Everybody Loves Cthulhu — John R. Fultz on Cthulhu's Reign, a forthcoming DAW anthology in which he and I both have stories. Nice cover, which coincidentally could have illustrated my piece.
Elissa Malcohn with a brilliant haiku
xkcd on "The Flake Equation" — Required reading for all skiffy types. The mouseover text is priceless.
Where neon falls like rain — I want to see the lightning storms there.
What Can Economists Tell Us About Teenage Sexual Mores? — Fascinating on several levels. Incidentally, I'm getting very tired of the term "pre-marital sex". It's incredibly heteronormative and full of unexamined cultural assumptions that are inherently stigmatizing. How about "sex"?
Emergency contraception — The Edge of the American West on, among other things, conscience laws for pharmacists and healthcare providers. Frankly, those conscience laws are utter bullshit, pandering to the worst impulses of the Right. Don't like part of your job? Get a different job. Forced pregnancy enthusiasts don't deserve special protection at the expense of the needs of the people they're sworn to serve.
An open letter to conservatives — A generation of conservative hypocrisy and idiocy, in one fell swoop. With citations in case you want to think it's all made up. And as the author mentions, nothing on the American left approaches nearly this level of nuttery.
Roger Ailes to Fox News' Glenn Beck haters: Stop 'shooting in the tent' — Hah. And yes, that would be Roger Ailes, Reagan's political strategist, who is now news director at "Fair and Balanced" Fox News. Your Liberal Media.
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010/03/23/still-waiting-for-the-pushback/ — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on that "single greatest pushback in American history" the GOP keeps talking about. When 50% of respondents say that they are pleased or enthusiastic about some high-profile, controversial thing the government has done, this is not normally the prologue to political annihilation for the people in charge of the government in that year’s election. Dream on, conservatives.
Frightening GOP behavior — Of course, the American people have spoken, and in November 2008 elected a Democratic White House and Senate and House of Representatives. But, elections and the workings of our democracy including the idea that the losing party respect the outcome of elections appear to be alien concepts to today's GOP. Yep. Elections have consequences. The GOP is happy with the system when they win. Sore Losermen.
chriswjohnson points me to "The Authoritarians" — A book on authoritarianism which explains the Palinite/Tea Party wng of the GOP more concisely than anything I've seen. You have to know a lot nowadays to stake out an intelligent, defendable position on many issues. But you don’t have to know anything to insist you’re right, no matter what. Dogmatism is by far the best fall-back defense, the most impregnable castle, that ignorance can find. It’s also a dead give-away that the person doesn’t know why he believes what he believes.?otD: Have you ever driven through Paris in a sportscar in the rain?
3/24/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Hours slept: 7.5 (faily well)
This morning's weigh-in: 234.6
Yesterday's chemo stress index: 4/10 (but still sick)
Currently reading: [between books]