[links] Link salad has the roadhouse blues
Don’t forget the new caption contest [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
A reader reacts to Mainspring
Another review of Is Anybody Out There?
5 Resources to Assist Your Research (Pants Not Required) — (Thanks to lt260.)
Toad-licking chef ticketed — Oh, those whacky Midwesterners. (Thanks to garyomaha.)
Traveler to the undiscovere’d country — Roger Ebert on Christopher Hitchens, also religion and dying. Dying isn’t so bad. It’s getting sick and dying that’s the hard part.
?otD: Did you wake up this morning and get yourself a beer?
8/13/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.75 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 242.0
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: Defender by C.J. Cherryh
Tags: Books, Cancer, Contests, Funny, healthcare, Links, Mainspring, Personal, Process, reviews, weird, Writing
Posted: 4:40 am Fri August 13 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad visits the home by the sea
Don’t forget the new caption contest [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
Paul Kincaid at Strange Horizons reviews Pinion — Hmm. The story belongs to the reader…
Planet Stories covers — Mmm, pulp. (Via Erotic Mad Science.)
Monkeys hate flying squirrels, report monkey-annoyance experts — “Monkey-annoyance expert”: your job title for the future. (Via Ed Brayton’s blog.)
The terrible truth of Tetris — Hahaha. (Via David Goldman.)
Industrial Arts Occupations — More WPA art from Vintagraph.
Unsung Heroes: Vintage Garbage & Sanitation Trucks — Another feature from Dark Roasted Blend.
Computing at the Speed of Light — Replacing metal wiring with fiber optics could change everything from supercomputers to laptops.
Why GOP reaction is muted as judge affirms gay marriage rights — GOP conservatives may not be itching for a culture war over a judge’s decision overturning California’s gay marriage ban. Economic issues, not cultural ones, are their focus heading into Election 2010.
?otD: Are you dreaming of the time when you were free?
8/8/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (revisions, WRPA)
Body movement: beach walking later
Hours slept: 9.0 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, emotional distress)
Currently (re)reading: Inheritor by C.J. Cherryh
Tags: Art, Books, Contests, Culture, games, Links, Personal, Pinion, Politics, Publishing, reviews, Science, Tech, weird
Posted: 7:12 am Sun August 08 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad contemplates the opposite of medical miracles
Fine-tuning Cancer Treatments — Drug companies are harnessing new knowledge of cancer genetics.
Size matters — Asteroids, to scale. (Via Bad Astronomy.)
7 Wonders of the RV World — Americana at its finest. (Via e_bourne.)
The Lizard, the Catacombs, and the Clock: The Story of Paris’s Most Secret Underground Society — (Via shelly_rae.)
The American Aristocracy — On the repeal of the estate tax. Remember when the GOP was on and on about how family farms could be lost to the “death tax”, and Farm Bureau couldn’t find a single example of that happening? Yes, this is definitely another conservative win for the little guy.
Romney and Palin — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on a likely GOP presidential primary contest.
Beck Subtext: Obama Planning to Assassinate Tea Partiers — Nothing to see here, citizen. Just politics as usual, being conducted by rational, principled persons.
GOP Reps Align with Muslim Nations Against Gay NGO — Wait, I thought the GOP tells us Muslims are the enemy? Anything to stop teh gay, I guess. How these people can sleep at night is beyond me.
?otD: What’s your worst medical experience?
7/21/2010
Writing time yesterday: 3.25 hours (editing, WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bicycle ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (interrupted)
This morning’s weigh-in: 234.2
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 5/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, emotional turmoil)
Currently (re)reading: Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
Tags: Cancer, Cool, Culture, healthcare, Links, Personal, politic, Religion, Science, shellyrae, weird
Posted: 4:59 am Wed July 21 2010 | Comments(1) |
[links] Link salad is stumped by mornings, branches out
Talkback… or is it soccer? — A.M. Dellamonica with a bit more on the talking to mid-career writers discussion, plus a source attribution back to Jessica Reisman for raising the question in the first place.
Critix Redux — Art guru James Gurney on art criticism (again), which he compares to music criticism. How does this apply to literary criticism? It would seem that SF/F is to literary criticism as comics are to art criticism, but still.
SMBC on sex with nerds — Though this could be sex with writers. Binding, bondage: is there a difference?
Big Bend National Park — One of my favorite places on Earth, from orbit, natch.
Robot vs. Lobster — When a hexapod robot challenges a decapod crustacean, who wins? A million years of human evolution. Fifty thousand years of cultural development. Over two centuries of industrialization. And now, this.
?otD: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
7/18/2010
Writing time yesterday: 6.5 hours (revision, editing and WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 (pretty good, look, ma, no Lorazepam!)
This morning’s weigh-in: 233.0
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 2/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
Tags: Cool, Funny, Links, Personal, Photos, Process, Science, sex, Videos, weird, Writing
Posted: 5:50 am Sun July 18 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad got feet down below its knees
Historians locate King Arthur’s Round Table — Historians claim to have finally located the site of King Arthur’s Round Table – and believe it could have seated 1,000 people. “Number seven Buddha’s delight special for 1,000, and make it snappy.”
SMBC with more on gay engineers — :: laughing ::
The Amazingness of Instant — Scott Adams with a take on the iPad.
The Detroit 1905 — Look! It’s a railroad on a boat! I’ve always been fascinated by mutlimodal transportation.
A visit to the Real Doll factory — Not work safe, not brain safe. But fricking fascinating. Really. You have been warned. (Via
Rocket Propelled Chainsaw — For when the zombies are just too much. (Via David Goldman.)
Antimatter deep underground may be key to predicting quakes — Big science, weird stuff edition, from io9.com.
Why Our Universe Must Have Been Born Inside a Black Hole — A small change to the theory of gravity implies that our universe inherited its arrow of time from the black hole in which it was born. Weird science for all you skiffy types.
Conservative Women’s Groups Mum On Vitter Scandal — More of that famed principled consistency, I see.
Republicans Just Don’t Like the Unemployed, Cont’d — Anybody who thinks people choose to live on unemployment rather than work has no idea what it means to be poor, or how far unemployment compensation (doesn’t) go toward meeting even minimal monthly commitments for anyone with a roof over their head. This is conservative idiocy of the rankest order, thinking with their ideology to the absolute exclusion to any, you know, facts.
Mobutu Sese Seko on Terry Savage — This is the great turd in the conservative work-ethic punchbowl—that as much as we like to ignore class in this country, it works with a particularly effective determinism in the vast majority of cases. If you are born middle class, you will likely be middle class. If you are born in poverty, you will likely die there.
?otD: Got toejam football?
7/13/2010
Writing time yesterday: 2.0 hours (4,200 new words)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (decent)
This morning’s weigh-in: 233.0
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 2/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
Tags: Cool, Culture, Funny, gay, history, iPad, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, Tech, trains, weird
Posted: 5:14 am Tue July 13 2010 | Comments(1) |
[links] Link salad slides into another week of work and writing
A review of several books, including Mainspring and Escapement — Good stuff.
Lifesaving drugs may be killing health workers — A darker side to chemotherapy. (Via shelly_rae.)
The pool at Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore — Um, no. (Thanks to willyumtx.)
Adolfo Farsari – The Man Who Shot Old Japan — This is fascinating. Photos from 19th century Japan. (Indirectly via willyumtx.)
Seeing Infrared in Maps — Infrared imagery in online maps lets homeowners see their energy efficiency. This is kind of cool.
Online, We Pay With Our Time Spent Searching — An interesting look at time/value calculations for our leisure and entertainment efforts. (Thanks to my dad.)
The third Bush term — The Edge of the American West on where Obama continues to fail those of us who believed in him. Not just environmental policy, but the war, Guantanamo, civil liberties — a wide array of that peculiar Bush-era admixture of idiocy and evil continues to be propagated by the man we elected to reverse the damage.
?otD: What’s your word for world?
7/12/2010
Writing time yesterday: 4.25 hours (6,000 new words, plus WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.5 (decent)
This morning’s weigh-in: 231.6
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 2/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading:
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
Tags: Books, Cancer, Cool, Culture, Escapement, health, healthcare, Links, Mainspring, Personal, Photos, Politics, reviews, Science, weird
Posted: 4:47 am Mon July 12 2010 | Comments(6) |
[links] Link salad has got sole
From The Internet, With Hate — Kristian Bland on Harlan Ellison’s exit from the Internet.
Paul Jessup leads “The Weird Revival” — What, me, weird?
Remaking Hollywood: The strange world of Polish film posters
Blessed Nascency — Kim Jong Il [walked] out from his mother’s Patriotic and Revolutionary Vagina… Must. Not. Attempt. To. Visualize. Aaaaargh. (From FAILBlog.)
Russian spies’ accents puzzles — This bit from Language Log is fairly amusing. Reminds me of Sarah Hoyt, who has a moderate Portuguese accent in her English, telling me she is often mistaken for Russian.
SETI: Stiff Odds Against Eavesdropping — Centauri Dreams on the math behind listening.
The Flying Car — James Gurney on chimeric tech coming to life.
San Francisco Issues Regulations for Making Pot Brownies — So it’s all official no and everything. (Snurched from Scrivener’s Error.)
How Liberal Do You Think You Are? — A new paper by James Rockey finds “that somehow voters consistently misperceive where they lie on the ideological spectrum.”
?otD: The average human being owns less than two pairs of shoes. How many do you own?
7/8/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 231.2
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 2/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Tags: Culture, Funny, Language, Links, Movies, Personal, Politics, Science, Tech, weird, Writing
Posted: 5:02 am Fri July 09 2010 | Comments(6) |
[links] Link salad wakes up, wishes it had not done so
Jim Van Pelt (and Blondie) on Reader Expectations — Good stuff, Maynard.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves — Another interesting squib from Science In My Fiction.
Jeff VanderMeer on the future of publishing
Tin House-gate — Polyphony had exactly this problem. (Via Scriveners’s Error.)
Almost the Fried Olives of His Dreams — shelly_rae with the fried olive report. Mmmm.
The Mark of a Masterpiece — The man who keeps finding famous fingerprints on uncelebrated works of art. Or maybe not. Forensics in the world of fine art. (Via danjite.)
A Call to End Teacher Tenure — I had a very unpleasant experience with overt and unrepentant abuse of tenure that nearly stopped me from graduating with my B.A., so my feelings about this kind of issue are rather mixed. (And yes, the piece is talking about primary and secondary schools, not higher education.)
Kitchen appliances that bite — More weirdness from Dark Roasted Blend.
Solar Impulse plane starts 24-hour test flight — The aim is to assess whether the plane can fly in darkness. Um… (Yes, there’s more to the story, but that cutline is ridiculously funny to me.)
Put Away the Flags — Remembering Howard Zinn on July 4th True patriotism doesn’t require a yellow ribbon on your SUV.
Palin and Mondale — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison with an odd (to me, at least) but interesting piece of comparative political analysis.
?otD: What price glory?
7/8/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (fitful)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 4/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, emotional turmoil)
Currently (re)reading:
God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
Tags: Art, Culture, Food, Links, Personal, Politics, Process, Publishing, Tech, weird, Writing
Posted: 5:10 am Thu July 08 2010 | Comments(1) |
[links] Link salad contemplates baked goods
Walt Kelly’s Pogo and the Jabberwocky
How to Play Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie — (Via @jackwilliambell.)
Castle of the Maidens — Honestly, I think I liked the Monty Python version better.
The Must Have Poncho For This Season — (Thanks to David G., who threatened to give me this for my birthday.)
Ballard Street anent my recent post about the “idiots and assholes” theory of driving
Har Nuur, Mongolia — Since I’ve been posting images of Mongolia lately, here’s one of Mongolia from orbit.
Luftwaffe: 1919 — Post-war disarmament. These kinds of pictures can haunt me.
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Dave Weigel firing — More commentary on the ‘liberal’ media, among other things.
BP burning sea turtles alive — I’m glad industry self-regulation is working out so well for everyone. Enron, Wall Street derivatives, the BP oil spill: so nice to see conservative ideals proven out in the market place.
?otD: Bagels or doughnuts?
6/26/2010
Writing time yesterday: n/a
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 10.0 (good but interrupted)
This morning’s weigh-in: 226.4
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 7/10 (GI follies, sleep issues)
Currently (re)reading:
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
Tags: Art, Culture, Funny, games, Links, media, Mongolia, Movies, Personal, Photos, Politics, weird
Posted: 7:31 am Sun June 27 2010 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad overhears song from the woods
A reader reviews Pinion — Not so much with the liking.
What steampunk means to me — A commentary. I agree with Callaway; as I’ve said before I see steampunk as ‘skin’ or an aesthetic, not a movement qua cyberpunk or New Weird. I wrote “The Baby Killers” in part to address this, to try to reach for steampunk themes. We shall see if I have succeeded.
Human heads found in boxes at Ark. airport — I always wanted to get ahead. (Thanks to .)
The Man In The Iron Mask — Ok, this is very strange. (Via Dark Roasted Blend.)
Protecting the Lunar Farside — Some crunchy science with SFnal implications from Centauri Dreams.
Death by toxic goose. Amazing waterfowl facts part II — Some weird stuff here.
Burn the scientists! — [Italian] seismologists are now being indicted and investigated for manslaughter, on account of their failure to warn the population that an earthquake was coming. WTF?
No, Really, Palin Has No Political Future — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison (a self-identified ‘paleocon’) on Sarah Palin and the politics of the 2012 presidential election.
?otD: Kitchen prose or gutter rhymes?
6/19/2010
Writing time yesterday: n/a
Body movement: n/a
Hours slept: 8.5 (interrupted, nightmares)
This morning’s weigh-in: 232.2
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 9/10 (infusion)
Currently (re)reading:
A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
Tags: Baby, Books, Culture, Links, nature, Personal, Pinion, Politics, reviews, Science, weird
Posted: 7:43 am Sat June 19 2010 | Comments(0) |
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