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Posts Tagged‘ebooks’

[links] Link salad creaks through the weekend

Always fighting the storm, afraid to suffer the wound — Lisa Costello on acceptance and coping with my impending death.

Ten Things You May Not Know About Ebook Prices — (Via D. Scott Frey.)

Nimoy Sings: 1968 — Given the pattern on Nimoy’s shirt, we can only be grateful this photo isn’t in color.

Apogee’s Full Moon — It’s a mighty cool photo, but be sure to read the copy as well.

Hiroo Onoda, Japanese soldier who long refused to surrender, dies at 91 — After losing his comrades to various circumstances, Onoda was eventually persuaded to come out of hiding in 1974. His former commanding officer traveled to Lubang to see him and tell him he was released from his military duties. In his battered old army uniform, Onoda handed over his sword, nearly 30 years after Japan surrendered.

Bone fragment ‘could be King Alfred or son Edward’

Scratching out a Living on Ellesmere Island — Retreating glaciers in the high arctic have left behind heaps of debris and new territory for cold-loving plants to colonize.

Three arguments about climate change that should never be used — Yeah, good luck with that. Climate change denialism isn’t an evidence-based process, and reason doesn’t enter in to. Exactly like evolution denialists, climate change denialists argue backwards from an ideological conclusion and try to subvert the language of evidence and reason to support their article of faith. So providing evidence-based reasoning against ideological denialist arguments is pointless.

Company Behind West Virginia’s Chemical Spill Files For Bankruptcy — Mmm, industry self-regulation for the win. All those meddlesome, job-killing Federal regulations wouldn’t have done anything except likely prevent the spill, and ensure the company could cover the damages if the spilled happened anyway. We don’t want that sort of thing in a free society, do we? Also, this. Because freedom! And evil liberals who happen to think clean drinking water might be important!

The GOP’s War on Science Endangering America: Climate Change, Evolution, Regulation — The Republican Party is increasingly emerging as an anti-science party. Since American greatness was built on its science and technology (and not on the odd cult of biblical inerrancy), this development is a danger to the republic, and, indeed, to the world. The US used to be about solving problems, about a can-do spirit, not about denying concrete reality. I would have said, “has long since emerged”. Conservatives will have an enormous amount to answer for in America’s degraded future, but they will never see or understand that.

Judge strikes down North Carolina ultrasound abortion law — Slowly, sanity and morality and justice creep back into America despite concerted conservative efforts to the contrary. (Via David Goldman.)

Christians aren’t being driven out of public life – they’re just losing their unfair advantages — One of the prickly issues for a society that attempts to be liberal is how tolerant it must be of the intolerant. Writing in the last issue of this magazine, Cristina Odone says that she feels her rights as a taxpayer, a citizen and a Christian have been trampled on. She warns of a world around the corner in which religion will be a secret activity behind closed doors. So, what is this dystopian vision of the future? A world where if you run a bed and breakfast, you cannot discriminate against gay couples, and you have to abide by the rules of the job you are contracted to do. That’s it, really. (Via [info]rekre8.)

America is becoming more liberal — If true, this offers some hope for future sanity in this country. The Reagan and post-Reagan conservative experiment has failed by almost every conceivable metric. Maybe it’s time to try optimism, growth and tolerance instead.

Obama Outlines 5 Surveillance Reforms — Yet somehow the surveillance state will continue to proper. Color me cynical.

?otD: Did you sleep in today?

1/18/2014
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo brain)
Hours slept: 8.75 hours (interrupted)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Weight: 239.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI!: 0
Currently reading: n/a (chemo brain)

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad is big and round and three to the pound

Dementia: Terry Pratchett ‘angry’ with government

Meet Your Body’s Death Eaters — From brain to blood to bone, macrophages take out our cellular trash. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Calvin and Hobbes on ebooks — Hahahah.

Twitter’s World — Languages and Twitter.

Prosthetic Arm Found in Second-Hand Shop — Ah, headlines.

Irrefutable Proof that Santa is Odin — (Via [info]rekre8.)

‘Get me off this plane’: Man locked in dark cabin in worst layover ever — Wow. (Via RWN.)

Fat Flag — Food, art, nationalism. (Via [info]willyumtx.)

Europe’s rarest orchid rediscovered in the Azores

Blistering exposé prompts Johns Hopkins to suspend black-lung screenings — Coal companies paid the Baltimore-based university handsome sums to screen the claimants for the disease. After reviewing chest X-rays, the university’s scientists almost always concluded that the scans did not show black lung — a conclusion which often overwhelmed any other medical opinion in the case. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

What Names are Normal? Shifting the Center of the World — Culture and names.

Online Dating Shows Us the Cold, Hard Facts — Fascinating article, although it makes a couple of logical leaps.

“She Said ‘This Is a Gun.’ I Said No, It’s a Prop for My Monkey.” — Ah, TSA, we hardly knew ye.

At Least 194 Children Have Been Shot to Death Since Newtown — The NRA says arming more adults will protect kids—but most are killed at home, our investigation shows, often with unsecured guns. Yep. Definitely safer dead by those guns than they would have been remaining alive in a gun-free household. Ask any gun owner.

The Heartland Institute and the American Meteorological Society — If climate science really is in such disarray as the deniers claims, then why do so many resort to misleading tactics so often? Why post misleading graphs, why cherry pick data, why engage in egregious ad hominems, why send out emails about papers that say the opposite of what the paper actually concludes? If their claims are correct, then why even risk the perception of impropriety? It might seem as if they’re more interested in scoring political and ideological points rather than scientific ones. But then, the evidence is solidly against them. So are 97 percent of the scientists who actually do research in climate science, as are the data, the science, and the reality of global warming. As with virtually all conservative causes, bearing false witness is far more productive than providing evidence, given that evidence-based reality almost never favors the conservative viewpoint.

Dear Pres. Obama: Dissent isn’t Possible in a Surveillance State — Sigh.

?otD: Does your staff have a knob on the end?

12/11/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo brain)
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Weight: 239.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block forging presidential birth certificates: 0
Currently reading: n/a (chemo brain)

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad hurts its foot

The Digital Public Library of America Opens its Doors — A new website is the start of a bold project to digitize America’s cultural heritage.

Trigger Happy: roleplaying in a World Which Hates You. — Caias Ward is running a gaming Kickstarter.

Terminal Illness: Readers’ Best and Worst Airports — In which my opinion of the Newark airport is quoted.

When oversharing online can get you arrested

Startup uBiome Will Catalog Your Microbes, Again and Again

Illegal loggers continue to threaten Amazonian tribe

When Dinner Has a Gleam in Its Eye — China’s economic boom is driving a culinary revival, as chefs rediscover dishes that haven?t been seen for decades. (Via Dad.)

Fish’s DNA May Explain How Fins Turned to Feet

Opalized wood — Petrified wood is basically fossilized wood that has had it’s organic matter replaced by a mineral such as agate, bit by bit, as it decomposes. The wood structure is maintained, but the wood fibers are slowly changed into stone. Sometimes a jasper, quartz, pyrite or even opal(shown above) can be found fossilized in wood. Wow. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Super Storm Sandy Produced Tiny Vibrations in Earth’s Crust

Dust over the Four Corners Region — My pareidolia caused me to see this as a cowboy waving his hat, even before I realized what region of the world the orbital photograph covers.

Samsung Demos a Tablet Controlled by Your Brain — An easy-to-use EEG cap could expand the number of ways to interact with your mobile devices.

Small Government: Texas Fertilizer Plant that blew up not inspected for years — The Texas fertilizer plant that suffered a massive explosion had not been subject to an OSHA inspection for many years. The current American obsession with deregulation and ending inspections has claimed yet more victims, as The Nation shows. And Texas has also cut funding for first responders like firemen. See? The Republican party is right. Regulation is bad for business, and taxes to pay for things like fire departments are an evil theft of your hard-earned money. Too bad about all those dead people, but at least they died for conservative principles.

Conservative radio host: Families of Newtown shooting victims can ‘go to hell’ — Ah, compassionate conservatism intersects with the measured, rational tenor of the American gun culture. You guys must be so proud of yourselves.

QotD?: Ow?

4/19/2013
Writing time yesterday: 4.0 hours (60 minutes and 1,600 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin, plus 30 minutes of WRPA to produce 1,100 words of nonfiction, and 2.5 hours of Reddit interviewing)
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (injured foot)
Weight: n/a (couldn’t stand on scale due to injured foot)
Number of FEMA troops on my block checking the magazine sizes of gun owners: 0
Currently reading: The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad stays up too late gaming

This Is Your Brain on E-Books — When we read on dead trees, do we retain more?

How Libraries Respond to Disaster — A Nebraska library in trouble. (Via [info]threeoutside.)

Cancer, Big Data and Storage — Some of the numbers are off, but this article talks about the genomic process I’m currently undergoing from the point of view data storage design. Interesting. (Via Michael Fay.)

Has anyone ever been killed by a falling piano or anvil? — Actually, one of my grandfather’s brothers was killed by a falling piano during the Great Depression.

Photos of Children From Around the World With Their Most Prized Possessions — (Via Lisa Costello.)

Belly Button Biodiversity: Part One — Uh, yeah. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

‘BioShock Infinite’ embraces history, philosophy

Arctic Instruments — A cool photo and text survey of extreme infrastructure.

Planck-in’ on Billions and Billions — The universe appears to be slightly lopsided, and even rather cold in one part. This is cool. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

How does Bitcoin work?

Diluting the scientific method: Ars looks at homeopathy (again) — In honor of World Homeopathy Week, we discuss why it shouldn’t be celebrated. Another stripe of anti-science willful ignorance often found among liberal-progressives, who really ought to know better.

Arctic nearly free of summer sea ice during first half of 21st century

Saudi Arabia’s Religious Police Outlaw ‘Tempting Eyes’ — This is what you get when you establish state religions and make laws based on religious principles. The American Taliban is no different in substance, only in degree (for now). Other than claiming to be Christians, as if that make it all better. (Via [info]danjite.)

10 Totally Kind Things Social Conservatives Have Said About Gays — I appreciate that conservatives resent being called bigots, but that’s what gay hate is. Bigotry. Not family values. Not morality. Not a legitimate personal philosophy with which reasonable people can differ. You want to hate, own the hate. There’s no get-out-of-jail-free card for being a “nice guy”.

What Actually Happened To That Same-Sex Couple In The Missouri Hospital — This is the kind of damage conservative values do to real people in the real world.

QotD?: Have you played Cards Against Humanity?

4/13/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.25 hours (1,700 words on Original Destiny, Manifest Sin, 1.25 hours WRPA including a media interview)
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 0.0 (away from home)
Number of FEMA troops on my block enforcing Agenda 21 by closing down golf courses: 0
Currently reading: Jingo by Terry Pratchett

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad is an advertising victim

Kalimpura gets Klausnered — Go, me!

All yours… until your credit card expires: Barnes & Noble ‘stops customers accessing ebooks they’ve already paid for’ — Nice move, Barnes and Noble. You’ve lowered yourself to Amazon.com’s level of predatory business practices. (Via [info]corwynofamber.)

Steampunk Keyboard — (Via [info]willyumtx.)

Preaching the incontrovertible to the unconvertible — Language Log revisits an old bogeyman, the spurious that/which distinction so beloved of copy editors.

“Homicide Victims Rarely Talk to Police,” and Other Horrible Headlines

cancer. canceling. postponing. waiting. growing. — Amanda Palmer on the hard choices of cancer in the lives of people around you. In case you somehow missed this. (Via Lisa Costello among others.)

Genetic Sequencing Traces Romani Back to Ancient Indian Origin — The original headline could use some work, though the article is more nuanced. Also, note the first comment under the piece. (Via David Goldman.)

Cold case cops find new DNA strategy — A cold case detective working to identify eight bodies found in John Wayne Gacy’s home in 1978 developed a new way to find other possible victims of Chicago’s most notorious serial killer. Ah, the majesty of the law. (Via Lisa Costello.)

The catfish that strands itself to kill pigeons — (Via Steve Buchheit.)

You don’t have to be local — I’m not very good at being local, but I do split my energy. (Via David Goldman.)

One Month Later: 30 Post-Election Rebuilding Tips From Republicans — I’ll bet good money the GOP swiftly returns to generating angry white men as their core electoral strategy. To do anything else would require the GOP to confront the huge number of issues about which it has been dreadfully wrong, and the modern conservative movement is clearly incapable of that degree of introspection.

Evangelicals vs. Persons With Disabilities: The real dangers of fighting against imaginary monsters — This vote also harms America’s leadership, influence and reputation in the world. It makes America look ignorant, petty and spiteful. It makes us look that way because 38 Republican senators caused America to be ignorant, petty and spiteful. And this ugly, harmful stupidity is all based on fantasy — based on nothing more than evangelicals’ preoccupation with pretending that they’re waging a heroic battle against Satanic baby-killer abortionists and against the one-world government of the Antichrist. How is that different from almost every other conservative position these days?

?otD: Got milk?

12/7/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo brain)
Hours slept: 8.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours stationary bike ride
Weight: 217.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block teaching evolution to children and redistributing wealth: 0
Currently reading: The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad is always in the front and not the rear

Have you voted in the Kalimpura caption contest voting poll?

Outlawed by Amazon DRM — A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. This is DRM at it’s worst. If you think Amazon is your friend, you are sadly mistaken. A lesson I learned the hard way a couple of years ago myself. (Via [info]goulo.)

Hobbes and Bacon — Hahahah. (Via Janelle Lohr.)

Daily Idioms — More like weekly, given the posting frequency, but ZOMG are these some amazingly cool links. (Via Lisa Costello.)

Big Trouble in Little China + Gangnam Style. John Carpenter approves. — The bog mindless… (Via Lisa Costello.)

Soldiers Lost and Found: Students Rediscover the Fallen — History, one war casualty at a time. (Via [info]danjite.)

Elephants — Not to mention incendiary pigs and howdah pistols. And Special Forces field manuals. And, um, yeah. Because reasons, that’s why! (Snurched from Daily Idioms.)

The Urine Wheel — Mmm. Pee-a-licious. (Via Lisa Costello.)

Dissolving electronics – medical sensors that disintegrate after a fixed time — This is some serious cool.

Mammatus Clouds Over Saskatchewan — I’ve seen these in Texas.

Coal-Eating Microbes Might Create Vast Amounts of Natural Gas — Companies are demonstrating a novel way to turn inaccessible coal into usable fuel.

L’Aquila quake: Italy scientists guilty of manslaughter — This is kind of freaky. Has the American conservative “science is lies from the pit of hell” attitude infected Italian politics as well? Or let me put this more succinctly: this is fucking insane. More here.

Carbon dating to 50,000 years — An article in Friday’s Science magazine details how a team of scientists provided a calibration for carbon dating accurately to 50,000 years, or about 10 times the age of the earth according to many creationists. Amazing how accurate and detailed those lies from the pit of hell can be. Warning: Facts not valid for conservatives. (Via [info]threeoutside.)

Costumed Pa. girl mistaken for skunk, shot — Police say a costumed 9-year-old girl was accidentally shot outside a western Pennsylvania home during a Halloween party by a relative who thought she was a skunk. If you’re one of America’s gun owners, how’s that whole defense of essential liberties thing working out for you? Sure worked out well for this kid, didn’t it? I’ll bet she’s grateful as hell for the NRA and the GOP vigorously standing up for her right to be shot at a party.

CNN anchor to hate group: “I am a proud, card-carrying member” of the gay gestapo — Republicans think truth has a liberal bias, so they lie routinely as a matter of strategy.

International monitors at US polling spots draw criticism from voter fraud groups — Now Kazakhstan is monitoring our elections. Guess who objects? Conservatives: the very same people committing wholesale voter suppression and fraud. (Via David Goldman.)

Steve King: Comparing Immigrants To Dogs Was ‘A Compliment’ — Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best. (Via my Aunt M.)

Akin: McCaskill fetches expansive government “like a dog” — Mr. Legitimate Rape is at it again. Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best.

Can a businessman help the economy? For presidents, the answer has been no. — The startling bottom line is that the nation’s GDP has grown more than 45 times faster under presidents with little or no business experience than it has under presidents with successful business careers. And on average, when there has been a successful businessman in the Oval Office (so, Truman is excluded), GDP growth has been negligible. I’ve never understood why business experience is a selling point for political office. Governments are not for profit entities, nor are they non-profit entities in the 501©3 sense. (Via David Goldman.)

A ‘greatest hits’ of misleading Romney claims — Once again, we see the guiding principle of contemporary conservatism: When you can’t win on your ideas, lie.

Romney’s Major Flip-Flops in the Third Debate — Remember when Republicans despised John Kerry for a flip-flopper? Yeah, neither do they.

Verdict on the Foreign Policy Debate — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on last night’s debate. A review of the transcript will show that Romney delivered a lot of incoherent answers, but that probably won’t hurt him with most viewers. Likely Republican voters in a nutshell, right there.

The Undisclosed Mitt Romney — With the presidential election just two weeks away, Romney’s gamble may be paying off. He has failed to specify where he would wield the budget knife, and he has defied, with a striking degree of success, the relatively quiet group of people who have called for him to honor a host of traditional disclosure and campaign practices. Post-truth campaigning is succeeding admirably for Romney and the GOP so far. Which may be a death knell for honest politics in America, insofar as they’ve been honest before this point.

?otD: What does a beaver do when she’s lost and cold?

10/23/2012
Writing time yesterday: 2.5 hours (revisions on “A Stranger Comes to Kalimpura”)
Body movement: 0.5 hour stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 hours
Weight: 230.0
Currently reading: n/a

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad sends a message through the receiver

Writing the Other with Fear and Trembling, Try and Caring — [info]kenscholes takes on a very contentious topic.

The Bookless Library — Print, e-books and reading. (Thanks to Marta Murvosh.)

Nerd Culture As Suicide Intervention — Ta-Nehisi Coates on how a lot of us rolled as kids and young adults.

Cormorant’s deep underwater dive filmed

This thread in my comments section about candied starfish is hilarious — Especially [info]garyomaha‘s remarks.

‘Stance’ vs. substance: why evangelicals are confused about the actual harm Chik-fil-A is doing to actual people — Fascinating squib from Slacktivist (and liberal Evangelical) Fred Clark.

Flight Diverted for Unattended Camera — Feel safer now?

The Collapse of the Climate Change Contrarians and the End of Coal — Amazing what happens when you introduce actual facts into a public debate, as opposed to ideological preconceptions.

Intelligence Community Agrees to Let Senator Mention It Broke the Law

Republicans Want Off The Hook For Voting For Defense Sequester — Republicans have disavowed the so-called “defense sequester” altogether and handed full responsibility for its existence to President Obama—despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of them voted to implement it last August. Well, if the GOP can successfully blame Obama for the disasters of the Bush administration, why not blame him for their own actions in Congress? It’s a form of consistency, at least.

?otD: Hope for an answer some day?

8/1/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (Further revisions on Other Me)
Body movement: 60 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
Weight: 238.4
Currently reading: The Essential Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems by Henry Petroski; Ironskin by Tina Connolly

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad awakens from a Carolina BBQ coma

Why is Amazon becoming a hardware company?

Did the Bard speak American?

How do “today’s students” write, really?

Genetic Discoveries Cast New Light on Migraine — It’s X-linked! Female chromosomes FTW! (Via Lisa Costello.)

Pink Aurora Over Crater Lake — Wow. Another awesome APOD image. I’ve never seen the aurora, and I’d really like to.

French Demand Compensation for Plantagenet Murder — Breaking news!

In New Exhibit, Disney Lends Its Star Power to Reagan, and Vice Versa — Sigh. My second least favorite president, further sanctified. (Thanks to my Dad.)

Monsignor Lynn sentenced to jail for role in church sex abuse — In a soft and clear voice, disgraced Catholic Monsignor William Lynn stood Tuesday before a packed courtroom and apologized for the years of sexual abuse a young man suffered at the hands of defrocked priest Edward Avery, whom Lynn transferred to the boy’s parish despite knowing that he had abused another boy. One tiny step in righting the monstrous behaviors of the Catholic hierarchy in systematically enabling and concealing child sexual abuse for generations.

Less Guns, Less Violence — Ya think? Ta-Nehisi Coates on American trends in crime and gun ownership.

President Obama’s gun baloney — Yeah, he’s a Socialist coming for your guns, alright. If ever there was a political moment for the Obama of the GOP/NRA’s paranoid fantasies to make an anti-gun move, it would be now. Can you see the black helicopters coming?

“Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” — PA state House Republican leader Mike Turzai on the year’s legislative accomplishments. Conservative integrity always shines through. Even when they’re bragging in so many words about vote blocking and election stealing.

?otD: WHat did you eat last night?

7/25/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (60 minutes on outline for untitled fantasy novel, 15 minutes of WRPA)
Body movement: 45 minute urban walk
Hours slept: 5.75 (fitful)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad salutes Sergeant Friday

Teh Crazy — J.A. Pitts on ranty, whacky characters.

Survey Shows Growing Strength of E-Books — E-books continued their surge in popularity last year, surpassing hardcover books and paperbacks to become the dominant format for adult fiction in 2011, according to a survey of publishers released Wednesday. (Thanks to my Dad.)

National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest 2012 — Wow.

Machiavelli – S.P.Q.F. — A fascinating historical overview. (Snurched from [info]sartorias here.)

Vintage ads for men’s underwear — Heh.

US geoengineers to spray sun-reflecting chemicals from balloon — Experiment in New Mexico will try to establish the possibility of cooling the planet by dispersing sulphate aerosols.

Ideology clouds how we perceive the temperatures — Flooding, drought, remain immune to politics.

14 dead, 50 wounded in shooting at Colorado theater, police chief says — Thank god for the NRA, or this man would not have been able to defend his essential liberties. What are your gun rights worth?

Decent Exposure: Guy Who Stripped Naked to Protest TSA Is Found Not Guilty — Ah, Oregon, where nudity is protected speech. I find that a lot more healthy for society than money being protected speech.

Utah GOP Fundraiser Accused Of Raping Women At Cabin Where He Hosted Political Events — Imagine for a moment if the headline was “California Democratic Fundraiser Accused…” We’d never hear the end of the yammering about soulless liberals and immoral atheists. I don’t think for a moment the accused rapist’s alleged assaults were a function of his political views, but I point out that the reverse assumption is constantly and loudly made by conservatives: that liberalism leads to immoral and criminal behavior.

Tony Scalia, Political Partisan, 12 Years On — Ah, Justice Scalia, that model of objective Constitutional jurisprudence. History will not smile on the Supreme Court of the past two decades. Not at all. Something Chief Justice Roberts might actually have finally figured out. But then, it’s his name on the door.

Joe Arpaio’s Birther Obsession Just Keeps Getting Stranger — Because reasons. Hell if I can understand Birtherism as anything but arrant conservative racism.

How The ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Canard Went From Right-Wing Blogs To Mitt Romney’s Mouth — [A] textbook case of how a distortion can emerge from right-wing online media, get laundered by Fox News, and go mainstream as a major line of attack by the Republican nominee for President. Confidential to Republicans and other low-information types: “Canard” means “lie”.

Erickson Brings Fox’s Bogus Small-Business Attack On Obama To CNN — Your Liberal Media: enabling and sustaining baldfaced conservative lies since pretty much forever.

Mitt Romney speaking French — Remember when one of the GOP criticisms of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was that he “looked French”? Imagine the Right’s reaction to a video of Kerry speaking French. Now witness their reaction to this video. Ah, the marvel of conservative intellectual consistency.

Vengeance Of Bain — Heh heh heh. Batman and Bane and Bain. The really nice thing about being an American conservative today is that it gives you complete freedom to hold completely batshit beliefs and go utterly unhinged while still proudly thinking of yourself as a sane, responsible citizen. Evolution denial was only the beginning. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

?otD: Cup of Joe?

7/20/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0 minutes
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (fitful)
Weight: 239.0
Currently reading: The Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad goes hiking

Fanboy squee: The ebook ARC of Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is now available at Baen for $15.00 — (Shamelessly stolen from [info]oracne.)

Colecção Argonauta — Some awesome 1960s Brazilian SF covers. (Snurched from @jeremiahtolbert.)

Mapping Your End-of-Life Choices

Meditation found to increase brain size — Now if this only applied in other areas of life… (Via Lisa Costello.)

Google launches Endangered Language Project — Google tries to promote info exchange on the world’s 3,000 endangered languages.

Lidar map shows path of Missoula floods that shaped Oregon’s backyards — Cool stuff. (Thanks to Dad.)

Planets worlds apart orbit one distant star

New passenger service to the Moon for $100M — Hmm. :: wants ::

What to make of the Chinese space effort? — In related news, Language Log comments on the term “taikonaut”.

Pope Jim Garlow I joins the Münchhausen martyrdom brigade — Slacktivist Fred Clark on the self-valorizing persecution fantasies of American Christians.
‘Bible Believers’ who do not know, or care, what the Bible says — Because for far too many Americans, being a Christian isn’t about religion or faith, it’s about tribalism and a smug justification for their private bigotries.

Congress Joins List of Things Romney Thinks Don’t Exist — The general theme of Mitt Romney’s campaign is that President Obama is 100 percent responsible for everything that has happened since he took office, including not only worldwide economic events but decisions of the Republican Congress.

The Consequences of Believing Nonsense — The current crop of conservatives will have a great deal to answer for to future generations. So will the rest of us who have let the GOP get away with politicizing utter nonsense and mortgaging the planet’s future for the sake of a few votes.

Yes, Iraq Definitely Had WMD, Vast Majority Of Polled Republicans Insist — Speaking of believing nonsense. This is flatly counterfactual. Untrue. A lie. Yet close to half of America’s voters believe that Iraq had WMDs. This is what comes of the GOP deliberately enabling nonsense, and co-opting Your Liberal Media to spread it. The people who started all this — Atwater, Ailes, Rove, etc. — they know better. They’re just cynical, opportunistic bastards. But they’ve created going on two generations of politicians and voters who are true believers, because listening to your own fears is a hell of lot easier (and more emotionally satisfying) than considering the nuances of things you don’t understand and don’t want to hear.

?otD: Been out to the Rising Gorge?

6/23/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (brain break)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride, hiking to come
Hours slept: 7.0 (solid)
Weight: 238.8
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad for a JayCon Saturday

Recognizing a New Medium: the Kindle — Interesting. (Via [info]danjite.)

Snow White: Beauty Is Power

The New Yorker on Prometheus

Proto-Indo-European in Prometheus?

Venus at the Edge — A view of the recent transit of Venus as seen from the Hinode spacecraft.

N. Carolina Senate decides to include science in sea level projections after all — Grudgingly accepts that sea level rises may accelerate. Some liberals forced them to betray good Republican principles by acknowledging actual reality.

Arctic Ocean mega-bloom: Scientists’ eyes popped and jaws dropped

How Bigotry Works — One reason why it’s hard to see bigotry in people we respect and love, is that it’s become a mark of shame. Ta-Nehisi Coates on bigotry, but I think he got it wrong, at least as far as that pull quote goes. Anti-gay bigotry is an important in-group marker among conservatives, especially religious conservatives. They dislike the label for the reasons he cites, but they enthusiastically embrace the reality of bigotry. Christianists want to be self-valorizing good guys while reveling in their arrant bigotry, they just resent being called on that in public.

Rush Limbaugh says Americans voted for Obama to prove they weren’t racist — Right. Because no one sane could possibly ever vote anything but Republican. The last GOP administration turned a budget surplus and a declining deficit into an all-time record setting economic disaster, involved us in a trillion dollar war of choice on knowingly false pretenses, and whistled while New Orleans drowned. Who could possibly vote for anyone else in the face of such glaring success?

Did Republicans deliberately crash the US economy? — Be it ideology or strategem, the GOP has blocked pro-growth policy and backed job-killing austerity – all while blaming Obama. A discussion in the UK press of something profoundly self-evident that you will hear very little of from Your Liberal Media.
?otd: Again?

6/9/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.25 hours (Going to Extremes outline)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 5.75 (solid)
Weight: 240.0 (!)
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate

Posted on in Links

[links] Link salad sings a song, sounds like it’s singing “Ooo, baby, ooo”

What Will Be — Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, a sci-fi novel so brilliant, it reads like an account of the past.

Darwin’s Ghosts, By Rebecca Stott — Before ‘Origin of Species’, many European and Arabic thinkers had outlined the principles of natural selection.

Cook’s View of the Transit of Venus — This is cool. 18th century science, on the hoof.

What You Hate Most About Waiting in Line

The Amazon Effect — An interesting history of everybody’s favorite serial market power abuser.

2 troubling examples of Google’s conflicts — Google showed their hand with the banal evil that is the Google Books settlement, which in its current proposed form overturns three centuries of copyright law and abrogates core intellectual property rights of all authors everywhere in favor of one corporation’s interests. Their famous motto is long dead, why would anyone be surprised now?

Are women better than men? — Roger Ebert on writing triggery and ill-advised blog posts.

“We are a sideshow no longer” — At his first same-sex marriage since Obama’s big announcement, a longtime advocate reflects on a decades-long fight. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Conservatives Attack Scientific Findings About Why They Hate Science (Helping to Confirm the Science) — Some would like to dismiss the inconvenient findings about the political right, but the science won’t let them.

How Obama Was Dangerously Naive About STUXNET and Cyberwarfare — A Times exposé suggests that the White House failed to consider how our own cyberweapons would be used against us. Juan Cole with more on this.

?otd: Do the clouds expect it when it rains?

6/3/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (spent the day cleaning)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: 242.4 (!!)
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate

Posted on in Links