gun Lenders Vanish — Unlike the gun culture conservatives in senate, GE can read polls that identify an overwhelming support for increased firearms regulation. Good for them.

Scenes From a Multiverse nails the conservative view of gun control

Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament — Charlie Stross is fascinating.

The Problem of Redaction — Hah. Interesting security wonk stuff. This seems right up autopope‘s alley. (Thanks to seventorches.)

Intelligence Is No Guarantee of Good Judgment — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison: [T]here was a frightening resemblance between Romney and Bush in their shared overconfidence and ignorance about the world. Romney endorsed misguided foreign policy ideas because he didn’t know much about the subject, didn’t care about it very much, paid it very little attention.

Bush 43: ‘History will ultimately judge … I’m a content man’ — He was completely delusional while in office. I don’t know he’d be any less delusional now.

Fight Club on the Hill — After thirty years of their proclaiming the evils of government, is it any surprise we have a Republican Congress that cannot govern? I continue surprised at the collapse of Republican party discipline, however. Another Bush 43 legacy, that, and one of the very few things America and the world should thank him for.

GOP quits public policy — Evidence reveals that today’s conservatives have been historically bad at writing bills or developing an agenda. When you elect people to govern who don’t believe in good government, why would you expect anything like good government? Conservatives: ruining America for the majority of us.

President Obama to daughters: if you get a tattoo, I will too

QotD?: Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.

4/25/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (2,300 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin)
Hours slept: 5.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (very carefully on the stationary bike)
Weight: 246.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block helping welfare recipients buy cell phones and big screen tbs: 0
Currently reading: Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Cancer, Christianists, Cool, Culture, economy, education, Funny, guns, healthcare, Links, Mars, Personal, Photos, Politics, Religion, Science, space, Tech, weird

Posted: 5:25 am Thu April 25 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad knows that the game never ends when your whole world depends on the turn of a friendly card

Reddit Fantasy AMA — On Thursday, April 18th (tomorrow), I’ll be participating in the Reddit Fantasy Ask Me Anything.

Badgers, Books and Bacon — Note what this badger is standing on. Heh.

What is the rule for adjective order? — One of those simple looking questions that is in fact fantastically complicated. (Snurched from @elfsternberg.)

Braving End of the Tunnel Blues — Fellow late stage cancer patient (and friend) Janet Freeman-Daily talks about “End of the Tunnel Blues”. Though perhaps they should be “Beginning of the Tunnel Blues”?

Hospital finances are broken. How to fix them. — [D]etails about why hospitals might not have any financial incentive to follow best practices. A new paper from researchers affiliated with Harvard, Boston Consulting Group and nonprofit health care delivery system Texas Health Resources suggests that, in some cases, providing worse care pays off for hospitals. This has not been my experience at all, but I may simply be lucky in that respect.

Combat juggling — No, really. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

Applicants wanted for a one-way ticket to Mars — Would you go?

Archaeology on an Interstellar Scale — Cool post from Centauri Dreams. Damned cool.

Mt. Hood and a Lenticular Cloud — I have seen these. They are very strange.

What Happens When You Throw Some Glow Sticks into a Waterfall — (Via my brother.)

Ice Caves Around the World — Gorgeous. (Via Lisa Costello.)

An Illustrated Tour Of Australia’s Museum of Copulatory Organs — Ah, the bracing cut and thrust of museum science. (Via David Goldman.)

Study backs ‘hobbit’ island dwarfism theory — A diminutive species of human whose remains were found on the Indonesian island of Flores could have shrunk as a result of island dwarfism as it adapted to its environment.

Barbie Body Would Be Pretty Odd-Looking In Real Life — Whereas I closely resemble a Ken doll myself.

Death Test Reveals Strength of Social Interaction — Social ties between humans are stronger than those between fruit flies or ants but weaker than those between bees, according to a cheerful new ranking based on how quickly creatures die when they become isolated.

200 Strangers Respond To Facebook Invitation For Funeral Of Veteran With No Friends Or Family — Hundreds of strangers attended the funeral of a British veteran after a clergyman, fearing that the former Royal Marine would be buried without mourners, posted a message on Facebook asking people to attend. (Via threeoutside.)

Is the Grand Canyon showing its age? — This is science in action—researchers debating a 65 million year conflict between evidence from traditional geological methods and new dating technology. A concept that’s hard to understand when your highest value is willful ignorance and rejection of the reality-based world.

Yes, Climate Change Is Worsening U.S. Drought — NOAA Report Needlessly Confuses The Issue — Much like O.J. Simpson’s defense team, in the face of an overwhelming preponderance of evidence, climate change denialists will seize on any anomaly in the pretense that it negates all the rest of the weight of the evidence. That’s not how science works, and most conservatives leading the denialist clamor know perfectly well better.

Multnomah County Sheriff Halts Washington Concealed Handgun Applications — I’m sure the gun nut conspiracy theories are already rolling, given the calm and rational nature of handgun advocates.

When Hacking Is the Smaller Crime — Here’s a fascinating article in the Yale Journal of International Affairs, by Paul Rexton Kan of the U.S. Army War College, about cyberwar between non-state agents — in this case, Anonymous versus Los Zetas, the Mexican drug cartel.

Top Ten Ways Islamic Law forbids Terrorism — Pretty sure the Christian tradition does likewise, but that doesn’t stop clinic bombers.

The Boston Blasts and Terrorism: A Historian’s Take on What It Means

‘Toolbox’ that shut down Steel Bridge was actually a TriMet fare box — Portland’s own contribution to public safety. This is what terrorism does. It makes paranoid incompetents of us all. Viz the entire Bush 43 administration.

Rubio: Don’t Tie Immigration Reform To Boston Bombing — Immigration reform opponent Rep. Steve King (R-IA) suggested legislation should be delayed just in case the bombing is linked to a foreign suspect. In case you had any lingering doubt that Republicans were anything but complete buffoons, that should take care of it. The stupid, it burns.

Microsoft Excel: The ruiner of global economies? — A paper used to justify austerity economics appears to contain an Excel error. Austerity economic is like supply-side economics: a mathematical fantasy that appeals to certain ideologies without any grounding in the real world.

The Willful Blindness of Bush Loyalists — Republicans are very good at embellishing or inventing Bush’s successes, and they need no encouragement in this regard. What they plainly refuse to do is to acknowledge Bush-era disasters for what they are, accept that the public holds their party responsible for those disasters, and try to find some way to correct the errors made. I will submit that when your entire ideology and your party’s political fortunes are based on wholesale denial of objective reality (i.e. evolution denialism, climate change denialism, supply side economics, etc.), it becomes much harder to engage in honest self-reflection. Conservatives have deeply corrupted their own habits of thought. That’s the basis of the well-documented conservative epistemic closure.

QotD?: Who could have prevented the fall of the unwise?

4/17/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (60 minutes and 1,500 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin, plus 60 minutes minutes of WRPA to produce 1,800 words of nonfiction)
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block checking the magazine sizes of gun owners: 0
Currently reading: The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Books, Boston, Cancer, climate, Cool, Culture, economy, Funny, gender, guns, healthcare, Language, Links, Mars, Personal, Photos, Politics, Portland, race, Religion, Science, space, sports, terrorism, Videos, weird

Posted: 5:31 am Wed April 17 2013 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad hangs out in San Antonio

Message from a Patient: Whole Genome Sequencing Not Clinical Yet — Mendelspod interviews me and Dad in a podcast.

Surgery mid-birth saved baby Lake — Wait, what? (Via David Goldman.)

After Chemo — Research into how the brain suffers as a result of chemotherapy is revealing potential avenues for ameliorating cognitive decline.

Beatles 3000 — A millennial retrospective. Hahaha. (Via scarlettina.)

Bingham Landslide — Wow.

NASA Mars Orbiter Images May Show 1971 Soviet Lander

Hacking an Airplane With Only an Android Phone — Hoo boy.

The Hard Truth about Economic Inequality that Both the Left and Right Ignore

Gitmo Defense Lawyers Say Somebody Has Been Accessing Their Emails — Because we Americans are the highly principled defenders of freedom and the rule of law.

In the story of Noah, climate change is humans’ fault — Slacktivist Fred Clark with a progressive religious perspective on the latest conservative idiocy.

Fox’s Disability Insurance Fraud “Shocker” Falls Flat — The conservative view of social programs as some kind of cornucopia of largesse is just bizarre, not to mention profoundly counterfactual.

QotD?: Been to the Riverwalk?

4/12/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (1,500 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin), 1.0 hour of editing work on METAtroplis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 0.0 (away from home)
Number of FEMA troops on my block enforcing Agenda 21 by closing down golf courses: 0
Currently reading: Jingo by Terry Pratchett

Tags: audio, Cancer, Christianists, climate, Cool, economy, Funny, guns, health, healthcare, law, Links, Mars, music, Personal, Photos, podcasts, Politics, Religion, Science, Videos, weird

Posted: 6:08 am Fri April 12 2013 | Comments(5) |

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

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

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

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

A Japanese medical blog reports on my Whole Genome Sequencing

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

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

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

Steampunk iPad: 1922 — Another Shorpy classic. Hahah.

Scientists successfully create living embryo of an extinct species

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QotD?: Ever been to the Blue Mountains?

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

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

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

[links] Link salad is dressed up like a million dollar trooper

Why I don’t self-publish — Charlie Stross is wise. Yes, this.

Writer’s Call to Kill Feral Cats Sparks Outcry

Land of the K, Home of the W: America’s Radio Nations — Huh.

Meet the 6-legged robot lizards that may one day roam Mars

Rockets to Reefs — More on the recovered Saturn V engines.

Comet Castle — Such a lovely photo.

Planck Telescope captures Universe’s first light

The cycle of fear that drives assault weapon sales — The cause of gun control in the US is lost unless we address the underlying anxiety that makes people feel safer armed. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Boy kills Georgia infant in stroller, police say — Yep. Definitely safer with more guns. Absolutely. Nothing to see here, citizen, move along.

The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon’s ‘treason’ — Reminds me of Reagan’s October surprise. Republican have never failed to put partisan interest over national interest, have they? (Via danjite.)

For Sen. Portman, Sen. Kirk and the rest of us: The next big step is the important one — It’s the realization that because I didn’t understand others’ situation or others’ perspective until I myself faced the same thing, I should then strive to listen and to learn and to see the world through others’ eyes so that I can better understand the world without having to experience every situation, every injustice, every ordeal personally. One fundamental definition of conservatism is “lack of empathy”.

Phil Donohue Recalls how he Was Fired From MSNBC for Being anti-war — Progressives really were right on that one, and conservatives dead, dead wrong. Not that any FOX News viewer will ever come to understand that.

QotD?: Who are you trying hard to look like?

3/22/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hour (WRPA, revisions)
Hours slept: 6.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours stationary bike
Weight: n/a (away from home)
Number of FEMA troops on my block building solar arrays to undermine the American fossil fuel industry: 0
Currently reading: Guards, Guards by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Cool, guns, history, Iraq, Links, Mars, media, Personal, Politics, Process, Publishing, Science, space, Tech

Posted: 5:15 am Fri March 22 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad refuses to freeze its soup and nuts

A review of Endurance — A review with a very curious approach.

The First 10 Pages: Science Fiction & Fantasy Boot Camp: 3/26/13 – 3/28/13 — An online course I am etching with writer (and friend) Phil Athans and agent Carlie Webber. Phil comments at length.

Widespread Flaws Found in Ovarian Cancer Treatment — Sigh.

French Toilet Paper Ad: ‘Emma’ By Le Trefle Proves Both French Husbands & Technology Wrong — Hahahaha! (Thanks to Lisa Costello.)

“W T Warren Testing Helmet 1912” — Um, ok.

Seagulls — Drones in love. (Via goulo.)

Ukrainian Killer Dolphins Deserted to Seek Mates – Expert — Um, wow.

Neanderthal large eyes ‘made them extinct’ — No one knows what it’s like/To be the bad man/To be the sad man/Behind blue eyes

Mars rock yields building blocks of life — NASA says the Curiosity rover detected six elements in a rock that indicated Mars once had a habitable environment with plenty of water.

Google Concedes That Drive-by Prying Violated Privacy — This has been percolating for a while.

Raging on the Web May Not Really Make Us Feel Better — Huh. Who knew? I guess we’ll all have to back to yelling at the teepee.

No burden, no regret in ‘fair, respectful, equal’ — I have never seen anyone who described their former support for marriage equality as an oppressive weight or burden that they were later joyously relieved to be rid of. I have never seen anyone weep with remorse and regret for the votes they cast or the words they once spoke in support of equal rights. I don’t recall seeing anyone moving in that direction at all.

Illinois Republican: Gun control ‘exactly’ like castration — Ah, the cool logic of the gun culture once again expresses itself. Saving 30,000 lives a year can’t possibly be worth this much trouble, eh? (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Richard Nixon Wished for Total Handgun Ban — And he presided over the founding of the EPA. I sometimes wonder how we’d view Nixon now if he hadn’t left office under a criminal cloud. (Via ericjamesstone.)

Falsity of Nuclear Accusation against Iraq Was Known before Bush’s Invasion — Well, duh. They knew they were lying about it. But evidence-based reality was never a high priority for the Bush administration, being as how they were Republicans and all. The kindest interpretation I’ve ever come up with is that they were certain Saddam had nukes, and were doing the political equivalent of kiting a check, figuring once they found the goods, no one would care later that the initial evidence was false.

QotD?: What’s the coldest you’ve ever been?

3/13/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (revisions and 900 additional words to “King of the Kingless”, to 4,000 words)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (19 degrees and snowing outside, what do you think?)
Weight: n/a (away from home)
Number of FEMA troops on my block escorting ACORN thugs to steal the votes of “Real Americans”: 0
Currently reading: Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Cancer, Cool, Endurance, events, France, Funny, gay, gender, guns, healthcare, Iraq, Links, Mars, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, reviews, sex, Tech, Videos, weird, Writing

Posted: 3:57 am Wed March 13 2013 | Comments(0) |