Jay Lake: Writer

[events] JayFest sponsored by Powell’s Books

Mark your calendars! Powell’s Books will be hosting JayFest, a group signing and book fair in support of, well, me.

DATE: Thursday, June 13, 2013 (two days before JayCon XIII)
TIME: Book fair 6:00-9:00 pm, group signing 7:00-8:00 pm
PLACE: Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing in Beaverton, Oregon

Authors in attendance will include David D. Levine, Phyllis Irene Radford, Devon Monk, Barb and J. C. Hendee, Shannon Page, Mark Ferrari, J. A. Pitts, M. K. Hobson, Diana Pharaoh Francis, and Tina Connolly.

Ten percent of the proceeds for each book sold during the book fair will go to the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund, which helps professional science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery writers living in the Pacific Northwest states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska deal with the financial burden of medical expenses.

Please see http://www.powells.com/events/5348/ for more information and updates.

Tags: Books, Cancer, Conventions, events, friends, health, Northwest, Oregon, Personal

Posted: 4:42 am Fri May 17 2013 | Comments(16) |

[links] Link salad thinks of its mothers

The Latest on the Women in SFF Debate — Cora Buhlert with some interesting analysis and a number of links.

That Monkey Don’t Swim: Maps, Sex and Violence — Pongoid anthropology and cartography.

Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation — Kids today. Everyone knows the past is golden, our generation is noble, and the youth are wastrels. It’s always been true!

Plague Helped Bring Down Roman Empire, Graveyard Suggests

Nontoxic radioactive Listeria^at is a highly effective therapy against metastatic pancreatic cancer — Huh.

A patient’s view on the Oregon Medicaid experiment — (Via threeoutside.)

Clouds, Birds, Moon, Venus — Another stunning image from APOD. A Maxfield Parrish sky in real life.

Then he heard the ice coming — Wow, this is weird. Several houses were destroyed, the Winnipeg Free Press reports, after “a massive ice floe rose out of Dauphin Lake” in central Canada.

The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change — We should be so lucky. I was struck by this: Soon after his experience in South Carolina, Emanuel changed his lifelong Republican Party registration to independent. “The idea that you could look a huge amount of evidence straight in the face and, for purely ideological reasons, deny it, is anathema to me,” he says. Hello? You were a Republican? Virtually any GOP position requires precisely that approach.

QotD?: Where is your mother today?

5/12/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (WRPA, editing METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 9.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Cancer, climate, Culture, gender, healthcare, history, Links, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Science

Posted: 8:04 am Sun May 12 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad is hopelessly devoted to you

In which it is announced that I am a Sturgeon Award finalist — For my Sunspin novella, “The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future“, published by Subterranean Online.

Joss Whedon’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Will Bring Marvel Universe to TV

Big-Bird Brain — Children watching clips of Sesame Street inside fMRI scanners yield unprecedented insights into the functioning of their brains.

Side-By-Side Photos Illustrate Inequality in America — Wow. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

Portland, Ore., is magnet for gay couples wanting babies — I am so proud of us.

Oregon Insurers vying to lower premiums because of Obamacare — What do you know? Obamacare is enabling market forces by forcing carriers to compete on a level playing field.

Climate Milestone: Earth’s CO2 Level Passes 400 ppm — Greenhouse gas highest since the Pliocene, when sea levels were higher and the Earth was warmer. Nothing to see here, citizen, move along. Just some more liberal “facts” and “data”, no cause for alarm.

No Need to Worry About Global Warming, Folks: More Carbon Dioxide Will Be Awesome

Global Warming: We are halfway to a mass extinction event — We could try to do something about this. Or we could just stifle the science and political discourse on the topic. Which course has Your Republican Party chosen?

Proposed bill that would regulate NSF research funding faces backlash — Scientists not amused, bill’s backers appear confused. Republicans confused about science? Really? The party of Creationism and climate change denial? Also, this just in: water is wet, sky is blue.

IRS targeted conservative groups, official says — Organizations seeking nonprofit status were improperly singled out for extra scrutiny, a top agency official says. This is seriously wrong. Infuriatingly, it’s also a rare piece of validation that further fuels the endless bizarre conspiracy thinking on the Right. Sigh.

QotD?: Ever seen Grease?

5/11/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (WRPA, editing METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 7.25 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 251.8 (!)
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Awards, climate, Cool, gay, healthcare, Links, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Science, stories, television, weird

Posted: 4:59 am Sat May 11 2013 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad knows that it is not Iron Man

Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy — This is freaking genius. (Spotted lots of places, but sent to me first by Lisa Costello.)

Batman: 1966 — Adam West, back in the day. Courtesy of Shorpy.

Linguists identify 15,000-year-old ‘ultraconserved words’ — Hmmm. (Via my brother.)

European migration evident in DNA patterns — A study of people in 40 countries illustrates long-established changes in Europe’s population. Going back a few thousand years, researchers find that everyone on Earth is related to everyone else. This is cool, but hardly surprising, I should think.

More than one-third of Oregon’s National Merit Scholars live in a single Portland-area ZIP code

More than half of the world’s population lives inside this circle

US Air Force Measures Potato Cannon Muzzle Velocities

Antibiotics could cure 40% of chronic back pain patients — Really? (Thanks to David Goldman.)

On the Rise — BLDG BLOG on the elevation of Galveston, TX after the devastating hurricane of 1900.

Tropical Climate History…Shrinking — Ice in the tropics.

“While some are seeking to withhold Communion from pro-choice and pro-marriage-equality Catholics, I have heard no call to withhold Communion from priests and bishops who have engaged in horrific sexual abuse against vulnerable children, nor their enablers.” — Yes. This. Religious activism in pursuit of anti-gay bigotry is all about politics and power. Not about morality or what is right and good. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

QotD?: Do you face Stark choices?

5/8/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (stress)
Hours slept: 7.25 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: The Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Christianists, climate, Culture, Funny, healthcare, Language, Links, Movies, Oregon, Personal, Photos, Politics, Religion, Science, Tech, television, Texas, Videos

Posted: 5:22 am Wed May 08 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad listens to the children of the night

fledgist reviews Kalimpura

Why Aren’t There More Woman Sci-Fi Writers? — (Thanks to Marta Murvosh.)

#Womentoread — Kari Sperring wants you to recommend SF by women.

The Prejudices We Permit — I’ve certainly been on the sharp of this stick. The point still stands.

What Kind of D&D Character Would You Be? — I scored out as Neutral Good Human Druid/Wizard (4th/3rd Level). (Snurched from james_nicoll.)

Giant floating head found in Hudson River — Headline of the week.

Scientists in Antarctica Find Invading Neutrinos from Another Galaxy!

Remains of a supernova fall to Earth — Tiny pieces of silica in meteorites predate the Solar System.

What Happened When One Man Pinged the Whole Internet — A home science experiment that probed billions of Internet devices reveals that thousands of industrial and business systems offer remote access to anyone.

20 Pounds? Not Too Bad, for an Extinct Fish

Elephant Bird Egg Fetches Over $100,000 At Christie’s Auction In London

Placentas provide clues about autism risk at birth, study says

Antibody triggers bone marrow stem cells to become brain cells — Wow… strange. (Via seventorches.)

Conservative evangelicals’ persecution complex and same-sex marriage — Despite being one of the largest voting blocs in the most powerful and wealthy nation in the world, American evangelical Christians often have a penchant for framing themselves as a persecuted minority. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

30 Of The Most Offensive, Idiotic, And Bizarre Conservative Arguments Against Marriage Equality — It’s pretty clear from these kinds of statements that conservatives have no concept of “consent”. But then, this isn’t exactly a surprise. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Liberty Counsel redefining ‘Christian’ just as Falwell did — Now, as then, the word “Christianity” is being used as a synonym for unvarnished bigotry. Yet another of the myriad reasons I am an atheist. I have no use for a God whose followers can do this in his name and still consider themselves good and moral people.

Oregon same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional, federal judge says in employee discrimination case — Another bigotry domino falls. As usual, conservatives are on the wrong side of history with this one, too.

Bobby Jindal: I’m fine with teaching creationism in public schools — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal says that he wouldn’t mind if public school students were taught creationism and intelligent design in addition to evolution, as long as it’s “the best science.” Conservative willful ignorance is so hermetically sealed. And an entire state elected this fool to be their governor…

House GOP Freshmen Feel Left Out Of Failed Obamacare Repeal Rituals — This story is just sad. It encapsulates everything that’s wrong with Republican party politics today. The saddest part is that the people involved don’t see anything wrong with it at all.

Bush and the American Right Wing: Top Ten Ways they are Like the Children of an Alcoholic — This piece is sort of Poe’s Law in reverse. Satire that is also way too close to the truth.

Truman, Bush, and Rehabilitating Presidential Reputations — The core Bush loyalist assumption is that a more dispassionate interpretation of his presidency will redound to his benefit, but that’s probably wrong. The less that people have at stake in defending Bush, the less eager they will be to bother. In another forty or fifty years, there will hardly be anyone interested in salvaging Bush’s reputation, and the truth is that he leaves behind no significant positive domestic legacy that later Republicans will feel obliged to defend and mythologize. Wow, how deluded do you have to be to imagine that anything of the Bush administration will be vindicated by history? Thanks to the Bush administration, we have stark, objective evidence about what happens when Republicans are allowed to govern: political, military and economic disaster.

QotD?: What beautiful music do they make?

4/26/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (400 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin plus quite a bit of background reading)
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (foot hurt all night)
Weight: 248.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block helping welfare recipients buy cell phones and big screen tvs: 0
Currently reading: The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Christianists, Culture, Funny, gender, healthcare, Kalimpura, Links, nature, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, reviews, Science, sex, space, Tech, weird

Posted: 5:22 am Fri April 26 2013 | Comments(1) |

[writing|process] Old home week at Wordos, “The Stars Do Not Lie”

Yesterday, Lisa Costello and I drove the 100+ miles down to Eugene, OR to attend a Wordos meeting, with a dinner preceding. This was the first Wordos meeting I’ve been to in years, though for the first half of the last decade I was an almost weekly attendee. It was great good fun to see some old friends there, as well as meet a few new ones. And it was a very strange experience to hear my Nebula- and Hugo-nominated novella “The Stars Do Not Lie” be discussed in critical terms.

One of the points several people made was that the story would have taken a real beating at the critique table. The first two paragraphs are so dense and strange that they violate a number of the classic Turkey City lexicon rules. Yet those first two paragraphs neatly encapsulate one of the basic themes of the story, and foreshadow much of the plot. In other words, they work in spite of themselves and the rules we try to follow.

It was also interesting to hear people talk about my intentions for this-and-that, and how I crafted the contrasting voice for the two mutually antagonistic protagonists, and so forth. To my mind, one of the oddities of literary criticism (as opposed to critique) is the imputing of motives to the author. I can remember back in high school hearing English teachers say things like, “What Faulkner is doing here is emphasizing [some cultural trope]“, and thinking, No, what Faulkner is doing here is telling a damned story. It’s the readers who find those other things.

Over three decades later, it turns out I was right. That discussion really made me reflect once more on the concept of unconscious competence. When I wrote “The Stars Do Not Lie”, I was just telling a damned story. I was generally aware of what I was doing — I’m not blind to my own thinking, after all — but I never sat there and said to myself, “Gee, how shall I emphasize the dynamic of faith in conflict with reason in this scene?” I never said to myself, “Oh, this fits into the conversation-that-is-genre going back to Lord of Light and Universe.”

Those sorts things are true, in the sense that they are very clearly present in the text, but Fred put them there, not me. At least not my conscious, self-aware self.

All in all, it would have been a fascinating experience in almost any context, but all the more so among the friends and writers who played a powerful and very material role in launching my career.

After that discussion we had about a thirty-minute impromptu Q&A on the craft and business of writing, which was kind of fun, too. Like world’s shortest writing workshop or something. And again, as I said to Lisa, a decade and a half ago I was at the other end of that exact same table, asking those kinds of questions. Quite weird to be talking to my past self. Giving back by paying forward. Plus it was a lot of fun.

My thanks to the Wordos for inviting us down and hosting us.

Tags: Awards, events, Oregon, Process, radiantlisa, stories, Travel, Writing

Posted: 5:26 am Wed April 24 2013 | Comments(10) |

[cancer] A LOT more on that billing problem

The joys of our American for-profit private healthcare finance system continue unalloyed for me. Now I am finally naming names, after having been coy about this up until this point for the sake of professionalism.

Yesterday I received a call from the main billing office at OHSU, the hospital that has been providing me with all my cancer care since day one of this horrible misadventure. I was told that my insurance carrier, UnitedHealthcare, had ruled the 1/7/2013 visit to my oncologist as out of network, and that financial responsibility for the bill was back to me, or I was free to take it up with the insurance company further. I pointed out that I had spoken to both UHC and OHSU repeatedly, and this was a billing mismatch of some kind, probably from OHSU’s end. I further pointed out that on the same damned bill they’d just sent me, later visits to my oncologist were correctly billed in-network. The OHSU billing rep was professional but not particular nice about this, reminding me they were giving me a courtesy call. I said the courtesy had gone out of this process a long time ago.

After we got off the phone, I tallied my contact notes on this issue in a spreadsheet. Counting yesterday’s calls (including a brief callback from the billing rep), I have placed or received sixteen separate phone calls on this matter, and with transfers spoken to or left voicemails for twenty-five people. (Note that some of those were multiple contacts with the same person, so that’s actually eighteen different people.)

So I opened complaints with the Oregon Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division, as well as the Oregon Insurance Division. I also spoke to someone from the Joint Commission, that handles hospital accreditation, but they only review medical practice issues, not business issues. Finally, thanks to help from a friend, I also emailed a state senator who used to be a physician in practice at OHSU.

The email I sent the senator about sums it all up, so I’m reproducing the main body of the message here, with only the greeting redacted:

I am having an intractable problem with OHSU, specifically on the business side of the house. I am a late stage cancer patient, incurable, transitioning to terminal status. I have been seeing my oncologist at OHSU since 2009. I have had five major surgeries and over 1,500 hours of chemotherapy, all of that except the first of the surgeries under their care. On my 1/7/2013 office visit, my insurance company, UnitedHealthcare (UHC), classified my oncologist as out of network, despite their having always been in network. This resulted in much higher billing fees to me, $283.59 instead of my $40 office visit co-pay.

After multiple phone calls, I determined that OHSU had changed my oncologist’s billing address. This created a data mismatch between the hospital’s billed zip code and the insurance company’s in-network provider database.

In the three months since, I have spoken or left voicemail for 25 people across 16 phone calls to both OHSU and UHC. They are completely unable to resolve this billing data mismatch, even though both prior and subsequent visits to my oncologist have been correctly billed as in-network. I was told this morning (4/22) by OHSU that it was an insurance company problem and they could not resolve it. I have been told repeatedly by UHC that this is a billing problem and they cannot resolve it.

I cannot fix this. I have no power over OHSU billing process or UHC’s claims process. In the last months of my life, I am spending many hours on the telephone pursuing this matter which apparently cannot be resolved from either end, resulting in me being held responsible for out of network charges.

While the amount in question is small, and I am by no means destitute, I should not have to pay this. I am covered by an employer sponsored plan, my oncologist is in network on my insurance policy; that should be the end of it. And the process has frustrated me sufficiently to make me want to continue to maintain the principled stance I have already taken.

As of today, I have opened complaints with the Oregon attorney general’s consumer protection division, and the Oregon insurance division. I’m not sure either of these is going to have any effect. I was hoping you might be able to direct me to a suitable path of management escalation within the OHSU organization, either in your capacity as a physician who has practiced there, or in your capacity as a state senator.

I can provide call logs documenting every conversation with OHSU, along with billing records from OHSU and claims management documents from UHC, as needed.

Thank you.

The basic problem is, of course, no one in authority at either OHSU or UHC has any particular motivation to fix this. The problem just goes around in circles at low levels and keeps getting referred back to me.

This is precisely what is wrong with our current healthcare finance system. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) only does a very partial job of fixing these kinds of problems. Civilized, humane societies with single payer systems don’t create this kind of hassle and heartbreak for their sick and dying. I’m a pretty articulate guy with good social and professional resources, and this is a small piece of billing. Imagine my position if the billing were substantial, one of my $100,000 surgeries, or if I were confused and baffled by paperwork and unable to untangle the repeat billing trails.

This is wrong. I wish the conservatives in this country who have opposed the process of healthcare reform were capable of the kind of empathy and understanding that lets them see past their ideological blinders to the hard reality of the system they so blithely support. And I fervently hope for their sakes that they never have to go through what I am going through. Self-evidently, their suffering means a great deal more to me than mine means to them.

Tags: Cancer, health, Oregon, Personal, Politics

Posted: 5:22 am Tue April 23 2013 | Comments(30) |

[links] Link salad is trying to catch the Devil’s herd, across these endless skies

Reddit Fantasy AMA — Today, Thursday, April 18th, I’ll be participating in the Reddit Fantasy Ask Me Anything. It starts at 5 pm (Pacific) this afternoon.

A ‘Whom Do You Hang With?’ Map of America — A fascinating expansion on some recent data about social connections and money circulation. (Thanks to scarlettina.)

Talk to Your Children About Death! — (Via controuble.)

The 30′s were a time of testing limits. Like, for example, can a lion ride in a motorcycle sidecar in a velodrome? — Hahahah. (Via goulo.)

The 33 Most Beautiful Abandoned Places In The World — (Snurched from art guru James Gurney.)

Google Is Forbidding Users From Reselling, Loaning Glass Eyewear

Have You Embarrassed Yourself Online? — Many web services offer an accidental megaphone. They need to protect us from ourselves.

Kessler syndrome — Ah, collisional cascading. We didn’t need outer space anyway, did we? (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

As Oregon Town Evolves, Caveman Heads the Way of the Dodo — I don’t normally link to the Wall Street Journal, as their relationship to reality is only marginally less tenuous than that enjoyed by FOX News, but this story has very little political implication and thus might contain a few grains of truth. Besides which, it is amusing.

‘Living fossil’ coelacanth genome sequenced

Aquageddon — A disappearing island shows what rising sea levels mean for the Chesapeake Bay. Man, those liberals are even sinking islands in Chesapeake Bay to keep up their climate change hoax. Amazing, the lengths people will go to. (Via Lisa Costello.)

Stephen Hawking: So here’s how it all happened without God — In a speech in Pasadena, Calif., the famed physicist wonders what God was doing before the universe was created and says he’s grateful that he wasn’t subject to a church inquisition. I’ve always said that Creationism and its intellectually fraudulent stalking horse, Intelligent Design, are driven by a poverty of imagination.

Creationism and taxes in Louisiana — A Baptist minister opposes teaching Creationism with public funds.

New Zealand House of Reps bursts into song after legalizing same-sex marriage — This is what happens in a country with sane politics and an ethical society. Bigotry is never the answer. (Via threeoutside.)

Rubio Rushes To Quiet The Right-Wing Rumor Mill — Good luck. Senator Rubio. Your party thrives on deliberate misinformation, knowing distortions of the truth and deliberate outright lies in order to keep manufacturing angry white men. You expect to get this one through your own rumor mill undamaged? Welcome to the reality-based community.

Terrorism and Privilege: Understanding the Power of Whiteness — White privilege is knowing that even if the Boston Marathon bomber turns out to be white, his or her identity will not result in persons like yourself being singled out for suspicion by law enforcement, or the TSA, or the FBI.

A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip — Senators say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. Once again, conservatives have proven they value their guns more highly than they value your life or mine.

Enraged President Obama Rips Senate GOP For Blocking Background Checks — Once again conservatives prove they value bullets over babies. You’d think anyone who claimed to be for the right to life would be for gun regulation.

Why the GOP Remains in Bush’s Shadow — Most Americans outside the party view Bush unfavorably because they regard him (correctly) as a failed president whose policies inflicted serious damage on the country. Most people inside the party see him in an entirely different light. If 65% of Republicans and 60% of self-identified conservatives view Bush favorably, it’s not surprising that there is so much resistance on the right to acknowledging Bush’s errors and learning from them.

Why Do We Have Taxes? — A cartoon history that your crazy Fox News watching uncle simply won’t believe, as it’s based on those pesky liberal “facts” and “data”.

QotD?: Who was it that went riding out one dark and windy day?

4/18/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (60 minutes and 1,800 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin, plus 60 minutes minutes of WRPA to produce 2,400 words of nonfiction)
Hours slept: 7.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 247.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block checking the magazine sizes of gun owners: 0
Currently reading: The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Christianists, climate, Cool, Culture, gay, guns, healthcare, Links, nature, Oregon, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, Religion, Science, space, Tech, Videos, weird

Posted: 5:27 am Thu April 18 2013 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad boogies back to Texas

The Amazing, Unstaged World Hiding Behind a Museum’s Closed Doors — This is pretty wild. (Thanks to Ximena Cearley.)

Twitter Happiness Levels Soar As People Travel Further From Home — Happiness levels caputred by Tweets rise logarithmically with distance from our average location, say computer scientists studying Twitter sentiment.

Can You Make It Through This Post Without Giggling? — Some extremely juvenile (and sort of NSFW) humor in photographs of signs. (Thanks to Lisa Costello.)

Battlestar Galactica Rebooted As NBC’s Friends — Snerk. (Thanks to Lisa Costello.)

Sea Lion Bops to the Beat, Challenging Popular Rhythm Theory — (Thanks to David Goldman.)

What You Didn’t Know About Beer

Culprit in Heart Disease Goes Beyond Meat’s Fat

Oregon, Hawaii May Name Official State Microbes — Go us?

Balkan folklore helps puts bite on bedbugs

United plane diverted when parents complain about inappropriate in-flight movie — Wow. Just wow. (Via danjite.)

Transatlantic flights ‘to get more turbulent’ — Flights across the North Atlantic could get a lot bumpier in the future if the climate changes as scientists expect. I continue to be amazed at the lengths liberals will go to in order to perpetrate their climate change hoax. Thank God we have Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party to remind us of the truth regardless of that liberal “facts” and “data”.

Climate science once again finds itself fighting with hockey sticks — A recent climate paper’s set off a torrent of complaints. We look at why. The requirement for willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty is one main reason I can never be a conservative.

Why Are People Changing Their Minds about Same-Sex Marriage? — It’s hard to hate people you actually know and care about. Which explains a lot about Republican polices on miseducating America’s children. A fear-based political movement requires isolation and willful ignorance to survive and prosper.

Four-Year-Old Shoots, Kills Deputy’s Wife At Tennessee Cookout — Tragic. Absolutely tragic. Yet the NRA still wants you to believe that we are all safer with more guns.

Why the Republican Party is the party of Thatcher

Why Conservatives Think the Ends Justify the Means

QotD?: Will I see you in San Antonio?

4/10/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (WRPA)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (airport walking to come)
Weight: 246.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block enforcing Agenda 21 by closing down golf courses: 0
Currently reading: Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

Tags: climate, Cool, Culture, Food, Funny, gay, guns, healthcare, Links, nature, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Science, Travel, UK, Videos

Posted: 5:32 am Wed April 10 2013 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad gives an online course today

‘Ungoogleable’ removed from list of Swedish words after row over definition with Google — I see Sergei and Larry and the boys are staying classy. Whatever happened to “Don’t be evil?”

Victoria’s OTHER Secret: Designer creates world’s first lingerie colostomy bags as they often put partners off — Yes. This. (Thanks to danjite.)

Continued DNA synthesis in replication checkpoint mutants leads to fork collapse — I love this headline. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Why IBM Made a Liquid Transistor

Into the Oort Cloud: A Cometary Civilization?

Astrophysicists Test Cosmological Defect Detector — Astrophysicists have built and tested the building blocks of a global detector capable of spotting topological defects in the cosmos as the Earth passes through them. I think I left mine behind the couch.

Amid Tsunami Debris, Something Sacred Washes Ashore In Oregon — [T]he arch from a Japanese Shinto shrine’s sacred gate has washed ashore in Oceanside, Oregon.

USPS Discrimination Against Atheism? — Appears to be a marketing troll, but pretty funny nonetheless. (Thanks to houseboatonstyx.)

China Bans Reincarnation Without Government Permission — Ah, the intersection of politics and religion. (Via Lisa Costello.)

Cold Dead Hand — Jim Carrey with some seriously funny mockery of gun culture. Hahahaha. As the bug said in Men in Black, “Your proposal is acceptable.” (Via Scott Frey.)

Suspect in custody after neighborhood sprayed with bullets — Yep. Definitely safer with more guns. Uh huh. Ask any of this man’s neighbors.

Birth certificates and bathrooms in Arizona — Conservatives just can’t keep themselves from discriminating. Slacktivist Fred Clark explains why this can be tough to accomplish.

QotD?: How good are your first ten pages?

3/27/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (genomics lecture)
Hours slept: 6.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 242.4
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: China, Cool, Funny, gender, guns, healthcare, Language, Links, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, sex, Tech, Videos

Posted: 5:15 am Wed March 27 2013 | Comments(2) |