Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad awakens with slow reluctance

In case you missed it over the weekend, my new cancer tattoo: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] — Yes, on the back of my skull.

Christopher Walken reads Where The Wild Things Are

Antarctica – Fantastical World without Borders — An Antarctica travelog, relevant to one of my future projects. (Via bravado111.)

Avería: The Average Font — Interpolative typography. Huh. Fascinating. (Thanks to kshandra.)

Washington Park: 1907 — Detroit’s “moon towers”, as depicted here, later were sold to the City of Austin, where most of them still survive.

One’s A Crowd — The trend toward living alone?

garyomaha on working lunches, or not

Neurocinematic comparison of monkeys and humans — Spaghetti western reveals differences between human and monkey brain. Mmm, neurocinematic. I loved this bit: Like most other films, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a complex multisensory stimulus, filled with rich, operatic imagery and, of course, Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable score. It is, however, fairly safe to assume that humans and monkeys will interpret the film quite differently. (Via danjite.)

Path Is Found for the Spread of Alzheimer’s — The headline is slightly misleading, as the story refers to Alzheimer’s progression within an individual rather than to transmission between individuals. Interesting stuff.

The Komen Controversy: Planned Parenthood Claims a New Kind of Victory in the Culture War — I am baffled by the conservative charge that Planned Parenthood “bullied” Komen. What is the Right’s treatment of Planned Parenthood but bullying, if you want to frame it in those terms? More to the point, for decades the entire forced pregnancy movement is about bullying desperate, vulnerable young women and their medical providers. What else is a clinic blockade or a doctor target list but sheer, awful bullying in the name of what? The god of love? Decency? Conservative bigotry and “morals”? Can you imagine the reaction if liberal-progressives blockaded churches and targeted pastors? Project much, guys? The Right can dish it out, but they can’t take it.

A Puritan’s ‘war against religion’ — Roger Williams, the Puritan who founded Rhode Island, insisted on the state refraining from intervening in the relationship between humans and God. Freedom of religion absolutely means freedom from religion. That is the best protection any church has against persecution. Despite the modern GOP interpretation, freedom of religion doesn’t mean the freedom to exercise oppressive bigotry, narrow-minded judgmenentalism, or tear down educational and cultural standards in favor of silly mythmaking.

ericjamesstone points out that I am wrong in characterizing Romney as saying he won’t have a Muslim in his cabinet — This in connection to my comment that I thought making an issue of Romney’ religion was a red herring, until he made an issue of Islam as a religion. Speaking as an atheist, there is nothing more or less at issue with Romney’s LDS membership than there is with Newt’s Catholicism or Clinton’s Southern Baptist faith. To me, the religion of the candidates would only be an issue if there were a straightforward atheist running on a major party ticket. Which won’t likely happen in my lifetime…

Senate GOP: Activist Federal Judges Wanted — The hypocrisy of a group of Republicans who are supporting the lawsuit against Obama’s recess appointments. Republicans being hypocritical? That’s as inconceivable as the idea of Newt Gingrich cheating on his wife.

The true conservative alternative: Ron Paul? — It’s sad that conservatism has become a race to the bottom to display the most ignorance, bigotry and sheer foolishness.

?otd: Dream much??

---

2/6/2012
Writing time yesterday: 5.5 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (solid)
Weight: 229.4
Currently reading: The Man in the Moone, and Other Lunar Fantasies ed. Faith Pizor

Tags: Antarctica, Art, Books, Cancer, Culture, gender, healthcare, Links, Movies, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, scorner, Tech, Texas, Videos, work

Posted: 6:29 am Mon February 06 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad from long, long ago

Review: ‘Hugo’ is a cabinet of wonders — CNN on Hugo, which I highly recommend to all of you.

SFFWRTCHT 1 Year Anniversary Show Giveaway

10 easy (but awesome) DIY Star Wars crafts projects — An R2D2 dreidel. Really? (Thanks, I think, to my brother.)

Cancer’s Escape Routes — Scientists are beginning to discover myriad strategies tumors use to avoid attacks by anti-cancer drugs. Yeah, well. That’s why I had to have a second round of chemo.

Kodak’s long fade to black

What’s in a Name? Ask Google

As Water Levels Drop, Texas Drought Reveals Secrets of the Deep — Interesting. (Thanks to Dad.)

Terraforming: Enter the ‘Shell World’

Nano Paint Could Make Airplanes Invisible to Radar

Air Force Extends Secret Space Plane’s Mysterious Mission

The American-Western European Values Gap — From the Pew Research Center. (Via danjite.)

Obama Gun Control Policy: President Stays Virtually Silent On Issue — You really have to wonder why the “Obama is coming for our guns” meme has so much traction among the GOP base. It’s not connected to reality in any way, shape or form.

The World According To Cain — The Cain campaign’s foreign policy document is laughable. I realize that the GOP thrives on low information voters, but low information candidates? Is that really a good idea? And speaking of low information candidates, Michele Bachman says she would close the US embassy in Iran. Uh, hasn’t been one those in over thirty years. Hello? GOP presidential field? This is the reality-based community calling…

Reporter’s Notebook: The Rise and Fall of the real Herman Cain

?otd: How far, far away is your galaxy?

---

12/5/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.5 (fitful)
Weight: 212.6
Currently (re)reading: Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold

Tags: Books, Cancer, Culture, Funny, guns, health, Links, Movies, Personal, Politics, reviews, Science, Tech, Texas

Posted: 9:31 am Mon December 05 2011 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad for a sleepy Wednesday

A thoughtful and rather starkly negative review of Green — One might well imagine my intentions for the book were rather different than this reviewer’s experience of the book.

What are the most interesting societies, alien or otherwise, in SF/F? — Another SF Signal Mind Meld, including comments from me.

Parents Urged Again to Limit TV for Youngest — Yeah, no kidding. Mother of the Child and I have raised the_child without television and with only limited access to video, and she seems to have done just fine.

Android debuts Ice Cream Sandwich — Really, I just love this headline. Context is for the weak.

When Hacking Your Car Is a Civic Duty

Seeing through walls — Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Lab have developed new radar technology that provides real-time video of what’s going on behind solid walls. I’m sure Harry Potter has a spell for this.

Habitable, Not Earth-like — Centauri Dreams on exoplanets.

Dust storm shrouds Texas city — An enormous cloud hits Lubbock, where residents compare it to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The ongoing drought helped produce the storm, an expert says. So where are the Christianists claiming some imagined slight against their deity? If God can punish Orlando or DC, why not Lubbock?

Spain’s stolen babies and the families who lived a lie — The role of the religious leaders of Spain in this story is disgusting. Can you imagine the reaction if atheists were stealing babies from Catholic hospitals?

David Barton and Ken Ham aren’t mistaken, they’re just lying — Creationists lying? Perish the thought.

Ralph Reed: When the Government Helps the Poor, It Takes Away Our Liberty — I’m sure it says exactly that in one of my Bibles here.

Glenn Beck: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Will ‘Kill Everybody’ — Right. Because the first impulse of liberal-progressives is to proclaim the need for Second Amendment remedies and talk about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. Oh, and to bomb clinics, too. Projection much, Glenn?

?otD: What questions did you ask today?

---

10/19/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 hours (fitful)
Weight: 218.6
Currently reading: The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod

Tags: Books, cars, Christianists, Cool, Funny, Green, Links, Occupy Wall Street, parenting, Personal, Politics, Religion, reviews, Science, Spain, Tech, Texas, Writing

Posted: 5:38 am Wed October 19 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad gets slowly infused

Don’t forget the new Endurance ARC contest: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

A reader reacts to Endurance — He liked it.

Queering Shakespeare: reflections on damaging tropes, and some positive alternatives — Julia Rios at Outer Alliance on Shakespear, queers and the peurile vileness that is Orson Scott Card’s worldview.

On 9/11, astronaut looked down on horrific scene

Rollback from GRAIL’s Rocket — APOD with a neat time-lapse photograh.

NASA successfully tests five-segment solid rocket motor — World’s largest, apparently. I originally found this story through a FOX news site, but I refuse, even to link to them as a source.

Saturn Moon Has Thin Atmosphere, Astronomers Discover — Icy body Dione may have dilute layer of oxygen air, study says.

Scientists develop blood swimming ‘microspiders’ to heal injuries, deliver drugs — Fantastic Voyage, anyone? (Thanks to cornwynofamber.)

The Battle Over Zomia — Scholars are enchanted by the notion of this anarchic region in Asia. But how real is it? (Thanks to danjite.)

They Messed With Texas — Perry and the death penalty.

California Republicans Going Extinct? — Given Prop 8 and the recent history of the California govenorship, I don’t actually believe this, but it’s an interesting read.

How the Apocalyptic GOP is Dragging us Into Civil War — But for the new GOP, compromise of any kind defeats their central purpose, which is political totale krieg. This party’s entire reason for being is conflict and aggression. There is no underlying patriotic instinct to find middle ground with the rest of us, because the party doesn’t have a vision for society that includes anyone outside the tent. That’s what happens when you religionize your politics, and brand anyone who stands against you sinful and a traitor. I’ll looking at you guys Atwater, Aisles and Rove.

?otD: How many drips in a drop?

---

9/10/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo)
Body movement: 0.0. hours (chemo)
Hours slept: 17.5 hours (maps, lenghty overnight … ah, chemo)
Weight: 227.0
Currently reading: Antiphon by Ken Scholes

Tags: Books, California, Contests, Culture, Endurance, gay, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, Religion, reviews, Science, Texas

Posted: 9:52 am Sat September 10 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad looks over the horizon

Don’t forget the new Endurance ARC contest: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Footprints and flags on the moon won’t last forever — Footprints, anyone?

A drink a day linked to healthy aging — Good news for all you budding lushes out there.

A fall from grace — Roger Ebert on his health, and frailty. I know whereof he speaks.

A 7-ton Satellite to Fall on Earth This Month

Climate Scientists’ Pole-to-Pole Greenhouse Gas Survey Near Completion

Wildfire Smoke Plumes over Texas — This is a terrible problem. I have friends and relatives whose property (and potentially lives) are threatened. Still, I think Pharyngula comment on the Texas drought perfectly applies to this as well. To my conservative friends who claim to believe that natural disasters are a form of divine commentary: Why is God punishing Texas?

Banning All Religion — An interesting squib from Australia.

Channeling FDR: The Moral Case Against Unemployment — Unfortunately, our politics has become downright punitively Calvinistic about the unemployed. Even more unfortunately, nearly half the electorate seems to be fine with this.

The Myth of Conservative Purity — A conservative view of the Right’s no-compromise tendencies.

Dick Cheney praises Hillary Clinton — Also, this just in: monkeys have flown out of my butt to deliver hockey sticks to Hell.

Asymmetrical War — Ta-Nehisi Coates on Republican obstructionism. As he says of Obama’s view of Boehner and McConnell, And we wonder what portion of “Government is the problem” he failed to understand.

Pass, Fail and Politics — Call me crazy, but I actually want someone smarter than I am in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, millions of my fellow Americans demonstrably would rather have someone they’re comfortable having a beer with. A valedictorian president or a frat boy president? Is that really our political divide?

?otD: Where would you go if you could?

---

9/8/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 hours (fitful)
Weight: 226.0
Currently reading: Antiphon by Ken Scholes

Tags: Australia, Books, Contests, Endurance, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Texas

Posted: 5:05 am Thu September 08 2011 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad for a midweek

With Cancer, Let’s Face It: Words Are Inadequate — More on this topic. (Via rinolj, who knows whereof he speaks.)

New study finds giant impacts aren’t periodic

Tech concern trolling — Pandagon on the privileging of older media and technology over newer developments. In other words, hey, you kids, quit digitizing my lawn.

Piece of doomed Shuttle Columbia discovered in drought dried lake

Astronomers Define New Class Of Planet: The Super-Earth — Rocky planets that are almost as big as Uranus seem far more common than anyone suspected.

The Cold War’s Missing Atom Bombs — In a 1968 plane crash, the US military lost an atom bomb in Greenland’s Arctic ice. But this was no isolated case. Up to 50 nuclear warheads are believed to have gone missing during the Cold War, and not all of them are in unpopulated areas. (Snurched from Dark Roasted Blend.)

West Texas town faces looming prospect of dried-out reservoir — Weather is not climate, but changing weather patterns are. I’m sure Rush Limbaugh can explain this away.

‘We too fall with it’ — Slacktivist Fred Clark on the intellectual and spiritual poverty of Young Earth Creationism.

Is ‘Christian fundamentalist’ label correct for Norway terror suspect?

The Deficit Deal: We Got Taken — I really expected better from Obama. Unfortunately, I’m stuck voting for him in the next election, as the alternatives are unimaginably worse.

Fox ‘Expert’ Blasts Expanding Access To Birth Control: “Are We Going To Do Pedicures And Manicures As Well?” — We’re $14 trillion in debt and now we’re going to cover birth control, breast pumps, counseling for abuse? Are we going to do pedicures and manicures as well? Ah, conservatism. Batshit cruel to the end.

Steve King: Covering Birth Control Will Make Us ‘A Dying Civilization’ — The rationalists on the Right check in on this topic. Not just cruel, but stupid, too!

Gingrich Accused of Twitter Fraud — The sterling ethics of conservatism are why so many heartland voters turn away from those venal moral relativists in the Democratic party.

?otD: Whereat?

---

8/3/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (post-op recovery)
Body movement: 30 minutes stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (solid)
Weight: 225.2
Currently reading: Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

Tags: Cancer, Cool, Culture, healthcare, Links, Norway, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, sex, Tech, Texas

Posted: 5:29 am Wed August 03 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad greets the morning without queasiness

The Periodic Table of Storytelling — (Via SF.)

Characteristic Ages of Genres — Andrew Wheeler is amusing while making an interesting point.

Call Michael Brotherton the Roger Ebert of science fiction movies — I remember him when he was was just a punk kid grad student.

Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse — (Thanks to lillypond, a/k/a my sister.)

New Findings on Rogue Planets

Scientific Process Rage — Snerk.

“Women making barrage balloons in a German factory, circa 1943” — A curious photo.

Disappointment, despair and Harold Camping — I stopped thinking of his “Bible prophecy” obsession as a kooky, but mostly harmless set of beliefs. I began to realize that it was a framework that burdened its followers with the inevitability of disappointment, false hope, denial and an inconsolable fear. Its adherents were its victims. There were other victims, too, but its main damage was wrought in the lives of those who most believed it. I am not so evolved as Slacktivist Fred Clark, and have more difficulty summoning his genuine sympathy for the self-inflicted victims of willful idiocy.

Newt: I’ll Make America Just Like Texas — Texas is dead last in the percentage of residents without health insurance, dead last in the number of children insured, and dead last in the number of women receiving early prenatal care. Texas is 44th in the number of children living in poverty, 45th in having the highest percentage of infectious diseases and 36th in high school graduation rate. Reminds me of my Texas Republican friend years ago who really wanted the US to go back to the way it was in the 1950s, when the country was free, safe, and prosperous. Except for the part where her divorced self wouldn’t have had her job because a man needed to feed his family and wouldn’t have been allowed in the door of her Bible-believing Church because she lived in sin with her boyfriend. (Not that she appreciated me pointing any of that out. I ruined a perfectly good rant against the evils of the same liberalism that made her divorce and her lifestyle socially possible and acceptable in the first place.) The bad stuff doesn’t count in conservative mythmaking.

You’re So Brave To Expose All Those Popsicle Woes — Islamic terrorism and urine-soaked popsicles. More intellectual leadership from the American Right. Christ, you guys would be hilarious if you weren’t so disastrously destructive.

The Year of Living Adulterously — What is it with Republicans lately? What does she mean, lately? The family values crowd never has been either.

?otD: Satay or sautee?

---

5/20/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (revised and submitted a short story)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (fitful)
Weight: 232.2
Currently (re)reading: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Tags: Culture, friends, Funny, Links, Movies, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, Publishing, Religion, Science, Texas

Posted: 5:35 am Fri May 20 2011 | Comments(2) |

[personal|cancer] Thoughts and condolences

Went walking this morning here in Austin. (Round Rock, actually, for those keeping score.) The pre-dawn darkess was in the 70s, and the air had that very familiar smell of live oak and cedar and limestone and leftover heat. Not to mention the glorious chicken fried steak I ate part of last night at the Hyde Park Bar and Grill. And yes, I had a salad first.

Yeah, I used to live here.

A bit after I went to bed last night, tillyjane a/k/a my mom called. Our friend with the cancer very similar to mine had just passed away. He was diagnosed in December, underwent surgery promptly thereafter, and has been in chemo these past two months until that was discontinued due to his body’s intolerance for the treatment. He was referred to hospice care last week, but continued to decline.

First and foremost, my condolences go to him and his family, who are also friends and acquaintances of mine. His adult children were only 100 miles away, in the process of driving up from California to see him one last time, when he passed. That has to be a terrible feeling.

As I’ve mentioned before, though none of what is going on right now is about me, this still causes enormous internal echoes. We shared a disease. We had a similar progression. I can see myself in him.

At the same time, another friend and cancer survivor just had an ambiguous test result, and is going in shortly for more detailed testing.

So, yeah, sick of this. Scan next Thursday, oncology consult a week from Monday. If I were prone to magical thinking, I’d believe the universe was sending me messages. Instead, I’ll settle for garden variety fear.

At least right now I’m in a place I like, with people I enjoy, doing something I love.

Tags: Cancer, family, Food, health, healthcare, Personal, Texas

Posted: 4:37 am Fri April 08 2011 | Comments(6) |

[process] Part the sixth and last of Consumers and Producers

Here is the final installment of this little series. I apologize for the delay in drafting and posting this one, but life got more than a little bit in the way. Once again, I’d like to extend my thanks to everyone who’s involved themselves in the discussion to date. For reference, and if you’d like to catch up on the various comments:

Part 1 [ jlake.com | LiveJournal 

Part 2 [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Part 3 [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Part 4 [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Part 5 [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

As I said before, Sunspin has caused me to completely re-engage with my own habits and practices as both a Consumer and a Producer. This series of posts has wandered pretty deeply into my experiences working on that project. Now I want to tie it back up with some thoughts, and some questions for you, who have been patient and kind enough to follow this far.

I value being a Producer very highly. It’s become a core part of my social and emotional identity. In the same vein, her mother and I have put a lot of effort in raising the_child with a sense of what it means to be a Producer (I am a writer, Mother of the Child is an artist working in several media), so that she can have this set of choices available to her as she sets her paths through life.

But being a Producer definitely comes at a cost. As discussed, if nothing else, it interferes with one’s place in life as a Consumer. For me, at least, the energy and focus come out of the same time budget, out of the same emotional and creative spaces.

Being a Consumer is also a creative act, because consuming Story requires participation and interpretation. But origination, now that’s where the holy fire is for me.

Being a Producer has also influenced my life choices with respect to social activities and how I spend my time. I’ve mentioned before that I gave up television in 1994, and gaming in 1998. Those are forms of Consumption, forms of Story, but they’re also things that would quite readily and happily eat my brain. My sense of social scheduling is influenced as well, and the ways I allocate my time on a daily basis.

None of this is to complain. I love what I do, I love being a Producer. My writing has sustained me through some very difficult times in these recent years of cancer and life turmoil. But the cost is real, both directly and in terms of opportunity cost.

The rewards are more real.

My conclusion is that this is a choice. And surely Producer and Consumer are not a crisply dualistic set of contrasting choices. Surely they are a spectrum, and everyone falls in a different place. But I find the concepts a handy tool to use when analyzing both my life and my work.

As for you… how would you define yourself? Does this idea appeal to you or put you off? When you Consume, what are your choices? If you aspire to Produce, what trade-offs do you make?

In a sense, these are the prototypical questions underlying the writerly cliches of “where do I find time to write” and “where do I find ideas to write about”.

In a sense, this is real life.

Read more. Write more. Be well.

Tags: Books, Calamity, cars, Green, ODMS, Process, Sins, Sunspin, Texas, Whips, Writing

Posted: 4:24 am Tue April 05 2011 | Comments(3) |

[travel] I’m off, to say the least

Heading for Omaha this morning. Hot air ballooning this afternoon, if the weather cooperates. At any event, I’ll see garyomaha and elusivem for dinner.

Workie bits the next three days, then off to Austin on Thursday for Paradise Lost, and some glorious favorite food of my days of yore as a long time Austinite.

Do good, be well today.

Tags: Omaha, Personal, Texas, Travel

Posted: 3:41 am Sun April 03 2011 | Comments(0) |