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| 2010-07-12 04:48 |
| [links] Link salad slides into another week of work and writing |
| Public |
| books, cancer, cool, culture, escapement, health, healthcare, links, mainspring, personal, photos, politics, reviews, science, weird |
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A review of several books, including Mainspring and Escapement — Good stuff. Lifesaving drugs may be killing health workers — A darker side to chemotherapy. (Via  shelly_rae.) The pool at Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore — Um, no. (Thanks to willyumtx.) Adolfo Farsari – The Man Who Shot Old Japan — This is fascinating. Photos from 19th century Japan. (Indirectly via willyumtx.) Seeing Infrared in Maps — Infrared imagery in online maps lets homeowners see their energy efficiency. This is kind of cool. Online, We Pay With Our Time Spent Searching — An interesting look at time/value calculations for our leisure and entertainment efforts. (Thanks to my dad.) The third Bush term — The Edge of the American West on where Obama continues to fail those of us who believed in him. Not just environmental policy, but the war, Guantanamo, civil liberties — a wide array of that peculiar Bush-era admixture of idiocy and evil continues to be propagated by the man we elected to reverse the damage. ?otD: What's your word for world?
7/12/2010 Writing time yesterday: 4.25 hours (6,000 new words, plus WRPA) Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride Hours slept: 8.5 (decent) This morning's weigh-in: 231.6 Yesterday's chemo stress index: 2/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy) Currently (re)reading: Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
Post A Comment | 11 Comments | Share | Flag | Link
| icedrake |
| 2010-07-12 13:42 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
Pool at Marina Bay Sands Hotel
Clearly not meant for the height-averse among us.
Also, "The Marina Bay Sands is the world's most expensive hotel in Singapore, and with a world's largest outdoor pool at 55th storey"?
So it's the most expensive hotel in the world, out of those that are in Singapore, and has the world's largest pool which is both outdoor and on the 55th story? Somewhere, an indoor pool located on the 56th story is crying bitter tears of shame.
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| delkytlar |
| 2010-07-12 13:52 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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Those pool pictures triggered my fear of heights immediately, which is strange because usually photos of high places don't affect me. My hands are shaking right now, and my heart is pounding. The thought of anyone actually SWIMMING there is incomprehensible to me.
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| jaylake |
| 2010-07-12 14:02 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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Do you ever get that 'pull' from being on the edge of a height? I find it when I'm hiking in the mountains, or visiting a cliff-edge site such as the Grand Canyon. Some part of my lizardbrain thinks I can fly...
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| delkytlar |
| 2010-07-12 17:12 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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No desire to fly. I get a purely unmitigated "Get me the hell away from this edge!" response. I actually enjoy high things/places, like roller coasters and tall skyscraper observation areas, as long as they are either (a) equipped with sturdy restraint systems, or (b) enclosed. I can't ride a T-bar ski lift, or anything that leaves my feet dangling (FORGET ABOUT "FLYING COASTERS").
I wonder if this is why, when I do dream that I can fly, I can never fly more than about 5 feet off the ground.
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| swan_tower |
| 2010-07-13 03:31 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| aaaaaah |
I get that. It was a relief some years ago to learn I'm not the only person vaguely afraid that one day the lizardbrain will get hold of the steering wheel for the half a second it would take to fling myself over the edge.
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A big sleeper issue that the general public's not focusing upon is in education. There, Obama's out-Bushing Bush. His education program is charters writ large, and that's not a good thing. Education is in need of reform, but it doesn't need a further heavy emphasis (heavier, in fact) upon high-stakes testing with the time it takes away from classroom instruction. Nor does it need union-busting.
Education could stand some serious busting of the trend toward top-down micromanagement and the growth industry trending toward top-heavy administrative workers who have no student contact, but wax prolific on their ivory-tower views of what they think should be happening--and in the meantime dumping more make-work-in-the-name-of-theory upon administrators and teachers who do have student contacts.
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| nicosian |
| 2010-07-12 15:52 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
i always got the impression Obama's slow pace/non pace was the naivete of pre election then the reality of election, and the need to suddenly "appease" the right, who aren't so big on change. He's far more centrist than I anticipated but I see a need if he actually even wants to dream of a second term....
Its not great but that is the nature of US politics from an outsider as I see it, a two party system so impossibly divided that neither understands what the other is saying anymore.
( canada's only MARGINALLY less split, we have 2-4 parties)
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| jaylake |
| 2010-07-12 16:08 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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I'm one of those people who thought the 2008 election could have been won handily from the (American version of the) Left. Liberal-progressive positions poll well, and provide people with real improvements in their lives instead the of righteous anger and empty ideologies promoted by the Right. So, yes, Obama is playing the center hard, in some cases for good political reasons, but I think his team both pre- and post-election has been far too timid about standing up for principles.
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| nicosian |
| 2010-07-12 17:06 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
oh, definitely, yeah. I want him to be much more aggressive, but I don't think that's his personality much.
i think things are better now than they were under bush, but that there's an unfortunate amount of work to be done, but the GOP tends to blame Obama for not singlehandedly fixing it ALL in his first month and well, that was then and this is now, we're not talking about bush.
I kind of suspect that some people think every new pres comes in with a blank slate, not carryover from the previous term.
I just can't wait to toss Prime Minister Harper out of my country's head position. I'd rather have a taxidermied kitten at the post than him. ( he was something of a Bush fanboy, and like the US, we have huge conservative strongholds that keep bringing these guys in.)
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Ohh that pool!
I'd swim there and dream of space travel.
Anon
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| mmegaera |
| 2010-07-13 00:06 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| Yellowstone |
That pool! Eep! I do natural heights (and closed-in spaces) just fine, but not manmade ones. That thing looks like the edge of Discworld in the closeups.
Have to agree about Obama. And when I think back to how excited I was when he was elected...
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