Lakeshore

The Ledding Library of Milwaukie currently has a show of children's art from Portland Waldorf School. A piece by the_child was ( one of the two selected from her grade. )

Reproduced with permission of the artist

An apology from me — I managed to offend a number of people yesterday. Judging from the comments, I'm not sure I haven't compounded the problem.

The secret history of the term "superdelegates" — Interesting reading about lexicography, framing and politics.

Babyfood — Some really cool tromp de l'oeil chalk drawing. (Thanks to sheelangig.)

McCain says Hamas pro-Obama — Mmm, Democrats certainly are terrorists, aren't they?

The close relationship between military analysts in the media, and the Pentagon — This is a long, fairly technical story from The New New York Times, but if you're interested in how the media narrative is gamed by the Bush administration, it's fascinating reading.

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4/20/08
Time in saddle: 20 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 273.4 (ate too much cheese yesterday)
Currently reading: The Cater Street Hangman by Anne Perry [ Powell's | Amazon ]

Stardust and Ashes — Alexis Glynn Latner talks about her mother and Alzheimer's. Very moving, very straightforward.

justinelavaworm is wise concerning blurb etiquette — scalzi expands on the question. Pay attention, people.

Frozen Grand Central Station — Video of performance art on the street. Pretty cool. (Thanks to BillM.)

Photographer and Goliath Grouper — This picture is amazing on several levels.

Space art — This site is made of awesome.

The mother of all telephoto lenses

How do you grow a glacier? — This is pretty wow.

Birds flew over the dinosaurs — Maybe. The most interesting thing about this article, to me, is the discussions of competing techniques of dating evolutionary events.

Ray Vukcevich reminds us that Tuesday, February 12th is Charles Darwin's birthday — Don't forget to kiss an EVIL-utionist that day! (Those of you not descended from monkeys can stay home and count begats.)

Elephants 'ditch tusks' to survive — Must be that Intelligent Designer reaching into the everyday world.

New details emerge in NRCC scandal — Good government. Check. Moral values. Check. Fiscal responsibility. Check. Yep, it's your Republican party with their hand in the till again!

Vice President's Remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference — Once again Republican self-parody descends into self-parody. This one's full of gems. For example, "As conservatives, we believe in a government that takes up a smaller share of the national income" Snarf! "The United States is a country that takes human rights seriously. We do not torture -- it's against our laws and against our values." Wow, and here the White House was just a couple of days ago fessing up to CIA waterboarding. Like I said before, it's so cute what conservatives believe about themselves. (About like me believing I'm a 60 foot fighting robot in the shape of Isaac Newton.) Or it would be cute, if the consequences of conservative self-delusion weren't so disastrous for Americans and the world.

Rocket Science: the Sculpture

NPR discovers steampunk — (Thanks to A.)

Strange Tanks — Weird stuff here. Possible steampunk or AH vehicle designs. (Thanks to the_flea_king.)

the_flea_king on the awesomeness of giant fighting robots — :: laughing ::

Atlantropa — Wow. Big science gone totally amok.

Future cars — :: wants the future now :: (Thanks to garyomaha.)

The quotation marks blog — (Thanks to AH)

The Hacker's Diet — Some fascinating stuff here. (Thanks to the_flea_king.)

Very detailed notes from an ID conference — Quite funny, if you like subtle, scientific snark. For example, "Irreducible complexity seems to be the principle that, 'if I can’t figure it out how natural processes operate, it must have been designed in a manner I can understand.'" (Thanks to lordofallfools.)

Bridge inspector confesses to faking paperwork — Obviously the answer is market self-regulation! And tax cuts!

Saudi Cops Grab U.S. Woman In Starbucks: Kingdom's Religious Police Take Her To Jail For Sitting With Man In Coffee Shop — That's what happens you bring God into politics. As I've said before, the difference between Saudi Arabia and Christian America is only a matter of degree. The intent and rationale are the same — that we'll be a better people if we follow God's law.

johncwright calls for a new literary movement in speculative fiction

Your delivery might be a bit late — My this is nice. I'll even ignore what I know about airframes in order to appreciate it fully.

devonmonk on the fine art of the in-person novel pitch — She is Wise.

Tiny wires growing from your skin — The ghost of Philip K. Dick is haunting our culture.

lasirenadolce with Rustycon photos

khaybee with Rustycon photos

Panda, ( by the Child )

Surrealist fantasy from Russian artist Jacek Yerka — Note automotive themed images here and here. goulo, who tipped me to this artist, also really liked this one.

Cat alarm clock — A video which will be familiar to cat owners. (Thanks to FB.)

There Are More Giraffe Species Than You Think — Cool biology neepery. Weirdly, I can actually follow the gist of this article, along with most of the details. I should send this woman a copy of Trial of Flowers [ Powell's | Amazon ].

A reader offers a thoughtful review of Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon | Audible ]

Get Fuzzy ding dongs the Bard of Avon

Myth is truth — An interesting piece about "just because you believe it doesn't mean its true" as applied to science journalism.

The British War on Christmas — "More Christians have been martyred for their faith in the last century than in any other period of church history." Really? There was a Christian holocaust? What is it about so many religious and political conservatives that seems to require a sense of persecution for them to be validated?

MotoArt — Art and furniture made of old aircraft and military parts. Can I have one of everything, please?

Shorpy with a picture of the Church of the Nativity, ca. 1940

A Vintage Christmas Carol — Mo better Shorpy.

Prince Charles will appear at conference as a hologram — Yes, we are fifteen minutes into the future. Where's Ron Headrest when you need him?

Republican commentators uneasy with Huckabee — Evangelicals are fine, as long as they keep their place in the voting line apparently. Yo, conservative America — its your big tent, you have to live with it. Unfortunately, so do the rest of us.

the_child ( does art. )

I met Australian artist Shaun Tan at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, where he was part of the ongoing Australian rumble. He's an elegant slip of a man who looks like he could fold himself into an origami crane and fly away. He's also stunningly pleasant — this I say after meeting him in the delightful company of Garth Nix, Cat Sparks and so forth.

I was impressed with Shaun, I was impressed with what I saw of his art, so on returning home I purchased two books by this World Fantasy Award winning artist: The Arrival [ Powell's | Amazon ] and The Lost Thing [ Powell's | Amazon ].

A few days ago the_child and I read The Arrival together. Tonight we read The Lost Thing. Color me even more deeply impressed than my already positive take on the man and his work.

The Lost Thing is an elegant, poignant story, the plot of which would fit on the back of a playing card. Like many illustrated works, the plot is barely the point. Tan's hauntingly strange artwork carries the piece. He has an eye for alienation, for the strange, for schools of art and artistic influence which I can glimpse even through the veils of my own insufficient education on the topic. In some ways I was reminded of the visual design of Terry Gilliam's Brazil [ imdb ], with the emphasis on inhumanly scaled architecture, random dysfunctionality, and ductwork.

Sweet and sad as The Lost Thing is, that is merely an overture to Tan's masterful The Arrival. This story is entirely nonverbal, 128 pages of glorious imagery telling the story of an immigrant's journey from his home to his new land, and what he does to eventually bring his family. The purely visual dimensions of the story perfectly serve the sense of disconnection experienced by a linguistically and culturally isolated immigrant. I know it struck a chord with the_child — even though she remembers nothing but life in the United States, she's very conscious of being from China. Tan's visualizations are deeply impressive, the sense of scale and strangeness on display in The Lost Thing having matured into a deeply layered texturing.

I can't recommend these books, and the work of Shaun Tan, highly enough. the_child was impressed enough to ask me to help her with a fan letter. Check them out.

The Roundbottom Interview — ktempest interviews the_flea_king's alter ego.

Orrery Maker — For all your clockpunky goodness. :: wants ::

Venus May Be Earth's Hellish Twin

Why science can't save the GOP

On planets in the galactic bulge

The longevity pill? — Resveratrol? Who the heck named that compound?

Class conflict on airplanes — This should surprise no one, and is a logical extension of American socioeconomics.

Magic Highway U.S.A. — Some beautiful ca. 1958 images of the future that never was. Sort of Roadrunner meets Heinlein.

Cartoon pr0n — Hilarious, and not work-safe or child-safe. (Snurched from dinogrl.)

( An alien )

Drawn by the_child.

Top secret repair job was no wind-up — Real life clockpunk. Thanks to kadath for the tip!

Retrofuture: To the Stars! — Classic SFnal art from Western and Soviet sources.

Gore and Bush Chat About Global Warming — Money shot:

Mr. Bush’s press secretary, Dana Perino, told reporters the president is willing to let bygones be bygones.

“This president does not harbor any resentments,” she said. “He never has.”

Wow, that is mighty white of the president. Nice to know he's so big about how it all went down in 2000: Bush's popular victory but looming defeat in the electoral college, Gore's cousin making a bad call on national news while working closely with Clinton's former political strategist, the "white collar riot" the Democrats staged to stop the Florida recount, Gore's fixed Supreme Court vote that snatched the decision out of the Florida court's hands in contravention of every conservative principle of state's rights.

Or am I misremembering something here?

(Thanks to shsilver and others.)

The Sudan teddy bear incident — This is precisely why I argue so forcefully against a mixing of religion and politics. How can a nonbeliever be guilty of blasphemy? Just because you believe something doesn't make it true. Your religious convictions have no binding on my behavior in a civil context. Every Christian who argues for prayer in school, Intelligent Design, the Ten Commandments in a court of law, or heteronormative oppression in the name of Biblical precepts, is imposing their subjective personal mythology on the objective world in this same way, with the same patently illogical and shameful results. I unquestioningly support your right to your religious beliefs without respect to my personal opinion of them, but equally so I unquestioningly oppose your right to impose the consequences of your religious beliefs on anyone else.

Google’s New Search — for Cheap, Clean Electricity — I am starting to view Google as a social change agent, pure and simple.

Rich and poor gird for climate change - UN report — Al Gore's lackies have spread their liberal lies everywhere! Will the conservative movement ever own up to how dead wrong it has been on climate change? Eventually even the most die hard trailer park crank may have to realize that Rush Limbaugh does not in fact know more about climate than, say, the vast majority of the world's climatologists. Perhaps as his single-wide floats down the Mississippi...

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you kenscholes ( ... )