Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad beholds the Underminer

Ruling: Jesus doesn’t heal cancer — Also, this just in: Water is wet. Not offensive so much as offensively stupid, and life-threateningly dangerous to ailing people foolish or desperate enough to place their hope in this. Spiritual seeking can be an important part of healing, but confusing it with actual medical intervention is tragic. As I’ve said time and again, just because you believe it doesn’t mean it’s true.

Are sugar substitutes worse than the real thing?

Ancient fleas plagued ancient dinosaurs — And modern fleas plague modern dinosaurs! Or something.

New Device Automatically Slices and Scans Brains, Then Puts Them Into A Google Map — The latest in zombie chic? (Via danjite.)

Draisine, ca. 1818 — A forerunner of the modern bicycle. (Via my brother.)

Do Kids Care If Their Robot Friend Gets Stuffed Into a Closet? — Headline of the day.

Physicists Crack Fusion Mystery — A new theory might help researchers double the power of fusion reactors.

‘Even Jimmy Carter’ — In which the usual Republican ignorance of reality is exposed for the Nth time.

Eight “Scathing” Passages From The News Corp. Report — Maybe the UK’s Parliament could have a go at Fox News next? There’s certainly no accountability whatsoever to be had on this side of the pond.

Conservatives’ Deep-Set Fear of Women’s Rights — Very interesting piece. To me this gets at the heart of the difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives by definition want to foster a narrow, smaller worldview. Liberals by definition want to foster a wider, more diverse worldview. The liberal worldview almost always leaves plenty of room for conservative ideals. Don’t want an abortion? Don’t have one. Hate and fear homosexuality? Be straight, with my blessing. Want to deny evolution? Party on with the flat Earthers. The conservative worldview very rarely leaves room for liberal ideals, seeking to deny all of society anything conservatives themselves don’t agree with. On the basis of sheer, simple fairness, I could never be a conservative.

Stephen King: Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake! — The iconic writer scolds the superrich (including himself—and Mitt Romney) for not giving back, and warns of a Kingsian apocalyptic scenario if inequality is not addressed in America. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Richard Grenell hounded from Romney campaign by anti-gay conservatives — Well, at least the GOP is being intellectually consistent for once.

[Michigan] EM referendum off November ballot, opponents vow appeal — Republicans cited the wrong font size on the title of the petitions circulated by Stand Up For Democracy, a coalition of groups that launched the petition campaign, as the reason for not approving the initiative for the ballot. Opponents gathered 203,238 signatures, roughly 40,000 more than needed to get a repeal question on the ballot. Yep, I can see that as a compelling political argument. Ah, the principled consistency of the GOP, who always believe the voice of the people should be heard, except when they disagree with it. (Via corwynofamber.)

?otd: Is nothing beneath you?

5/3/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (3,500 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 60 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 7.25 (fitful)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: The Blade Itself Joe Abercrombie

Tags: Cancer, Cool, Food, Funny, gay, gender, healthcare, Links, media, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, sex, Tech

Posted: 4:42 am Wed May 02 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad celebrates the birth of a tumor

The New World of Publishing: Respect — Dean Wesley Smith on much-needed changes to trade novel publishing contracts.

Is Google Drive worse for privacy than iCloud, Skydrive, and Dropbox? — Another analysis that finds a more balanced outcome. (Via goulo.)

New York faced with swarms of bees which feed off human SWEAT — It’s the bee zombie apocalypse!

An astrological rarity: Venus moving across the sun in May — An offensively stupid headline in WaPo to describe an interesting astronomical event.

Rubber Chicken in Space — This photo is hilarious.

The Trust Molecule — Why are some of us caring and some of us cruel, some generous and some greedy? Paul J. Zakon the new science of morality— and how it could be used to create a more virtuous society.

What the Secret Service could learn from drunken sailors

“America Does not Go Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy” – John Quincy Adams — Old John Quincy Adams ain’t careful, he’ll find himself drummed out of the Tea Party for not following the wisdom of the Founders. No, wait… Help me, Rush Limbaugh!

What’s wrong with American politics

Behind the Right’s Phony War on the Nonexistent Religion of Secularism — Because in conservative America, the lies drive fund raising and votes much better than the truth ever does. My ongoing offense at this arises from the intersection of allegedly high-minded moralism on the Right and the flat-out, knowing false witness borne by these high-minded moralists on the Right. Christian conservatives cynically threw out their own Ninth Commandment decades ago in pursuit of political gain, all the time declaring that atheists like me are immoral. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Surrendering On Marriage — A truly conservative party would be pushing marriage equality, as the Tories are in Britain. What the GOP is, in stark contrast, is not a conservative party governing a modern society. It’s a radical fundamentalist and anti-government religious movement, dedicated to a core rejection of almost everything modernity brings but money.

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. — We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party. The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. So glad you finally noticed.

Mitt Romney stays put — He hopes to win the White House by doubling down on small-government conservatism. Yeah, that worked out so well for the country under Dubya.

Ready for the Fight: Rolling Stone Interview with Barack Obama — The president, in the Oval Office, discusses his job, the opposition and the coming campaign.

?otd: What do you celebrate?

4/29/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bicycle ride
Hours slept: 8.75 (solid)
Weight: 241.4 (!)
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones (graphic novel), George R.R. Martin with Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson

Tags: Christianists, gay, Links, media, nature, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, weird

Posted: 6:54 am Sun April 29 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad only let them go so wrong out of kindness, I suppose

Panel Discussion Moderated by Terry Bisson and Interviews with Rudy Rucker, K. W. Jeter, and Jay Lake — Rick Kleffel with a podcast of some of us Being Smart at SF in SF last February.

The Cultivation of Imagination — Art writing guru James Gurney with some interesting thoughts.

Emotion — xkcd on cancer.

Monsanto Blamed For Bee Population Collapse, So It Buys Bee Research Firm — (Via danjite.)

Pacific reef shark populations ‘plummeting,’ study says

Space shuttle with horse and rider — I find this photograph striking.

Big Bang Machine Discovers Brand New Particle

Asteroids Could Be Mined for Fuel, Says Company — Orbiting spacecraft could be refueled with water taken from planetoids—but some experts doubt the economics.

Explaining the CISPA Cybersecurity Bill, the Latest Threat to your Privacy — Hoo boy.

White Privilege — Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about privilege.

Homophobic? Maybe You’re Gay — Why are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners? Because water is wet. Typical conservative hypocrisy, in the same vein as “The only moral abortion is my own.”

Legal discrimination, but no name-calling, please — …a desire to avoid being labeled a bigot while defending legal discrimination Hello, Christian Right. Also, this: Christian petition affirms same-sex relationships.

The Public Doesn’t Share Romney’s Cold War Mentality on Russia — Ya think. Confidential to the Romney campaign: The Soviet Union hasn’t existed for over twenty years. And they’re really not a threat to Czechoslovakia, which hasn’t existed for almost twenty years. Confidential to the rest of America: Tell me again why these GOP morons should be in charge?

John Boehner’s poker face — In January, John Boehner couldn’t have been more confident about the state of the GOP majority. It was “nearly impossible” that Democrats might win the House back in 2012. In fact, the Speaker said, Republicans were well positioned to hold the House for the next decade. Ah, for the heady days of the Permanent Majority, when the GOP turned a budget surplus into a frightening deficit, reversed our paydown on the national debt, and launched a reckless trillion dollar war of choice. All of which is now Obama’s fault, of course. Just ask any Tea Partier. No wonder people want the Republicans back in power.

?otd: Where did Lefty get the bread to go?

4/28/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bicycle ride
Hours slept: 8.75 (solid)
Weight: 242.4 (!)
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones (graphic novel), George R.R. Martin with Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson

Tags: Art, Cancer, Christianists, Cool, gay, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, podcasts, Politics, Process, race, Religion, Science, Tech, Writing

Posted: 6:50 am Sat April 28 2012 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad skids into Friday

Everything You Need to Know about the Hugo Award — In one handy chart. (Snurched from Andrew Wheeler.)

Sticking With Dropbox — A cursory but alarming analysis of Google Drive’s terms of service. Short form: if you’re producing copyrighted material for which you wish to protect first rights (i.e., if you’re a working or aspiring professional author), for the love of God, don’t use Google Drive. More comments on this from the same source, indicating this might not be such a big deal after all. I remain dubious. (Via danjite.)

Dogfights on Your iPhone — This is cool. I want one. (Thanks to Dad.)

Descriptive Camera, 2012 — This is also very weirdly cool. A text-based camera. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

‘GPS brain cells’ seen in pigeons — Researchers have spotted a group of 53 cells within pigeons’ brains that respond to the direction and strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Jupiter and the Moons of Earth — APOD again. Though I have to wonder why the phrase “Earth’s largest natural satellite” was used to describe the moon in this photo’s cutline. Did we really need the adjective “natural” for clarity there?

What are Those Weird Spirals on Mars’ Surface? — The giant coils suggest a mysterious network of valleys on the Martian surface were formed through volcanic activity.

Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole: A Real-Life Ronald Searle Love Story — A lovely piece about coping with cancer through art. (Courtesy of fjm.)

More debunking of the ex-NASA 49 climate change deniers — Remember that embarrassingly bad letter written by 49 ex-NASA employees saying that global warming is a fraud and that NASA shouldn’t support it? Not that the people who need to read this piece will do so, and even if they do, they’ll just dismiss it as part of the hoax. Sorry, climate change denialists, but the facts are seriously biased against you.

Women’s Prayer Group Praying That the Women at MRFF All Get Incurable Breast Cancer — As the hymn goes, “They will know that we are Christians by our love.” And people wonder why I am an atheist.

Study of the Day: Even the Religious Lose Faith When They Think Critically — New research in Science shows that, unlike intuitive thinking, activating the analytical cognitive system promotes religious skepticism. Which dovetails nicely with the GOP’s decades long effort to tear down education in this country.

Satanazis III: Night of the Satanazis — Maybe you’re thinking this is just a snarky post, mocking a bunch of fringe characters for their over-the-top rhetoric and their literal demonization of their political opponents. But these aren’t just fringe characters telling us that liberals are Nazis who murder babies and love the Satan whom they serve. These are Roman Catholic bishops, state governors, influential clergy and elected officials saying this. The great legacy of conservatism of this era will be how it legitimized absolute lunacy.

Using U.S. Dollars, Zimbabwe Finds a Problem: No Change — (Thanks to Dad.)

The Children of Fallujah – Sayef’s story — The phosphorus shells that devastated this city were fired in 2004. But are the victims of America’s dirty war still being born?

GOP Sets Up A Showdown On Violence Against Women Act — “Unfortunately in Congress, there are some who’d like to make this a political play. They’d like to make cheap shots and try to politicize it in an election year,” said Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD). Right. Because no Republican ever has done anything like this, especially not to President Obama. We all know how principled the GOP is, after all.

We Are Not Stupid — Romney is still Romney and he’s still running as the head of a party that has spent the last few years pursuing a profoundly regressive agenda. Last few years? Try my entire lifetime.

?otd: Where did your week go?

4/27/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hour (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bicycle ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (fitful)
Weight: 241.4 (!)
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones (graphic novel), George R.R. Martin with Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson

Tags: Art, Awards, Cancer, Christianists, Cool, education, Funny, gender, healthcare, Iraq, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Process, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech

Posted: 5:29 am Fri April 27 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad flew home, boy are its arms tired

Tor Books goes completely DRM-free — Old news for those of you who follow ebooks, but just in case you missed it. Also, more from John Scalzi and Charlie Stross.

Beneath an Abandoned Hospital: Thoughts from Places — (Via shelly_rae.)

So Much Life on a Little Patch of Earth — Counting bugs in a backyard in Bellingham, WA.

Mysterious ‘Godzillus’ fossil find stumps scientists — An amateur paleontologist discovered an unusual fossil last year. Now experts are attempting to determine its identity.

Edison’s Revenge: The Rise of DC Power — In a world of more electronics and solar energy, there’s less and less need for AC power. Nikolai Tesla is spinning in his grave. Hopefully wrapped in copper wire while doing so.

Rage Against the Smart Meter — Seeing Big Brother in the grid, some citizens are mounting opposition to wireless electricity meters. Break out the tinfoil hats, boys.

Warm Ocean Waters to Blame for Antarctic Ice Melt — A new satellite survey indicates ice-shelf thinning is due to winds driving warmer ocean currents under the shelves. Yet another example of how liberals get the facts to conspire against the conservative version of truth.

Climate change proponent realizes he was wrong, but for the wrong reasons — What happens when a scientist gets the science wrong. This is as nutty as climate change denialism, from the other direction.

Let’s beef up Social Security benefits instead of cutting them — The best way to improve Social Security’s value is by increasing benefits to better serve the neediest workers and expanding its reach to cover workers and dependents who have been excluded. Except the Republican lies about Social Security make for much better headlines.

Brutality of Servility — An interesting take on the John Edwards trial. Ghu am I glad he didn’t become president. This would have been worse than the Bill and Monica show.

Today We Pray for Women for Whom Pregnancy is Not Good News… — There are still some people in the Christian church who can look beyond their own prejudices and the deliberate misreading of scripture that characterize the Christianists of the forced pregnancy movement. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

How the Pennsylvania Senate Primary Explains Democrats’ Chances to Keep the Senate

Newt Gingrich to suspend campaign — He truly believes he would be the best candidate for the party but recognizes the objective reality that recent primary voters have not agreed and intends to be loyal to the party. Um, Newt. You’re a Republican. A leading light of the political party that explicitly rejects objective reality in favor of ideology, deliberate falsehood, bigotry and sheer wishful thinking.

Hail to Mitt: Romney Has a Big Night—Sort Of — Which he achieved mostly by pretending that the GOP had nothing to do with either creating the current state of the economy under the Bush administration, or with perpetuating the current state of the economy through their absolutist intransigence towards Obama. Luckily for Romney, Your Liberal Media supports that blatantly deceptive narrative, and millions of low information voters are happy to go along with it.

?otd: How high did you go yesterday?

4/26/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (1.0 hour on 1,600 words on Their Currents Turn Awry, plus a fair amount of outline work, 1.0 hour on WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bicycle ride
Hours slept: 6.75 (solid)
Weight: 241.6 (!)
Currently reading: A Game of Thrones (graphic novel), George R.R. Martin with Daniel Abraham and Tommy Patterson

Tags: Christianists, climate, Cool, ebooks, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, sex, Tech, Videos

Posted: 5:37 am Thu April 26 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad is as stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay

From Kerouac To Rand, ‘Harmful’ Reads For Writers — Hmmm.

Is the Book Cover Dead? — It sure doesn’t look good. Thanks, technology.

Letter from Philip K. Dick to Jeff Walker regarding “Blade Runner” — Wow. (Via danjite.)

The Missed Spanish Opportunity to Conquer China That Wasn’t — A weird little alt.hist stub that popped up in the political news.

Block That Comma! — Hahaha! Comma snark and The New Yorker. (Via my friend M—.)

Vintage movie posters for scary movies — Muahahahah!

Stonehenge you can bounce on — Mmm, inflatable trilithons. (From a mailing list I’m on.)

Evolution seen in ‘synthetic DNA’ — Wow.

New report recommends NASA rethink how it avoids contaminating other worlds

In the City, Bright is the New Black — White rooftops and urban temperatures.

Early Bloomers — [T]his year, after a record warm winter, blueberry bushes began to flower on April 1, six weeks earlier than in Thoreau’s time. Amazing, how liberals can get even the plants to cooperate in their climate change fraud. Thank God for good conservative outlets such as FOX News and Rush Limbaugh who keep those nasty, biased facts away from Real Americans.

‘Girls’ Through The Veil — Ta-Nehisi Coates on the representation of race in media. A very good read in its own right, as well as being food for thought for those of us who spend time working on writing the other.

Obama Faces Entrenched Resistance Among Some White Voters — Nope. No racism here. Not in conservative America. No sirree bob. Especially not from all those angry white conservatives who never said a damned thing about Bush’s wars, deficits or economic collapse until Obama became president and they could blame him.

Homophobia may reveal denial of own same-sex attraction, study suggests — I long ago reached the point of assuming that homophobia was a combination of religious bigotry and repressed homosexuality. That reality has been confirmed over and over and over.

Don’t Blame “Corporate Personhood” — Citizens United decimated what remained of campaign-finance reform, but the damage has been long in the making.

Tax rates are at historic lows — This is a fact. It is a true thing. You can look it up. But as with many facts these days, this fact is rejected by people who feel that facts are only factual if you “believe” in them. Thus we have one of the stranger aspects of American politics just now: Millions of citizens angry with President Obama for raising their taxes despite the fact that he actually lowered them. Welcome to conservative America, where reality takes a distant back seat to manufactured outrage and ideological convenience.

USDA to Let Industry Self-Inspect Chicken — Ah, the conservative dream of industry self-regulation springs to life again. What could possibly go wrong? Look how well it worked out for Enron, and Goldman-Sachs, and the entire mortgage industry, and the entire tobacco industry, and… (Via danjite.)

Cantor Suggests Anti-Semitism Is A Problem Within The House GOP Caucus — What, conservatives? Discriminating against someone on the basis of religion or race? Just as inconceivable as conservative discrimination by gender would be. Inconceivable, I tell you.

The Sympathy Gap — Republicans, in their own words. Disgusting. (Snurched from Slacktivist.)

GOP Senate Candidate Raese Compares No-Smoking Sign To Jewish-Star Patches — Conservatives: providing thoughtful, measured leadership on critical American issues since, um, never.

Condi Rice on veep slot: ‘Thank you, but no’ — Smart woman.

?otd: Are you sentimental, if you know what I mean?

4/20/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (3,200 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
Weight: 239.6
Currently reading: Somewhere Else by Sally McLennan

Tags: Art, Books, climate, Cool, Funny, gender, Language, Links, Movies, Personal, Politics, Process, race, Religion, Science, Tech, weird

Posted: 5:24 am Fri April 20 2012 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad is as stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay

Neal Stephenson on Science Fiction, Building Towers 20 Kilometers High … and Insurance

Any kind of physical activity lowers Alzheimer’s risk

Reversing a heart attack: scientists reprogram scar tissue into working muscle

The Screech Owl Cam is Live Again (at Last!)

‘Extreme Universe’ puzzle deepens — The mystery surrounding the source of the highest-energy particles known in the Universe has grown deeper.

Neutrino Communications: An Interstellar Future?

Racism vs. the Race Card — Ta-Nehisi Coates is thoughtful on conservative views of racism.

Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes — Review finds thousands of papers detailing shameful acts were culled, while others were kept secret illegally. As usually, destruction of the evidence is a lesser crime than what is being concealed. Anybody remember the Iran-Contra raid where the FBI politely waited for Oliver North and Fawn Hall to finish shredding documents?

Phony Mommy Wars — Yep.

The most amazing Supreme Court chart. Maybe ever. — This should go right next to a chart about the ideological fixations of the Court’s conservative wing.

The Bush National-Guard Story Rises from the Dead — The story itself was never discredited or disproven, quite the opposite in point of fact, but the conservative smoke screen around it, enthusiastically abetted by Your Liberal Media, has ensured the truth will never be taken seriously.

Romney’s Foreign Policy Could Be More Ideological and Reckless Than Bush’s — As someone who, apparently unlike every single likely Republican voter in the United States, can actually remember the decade just past, may I say, “Holy crap!”

?otd: Are you sentimental, if you know what I mean?

4/19/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (2,500 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
Weight: 239.6
Currently reading: Somewhere Else by Sally McLennan

Tags: Cool, Culture, gender, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, race, Science, Tech

Posted: 5:27 am Thu April 19 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad toddles off to the oncology unit again

Because This Point Cannot Be Made Often Enough — Actually, I thought romance was bigger than that.

The Challenge of Going Vegan

Cadet: We’re Not Sleeping Here, There Are Dead Cows — Forest Service Considers Blasting Out Dead Cows With Explosives. From the department of real life being much weirder than fiction. (Via danjite.)

The Difference Between UX and UI: Subtleties Explained in Cereal — Hahahah. (Thanks to daviddlevine.)

Buried Treasure: World War II Spitfires To Be Unearthed in Burma — Cool! (Thanks to oldcharliebrown.)

Man strips naked at Oregon airport in TSA protest — Ah, Portland.

How Will Humans Fly to the Stars? — Naked?

‘Rogue’ Alien Planets May Circle Billions of Stars — Billions and billions!

Did Einstein’s First Wife Secretly Co-author His 1905 Relativity Paper?

Tupac “hologram” merely pretty cool optical illusion

Sound familiar? MSNBC article about the military getting ready for melting polar cap — [The] biggest preparers for global climate change are the military. Those damn hippies. Yep. Because national defense can’t be bogged down in pernicious ideological lies. Once again, the facts are biased against the conservative position.

De-legitimizing Christians outside the evangelical tribe — Even while they bemoan their alleged oppression with self-valorizing congratulations, the Christianists have been winning the media war.

Wealth & Righteousness? — Do we [Mormons] really believe that just because one is rich one is blessed by God? Cripes is that a vile and pernicious meme. Thank you, John Calvin. (Via theresamather.)

Catholic Bishop Claims Obama Is ‘Following a Similar Path’ To Hitler — One of the many, many reasons I am an atheist is moronic lunacy like this from the mouths of religious leaders. This isn’t some fringe nutcase with a trailer park chapel, this is a Prince of the Church speaking.

The Democrats’ Duty: Bring the GOP Back from Crazy — Interesting piece from the perspective of the angry left.

If Health Insurance Mandates Are Unconstitutional, Why Did the Founding Fathers Back Them? — That’s the problem with history. It rarely matches ideology unless you’ve been able to edit it yourself. Hence Christian “colleges” and the pathetic joke that is Conservapedia. Because the conservative version of reality hardly ever stands up to the facts. (Snurched from Slacktivist.)

Bush was wrong about his tax cuts, even to the name — Just this single piece of Bush’s GOP agenda pushed through in the first term of his presidency — his tax cuts, enacted in 2001 and 2003 — have added more dollars to the nation’s debt and deficit than almost all of the rest of his horrible policy initiatives combined. Remember kids, cutting taxes increases economic growth. Just ask any Republican about how that worked out in the past decade. They’ll proudly tell you that all our economic woes today are Obama’s fault.

?otd: Got tumors?

4/18/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (2,900 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.75 (solid)
Weight: 240.2
Currently reading: Somewhere Else by Sally McLennan

Tags: Christianists, climate, Cool, Culture, Food, Funny, healthcare, Links, music, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, Travel, weird

Posted: 5:31 am Wed April 18 2012 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad rings like a bell through the night

Mur Lafferty writes a letter to her daughter — Beautiful and tough.

Making Education Brain Science

Fantasy flying boat art — Mmm.

A Startup Puts the Internet in Your Couch Cushions

The love affair of William Francis Gibbs (Fortune, 1957) — A man and his ship.

Unanswered Questions in F.C.C.’s Google Case — This is interesting, and a little alarming.

The Science of Why They Deny Science — and Reality — He writes early on and illustrates throughout it’s not that liberals or independents are always right about science, it’s that, lately, conservatives are wrong a lot. From all outward appearances they often seem to be sincerely unaware of how wrong they are. At times they can even make a good faith effort to grasp why they’re wrong and still fail. The book also introduced something new, at least for me, called the smart idiot effect: the more educated conservatives are, the more sure they are about their false beliefs.

G.O.P. Lawmakers and Romney Face a Delicate Tango — If Mitt Romney is considering a quick pivot to the center as he heads into the general election, he will find an imposing impediment: fellow Republicans in the House. I can’t help but be amused by this. And the more the national GOP bows to pressure from their hard right, the more they drive away undecided voters, centrists, moderates, women, Latinos and pretty much anyone else with either a heart or a brain. So go, go, Republican congress!

?otd: Would you stay if she promised you heaven? Will you ever win?

4/16/2012
Writing time yesterday: n/a (cancer stress)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.0 (fitful)
Weight: 239.6
Currently reading: Somewhere Else by Sally McLennan

Tags: Art, Cool, gender, Links, Personal, Politics, Science, Tech

Posted: 5:10 am Mon April 16 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad is magically bored on a quiet street corner

The Sound of One Shoe Dropping — Scrivener’s Error on U.S. v. Apple, Inc., et al., the shiny new lawsuit alleging ebook price fixing. (Disclaimer, Macmillan, my own publisher via my Tor relationship, is a defendant in this lawsuit.)

Airplane Lavatory Self-Portraits, in the Flemish Style — Hahaha. (Via willyumtx.)

I remember you — Roger Ebert on the meaning of death.

Why Scientists Are Fooling Animals With Virtual Reality — New technological developments in virtual reality allow researchers to study the neurological basis of decision making in insects, rodents, and other animals. But do roaches truly think the simulation is real, or are they just playing a video game? It’s the Matrix! (Snurched from @DavidBrin1.)

Computer Scientists Build Computer Using Swarms of Crabs — Logic gates that exploit the swarming behaviour of soldier crabs have been built and tested in Japan. The future is here, and it has claws…

Bits of the Future: First Universal Quantum Network Prototype Links 2 Separate Labs — Physicists demonstrate a scalable quantum network that ought to be adaptable for all manner of long-distance quantum communication.

‘Universal’ cancer vaccine developed — A vaccine that can train cancer patients’ own bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells has been developed by scientists. (Via shelly_rae.)

Closer to using aspirin for cancer prevention — Not that it helps me now… (Via bravado111.)

Saving Lives in a Time of Cholera — (Via tillyjane.)

Now This Is Interesting: A Climate Prediction From 1981 — Hey. Guess what. They were right. Amazing, how those facts just line up against the conservative worldview over and over again. (Snurched from Slacktivist.)

Born This Way — The new weird science of hardwired political identity. Speaking of yesterday’s post. (Via AH.)

Which Way Does Your Blog Lean? — An analysis of political discourse online. The practices of the left are more consistent with the prediction that the networked public sphere offers new pathways for discursive participation by a wider array of individuals, whereas the practices of the right suggest that a small group of elites may retain more exclusive agenda-setting authority online.

Allen West: I’ve ‘Heard’ 80 House Democrats Are Communist Party Members — Tell me again that conservatives aren’t bugfuck crazy?

Tennessee “Monkey Bill” Update — Speaking of bugfuck crazy. Ah, conservatives. Ruining education for all of America’s children, not just their own. Yet another reason I can never be a conservative. I just don’t have it in me to force such massive intellectual inconsistency and deep counterfactuals on generations of young minds.

Ann Romney takes to Twitter to defend herself — Take a public stance, deal with the public response. Just be glad you’ll never get the Hillary treatment from Your Liberal Media, Ann. As a conservative, you’re immune to that level of investigation and harassment. Nancy Reagan and both Bush first ladies proved that in spades.

Santorum stands down — Ah, Senator Frothy Mix, we hardly knew ya’.

Remembering Rick Santorum: Obama’s Secret Weapon

Re-Election Would Allow Obama to Ignore the Left More Than He Already Does — The conservative idea that somehow Obama’s “inner leftist” will be unleashed is just another one of their bizarre fixations. I’m one of those people who voted enthusiastically for Obama from the left last time around, and has been repeatedly disappointed ever since. Trust me, he’s no leftist.

?otd: Are you out of your brain on the train?

4/12/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (3,000 words on Their Currents Turn Awry)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
Weight: 239.6
Currently reading: The Bone Doll’s Twin by Lynn Flewelling

Tags: Art, Cancer, climate, Cool, ebooks, education, healthcare, Links, media, nature, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Science, Tech, weird

Posted: 5:39 am Thu April 12 2012 | Comments(2) |