Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad drives home from Seattle

5 things I’ve learned about horses that fantasy writers should keep in mind — truepenny tells it like it is.

Can wine become an American habit? (Fortune, 1934) — CNN.com reprints an 80 year old business story.

‘Bird-Man’ YouTube Video Confirmed to Be a Hoax

Forevertron

Robot Submarine To Europa Could Find Aquatic Life On Jupiter’s Icy Moon — “Robot Submarine to Europa” would be an awesome name for a rock band.

Team Obama embraces ‘Obamacare’ label — [I]f we ignore perceptions and deal with reality, “Obamacare” is, in fact, delivering on its promise, and helping millions of families who need the support. Luckily for the Republican party’s political fortunes, many millions of American voters will never forsake comfortably valorizing paranoid perception for the cold, hard, progressive reality of facts.

The Barbarism of the Health-Care Repeal Crusade — In every other advanced country, the provision of universal access to medical care is a public responsibility. In every other advanced country, this principle has been accepted by the mainstream conservative party. Only in the United States does the conservative party uphold the operating principle that regular access to doctors and medicine should be denied to large chunks of the population. This sort of barbarism is unique to the American right.

?otd: Seen John Carter yet?

3/25/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.5 hours (Little Dog, including story conference with bravado111)
Body movement: n/a
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch

Tags: Cool, Culture, Food, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Process, Science, Videos, Writing

Posted: 7:37 am Sun March 25 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad flies away like a little bird

My story “The Speed of Time” is up in podcast and Web reprint at Escape Pod

Darth Vader In A Kilt On A Unicycle Playing Bagpipes — This video will make your brain hurt, I promise. (Thanks to Scrivener’s Error.)

How to piss off a frog — Hahahahahahah.

Examining His Own Body, Stanford Geneticist Stops Diabetes in Its Tracks (Via Emily Siskin.)

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) — (Via my aunt.)

How Not to Attract Tourists — Ah, the romance of cross-border travel. I will observe that in my experience entering the US is a more intimidating and unfriendly process than anywhere else I’ve been in my adult life, including various Communist countries.

This Explains a Lot — A trenchant LA graffito. (Via mlerules.)

The Abominable Shellfish — Why some Christians hate gays but love bacon.

What now for Republicans? — Between oppressing gays and waging war on science and pushing women back into the nineteenth century and making sure kids grow up undereducated and proudly ignorant, how’s a busy Republican to find time to get back to ruining the economy and creating new military disasters, just like our last GOP administration?

Ariz. bill could require reason for birth control — Because conservatives are so rational, and have your best interests at heart. (Speaking of pushing women back to the nineteenth century…)

The Limits of Santorum’s Politics of Resentment — Who knew there were limits to the politics of resentment? Surely not the GOP.

2012 or Never — Republicans are worried this election could be their last chance to stop history. This is fear talking. But not paranoia. (Via ilya187

?otd: Ever been part of an emergency landing?

3/17/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (trip prep)
Body movement: Airport walking to come
Hours slept: 6.0 (solid)
Weight: 238.0
Currently reading: The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy

Tags: Art, Fiction, Food, Funny, gender, healthcare, Links, music, Personal, podcasts, Politics, Religion, sex, stories, Tech, Travel, Videos

Posted: 3:34 am Sat March 17 2012 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad is a regular Frankie fan

Subterranean announces their Spring, 2012 table of contents — Including my Sunspin novella, “The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future”.

A photo of me and my siblings ca. 1974 — (Via lillypond, a/k/a my sister.)

Girls’ Time Travel Attempt Leads To Suicide In China

Cube laser virtual keyboard for iPhone & iPad — :: wants ::

Cloning and resurrecting the mammoth? Not so fast

Human fossils hint at new species — The accompanying photo of a skull looks a lot like Darth Vader. Homo sith, anyone?

Disturbing and poignant video about a self-aware robot tests game-engine’s limitations — (Via willyumtx.)

A 77-year-old man from Oklahoma cannot deny human-caused climate change — Slacktivist Fred Clark on Republican Senator Inhofe’s allegedly Bible based climate change denial.

Abortion bill raises KU Med accreditation concerns — Why would anti-science conservatives even care?

Georgia Republican Compares Women to Cows, Pigs, And Chickens — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best. And people, when you vote GOP, whatever your reasons, you’re enabling and endorsing a hell of a lot of very destructive crazy, just like this. Are you proud of your Republican party?

Democrats ride Romney’s Planned Parenthood remark — As well they should. Romney was being honest about the destructive GOP agenda. Keeping that in the minds of voters is the right thing to do.

Under what party did gasoline and oil prices reach their peak? Republican, of course — Not that the historical record stops the GOP from flat out lying about this.

Don’t you know that it’s different for hippies — Or why conservatives are protected from the consequences of their actions. Dixie Chicks vs Rush Limbaugh, anyone?

?otd: Was it great when it all began?

3/15/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (fitful)
Weight: 236.6
Currently reading: Blood of Orange by Lizzy Shannon; Requiem by Ken Scholes

Tags: cars, China, climate, Cool, family, gender, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, sex, stories, Sunspin, Videos

Posted: 5:19 am Thu March 15 2012 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad in another dimension, with voyeuristic intention

Google to Announce Venture With Belgian Museum — Oooh, an analog search engine. This is cool. Reminds me of the paper-based relational databases described in Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew (published in 1844/1845). (Via my Dad.)

Exposure to D. & D. early in life? — Hahahahahah. A handy infographic. No, I don’t recognize myself on there. Not anywhere. Why do you ask? No, not me. Nuh uh.

The lifespan of a falsehood — Fascinating. (Via Steve Buchheit.)

Pediatricians get more firm when parents refuse vaccines — Hell, yes. Willful ignorance is willful ignorance. (Thanks to danjite.)

New type of extra-chromosomal DNA discovered — This apparently has implications for both cancer and autism.

Fugates of Kentucky: Skin Bluer than Lake Louise — Are they Melungeons? (Via my Dad.)

Most Detailed View Yet of the Apollo 11 Moonwalks: Big Pic — Not that this will faze the moon landing denialists in the slightest.

Exotic Antimatter Caught in Disappearing Act — So, why don’t “exotic matter” and “exotic dancer” have parallel meanings?

3D-nanoprinting speed record set by Vienna University — (Via David Goldman)

Busy Nest Box — Chris Johnson’s high tech owl nesting box is back in business for the season.

Mysterious hog farm explosions stump scientists — How can you not love a headline like this?

Social networking sites and politics — Liberals are the most likely to have taken each of these steps to block, unfriend, or hide. In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates. Not quite the result I would have expected. (Via ericjamesstone.)

PMO Scientists Pest Control — Don’t let scientists wreak havoc with your agenda. Hahahah. (Thanks to threeoutside.)

The Hypocrite in Everyone Else — We’re all hypocrites. It’s human nature. It’s the hypocrisy in those who claim moral superiority, and profit from those claims, that truly rankles.

How the NBA Takes Money From People Who Don’t Like Basketball — This story certainly plays into my confirmation biases.

Goldman Sachs director in London quits ‘toxic’ bank — A manager at US banking giant Goldman Sachs in London has quit, saying he could no longer work there “in good conscience”. Goldman Sachs would be part of that Wall Street establishment that Kenyan Muslim Socialist Obama has worked to protected above all other players in our economy. Tell me again why this has been a national priority?

Santorum, Gingrich Decry ‘Anti-Christian Bigotry’ In Run-Up To AL, MS — Um, I’m pretty sure it’s the Christians who are doing most of the persecuting in this country. A lot more abortion clinics get shot up and bombed than churches do. And, well, teh gay!

Reid Dares GOP: Block Judicial Nominees, And You Will Also Stall The JOBS Act — You know, that whole advise and consent thing. If Democrats in the Senate had treated Bush this way, the howls would still be echoing. When Republican do it to Obama, well, that’s just good patriotism.

Tilting at Dutch windmills — From [Santorum press secretary] Stewart’s perspective, Santorum being “a strong pro-life person” apparently gives him license to make up nonsense about the Netherlands. Republicans: The party of simply making shit up to confuse the voters.

?otd: Well secluded, do you see all?

3/14/2012
Writing time yesterday: 3.5 hours (2.25 hours on nonfiction first draft unrelated to Extremes; 1.25 hours of WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.75 (solid)
Weight: 237.0
Currently reading: Blood of Orange by Lizzy Shannon; Requiem by Ken Scholes

Tags: Cancer, Cool, Culture, Funny, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, sports, Tech, Videos

Posted: 5:27 am Wed March 14 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad does the walk of life

A nice review of Westward Weird — With favorable mention of my story, “The Temptation of Eustace Prudence McAllen”.

Michael Chabon Attacks Prejudice Against Science Fiction

The Collusion Case Against Publishers — John Scalzi is wise.

SMBC on Clarke’s Third Law — Hahahah.

The QWERTY effect — Language Log on the supposed positive valence of rightside letters.

Brontë sisters power dolls — Snerk. (Via Scrivener’s Error.)

“The Women of the Future” according to 1902 French Trading Cards

A Dutch Angel’s Cellphone Number Is in Demand — Cryin’ statues and spittin’ images. (Thanks to David Goldman.)

It’s Not Junk if I Made It — Recreating Snack Cakes, Cookies and Chips at Home. (Via my Dad.)

DIY Kit Overclocks Your Brain With Direct Current — Transcranial Direct Stimulation works, and you can try it at home. What could possibly go wrong?

Why Aren’t There More Female Patent-Holders? — I will note anecdotally that I am an inventor of a commercialized patent, and I do not have an engineering or technical degree.

Feathers Worth a 2nd Look Found on a Tiny Dinosaur

James Cameron winning ‘race to inner space’ in a ‘clown car’ — I love this headline.

Entire nation of Kiribati to be relocated over rising sea level threat — The low-lying Pacific nation of Kiribati is negotiating to buy land in Fiji so it can relocate islanders under threat from rising sea levels. It’s amazing the lengths liberals will go to in order to perpetuate their climate change scams. Luckily the Right has Rush Limbaugh and other ideologically correct voices to shield them from those pesky facts.

Pat Robertson Says Marijuana Use Should be Legal — Also, this just in: Monkeys have flown out of my ass. Wait, what?

Bullying, Cont. — Ta-Nehisi Coates with some cites on ant-gay bullying as sponsored by conservative parents and political leaders. The embrace of organized hatred and institutionalized bigotry is yet another of the myriad reasons I will never, ever be a Republican.

Political “Fairy Tales” Are Frequently Pernicious

Rush Limbaugh’s blind spot — It also may be why Limbaugh can’t shake his paranoid hallucinations of trampy, castrating women. He doesn’t have a clue what a real one is.

Women in Texas Losing Options for Health Care in Abortion Fight — Thank you, conservative America. Your misogyny couldn’t be any more plain. (Via shsilver.)

The GOP is the place to be — Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. Heh.

?otd: Will you hand me down my walking shoes?

3/9/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (Going to Extremes)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: 235.6
Currently reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann; Permeable Borders by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Tags: climate, Culture, Food, Funny, gay, gender, healthcare, Language, Links, media, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, Religion, reviews, Science, stories, Tech, Videos, weird

Posted: 6:26 am Fri March 09 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad doesn’t tell you where to go, baby

Staying in Touch with Your Writing — Jeff VanderMeer on the danger of emphasizing word counts, with some positive comments on how otherwise to approach writing. (Via Steve Buchheit.)

Reprint Recommendations: War and Space: Recent Combat — Editor Sean Wallace is looking for reprints of space war stories.

Distances among genres and authors — Some linguistic neepery on word corpuses etc. from Language Log.

Bad News for People With Hard-to-Pronounce Names — I think authors and publishers have known this for a long time.

Teller Reveals His Secrets — The smaller, quieter half of the magician duo Penn & Teller writes about how magicians manipulate the human mind. (Thanks to danjite.)

If You Feel O.K., Maybe You Are O.K. — An objection to early diagnosis. Speaking only for myself, neither of metastases so far had expressed themselves to me somatically before being found by imaging. If we’d waited for me to show symptoms, I would have been in a lot more trouble. Early diagnosis continues to save my life.

Oetzi the Iceman’s nuclear genome gives new insights

Revolutionary vehicles that never caught on — Mmm. Dynasphere.

Flying Through a Crack in the Ice — A cool animation from NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Why We’ll Never Get a Cashless Society — The arguments against cash are rational, but our attachment to it isn’t.

Shame on the Rich — Are the rich more dishonest? I believe the word you’re looking for is “entitlement”. (Via my aunt.)

Republicans’ war on common sense

G.O.P. Greek Tragedy — In the old days, the Republican ego had control of the party’s id. The id, sometimes described as a galloping horse or crying baby, “the dark, inaccessible part of our personality … chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations,” as Freud called it, was whipped up obliquely by candidates. Nixon had his Southern strategy of using race as a wedge, Bush Senior and Lee Atwater used the Willie Horton attack, and W. and Karl Rove conjured the gay marriage bogyman. Once elected, those presidents curbed the id with the ego, common sense and reason. But now the G.O.P.’s id is unbridled.

Erasing the History of the Bush Era — Conservatives don’t like to recall the horrible, horrible costs of our country’s last era of conservative government. Denial, thy name is GOP.

?otd: What if I ride? What if you walk?

2/29/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.75 hours (0.75 hours of WRPA, 1.0 hours of Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (solid)
Weight: 235.6
Currently reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann

Tags: Cancer, cars, climate, Cool, Culture, Funny, health, healthcare, Language, Links, Personal, Politics, Process, Publishing, Science, stories, Videos, Writing

Posted: 6:27 am Wed February 29 2012 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad puts some Spike Jones on the box

My dear friend and fellow writer Mark Bourne has passed away suddenly and unexpectedly — My deepest condolences to Elizabeth and all his family and friends.

A reader reacts to Westward Weird — They liked my story.

Street Dates and Sales Velocity — Andrew Wheeler on Seanan McGuire and some fairly deep (and interesting) publishing neepery.

Insane art formed by carving books with surgical tools — (Thanks to scarlettina.)

Culturomics And The Google Book Project — The digitisation of over 5 million books has created a huge dataset of cultural interest. Now researchers are beginning to tease it apart using powerful number-crunching techniques.

Aardman’s upcoming pirate movie — Aardman Animation, the makers of Wallace and Gromit, is putting the finishing touches on The Pirates! Band of Misfits, which may be the most technically ambitious stop-frame animated film yet.

The Book of Human Languages — Ta-Nehisi Coates on bilingualism.

The 5 Craziest War Stories (All Happened on the Same Ship) — (Via danjite.)

Hell off Earth: Blustery Exoplanet Charted in 2-D for First Time — Astronomers have made a crude two-dimensional thermal map of an extrasolar world they cannot yet see, confirming that violent winds rapidly whip around the planet.

An Astronaut’s Cravings: Horseradish and Tabasco Sauce — Interesting stuff here that might be useful for SF writers. I like the bit about the biscotti.

High-precision weigh-in for W boson means fewer hiding places for Higgs

Single molecule’s electric charges seen in first image

Unlimited human eggs ‘potential’ for fertility treatment

Climate Reality, a poignant and important PSA about climate [change] denial in schools.

Frank Rich on Media Bias — The “liberal media” meme has been one the GOP’s most successful Big Lies in their decades-long attack on American culture and society.

The Difference between Romney and Obama (Picture) — This one pretty much says it all. Hey, I wonder if any FOX News viewers saw this? You know Your Liberal media is.

Ghastly Outdated Party — Welcome to Republican America.

Rick Santorum’s Despicable And Hurtful Health Care Lie — I know. A Republican lying. It’s like rain falling in Oregon or something. Who could possibly anticipate such a thing? (Via David Goldman.)

?otd: Can you stand to hear him sing? Do you love the way he talks?

2/27/2012
Writing time yesterday: 4.75 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: 60 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.25 (fitful)
Weight: 235.4
Currently reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann

Tags: Art, climate, Cool, Culture, Food, healthcare, Language, Links, media, Movies, Personal, Politics, Publishing, reviews, Science, stories, Tech, Videos

Posted: 6:32 am Mon February 27 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad takes to the skies once more

delkytlar reacts to Pinion

The Genius of Pinterest’s Copyright Dodge

How Waiters Secretly Predict Your Every Need

Windows on the iPad, and Speedy — Hmmm… (Via my Dad.)

The Handley Page H.P.39 Gugnunc, Cierva C.19 Mark III autogyro, and Westland-Hill Pterodactyl IV – at the Royal Air Force Display, Hendon, 1931 — This is quite a photo. Pterodactyl?

Remix footage of the world’s first helicopters using samples from the British Pathe archives

Buckyball Solids Found in Space — Cool!

‘Nomad’ planets may outnumber stars in Milky Way — Many of those homeless planets could be heated by internal radioactivity, and if any possess thick atmospheres, they might even harbor some kind of microbial life.

Never mind the polls—we’re convinced our candidate is going to win — People tend to think their opinion is a majority view, even if they’re total extremist whackaloons. Remember the Montana Freedmen, who were convinced the entire nation would rise up in support of them when the FBI came to their compound?

Maryland gay marriage bill on way to governor — Another setback for the religious bigots.

President Obama as an alien — We know it’s wrong to judge people by their race or lineage. Unless we’re Republicans, of course, trolling for votes from white bigots.

The Man Who Wasn’t There — It is now an article of faith among the Republican base that Bush’s failures stem not from the fact that he was a manifest incompetent, but that he was too liberal a president. Yep. And further proof that Republicans are delusional.

?otd: Fly much?

2/24/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (Sunspin revisions)
Body movement: airport walking to come
Hours slept: 5.5 (solid)
Weight: 237.2
Currently reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann

Tags: Books, Cool, Culture, gay, Links, Personal, Photos, Pinion, Politics, Publishing, race, Religion, reviews, Science, Tech, Videos

Posted: 4:30 am Fri February 24 2012 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad luxuriates in Saturday

Welcome to Earth – a universal timelapse to give you goosebumps

Get Them While They Are Young — Indoctrination of children through art and media. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

“Salon Aéronautique : moteur REP, 10 cylindres, 35 HP : [photographie de presse] / Agence Meurisse” — There’s quite an untold story embedded in this early 20th century photograph.

Tiny chameleon and wasp

White Grandfather Detained While Walking With Black Granddaughter: Scott Henson Cuffed By Texas Police — Sigh.

Hip, hip, hypocrisy! — Bad Astronomer with some snark and links on the Heartland Institute and the cynical intellectual fraud of climate change denial.

Everything old is new again, alas — [T]he idea of dividing public necessity from personal religious scruple seems far scarcer today than it was 50 years ago. Ah, progress.

Rick Santorum Questions Obama’s Christian Values — Stay classy, Senator Frothy Mix.

Gingrich: Negative ads have lowered voter turnout — Yet somehow, they just can’t help themselves.

?otd: What are you doing with your weekend?

2/18/2012
Writing time yesterday: 3.0 hours (Sunspin revisions, 15 minutes of WRPA)
Body movement: n/a
Hours slept: 7.5 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann

Tags: climate, Cool, Culture, Links, media, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, Religion, Videos

Posted: 12:30 pm Sat February 18 2012 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad is still in the Mile High City

A reader reacts to the anthology Is Anybody Out There? — Including favorable mention of my Sunspin short story, “Permanent Fatal Errors”.

Do you outline or are you a “pantser”? — The Shimmer blog’s group interview of five authors continues.

How to Save Books — Ted Rall on ebooks. (Via goulo.)

An interface for navigating iPad ebooks that mimics the fluid, intuitive navigation of thumbing through the pages of a paper book.

Dead Ox Kids: 1939 — A little bit of Oregon history from Shorpy.

An octopus blind date — (Via Scrivener’s Error.)

A star that exploded but didn’t die: the Great Eruption of Eta Carinae

Swiss space-cleaning bot grabs flying junk, hurls itself into furnace — SkyNet? Hello?

What Happened At Heartland? — Further reporting on the cynical intellectual fraud that is climate change denialism. Nobel Intent with more on this, especially the money trail.

Drumming up a phony war on religion — When you don’t have any ideas, run on social manipulation. It’s the GOP way.A

The Saga of Rick Santorum’s Second Surge — Mmm. Senator Frothy Mix is frothing.

?otd: How many people named Tabor can there be in American history?

2/16/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (short fiction revisions, some Sunspin WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute urban walk (cold!!!)
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann

Tags: climate, Cool, ebooks, Links, nature, Oregon, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, Publishing, Religion, reviews, Science, stories, Tech, Videos, Writing

Posted: 6:12 am Thu February 16 2012 | Comments(0) |