Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad celebrates the birth of a tumor

The New World of Publishing: Respect — Dean Wesley Smith on much-needed changes to trade novel publishing contracts.

Is Google Drive worse for privacy than iCloud, Skydrive, and Dropbox? — Another analysis that finds a more balanced outcome. (Via goulo.)

New York faced with swarms of bees which feed off human SWEAT — It’s the bee zombie apocalypse!

An astrological rarity: Venus moving across the sun in May — An offensively stupid headline in WaPo to describe an interesting astronomical event.

Rubber Chicken in Space — This photo is hilarious.

The Trust Molecule — Why are some of us caring and some of us cruel, some generous and some greedy? Paul J. Zakon the new science of morality— and how it could be used to create a more virtuous society.

What the Secret Service could learn from drunken sailors

“America Does not Go Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy” – John Quincy Adams — Old John Quincy Adams ain’t careful, he’ll find himself drummed out of the Tea Party for not following the wisdom of the Founders. No, wait… Help me, Rush Limbaugh!

What’s wrong with American politics

Behind the Right’s Phony War on the Nonexistent Religion of Secularism — Because in conservative America, the lies drive fund raising and votes much better than the truth ever does. My ongoing offense at this arises from the intersection of allegedly high-minded moralism on the Right and the flat-out, knowing false witness borne by these high-minded moralists on the Right. Christian conservatives cynically threw out their own Ninth Commandment decades ago in pursuit of political gain, all the time declaring that atheists like me are immoral. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Surrendering On Marriage — A truly conservative party would be pushing marriage equality, as the Tories are in Britain. What the GOP is, in stark contrast, is not a conservative party governing a modern society. It’s a radical fundamentalist and anti-government religious movement, dedicated to a core rejection of almost everything modernity brings but money.

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. — We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party. The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. So glad you finally noticed.

Mitt Romney stays put — He hopes to win the White House by doubling down on small-government conservatism. Yeah, that worked out so well for the country under Dubya.

Ready for the Fight: Rolling Stone Interview with Barack Obama — The president, in the Oval Office, discusses his job, the opposition and the coming campaign.

?otd: What do you celebrate?

4/29/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bicycle ride
Hours slept: 8.75 (solid)
Weight: 241.4 (!)
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones (graphic novel), George R.R. Martin with Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson

Tags: Christianists, gay, Links, media, nature, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, weird

Posted: 6:54 am Sun April 29 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad only let them go so wrong out of kindness, I suppose

Panel Discussion Moderated by Terry Bisson and Interviews with Rudy Rucker, K. W. Jeter, and Jay Lake — Rick Kleffel with a podcast of some of us Being Smart at SF in SF last February.

The Cultivation of Imagination — Art writing guru James Gurney with some interesting thoughts.

Emotion — xkcd on cancer.

Monsanto Blamed For Bee Population Collapse, So It Buys Bee Research Firm — (Via danjite.)

Pacific reef shark populations ‘plummeting,’ study says

Space shuttle with horse and rider — I find this photograph striking.

Big Bang Machine Discovers Brand New Particle

Asteroids Could Be Mined for Fuel, Says Company — Orbiting spacecraft could be refueled with water taken from planetoids—but some experts doubt the economics.

Explaining the CISPA Cybersecurity Bill, the Latest Threat to your Privacy — Hoo boy.

White Privilege — Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about privilege.

Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay — Why are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners? Because water is wet. Typical conservative hypocrisy, in the same vein as “The only moral abortion is my own.”

Legal discrimination, but no name-calling, please — …a desire to avoid being labeled a bigot while defending legal discrimination Hello, Christian Right. Also, this: Christian petition affirms same-sex relationships.

The Public Doesn’t Share Romney’s Cold War Mentality on Russia — Ya think. Confidential to the Romney campaign: The Soviet Union hasn’t existed for over twenty years. And they’re really not a threat to Czechoslovakia, which hasn’t existed for almost twenty years. Confidential to the rest of America: Tell me again why these GOP morons should be in charge?

John Boehner’s poker face — In January, John Boehner couldn’t have been more confident about the state of the GOP majority. It was “nearly impossible” that Democrats might win the House back in 2012. In fact, the Speaker said, Republicans were well positioned to hold the House for the next decade. Ah, for the heady days of the Permanent Majority, when the GOP turned a budget surplus into a frightening deficit, reversed our paydown on the national debt, and launched a reckless trillion dollar war of choice. All of which is now Obama’s fault, of course. Just ask any Tea Partier. No wonder people want the Republicans back in power.

?otd: Where did Lefty get the bread to go?

4/28/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bicycle ride
Hours slept: 8.75 (solid)
Weight: 242.4 (!)
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones (graphic novel), George R.R. Martin with Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson

Tags: Art, Cancer, Christianists, Cool, gay, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, podcasts, Politics, Process, race, Religion, Science, Tech, Writing

Posted: 6:50 am Sat April 28 2012 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad skids into Friday

Everything You Need to Know about the Hugo Award — In one handy chart. (Snurched from Andrew Wheeler.)

Sticking With Dropbox — A cursory but alarming analysis of Google Drive’s terms of service. Short form: if you’re producing copyrighted material for which you wish to protect first rights (i.e., if you’re a working or aspiring professional author), for the love of God, don’t use Google Drive. More comments on this from the same source, indicating this might not be such a big deal after all. I remain dubious. (Via danjite.)

Dogfights on Your iPhone — This is cool. I want one. (Thanks to Dad.)

Descriptive Camera, 2012 — This is also very weirdly cool. A text-based camera. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

‘GPS brain cells’ seen in pigeons — Researchers have spotted a group of 53 cells within pigeons’ brains that respond to the direction and strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Jupiter and the Moons of Earth — APOD again. Though I have to wonder why the phrase “Earth’s largest natural satellite” was used to describe the moon in this photo’s cutline. Did we really need the adjective “natural” for clarity there?

What are Those Weird Spirals on Mars’ Surface? — The giant coils suggest a mysterious network of valleys on the Martian surface were formed through volcanic activity.

Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole: A Real-Life Ronald Searle Love Story — A lovely piece about coping with cancer through art. (Courtesy of fjm.)

More debunking of the ex-NASA 49 climate change deniers — Remember that embarrassingly bad letter written by 49 ex-NASA employees saying that global warming is a fraud and that NASA shouldn’t support it? Not that the people who need to read this piece will do so, and even if they do, they’ll just dismiss it as part of the hoax. Sorry, climate change denialists, but the facts are seriously biased against you.

Women’s Prayer Group Praying That the Women at MRFF All Get Incurable Breast Cancer — As the hymn goes, “They will know that we are Christians by our love.” And people wonder why I am an atheist.

Study of the Day: Even the Religious Lose Faith When They Think Critically — New research in Science shows that, unlike intuitive thinking, activating the analytical cognitive system promotes religious skepticism. Which dovetails nicely with the GOP’s decades long effort to tear down education in this country.

Satanazis III: Night of the Satanazis — Maybe you’re thinking this is just a snarky post, mocking a bunch of fringe characters for their over-the-top rhetoric and their literal demonization of their political opponents. But these aren’t just fringe characters telling us that liberals are Nazis who murder babies and love the Satan whom they serve. These are Roman Catholic bishops, state governors, influential clergy and elected officials saying this. The great legacy of conservatism of this era will be how it legitimized absolute lunacy.

Using U.S. Dollars, Zimbabwe Finds a Problem: No Change — (Thanks to Dad.)

The Children of Fallujah – Sayef’s story — The phosphorus shells that devastated this city were fired in 2004. But are the victims of America’s dirty war still being born?

GOP Sets Up A Showdown On Violence Against Women Act — “Unfortunately in Congress, there are some who’d like to make this a political play. They’d like to make cheap shots and try to politicize it in an election year,” said Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD). Right. Because no Republican ever has done anything like this, especially not to President Obama. We all know how principled the GOP is, after all.

We Are Not Stupid — Romney is still Romney and he’s still running as the head of a party that has spent the last few years pursuing a profoundly regressive agenda. Last few years? Try my entire lifetime.

?otd: Where did your week go?

4/27/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hour (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bicycle ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (fitful)
Weight: 241.4 (!)
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones (graphic novel), George R.R. Martin with Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson

Tags: Art, Awards, Cancer, Christianists, Cool, education, Funny, gender, healthcare, Iraq, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Process, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech

Posted: 5:29 am Fri April 27 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad flew home, boy are its arms tired

Tor Books goes completely DRM-free — Old news for those of you who follow ebooks, but just in case you missed it. Also, more from John Scalzi and Charlie Stross.

Beneath an Abandoned Hospital: Thoughts from Places — (Via shelly_rae.)

So Much Life on a Little Patch of Earth — Counting bugs in a backyard in Bellingham, WA.

Mysterious ‘Godzillus’ fossil find stumps scientists — An amateur paleontologist discovered an unusual fossil last year. Now experts are attempting to determine its identity.

Edison’s Revenge: The Rise of DC Power — In a world of more electronics and solar energy, there’s less and less need for AC power. Nikolai Tesla is spinning in his grave. Hopefully wrapped in copper wire while doing so.

Rage Against the Smart Meter — Seeing Big Brother in the grid, some citizens are mounting opposition to wireless electricity meters. Break out the tinfoil hats, boys.

Warm Ocean Waters to Blame for Antarctic Ice Melt — A new satellite survey indicates ice-shelf thinning is due to winds driving warmer ocean currents under the shelves. Yet another example of how liberals get the facts to conspire against the conservative version of truth.

Climate change proponent realizes he was wrong, but for the wrong reasons — What happens when a scientist gets the science wrong. This is as nutty as climate change denialism, from the other direction.

Let’s beef up Social Security benefits instead of cutting them — The best way to improve Social Security’s value is by increasing benefits to better serve the neediest workers and expanding its reach to cover workers and dependents who have been excluded. Except the Republican lies about Social Security make for much better headlines.

Brutality of Servility — An interesting take on the John Edwards trial. Ghu am I glad he didn’t become president. This would have been worse than the Bill and Monica show.

Today We Pray for Women for Whom Pregnancy is Not Good News… — There are still some people in the Christian church who can look beyond their own prejudices and the deliberate misreading of scripture that characterize the Christianists of the forced pregnancy movement. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

How the Pennsylvania Senate Primary Explains Democrats’ Chances to Keep the Senate

Newt Gingrich to suspend campaign — He truly believes he would be the best candidate for the party but recognizes the objective reality that recent primary voters have not agreed and intends to be loyal to the party. Um, Newt. You’re a Republican. A leading light of the political party that explicitly rejects objective reality in favor of ideology, deliberate falsehood, bigotry and sheer wishful thinking.

Hail to Mitt: Romney Has a Big Night—Sort Of — Which he achieved mostly by pretending that the GOP had nothing to do with either creating the current state of the economy under the Bush administration, or with perpetuating the current state of the economy through their absolutist intransigence towards Obama. Luckily for Romney, Your Liberal Media supports that blatantly deceptive narrative, and millions of low information voters are happy to go along with it.

?otd: How high did you go yesterday?

4/26/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (1.0 hour on 1,600 words on Their Currents Turn Awry, plus a fair amount of outline work, 1.0 hour on WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bicycle ride
Hours slept: 6.75 (solid)
Weight: 241.6 (!)
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones (graphic novel), George R.R. Martin with Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson

Tags: Christianists, climate, Cool, ebooks, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, sex, Tech, Videos

Posted: 5:37 am Thu April 26 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad knows your history

Jay Lake. The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future — Best SF with a review of my recent Sunspin novella at Subterranean Online.

Talking pineapple question on state exam stumps … everyone! — And more on this. Plus a hilarious response from author Daniel Pinkwater, who wrote the original source material from which the test was extracted. Weird stuff. (Via corwynofamber.)

Rhetological Fallacies — Errors and manipulations of rhetoric and logical thinking. Oddly, the second chart I saw yesterday illustrating this point. (Via tillyjane.)

Sticking hand into bee colony and moving them — A nifty video. (Via willyumtx.)

Quantum decision affects results of measurements taken earlier in time

‘History of Space Photography’ is out of this world

Rosetta Approaches Asteroid Lutitea — What would it look like to approach an asteroid in a spaceship? Though I also love this comment: Lutetian is currently the largest asteroid or comet nucleus that has been visited by a human-launched spacecraft. Since when have we needed to qualify the noun “spacecraft” with the adjective “human-launched”?

Private company does indeed plan to mine asteroids… and I think they can do it — Bad Astronomer Phil Plait on some very cool stuff.

Primate Change — Hahahaha.

Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012 — In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died.

Legal Theory Lexicon: Persons and Personhood — In case you were wondering. (Via Scrivener’s Error.)

The day-to-day reality of enforcing immigration laws

Shift on Executive Power Lets Obama Bypass Rivals — Strangely enough, this story in Your Liberal Media makes it sound as if Obama had come up with this all on his own, for his own reasons, without ever actually mentioning deliberate Republican obstructionism or the GOP’s stated highest legislative priority of making Obama a one-term president. Nope, he’s just a power mad liberal, apparently.

The Amnesia Candidate — Mr. Romney wants you to attribute all of the shortfalls in economic policy since 2009 (and some that happened in 2008) to the man in the White House, and forget both the role of Republican-controlled state governments and the fact that Mr. Obama has faced scorched-earth political opposition since his first day in office. Basically, the G.O.P. has blocked the administration’s efforts to the maximum extent possible, then turned around and blamed the administration for not doing enough. But, but, Tea Party!

Jon Huntsman and the Grand Old Communist Party — Hahahah.

Rubio: George W. Bush Was a “Fantastic” President — By what conceivable standard? National security? 9-11 happened on his watch, and we were drawn into the Iraq war on blatantly false pretenses. Domestic security? The response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans should have been the scandal of the decade. The economy? That’s a farce that goes without saying. The Bush administration was one of the most colossal political failures since at least Herbert Hoover, proudly following conservative philosophies while driving this nation as deep into the ditch as we’ve been since the Great Depression. And Republicans think it was a success? Unfortunately for reality-based Americans, we really do get the government that we deserve.

RNC spokesman says Republicans will follow Bush economic policies, ‘just updated’ — Yeah, because that worked out so well during the Bush administration. I realize that all likely GOP voters blame Obama for everything that’s happened to the economy over the last twelve years, but here in reality land, some of us remember what the state of the economy, the Federal budget, and the deficit were when Bush took office, and what state they were in when he left.

?otd: Where were you born?

4/24/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (3,000 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.0 (solid)
Weight: 240.2 (!)
Currently reading: Between books

Tags: climate, Cool, Culture, education, Funny, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, reviews, Science, stories, Sunspin, Videos, weird

Posted: 5:35 am Tue April 24 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) |

[photos] Hiking to Gillette Lake

Sunday, J—, T— and I (and their dog N—) drove out the Columbia Gorge to the Bonneville Trailhead to go hiking up to Gillette Lake. It’s a nice drive, the better part of an hour out I-84 then across the Bridge of the Gods to the Washington side, and back over to the immediate area of Bonneville Dam.

We hit the trail around 9 am, which is a late start for me hiking, but were still the first ones out from that point. We spent about two and half hours on the trail, which is a long time to hike 5.5 miles, but that included me going slow on some steep sections, a bunch of messing around when we actually got to Gillette Lake, and my right knee getting funky on the downward slopes near the end of the hike.

The place was, as usual for the Pacific Northwest, stunning.

View back toward the Oregon side, fairly early in the hike

Hiking through a stand of trees, also early in the hike

Prayer flags on the trail in one of the clear cut areas

The trillium are in bloom, though this one was a bit distressed

Gillette Lake its own self as seen from the trail heading down to the shore (the lake lies in a steep bowl valley)

A bit of pareidolia as we approached the lake itself — this looks like a bear to me

J— in the woods by the lakeshore

Gillette Lake up close and personal

Looking across the lake up at the crest where the trail brought us out of the woods

The water was very clear, and very green

Gillette Lake is fed by a lovely, noisy stream

The dog enjoying the stream

J— crossing the stream (I decided not to try that bridge with my poor balance)

The bridge I did use, a few hundred yards upstream from the lake

View of the stream from the bridge

Happy dog by the lakeshore

As usual, more at the Flickr set.

Photos © 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: friends, nature, Oregon, Photos, Washington

Posted: 5:36 am Wed April 18 2012 | Comments(0) |

[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) |

[links] Link salad is quicker than they thought

dumb all over. a little ugly on the side. — matociquala is wise about how one treats oneself.

Cancer diagnosis raises risk of heart attack and suicide, study says — Within the first week of being diagnosed with cancer, patients were 12.6 times more likely to commit suicide and 5.6 times more likely to die of a heart attack.

Just One More Game … — Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games’ Once reason I gave up computer and console gaming back around 1998 is that I am very susceptible to game addiction. I didn’t want to spend my life staring at a screen. (Says the guy who writes obsessively…)

Celebrating Oregon’s beloved elephant: 50 years of Packy (Photo Essay)

Woolly mammoth carcass may have been cut into by humans

Shake It Off: Earth’s Wobble May Have Ended Ice Age — Which suggests a certain grandiose technique for dealing with the current climate change crisis we’re having over here in reality-land, does it not?

Press Freedom Index 2011/2012 — The U.S. is number 47. Whoo! (Via danjite.)

Opinion: The Risk of Forgoing Vaccines — Herd immunity, or the protection of individuals who are not vaccinated due to generally high vaccination rates within a population, does not currently exist in many pockets of the US. Yes, anti-science idiocy isn’t confined to conservative America. It is, however, considerably less privileged outside of conservative America. (i.e., Democrats don’t troll for votes by valorizing the idiocies of the left, unlike Republicans and the idiocies of the Right.)

Acknowledging Climate Change Doesn’t Make You A Liberal — A Message From A Republican Meteorologist On Climate Change. No, it just means you live in the real world. (Snurched from @gregvaneekhout.)

Looking Ahead, Republicans Examine Options in Health Care Fight — What do you know? The GOP never had a plan, except “kill Kenyan Muslim socialism!”

Romney Accuses Obama of Hiding Agenda — Why? Because the accusation plays well with anti-reality conservatives. Kenyan Muslim socialism is subtle, y’all.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Mormonism off limits — Right, because Obama is that anti-religious Kenyan Muslim atheist who, um. No, I got nothing.

Republican Judge Flips Out at Obama — Suppose George W. Bush had managed to pass his plan to privatize Social Security, and liberals ginned up a legal challenge that everybody dismissed but gradually made its way to the Supreme Court and got a respectful hearing from a Supreme Court controlled by five Democratic-appointed justices. I suspect conservatives would be a tad upset. The mistake is assuming intellectual consistency on the part of conservatives.

Calling Radicalism by Its Name — President Obama’s fruitless three-year search for compromise with the Republicans ended in a thunderclap of a speech on Tuesday, as he denounced the party and its presidential candidates for cruelty and extremism. As I’ve said a number of times, the conservative worldview is a failure of both empathy and imagination. Obama said it better.

Words that blow your legs off — On language and political discourse. This is why you mostly don’t see me jumping all over politicians for slips of the tongue or even open mic errors. Statements in writing, or contextualized in prepared speeches, are certainly fair game.

Why Conservative GOP Voters Aren’t Giving Up on Rick Santorum — The more the Republican establishment pushes Mitt Romney, the more alienated the religious right becomes. Why the party’s hard-core base isn’t coming around. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of small minded, anti-reality bigots.

Does The Romney-Santorum Contest Matter? — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on the last men standing the GOP field. I loved this line: The most meaningful difference between them is that one is an ideologue and the other is a liar. More Republicans seem to prefer the liar.

?otd: Did you just turn your back and walk?

4/5/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.25 hours (5,400 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (solid)
Weight: 239.4
Currently reading: The Bone Doll’s Twin by Lynn Flewelling

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Posted: 4:57 am Thu April 05 2012 | Comments(0) |