Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad dances by the laser light

Goodreads First Reads: Kalimpura by Jay Lake

Is This Grade School a ‘Cult’? (And Do Parents Care?) — The Atlantic on Waldorf schools. the_child has attended one since she was three and a half. (Via tillyjane, a/k/a my mom.)

Crystals… made of time — Physicists: “Ignore the infinities and try this.” Universe: “Not likely.”

Teen bank robber from Nebraska brags about crime on YouTube video — The self-described ‘Chick bank robber’ flashed her stolen loot on video – now she faces time behind bars. Welcome to crime in the age of social media. (Via threeoutside.)

Senate Republicans Block Ratification Of U.N. Treaty On Rights For The Disabled, Citing Impact On Home-Schoolers — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best.

Congressman’s Restaurant Refused To Serve Muslim Couple — More class from Sarah Palin’s “real Americans”.

I think an awful lot of what passes for political discourse in this country these days works off that principle: There’s money in making stupid people mad. — Votes, too. Hence the perennial GOP electoral strategy of generating angry white men. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

FoxNews.com Columnist Attacks Bob Costas For Correctly Drawing Connection Between Guns And Murder — From the “la-la-la-la, I can’t hear you” school of the obvious about the relationship between guns and violence. Why is the Second Amendment’s guarantees of freely available instruments of murder so absolutely sacred to conservatives while the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom gets constantly shredded by the very same people? Compensating much?

Anonymous, Karl Rove and 2012 Election Fix? — Did Karl Rove’s hack get hacked? A question I myself have asked. It would explain a lot about the last-minute expectations of the Romney campaign.

GOP’s McCain, Graham, Collins used same language as Rice to describe Benghazi attack — Both Rice and the Senators used the term “mob” to describe those who perpetrated the attack on our consulate and CIA station in Libya. None of them referred to terrorists, or Al Qaeda. Yet the Senators are now faulting Rice for not referring to Al Qaeda when the Senators themselves did not refer to Al Qaeda. More of that justly famed principled intellectual consistency from the American Right, I see.

In Search of a Gatekeeper — . It eludes Welch that one of the long-term failings of the conservative movement has been its tendency to condemn former allies that it no longer found useful. As a political movement, it has been increasingly interested in heresy-hunting and not all that interested in persuasion in recent years. Perhaps that is in the nature of any political movement, but it has afflicted the conservative movement very much in the last two decades. Each purge simply makes the conservative movement and the Republican Party increasingly rigid, unimaginative, and oblivious to the world around it.

Republicans not handling election results well — 49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore. Yep, those finely honed minds on the American right.

?otD: Did I miss ruby Tuesday?

12/5/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo brain)
Hours slept: 9.0 hours (8.0 hours extremely fitful plus napping)
Body movement: 0.5 hours stationary bike ride
Weight: 219.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block teaching evolution to children and redistributing wealth: 0
Currently reading: The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks

Tags: Books, Culture, guns, Iraq, Kalimpura, Links, Nebraska, Personal, Politics, Publishing, race, Religion, Science

Posted: 6:16 am Wed December 05 2012 | Comments(3) |

[photos] Ballooning through the Nebraska skies

I still don’t have access to the photos taken in-flight from inside the basket, but here are some nice ones from fellow passenger Doris Abraham, as well as ground crew members Dani Martin and Tracy Rotundo. Man, that was a lot of fun.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Cool, friends, Nebraska, Photos

Posted: 4:35 am Wed August 22 2012 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad for a busy Sunday

This Embarrasses You and I* — Grammar Gaffes Invade the Office in an Age of Informal Email, Texting and Twitter. Ah, prescriptivism.

Chasing a Prairie Tale — Buffalo, the Pawnee, and an old story on a trip across the plains. Reflections on frontier Nebraska. (Thanks to my Dad.)

Stonehenge Was A Monument To Tribal Unification, Says Researchers — Really?

Mars Snowflakes As Tiny As Red Blood Cells

Getting Lost in the Labyrinth of Medical Bills — Move along, citizen. Nothing to see here. No need for healthcare reform in this country. America has the bestest system, and private enterprise only makes it bestester! Anyone who thinks otherwise is a Kenyan Muslim socialist. (Or possibly just in touch with reality.)

NSA: Can’t Tell You Who We Spy On; That Would Violate Their Privacy — Feel safer yet?

Alan Turing: Inquest’s suicide verdict ‘not supportable’ — I wonder how much of this finding is an effort to rehabilitate the guilt borne by the British government, press and people over the disgusting manner in which Turing was treated.

What doth it profit religious demagogues to gain direct mail millions and lose their souls? — Slacktivist Fred Clark on the history of the anti-gay hysteria within the religious Right, as well as a few related topics. Worth the read, especially if you somehow are deluded enough to believe that this is genuinely about issues of faith.

Most Americans oppose health law but like provisions — Which just once again proves two things I say over and over. Your Liberal Media supports the conservative narrative (hence the topline opposition), but no one, not even conservatives likes conservative policies when applied to them personally (hence the support for individual provisions). Conservatism is all about blaming and punishing the other.

The Claim That Barack Obama Is A Big Spender Is A Big Lie — Unpossible. Republicans lying about Obama. Their justly famed moral probity and intellectual consistency renders this unpossible.

Romney Lacks Experience on Foreign Policy, and His Judgment Is Awful, Too — The U.S. has already had quite enough experience with an inexperienced Republican governor surrounded by supposedly heavyweight foreign policy advisers to risk doing it again. An inexperienced and ignorant chief executive is more likely to listen to bad advice because he doesn’t know enough to recognize it as bad advice. Rule number one of GOP electoral politics in 2012 is “George who?”

?otD: Doing good? Having fun?

6/24/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (brain break)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride, some walking to come
Hours slept: 7.25 (solid)
Weight: 239.2
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate

Tags: Christianism, Cool, Culture, England, gay, healthcare, Language, Links, Mars, media, Nebraska, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science

Posted: 5:48 am Sun June 24 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad would sooner kiss a wookie

The Horrible, Amazing, Odd Story Behind the Stories of Thackery T. Lambshead — A book everyone should buy and read! Full of weirdos and weirdnesses.

Rainbow: Victorian meets sci-fi in steampunk — Omaha’s view of the world. (Thanks to garyomaha.)

A Trip to China Can Make a Guy Hate His iPhone — My trip to China two years ago gave me a lot of frustration for completely different reasons than described in this piece. Basically, on the Chinese domestic cell networks, it worked way better than ever on AT&T in this country. Much cleaner sound, no dropped calls, no ‘dials of death’ instant five bar service in any urban or built up areas.

Octophilosophy — When it comes to studying cephalopod brains and behavior, it helps to have a philosopher around.

When the Nurse Wants to Be Called ‘Doctor’

Common Ground for Legal Adversaries on Health Care — (Thanks to my Dad.)

Gotta Revolution: Video Mix of Occupy Wall Street Protest And Police Reaction

The Round and the Oval — WaPo on Chris Christie, politics and weight. Like people criticizing McCain for being computer illiterate, criticizing Christie for his weight is a red herring.

Chris Christie’s Presidential Baggage

Michele Bachmann’s campaign is sputtering in Iowa — And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving loon.

Herman Cain denies GOP’s horrible history with blacks — One again, those liberally biased facts don’t count in the conservative narrative.

?otD: Can you arrange that?

10/3/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.75 hours (WRPA despite chemo)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.5 hours (7.5 hour overnight, fitful, plus napping)
Weight: 221.4
Currently reading: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

Tags: Books, China, healthcare, Links, Nebraska, occupywallstreet, Personal, Politics, Publishing, steampunk, Tech, Videos

Posted: 5:30 am Mon October 03 2011 | Comments(0) |

[photos|travel] The somewhat delayed balloon launch post

Finally it can be told. Or more to the point, finally I have the time (and bandwidth) to tell it.

Wednesday of last week, I went out to the Sarpy County Fairgrounds in Springfield, Nebraska with elusivem and garyomaha. Our goal was to fly elusivem‘s hot air balloon with me as passenger.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ballooning, Cool, Food, friends, Nebraska, Photos, Travel

Posted: 5:42 am Wed April 13 2011 | Comments(0) |

[child] The Child reports on Nebraska

is writing a report on Nebraska for her class. It’s not due til after spring break, but since she will be in China over spring break, it pretty much needs to be done now. She has email interviewed and , and is researching with books from the library. Tonight she was so into working on her report that I could not get her to stop doing her homework so she could go back to her mom’s house and get ready for bed.

Like, um, whose child is this and where did she come from?

Go her!!!

Tags: Child, Family, Funny, Nebraska

Posted: 6:19 pm Wed March 11 2009 | Comments(0) |