I must confess to being a bit daunted about jumping into the next book, which I won’t do until April. It’s already half-written, I only owe myself another 100,000 words of first draft to nail down volume two, but the overall project is so filling my head right now that I feel as if it will leak out my ears.

Meanwhile, I have two short fiction rewrite requests on my desk to fulfill, a book review to write, and ambitions to make more progress on the synopsis of Little Dog. Given that I have the rest of the month in which to do these things, I am feeling pretty good about my goals.

Próba Kwiatów – Jay Lake — A mixed review, in Polish, of the Polish edition of my novel Trial of Flowers.

SF in SF — Just a reminder that this coming Saturday, 2/11, I will be at SF in SF with K.W. Jeter and Rudy Rucker. If you’re in the Bay Area, come on down.

10 Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy — He’s talking about ad copy, not fiction, but this is still interesting and worthwhile stuff. (Via Curiosity Counts.)

Kill the Local News — Writer Jeremy Tolbert on sensationalism.

Mindful Eating as Food for Thought

Scale of the Universe — Another fun take on the “powers of 10″ meme. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

What did people do: in a Medieval City? — (Via danjite.)

Self-Cloning Seagrass May Be World’s Oldest Living Thing

Mars-bound NASA rover carries coin for camera checkup — This is cool and kind of poetic.

Mapping the Road Ahead for Autonomous Cars

Turing’s Enduring Importance — The path computing has taken wasn’t inevitable. Even today’s machines rely on a seminal insight from the scientist who cracked Nazi Germany’s codes. An interesting article, although I wish in mentioning his suicide it had acknowledged the disgusting way Turing was treated by his own people.

The State of Gay Marriage — Being a handy map to show you where bigotry has triumphed, and where respect for basic human rights is gaining ground.

The Single Most Powerful Quote From California’s Prop 8 Ruling — “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.” Like opposition to interracial marriage forty years ago, Prop 8 is bigotry, pure and simple, a combination of narrow-minded religious privilege and typically unfounded conservative alarmism. Like opposition to interracial marriage today, forty years from now people will be ashamed to admit in public what they once voted and for and believed.

The Business Case Against Karen Handel — John Scalzi with a very sensible take on the (surprising to me) resignation of Karen Handel from the Susan G. Komen foundation. For my own part, I’ll observe that as usual when the Right tries strong-arm tactics, they only see unfairness when they get caught out.

Planned Parenthood’s Deep Bench — Ta-Nehisi Coates with some interesting thoughts on the fight that Komen picked when they decided to show their true conservative colors.

Why the Energy-Industrial Elite Has It In for the Planet — Social and political commentary on the funding impetus behind the intellectual fraud of climate change denial.

Jesus versus the GOP — The man from Nazareth would have been appalled by the “Christian” Republican candidates. The only thing I have to say to political Christianists is “Matthew 6:6“.

‘We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World — The declining influence of the US Constitution overseas.

Republicans Finally Realize They’re Helping Obama — Like their counterparts from 16 years before, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives last year filled with revolutionary zeal, assuming that they could leverage their hold over one branch of Congress into sweeping changes in the national agenda. And like their predecessors, they blundered into high-profile confrontations with a Democratic president and suffered prolonged and deep damage in their public standing, with each new defeat slowly leeching the fanatical determination out of them.

Santorum Upsets G.O.P. Race With Three Victories — I really can’t decide who would be the bigger disaster for this country, Senator Frothy Mix or Governor 1%. Our last Republican president set an extremely low bar for destructive incompetence, something the GOP electorate seems to have very conveniently forgotten.

?otd: How was your Tuesday?

2/8/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.25 (solid)
Weight: 230.8
Currently reading: n/a (between books)

(Note this is first draft, the raw stuff, and because of the decision to cut it, I haven’t cleaned it up at all.)

Queen Margot of Bourgoigne

My son is a fool.

I will not say this, of course, because servants repeat everything they hear, especially those ill-chosen words that even a person of my quality might utter in a moment of extraordinary frustration. My husband’s courtiers are worse, more dreadful gossips than the starlings that swarm in the rafters of our great halls.

For this foolish boy, I have labored to give him every advantage, every possible assistance to make his way to his way to his father’s throne. I would not have it said that he profited only from the circumstances of his birth. I myself rose from humble, tainted beginnings to one of the great thrones of Europe by dint of sheer force. My young prince should be honored and feared just as much as I, not laughed at behind disloyal hands for toddling to a crown and scepter he had not earned.

Nothing but the best for him, and I made sure everyone around Puissant knew his worth before the child himself had come to any such realization. I gave him everything, paved his way to self-reliance and strength on the whipped backs of a hundred servants, the carefully secured loyalties of dozens of courtiers.

And how does he repay me? By leaving the court, by making mock of my rightful ambitions for him. By becoming a hedge knight lurking in the slums of the sun-raddled south.

I was borne in a bothy high in the Pyrenees. I was raised in my earliest years amid the shit of sheep and the foolishness of a mother too stupid to understand who had raped her into pregnancy and what a gift he had given her. When my father in his blood-dyed cap had come calling in my seventh year, to lay claim to his child, people fought and were slain out of sheer, ignorant terror.

He claimed me, and took me to the caves where ancient forges still made weapons that had won battles in the morning of the world. The fae knew the secrets of steam and iron long before the Romans or the Arabs had begun to unlock those doors of knowledge. Once my father’s people and their lesser kin had held dominion over the fields and hills of Europe, binding my mother’s people like cattle and driving them to their masters’ will.

From my mother I had learned how to shear sheep and make bad mutton stew. From my father I learned the history and ways of power, and the tale of how the fae lost their power and became creatures of shadow and night, hiding among leaf and branch when the clatter of horses’ hooves arises.

I learned that we could and would be greater than that once more. I resolved that I would do my part to bring our power back to the days of its glorious zenith.

At fourteen I set out, a girl who had been raised in a cave by monsters and was herself already the height of most ordinary men, to find my way to the top of this world we all must live in.

And I succeeded.

Think you how many mothers would covet a king’s marriage bed for their daughter. Imagine the fierce competitions waged in ballrooms and salons and behind the curtains of women’s quarters the length and breadth of this continent for the sake of putting a girl within seduction’s distance of a crown prince. I, with no one to sponsor me, no family or monied connections or favors from aunties and old friends from boarding school, climbed that mountain surely as any conqueror of old atop his hill of skulls.

All of this to produce my son, to bring into the world his bright smile and broad shoulders and ogre’s blood, that one of the Old People might rule again, and so crack open those doors of opportunity and power that our cattle had slammed in our face a hundred generations past.

I married and mated with one of those cattle to produce that son.

And the fool betrayed me for the life of a knight errant, bedroll and hard tack and bandit arrows his lot.

What a waste. Could any sane man want this for himself, when he had waiting for him everything I had prepared?

Yet there is another chance. A small kingdom, doomed by fae jealousy and the petty scheming of the seasons, soon to fall prey to a curse that such a one as my son fancies himself to be could hardly resist riding toward in hopes of winning honor by succoring the needy.

If he is anything, Prince Puissant is a romantic. I will make sure when the time comes that he learns of the unfortunate fall of Talos, and I shall use that to draw him back to his rightful place in life.

And my father, his grandfather, shall see his own seed rise to the highest places a man – or fae – can go in this modern world.

Carl Zimmer responds to Jonathan Franzen’s rant against ebooks. — Very good.

The Upside of Dyslexia

“San Diego Demonoid”: you mean that dead opossum?

Does Mars have life? New study says it’s unlikely on the surface.

In Fuel Oil Country, Cold That Cuts to the Heart

Neil deGrasse Tyson on politicians and the electorate

Islam, Women and the West — Some interesting thinking on Western perceptions of the Islamic world by Jonathan Lyons.

Jury finds Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White guilty on 6 of 7 felony charges — No wonder Republicans claim to be so concerned with voter fraud. After all, if they’re committing it, surely everyone else is, too. Right? Anyone?

On eve of Darwin’s birthday, states take steps to limit evolution — It’s the full throated support for lunacy like this that obscures the value of any real ideas the conservative movement has. Like flavoring your stew with rat poison, it doesn’t matter how good your meat and veggies are.

Romney Is Not the “Stealth Tea Party Candidate” — Note to GOP: Romney is Wall Street delusionary conservative, not a Main Street delusionary conservative.

?otd: How much did you sleep last night?

2/5/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (1.25 hours on short story revisions, 0.75 hours on Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 9.0 (solid)
Weight: 228.0
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor

A reader reacts to Visitants, ed. Steve Jones — Including comments on one of my stories.

Not So Wild Review: Schlock Mercenary — I’ve said before that I think Schlock Mercenary is some of the very best long form SF around. This reviewer frames his praise differently, but seems to share my same fundamental opinion. (Via @howardtayler.)

Release the hounds! — Miranda Suri on learning to outline novels. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

I Greet You in the Middle of a Great Career: A Brief History of Blurbs — Heh. (Via @legalnomads.)

How Do We Get There? — Cat Valente asks about the development of post-scarcity societies.

An obsessive history of The Elements of Style and what makes it a cultural treasure. — Even unto being wrong on a number of points of grammar and usage…

Indie Game: The Movie — For those interested in that sort of thing.

Space voyages shouldn’t become politically incorrect

Komen Reverses Decision on Planned Parenthood Funding, Is Still Likely Full of Shit — Komen blatantly, obviously, and deliberately targeted Planned Parenthood. Their board room is still staffed with conservative donors and at least one vocal anti-choice politician. They’re still a conservative political organization masquerading as a feel-goodery for people who just want to help cure cancer.

Komen May Continue to Fund Some Planned Parenthood Grants — A pro-life site accuses Planned Parenthood of being “dishonest thugs”. This coming from the political movement that operates “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” (profound dishonest fake clinics meant to deceive and entrap desperate pregnant women) and actively encourages the murder of doctors (unconditional thuggery)? Project much? Of course you do, you’re conservatives.

Komen backlash: Public turns fury on vice president Karen Handel

The big backlash against bullying women — Sadly, conservative America controls the discourse, and profits politically and culturally from the bullying of women. It’s not going to stop.

Indiana backing away from bill allowing creation “science” into classrooms — Many similar bills are introduced in state legislatures each year and, in cases where their sponsors speak to the press, they tend to reveal a great deal of ignorance regarding both science and the law. In terms of science, they tend to misunderstand the meaning of the term “theory,” think that there are multiple scientific explanations for life’s diversity, or suggest evolution is a theory for life’s origin. The Indiana bill’s sponsor, Dennis Kruse, appears to get all of these wrong. It’s tough getting ahead when you’re flat fucking wrong in terms of both reality and the law, but conservatives will persevere. And they succeed far too often.

Romney’s political success is a mixed blessing for Mormon Church — His presidential candidacy could be a breakthrough ‘JFK moment for Mormons,’ but it could also stir up more negative publicity for the church. I was sympathetic to Romney on the issue of religious criticism until he made it clear he wouldn’t have a Muslim in his cabinet.

Chris Christie and the Nation-State Project — Ta-Nehisi Coates on conservative ignorance of history. Many of the actual people who were beaten and killed “in the streets”–Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, for instance–were attempting to secure the very right which Christie, bizarrely, believes they should have exercised. It’s almost as if he doesn’t know what the Civil Rights movement actually was.

As Romney’s slip-ups show, gaffes nearly unavoidable on modern campaign trail — Nush mostly just babbled. Romney’s gaffes are golden soundbites for his opposition.

?otd: Ink much?

2/4/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (busy with tattoos and Dad time)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 (solid)
Weight: 229.8
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor

The shuttle was a local design, some wide-winged lifting body that skipped through the planet’s upper atmosphere before making a gentle descent. Father Vasiliev watched their progress on the virteo monitor in the seatback in front of him, while Dr. Rouhollahzadehm napped beside him.

He was fascinated.

Salton was tectonically active, with wide belts of young, craggy mountains wrinkling the planet’s skin. The highest peaks were nearly 15,000 meters above the datum plane, planetologically unsustainable altitudes for a world with nearly Earth-normal gravity and crustal composition.

Almost no one lived on or near those, he was given to understand. A few adventurers, prospectors, people working resource extraction. But no urban centers or long term, persistent infrastructure.

From above, the folds were encased in snow and ice until they were glinting fractures in the perfection of one of God’s worlds. He thought back to Dr. Rouhollahzadehm’s comments about fractals, firelight and the curl of surf. Mountains were the surf of the world, but the waves of stone took a million years to curl and break. He could see the patterns, imagine each valley as experienced on foot, climbing the knifeback ridges and endlessly variable folds of the planet.

The shuttle lost altitude, and they were over the eastern plano of Salton’s largest continent. Not too many conurbations here, either, because of the temblors, but farmland and ranches and orchards, long fields beside lazy rivers, visibly defined even from this altitude by the gleaming, regular threads of irrigation canals and water systems.

The cities appeared along the coast as the shuttle banked and shed velocity to complete its transformation from spacecraft to aircraft. The world slid beneath at an increasing rate of apparent speed. Where the mountains had gone by at 2,000 kilometers per hour but seen from such a distance that they seemed nearly inviolate, now the settled bays and wooded headlines and offshore cities on their floating caissons fairly whistled past.

The slower you went, the faster you felt, he mused. The human body thought itself at the greatest speed when running. Everything else was illusion or centripetal force.

© 2011, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

Philip Glass on style

Darwin Day — Portland celebrates the Antichrist one of the heroes of modern science on February 12. (Via threeoutside.)

DNA Turning Human Story Into a Tell-All — Humans and Neanderthals and Denisovans, oh my. I especially liked this bit: [O]ur modern era, since H. floresiensis died out, is the only time in the four-million-year human history that just one type of human has been alive. (Thanks to Dad.)

Steampunk Pocket Watch Winds Via Solar Power — So to speak… Some neat lateral thinking here. (Via markbourne.)

Experts Build Crab-Like Robot to Remove Stomach Cancer — Huh. (Via danjite.)

How Neutrino Beams Could Reveal Cavities Inside Earth — Commander Laforge to the bridge.

Scientists close to entering Vostok, Antarctica’s biggest subglacial lake

Team to investigate underwater ‘UFO’ – is it sunken ships or Millennium Falcon? — Duh, of course it’s a life size replica of a completely fictional starship. At the bottom of the ocean.

Far side of the moon filmed by Nasa spacecraft — One whole face of the Moon can never be seen from Earth because it does not spin on its axis, meaning we always have a view of the same side. Umm… stupid much?

Bill legalizing same-sex marriage passes Washington state Senate — Someday fairly soon, opposition to gay marriage will have all the social panache and credibility as opposition to interracial marriage, and for much the same reason. This shameful bigotry will be the province of bitter, aging cranks, largely behind closed doors.

I Don’t Care About Your Invisible Jeebus — But from where I stand these days, the only thing I see religion doing in the public sector is gay bashing and telling women, mostly poor and desperate and in deplorable financial and personal situations, what to do with their bodies. I see busybodies deciding what drugs they can dispense to which customers, or deciding that they don’t have to issue a marriage license because of some petty deity that I don’t believe in told them to hate their fellow citizens and ignore the law.

Indiana Senate passes bill putting religion in science class — Conservative America: driving all our children deeper into ignorance every year. Yet another of the myriad reasons I can never be conservative, and honestly don’t understand how any thoughtful, self-aware person can be.

Teleprompters are stupid … only when Obama uses them — Ah, conservative “logic”.

The Conservative Backlash That Isn’t Coming — Some thoughts from conservative commentator Daniel Larison. I will observe that since no one in the GOP seems to remember the eight years of the Bush administration, preferring to blame the disastrous outcomes of his governing on conservative principles on Obama who inherited Bush’s mess, how could there be a backlash?

Have Democrats Succeeded in Pre-Destroying Romney? — A conservative leaning narrative complaining about the Democrats using the same tactics that have been so successful for the GOP these past decades.

?otd: Are you ever bored? Why?

2/2/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.5 (solid)
Weight: 227.2
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor

The Self-Sabotaging Writer — Kameron Hurley on the perils of being a writer. (Via Steve Buchheit.)

What the Nook Means — A new Nook’s on its way. Can it save books?

The Milhous Collection — A meticulously assembled selection of mechanical musical instruments, vintage automobiles and more. (Via danjite.)

Cloud Cover’s Role in Exoplanet Studies

Study measures mammalian growth spurt — It takes 24 million generations for mouse-sized mammals to evolve into elephants — but shrinking back is much faster.

Mind-reading program translates brain activity into words — The research paves the way for brain implants that would translate the thoughts of people who have lost power of speech.

cassiealexander on Rick Santorum, privilege, healthcare, and sick kids — What she says.

The End of Health Insurance Companies — I don’t think I actually believe this piece, but it’s a nice thought.

Inside the heresy files — Interrogation. Surveillance. Ethnic profiling. Censorship. The words come from 21st-century headlines, but they have an ancient pedigree. Cullen Murphy on how the Inquisition ignited the modern police state. (Snurched from Scrivener’s Error.)

McConnell’s Revisionist History: Congress Gave Obama Everything He Wanted! — Can he possibly believe this? McConnell, of all people? More to the point, why does anybody else believe this?

Marsh on Obama: The Party’s Over — Sigh.

Delusions of Obama the Idiot — It’s amazing that the GOP has somehow convinced itself that Obama is some kind of beguiling intellectual lightweight. Once you accept that ideology trumps reality, it’s easy to put faith in any whackdoodle idea that enters one’s head.

Gingrich, Romney, and “Reckoning with the Base”

Romney versus Gingrich slugfest is harbinger of Republican civil war — We can only hope. Meanwhile, I continue to marvel at the Republican base’s vitriolic view of liberals, who are guilty of bringing America such heinous sins as the forty hour work week, paid vacations, child labor laws, clean air and water, and other such violations of our civil rights, all over the strong objections of conservatives.

Welfare Drug Testing Bill Withdrawn After Amended To Include Testing Lawmakers — Don’t worry, it will be back. Oppressing the poor is a club sport for the GOP.

Huh? Mitt claims Newt outspent him in S.C. — Huh. Republicans lying about each other. The candidates and party leadership know it doesn’t matter. The message always trumps facts. The low information voters who make up the GOP base will just nod and follow along like they always do.

The Myth of the American Political Intelligence Gap

?otd: When’s the last time you attended a live reading?

2/1/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
Weight: 228.8
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor

willyumtx

You Eat That? — Disgust is one of our most basic emotions—the only one that we have to learn—and nothing triggers it more reliably than the strange food of others.

Honda revives Ferris Bueller — Zombie Matthew Broderick?

Genetic or Not, Gay Won’t Go Away

Ritalin Gone Wrong

Hysteria and the Teenage Girl

Testicular zap ‘may stop sperm’ — A dose of ultrasound to the testicles can stop the production of sperm, according to researchers investigating a new form of contraception.

U.S. may rely on aging U-2 spy planes longer than expected — The Pentagon has proposed delaying a plan to replace the U-2s with RQ-4 Global Hawk drones because of Defense Department cutbacks.

Too Much of a Bad Thing: Monsanto Did NOT Buy Blackwater — Hmmm. (Via danjite.)

Newt Gingrich’s moon base plan a ‘cheap trick’ to get votes, space experts say — Experts call Gingrich’s plan a gimmick that is too expensive to work. I am shocked that Newt might have said something deliberately misleading. Shocked, I tell you. Shocked.

Gingrich’s Absurd Outsider Pose — But it works with the low information voters who make up the GOP base. Who cares if his claims are true?

?otd: What are you working on this week?

1/30/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.5 (fitful)
Weight: 227.8
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor

Angered, Disturbed or Frightened: Can’t Tell — jimvanpelt on aging and authors.

We’re filling up! — If you’re interested in the Cascade Writers conference this coming summer, they’re almost full.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Lone Wolf Commands a Following — A wolf in California. (Thanks to Dad.)

Roadside Dinosaurs — Mmm, pop culture.

The science and engineering behind Lego Man’s balloon voyage

Banks Taketh, but Don’t Giveth

?otd: Oversleep much?

1/29/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 9.75 (solid)
Weight: 226.0
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor