Jay Lake: Writer

[contests] Endurance caption contest: We have a winner

Art by Dan Dos Santos

In order to celebrate the availability of the Endurance ARCs. I declared a caption contest on the following photo:

Very locked door, Bonspur, WA. © 2007, 2011, 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.

With 52 votes cast, we have a winner!

With 15% of the vote, Gerry Huntman takes the honors:
Neil Gaiman getting possessive with his BBC-gift replica of the Tardis

Second place goes to goldfishsara with 13% of the vote:
The family always locked Fluffy up when company was expected.

Special judge’s mention to saveswhat:
Lockpunk

All three winners will receive inscribed copies of the Green trade paperback and the Endurance ARC. Please contact me with your shipping information, guys!

Tags: Books, Contests, Endurance, Green, Polls

Posted: 4:08 am Fri June 24 2011 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad thinks about meals it wishes it hadn’t eaten

The voting poll for the Endurance caption contest will be open for another day or two

A reviewer talks about swords and sorcery in sub-Sahara Africa — Holds up Mainspring as a negative example of 19th century attitudes. Except Mainspring is in large part about 19th century attitudes, so from my perspective, it’s an odd critique. And though it’s not germane to either reading or critiquing the book, I did in fact spend some years of my life living in sub-Saharan Africa. As always, the story belongs to the reader.

A reader responds to Mainspring — They liked it, a lot.

Lessons From the Gutenberg Bible for Publishers Going Digital — Gutenberg’s reward for the invention of the printing press was financial ruin, but others figured out a unique way to keep the printing business afloat.

HG Wells or Enrique Gaspar: Whose time machine was first?

A Start-Up’s Camera Lets You Take Shots First and Focus Later — Interesting. More from Tech Review. (Via David Goldman.)

St. Jude Postdoc Faked Images — A former postdoctoral researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital fudged images published in two papers, one of which has since been retracted. Faking cancer research results… I have no words.

As arctic ice shrinks, so does a denier claim — You know, reality wouldn’t have a liberal bias in the first place if conservatives didn’t insist on ideological counterfactuals over actual data.

Despite horses and buggies, Amish aren’t necessarily ‘low-tech’

Bible condemns a lot, so why focus on homosexuality? — Bigotry, pure and simple. If this was about the written word of God, the Christianists would be campaigning just as vigorously to ban shrimp, mixed fabrics and crop rotation. (Via @willshetterly.)

Quench Not the Spirit — Slacktivist Fred Clark on the doctrine of Hell. This is inside baseball for a part of the culture that isn’t my game, but I still find it pretty interesting.

Christian Faith Requires Accepting Evolution — I have no objection to people denying evolution if that’s their interpretation of their faith. What I have enormous objection to is people projecting the deliberate irrationalities and counterfactuals of their faith onto the political and social landscape, as if a personal opinion could substitute for reality.

Surprise! Bachmann Supports Creationism in Schools — Apparently she thinks this is a scientific issue of reasonable doubt. Repeat after me: Just because you believe it doesn’t mean it’s true.

Michele Bachmann’s Holy War — The Tea Party contender may seem like a goofball, but be warned: Her presidential campaign is no laughing matter Yes, Virginia, the GOP’s deliberate fostering of the crazy in their base to drive votes does have consequences.

“Gooble, gooble, one of us!” — Digby on conservative pacifism.

Journalists Reportedly Outnumber Voters At Huntsman’s GOP Campaign Events — Your Liberal Media, fluffing Republicans every day.

?otD: Ever eaten live eel soup?

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6/23/2011
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (Kalimpura revisions, plus a little WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.75 hours (solid)
Weight: 230.2
Currently (re)reading: A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

Tags: Books, Cancer, Contests, Cool, Endurance, Fiction, healthcare, Links, Mainspring, Personal, Politics, Polls, Religion, reviews, Tech

Posted: 4:58 am Thu June 23 2011 | Comments(6) |

[links] Link salad rings solstice bells

The voting poll for the Endurance caption contest is now open

Best Science Fiction, Fantasy Books? You Tell Us — NPR asks your opinion. Go vote! (Snurched from the mighty Daniel Abraham.)

The Justice League of Bulgarian Socialists — (Thanks, I think, to my brother.)

How Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Unearthed Lost Photos From American Graffiti — A combination of crowdsourcing and machine intelligence just found a lost treasure in the Magnum Photo archive, a technique that could have wide application.

War Evolves With Drones, Some Tiny as Bugs

Mining Your Smart Phone for Health Data — A new app analyzes mobile-phone activity for warning signs of disease flare-ups.

Radical therapy sees injured US soldier regrow muscle — I love living in the future.

My Ex-Gay Friend — A tough one.

Endowed by their Creator with certain WHAT? — Some fun linguistic neepery regarding the United States’ Declaration of Independence

NBC airs Pledge of Allegiance without “under God” — Creeping Shariah!

Why I’m suing Georgia over immigration law — A principled Republican official speaks out. (Thanks to shsilver.)

McKinsey releases methodology; firm concedes study not predictive — Gosh, conservative lies about healthcare? In writing? What’s amazing isn’t the lies, it’s that McKinsey actually got called to account by the allegedly liberal media.

David Mamet’s Right-Wing Conversion — [Mamet is] Quoting Deepak Chopra, of all people, as saying, “Our thinking and our behavior are always in anticipation of a response. It [sic] is therefore fear-based,: he seizes the chance to ask, “Is it too much to suggest that this quote contains the most basic prescription of liberalism, ‘Stop Thinking’?” Like so many conservative critiques of liberalism, this is pure projection. The Big Lie from another angle. My most basic working definition of contemporary American conservativism is that it is founded on the morbid fear that someone, somewhere might be enjoying an undeserved benefit at one’s own expense. That, in a nutshell is fear.

The Thirty Years’ War … — Ta-Nehisi Coates comparing the American Civil War with the Thirty Years’ War. Plus a money quote from the Vice-President of the Confederacy which pretty much puts paid to the whole ‘Civil War wasn’t about slavery’ apologia so beloved of modern conservatives.

How Today’s Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality — Some inconvenient truths from the real world.

?otD: Will you praise the not-so-distant sister sun?

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6/21/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.25 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (solid)
Weight: 228.8
Currently (re)reading: A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

Tags: Books, Contests, Endurance, Funny, gay, healthcare, Language, Links, Movies, Personal, Photos, Politics, Polls, Religion, Tech

Posted: 4:58 am Tue June 21 2011 | Comments(0) |

[contests] Endurance caption contest voting poll

Art by Dan Dos Santos

Time for another caption contest voting poll, to celebrate the availability of the Endurance ARCs. I declared a caption contest on the following photo:

Very locked door, Bonspur, WA. © 2007, 2011, 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.

The usual comment madness ensued: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

I have now embedded the comments into a voting poll. Unfortunately, some of the longer witticisms are truncated by the poll code. Usual rules apply. Prize after the voting poll will be an inscribed copy of the Green trade paperback and the Endurance ARC. Additional prizes may be awarded at the judge’s discretion.

Tags: Art, Books, Contests, Endurance, Green, Polls

Posted: 5:26 am Mon June 20 2011 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad blinks into another week

The voting poll for the Endurance caption contest is now open: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Super-Sized Spores Make Fungal Infections More Deadly, Possibly Explaining Victims in Missouri — More on the Missouri post-tornado infection. Weird stuff. (Thanks to David Goldman.)

Mechanical Calculators — Some lovely mechanical photography. (Via threeoutside.)

Fukushima Disaster Failures Kept Behind Closed Doors at UN Atomic Meeting

The difference between US and foreign reporting: [ OPPD Dispels Nuclear Meltdown Rumors In Ft. Calhoun | US orders news blackout over crippled Nebraska Nuclear Plant: report ] — Hmm, Omaha. (Thanks to danjite.)

[Sec. Def. Robert] Gates: Winding down the Wars

Benefactor’s Activities Raise New Ethical Concerns About Justice Thomas — What, an unethical party line Republican? Thelma, bring me my smelling salts.

The Tom and Jerry Problem — This use-hate relationship, in which Palin manipulates us and we torture her, reminds me a little of Princess Diana, whose relationship with the press Tina Brown described as “a cycle of dependency and combat.”

?otD: Is Monday the start of your workweek?

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6/20/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (solid)
Weight: 229.8
Currently (re)reading: A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

Tags: Books, Contests, Cool, Endurance, healthcare, Iraq, Japan, Links, media, Omaha, Personal, Photos, Politics, Polls

Posted: 5:23 am Mon June 20 2011 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad wonders about ornithopters

My flash piece “In the Green Jungles of Envy” is live at 10Flash Quarterly — Go check it out.

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities — A curious book, in which I have a curious piece of fiction, along with many literary and artistic luminaries.

Best Fantasy Magazine Story of 2010 — A poll, in which calendula_witch and I have a story for consideration.

From Stars to Steam — In which I am one of several guest bloggers at Borders Babel Clash, along with Tim Akers, Felix Gilman and Mark Hodder.

Hazards of early success — cathshaffer on the perils of breaking out as an author.

Photos of Japanese aircraft captured at the end of WW II — These are fascinating. (Via x planes.)

The Mysterious “Anonymous” Behind Egypt’s Revolt — Who is El Shaheed, the person who has taken a dead man’s name to call for change?

Model predicts ‘religiosity gene’ will dominate society — Hmm. Statements like this always make me very suspicious. For one thing, if this were true, why hasn’t the effect already been overwhelming? Religion isn’t exactly a modern phenomenon.

Bill O’Reilly: tidal bore — Phil Plait discusses willful ignorance. I seriously and strongly feel that everyone has the right to believe what they want, and to find comfort in it if they need it. But you can’t let that belief narrow your view of the Universe to where it’s simply easier to avoid what you don’t understand. This is precisely the sort of pathetically flawed thinking that American society’s practice of allowing conservatives to sabotage education leads to.

?otD: Are flying wings a canard?

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2/1/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (2,500 new words on Sunspin book one, minor WRPA.)
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Hours slept: 6.0 hours (interrupted)
Weight: 252.0
Currently reading: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde

Tags: Books, Cool, Egypt, Fiction, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Polls, Process, Religion, steampunk, stories

Posted: 6:25 am Tue February 01 2011 | Comments(0) |

[contests] The Sky That Wraps caption contest winner

A month or so ago I held a caption contest for The Sky That Wraps. Unfortunately, real life intervened and I was unable to process the poll in a timely manner. For this, I apologize. Herewith is the winning caption.

Jay laughing, Martinborough, NZ. © 2010, Shannon Page.

This work by Shannon Page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Alex J. Kane – If you’re going to do that, sir, the law prefers that you do so in the center of the city street with one hand on the arse of your horse, for the sake of balance.

Alex, please contact me to arrange shipping your prize, a personalized copy of The Sky That Wraps. I want to thank everyone else for playing.

Tags: Books, Calendula, Contests, Funny, Photos, Polls, Sky

Posted: 8:05 am Sat December 04 2010 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad rises early in the morning

Don’t forget the latest caption contest voting poll — I will be closing this out shortly.

Secretariat was not a Christian — Roger Ebert on another critic on the new movie. Weird. Just weird. And especially odd in light of this article mocking conservative messages in movies, highlighting the same film. (That last via markbourne.)

Heavy Lifting: 1908 — I do loves me some big, clanky engineering.

Get the anti-science bent out of politics — Michael Mann, subject of the Virginia AG’s anti-science witch hunt, responds. We have lived through the pseudo-science that questioned the link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, and the false claims questioning the science of acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. The same dynamics and many of the same players are still hard at work, questioning the reality of climate change. The basic physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide and other human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere have been understood for nearly two centuries. The deliberate, aggressive know-nothingism of the modern GOP, purely for political purposes, will be one of the things history judges this era’s GOP most harshly for.

Scrivener’s Error on (among other things) the difference between liberalism and libertarianism — I will add that these days libertarianism seems to have become synonymous with being a Republican. Which is odd, because many of the Libertarian Party’s stated policies are very much anathema to conservatives. It’s all about the taxes, I guess, at least when it’s not all about the faux-Fox outrage du jour.

Energized GOP can thank the tea party — [T]he interest and commitment among many tea party supporters still appear likely to be a big asset to GOP candidates as they seek to turn out a big vote. At some point this pretense of the independence of the Tea Party movement will collapse. Funded by Republicans, populated by Republicans, voting for Republicans.

Being Glenn Beck — A lengthy and interest profile of Glenn Beck from NYT. Seems to confirm what I’ve thought about him for a while — where Rush and O’Reilly seem to be rank opportunists who know exactly what damage they are doing (and don’t care so long as they profit by it), Beck actually believes in his own tripe.

Tags: Contests, Links, Personal, Politics, Polls, Tech

Posted: 5:09 am Sun October 10 2010 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad wonders about moist

Don’t forget the latest caption contest voting poll

You Call – We Respond — A firefighter comments on this past week’s news story about the house burndown in Tennessee.

The stigma gene — Bad Science on an interesting intersection between genetics, medicine and social perceptions of illness and disability.

See the Future with a Search — A Web startup demos a “predictive” search engine.

The End of the Tunnel — Paul Krugman on the cancellation of the NY-NJ tunnel project, and what that says about infrastructure, politics and vision.

Times Square bomber: Cause and effect in the War on Terror — It’s so much more comfortable not to think about this stuff, isn’t it? I’m looking at you, conservative America, but also the rest of us.

Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi? — Godwin’s Law has apparently come to life. Waffen SS re-enactor running for Congress on GOP ticket.

?otD: What’s your least favorite word? (Or “cringe” word.)

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10/9/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 hours (briefly interrupted)
This morning’s weigh-in: 240.2
Yesterday’s chemo/post-op stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: The Exile Kiss by George Alec Effinger

Tags: Contests, Culture, Links, Personal, Politics, Polls, Science, Tech

Posted: 5:51 am Sat October 09 2010 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad contemplates languages and lexemes

Don’t forget the latest caption contest voting poll

An in-depth review of (among other things) my short story “The Goat Cutter”

Mainspring is reviewed by a German an Austrian reader — In German.

Hadley Rille 5K – Commemorating 5 Years of Exceptional Publishing! — One of my publishers, and a terrific small press, is having an anniversary sale. Check it out, some great titles there. Also a Kindle 3G giveaway going on.

Undocumented language found hidden in India — I find this kind of story pretty darned cool.

tongodeon with an excellent post on trust and credibility

So that’s why Koch funded a major evolution exhibit — But, for instance, what they do is illustrate the temperature changes in a graph covering the last 10 million years, which makes it easy to hide the very abrupt and rapid rise in the last few centuries. They also elide over an obvious fact: we’d rather not experience natural selection. Climate change may have shaped our species, but it did so by killing us Ah, climate change denial. For when the facts are biased against you.

The global warming witch hunt continues — Being a petty-minded nutbar has long been an important qualification for public office as a Republican (Bachmann, DeMint, Bunning, etc.), but it seems to be nearly mandatory nowadays.

The Moonie Times on the Obama Muslim Bandwagon — A fundamentalist Christian takeover of government is infinitely more likely than a Muslim takeover. Anyone who thinks that Muslims are in the process of conquering America is either unbelievably stupid or paranoid to the point of being mentally ill. Um, yeah.

?otD: What’s your favorite word?

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10/8/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1 hour
Body movement: 50 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 238.8
Yesterday’s chemo/post-op stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: The Exile Kiss by George Alec Effinger

Tags: Books, Contests, Culture, Language, Links, Mainspring, Personal, Politics, Polls, Publishing, Religion, reviews, stories

Posted: 5:19 am Fri October 08 2010 | Comments(7) |