links

First, I’ve heard secondhand complaints that the media aren’t covering the good news coming out of New Orleans. My friend Legomancer says there must be some puppies holding balloons that the everpresent cameras seem to have missed, but alas all I can offer you is “Cats in Sinks“.

Though usually bilious to a level that makes me roll my eyes, nihilistic kid has a good refutation for all the people questioning whether New Orleans needs to be rebuilt. Yesterday, he also wrote an eye-opening account of how stories get misreported (including the looters shooting at helicopters which apparently was just a rumor, thank God). He’s also posted a letter from Left Turn editor Jordan Flaherty, an eloquent firsthand account. CNN examines the disconnect between “official channels” and what journalists on the scene report. I guess this is what happens when our government is not part of the reality-based community. An interesting series of blog posts from author China Mieville on the Politics of Weather: part 1, part 2, part 3. His socialism is showing, but that doesn’t discredit his arguments. Particularly incisive is this bit from part 2: “Where do you even start? The lack of planning for/giving two shits about the poor? The wittering on about ‘looting’, ie the clear, unambiguous prioritising of property over human life?”

If I hadn’t already raged and spewed enough venom at the man who claims to lead my country yesterday, I could go on at length today about the incredibly facile and infuriating thing he said about Trent Lott’s beach house. Fortunately for me, others got there first, so I can just provide links: he’s clueless, he thinks a second home is the worst thing one has to face losing, he could have said something heart-warming if he had an ounce of empathy like Clinton did, he might have said one of these extrapolations if he’d been present at other calamities.

A common sense warning to the self-righteous finger pointers who insist everyone who lived in New Orleans deserves what they got because they’re stupid enough to live in a bowl below sea level. The loveliest line in the tirade : “Circumstance is chasing us all down, slowly but surely.” Indeed. “There but for the grace of God go I” has never been more eloquently phrased. Also, one last word on why someone who had no means to leave the path of a hurricane might not admit to it.

A list of New Orleans musicians who have been accounted for, and those who have not, from Looka! (via Making Light). Alex Chilton, another Ninth Ward resident, is still missing.

Morbid but funny, cobaltgreen brainstorms on what news would make the government stop dragging its feet and rescue the stranded. Also in the gallows humor category, this billboard (via Making Light) reminds us of the connection between small government and the lack of safety nets for our citizens:

My husband loaded a bunch of pictures into the photo database. Here’s a couple of my favorites from the summer:

I’ve noticed lately that Google News doesn’t have a feature I would like. It offers to sort things by date, assuming you want the most recent news, which is normally the case. However, several times in the past couple of weeks, I’ve been searching for the first instance of a quote or the first time something was mentioned in the news…this means that I’d want a reverse date sort, which it doesn’t have, and which would be really useful. Going to the last hit would accomplish a similar thing, except that you might get news that was too old, like years old instead of weeks old. So it would need to be a recent reverse sort, like seven days or two weeks.

Ok, so it wasn’t all negative, right? I tried for that vaunted balance I hear the media values so much.

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Yesterday was a day filled with melancholy, in which I wished very much to not be in the world, because of stories like this, this, and this. Please note, it’s all horrifying stuff. I wouldn’t blame you a bit for not wanting to know. I didn’t.

Today I feel a bit better, in part because I slipped sideways into Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and vanished from here for a few hours, and in part because of things like this. Discovery landed safely, with a woman commander, how cool is that? And I learned something new, I didn’t know the shuttle got carted around on the back of 747 NASA carrier jet.

What a perplexing, sad and awe inspiring time to be alive.

Also, this is a weird thing that I have no explanation for, but I hope one of my readers can point me to one. There’s an African country that is currently undergoing a starvation catastrophe. Yet another one of those things that has me disheartened because everyone knew this was coming and no one did anything about it. I digress, though. The mystery is when I was young, I learned to say this country name as ‘nI-j&r, but I increasingly hear it pronounced in a more Frenchified way, as nE-’zher. When did this happen? And why? The other day I actually heard a radio announcer correct themselves from the first pronunciation to the second. What is that about? Anyone know?

I heard this most moving story concerning a woman’s remembrances of the bombing of Hiroshima, sixty years ago last Saturday. There’s four parts to the series, all of which are excellent and worth hearing (though you will need to guard yourself against becoming depressed on listening, if you are at all like me). A day or so after the story that I linked above aired, the station read an angry letter from a guy who was totally outraged that nothing in the piece justified the bomb dropping. This seemed so odd to me. Why would a bombing survivor have any business talking about how great the bombing was? I understand that arguments can be made (though never proven) for a quicker end to the war and therefore a smaller loss of life overall because of the United States’ use of the atomic bomb, but I hardly think it’s appropriate that every article about Hiroshima contain a cheering section for slaughter, regardless of potential justifications. How does that honor the dead and the living? Why would anyone demand that others capitulate their position and abnegate their actual experience in order to praise the actions of their enemies? It’s a bizarre sort of thing to be offended about, to my mind, and I can’t quite fathom it. You can hear the letter for yourself here under the entire program link, at about the 22 minute mark.

I am also concerned about the impending, forced evacuation of Israelis from the settlements in Gaza. I don’t want there to be any violence from any person on any side of this polygonal dispute. It is a courageous move on the part of the Israeli government to publicly cede land and I hope the Palestinians can see that. Turning the military on your own people is always dangerous, always difficult and rarely wise. I hope the settlers can understand this is a move of duress on the part of their government. I will be praying for a peaceful transition in which no one (else) comes to harm.

And that’s today’s newscast through the Anarkey filter.

One last thing, Slacktivist is as insightful as ever, with his piece on the difference between need and greed. Today I bless you, reader, in this way: may you always remember that there is enough, whether you have it when you do or not. Dayenu.

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My husband is perpetually astonished at the number of open tabs I maintain at any given moment, usually around 15 or 20.

In lieu of content, several links I have to proffer :

• Thought-provoking stuff from Elizabeth Bear. Watch as she adroitly explains the four stages of mastering a new skill. Besides using a model that is encouraging about those times when it seems like everything you are writing sucks (you have mastered one area and don’t notice it being executed competently and have your sight focused on the area you haven’t mastered yet), she also brings up a couple of almost tangential but very interesting points : one, her assertion that writing is a whole array of skills, not just a single mastery and two, this bit of genius (which I hope I may freely quote at length without offending) “…you can write stories that work–at least on some fairly facile level–almost every time if you follow…rules. It’s what permits Hollywood to exist, and what permitted the pulp writers to bang out a story every night over a fifth of scotch and a mechanical typewriter. This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with stories constructed on three-act structure and internal and external conflict and a hook, rising action, climax, denoument model. Because there isn’t. But it’s only one model. It’s just the one we’re most culturally conditioned to recognize as a story.” This is one of my current problems, I think. I hate to say it, or even think it, because it seems pretentious and snobby but at least some of the time I catch myself trying to write stories that break that model. It’s not my fault. I no longer find that model as interesting as I once did, and I have been writing long enough to want to do other things. On the other hand, I wonder if I’m pulled in other storytelling directions because I haven’t as good a good grip on the traditional model as I ought to. At any rate, there’s a large random readership percentage that finds explorations of alternate story models unsatisfying or downright offensive. Out of thirty or so readers, only two felt like I did, that the absence of consequences was one of the beauties of “Hindsight”. I “fixed” that story by creating dramatic consequences for the main character and “punching up” (a term that makes me grit my teeth) the ending. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I damaged my artistic integrity by changing it up, and I’m quite pleased with it, but I just didn’t see the flaw in having it fizzle to an end instead of popping. And I’m absolutely willing to believe that I have to listen to people about what is unsatisfying in a reading experience. They’re the readers, not me. I am also willing to work at delivering stories in a more accessible way. So I’m not pulling the no one understands my art card here either. I have no designs to be even the slightest bit avant-garde. An editor friend of mine that I hope will help me with “Ennui” told me it was “experimental” and I felt myself cringe. Ugh.
• More from Elizabeth Bear on how to write good intrigue (likely not of interest to most of you regular folk). She’s so straightforward in her layout that I begin to consider I might attempt to write a book with intrigue. Angles and elements. Why didn’t I see that?
• Confirming my worst suspicions, this article explores the possibility that “corporations [are] fundamentally psychopathic organizations that attract similarly disposed people”. The guy making the assertion ought to know, he’s Dr. Robert Hare, creator of the Psychopathy checklist.
• Interesting new research shows that cats have no taste receptors for sweets. The scientists involve suspect that there’s some connection between this absence and the obligate carnivore nature of cats. I’ve always heard that cats and dogs are attracted to anti-freeze because it smells sweet and so is especially dangerous. That might work for dogs, but if they really cannot taste anything sweet what makes anti-freeze attractive to cats?
• Listen to radio waves from Saturn, as captured by Cassini (and downshifted to a human hearable range and also time compressed).
• Resources for better living: about one third of the way down this very informative page is a chart listing common composting materials (tea bags, hair and dryer lint — who knew?), a zester I covet, and a neat hack for keeping your grocery bills in tune with meals you actually prepare. I particularly like how the startup is simple and doesn’t involve a massive immediate organizing binge to get going.
• Kudos to a couple of my writing heros. Gene Wolfe won the 2005 Locus award for best novella (”Golden City Far” in Flights, which is a delicious, dreamy story I savored and then reviewed) and he was also nominated to win the Nebula for his book The Knight (which I haven’t read but want to) though he lost out to Lois McMaster Bujold who won it for Paladin of Souls (which was a wonderful book). She was also nominated for a Hugo for “Winterfair Gifts” which I hope to get read soonish. It’s so splendid to live at this time, with such talented people producing books. And while I’m on the subject, check out this extremely exhaustive and commented list of this year’s Hugo contenders.
• These links I include for my own personal reference and business information. A site to get free credit reports. A form to fill out that supposedly opts you out of pre-approved lines of credit. I don’t know if it works or not but I’m sick to death of stupid pre-approved “checks” that are actually loans with exorbitant rates that could be stolen off my front porch by anyone and land me in a heap of trouble without my knowledge or consent. Get out of my life and stay out, usurious lending companies. And that’s all I’ll say about that before I degrade into full on rant mode. Also, instructions on how to get less snail mail spam marketing. I’m tired of people killing trees to mail me advertising for stuff I will never buy and just go from the postbox to the trash, ending up in a landfill, I’m sure. Really guys, I’m less of a consumer than you could hope for.
• Not much to look at yet, but this is the fledgling wiki for my writer’s group : WUTA. I’m looking forward to contributing content to it.
• Last but not least, some online fiction I think is worth reading, but I probably won’t be getting around to reviewing in depth. Merrie Haskell’s flash piece “Star and Galaxy” is up at Between Kisses (yes, I know it’s not a particularly good layout, just search on Merrie). Another good read is “Cloud Dragon Skies“, by N.K. Jemisin, a Viable Paradise graduate. (see? That could be me one day!)

Phew! Down to six tabs of stuff I really haven’t read yet. Not bad! Thanks for the good links to the usual suspects (you know who you are).

iTunes says I was listening to Procreation Chick from the album Blueshift by Splashdown when I posted this. I have it rated 4 stars.

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Holy cow, did an entire week go by without me posting? I’m living the life of the perpetually behind, I guess. Have some links! Pass them around, enjoy them.

The new Mirrormask trailer is out. According to Neil Gaiman’s blog, Sony is going to judge how widely to release the film at least in part by the number of hits on the trailer. So please, as a personal favor to me, go view the trailer. Often. Thanks!

An interview with Jon Scieszka (of The Stinky Cheeseman and Other Fairly Stupid Tales fame) is available at Bookslut. It’s about his new book aimed at boys, and his effort to promote reading to boys. Also there, you can find an interesting gender in spec fic conversation with Lois McMaster Bujold (one of my writing heroes, as I’ve perhaps mentioned once or twice before).

As you know, I spend a lot of my time listening to public radio. There are a number of reasons why I love it, but one of the most basic is that it’s one of the few remaining media news outlets where I can get foreign news. Sure, I can go to foreign papers online and get news that way, but (at the risk of sounding nationalistic and self-centered) I like my foreign news with an American slant, focusing on how it affects my nation. I know I’m in the minority among my countrymen, holding an interest in global news, because public radio is one of the last places I can still get any kind of foreign coverage. Everywhere else the market rules, the mass appeal to the lowest common denominator has taken over, and the people have steadfastly voted against knowing about what goes on outside our borders. In that vein, I also appreciate that NPR rarely covers celebrity events, which I don’t consider news at all, and usually avoids obsessive focus on stories of the week like the Petersen case or that woman who ran away from her own wedding. I relish public radio because it almost never tells me things I didn’t need to know. Many people say NPR is liberal, and many think it is conservative and almost everyone thinks it has biases in reporting. All of this may be true. However, even though the news may slant towards one end or another of the political spectrum, it’s honestly largely non-partisan. It can’t truthfully be said to be a mouthpiece for either of the two major parties. As an outcast of the major parties, I like that about it. However, this may soon change, and I think that would be terrible, and if you do too, I urge you to take action.

Now that I’m reading several blogs from people publishing in the genre of speculative fiction, I’m slowly growing aware of certain tiffs and to-dos, of the type that all smallish communities have. The latest knockdown appears to be that a few renegade authors started an anonymous blog to review other authors because – unless I misunderstand the intent – they don’t like the sorts of things being nominated for the major awards. Lots and lots of differing reactions to that. I’m not really a member of the community, so it feels really weird to be witnessing the accusations and counter-accusations in the blogosphere. It has nothing at all to do with me. However, I am a little intimidated about being embroiled in any of this sort of thing down the road (although thinking about it all seems stupidly premature), and hope that I can keep my head well enough to remain aloof. Not that I ever do, which is why I’m starting on my hope early. I must say I was – slightly – stung by the guy that said writers have no business reviewing things. Is that true? Do I need to stop reviewing things I read by live authors as soon as I get my first submission accepted? I guess we’ll see. Meanwhile, that’s just anxiety I’m displacing from the real worry which is the soon to be shredding of my story “Hindsight” which goes up at Critters this week. It needs shredding. I’ll be glad of it. The part of me that’s not screaming in pain from the paper cuts will be glad of it anyways.

Last two : some of the most beautiful kinetic art I’ve seen. Astonishingly, it’s created by a robot sculptor. I promised someone (perhaps tux?) the link to a page of starmaps for science fiction movies and books.

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Hmmmm, for some reason this article isn’t titled “Summers eats crow”. Ah well, at least there’s money going in a direction it probably needs to be going in.

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Was a time when I’d be linking Neil Gaiman’s fascinating blog every other week. I got so self-conscious about constantly linking that I once declared I’d just make my website a redirect to his. He’s writing less frequently, I think, and I find less that I want to quote or link to these days (though I’m still a faithful reader). But slacktivist is knocking my socks off, blowing me away, ruling my world and whatever other expression you care to add that colors me suitably impressed.

Last week he wrote an incisive post about the false persecution complex some American Christians currently indulge in. I’d have linked it sooner, but I’m still sort of digesting it, and haven’t yet formulated any kind of response past resounding agreement.

Today he did it again, with his timely, cogent post about that pastor down in North Carolina who apparently confused his Baptist church with a Roman Catholic parish and tried excommunicating members of his congregation. The ludicrousness of this whole maneuver is probably not clear to people who don’t know a lot about Baptist doctrine and theology, but slacktivist does an excellent job of explaining the jaw dropping cognitive dissonance required by the perpetrators of this nasty attempt at exclusion with a concise FAQ as part of his post. I quote the most relevant bits :

“Q: You keep talking about this “soul liberty” as the essence of what it means to be a Baptist. But isn’t the essence of the Baptist tradition, you know, baptism?
A: What sets Baptists apart is not that they are baptized — all Christians practice baptism in one form or another. Nor is it the form of baptism (we prefer old-school, take-me-to-the-river-style immersion, but it’s not an article of faith). The distinct thing is that Baptists choose baptism, and thus are only baptized when they’re old enough to make that choice on their own. The significance of this is that it means that membership in the church is a matter of individual choice — soul liberty again. This also has political significance as an expression of individual freedom and the separation of church and state. This political aspect was a rather big deal a few centuries back. The separation of church and state is the one and only contribution Baptists have made to Christian political thought — but it’s a pretty good contribution.
Q: If “soul liberty” is the essence of what it means to be Baptist, then how do you explain the Southern Baptist Convention?
A: The Southern Baptist Convention is none of the above. For the past 20 years or so it has been evolving from a convention into a denomination. They have, in function if not in name, bishops and archbishops. They have inquisitors. Eventually, and sooner rather than later, they will have their own pope. They regard the separation of church and state as a “myth.” They don’t allow disagreement. They strictly enforce adherence to creed-ish “statements of faith.” In short, they’re about as Baptist as Cotton Mather.” *

Amen! Sing it, brother.

* Information on Cotton Mather can be acquired here and here.

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I just discovered that NPR has about a zillion RSS feeds available. Coooooooool.

In other cool news, I found the Online Parallel Bible via Elizabeth Bear (see a vast array of versions of the Great Commission, for example). Haven’t yet figured out how to read things in context and seeing only one verse at a time is frustrating but it’s still nifty to see all those versions all lined up like that.

As everyone under the sun has already mentioned, the Serenity trailer is out. It’s beautiful and a little scary. Beautiful because I love this world and this story and am so ready to be taken back into it, scary because the trailer was all about River, one of my least favorite characters. It totally chintzed on Zoe (probably my favorite character) and didn’t even show Book and Kaylee. I know that it’s just a trailer, but still, it makes me antsy. I don’t want to see Kung Fu River, I want to see the ship and Mal and the crew and…c’mon Joss, I’m really invested, please make it good.

Serenity is one of three movies that I’m seriously looking forward to this year, the other two are Mirrormask (also in September, yay!) and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (December release!). I’m going to see Star Wars on opening day, I’ve already got tickets, but I’m not excited at all about that. Stars in my eyes for Serenity, though. That will put me at six movies for the year (I’ve already seen House of Flying Daggers and The Incredibles). I think I saw seven or eight last year. In general, movies hold a lot less interest for me than they did in the past. My interest wanes steadily every year. On the other hand, though I see far fewer movies overall, I fully enjoy all of them, so I guess I’m better at picking what I want to see and passing on things that aren’t as good. I couldn’t even summon eagerness to go see Kung Fu Hustle, though I bet I would have enjoyed it. I sort of wanted to see Bride and Prejudice, but on the week that I could have gone I opted to do something else instead.

This morning I heard on NPR that there’s been a for real, true, verified sighting of an ivory billed woodpecker. This is like the holy grail of american bird species. It put the tiniest ray of sunshine in my day. It’s not because it somehow means we’re not decimating the planet with pointless consumer consumption, overpopulation and greed. It’s quite obvious that we are. But that one gorgeous native bird we thought wiped from the earth is still with us, at least today. It gives me hope. Our situation is dire, yes, but perhaps not irredeemable.

Research for YWGYSL has led me to this nifty little site showing a potential first Mars base.

My husband tells me I failed to mention here that I found my yoga mat. It was at the yoga center where I practice on Tuesdays, behind a curtain which serves as the lost and found. I had looked around for it on my own, but it wasn’t anywhere obvious or accessible. However when I asked my teacher about it she showed me where lost mats rest. I’m so happy to have it back that I washed it, according to my yoga teacher’s instructions, which are amazingly easy : put in washing machine on gentle cycle with exactly one drop of dish detergent. And one of these days, I keep thinking I might write a post about yoga.

I joined stlbloggers (and stuff like this is yet another reason why I love living in St. Louis), so if you’ve popped in from over there, welcome! Also welcome if you got here from my excessive peddling of this url at my writer’s group. I’ll have to quit saying nasty things about you guys from now on, I suppose.

Since this is a post of links, the following is a shopping list made easy, for my husband. The rest of you can stop here. He’ll need this handy linkified list for May 8, which is Mother’s Day. I could really use some yoga stuff, like a yoga ball, a yoga blanket or an eye pillow. For pure pampering luxury, guaranteed to put me in a good disposition, try some bath bombs, some of my tried and true magie noire, or if you think I should expand my scent repertoire, try a few exciting and intriguing samples from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (though this would not arrive on time, so you might want a backup gift to accompany this, and so you’re not overwhelmed, here’s a few suggestions). If you wish to cater to my undying love for chocolate, please remember Salvato’s Cioccolato. If that fails, try some headphones, Elizabeth Bear’s Hammered, or any of the gabillion things on my amazon wishlist. I’ve set you up for success and I look forward to your flying colors.

Tomorrow a book review. Maybe.

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This appeals to my grammar geek funnybone. Alien loves Predator isn’t always good so I fail to check it regularly, but occasionally it makes me guffaw, which is more than I can say for 95% of the webcomics people tell me to read.

I’ve been offline a couple of days, traveling, but I’m back. Happy Easter to all of you, and a real entry (if you consider the book reviews to be real entries, anyway) is coming up soon. Enjoy the silence while you can.

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