Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad relaxes

Preparing for Death Online – How ISPs and Social Media Companies Can Help People Plan — Laurie Mann is wise.

Locomotive Makeover: 1942 — I love this photo.

Einstein’s Gravity Theory Passes Toughest Test Yet

Robotic Replicators — Thinking about Von Neumann machines.

E. coli enters the energy game, could pump out petroleum — Engineering bacteria to make petroleum substitute, pump out hydrocarbons. A longtime skiffy idea finally comes to life.

A New Computer Screen Reaches Out to Touch You — An experimental new touch screen, the Obake, has a stretchable surface that to reacts user interaction in new ways.

Do Whales Have Culture? Humpbacks Pass on Behavior — Whales communicate with other humpbacks via social learning, study shows.

The Incompleteness of the Harm Principle

Part of 9/11 plane’s landing gear found, NYPD says — Odd.

Measles Epidemic in Wales Has Roots in Antivax Movement — Once again proving that willful ignorance can be found at all ends of the political spectrum.

Chris Auchinvole’s Marriage Equality Bill speech — A Christian conservative (in New Zealand) comes to terms with marriage equality, and carefully explains his reasoning. The deeply religious don’t have to be bigots, that’s just a “feature” of American culture on this matter. (Thanks to soon_lee.)

The 1 Percent’s Solution — [T]he dominance of austerians in influential circles should disturb anyone who likes to believe that policy is based on, or even strongly influenced by, actual evidence. Well, that lets conservatives off the hook right out of the gate, given their decades-long self-declared tenuous relationship with reality, but what the hell is Obama’s excuse?

Elijah Cummings rejects GOP report on Hillary Clinton, Benghazi — The Republican ‘smoking gun’ in this report is just another example of conservative willful ignorance. “The allegations in your staff report are false, extremely irresponsible, and lack even a rudimentary understanding of how State Department cables are processed. After the past two or three decades, why does anyone take anything Republicans say seriously?

QotD?: When do you want to?

4/27/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (1,900 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin)
Hours slept: 8.0 hours (solid)
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: Cool, Culture, economy, gay, gender, health, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, space, Tech, trains

Posted: 6:43 am Sat April 27 2013 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad has smoker’s hack without ever smoking

A Cancer Gene Therapy Activated by a Pill — This is not directly relevant to my disease, but it’s still cool as heck.

Oklahoma Woman Proof That Youth Should Not Preclude Breast Cancer Screening — Me, too. I was 43 when I presented with fully developed colon cancer. I couldn’t have gotten screened if I’d known to beg for it, as screenings for my kind of cancer aren’t indicated for patients under 50, and so not covered by health insurance and not prescribed by most doctors.

We Aren’t the World — Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way social scientists think about human behavior and culture.

Depression Stems from Miscommunication Between Brain Cells; Study Challenges Role of Serotonin in Depression

An Unlikely Plan to Revive the Passenger Pigeon — Advances in genetic engineering have some biologists convinced they’ll re-create extinct species.

Who Made That Cellphone? — Ah, history. (Thank to Dad.)

Self-Healing Circuits for Deep Space — Huh. Wow.

Railroad Pageant: 1939 — Mmm, steam.

How Far Did She Fall? The Amazing Story of Vesna Vulović — I’ve read about this before. (Via David Goldman.)

A warmer planet means bigger hurricane surges — Not just in the future—the impact is already significant, a new study argues. Amazing, how liberal lies have affected even the behavior of the ocean itself. Thank God for Rush Limbaugh and the Republican party, otherwise those climate “facts” and “data” might have had some effect on US policy by now.

In Some States, Gun Rights Trump Orders of Protection — The judge’s order prohibited Mr. Holten from going within two blocks of his former wife’s home and imposed a number of other restrictions. What it did not require him to do was surrender his guns. About 12 hours after he was served with the order, Mr. Holten was lying in wait when his former wife returned home from a date with their two children in tow. Yep, I definitely feel safer with gun rights so thoroughly protected. Don’t you? If you’re a gun culture person, why is this all right with you? (Via Marta Murvosh.)

What we Lost: Top Ten Ways the Iraq War Harmed the US — This is what conservative leadership and ideals brought us.

QotD?: Cough much?

3/19/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (WRPA, working on Whole Genome Sequencing presentation)
Hours slept: 9.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours stationary bike
Weight: 240.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block building solar arrays to undermine the American fossil fuel industry: 0
Currently reading: Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Cancer, climate, guns, healthcare, Iraq, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, space, Tech, trains, weird

Posted: 5:24 am Tue March 19 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad wakes up in Houston, wonders what the heck happened

My Green novelette “A Stranger Comes to Kalimpura” is now available at Subterranean Online — It concerns an older Green, and an outside context problem.

Frank’s Compulsive Guide to Postal Addresses: Britain and Ireland — Obsessive doesn’t even begin to cover it. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

LOL, texting, and txt-speak: Linguistic miracles — A linguist surprises the TED crowd; apparently txt-speak really is special.

Should sex be like jazz?

M-497 Black Beetle — Wow. Just wow. Talk about your hurtling fever train.

How to Spend 47 Hours on a Train and Not Go Crazy

Screech Owl Cam’ is Down — Oi. My friend Chris Johnson has been frozen out of his long-term bird education project.

After Initial Problems, SpaceX Dragon Now Looking Good On Orbit

Volcanic eruptions halted global warming during 2000-10

A Mother’s Death Tested Reporter’s Thinking About End-Of-Life Care — (Via Jennifer Danvers.)

Taking on Creeping Creationism in Public Schools — The US will fall behind other countries in bio-technology if this wave of obscurantism is allowed to continue. And, note that biotech jobs are increasing, but concentrated in seven states. They are the ones where anti-evolution thinking is unpopular among the public, and they emphatically do not include Louisiana, which limps along with among the worst poverty, employment and health rankings among US states.

Obama’s ‘Jedi mind meld’ reference ridiculed by sci-fi fans — Oops.

Vigilante Walmart shopper shoots at shoplifter, hits 3 cars, almost hits innocent — Yep. More guns. Definitely need more of this kind of responsible citizen protecting us all. What could possibly go wrong?

QotD?: Oilers much?

3/2/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (1,000 new words to draft complete on the current nonfiction project at 7,900 words, plus some light editing.)
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (traveling)
Weight: n/a (traveling)
Number of FEMA troops on my block converting golf course to concentration campsi: 0
Currently reading: Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Christianists, climate, Cool, Funny, Green, guns, healthcare, Language, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Religion, sex, stories, trains, weird

Posted: 5:28 am Sat March 02 2013 | Comments(2) |

[cancer] Things I want to do before I die

Things I want to do before I die, time, health and funds permitting:

• Take a long road trip through the American west with the_child
• Take the_child to New Zealand to visit danjite and khaybee.
• Take the_child to Antarctica.
• Visit the railroad graveyard in Uyuni, Bolivia with a really good camera in hand.
• Visit the city of Petra in Jordan.
• Go back to Taiwan (where I was born and spent my grade school years) one more time.
• Write (well, finish) Original Destiny, Manifest Sin.
• Write (well, finish) Jay Lake’s Book of the Dead.
• See the_child graduate from high school.

With the exception of writing one or both books, none of these are likely to happen for a bunch of very good reasons, money and time especially, but they’re what’s on my mind. Funny how they’re almost all travel-oriented.

Tags: Antarctica, Book of the Dead, Books, Cancer, Child, death, health, New Zealand, Original Destiny, Personal, trains, Travel

Posted: 6:03 am Thu February 07 2013 | Comments(13) |

[links] Link salad digests Peking duck

The Acts of Whimsy cancer fundraiser is still live. It has made goal, but additional support is always welcome, especially given my new complications. Please check it out if you have not done so yet.

The Lakeside Kickstarter has expanded its stretch goals to include documenting the science around my genomic testing by traveling to the testing lab and interviewing the scientists there. They’v also posted a new trailer for the movie, which is very striking. So give a little to support SCIENCE!

A very nice poster made from some of my recent words on cancer — Thank you, Nicole.

F.E.A.R. — Another cancer survivor talks about fear and loss and coping.

The Girl on the Glider and Other Stories — A roundup of reviews from a reader, including a very kind mention of my short story, “The Cancer Catechism”.

The Best Shots Fired in the Oxford Comma Wars — (Via danjite.)

The last roll of Kodachrome — “Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away.”

The Physics of… Face Slapping — Um… yay, science? (Via David Goldman.)

In science today, a genius never works alone — Future discoveries are more likely to be made by scientists sharing ideas than a lone genius

Cat gap — The cat gap is a period in the fossil record of approximately 25 to 18.5 million years ago in which there are few fossils of cats or cat-like species found in North America. No cat gap on the Internet! (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

App Feeds Scientists Atmospheric Data from Thousands of Smartphones — PressureNet shows the potential of distributed sensing with mobile devices.

East African Railways and Harbours — For all you infrastructure geeks. (Via threeoutside.)

The Museum of Online Museums — Hah! (Also via threeoutside.)

You Moist Remember This — Tom Robbins on rain. (Via Marta Murvosh.)

Richard III: unveiling day arrives for skeleton that would be king — Leicester University prepares to show carpark remains to the world as scientists work round the clock to finish ID tests.

The Last Places — Henry VIII’s wine cellar, under Britain’s Ministry of Defense building. This is cool. (Snurched from Cameo Wood.)

No Pictures. Only Words. — Peter Watts on his father’s life and death as a deeply closeted gay man. Sobering reading. (Via Tim Keating.)

Activists hail a watershed moment in gay rights movement

Do White evangelicals have a delusional persecution complex? — In a word: yes. It feeds the Christianist narrative quite nicely. Unfortunately for my Evangelical friends, having your absolute cultural supremacy replaced by merely overwhelming dominance isn’t persecution; it’s progress for the rest of us. In other words, a smidgen of fairness. Do unto others, and whatnot, not that the Golden Rule holds much water for American Christianists.

NRA likens universal checks to gun registry — That would be the same NRA that used to support background checks, before they decided the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of children.

Obama gun photo triggers mocking comments — Of course it did. Conservatives hate him no matter what he does. At least those of us who deposed Bush had ample reason to do so, rather than paranoia and self-valorizing fantasies. Unless, of course, you think ruining the economy, crashing the Dow-Jones, reversing the budget surplus, and launching a trillion-dollar war of choice under knowingly false pretenses were good for the country.

Smart dumb quote of the day: “American democracy is the greatest institution on Earth” edition — Ah, Senate rules. (Snurched Steve Buchheit.)

QotD?: Is it pure quackery?

2/3/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.25 hours (minor revisions to an accepted story)
Hours slept: 10.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.2 hours stationary bicycle (still in post-operative recovery)
Weight: 225.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block protecting women from violence: 0
Currently reading: Gulp by Mary Roach

Tags: Cancer, Christianists, Cool, documentary, England, Food, fundraiser, gay, guns, health, Language, Links, Northwest, Personal, Photos, Politics, Religion, reviews, Science, stories, trains, Videos, weird

Posted: 9:18 am Sun February 03 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad talks about pop music

The Acts of Whimsy cancer fundraiser is still live. It has made goal, but additional support is always welcome, especially given my new complications. Please check it out if you have not done so yet.

The Lakeside Kickstarter has expanded its stretch goals to include documenting the science around my genomic testing by traveling to the testing lab and interviewing the scientists there. They’v also posted a new trailer for the movie, which is very striking. So give a little to support SCIENCE!

The Locus Recommended Reading List has two of my novellas on it — “The Stars Do Not Lie” (Asimov’s 10-11/12), and “The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future” (Subterranean Spring ’12).

Twitter Breached, Attackers Stole 250,000 User Data — Sigh.

Tiny Sensors Could Give an Atom-Level View of Proteins — The advance could help researchers better understand the role of proteins in disease.

Did antibiotics spur the sexual revolution? — A cure for syphilis lowered the “cost” of sex, says one economist.

Fish Thoughts — In this seven second video, the brain activity of a fish is registered in real time.

Memorable moments in Grand Central’s 100 years

Off the Rails: 1943 — Shorpy with a very cool photo of a steam locomotive in the shop.

Ten things you don’t know about the earth — Chord tunnels? (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

The Effects of Housing Segregation on Black Wealth

Former NRA Prez: Yes, We’ve Flip-Flopped On Background Checks — Ah, that justly famed intellectual consistency of American conservatives.

With The Fox News Empire In A Ratings Slump, Where’s Roger Ailes’ Magic Touch? — Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of intellectually dishonest moral frauds.

Hagel’s “Re-Confirmation” Hearing — The Republicans on the Armed Services Committee mostly distinguished themselves for their vapidity and fanaticism. The consensus seems to be that Ted Cruz was by far the worst in this regard, and based on what I saw that seems right. Cruz and his Republican colleagues on the committee may not appreciate this now, but they managed to inflict significant new damage on their party in one day. If anyone wants a clear, albeit tedious, lesson in why Republicans shouldn’t be trusted on national security and foreign policy matters, all one needs to do is watch the recording of that hearing.

Not Sure We’re Done — But conservatives seem incapable of understanding that unyielding anger and contempt is not paying dividends anymore.

Clinton: Benghazi Critics Don’t Live In ‘Evidence-Based World’ — Duh. They’re Republicans. By self-definition, they reject the reality-based community in favor of ideology.

Geraldo “Truly Contemplating” Senate Run — Hahaha. Oh, wait. That’s not a joke.

QotD?: New York, Paris, ice cream, tee vee, travel, good time?

2/2/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (still in post-operative recovery)
Hours slept: 9.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (still in post-operative recovery)
Weight: 228.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block protecting women from violence: 0
Currently reading: Gulp by Mary Roach

Tags: Cancer, Cool, documentary, fundraiser, gun, health, healthcare, Links, media, nature, Personal, Politics, race, sex, stories, trains, Videos, weird

Posted: 8:13 am Sat February 02 2013 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad feels like Leisure Suit Larry

The Lakeside Kickstarter has begun — The complications in my cancer have created complications in the filming process. The producer needs to extend the budget a little further.

imdb with the listing for Lakeside — Still being built, but there’s a movie poster there, and acting credits for me and the_child.

Lord of the Strings: The Influence of Tolkien on Heavy Metal Music — Um? Wow. (Via Cora Buhlert.)

Faster, Quentin! Thrill! Thrill! — Roger Ebert with a lot of interesting things to say about Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained [ imdb ].

Closed off tunnel now sheds light on Portland’s sordid past — A squib about Portland’s Shanghai tunnels.

Round Trip — I love this 1943 Shorpy photo of a railroad roundhouse.

The US And New Zealand Secretly Tested The First Tsunami Bomb — Wow. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

The Sarcastic Fringehead — Really? Curious video of undersea life. Also possibly the name of my next rock band. (Via willyumtx.)

Captured deep beneath the waves: Giant squid filmed in natural habitat — I’ve seen the specimen on display at Te Papa, the national museum in Wellington, NZ (though I think that one might have been a colossal squid). These things are amazing.

Release the kraken! 2,000 years of tall tales (and a smattering of truth) — veryone from Pliny the Elder to Tennyson has written about giant squid.

Earth-Sized Planets Widespread in Galaxy — The rate at which our knowledge of the universe changes amazes me.

Consumption of sweet and diet drinks could lead to depression — Huh.

The Reverend Hall, America Hero — Comes word that the National Cathedral, an Episcopal Church, will start to perform same-sex marriages. Good. The public face of American Christianity needs to be about something more than bigotry, hatred and willful ignorance. Everything from evolution denial to the Mormon Church’s shameful support of Proposition 8 to practically every word that comes out of the mouths of Evangelical leaders further stains the image of religion. Nice to see some movement in the other direction

Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice? — A wrenching piece on murder and forgiveness. Though given current events, I was quite struck by this line: “If that gun had not been in the house, our daughter would be alive.” There’s a lesson here, that no one in the gun culture will ever acknowledge, let alone learn. The rock solid truth of the fundamental immorality of wholesale death is incompatible with gun owners’ view of themselves as good people. (Courtesy of wild_irises.)

Alex Jones Pitches Government by Boxing Match — [T]he fact that Jones responds to a disagreement over government policy by telling his interlocutor “well how ’bout we take this outside” is illustrative. Jones spends much of the interview ranting about the evils of government use of force, without much attention to the kind of individual violence with which he threatened Morgan. That’s one of the deep problems with our gun culture. It valorizes violence that the gun owner sees a defensive, just or retributive. Do we really want 100,000,000 people with powers of summary execution which depend on their casual judgment regardless of mood or circumstance or the objective facts of the situation? Because that’s what this country has with widespread private gun ownership.

Giffords and Kelly: Fighting gun violence — An important effort that will sadly most likely be a failure, as Americans’ love of guns trumps any number of deaths. As a culture, we prefer killing machines to the morality of life, and make endless excuses to maintain the illusion that this is the right thing.

?otD: Ever been to the Land of the Lounge Lizards?

1/9/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (stress)
Hours slept: 8.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 217.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block teaching critical thinking skills to the children of conservatives: 0
Currently reading: The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks

Tags: Christianists, Culture, documentary, Food, guns, healthcare, Links, Movies, music, nature, New Zealand, Personal, Photos, Politics, Portland, Religion, Science, Tech, trains, Videos, weird

Posted: 6:26 am Wed January 09 2013 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad is Brian, and so is its wife

There She Blows! ‘Tis the Contract for Moby Dick! — Huh. Cool.

Colon Cancer: Aspirin May Improve Survival in Some — Not sure if I’m in this pool or not.

The Snail Wrangler — Wow. Who knew the intricacies of escargot? (Via my Dad.)

MIT’s artificial leaf is ten times more efficient than the real thing — This is seriously cool. (From Lisa Costello via Stupidest Genius I’ve Ever Met.)

Carrier at New Orleans: 1910 — Circa 1910. “Southern Pacific R.R. transfer boat Carrier at New Orleans.” For some reason, this image fascinates me.

How the Chinese and the Greeks viewed (pretty much) the same sky — (Via Lisa Costello.)

A small (but glorious) world: The best microscope images of 2012 — Spiders, fossils, brains, and eyes all make the grade.

Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems — Interesting article, though I think the author gives shorter shrift to the market-based explanation than it deserves. The fundamental shift in investment patterns that came to fruition in the 1980s from long-term value investing to manic focus on quarter-over-quarter gains made long-term research and development, especially pure research, much harder to justify in corporate America. This same attitude has leaked into government, viz the endless budget cuts at NASA, NSF and so forth. I really do think Big Money bears a lot of the responsibility for this loss of human capacity.

Seismologists Convicted of Not Predicting Earthquake — A US legal analysis of the recent travesty of justice in Italy. Freakonomics with more on this.

Bitten: Apple’s ‘blasphemous’ logo under fire in Russia — Some Russian Orthodox Christians see the iconic logo as a symbol of sin that they would like to see outlawed. Really? This kind of nonsense is what faith-based thinking gives you. (Thanks to David Goldman.)

Why Are States So Red and Blue? — A fascinating cultural and psychological riff on voting patterns. (Thanks to shsilver.)

Conservative Media Ignore GOP Voter Registration Fraud — Gee, ya think? That’s a big advantage of living in a post-truth, non-reality-based world. You can edit out all those inconvenient “facts” and “data” with their liberal bias. Oh, look, ACORN! (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Five Ridiculous Congressional Candidates Who Will Probably Win — Hey, they actually found a Democrat to criticize!

Sen. Cornyn Defends Mourdock’s Comment On Pregnancies From Rape — That would be the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Tell me again that this senseless cruelty isn’t a core Republican value?

What “health of the mother” means — When cancer was suspected during my pregnancy, I faced a decision no woman wants — and few politicians understand. No one who needs to read this article ever will, sadly. And if somehow they do, as it emits from the reality-based community, it will be dismissed as liberal lies. Because senseless cruelty to women sells much better to the Republican base than any amount of reality.

Pregnancy as Labor — Ta-Nehisi Coates on a similar theme, in further reference to the senseless cruelty of core Republican values regarding women’s lives and health.

Mourdock, Rape as a Gift of God, and Islamic Sharia — To put this in simple terms, government by Christian theology is no better than government by Islamic theology. Thanks to the GOP’s decades-long embrace of theocracy while trolling for votes, Christianity is far more of a danger to the United States than Islam can ever hope to be.

‘Fairness and integrity’: The New Yorker endorses President Obama

Powell standing by Obama in 2012 presidential race — Speaking of Obama, Powell said the president got the United States out of Iraq and has laid out a plan for leaving Afghanistan “and didn’t get us into any new wars.” Mighty generous of you, Colin, since it was your good name and reputation that gave considerable political cover to the knowing, cynical lies that the Bush administration used to get us into those wars.

Poll: Gender gaps all but gone in White House race — I find this bizarre if true. (Polls are sometimes quirky.) The GOP has experienced a substantial gender gap in the female vote for quite a while now in presidential elections. Which given their positions on women’s health, reproductive rights, and equal pay for equal work only makes sense. In fact, what does amaze me is that any women vote Republican, ever. It’s almost as weird as gays who vote Republican. Or middle class people. Or people in states that are net beneficiaries of government spending (i.e., virtually all of the so-called “Red states”.) One of the great triumphs of the modern Republican party is getting millions of people to vote directly against their own personal and economic interests time and time again. I guess that’s the value of a post-truth worldview.

How Mitt Romney Gets So Tan — A source lets BuzzFeed in on a campaign mystery: It’s a spray tan. “It’s not like Mitt Romney can go chill out on a beach right now; he needs a quick fix.” So R. Money’s tan is every bit as sincere as the rest of him?

?otD: But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, viniculture, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

10/25/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hour (WRPA, research for the Sekrit Projekt, plus opening the story stub)
Body movement: 0.5 hour stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.75 hours (fitful)
Weight: 229.8
Currently reading: n/a

Tags: Apple, Cancer, China, Christianism, Cool, Culture, Food, gay, gender, health, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, trains, weird

Posted: 5:40 am Thu October 25 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad just turned its back on the crowd

The Feathered Edge — A book which needs some love. Go check it out. calendula_witch and I have a story in there.

Storm of Swords – It Gets Better — Brilliant poking of fun at GRRM. Warning: spoileriffic. Hahahah. (Via Marta Murvosh.)

A Computational Model of an Anticancer Nanoparticle — IBM’s Blue Gene supercomputer uncovers a novel drug interaction site.

Off the Beaten Track, Railroad Buffs Get Stoked by Riding Obscure Routes — ‘Rare-Mileage’ Fans Go to Great Lengths; ‘I Have Lusted After That Track for 35 Years’

50 years to orbit: Dream Chaser’s crazy Cold War backstory — The reusable mini-spaceplane is back from the dead—again—and prepping for space.

Drake equation: How many alien civilizations exist? — Cool little software toy. (Via AC.)

Life on Mars time for JPL scientist and his family — A JPL scientist’s family joins him on his mission to live sol by sol — and discovers a new sort of life around Los Angeles.

Mars image may indicate presence of water ice

US Health Care System Wastes $750B A Year — (Via danjite.)

We can have political debate or politicized facts, but we can’t have both — Welcome to conservative America, denying the reality-based community since pretty much forever.

Disillusioned Obama Supporter In Romney Ad Is Actually GOP Staffer — Because honesty is a core conservative value. Right up there with truthfulness.

Top Ten Ways we are Better off than in January 2009 — It’s a question the GOP really doesn’t want to ask. Except, of course, that Your Liberal Media will as always support the conservative narrative, and the low-information voters that are the Republican lifeblood will dutifully nod along.

Paul Ryan, Mountaineer — Ah, more of that vaunted conservative truthfulness. Because liberals can’t be trusted to be honest or sincere. Not like these guys.

?otD: But you got away, didn’t you babe?

9/7/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (revisions to Other Me, then off to agent)
Body movement: 60 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 5.75 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: Heartland by Mark Teppo

Tags: Books, Cancer, cool tech, Funny, healthcare, Links, Mars, media, Personal, Politics, Science, stories, trains, Videos

Posted: 3:45 am Fri September 07 2012 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad winds on down the road

Patent No. 5,443,036: Method of Exercising a Cat

Broken Letters: A Typogeography of Europe — Fascinating reading if you’re either a typeface geek or a history geek.

Which profession drinks the most coffee?

Roundhouse Foundations — Mmm. Trains.

Video urges Singapore couples to make babies – like, now — (Thanks to David Goldman.)

Neanderthals did not interbreed with humans, scientists find — The genetic traits between humans and Neanderthals are more likely from a shared ancestry rather than interbreeding, a British study has suggested.

Study: Japan nuclear disaster caused mutated butterflies — “Power was to be cheap and clean; grimy faces were never seen”

Researchers find some of the world’s earliest (pre-Cambrian) armor — Specimens hint that protective organic skeletons predate the Cambrian explosion.

Into the Uncanny Valley — Centauri Dreams on extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Obama Calls Mars Rover Team, Considers Mohawk — Heh.

Arctic ocean losing 50% more summer ice than predicted — Facts not valid in conservative America and other places outside the reality-based community.

Isolated Incidents (Completely Unrelated To All The Others Just Like It) — Sexual morality at a Christianist bible “college”. Proving once again that atheists are moral monsters without Christian principles to guide them. Or something. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court — A classic example of why people hate both insurance companies and attorneys. This also clearly illustrates the fundamental conflict of for-profit insurance companies. Unlike almost any other business sector, their profit model relies on them not fulfilling their contracts. That problem is most obvious in health insurance companies, but applies across the board. Which is why I sometimes think all insurance companies should either be co-ops or publicly owned. As for the attorneys involved on the Progressive insurance side, I hope the crypts they sleep in are comfortably chilled.

The Certainty of Even More Shootings — Because this is America, where your theoretical defense of essential liberties is worth more than my actual life. But only under the Second Amendment. Thanks to the justly famed intellectual consistency of the conservative movement, we’ve already traded away all those other pesky amendments and their essential liberties for the illusion of a little temporary safety.

Your Election is being Bought by 47 Billionaires (and they are Buying War, Climate Change) — [N]early 60% of the almost quarter of a billion dollars raised by Super PACs from individuals derived from just 47 people, who gave at least $1 million each (obviously some gave much more). Remember, kids, according to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, money is speech, so if you don’t like this, put up your own millions.

Mitt Romney Denies Freedom of Religion — Do you believe in freedom of religion? President Obama does, and he is defending Americans’ freedom of religion against Mitt Romney and Fox News.

Paul Ryan already benefited from the Social Security fund he now wants to gut — When a conservative needs something from the government, it’s an essential Federal program. (See highway bills and farm price supports.) When anyone that conservative disapproves of needs something from the government, it’s wasteful socialism. (See Aid to Families with Dependent Children.)

The Ryan Role — Paul Krugman on Paul Ryan. Interesting what the facts tell you, which is very different from what Your Liberal Media tells you.

Wonkbook: Everything you need to know about Paul Ryan — Paul Ryan’s number one qualification for Romney’s VP slot? He’s not Sarah Palin.

?otD: Is your shadow taller than your soul?

8/14/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.25 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 60 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.0 (solid)
Weight: 238.4
Currently reading: The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems by Henry Petroski

Tags: business, cats, Christianists, climate, Cool, Culture, Funny, guns, history, Japan, Links, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, sex, Singapore, trains, weird

Posted: 5:33 am Tue August 14 2012 | Comments(3) |