[links] Link salad for a travel day

Cherenkov blue — A fascinating lateral take on my story “The Sky that Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black”, which uses the piece as a jumping off place to talk about a bit of physics.

Fiction Rule of Thumb — xkcd nails our genre.

The House on the Rock — A very cool, very weird place with a lot of (accidental) steampunk. (Thanks to lordofallfools.)

Machu Picchu’s far-flung residents — Interesting anthropology on Incan royalty and their serving class. (Thanks to lt260.)

The ‘Secret Jews’ of San Luis Valley — Genetics, religion and hidden culture. (Thanks to lt260.)

APOD with the first rocket launch from Cape Canaveral — You can smell the fresh paint on the future in this photo.

Low-Power Liquid Lens — The mighty power of water optics. Cool stuff.

Teaching Bacteria to Behave — Unicellular Skinnerism?

Palin comes out as pro-choice — “… should anyone end up in jail for having an [...] abortion, absolutely not.” Right. Because, um, that’s what the pro-life movement wants. Erm. (And yes, I do know the pro-life agenda is as much about criminalizing medical procedures and punishing providers as it is about victimizing women. Still, this is another of those deeply disingenuous feel-good answers designed to make the Scary Right less scary to middle of the road voters. N.b.: she also said she believed in a Constitutional right to privacy.)

Kathleen Parker Shocked To Find Her Party’s Full Of “Vicious””, “Threatening”, Delusional Wingnuts — Conservative hate speech monger disturbed by conservative hate speech! Amazing how it feels when it’s directed at you, isn’t it?

Time with an Obama poll — Note that your Liberal Media did not ask leading and highly inaccurate about McCain, only about Obama. (Via Eschaton.)

10/02/08

Body movement: airport walking (to come)

Last night’s weigh-out: n/a

This morning’s weigh-in: 233.8

Currently reading: n/a

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.