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| Thursday, January 7th, 2010 |
james_nicoll
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5:45p |
Today's poll
Poll #1508460
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 27 Do you think people who complain about the unfairness to men of all-women issues also complain about the unfairness to women of all-male issues? |
james_nicoll
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5:33p |
Nothing affects my inclination to purchase a book as much as
noticing that American publishers are still charging Canadians 30% more than Americans. I reserve the right to harvest non-paired organs from anyone who comments on this who thinks the exchange rate between US and Canadian dollars is where it was ten years ago. The current exchange rate is $1 CDN = $0.9661 US. I note that when the Canadian dollar was at its lowest wrt the US dollar, Canadians actually paid about the same or even slightly less for books than Americans, once the exchange was taken into account. |
cloudscudding
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11:37a |
Post in Progress The last few weeks have been full of not-writing. Between filling in at an on-site and doing database projects, I've been working full-time+ except for our road trip to Wisconsin to visit Phil's family at Christmas. And then there were so many family events that I wasn't able to work on writing stuff--although I did manage to finish my Christmas cards! It was very, very nice to have this past weekend off. This week I'm working on-site at a law firm where we manage all the office services, filling in since one person got fired and one person's out sick. Working 9:30 to 6:00, which means I have a little time in the morning, but not much, and I don't get home until 7ish. That doesn't leave much time for anything but eating, quickly checking the "important" parts of the internets (where I can lose hours), and the most perfunctory of housework, even if I skimp on my physical therapy exercises. I've managed to get a little Vicesteed editing around the edges, but only a very little. As far as housekeeping--barely the bare necessities: I ran the Roomba for the first time in 2 weeks this morning, Mt. Laundry takes up an entire couch, the bathroom desperately needs a cleaning, and the cobwebs are so aggressively expanding their territory that I'm a little worried the cats will get stuck in them. Used to be, working a full day meant getting home around 5, dinner on the table at 6, or 7 at the latest. Now, I'm not even getting home until 7, sometimes later. Phil would starve if he waited for me to cook. He's been doing the cooking, but he's pretty much ran through his repertoire: BLTs, soup and cheese sandwiches, spaghetti, and tacos (mmm, tacos). On the other hand, we're all still getting fed, the dishes are washed, and the laundry is clean, if prone to landslides. Next week should be better, as I told them other things were building up (they are!) and I needed to switch back to part-time. Of course, that part-time is 1PM - 6:00PM, so dinner planning will still be--interesting. As you may have guessed by now, today is a quiet day in the office, and I'm able to play on the internets (albeit I might get frowned at). Soon I'll be writing/researching on my short-story-in-progress, "Ekaterina and the Firebird." I've always been proud of my ability to get the rough draft written without being afraid of writing "crap" and without necessarily "feeling inspired." (Inspiration comes with effort, not vice versa.) I only recently realized that I've fallen into another similar trap--the "I can't write under these circumstances" trap. Sure, I get my best writing done in large chunks of time, in relative isolation, with a particular story soundtrack, cats to pet, and a mug of tea. That doesn't mean I can't (to be edited in later) I shudder to think how jerky a novel would be, written in this style, and editing it for tone/content/era/character consistency would be a nightmare. |
james_nicoll
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5:27p |
About the death penalty
If the US resolved to execute about 35 people a year fewer than it does on average, it would have effectively ended the death penalty. 40% of that goal could be reached by ejecting Texas from the Union. |
burger_eater
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9:27a |
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james_nicoll
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5:12p |
It's 2010 and not only do I not have my jet-pack
But fantasy and science fiction magazines are still having all girl writer issues. Actually, it's not so much the all girl writer issues as the fact that all girl writer issues are considered noteworthy, perhaps even praiseworthy, rather than something you'd expect to happen from time to time as a result of the gender statistics of writers [1]. You know, Analog did that in 19*77*, people. Has so little progress been made since the Disco Era? 1: Hmmm. Assume a 50/50 split and eight stories. 2^8 = 256. Assuming a dozen magazines coming out once a month, this should happen every 21 months or so. Of course, it's not a 50/50 split. And I don't know if there are 12 monthlies. And I picked eight out of the air. Going the other way, if 80% of the writers are guys, the odds that all eight stories would be by men is about one in six. I wonder if that reflects the actual odds of picking up an SF magazine with only guy writers in it? |
cristalia
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12:23p |
The promised reviews and Cool Announcement.
Now that we're mostly all in the land of the living here (sorry, Australians), it's time for for the reviews and Cool Announcement. Yes, more reviews. I've got to put them somewhere or they clog up the vents. First off, Blog of the Fallen says some very nice things about Clockwork Phoenix 2, calling it the best original genre anthology they read this year. Which is nifty. Moving into the main course, Hannah Strom-Martin, in the Strange Horizons 2009 in Review article, gives a shoutout to Realms of Fantasy and "Mister Oak": In the last issue Harlan Ellison’s effortlessly brilliant "How Interesting: A Tiny Man" and Leah Bobet’s touching "Mister Oak" reminded me of the fabulous literary lights we possess. May they continue to burn into 2010 and beyond. This is especially nice because I opened it up and ironically did a little search on my name, so I could find nothing and get on with my life. And then I found something. And felt bad for being such a terrible cynic like I am, but was crazy flattered that it turned out this way. Next rock! The Twitter saying something nice about "Mister Oak" the other day has been located, mostly because he expanded it into a blog post: Pete Tzinski says some further nice things about that story, and likes the stats page as well. Which I need to do a little redesign on to handle those freaking tables. They are ugly. There. That's reviews.
The Fun Cool Announcement of Import is that I, along with a bunch of the other Shadow Unit authors, will be appearing at the Tucson Festival of Books in Tucson, AZ on March 13 and 14. We'll be doing a panel and signing, and otherwise just roaming the festival in a pack formation, being festive. There are a lot of authors already signed up for this thing -- I'm sort of personally boggled at the hugeness when I'm not doing little fangirl dances about various attendees -- so I'm really looking forward to this trip. If you're in the area, hope to see you there! Current Mood:  cheerfulCurrent Music: Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker -- Man Makes the Zoo |
the_flea_king
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11:17a |
Say, is that a Tumbleweed?
It’s rare that I let my blog go 3 weeks without updating, but all of my bloggy updatey energies have been going into the 365 project. I decided early on that I needed to spend most of January on acquiring projects. This is the cycle that I’m settling into–I spend time hustling for my freelance, and once I have a good group of projects lined up, then my extra time gets put into projects like blogging and writing.
So what’s on the horizon? A newly reinvigorated Roundbottom project, with new avenues for storytelling being explored. I’m reading a lot about browser-based social games, to give you a hint. Also, a redesign of this site–I have a ton of new design ideas that I want to explore and experiment with, and my own site is the best one to try that on I think.
So, again, sorry for the radio silence. I’ll try to find some time a few times a week to update things around here so you don’t think I’m dead. Unless you’re my student loan or credit card companies. I would prefer it if you think I’m dead.
Originally published at JeremiahTolbert.com. You can comment here or there. |
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makinglight
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4:50p |
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mind_hacks
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8:00a |
A clarion call for a decade of disorder
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2010/01/a_clarion_call_for_a.html  This week's Nature has an excellent editorial calling for a greater focus on the science of mental illness and summarising the challenges facing psychology and neuroscience in tackling these complex conditions.
It's generally a very well-informed piece, but it does make one widely repeated blunder in the last sentence of this paragraph:
Frustratingly, the effectiveness of medications has stalled. Nobody understands the links between the symptoms of schizophrenia and the crude physiological pathologies that have so far been documented: a decrease in white brain matter, for example, and altered function of the neurotransmitter dopamine. The medications, which are often aimed at the dopamine systems associated with delusions, have advanced over the decades not in their efficacy but in a reduction of their debilitating side effects.
The idea that newer antipsychotic drugs have less side-effects is a myth, albeit one that was widely promoted by drug companies in the early days of the newer 'atypical antipsychotics'.
The early antipsychotics were notorious for causing a syndrome of Parkinson's disease-like abnormal movements owing to their long-term effect on the dopamine system.
The popular newer generation drugs do indeed produce fewer of these problems, although the difference is much smaller than was originally thought. But in addition, they tend to cause metabolic syndrome - weight gain, diabetes, heart problems - something which wasn't such an issue with the older drugs.
In other words, the side-effects aren't less, they're just different. While the old drugs were more likely to produce movement problems, the newer are more likely to make you fat and give you diabetes.
Although antipsychotics were one of the most important medical advances of the 20th century, as the Nature editorial notes, there has been no improvement in the ability of these drugs to actually treat psychosis in the last few decades.
One of the main problems is that the most effective antipsychotics seems to have the highest levels of side-effects and a huge advance would simply be the production of a drug that was of equal effectiveness but less damaging to patients' health.
Apart from this minor error, the Nature piece is an excellent brief summary of where psychiatric research is at, and where it needs to go to better tackle these episodes of mental turmoil, and comes highly recommended.
Link to Nature piece 'A decade for psychiatric disorders'.
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scrnwrtinghack
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12:00p |
Thursdays...
Well, it turns out the 1045 class was shortened due to the fact we only have 4 people. So, getting out at 915 is much happier than 1030. So far the Marketing Class has been great, hopefully the Portfolio Class will be good too. Time to go portfolio hunting on Saturday. If anyone on the F-List has had good experience with any specific portfolio comment away... Current Mood:  amused |
cloudscudding
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10:53a |
Writing Log: Tsarist Russia
01/06/2010, Wednesday, full day at job * Read WritersWeekly newsletter. * Posted writing logs. * Penthius freewriting. * "Ekaterina and the Firebird," 1 pg. on the bus. * Drowned in researching 18th century Tsarist Russia. Not easy. I am irked at the difficulties I had with researching Tsarist Russia online. I'm looking for everyday sort of of info on the upper class--how they lived, what they wore, ate, and did for entertainment. Of course, to be fair, initially I just thought "Tsarist Russia,"--it took me a bit to narrow that to 1700s Russia and a bit longer to try alternating the wording to 18th century Russia. Aardvark was not helpful--"Try Google" is not a useful suggestion. Of course I tried Google first. And Wikipedia, which frequently has good reference links. Not so much this time. And then my lovely research librarian friend ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) da_wyf takes 10 minutes and finds better researchy goodness for me to look at. ::facepalm:: ...I need a research assistant. Ah well, it's on the list for if I ever become a professional at this whole "writing" thing. |
james_nicoll
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4:43p |
An airplane safety issue
Why is it the airlines still allow passengers to carry on with them as much adenosine triphosphate as they care to? ATP can provide a respectable amount of energy per kilogram and I'd hate to think what could happen to an airplane if all the ATP contained in a typical plane's contents were to be provoked into suddenly releasing that energy. I doubt anyone on board would survive. Can't we make sure no ATP makes it on board any passenger aircraft? |
nihilistic_kid
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8:46a |
Merry Christmas!
I am utterly shocked that www.isitchristmas.com is reporting NO today. |
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talkngptsmemo
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4:05p |
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talkngptsmemo
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3:25p |
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talkngptsmemo
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2:46p |
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bentolunch
[ ocean_storm ]
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11:16a |
 
( Bento's #3 & #4! )
Need to work on my color combination's to make it look nicer but eh, whatever works. Sorry for the weird thumbnails, got a bit over excited about having photoshop again lol |
jpsorrow
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11:16a |
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
We're coming up on the German foreign language release of The Cracked Throne, titled "Die Regentin." If you speak German, live in Germany, have friends who live in Germany, have friends who like to read things in German, then check it out!
You can order it from the German Amazon.com. The Skewed Throne, titled "Die Assassine," is also available.
The Vacant Throne is set to be released in June 2010 as "Die Kaempferin."
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rosefox
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10:51a |
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scalzifeed
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3:28p |
The Big Idea: Sarah A. Hoyt
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/01/07/the-big-idea-sarah-a-hoyt/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=9626 
2010 is here, so let’s drive right in to this year’s series of Big Ideas. And to begin the new year, we have science fiction and fantasy author Sarah A. Hoyt and her new novel Darkship Thieves — for which one of the initiating reasons for the book was the author being annoyed. Annoyed at what? Or annoyed at whom? Hoyt will explain all — and remind us all that inspiration can some at you from any angle.
SARAH A. HOYT:
Most of my big ideas – and a lot of the small ones – start with my being annoyed. In this case, the source of annoyance was the whole flap about clones and how the cloning technology was going to destroy the world.
Let’s forget for the moment that most journalists, displaying the biological knowledge of the common household teapot, seemed to believe that clones would be born with the memories of the original or would be a sort of dark-universe twin of the original. That was bad enough but could be ignored. What couldn’t be ignored was the continuous din of people who should know better for the regulation of this technology. Let’s make it illegal, they said, because otherwise people will be cloning themselves and having their brains transplanted to the body of the clone; they’ll be using these kids for spare parts; they’ll be–
It went on and on. Two things bothered me about this: first, the belief that humans would use the new technology only for “evil” purposes and second, the idea that legislation was a sort of magic wand that undid the technological discovery and made it unusable. The first might be true or not. Granted that the worst possible purpose is in the range of human uses of any given technology. However, we don’t always follow through on our evil designs. We haven’t managed to nuke ourselves out of existence yet, for instance. As for law stopping it… It depends whose law and where and how good enforcement is or can be. I think the war on drugs has shown that nothing can be banned completely, permanently or effectively.
What banning technology can do – look at the war on drugs again – is make it go underground and thereby insure it gets used only for the worst – or at least the most harmful to society at large – purposes. Drug addiction might be no picnic even if it were openly talked about, but it’s made worse by the fact that the activity is illegal, must be hidden and has taken roots in a whole criminal underground.
In my view, at least, banning cloning – and the inevitable human enhancement – technology would ensure it would be used for all those purposes that people were afraid of.
So I started with two worlds – the one in which cloning and human biological enhancement was banned, and the one where it wasn’t.
Only I’m cursed with a twisty and convoluted mind where no idea can be simple. Besides the “good world” and “bad world” design was too Manichean to satisfy my inner critic. Things are never that black and white.
I went back to the drawing board and let other themes fall in – themes that interest me, like the idea of the resilient child that turns out all right despite everything. And the one that doesn’t. Like human instinctive – if hidden – dislike of those who are perceived as different. Tinged with fear when those who are perceived as different are also smarter. Like the idea that there is no technology that would be harmful in the hands of an individual that can’t be made more so – on an epic scale – in the hands of an entrenched bureaucracy.
So when Darkship Thieves starts, in the 24th century, biological enhancements are illegal on Earth. They didn’t start out illegal, but heavily regulated in most of the world. In the rest of the world, on the other hand, they’d been used by tin pot dictators and corrupt bureaucracies. It had started on a massive scale, creating children as fodders for armies, as strength for ethnic majorities, and as smart people who could fix all of the world’s problems.
What this led to was tyranny by super-engineered humans – Mules – who didn’t consider themselves human, partly through having hobbles (including the inability to reproduce) built into their genes, partly through having been raised as things, not people. It eventually led to a revolt against the Mules and an overthrowing, which resulted in a world wide government of sorts and tight controls on human improvement and artificial human genetic change.
The Mules and some of their more grossly bio-engineered collaborators escape to space. The still-human servants of the Mules colonize an asteroid. The Mules themselves go on, into the wider space, because even among their collaborators they are considered odd and inspire fear.
Those still human servants form Eden, a society in which bio-engineering is extensively used and in the open. They are connected to an Earth that doesn’t even believe they exist through one of the remaining pieces of technology introduced by the Mules – powertrees. The powertrees grow in the vacuum of space and yield power pods, which can be harvested and are used to power the technology of Earth and Eden. Edenites collect these pods by flying ‘darkships’ and making use of bio engineered pilots and navigators.
Athena Hera Sinistra, daughter of a Good Man – sort of a regional governor – of Earth tumbles into the midst of Eden society when she’s rescued from the powertrees by a darkship pilot.
The end result could be described, in Shakespeare’s words, as “all are punished.” Or perhaps “all are redeemed.” It depends on how you look at it and squint.
Not that there is anything murky about Athena, or Kit, the darkship pilot who rescues her. They are quite decisive and active in facing what’s wrong with both of their flawed societies and in trying to improve it (in Athena’s case a little… er… forcefully. The woman has anger issues.) But in the end their struggle to reach what they consider humanity – humanity as a moral, not just a biological ideal – passes through personal discovery and revelation of deep, dark ills in both their worlds.
They fight against those evils – I cannot seem to write characters who merely whimper about things. I’ve tried – and emerge victorious for a given definition of the word. They find themselves as humans – or as human as they’re likely to be. They find their own places in the universe and an humanity that transcends biological status or appearance.
Of course, they’re only two people, so they cannot change their worlds completely. That will take time and independently-arising movements.
So we’ll leave my characters, at the end, sure of themselves and willing to continue struggling. Revolution and wholesale mayhem will have to wait for future books.
—-
Darkship Thieves: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Powell’s
Read an excerpt of Darkship Thieves. Visit Sarah Hoyt’s LiveJournal. Follow her on Twitter.
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scalzifeed
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2:45p |
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j_cheney
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9:42a |
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sartorias
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7:31a |
Mrissa's moss trolls
On top my question, then comes the maunder. This question is for my German friends especially. Say I'm writing a short story set in Wittenberg in 1519, and I have Philip Melancthon, newly made a professor (then a very rare distinction) meet a demon. But I want the demon to wear the form of a scholar, so he's addressing the professor properly. Would he say "Herr Professor?" But they'd be speaking in Latin, wouldn't they? So what would the professor be called? I don't have a good German source at hand for this question, and my Google-fu is pretty lame. I know, that's pretty picayune. (Wow I love that word, picayune. Always have.) Anyway, mrissa posted not long ago about "moss trolls," --those tiny anachronisms that can bounce readers out of a story. For some, a big deal breaker is the use of "okay" in secondary-universe or epic fantasy. It bothers me, though I've heard others say, "Come on, the entire thing is written in English, don't you suppose there's an equivalent, just as all these other words have equivalents?" I can totally buy the concept--if I open a book I want to sink into it--but 'okay' is just too hardwired in my brain as American 20th C. Even if most of the world uses it now. Even if we're in the 21st Century. For that moment I'm not in the other world, but in ours, with a book in my hands, and I have to make an effort to dive back in. It's not a big effort--I think of it as akin to having to stop your car at a stop sign when no one is crossing. It doesn't take all that much effort, not like riding a bike. But it does break the smooth ride for just that time, and it takes that little bit of extra effort to resume the smooth ride. I've discovered that there are no sustainable "rules" about these things. Some readers' ears are more attuned to the words on the page, others gulp down the text super fast in order to fuel the movie in their brain, so they don't notice the words. Secondly, there's the matter of expertise. We are all experts in something. Many MANY years ago, I attended a showing of an otherwise forgettable movie in which Warren Beatty played a hairdresser who seduced all his customers. One of the people in our group kept putting her hand over her eyes and muttering and moaning about the errors the movie made about how a hairdresser shop actually works. None of the rest of us cared, but to her it was a big deal because she worked in one. Some of us can't watch a movie set in our home town without laughing as the characters drive down one street, turn a corner and end up on a street that we know is twenty miles away. (Or, in L.A., pull up in front of a place and there is always a parking spot!) The little details that make a world resonate more truly (I think) are not just built by throwing a zillion made up terms at the reader, but also by making sure that the paradigm implied in characters' converse and POVs matches up. "You'd better pray that isn't the Big Bad," the princess says--in a world where, so far, we haven't seen any sign of religion, prayer, gods, or anything related. "Hang on! Rescue is seconds away!" in a world where we have yet to see one single clock, or any other sort of time keeping. In a project, I struggled with the term barbarian--would it evoke Rome and the 'wild bearded savages'? But every synonym moved farther away from the image of wildness and inferior culture implied in that term. So I went with it. I also felt ambivalent over "Yeah," but decided that distortions of basic words such as No and Yes would be universal. I'm sure readers didn't give a flying fig (or hated other aspects invisible to me) but that kind of detail can poke me out of a story if the paradigms clash--or make me sigh with happiness and sink further into the world if there is continuity.  |
ericmarin
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9:27a |
My Poetry-Writing Game Continues
I managed to write a poem for each of the days of November and December of 2009, and I am on track to do the same for January (nine poems written so far this month and seventy-one poems written since November 1st ). I imagine I will stop writing quite so much sometime soon, but I'm not feeling the urge to slow down as of yet. I'm having far too much fun. |
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