Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad says it’s time to celebrate a birthday

Jay Lake – Próba kwiatów — An (apparently) largely positive review of the Polish edition of Trial of Flowers.

How we feel can change how we taste fat — Content people can detect changes in fat content, unhappy people do not.

Australian squid eat sperm for better bodies and babies — Presented without further comment. (Via David Goldman.)

Leprosy’s disappearing act came from public health improvements

Japanese eyeball-licking craze carries blindness risk

The Invention: 1928 — Flat panel display?

How Google Will Use High-Flying Balloons to Deliver Internet to the Hinterlands — I do love Google, except for the banal evil that is the Google Books Settlement.

Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere — Both funny and sobering. (Via David Goldman.)

Feds to comply with NY morning-after pill ruling — Conservative sexual paranoia really isn’t a good basis for national policy. I’m glad to see sanity prevailing once in a rare while.

The Tragic Fall of the White Race in America — Yup. Too bad for the Republican angry white man freakshow.

QotD?: Going to be at JayCon today?

6/15/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (too many errands, not enough time)
Hours slept: 5.5 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (exercise room was occupied)
Weight: 246.6
Number of FEMA troops on my block leaking intelligence secrets: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg; Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Food, gender, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, reviews, sex, Tech, Trial, weird

Posted: 5:36 am Sat June 15 2013 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad asks where did you come from, where did you go?

Waving My Tweak Flag High — On the process of revision. (Thanks to David Goldman.)

Timbuktu Libraries in Exile — Help us preserve a global cultural heritage from imminent loss and become part of the great learning adventure of Timbuktu. Fundraising for a profoundly worthy cause. (Via threeoutside.)

Looking It in the Face — On aging and death… (Via David Wilford.)

What Is Capuling? ‘Everyday I’m Çapuling’ Turkish Protest Video Goes Viral — Language and culture in motion. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Most European males ‘descended from farmers’ — Most men in Europe can trace a line of descent to early farmers who migrated from the Near East, a study says. Why is this surprising? (Via my Dad.)

Museum Bares All For Cycle Exhibition — Clothing is optional, of course. Riders will be charged one dollar admission for each item they wear. Portland Police recommend all cyclists wear a helmet, at the bare minimum. Ah, Portland.

Physics’s pangolin — Trying to resolve the stubborn paradoxes of their field, physicists craft ever more mind-boggling visions of reality. Interesting stuff. (Via AH.)

Mars rover Opportunity finds traces of ‘drinkable’ water

Atomic bomb tests confirm formation of new brain cells — Newly created neurons marked with isotopes from bomb tests. Because Science!

Contact Lens Computer: Like Google Glass, without the Glasses — Finally, retinal displays!

West Texas Oilfield Town Runs Out of Water — All those rural liberals in West Texas are just contributing to the climate change conspiracy.

4-year-old boy accidentally kills dad in Arizona — Because guns make us all safer. Just ask the 30,000 people killed in the United States every year by firearms. If you’re confused, the NRA and the GOP can explain.

Response to an Open Letter — Hal Duncan speaks brilliantly to wounded, self-valorizing Christian privilege from an atheist (and nonheteronormative) perspective.

If I Were a Black Kid… — Ta-Nehisi Coates on education. Though he’s speaking specifically of black youth, some of his comments are spot on for kids in any enclosed community, such as Christian homeschoolers or small towns.

#GOPHeartsLadies (video) — A great video from Emily’s Lists, titled #GOPHeartsLadies, walking us through the offensive things Republicans have said about women in just the past seven days. And Republicans wonder why they have a demographic problem. They just can’t stop longing for the days of white, male, dominance.

QotD?: What the heck did cotton-eyed Joe ever do to you?

6/8/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.75 hours (revisions to “Rock of Ages”)
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 247.9
Number of FEMA troops on my block creating tornados for political distraction: 0
Currently reading: Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Christianists, climate, coo, gender, guns, healthcare, Language, Links, Mars, nature, Personal, Politics, Portlnd, Process, race, Religion, Tech, Texas, Videos, weird, Writing

Posted: 6:14 am Sat June 08 2013 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad says Happy Birthday to me

Coming Soon: “Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction” — A project of which I was a part. I provided the chapter on steampunk. Unfortunately, I did not inquire as to the stable of my co-authors.

Jay Lake and Austin Sirkin in Conversation — Locus with a podcast recorded last spring at ICFA. We talk steampunk, mostly.

We are here to protect you. We are here to protect you from the terrible secret of Seanans. — seanan_mcguire on (among other things) our current WIP collaboration.

Think Similar — Rhetoricians call switching a word from one part of speech to another “anthimeria”. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Book Domino Chain World Record — Oh, this is so cute. (Thanks to threeoutside.)

There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written — (Thanks to threeoutside.)

On Being an Octopus — Diving Deep in Search of the Human Mind. (Thanks to AH.)

Fresh-Squeezed: 1951 — Mmm. Oranges.

What We Think Martians Look Like: Photos — Some classic images.

New Science of Cosmography Reveals 3-D Map of the Local Universe

Chester E. McDuffee’s patented diving suit (1911) — Wow. And a cool site it’s on, too. (Thanks to David E. Vincent.)

First “Small Modular” Nuclear Reactors Planned for Tennessee

Helicopter Operated By Pure Mind Control

Invisibility ‘time cloak’ developed

Can “Infinite Variation” Be Mass-Produced Using 3-D Printing? — Shapeways looks to software to bring down production costs and time to market in its 3-D printing factory in New York City.

Rep. Marc Veasey condemns racist remarks by Dallas Republican activist — “I’m going to be real honest with you, the Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats,” [Tea Party Republican] Ken Emanuelson said. Are you proud of your Republican Party?

IMF ‘to admit mistakes’ in handling Greek debt crisis and bailout — Wait? What? Austerity isn’t the answer to everything? Clearly we need more tax cuts!

“Yes Virginia, There Are Death Panels”: Limbaugh Exploits Child Transplant Patient To Revive Obamacare Myth — Because conservatives lie. Constantly and knowingly. That’s what happens when truth and reality aren’t ever on your side.

Obama says GOP obstruction of nominations is ‘unprecedented.’ What if he’s right? — Republicans deny that their obstructionism is unprecedented. As it happens, though, there is a set of actual facts we can look at to try to determine who is right.

QotD?: When is your birthday?

6/6/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.25 hours (WRPA editing and revising “Hook Agonistes”)
Hours slept: 6.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (feet hurt)
Weight: n/a (traveling)
Number of FEMA troops on my block creating tornados for political distraction: 0
Currently reading: Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Tags: audio, Books, Cool, economy, Funny, healthcare, Language, Links, Mars, nature, Personal, Photos, podcasts, Politics, Process, race, Science, stories, Tech, Videos, weird, Writing

Posted: 3:06 am Thu June 06 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad for a sleepy Friday

Why John O’Halloran shaved his head mustache and beard — For Christine, and for me. Go read this.

Jay Lake, Alien Hunter — The recent Waterloo Productions video in a non-Facebook environment.

Jay Lake’s Tub (and on being a newer writer) — Writing advice, which I originally got from Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch. The tub is not original to me.

The System: C’est La Wifi — Haha. We had exactly this discussion in my house earlier this week.

Sad Cat Diary — Hahaha. (Via David Goldman.)

Great tweets of science — Hahahahah.

Parents have gastric bypass; children’s DNA may receive the benefits — It’s epigenetics: Kids’ gene expression may occur a generation after surgery.

Neuron growth in children ‘leaves no room for memories’ — The reason we struggle to recall memories from our early childhood is down to high levels of neuron production during the first years of life, say Canadian researchers. I have very few memories prior to age seven. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Mars mission astronauts face radiation exposure risk — Ya think?

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Discovers Evidence for Ancient Streambed and Flowing Water

Oceans Under the Ice Worlds? — This is intensely cool.

How the turtle got its unique hard shell — How the turtle shell evolved has puzzled scientists for years, but new research sheds light on how their hard shells were formed. The really great thing about science is how it institutionalizes uncertainty. No easy answers, no hard truths, just a continual process of observation and evidence gathering and refinement of theory.

Slow-motion 7.0 earthquake drags on for 5 months under New Zealand

Northern Ireland Town Fakes Prosperity for G8 Summit — Um…

The Questions People Get Asked About Their Race — Wow…

Pundits get more followers for being confident than correct — Dunning-Kruger FTW!

As Glaciers Melt, Alpine Mountains Lose Their Glue, Threatening Swiss Village — It’s amazing, the lengths liberals will go to for their global warming hoax. Thank God for Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party, otherwise we might have to do something about this before it’s too late.

What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers? — Wow. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson actually said this. Replace “humanity” with “my bank account” and that’s conservatism in a nutshell. They’re not even pretending any more.

Big Utah Gun Rights Advocate Arrested, Accused Of Domestic Violence — Yep. We are definitely all so much safer, especially with guns in the hands of people like this gentleman and all he represents.

Rick Perry Vetoes “Buy American” Bill Approved 145-0 by Texas House — Because patriotism! (Via shsilver.)

Imprisoned CIA Torture Whistleblower John Kiriakou Pens “Letter from Loretto”

Michele Bachmann is gone, but her paranoid politics has become the norm for GOP

Lincoln Chafee’s long journey from Republican to Democrat — But what’s remarkable is that someone with Chafee’s priorities was once a Republican. Chafee left the GOP six years ago, largely because he had decided it had squandered its mantle as a party of fiscal responsibility. Yep. Reality will do that to you. If you’re in favor of fiscal responsibility, strong on defense, and interested in pro-business economic growth, the GOP is not the party for you based on the historical record of both major parties in the past thirty years. If you’re in favor of social justice, income equality, consumer protection, jobs or the environment, the GOP has never been the party for you. What’s left? Proudly fact-free rhetoric bent on generating angry white men is all I can see.

QotD?: What week is this?

5/31/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (revisions to “Rock of Ages”)
Hours slept: 6.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: n/a (forgot)
Number of FEMA troops on my block scamming disaster aid slush funds: 0
Currently reading: Thud by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Cancer, climate, Cool, economy, Funny, guns, health, healthcare, Ireland, Links, Mars, media, nature, New Zealand, Personal, Politics, Process, race, Science, space, Tech, Texas, Videos, Writing

Posted: 5:07 am Fri May 31 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad dreams mountain dreams

The first Apple, fetching prices that may crash the system

Acoustic Levitation — This is seriously cool. (Via threeoutside.)

Marketing to the Big Data Inside Us — In your DNA are clues to your health, your ancestry, and maybe even your purchasing preferences.

A molecular window on itch — Researchers discover chemical puppet master behind the need to scratch.

An Interplanetary GPS Using Pulsar Signals — Spacecraft could determine their position anywhere in the solar system to within five kilometres using signals from x-ray pulsars, say astronomers.

New Technique Could Probe Rocky Alien Planet Surfaces

Scientists: Arctic bacteria discovered on Earth may prove life could thrive on Mars

Glow-in-the-dark cockroach among top 10 new species of 2012

White tiger’s coat down to one change in a gene

Race, Intelligence, and Genetics For Curious Dummies

The Iraq War Wasn’t Inevitable — Nope. It was a trillion dollar war of choice based on knowingly false premises brought to you by leading conservatives. I wish more Republican voters understood those simple facts. But they watch FOX News and listen to Rush Limbaugh, so they never will.

C.I.A. to Focus More on Spying, a Difficult Shift — Hmm…

Ignorance loves company: Four examples — Ignorance loves company. The truly stupid resent those who are not and won’t be satisfied until they’ve burned all the books, torn down the libraries, closed the universities, and made it impossible for anyone else not to share their own proud ignorance. Who could he be talking about? What segment of American culture and politics? I really cannot imagine, can you?

How Van Halen explains Obamacare, salmon regulation and scientific grants — This is why it’s important to do nuance. Too bad Republicans have elected political vandals who proudly don’t do nuance to dominate the House and derail the Senate. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Toomey’s candor sheds light on post-policy party — “There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it.” Speaking of the GOP as political vandals. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

President Obama and Counter-Terrorism: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

QotD?: How was your dinner last night?

5/24/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (WRPA editing, otherwise on workshop time)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (very fitful)
Body movement: n/a
Weight: n/a
Number of FEMA troops on my block scamming disaster aid slush funds: 0
Currently reading: The Wee, Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Apple, Cool, Culture, healthcare, Iraq, Links, Mars, nature, Personal, Politics, race, Science, space, Tech

Posted: 5:58 am Fri May 24 2013 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad knows there’s no love inside the icehouse

Rick Novy interviews me

The Canadian Who Won’t be Returning From the Stars — specficrider on a joint project of ours.

Will insurance cover genetic testing, preventive surgery? — Women who discover they carry a hereditary gene mutation that dramatically increases their risk of breast and ovarian cancers face big decisions and the possibility of tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs. This story is a version of what I went through.

12 Tips from 12 Years Sick — Yep. I’m only barely into year six, but, yep. (Thanks to Lisa Costello.)

Star Trek: The Search for Science — The Bad Astronmer is much with the hilarity.

The secret laser-toting Soviet satellite that almost was — Here’s a little Cold War alt.hist for you.

Billion-Year-Old Water Found in Canada Holds Clues About Ancient Life — You really need to read the expiration dates on those gas station water bottles.

Hunting Pesky Pigs in Paradise — Ham sandwiches on the hoof, where they don’t belong.

Terahertz Image Reveals Goya’s Hidden Signature in Old Master Painting — Darkened varnish obscures Goya’s signature in a 1771 masterpiece, according to a new analysis using terahertz waves

The Spies Who Blundered — Alleged undercover CIA agent Ryan Fogle is one of many spies to bungle the job.

My Despair — Another of those sad, strange posts on Feminist Mormon Housewives where someone of apparent intelligence and progressive sensibilities finds their common sense and observations of the real world in profound conflict with their faith. If I were a faith-holder, I don’t think I could tolerate that much cognitive dissonance.

When did you choose to be straight? — Heh.

Christian denominations and marriage equality: A simple quiz — Slacktivist Fred Clark makes a point that many anti-gay bigots in pietist clothing would prefer to ignore. Christianists find it so much more comfortable to hate inconvenient people than to actually pay attention to their own morality.

What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’ — In a world where Kevin Garnett, Harold Ford, and Halle Berry all check “black” on the census, even the argument that racial labels refer to natural differences in physical traits doesn’t hold up. Ta-Nehisi Coates is far more elegant than I ever could be on this topic.

Tullahoma father being reckless when baby daughter shot, police say — Because guns make us all safer. Without the smiling protection of the NRA and the GOP, this dad wouldn’t have been able to exercise his theoretical defense of essentially liberties by blowing away his own child.

QotD?: Can you remember getting any older?

5/16/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (0.5 revisions on my novella for METAtropolis: Green Space, plus WRPA)
Hours slept: 8.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Books, Cancer, Christianists, climate, Funny, gay, guns, health, healthcare, interviews, Links, Movies, nature, Personal, Politics, race, Religion, Science, stories, Tech, Videos, weird

Posted: 5:20 am Thu May 16 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad for another hump day

Biology, Chemistry and Science Pick-up Lines! — Hahahaha! (Via Gabrielle Harbowy.)

It’s Time to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class — How will a mass influx of robots affect human employment?

Synthetic Biology Could Speed Flu Vaccine Production — Advanced genetic engineering is already changing vaccine development and could make inroads into other branches of medicine.

The Extinction Orchestra — Designer Marguerite Humeau reconstructs the voices of extinct animals based on speculative extrapolations from their skull structure.

Parents sue South Carolina for surgically turning child into a female — This is about state intervention in an intersexed child’s medical care.

How climate change denial works — Fox’s broadcast was really quite ingenious. They can claim they presented “both sides,” when in fact there were never two sides to the question. That’s the typical conservative response. Their ideas are intellectually bankrupt, so they lie.

RNC Hispanic Outreach Director Becomes A Democrat — What did he expect? He was a Republican. Good for him for finally waking up when his own ox was gored. Like I keep saying, no one likes conservative policies when applied to them personally. (Via shsilver.)

National Security Brief: Poll Finds Americans Aren’t Buying GOP Benghazi Witch-Hunt — A whopping 41 percent of Republicans polled think the Obama administration’s handling of Benghazi is the greatest scandal in U.S. history. “One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history,” PPP adds, “is that 39% of them don’t actually know where it is.” Sometimes the jokes just write themselves. Also, Jim Wright with a lot more on the conservative “position” on Benghazi.

When the IRS targeted liberals — Under George W. Bush, it went after the NAACP, Greenpeace and even a liberal church. Yeah, remember all the Republican outrage back then? Nah, neither do I. Not that this makes what’s going on now right, but it certainly underscores yet again the profound hypocrisy of conservatism in general.

QotD?: What’s your favorite day of the week?

5/15/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (Revision on my novella for METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 5.75 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

Tags: climate, Cool, Funny, gender, healthcare, Links, music, Personal, Politics, race, Science, sex, Tech, weird

Posted: 5:03 am Wed May 15 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad prove to you that it’s no fool, walks across your swimming pool

It’s hard to rely on my good intentions, when my head’s full of things that I can’t mention — Lisa Costello on how my cancer news is affecting her.

Game Theory and the Treatment of Cancer — Thinking about cancer as an ecosystem is giving biologists access to a new armoury of mathematical tools for tackling it, such as evolutionary game theory.

The History of Typography – Animated Short — This is kind of nifty. (Via threeoutside.)

Alice E. Kober, 43; Lost to History No More — Ancient languages and eccentric professors. It doesn’t get any better! (Via my Dad.)

Dull Flag and Tongue of Gangsta: The Laugh-out-loud Place-names of Shetland and Orkney

Beatnik JFK: 1957 — For some reason, I find this photo very funny.

Researcher Analyzes Oldest Fossil Hominid Ear Bones Ever Recovered

Fossil Amber Challenges Theories About Glass — Scientists discover that glass doesn’t flow like a liquid.

Kangaroos have three vaginas — Mmm, marsupials. (Via David Goldman.)

One Small Step for Geoengineering — or Is “Ecoengineering” Better?

Space Oddity — David Bowie’s Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station. We are indeed living in the future. (Via David Goldman and others.)

‘Einstein’s Planet’: New Alien World Revealed by Relativity

Climate Sensitivity Stunner: Last Time CO2 Levels Hit 400 Parts Per Million The Arctic Was 14°F Warmer!

The Dark Art of Racecraft — Jason Richwine’s place in the long history of research on race and IQ. Ta-Nehisi Coates is powerful on race and racism in academic tradition.

Infographic: Is Your State’s Highest-Paid Employee A Coach? (Probably) — I’m so proud of America at moments like this. With all the budget problems of government, and all the human suffering in our debated economy, we still have our priorities straight. (Via danjite.)

Japan WWII ‘comfort women’ were ‘necessary’ – Hashimoto — A prominent Japanese politician has described as “necessary” the system by which women were forced to become prostitutes for World War II troops. Oh, God. Really? Not only seven kinds of wrong, but disgusting and morally depraved. China indignant at Japanese politician’s “comfort women” statement.

Homophobes Might Be Hidden Homosexuals — A new analysis of implicit bias and explicit sexual orientation statements may help to explain the underpinnings of anti-gay bullying and hate crimes. Also, this just in: water is wet. Inside a great number of angry conservative bigots is a fabulous gay man struggling to get out.

Naked TSA Protester’s Appeal to Be Heard Tuesday — A story of local interest here in Portland. It would be pretty funny if it weren’t so darned serious.

Police search for 19-year-old man shooting, wounding of 19 at New Orleans Mother’s Day parade — Because an armed society is a polite society, and guns make us all safer. Think how much harder it would have been for this shooter to exercise his theoretical defense of essential liberties without the smiling protection of the NRA and the Republican Party.

Right-wing media check up: still crazy — The right-wing media hasn’t learned anything from its failures in 2012. It’s the same-old ‘Obama is evil’ conspiracy theories.

Gates: Administration Critics view of US Military Capabilities in Benghazi “Cartoonish” — Former Bush and Obama administrations secretary of defense Bob Gates, a lifelong Republican, replied to some of the GOP fantasies about the possibility of a US military mission into Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. The Republican obsession with Benghazi is just as bizarre and counterfactual as the vast majority of their other obsessions. Not that bizarre counterfactuals stopped Whitewater from morphing into the Clinton impeachment. Essentially, the GOP has been unable to accept the legitimacy of any Democratic president since LBJ.

Government secretly obtains phone records from journalists — Prosecutors targeted the Associated Press in an attempt to learn who leaked information about the CIA and an apparent terrorist plot in Yemen. If proven out, this is seven kinds of wrong. I don’t care what your politics are, this isn’t what our government does or should be doing. Should these allegations be substantiated, Attorney General Eric Holder needs to go, and Obama needs to answer for this. If nothing else, can this administration give us accountability? And some counterpoint on this.

QotD?: What is it that you have got that puts you where you are?

5/14/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (1.25 hours of revision, plus WRPA, editing METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 5.0 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: m/a (forgot)
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Cancer, climate, Cool, economy, gay, guns, health, history, Japan, Language, Links, media, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, radiantlisa, Science, space, sports, Travel, Videos, weird

Posted: 5:15 am Tue May 14 2013 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad wakes up in a different, shorter world

2013 Locus Awards Finalists — My Nebula- and Hugo-nominated novella, “The Stars Do Not Lie”, is also a finalist for the Locus Awards as well. I am quite pleased

A reader reacts to Escapement — They didn’t like it so much.

Ultraconserved words? Really?? — Language Log responds to the recent “ultraconserved words” story.

Sky Crane — A gorgeous photo of the construction of One World Trade Center.

Ridge could be piece of Pangaea — Speaking of ultraconserved.

First Quantum-Enhanced Images of a Living Cell

San Francisco gives up on cell phone warning stickers — Reuters’ reporting makes a hash of the science.

Changing U.S. Racial Demographics — This one pretty much explains itself.

Heritage: We Have Nothing To Do With Racial Immigration Study — This is the quality of conservative intellectual discourse. These are the people who produce it.

A former religious extremist explains how radicalization happens {plus, a theory of how suspected Boston Marathon bombers were radicalized} — The enemy is fundamentalism because fundamentalism is very attractive to people looking for Definitive Answers. Extremist religion provides a rigid, black-and-white framework for understanding the world. Much the same could be said of contemporary conservatism. Conservatives proudly “don’t do nuance“, and have explicitly rejected critical thinking and sneered at the reality based community. How different is that from religious extremism with its comfortingly simple answers? (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

On gun fatalities and terrorist fatalities — In the last 30 years, there have been 30,000 to 40,000 gun deaths in the United States per year, more than 900,000 people. In the last 40 years since 1970, there have been about 3,400 terror-related deaths. What would the response of a rational society be? Here in America, we will never know. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

10 Things You Can’t Do and Become President

QotD?: Are you going to do something wonderful today?

5/9/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (stress)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 246.8
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: Awards, Books, Christianists, Cool, Escapement, guns, Language, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, Religion, reviews, Science, stories, Tech

Posted: 5:04 am Thu May 09 2013 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad celebrates M’aidez

A reader reacts to Escapement — They liked it better than Mainspring.

Worldbuilding with Maps — Art guru James Gurney (of Dinotopia fame) is interesting.

Rob and Laura: 1963 — I’m not quite old enough to remember this as a prime time series, but it was in regular rerun rotation when I was a little kid, in the year or so I actually watched television during my childhood.

Could Body Armor Have Saved Millions in World War I? — The follies that led to poor helmets and a lack of torso protection for men in the trenches. (Snurched from james_nicoll.)

Google Glass: Let the evil commence — Glass has now been ‘jailbroken’ with a well-documented exploit. So what can you (or others) do with a hacked headset? Apparently, a whole lot.

More than 20,000 people apply for one-way ticket to Mars — Wow.

Would an antimatter apple fall upward from the earth?

Sun Plus Nanotechnology: Can Solar Energy Get Bigger by Thinking Small?

Atoms star in world’s smallest movie from IBM — Researchers at IBM have created the world’s smallest movie by manipulating single atoms on a copper surface.

A Sense of Where You Are — I have an excellent sense of both location and direction. I know people who have very little internal sense of either of those things. Finally, an explanation.

Prenatal DNA Sequencing — Reading the DNA of fetuses is the next frontier of the genome revolution. Do you really want to know the genetic destiny of your unborn child? I sure would. Also note, this story is about the company that did my own Whole Genome Sequencing.

Representing Transracial Adoptions — Wow. As a white parent in an adopted transracial family, just wow.

Pro-Environment Light Bulb Labeling Turns Off Conservatives, Study Finds — Sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

Poll: Democratic edge for 2014 — Slightly more voters say they’ll vote Democratic in the 2014 congressional elections than Republicans, bucking a historical trend of the president’s party losing seats in his sixth year, a new poll Wednesday shows. I’ll believe it when I see it, but if true, this represents a welcome trend away from the fever swamp of destructive insanity that the GOP has become.

QotD?: Est-ce que vous êtes internationale?

5/1/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (WRPA editing work on METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block helping welfare recipients buy cell phones and big screen tvs: 0
Currently reading: The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Books, Cool, Escapement, healthcare, Links, Mainspring, Mars, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, race, reviews, Science, space, Tech, television, weird, Writing

Posted: 5:01 am Wed May 01 2013 | Comments(0) |