Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad wanders off to New Mexico

A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste — Me and John Scalzi.

Mark Twain Captured on Film by Thomas Edison in 1909. It’s the Only Known Footage of the Author. — Oh, wow. (Thanks to scarlettina.)

How the Mighty Winds of Uranus and Neptune Blow — Uhh…

Earth’s Richat Structure — Oh. this is cool. Geology from space.

Has Justin Bieber Abandoned His Monkey?

Up to 1 in 5 children suffer from mental disorder: CDC — Sigh.

In the Box: A Tour Through the Simulated Battlefields of the U.S. National Training Center

Climate Change Denial is Costing us Trillions, Threatening Farming, Fishing, Animals (Video) — Rush Limbaugh and the GOP keep us better informed than any of those liberal “facts” and “data” possibly could.

Colorado GOPer Accused Of Storming Away From Aurora Victim’s Dad — Conservative policies have ugly, ugly consequences. Republican support for widespread private gun ownership with minimal responsibility or accountability kills 30,000 American adults and children every year. Running away from that doesn’t change anything, it just confirms once again the moral and political cowardice inextricably interwoven with the pro-gun position.

QotD?: Ever been to New Mexico?

5/19/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (con time)
Hours slept: 4.25 hours (fitful, 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: climate, Cool, Culture, Funny, guns, healthcare, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, Science, space, Videos

Posted: 5:21 am Sun May 19 2013 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad wonders how it can dance when our earth is turning

JayFest — Sci-Fi Book Fair & Group Signing — My friends at Powell’s are hosting a group signing in support of my cancer journey, book sales to benefit the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund. The evening of June 13, 2013, two days before JayCon, at Powell’s Cedar Hills in Beaverton, OR.

Almost All the Way Home From the Stars: Seven Science Fiction Stories — An ebook of my collaborate work with Ruth Nestvold is now available. Includes the story we had in SCI FICTION together.

Vintage Book Jacket Art — (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Two uncomfortable truths: New Merida looks a little whorey. Fewer people care about this than you would think.

Brain Training Helps Clear Cognitive Fog Caused by Chemotherapy — The mental fuzziness induced by cancer treatment could be eased by cognitive exercises performed online, say researchers. I play sudoku online rather obsessively when I am in chemo, as a form of cognitive self-check.

Ranbaxy: Looking Under the Rock — Why generic drugs do not always stack up. (Via David Goldman.)

Eyeball — A throwable building-mapping sphere from Bounce Imaging was recently chosen by PopSci for a 2013 Invention Award. The “throwable, expendable, baseball-size probe,” in PopSci’s words, “has a shock-absorbing shell embedded with six cameras, plus clusters of near-infrared LEDs to light up dark rooms (for the cameras).” Wow.

Opportunity Breaks NASA’s 40-Year Roving Record

Danish Teenager Makes Rare Viking Find — Cool!

Thrilling video of Portland PD high-speed chase… wait for it… — Ah, Portland.

Survey of 12,000 studies finds strong agreement on climate change — We already knew 97% of climate scientists backed the scientific consensus. It’s amazing the lengths liberals will go to in order to spread their climate change lies, even to the extent of using reality-based “facts” and “data”.

GOP raffling AR-15 “Sandy Hook”-type rifles as macabre pro-gun stunt — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best.

CBS: It was congressional GOP who faked Benghazi email — Conservatives can almost never win on the facts, so of course they lie. That’s the entire idea behind FOX News. And the Bush administration. (WMDs in Iraq, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) Why should it be any different in the GOP congressional delegation? Water is wet, too.

QotD?: How do we sleep while our beds are burning?

5/17/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (0.5 revisions on my novella for METAtropolis: Green Space, plus WRPA)
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 249.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block covering up evidence about Benghazi: 0
Currently reading: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Cancer, climate, Cool, events, Funny, guns, health, healthcare, Iraq, Links, Mars, media, Personal, Politics, Portland, Publishing, Science, stories, Tech, Videos

Posted: 4:36 am Fri May 17 2013 | Comments(4) |

[cancer] Field notes from Cancerland, heading out of town tomorrow edition

Generosity of Spirit

More generosity flows my way. @howardtayler has done some amazing things for me this week, with an able assist from his colorist Travis Walton. Howard teases his work here. Suffice to say this will be public soon, and you can all marvel at Howard’s skill and wit, and understand how impressed and humbled I am by his support.

Airline Mileage

Yesterday’s airline mileage appeal was a bit of a fiasco. I’d not checked into the airline policies for a while, and they have both monetized and restricted mileage transfers between private individual. Thank you so much to everyone who made the effort. Another reader found points.com, which I will be investigating today or tomorrow in hopes of arriving at a more useful solution. In the mean time, the original Big Project has proceeded down another path. I have several other Worthy Projects in mind, so if I can get this straightened out, the appeal will continue, albeit on slightly different terms.

Regorafenib

I’ve been told that my prescription for Regorafenib has been approved. This drug is a specialty pharmacy item, which means it falls outside the usual infrastructure of pharmaceutical benefits. This includes pre-approval letters and me dealing with a designated mail order pharmacy for my medication supply. It also potentially included a whopping co-pay, but it turns out my carrier’s pharmacy plan treated this as simply being at the high end of the formulary. Which is modestly annoying, but that’s same $50 co-pay I have for Celebrex, Levitra, et cetera.

My Next Scan

I have been corresponding with my oncologist about my next CT scan. Those are supposed to be eight weeks apart right now. That’s the minimum spacing recommended for clinical benefit. I also believe there are significant radiation exposure concerns with excessive scanning. In my case, I won’t live long enough to experience that set of problems, but nonetheless the health and safety guidelines exist. The problem is, they want me to have the next CT scan eight weeks after I start taking the Regorafenib. As I am going out of town tomorrow for eleven days — the Nebulas in San Jose, then Rio Hondo in northern New Mexico — I won’t be able to start taking the Regorafenib prior to May 27th at the earliest. And even that date assumes the specialty pharmacy comes through in a timely manner. Which puts me to eleven weeks or longer between CT scans. And creates the situation that we have 3+ weeks of tumor growth prior to the beginning of any hoped-for effects from the Regorafenib. I think we’d have both a growth rate assessment and a clean baseline for evaluation the new medication if we did a scan shortly after May 27th, but that is far too soon per the generic clinical guidelines. No answer yet, but it’s one of the things I’m worrying about.

Tasking All the Things

Remember that big list of mine, of things that need doing before I die? [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] Well, it’s grown. And we’re doing them. So an enormous amount of administratrivia is happening around Nuevo Rancho Lake. So far, most of the customer service reps, managers and whatnot we’ve dealt with have been very gracious. I feel like Robert DeNiro’s Harry Tuttle in Brazil [ imdb ] being consumed by paper. Still, progress is being made.

My Coping

I’ve had several people note that I’m pretty cheerful lately. The not very hidden subtext is them wondering why I’m not wailing and rending my garments. Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m not wailing and rending my garments. I suppose because there’s no time for that sort of thing. I don’t have much life left to live, especially in something like normal health, and I have too much to do. Love my child, write my stories, be good to Lisa Costello and Jersey Girl in Portland and mother of the child and my family and my friends and my fans and my co-workers and and and. It is true that my current good nature is a very thin veneer, subject to cracking at even a glancing blow. Beneath that is a bubbling stew of anger, grief and terror, spiced with a catalog of other negative emotions. Nonetheless, here I am. And forward is the only direction for me.

Thank you all for reading, for caring, for reaching out.

Tags: Art, Cancer, Child, Family, friends, health, jerseygirl, Movies, Personal, radiantlisa, Travel, Videos

Posted: 5:48 am Thu May 16 2013 | Comments(17) |

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

Rick Novy interviews me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When did you choose to be straight? — Heh.

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

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

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

QotD?: Can you remember getting any older?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Researcher Analyzes Oldest Fossil Hominid Ear Bones Ever Recovered

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[links] Link salad wonders what’s the fuss

Save Trent’s Teeth, Save His Life — Trent Zelazny needs help with a medical fundraiser of his own.

The Algorithm That Automatically Detects Polyps in Images from Camera Pills — Analysing the footage from camera pills is a time-consuming task for medical professionals. Now computer scientists are attempting to automate the process.

The British ‘Atlantis’ is mapped in detail — Using dual frequency identification sonar, the ruins of Dunwich rise again.

8BBC News – Close-up on Japan’s amazing lunchboxes — Mmm, bento. (Via willyumtx.)

Watch 32 discordant metronomes achieve synchrony in a matter of minutes — Huh. (Via David Goldman.)

‘Junk’ DNA Mystery Solved: It’s Not Needed — I am dubious of this story. National Geographic with more.

Happy whatever — Blogess Jenny Lawson says some very important things about women in general and mothers in specific.

Transgender woman wins right to marry in Hong Kong — Not exactly a noted hotbed of progressivism, that.

Dalai Lama Calls For Care For Our ‘Only Home’ Earth

‘Dramatic decline’ warning for plants and animals — More of that liberal conspiracy to keep the climate change hoax going.

Researchers Create “Hate Map” of the U.S. With Twitter Data — The same researchers previously mapped racist Tweets about President Obama. In both cases there’s reason to be a little skeptical.

Pediatricians take on gun lobby – carefully — Well, the NRA is better armed, and unlike doctors, some NRA members have a habit of publicly threatening people.

QotD?: Tell me what’s a-happening?

5/13/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (1.0 hours of revision, plus WRPA, editing METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 7.0 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 249.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block digging for fossils in the yards of God-fearing Republicans: 0
Currently reading: The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Cancer, China, climate, Cool, Culture, Food, gender, guns, health, Japan, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Science, sex, Tech, UK, Videos, weird

Posted: 4:36 am Mon May 13 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad knows that it is not Iron Man

Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy — This is freaking genius. (Spotted lots of places, but sent to me first by Lisa Costello.)

Batman: 1966 — Adam West, back in the day. Courtesy of Shorpy.

Linguists identify 15,000-year-old ‘ultraconserved words’ — Hmmm. (Via my brother.)

European migration evident in DNA patterns — A study of people in 40 countries illustrates long-established changes in Europe’s population. Going back a few thousand years, researchers find that everyone on Earth is related to everyone else. This is cool, but hardly surprising, I should think.

More than one-third of Oregon’s National Merit Scholars live in a single Portland-area ZIP code

More than half of the world’s population lives inside this circle

US Air Force Measures Potato Cannon Muzzle Velocities

Antibiotics could cure 40% of chronic back pain patients — Really? (Thanks to David Goldman.)

On the Rise — BLDG BLOG on the elevation of Galveston, TX after the devastating hurricane of 1900.

Tropical Climate History…Shrinking — Ice in the tropics.

“While some are seeking to withhold Communion from pro-choice and pro-marriage-equality Catholics, I have heard no call to withhold Communion from priests and bishops who have engaged in horrific sexual abuse against vulnerable children, nor their enablers.” — Yes. This. Religious activism in pursuit of anti-gay bigotry is all about politics and power. Not about morality or what is right and good. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

QotD?: Do you face Stark choices?

5/8/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (stress)
Hours slept: 7.25 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.0
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: Christianists, climate, Culture, Funny, healthcare, Language, Links, Movies, Oregon, Personal, Photos, Politics, Religion, Science, Tech, television, Texas, Videos

Posted: 5:22 am Wed May 08 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad has scan anxiety

10 Classic TV Shows You Still Can’t Watch Online — (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Has Big Data Made Anonymity Impossible? — As digital data expands, anonymity may become a mathematical impossibility.

US returns stolen Tyrannosaurus dinosaur to Mongolia

In Poland, Pursuing Valuable Energy Deep in the Earth Fuels Dissent Above Ground — Fracking oil.

Why did Komen for the Cure give Nancy Brinker a 64 percent raise? — Now that the Komen foundation has become a shill for right wing politics and policies, as opposed to a non-partisan charity devoted to cancer research, I think all of our cancer donations should go almost anywhere else. And believe me, nothing about this story convinces me otherwise. I’ve certainly stopped supporting any Races for the Cure.

Brady resigns as Illinois GOP chairman amid gay marriage controversy — The ‘controversy’ being that Brady showed insufficient bigotry to retain his qualifications as a good conservative. The GOP keeps pretending to clean up its brand, but the true face of conservative America keeps showing through.

5 Lowlights From The NRA Convention — Because the gun culture is all about high-minded principle, reasoned discourse and keeping it classy. Remember, according to the NRA you are safer with guns, even if you happen to be one of the 30,000 who die unnecessarily every year. (Thanks to danjite.)

Blade Runner, Terminator, Minority Report and the deliberate sabotage of the Postal Service — So if your whole political shtick is based on being anti-government, then the Postal Service is a threat you’ve got to get rid of. That’s why, back in 2006, Republicans in Congress passed something called the “Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act,” requiring the agency to “pre-fund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in an astonishing ten-year time span.” If you haven’t heard of this, pay attention. It’s all the GOP’s intellectual dishonesty and ongoing vandalism of government rolled into one neat package.

QotD?: What scares you?

5/7/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hour (WRPA)
Hours slept: 7.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.2
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: Cancer, Culture, gays, guns, healthcare, Links, Mongolia, nature, Personal, Poland, Politics, Tech, Videos

Posted: 5:18 am Tue May 07 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad watches the moon ride the sky of a morning

Walk The Fire: a shared-world SF anthology series — An interesting Kickstarter.

Willie Nelson’s Audition Tape for “The Hobbit” — Hahahahah.

The ultimate cancer taboo: Sometimes it kills you — We keep talking about battles, warriors, miracles and hope. Meanwhile, those with metastatic cancers are ignored. That would be me.

In Germany, a U.S. beer invasion — This seems improbable.

The World’s Largest Rubber Duck Arrives in Hong Kong — Wow! Hahah. (Via threeoutside.)

The Data Made Me Do It — The next frontier for big data is the individual.

5 Ways to Make Google Glass Better — Number 6, make it possible to use them with prescription lenses.

High-tech camera acts like a bug’s eye

Space Ape Parody Shows Why Aquatic Ape Theory Is All Wet — (Via David Goldman.)

Religious Knowledge Quiz — You answered 14 out of 15 questions correctly for a score of 93%. Which puts me in the 99% percentile. Not bad for an atheist. I also note that when this survey was done with the general public on an outbound basis, atheists came in second only to Jews in their knowledge, well ahead of a number of different identified Christian groups, though the Mormons were a close third. This is parallel to the science quiz I recently posted. (I missed the First Great Awakening question.)

Man shot and killed at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport, authorities say — Thank god for the NRA and the Republican party, or the shooter wouldn’t have had the right to exercise his theoretical defense of essential liberties in such a fashion. Where would we be as a society without our guns?

Even Counting Votes too Scientific for North Carolina — Typical conservatives. They cannot win on their ideas, so they cheat. Egregiously, in this case. (Via corwynofamber.)

QotD?: Would you go to the moon if you could?

5/3/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.75 hours (WRPA editing work on METAtropolis: Green Space, plus audiobook prep)
Hours slept: 8.75 hours (interrupted)
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: Art, Cancer, China, Cool, Funny, Germany, guns, Links, Movies, nature, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, Videos

Posted: 6:13 am Fri May 03 2013 | Comments(6) |

[links] Link salad tools up to head to southern California

David: Illness and Death — Debbie Notkin with a thoughtful narrative on her brother’s death from cancer.

‘Death cafes’ normalize a difficult, not morbid, topic — Yeah, well. Welcome to my dinner table. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Genomics to reshape endometrial cancer treatment — This is very similar to what we were hoping to do for me.

Banned Baby Names: Justice Just As Bad As Anal And 4Real, One Country Says — Ah, New Zealand.

How to play chess properly — Hahahah. (Via willyumtx.)

The Robie Metric System — Because he could? Wow… (Thanks to Lisa Costello.)

Le cigare volant est Francais! — x planes with a particularly weird piece of French aviation concept art from the 1950s.

Nasa telescope has close shave with Soviet satellite

What’s Next for Curiosity? Mars Mountaineering

Bones reveal a tale of desperation — Scientists find evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, America’s first permanent English colony.

Bring Your Camera — Some stunning images of arctic ice, courtesy of NASA.

The Twitter Account to Watch If You’re Worried About Climate Change — More reality-based liberal lies, of course. Ask any conservative.

While Sequestration Cuts Programs For The Poor, The U.S. Ranks Second-To-Last On Child Poverty — That’s what conservative social policies get you. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

GOP fundraising video mocks grieving Sandy Hook mom who lost 6 y.o. — Ah, those moral stewards of compassionate conservatism. Are you proud of your Republican party? The gun culture has absolutely no shame or conscience.

2-Year-Old Girl Shot, Killed By 5-Year-Old Brother With Rifle He Recieved As A Gift — Because guns make us all safer, right?

Toomey doubts second Senate gun-control vote any time soon — The toughest thing to do in politics is to do the right thing when your supporters think the right thing is something else,” Toomey said. That’s the GOP in a nutshell. In their own words, the right thing isn’t what their own base thinks the right thing is. On guns. On taxes. On deficits. On education. On climate. On jobs. On immigration. And their leadership knows better. No shame. No conscience. Are you proud of your Republican party? Doing the right thing since never, once again in their own words.

Poll: 29% Think Armed Rebellion Might Soon Be Necessary — 44% of self-identified Republicans say that “in the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” Once again, are you proud of your Republican party?

Pat Buchanan joins Manhattan Declarers in ‘civil disobedience’ fappery — All this talk of “civil disobedience” from anti-gay folks like Buchanan and the Manhattan Declarers is just posturing. It’s part of the fantasy role-playing game in which they stroke their egos by pretending that they’re heroic champions of morality. Bigotry is bigotry, no matter how much you abuse the language of civil rights and victimhood to self-valorize. Gay marriage compels absolutely nothing upon people who disagree with it, and takes absolutely nothing away from them. The basic Christianist argument is “My right to take away your rights trumps your right to exercise rights that have nothing to do with me.” That’s about as un-American as you can get.

QotD?: Ever been to San Diego? Why not?

5/2/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (WRPA editing work on METAtropolis: Green Space, plus lots of time prepping for San Diego trip)
Hours slept: 8.5 hours (interrupted)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.0
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, Cancer, Christianists, climate, Cool, Culture, economy, Funny, gay, guns, health, history, Language, Links, Mars, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, space, Videos, weird

Posted: 6:13 am Thu May 02 2013 | Comments(3) |