Lakeshore

Batman trailers — This is funny, a comparison of two different Batman movie trailers.

Recoiling black holes — Cool stuff on a galactic structure scale.

Where Are They? — Technology Review on why the best answer in search for extraterrestrial life might be nothing.

A network graph of corporate America — Some very cool data visualization.

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5/3/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (sore insides, no vigorous exercise)
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 268.4
Currently reading: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia [ Amazon ]

Of Dice and Men: Modern Fantasists and the Influence of Role Playing Games — Clarkesworld with an article by Justin Howe and Jason S. Ridler. I am quoted.

A reader reviews Rocket Science [ Powell's | Amazon ]

Ancient Galaxies Packed With Stars — Such a beautiful, deadly sky that would be.

Blind Mice See the Light — Researchers adapt an algal protein to reengineer sight into a broken visual circuit.

Missing Link of Electronics Discovered: "Memristor" — Cool stuff, though the implications are not fully obvious to me.

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5/2/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (sore insides, no vigorous exercise)
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 269.0
Currently reading: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia [ Amazon ]

All 120 Crayon Names, Color Codes and Fun Facts — Mmm. Art. Which flavor tasted best? (Thanks to lt260.)

A crusade to edit America — The Editing Guy strikes. Prescriptivists 'r us. Though I certainly share the twitch. (Thanks to garyomaha.)

The future of books — The interface on this site is confusing and annoying, but click on the second image. The little slide show which follows is pretty cool. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

Taking Apart the Livescribe Pulse — Technology Review on a very smart pen. Though my favorite bit was this comment about the special, patterned paper: "Each printed page has its own unique pattern — actually, a unique portion of a single, non-repeating pattern big enough to cover Europe and Asia."

How Hillary Can Still Win — A short video about the mathematics of electability, which nicely explains the Clinton campaign strategy. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

Limbaugh on Republicans — "We don't riot. We don't burn our cars. We don't burn down our houses. We don't kill our children. We don't do half the things the American left does." Speaking as a member of the American left, I can tell you it's just not a Saturday night if I don't set fire to Nuevo Rancho Lake and threaten the_child with grievous bodily harm. I have to ask my conservative friends: when the most visible conservative in the American media says stuff like this, how can the rest of us not think conservatives are simply crazy?

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4/25/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (travel day)
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: The Houses of Time by Jamil Nasir[ Powell's | Amazon ]

APOD on bacteriophages

Hiawatha Noir — Shorpy with a deeply awesome train photo.

Algae-Bot Scouts for Toxic Blooms — This be some cool tech.

Record Heat for Land Surfaces in March — The weather has clearly been conspiring with the Antarctic ice sheet.

The Return of Big Government — US News & World Report with a stunning story about how the limited government and conservative spending policies of the Bush administration are going to be overthrown in the next election.

McCain: A Question of Temperament — I realize McCain's allegedly violent temper isn't nearly on a par with Obama ordering orange juice, but it might be important should he win the election. Or maybe not. After all, Bush has shown us that a president with poor personal qualities in no wise leads a damaging administration.

Secretary Rice announces Second Amendment is incompatible with democracy — "...the prime minister has laid down some ground rules which any functioning democratic state would insist upon, having to do with, you know, arms belonging to the state, not to -- not in private hands." Imagine the reaction if Hillary had said those exact words.

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4/21/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (airport)
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: The Cater Street Hangman by Anne Perry [ Powell's | Amazon ]

DC-3 conversion van — Ok, I want this. Real bad. Real, real bad.

The Kentucky Space Program

APOD with another lovely and thought-proving image

Texas polygamist sect is accused of indoctrinating girls — "Girls in the west Texas polygamous sect enter into underage marriages without resistance because they are ruthlessly indoctrinated from birth to believe disobedience will lead to their damnation" How is this different from any other religion? That's a serious question, not snark. The followers of virtually all religions raise their children within their religious framework, and impose the moral and behavioral rules of their faith on their children. Why is this different? If you're going to give social approval to religious upbringing, where does the line fall in picking-and-choosing? From my atheistic point of view, it's all indoctrination, after all.

Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt' — Damned liberal traitors have infested the Pentagon now. Where's Joe McCarthy when we really need him?

John McCain's tax returns — Note his wife's were withheld. I wonder how Your Liberal Media and conservative America would feel about Hillary withholding Bill's tax info.

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4/19/08
Time in saddle: 20 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 271.8
Currently reading: The Cater Street Hangman by Anne Perry [ Powell's | Amazon ]

Had a nice time this evening at the MHCC Library Week science fiction do. joshenglish sponsored a bunch of us chickens, so we met for dinner beforehand — him, me, the_child, davidlevine, kateyule, camillealexa, and newroticgirl. David Goldman joined us at the library, along with Mrs. joshenglish, one of the librarians and an actual, random audience member. We had a great discussion that ranged quite widely about writing, process and publishing. Then we all went home.

:: yawn ::

In other news, ecbatan seems to have liked "The Fly and Die Ticket".

And finally, I have been vouchsafed a glimpse of the preliminary cover sketch for Green. I am quite impressed with the conception. While I didn't have anything in particular in mind (not that it's up to me in any case), Tor is threatening to outdo themselves on this one. That would be 3-and-0 for the win on my covers from irenegallo and the mighty Tor machine.

Suspect caught with gator in his car — Life imitates one of my short stories.

Grunt Work: Scientists Re-Create Neanderthal Speech — Cool anthropology.

Evernote: Software to help you remember everything, forever — Externalizing your mind. Apple's Spotlight + gmail already do a significant amount of this for me. The ability to freely and powerfully search unstructured data has significantly improved some important aspects of my life. (Thanks to my Aunt M.)

The sign of the long now — The art and science of making a 10,000 year "keep out" notice. (Thanks to danjite.)

Video: Water Balloon Exploding at 2,000 Frames per Second — This is pretty darned cool. Story is a brief squib about high speed cameras, not the properties of water, fyi.

Ringing the Stellar Bell — Centauri Dreams on astroseismology and overmetallicity. Worth reading for any of you hard sf or science geek types.

The $100 Genome — If that's not a story title, I don't know what is.

De-debunking the recent NASA asteroid collision story — Maybe they can keep English and metric straight. Rocket scientists...sheesh...

Talking Points Memo with an interesting letter from a conservative reader — One of the underlying arguments is that conservatism is not equivalent to support for the Bush administration, its policies and actions. I find this argument grossly self-serving. Much like moderate Christians silently riding the Evangelical political wave over the past 25 years, moderate conservatives (such as they are) have remained silent on the election fraud in 2000, the wholesale assault on civil liberties post-9/11, the disaster of the Iraq war, the siamese twin disasters of the budget and the deficit. Somehow the last eight years would have been worse with Democrats in charge, I guess. This is another version of the nascent "But Bush isn't a real conservative" meme. Confidential to conservatives in America: Tough shit, guys. You got in on the cult of Bush when the getting was good, you can fucking live with the consequences now. The rest of us are sure as hell stuck with them.

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4/17/08
Time in saddle: 19 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 271.4
Currently reading: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon [ Powell's | Amazon ]

Don't forget yesterday's open questions thread

Wuxiapedia — Translated Chinese epic fiction. Interesting stuff. (Thanks to Jacques B.)

Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals — An historian looks at AH. Sort of.

Review of Why Think? Evolution and the Rational Mind — "When enough people share a delusion, it loses its status as a psychosis and gets a religious tax exemption instead." Hahahahahaha.

Retropolis — I am there. T-shirts for yesterday's tomorrows, baby!

io9 on galactic habitable zones — Some very cool stuff here.

APOD with a stunning shot of the night sky over Flagstaff, AZ

Should We Shout Into the Darkness? — The (supposed) perils of METI.

German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA's asteroid figures — Must have forgotten to convert English to metric again...

Red Baron tribute car — I remember the original of this thing.

The Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere —

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4/16/08
Time in saddle: 18 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 272.2
Currently reading: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon [ Powell's | Amazon ]

Happy Tax Day!

Me, on numbers — From last night. And yes, I am very mildly synesthetic. I wonder how many writers are?

A review of my recent Clarkesworld story, "The Sky That Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black" — Some folks have liked this story a lot. You can read it here at Clarkesworld.

Bethesda Start-Up Makes Writing a Little Less Lonely — Crowd-sourcing fiction? Hmm... (Thanks to danjite.)

Toward a Quantum Internet — Entangled photons over distant fiber. I always thought "Spooky Action at a Distance" was a great name for a rock band.

What is the value of space exploration?

The ice man sitteth — More historical goodness from Shorpy. That's a hell of a photo.

A Renegade Against Greenpeace — One of the co-founders of Greenpeace talks about why he is pro-nuke. (Thanks to danjite.)

Craigslist and eBay: Terrorist arms bazaars of DEATH — The Register takes on the GAO's fear-mongering over online arms sales. Certainly it's much more efficient to have the national security folks handle it directly. Anyone remember Oliver North? Anyone?

Obama would ask his AG to "immediately review" potential of crimes in Bush White House — Say, promoting torture? Nah, that's unpatriotic of me to suggest that behaving in profoundly unAmerican ways is unpatriotic. Remember kids, it's ok if you're a Republican.

Cheney, Torture and the Chance to Restore the Rule of Law — I'm sympathetic to this argument, but as I recall, our courts have been pretty consistent in holding that Constitutional rights do not automatically apply to non-citizens. Hence, torturing non-Americans is certainly illegal, but I'm not sure there's a case to be made for it violating the 8th Amendment. But I'm neither an attorney nor a constitutional scholar. Nor a Republican. (Thanks to my Aunt M.)

Dick Cheney was never a "grown-up" — A fascinating look at the history of one of modern America's greatest villains. (Thanks to my Aunt M.)

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4/15/08
Time in saddle: 18 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 272.0
Currently reading: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon [ Powell's | Amazon ]

A review of Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon | Audible ] — The reviewer really, really, really didn't like the book. The comments are so negative they are funny. Not my audience, I guess. (Scroll down to the middle of the post.)

prof_brotherton on how to write a book review

A camera built to study the beauty of decay — Which mostly makes me want to construct a pinhole camera from the case of an upright piano. Don't think I wouldn't do it. PianoCam, coming to a flatbed truck near you... (Thanks to Jacques B.)

The Aldrin Cycler — Trips to Mars on an energy budget. This was a new one on me.

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4/11/08
Time in saddle: 17 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 274.6
Currently reading: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon [ Powell's | Amazon ]

APOD with a photo of Stickney Crater on Phobos

willyumtx sends along these amusing photo links here and here

Portable Rotary Phone — Very Get Smart, somehow. :: wants :: (Thanks to willyumtx.)

Invention of the safety pin — Where have you gone, Walter Hunt? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

The different epistemologies of science and religion — A much more concise explanation than I've been able to articulate of why religion and science are not equivalent. (Thanks to kadath.)

Occupying Iraq Is Just Like Occupying ... Alabama? — Sometimes conservatives really are too stupid to remember to keep breathing.

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4/10/08
Time in saddle: 17 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 274.6
Currently reading: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon [ Powell's | Amazon ]

charlesatan reviews Greetings From Lake Wu [ Powells | Amazon | Traife Buffet ] — Interesting perspective on my earlier work.

From this weekend, me on faith, RSI and literary style — As usual, the real action is in the comments.

garyomaha suggests this virtual keyboard as the solution to my woes — Actually, I think this is pretty cool, but it's a little too spendy for me to buy just for the hell of it.

Mysterious white rock fingers on Mars — Another fascinating APOD.

Shorpy with an awesome photo of a 1920s flying boat — If I was stupid rich (like, Paul Allen rich) I'd collect pre-modern flying boats.

Overheard in the Office — Some very funny stuff here. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

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4/7/08
Time in saddle: 15 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 275.8
Currently reading: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon [ Powell's | Amazon ]