Tubulovillous adenocarcinoma in 50% merino — kateyule is brilliant. My throw toy/plushie of my tumor. I have several other magnificent friends working on other props for me. Watch this space.

Movie maps of the world — Cartograms of the global film industry.

Dressed for a meeting, ready for mayhem — Detectives and their suits.

Top US commando says strain of war limits forces elsewhere — Conservative friends of mine have challenged assertions on this blog that the military's capacity has been reduced. Here it is from the horse's mouth.

5/6/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (slept in)
Last night's weigh-out: 273.3
This morning's weigh-in: 270.0
Currently reading: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia [ Amazon ]

csinman's LOLCatScan of me in the hospital — With bonus hilarity in comments.

Don't forget to vote in the cancer funnies poll — I'll be closing this out tonight or tomorrow, because we've got another contest coming up.

Nightmares in copy editing

Mopery with intent to creep — Hahahaha.

The odds against interstellar panspermia — This is freaking fascinating.

Advertising in the clouds — Mmm. Just what we needed. (Thanks to tetar.)

Nuclear threat sparked tea worry — "The threat of a nuclear attack on the UK in the 1950s caused concern over the supply of tea, top-secret documents which have now been released reveal." Nice to see someone had their priorities right during the Cold War. (Thanks to danjite.)

Chinese companies outsourcing to the US because of lower costs — Wow. Bush really is taking us back to Third World status.

5/5/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (away from home, some light walking instead)
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia [ Amazon ]

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 ]

Chasing Ray reviews Escapement [ Amazon ] — She liked it.

Matt Hughes is SF's best-kept secret — Je suis d'accord.

Roly poly fish heads continue at Nuevo Rancho Lake — Still working on that salmon head soup...

Where Are They? — Technology Review on SETI and exoplanets. Includes the cool concept of a "probability barrier", but there's a lot of assumptions (and some glancing blows at science) in this article with which I am uncomfortable. Interesting reading, nonetheless.

Hubble telescope captures crashing galaxies — (Thanks to lt260.)

Dry spell almost killed off race — How close did the human race come to a personal ELE? (Thanks to tetar.)

Let's Say You Want to Date a Hog Farmer — Online dating for Objectivists... (Thanks to my dad.)

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus — A fascinating article about the cognitive cost of television to society as a whole. Money shot: "the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin." Lots to argue with here, lots to think about. (Thanks to danjite.)

John McCain on American occupation of foreign countries — "For us to get into nation-building, law and order, etc, I think is a tragic and terrible mistake. But the argument that somehow the United States would suffer a loss to our prestige and our viability, as far as the No. 1 superpower in the world, I think, is baloney. The fact is, what can hurt our prestige, Mr. President, I'll tell you what can hurt our viability, as the world's superpower, and that is, if we enmesh ourselves in a drawn-out situation, which entails the loss of American lives, more debacles like the one we saw with the failed mission to capture Aidid's lieutenants, using American forces, and that then will be what hurts our prestige." Of course, that was when Clinton was president, and so everything was completely different.

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4/28/08
Time in saddle: 20 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 273.8
Currently reading: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia [ Amazon ]

Updated seismic maps of the US — On behalf of the Pacific Northwest, may I say, "uh oh".

The Future Is Now — Wapo with a sort-of puffy piece on recognizing the future as it happens. Cool stuff. (Thanks to danjite.)

Technology Review's Top 10 Emerging Technologies — Some interesting near turn futurism for you skiffy types.

Orrin hatches song for McCain campaign — Comment from a young conservative: "the message to attract young people is that liberalism oppresses people, stifles freedom and causes 'pervasive destitution'" Yeah, I can see that. Word up, brah. (I think psychiatrists refer to that sort of thing as projection.)

Conservatives are happier than liberals — Freakonomics is being interesting again.

Experts say sex abstinence program doesn't work — Also, this just in: sun rises in east!

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4/24/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (30 minute walk instead)
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 ]

Me on risk taking in writing

lasirenadolce hangs with the_child

The art of Dave Pressler — Very nice stuff. I like this a lot. (Thanks to skidspoppe.)

The travelling rocks of Death Valley — (Thanks to AH.)

Penny Arcade on Twitter — Hahahah.

Another awesome APOD photo of the night sky

More on "crazy English" — Linguistic cultism in China.

Hawking: Unintelligent life is likely on other planets — "There's bugger all down here on Earth." Wait, that was a different Brit. (Thanks to garyomaha.)

Counterfeit hardware as a security risk — Infowar comes to a router near you. (Thanks to danjite.)

An essay about elitism in politics — Anti-elitism got us Bush, the guy you'd allegedly want to have a beer with. (Though only if you'd never met, seen or heard him ... I never did understand that meme.)

Bush's disapproval rating worst of any president in 70 years — Clearly the facts are biased against him.

scalzi comments on Hillary in Pennsylvania — What he said.

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4/23/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (25 minute walk instead)
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 ]

Fiction and Culture

A review of the Solaris Book of New Fantasy — With moderately good words for yours truly.

Edible.com — For the truly adventurous gourmand. (Thanks to danjite.)

Where news breaks — Another cool squib from Strange Maps

Oregon attorney slaps cop with illegal parking complaint — My home town...

jimhines with some thoughts on men and rape — Somber topic, worth the read.

Science and Technology

Halftrack Alfa Romeo — :: wants ::

Sexually Transmitted Bug is the Strongest Organism — Gonorrhea-powered machines? Is this what orgone energy has come to?

Laptops as earthquake sensors — Distributed computing using the accelerometers built into laptops to provide seismic data. The Internet is so cool.

Politics and Religion

Muslim call to adopt Mecca time — Uh huh. Nice to see some clear-minded thinking from the spiritual quarter. prof_brotherton is all over it. They must get those Muslim "scientists" from the same place the DI gets their "biologists". (Thanks to danjite.)

Closing the "collapse gap" — Some vestpocket comparative analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the alleged impending collapse of the American empire. A bit on the fringe, but interesting nonetheless.

Rice, death and the dollar — A fascinating piece in the Asia Times connecting the dollar's decline to the growing world food shortage. In general, I find non-US perspectives on American politics and policy very interesting, because they tend to stand outside our baseline assumptions. A lot of Americans don't think we have anything to learn from the rest of the world (and one of them sits in the big chair in the White House), but that's just sheer nativist idiocy. (Snurched from Daily Kos)

George Will moves to the left of Democrats — George Will on the Wall Street bailouts. For once, I think I agree with Mr. Will on something. This just in: snow in Hell.

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4/22/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (30 minute walk instead)
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: n/a
Currently reading: Flood by Andrew Vachss [ Powell's | Amazon ]

He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work) — It is to boggle.

Heating plug-in hybrids — It never occured to me that this was a problem with hybrids. But duh, heating runs off waste heat from the internal combustion engine.

Cultured meat is on its way — I've wondered for years why this hadn't been done already. What do you think? Frankenfood or progress?

Research monkeys languish in a state of limbo — The monkeys of Abkhazia. There's a hell of a piece of fiction (or more than one) buried in this sad, awful news story.

Youngstown downsizes — A city faces up to a no-growth future. That's very unAmerican, yet very practical.

Human, Chimp Ancestors May Have Mated, DNA Suggests — Sorry, offer not valid for Young Earth Creationists and ID proponents.

100 million year old feathers found trapped in amber — Ooh, that dastardly Satan has been planting evidence again!

Polygamy case poses 'logistical nightmare' for courts — This is funny, but sad. Or sad, but funny. ETA: scarlettina points out quite correctly that there is nothing amusing about this situation. It stands at the intersection of religion and child abuse, two big hot buttons of mine. I've avoided making larger comments about this (and I've thought plenty) because virtually none of the believers among my readers will be willing to associate this behavior with theirs, while most of the non-believers already see the connections. What I do find funny is the idea of a town overflowing with lawyers, which was the gist of this article.

A movie critic talks about not seeing Expelled [ imdb ] — The story of this movie is pretty damned funny. More ID idiocy, reaching the depths even of the Dover decision. ETA: See also Expelled.

Rahm Emanuel is an idiot — "We've put about $45 billion into Iraq's reconstruction . . . and they have not spent their own resources," said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.). "They have got to have some skin in the game." Jeebus, even the Republicans usually aren't that stupid. I expect a little more from the (alleged) good guys.

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4/14/08
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 ]

SFFaudio with a review of the audio release of Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon | Audible ]

Andrew Wheeler with some interesting observations about genre sales

nick_kaufmann is wise concerning rejection

More adventures with Zoli here and here — The meme is spreading. Dang, I might have to write one, too.

scalzi gets all prescriptivist and stuff — Alright, that's enough.

Amusing toilet paper dispensers — From Mental Floss. (Thanks to garyomaha.)

Homebrew MRI — No, really.

Weird houses — Very weird.

The tourbillion — A watch which shows only day or night. Incidentially, Tourbillion is my working title for the third Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon | Audible ] book. (Thanks to chriswjohnson.)

Wake up, smell the music with Japan perfume download — Smell-O-Vision finally comes to life, in Japan, home of all that is too weird to be cool and too cool to be weird. Best line: "NTT Communications also plans to conduct trials of another service that would allow mobile phone users to send files with scent attachments."

Earth's Crust Shows Long-Term Wiggle Room — New thinking about continental plates.

A Disease That Allowed Torrents of Creativity — The creative disease. Fascinating stuff about cognitive psychology, creativity and selective dementia. (Thanks to GS.)

1692 in America — A year of history in a year of blogging. Deeply cool. This is going on my daily blogroll.

Growing Pains for a Deep-Sea Home Built of Subway Cars — Luxury condos for fish. Interesting story about re-use. (Thanks to my dad.)

antitheism on delusions — A bit more fuel to the atheism fire — (Thanks to lt260.)

CFI Issues Critique of Civics Textbook — This is pretty interesting. I especially like: "the alleged influence of the religious concept of “original sin” on the structure of the Constitution." Christianists seem to want to distory the reality of our entire society to fit their worldview. Except when they need antibiotics or a decently educated doctor, of course. (Thanks to lt260.)

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4/9/08
Time in saddle: 17 minutes
Last night's weigh-out: n/a
This morning's weigh-in: 275.0
Currently reading: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon [ Powell's | Amazon ]

(Snurched from elsewhere on LJ...)

Link: The Feminist Test written by proudfeminist on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(proudfeminist)

The Angry Black Woman gets very angry. As well she should. Go read. She needs to know how many of us have her back.