Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad parties with the pros in San Jose

“Into the Gardens of Sweet Night” by Jay Lake — A review of my 2003 Hugo-nominated novella.

Stone Age Cinema — This is cool.

Brain Stimulation Can Boost Math Skills — The study was small-scale and is not something that should be replicated at home, because of the possibility of harm/ Ya think? (Via David Goldman.)

Farm Equipment That Runs on Oats

Huge Rock Crashes Into Moon, Sparks Giant Explosion

Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds — Of more than 4,000 academic papers published over 20 years, 97.1% agreed that climate change is anthropogenic. Reality’s well-known liberal bias is not an inherent property of the physical universe. Rather, it’s an emergent property of conservative privileging of ideological thinking over evidence-based thinking. Conservatives would serve themselves and the country as a whole a great deal better if they relied less on arguments from authority and more on arguments from reality.

Justifiable Cause — The Obama administration is making the case for conservatism better than Mitt Romney ever did. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The Great Benghazi Conspiracy and Republican Forgeries — As I said on Twitter and Facebook yesterday, GOP makes up fake White House Benghazi emails, cons news with fakes, now can accuse White House of covering up when real emails are released. Classy. The worst part, it works. Keeps their white men angry over outright lies.

QotD?: Have you handicapped the Nebula ballot?

5/18/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (WRPA)
Hours slept: 4.25 hours (solid, but yikes!)
Body movement: n/a
Weight: n/a
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, climate, Cool, history, Links, Personal, Politics, reviews, Science, space, stories, weird

Posted: 6:01 am Sat May 18 2013 | Comments(2) |

[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) |

[movies] Iron Man 3 and Oblivion (spoiler free)

Yesterday was a tough day for Being Productive, what with the cancer stress and all, so Lisa Costello and I bailed out for the movies. First we saw Oblivion [ imdb ], then we went and picked up the_child, to hit Iron Man 3 [ imdb ].

I actually kind of liked Oblivion, but it definitely felt very derivative. (Lisa actively disliked it.) And though the worldbuilding eye candy was beyond gorgeous, much of it was also sufficiently illogical to distract me from the movie. In the end, I suppose this movie is rather like The Fifth Element [ imdb ]: best enjoyed with the sound turned off.

Iron Man 3 was precisely what it said on the tin: the third Iron Man movie. Robert Downey, Jr. played his part, things went boom and ka-blam, and so forth. There were some reasonably interesting plot twists, and a fair nod to continuity within the Marvel Avengers film cycle. Certainly a lot of fun.

So, yeah, good summer movies. Of course, it’s not quite summer yet…

Tags: Child, Movies, radiantlisa, reviews

Posted: 5:27 am Wed May 08 2013 | Comments(10) |

[links] Link salad lazes on Sunday morning

‘Mockingbird’ Author Sues to Regain Copyright — Huh.

Exotic Alloy of Ferrous Oxide Man — Scrivener’s Error is very funny (and snarky) about the new Iron Man movie [ imdb ].

Mis-printed sign amuses Thorndon residents — Things like this always give me the giggles. (Via Sally McLennan.)

Dream with cancer game — My old friend goulo (whom I first almost a quarter century ago) dreams about me, cancer and gaming.

Wright Brothers Flight Legacy Hits New Turbulence — Not to mention the Wright sister.

A Supercell Thunderstorm Cloud Over Montana — Another amazing image from APOD.

Political Extremism Is Supported by an Illusion of Understanding — Asking people to explain policies in detail both undermined the illusion of explanatory depth and led to attitudes that were more moderate. That’s the Tea Party in a nutshell, along with most of the conservative movement. It’s also why the conservative dominated media machine is so critical to the GOP: Rush Limbaugh saying, “Look, this is simple folks…” helps a lot of people with tenuous positions feel affirmed. Much better for manufacturing angry white males than actually doing the nuance of understanding any issue.

Harvard Professor Trashes Keynes For Homosexuality — That’s liberal academia for you. Bigoted, ad hominem attacks free of facts.

The Conservative Logic of Ferguson’s Smears of Gays, Muslims, Obama and Krugman — I would argue that the reason that conservatives like Ferguson hate Keynes is that Keynes demonstrated conclusively that when the economy goes into a deep recession or depression, the only way to get back out of it is for the government to increase spending. Contemporary conservatives do not want to admit that government plays an indispensable set of economic roles. This is pretty simple, and doesn’t require much nuanced analysis. Most conservative ideas do not survive contact with reality. (viz. supply side economics, reduced regulation, PNAC, privatization of social services, almost anything in Republican educational policy, guns, Iraq, climate change, marriage “defense”, et cetera ad nauseum.) The conservative response is not to assess the evidence and revise their ideas, but to deny reality. We’ve seen this played out over and over again, increasingly blatant, in politics and the media over the past few decades. The BEST study of climate change is one of the vanishingly rare counterexamples of conservative intellectual honesty in response to countervailing evidence, and it was widely condemned by media and political figures precisely for that intellectual honesty.

QotD?: What’s on your plate?

5/5/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (WRPA on audiobook prep)
Hours slept: 8.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (foot hurts)
Weight: n/a (away from home)
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Cancer, Cool, economy, Funny, Language, law, Links, media, Movies, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, reviews, Tech

Posted: 7:24 am Sun May 05 2013 | Comments(1) |

[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) |

[links] Link salad marks the calendar and sighs

2013 Hugos: Best Novella — A reader offers capsule reviews of the Best Novella Hugo ballot, including my own “The Stars Do Not Lie”.

‘Stoned wallabies make crop circles’ — Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around “as high as a kite”, a government official has said. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Invisible, unhealthful toxics in Portland’s airshed need immediate attention — “Airshed” is a new word to me, though I immediately parsed it correctly as a back-formation from “watershed”.

Congress finds it hard to let Federal Helium Program run out of gas

Climate Change or Global Warming? Both. — This whole thing with Fox would be funny if it weren’t so damaging. A lot of people only watch Fox News, and while it’s easy to mock Fox for being so reality-deficient, so clearly wrong so often, the fact is for millions of people Fox is their sole news source.

QotD?: What does this day mean to you?

4/28/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (0.5 hours and 800 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin, 0.5 hours WRPA editing work on METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 8.5 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (foot still hurts)
Weight: n/a
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: Awards, Links, media, nature, Personal, Politics, Portland, reviews, stories, weird

Posted: 6:43 am Sun April 28 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) |

[links] Link salad knows the cider’s laced with acid

Magazine Monday: Subterranean, Spring 2013 — Including a review of my Green novelette, “A Stranger Comes to Kalimpura”. I liked this bit: Green’s voice is, as always, sharp and clear and pitiless. She is a haunting character.

Lois Tilton reviews “A Stranger Comes to Kalimpura” — She didn’t like it quite so much.

Cancer Centers Racing to Map Patients’ Genes — Welcome to my life.

What’s Tylenol Doing to Our Minds? — The same pathways that help with physical pain seem to moderate existential distress. Wow. (Via danjite.)

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today — (Via @daviddlevine.)

Inside the Race to Build the World’s Fastest Bitcoin Miner — Stories like this are making me feel like a tech dinosaur.

Two-Track Mind — The MTA’s “track geometry car” slides around through the New York City subway, using “a variety of sensors, measuring systems, and data management [software] to create a profile of the track being inspected.” This is cool.

Microraptor: A 4-Winged, Fish-Eating Dinosaur

Fellowship of the Tree Rings — New Zealand researchers probe history and climate science by looking at wood. It’s pretty amazing how liberals have planted evidence for climate change even deep inside ancient trees. Thank God we have Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party to keep us focused on the truth instead of that pesky old reality.

Exploring public concerns about geoengineering the climate — UK researchers talk about pumping reflective aerosols into the atmosphere. What could possibly go wrong?

Terrorism and the other Religions — It takes a peculiar sort of blindness to see Christians of European heritage as “nice” and Muslims and inherently violent, given the twentieth century death toll.

Actual 4th Grade science test in South Carolina — I hope to Ghu this is a spoof. Thanks to Poe’s Law, it’s impossible to separate conservative willful ignorance from parody of conservative willful ignorance. I simply do not understand how any parent would want to so dreadfully miseducate their child. (Via goulo.)

2nd Child of Pa. Couple Dies After Only Praying — Religion really can make you stupid. Fatally stupid. The deliberate miseducation and intellectual stunting so beloved of religious conservatives is bad enough. Those poor kids died of abuse and neglect privileged under the mantle of faith.

FMH Podcast Episode 52: Women That Leave Because of Gender Inequality — What I find fascinating about the blog Feminist Mormon Housewives is the intellectual train wreck always in progress there. Most of the post and comments on that blog are from intelligent, progressively-minded women who are struggling mightily to reconcile what their education and identities tell them with what their faith demands of them by way of subservience, submittal and acceptance of discrimination and flat counterfactuals. To my atheist outsider’s view, almost all of them would a lot happier listening to themselves rather than their faith.

GOP Ex-Congressman Testifies About Struggle Getting Visa For His Gay Partner — Words fail me. You do remember you’re a Republican, right? Further proof that no one likes conservative policies when applied to them personally.

Texas wants federal disaster aid it refused to give others — Ah, the justly famed intellectual consistency of conservatives is once more on display. Of course, these are Sarah Palin’s “real Americans” in trouble, not undeserving East Coast liberals.

The Senate’s gun control fail: dead children and monied politicians — A UK perspective. A sane man’s contempt for the United States Senate must now be certain and complete. Given the inertia on even the most modest legislative response to the mass murder of schoolchildren, those still credulous enough to believe that our governance is representative of popular will are either Barnum-sized suckers, or worse, tacit participants in tragedies soon to come.

Jeff Flake’s Rhetorical Games On Background Checks Come Back To Haunt Him — Speaking of intellectual consistency. As ever, conservatives value their guns over your safety.

Arkansas county GOP is unhappy that we can’t shoot politicians, as the Second Amendment intended — More of that measured reason we have all come to expect from conservatives in the gun culture. I sure feel safer knowing people like this are exercising their Second Amendment rights to theoretical defense of essential liberties.

WSJ Columnist Taranto Uses Gabby Giffords’ Injuries To Silence Her On Gun Violence — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best. (Honestly, if I were a Republican, I’d die of shame.)

‘I am the senator. You are the citizen. You need to be quiet.’ — This is how Republicans respect our democracy. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

QotD?: What is the Holy Spirit crying?

4/23/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo day)
Hours slept: 8.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (very carefully on the stationary bike)
Weight: n/a (couldn’t stand on scale due to injured foot)
Number of FEMA troops on my block faking evidence for climate change: 0
Currently reading: Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Boston, Cancer, Christianists, climate, economy, education, gay, Green, guns, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Religion, reviews, Science, stories, Tech, Texas, weird

Posted: 5:16 am Tue April 23 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad wasn’t fuzzy, was he?

Reviewing the Nebulas: The Novellas — I’m not a fan of Lake’s writing. Generally, I find it hard to parse his stories, it’s something about my brain stumbling over his word choices. I’m also no fan of steampunk. So the fact that I enjoyed this story, that it’s the best thing of Lake’s I’ve ever read, is some sort of minor miracle. Heh.

My Reddit Fantasy AMA — Essentially an open source interview with me by several dozen questioners.

For Whom the Bell Tolls — The inexorable decline of America’s least favorite pronoun.

Interactive map plots locations of more than 100 million species — This strikes me as being awfully useful for writers as well as scientists.

What Happens When You Wring Out a Washcloth in Space — Mmm, science. (Via shelly_rae.)

Exploring the Grand Canyon — The view from space.

Dinosaur ‘fills fossil record gap’

Poor, cute bunnies likely to get eaten when the snow melts early — Hares change coat color for winter based on the calendar, not the conditions. Nothing to do with climate change, of course. Just ask any Republican.

Barcodes let scientists track every ant in a colony — A team of Swiss scientists glued barcodes to hundreds of ants living in six laboratory colonies and recorded all of their movements for more than a month. Now, there’s a job description.

Brain Research, as Only Vegas Can — Weird doings.

Psychedelic Portuguese Man-of-War Photos Prove God Is a Stoner — (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

When tragedy turns to joy — People doing good. (Via threeoutside.)

The Chosen Few: A New Explanation of Jewish Success — Congregationalism and individual literacy?

Fathers and Sons and Chechnya — Juan Cole on the heritage and family dynamics of the Boston bombing suspects.

Chechens, Czechs, whatever — This kind of ignorance drives me batty. This is basic knowledge about the world.

Building a Picture of the Bomb Suspects through Social Network Analysis — Police can obtain huge quantities of social network data, but must sort out the junk to glean useful information. Hmmm.

Pre-Viking Tunic Found In Thawing Glacier Shows How Climate Change Aids Archaeology — Ah, a benefit of climate change. (Via corwynofamber.)

How did Jesus come to love guns and hate sex? — One of many, many reasons I am an atheist is issues like this. Because matters of faith are heavily privileged in our society, religion has a vast power to make people very stupid without ever being challenged on it. Mind you, that’s not an inherent property of religion, and likewise people make themselves stupid in myriad other ways, but the confluence of faith and stupidity is toxic. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

LePage Spins Windmill Conspiracy Theory — It’s hard to trust any policy stance of someone who is either so incredibly gullible or is willing to cynically and habitually lie in such a transparent way in order to advance his own agenda. Um, that would be every single conservative politician in the United States. At least every conservative who won’t condemn evolution denial, doesn’t stand up to climate change denial, won’t condemn Birtherism as arrant racist nonsense, believes in supply side economics, or supported the Iraq War. Like I said, every single one.

NH GOP back in news – for the wrong reason — Once more, conservatives in the gun culture exhibit their justly famed calm rationality in the face of perceived adversity. Are you proud of your Republican party?

Architecture review: Bush presidential library is fittingly blunt — Really, they could have installed it in a restaurant booth. How much room do you need to store My Pet Goat? That’s about all they have left after shredding the incriminating evidence.

QotD?: Did your bear have no hair?

4/20/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (1.25 hours and 2,300 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin)
Hours slept: 10.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (injured foot)
Weight: n/a (couldn’t stand on scale due to injured foot)
Number of FEMA troops on my block checking the magazine sizes of gun owners: 0
Currently reading: The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Awards, Boston, Christianists, climate, Cool, Culture, guns, history, interviews, Language, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Religion, reviews, Science, space, stories, weird

Posted: 9:25 am Sat April 20 2013 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad refuses to freeze its soup and nuts

A review of Endurance — A review with a very curious approach.

The First 10 Pages: Science Fiction & Fantasy Boot Camp: 3/26/13 – 3/28/13 — An online course I am etching with writer (and friend) Phil Athans and agent Carlie Webber. Phil comments at length.

Widespread Flaws Found in Ovarian Cancer Treatment — Sigh.

French Toilet Paper Ad: ‘Emma’ By Le Trefle Proves Both French Husbands & Technology Wrong — Hahahaha! (Thanks to Lisa Costello.)

“W T Warren Testing Helmet 1912” — Um, ok.

Seagulls — Drones in love. (Via goulo.)

Ukrainian Killer Dolphins Deserted to Seek Mates – Expert — Um, wow.

Neanderthal large eyes ‘made them extinct’ — No one knows what it’s like/To be the bad man/To be the sad man/Behind blue eyes

Mars rock yields building blocks of life — NASA says the Curiosity rover detected six elements in a rock that indicated Mars once had a habitable environment with plenty of water.

Google Concedes That Drive-by Prying Violated Privacy — This has been percolating for a while.

Raging on the Web May Not Really Make Us Feel Better — Huh. Who knew? I guess we’ll all have to back to yelling at the teepee.

No burden, no regret in ‘fair, respectful, equal’ — I have never seen anyone who described their former support for marriage equality as an oppressive weight or burden that they were later joyously relieved to be rid of. I have never seen anyone weep with remorse and regret for the votes they cast or the words they once spoke in support of equal rights. I don’t recall seeing anyone moving in that direction at all.

Illinois Republican: Gun control ‘exactly’ like castration — Ah, the cool logic of the gun culture once again expresses itself. Saving 30,000 lives a year can’t possibly be worth this much trouble, eh? (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Richard Nixon Wished for Total Handgun Ban — And he presided over the founding of the EPA. I sometimes wonder how we’d view Nixon now if he hadn’t left office under a criminal cloud. (Via ericjamesstone.)

Falsity of Nuclear Accusation against Iraq Was Known before Bush’s Invasion — Well, duh. They knew they were lying about it. But evidence-based reality was never a high priority for the Bush administration, being as how they were Republicans and all. The kindest interpretation I’ve ever come up with is that they were certain Saddam had nukes, and were doing the political equivalent of kiting a check, figuring once they found the goods, no one would care later that the initial evidence was false.

QotD?: What’s the coldest you’ve ever been?

3/13/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (revisions and 900 additional words to “King of the Kingless”, to 4,000 words)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (19 degrees and snowing outside, what do you think?)
Weight: n/a (away from home)
Number of FEMA troops on my block escorting ACORN thugs to steal the votes of “Real Americans”: 0
Currently reading: Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Cancer, Cool, Endurance, events, France, Funny, gay, gender, guns, healthcare, Iraq, Links, Mars, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, reviews, sex, Tech, Videos, weird, Writing

Posted: 3:57 am Wed March 13 2013 | Comments(0) |