Writing
Since one of my major projects for the year was writing, I want to cover that first. And it's exciting, because I finally got to put my big girl writer pants on this summer! I'm now officially an associate member of the SFWA, which was a giant personal accomplishment for me, to go with getting my first story published at a pro rate.
Written This Year
Novels: I started work on two novels and am still having a hard time figuring out which to work on first. Which is fine, since I haven't had a lot of time or attention span for working on something long anyway. I also got about a third of the way in to a second draft of one of my old NaNos, but let it fall by the wayside in favor of Throne of Nightmares
This year I also completed three separate drafts of Throne of Nightmares, which Isaac and Sin were good enough to critique. I also have started sending out queries for Throne of Nightmares, which is exciting and terrifying at the same time. We'll see if I have any luck there...
Shorter stuff:
Written total: 8 short stories, 1 novelette, 1 novella
Finalized: 5 short stories, 1 novelette
Consigned to the Trunk of Awfulness, never to emerge again: 1 short story
Publishing
Queries Sent: 48
Rejections Received: 38
Most rejections received: Transportation at 14
Published this year: The Book of Autumn in Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue #49.
Slated for next year: Transportation in Anotherealm in September, The Falling Star in the New Fairytales Anthology by Aurora Wolf which should be coming out in early 2011.
So I feel that generally, I did a good job with writing this year! I'm hoping to do as well next year, though I think my productivity will be lower since I won't have half a year off of school this time around.
Blogging
This, I didn't do so well at. Total, I did 165 entries this year, which is okay I guess... averages about one every three days or so. But I was trying for every other day. Up until about September I did all right (we shall not speak of April... my excuse is wedding prep!) but after that my productivity just tanked. I honestly don't think next year will be much better thanks to that grad school thing. In the grand scheme of things, if I have to choose between writing a blog post and writing on a story, the story is bound to win.
Everything Else!
2010 was a massive, crazy year for me. And mostly filled with good instead of bad, so I can't complain at all.
The Good
1. I got married! (I have many photos, by the way...) That was exciting, and involved some wonderful cake and a lot of British people wandering around in Colorado and feeling faintly bemused. Married life has, honestly, not been much different from unmarried life considering Mike and I had been living together for five years before the wedding. But it was still an incredibly important milestone in our relationship and I couldn't be happier.
2. I started grad school! I've still got my doubts, worries, and uncertainties, but I survived my first semester, and I think I survived it fairly well. Of one of my classes, the less said of it the better, but the other - sedimentary petrology - I did really well in. I even got the highest score in the class on my sandstone practical, as far as I can tell. I haven't started my research yet, but I read two articles a week and am slowly coming up to speed on the Bighorn Basin.
3. I survived to my 30th birthday! And then I got very drunk.
4. I've managed to get myself back into good enough shape to start kung fu back up. I'm incredibly excited about that. I've learned the entirety of the sze sze chuen suong ta now, and I've gotten deep into ching men chuen. I feel like that's extremely good for only three months back.
5. I got an Exxon-Mobil research grant, so I'll be able to spend a month or so up in the Bighorn Basin next summer. That'll hopefully give me a good start to my research. Once I figure out what my topic is.
6. Got my first short story published at a professional rate! Yes, I know that I already mentioned this, but it's so exciting I think it's worth mentioning again.
7. I rescued a cat and helped find her a new home. I got to cat sit for her at the beginning of December, and she's thriving. Crazy, but thriving.
8. I got to go to TAM for the third year in a row and hang out with all of my friends - and got hugged by DJ Grothe (omg Squee). I also was able to go to MileHi Con for the first time in years, even if only for a day. I was very excited about that and had a blast. And, of course, capped that day with getting to go to a Not-Quite-a-W00tstock.
9. Made it back to the UK for Christmas this year, after skipping last year so we could save up for the wedding. It was really nice to get to see everyone, and have our (mostly) annual walk along the beach in Brighton.
The Bad
1. The furnace springs immediately to mind, since it also only just happened. While it's only a thing, and it didn't kill or harm anyone, the harm that it's done to our bank account still has me reeling. I also realized that if it had gone up before we headed to the UK, we wouldn't have made it this year. So a thing falling apart in and of itself isn't that big of a deal, it's the stress that it puts our household under that makes it bad.
2. In the same vein, getting the news that the car is going to fall apart soon and really isn't worth repairing was rough. On the good side, it's still running, even if it sounds so awful you feel like you should have a bag over your head when you drive it somewhere. But we know the day is coming, and now our money that was reserved for the car is gone, thanks to the furnace.
3. The class that shall not be named in grad school made the last three weeks of the semester a living hell during which I didn't even get to see my husband for more than a few hours a week. This is probably for the best, since if I had seen him I likely would have started screaming at him for no good reason, just because of the stress.
4. Being completely unable to find an internship for next summer. This was a major blow to my self-esteem, particularly since everyone assured me I had a rock-solid resume. Maybe I just suck that much at the interview part of the process. Of course, this also adds to the financial distress, since it means I won't be earning nearly as much in the summer of 2011 as I should. But what can you do... we'll survive.
So... twice as much good as bad. That's always an excellent sign! Hopefully 2011 will be even better. A little less woe in the finance department would be nice.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
The Mid-vacation Post
So far, it's been a nice visit to the UK, which is really no surprise to anyone. Christmas and Boxing Day were big family get togethers, which I enjoyed and only got a little drunk for. My jet lag problem is still present this year, though I think not nearly as obnoxious as it's been in years past. I've had to take naps on a couple of days, and have had a little bit of insomnia, but not to the point that I've been up at 3 in the morning and completely unable to sleep like I have been in other years.
The weather in the UK has been just fine as far as I'm concerned. There's been a lot of do about the temperature being below zero C, but I went for an hour and a half walk in it on Christmas morning while everyone else was at mass, and it was perfectly fine other than my ears getting cold since I forgot my hat back in the US. I think the bigger problem is just that the cold temperatures means the ice doesn't melt, and I guess this part of the UK doesn't know the wonders of car-destroying mag chloride the way we do in Colorado. I did have to avoid some terrifying icy sidewalks during my walk, to be sure. But other than that, it hasn's been any kind of Snowmageddon. Yesterday when we got back from London (around 2200) it was actually raining fairly heavily, so that's hopefully a sign that it's getting a bit warmer and the ice will go away. We ended up taking a cab from the train station at Wokingham, since the line west of it was shut down and the rain was nasty enough we didn't feel like waiting for the bus, or walking home once we caught said bus.
Speaking of Snowmageddon, we landed all right, but Heathrow has still apparently not gotten its shit together. Once we landed we had to park somewhere in the back of beyond for a good twenty minutes because there was nowhere for our plane to go, and then moved to a slightly less far away parking spot so that we could take buses to the terminal. Immigration was fast, but then we spent a stupid amount of time waiting for our luggage. I was also insanely thirsty the entire time, and there was nowhere to get anything to drink, though I could have apparently bought a SIM card from a vending machine if I wanted to. Maybe you can suck on those like mints. Anyway, our flight landed not long after 0900, and we didn't get our luggage collected and get out of there until after 1100. There was also a frightening graveyard of lost and unclaimed baggage taking up one entire section of the claim, which did not inspire confidence.
It's also worth noting that I didn't get to sit next to Mike for most of the flight, since the television for his seat was broken, and they moved him to the only empty seat on the airplane so he had something to do. I mostly used the flight to catch up on movies... I watched Toy Story 3, which I thought was very good and don't feel at all ashamed about sniffling through. I also watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The funny thing is, when Mike and I met up after landing and were talking about the movies we watched, we could each name two of them and it took us forever to remember which one the third was. For both of us, it was that movie. Which I think pretty much says all you need to know about how utterly unremarkable it was as a film.
Yesterday Mike and I went in to London. I paid a quick visit to Harrod's - the store was insanely busy, but everyone apparently just desperately wanted to buy perfume. After we got out of that section of the store it was just fine, and we were in and out in less than twenty minutes. After that we met up with Sam and Rick, and spent the rest of the day taking up space in a pub and playing board games. The game we started off with was Ticket to Ride, which was a lot of fun and I'm going to have to pick up a copy once my checking account stops crying about the furnace.
Oh yes, translation for any UK readers: by furnace, I mean boiler. Even though it has nothing to do with boiling water. I do not in fact own any sort of smelting equipment. This announcement brought to you by Mike's parents, who found that particular vocabulary mix-up very entertaining.
The Doctor Who Christmas special was pretty good, I think. I wouldn't place it higher than the first Christmas Invasion, or even the Runaway Bride, but I definitely liked it better than the silly episode with the space Titanic, or the one from two years ago that was kind of about the cyberman and all it really had going was a lovely steampunkish Victorian setting. I'd say this one was as close at Doctor Who's really gotten to just out and out producing a fable, and while it had the normal plot holes that you could drive a truck through, it at least had a lot more life in it than the last couple of episodes I've seen. (Which were, for the record, Victory of the Daleks and The Adventures of Spitty Timothy Dalton as the Most Underused Rassilon Imageinable [not its actual title].) Really, considering that I feel like the entire episode was based around someone saying, "I've got this awesome mental image of a shark flying through the air, pulling a rickshaw... let's combine that with Christmas!" the end result was surprisingly coherent and fun. It's also convinced me to give Matt Smith another chance as the Doctor... considering my first exposure to him was the underwhelmingly written turd of a Dalek episode from his season, he really needed something to recommend him.
I think a some point I may have to devote a post to how I feel about the way the Daleks have been used in recent episodes. It won't be a very nice post.
Today Mike and I are headed off to Brighton to see Sam and Dan and Rhi and hopefully Captain Stu, so that's exciting. It's hard to believe we're already at the midpoint of our trip, though this one's a few days shorter than trips we've taken in the past, since Mike ran out of vacation. Something to do with a wedding.
Also, Anotherealm has now published its 2011 lineup. Transportation will be the September offering - I'm really excited about that!
The weather in the UK has been just fine as far as I'm concerned. There's been a lot of do about the temperature being below zero C, but I went for an hour and a half walk in it on Christmas morning while everyone else was at mass, and it was perfectly fine other than my ears getting cold since I forgot my hat back in the US. I think the bigger problem is just that the cold temperatures means the ice doesn't melt, and I guess this part of the UK doesn't know the wonders of car-destroying mag chloride the way we do in Colorado. I did have to avoid some terrifying icy sidewalks during my walk, to be sure. But other than that, it hasn's been any kind of Snowmageddon. Yesterday when we got back from London (around 2200) it was actually raining fairly heavily, so that's hopefully a sign that it's getting a bit warmer and the ice will go away. We ended up taking a cab from the train station at Wokingham, since the line west of it was shut down and the rain was nasty enough we didn't feel like waiting for the bus, or walking home once we caught said bus.
Speaking of Snowmageddon, we landed all right, but Heathrow has still apparently not gotten its shit together. Once we landed we had to park somewhere in the back of beyond for a good twenty minutes because there was nowhere for our plane to go, and then moved to a slightly less far away parking spot so that we could take buses to the terminal. Immigration was fast, but then we spent a stupid amount of time waiting for our luggage. I was also insanely thirsty the entire time, and there was nowhere to get anything to drink, though I could have apparently bought a SIM card from a vending machine if I wanted to. Maybe you can suck on those like mints. Anyway, our flight landed not long after 0900, and we didn't get our luggage collected and get out of there until after 1100. There was also a frightening graveyard of lost and unclaimed baggage taking up one entire section of the claim, which did not inspire confidence.
It's also worth noting that I didn't get to sit next to Mike for most of the flight, since the television for his seat was broken, and they moved him to the only empty seat on the airplane so he had something to do. I mostly used the flight to catch up on movies... I watched Toy Story 3, which I thought was very good and don't feel at all ashamed about sniffling through. I also watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The funny thing is, when Mike and I met up after landing and were talking about the movies we watched, we could each name two of them and it took us forever to remember which one the third was. For both of us, it was that movie. Which I think pretty much says all you need to know about how utterly unremarkable it was as a film.
Yesterday Mike and I went in to London. I paid a quick visit to Harrod's - the store was insanely busy, but everyone apparently just desperately wanted to buy perfume. After we got out of that section of the store it was just fine, and we were in and out in less than twenty minutes. After that we met up with Sam and Rick, and spent the rest of the day taking up space in a pub and playing board games. The game we started off with was Ticket to Ride, which was a lot of fun and I'm going to have to pick up a copy once my checking account stops crying about the furnace.
Oh yes, translation for any UK readers: by furnace, I mean boiler. Even though it has nothing to do with boiling water. I do not in fact own any sort of smelting equipment. This announcement brought to you by Mike's parents, who found that particular vocabulary mix-up very entertaining.
The Doctor Who Christmas special was pretty good, I think. I wouldn't place it higher than the first Christmas Invasion, or even the Runaway Bride, but I definitely liked it better than the silly episode with the space Titanic, or the one from two years ago that was kind of about the cyberman and all it really had going was a lovely steampunkish Victorian setting. I'd say this one was as close at Doctor Who's really gotten to just out and out producing a fable, and while it had the normal plot holes that you could drive a truck through, it at least had a lot more life in it than the last couple of episodes I've seen. (Which were, for the record, Victory of the Daleks and The Adventures of Spitty Timothy Dalton as the Most Underused Rassilon Imageinable [not its actual title].) Really, considering that I feel like the entire episode was based around someone saying, "I've got this awesome mental image of a shark flying through the air, pulling a rickshaw... let's combine that with Christmas!" the end result was surprisingly coherent and fun. It's also convinced me to give Matt Smith another chance as the Doctor... considering my first exposure to him was the underwhelmingly written turd of a Dalek episode from his season, he really needed something to recommend him.
I think a some point I may have to devote a post to how I feel about the way the Daleks have been used in recent episodes. It won't be a very nice post.
Today Mike and I are headed off to Brighton to see Sam and Dan and Rhi and hopefully Captain Stu, so that's exciting. It's hard to believe we're already at the midpoint of our trip, though this one's a few days shorter than trips we've taken in the past, since Mike ran out of vacation. Something to do with a wedding.
Also, Anotherealm has now published its 2011 lineup. Transportation will be the September offering - I'm really excited about that!
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Furnace Installation
There are scary noises emanating from my downstairs closet, which must mean that a nice man named Wayne is installing my new furnace. I hope.
As you can see, Loki is hard at work helping.
As you can see, Loki is hard at work helping.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
For Christmas, I Got You an Empty Bank Account
I woke up this morning and the house was cold. Cold, and silent except for the sound of the cats and the hum of my laser printer in power save mode.
I'm sure everyone who has ever owned a home feels an empathetic sick, sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach just about now.
I called the HVAC people. They sent out a nice young man named Chris. His nametag helpfully informed me that he'd been both tested for drugs and undergone a background check. (They also e-mailed me his picture in advance, I suppose so a person posing as an HVAC technician couldn't get into my house and monkey around with my broken furnace.)
Chris, with Loki close by, ready to assist him at a moment's notice, fixed the furnace-not-turning-on problem very quickly. Unfortunately, he also found another problem.
"Look in this hole. See where I'm shining my light?"
"Yes?"
"See how this little tiny ring is missing from that aperture?"
"Yes?"
"That means your furnace is trying to kill you."
Okay, that last thing is not actually what he said. Rather, he told me that it was the symptom of a badly cracked heat exchange, and that if it was that badly cracked, my furnace might start filling my house with carbon monoxide at a moment's notice. So effectively, that last statement is what I heard.
That is why, the day before leaving the country for Christmas, we now only have about $500 in our savings account. I guess the good news is that we were saving all of that money for a new car next year, so we had it on hand to pay for a new furnace. The bad news is that we no longer have that money for acquiring a new car. But hopefully the faithful old steed will keep limping along while we try to rebuild our savings.
Chris brought in an electrician, who looked around and within five minutes found over $6,000 worth of reasons my house is not up to building code. Thankfully most of that can be ignored until I've managed to sell a kidney on the black market, several years from now. The stuff actually related to the furnace he took care of today, and the price seemed very reasonable in comparison to the number he quoted for, say, replacing my electrical panel, which comes direct from the 70s and is chock full of aluminum wiring. As far as I can tell, the sole purpose of aluminum wiring is to set houses on fire.
The new furnace will be installed tomorrow morning. Chris the Technician put a brand new carbon monoxide detector in that will warn us if the furnace tries to kills us, so that we can use tonight to prevent ourselves from freezing to death.
I guess I'm glad that this happened now, after I did all my Christmas shopping. It means all of our friends are getting nicer presents than a candy bar, or a used bookmark that Tengu has chewed up. I've now managed to take in enough alcohol that I no longer feel like screaming hysterically.
Santa, if this is how it's going to be this year, I just can't wait to see what surprises you have in store for me at the airport.
I'm sure everyone who has ever owned a home feels an empathetic sick, sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach just about now.
I called the HVAC people. They sent out a nice young man named Chris. His nametag helpfully informed me that he'd been both tested for drugs and undergone a background check. (They also e-mailed me his picture in advance, I suppose so a person posing as an HVAC technician couldn't get into my house and monkey around with my broken furnace.)
Chris, with Loki close by, ready to assist him at a moment's notice, fixed the furnace-not-turning-on problem very quickly. Unfortunately, he also found another problem.
"Look in this hole. See where I'm shining my light?"
"Yes?"
"See how this little tiny ring is missing from that aperture?"
"Yes?"
"That means your furnace is trying to kill you."
Okay, that last thing is not actually what he said. Rather, he told me that it was the symptom of a badly cracked heat exchange, and that if it was that badly cracked, my furnace might start filling my house with carbon monoxide at a moment's notice. So effectively, that last statement is what I heard.
That is why, the day before leaving the country for Christmas, we now only have about $500 in our savings account. I guess the good news is that we were saving all of that money for a new car next year, so we had it on hand to pay for a new furnace. The bad news is that we no longer have that money for acquiring a new car. But hopefully the faithful old steed will keep limping along while we try to rebuild our savings.
Chris brought in an electrician, who looked around and within five minutes found over $6,000 worth of reasons my house is not up to building code. Thankfully most of that can be ignored until I've managed to sell a kidney on the black market, several years from now. The stuff actually related to the furnace he took care of today, and the price seemed very reasonable in comparison to the number he quoted for, say, replacing my electrical panel, which comes direct from the 70s and is chock full of aluminum wiring. As far as I can tell, the sole purpose of aluminum wiring is to set houses on fire.
The new furnace will be installed tomorrow morning. Chris the Technician put a brand new carbon monoxide detector in that will warn us if the furnace tries to kills us, so that we can use tonight to prevent ourselves from freezing to death.
I guess I'm glad that this happened now, after I did all my Christmas shopping. It means all of our friends are getting nicer presents than a candy bar, or a used bookmark that Tengu has chewed up. I've now managed to take in enough alcohol that I no longer feel like screaming hysterically.
Santa, if this is how it's going to be this year, I just can't wait to see what surprises you have in store for me at the airport.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Emerging From Under My Rock
So, where have I been since Thanksgiving? The easy yet melodramatic answer is: in a black pit of horrible despair. Really, I just mean that I was working on an intensely awful end of semester group project, which I was having to spend over twenty hours a week on. With the other end of semester goings-on, it meant that I spent several weeks where I didn't get to see my friends and barely got to see my husband while he was awake. There was other awful drama connected with it that I'd rather not go in to now; let's just say that I'm glad I survived it without ending up in jail.
Thankfully, that's all done with now! WOO! I survived my first semester of grad school. I have been assured by many friends that grad school is normally not quite this horrible, so I'm going to try not to worry too much about next semester.
The last thing I did in the semester was actually write a paper for sedimentary petrology. That was actually a lot of phone, particularly when compared to the soul-destroying awfulness of the group project. I enjoyed spending time with my thin sections, and it also means I've got a new round of photo micrographs to share! The ooid grainstone micrographs are cooler looking than the lithic arenite, though I think the diagenetic history of the lithic arenite is more interesting. But that's because sandstones tend to be a diagenetic nightmare.
Lithic arenite photo micrographs
Ooid grainstone photo micrographs
Now that school's done with until January, I'm hoping I can manage to get some writing done. I'll also be in England from December 23-January 1, since Mike and I are going to see his family. There's a lot to look forward to this vacation.
Other things:
I love my Senator. Mark Udall, I mean. Bennet, well, the best I can still say for him is that at least he isn't Ken Buck.
Tron: Legacy was a fun movie. Don't bother seeing it in 3D, in case you're one of those people that actually likes the 3D thing. It's great in 2D, and I have it on good authority that the 3D really doesn't add anything. If you want something deep, it's not the movie for you, but if you want lightcycles and Jeff Bridges being stoner!God, it's a great time.
My parents gave me a Galaxy S as my early (and only) Christmas present. I am deeply in love with my amazing phone, and am greatly enjoying the fact that I no longer have the most pathetic phone out of all of my friends.
There is now a Jack'n'Grill by my house. We went there yesterday and the food is fantastic. It's also huge. We didn't realize until we got there that it was the home of the seven pound breakfast burrito once featured on Man vs. Food. The rest of the food is in keeping with that. You can't get a burger that's smaller than 10 ounces. But it's 10 ounces of pure awesome, that's for sure.
Yesterday Kat came up to hang out. During the afternoon we worked on some writerly stuff. The end result is that I sent out five query letters to agents. I am both excited and terrified about this. I hope the rejection callouses that I've built up over the last nine months with my short stories will help me in this process.
Thankfully, that's all done with now! WOO! I survived my first semester of grad school. I have been assured by many friends that grad school is normally not quite this horrible, so I'm going to try not to worry too much about next semester.
The last thing I did in the semester was actually write a paper for sedimentary petrology. That was actually a lot of phone, particularly when compared to the soul-destroying awfulness of the group project. I enjoyed spending time with my thin sections, and it also means I've got a new round of photo micrographs to share! The ooid grainstone micrographs are cooler looking than the lithic arenite, though I think the diagenetic history of the lithic arenite is more interesting. But that's because sandstones tend to be a diagenetic nightmare.
Lithic arenite photo micrographs
Ooid grainstone photo micrographs
Now that school's done with until January, I'm hoping I can manage to get some writing done. I'll also be in England from December 23-January 1, since Mike and I are going to see his family. There's a lot to look forward to this vacation.
Other things:
I love my Senator. Mark Udall, I mean. Bennet, well, the best I can still say for him is that at least he isn't Ken Buck.
Tron: Legacy was a fun movie. Don't bother seeing it in 3D, in case you're one of those people that actually likes the 3D thing. It's great in 2D, and I have it on good authority that the 3D really doesn't add anything. If you want something deep, it's not the movie for you, but if you want lightcycles and Jeff Bridges being stoner!God, it's a great time.
My parents gave me a Galaxy S as my early (and only) Christmas present. I am deeply in love with my amazing phone, and am greatly enjoying the fact that I no longer have the most pathetic phone out of all of my friends.
There is now a Jack'n'Grill by my house. We went there yesterday and the food is fantastic. It's also huge. We didn't realize until we got there that it was the home of the seven pound breakfast burrito once featured on Man vs. Food. The rest of the food is in keeping with that. You can't get a burger that's smaller than 10 ounces. But it's 10 ounces of pure awesome, that's for sure.
Yesterday Kat came up to hang out. During the afternoon we worked on some writerly stuff. The end result is that I sent out five query letters to agents. I am both excited and terrified about this. I hope the rejection callouses that I've built up over the last nine months with my short stories will help me in this process.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
My Next Bumper Sticker
Overheard at kung fu.
Shifu: "You're assisting a face plant here. Some people plant roses. We plant faces."
Shifu: "You're assisting a face plant here. Some people plant roses. We plant faces."
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Senator Bennet's Reply to My Concern About the TSA
Dear Rachael:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security procedures for airline passengers. I appreciate hearing from you.
I am committed to ensuring that TSA has the resources it needs to keep our airports secure. We face serious threats to our airport security and must ensure law enforcement has the tools it needs to do its job. With that said, we must not unnecessarily surrender our individual right to privacy.
As you may know, TSA was established under the Bush Administration as part of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act in 2001 as a response to the September 11th terrorist attacks. TSA is responsible for screening all passengers and all checked and carry-on baggage in all major U.S. airports in order to prevent another potential terrorist attack.
As part of TSA's overall approach to improving the detection of explosives and non-metallic weapons at passenger screening checkpoints, it is currently exploring the use of whole-body imaging technologies for detecting concealed items carried by passengers. Whole-body imaging scanning devices offer an integrated approach to passenger screening insofar as these technologies can reveal concealed items carried on a person, including traditional metallic weapons, non-metallic weapons and explosive devices. TSA reports that all images captured by the scanners are deleted from any of its facilities or records immediately upon viewing and cannot be stored, exported, printed, or transmitted. Also, the officer assisting the passenger cannot view the image, and the officer viewing the image never sees the passenger.
In addition, TSA offers an alternative for passengers who prefer not to use the full-body scanners. The alternative procedure, a search by a TSA security officer of the same gender as the passenger, has caused public angst as some feel it is overly intrusive. According to TSA, these procedures have only been used on three percent of passengers. My office has been briefed by TSA on these procedures and we will continue to closely monitor how the agency responds to potential threats with a special eye towards the privacy rights of passengers.
It is my view that a cornerstone of training TSA officers must be comprehensive sensitivity training. Americans entrust medical professionals and law enforcement officers because they are trained professionals. We should be able to reach that same level of trust with airport security officials too.
If you would like to pass on concerns to TSA regarding your experience, you may submit written complaints at the checkpoint, which are referred to the airport’s Customer Service Manager for appropriate follow-up. You may also contact the TSA Contact Center by e-mailing TSA-ContactCenter@dhs.gov or calling 1-866-289-9673.
To help aid the TSA in investigating any matter, you can file a complaint and include the airport, date and time of travel, and any other pertinent information. For those with privacy concerns about whole-body imaging: please see http://www.tsa.gov/approach/tech/ait/privacy.shtm, or health concerns: http://www.tsa.gov/approach/tech/ait/safety.shtm. For general information, please visit: http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/screening_experience.shtm.
I value the input of fellow Coloradans in considering the wide variety of important issues and legislative initiatives that come before the Senate. I hope you will continue to inform me of your thoughts and concerns.
For more information about my priorities as a U.S. Senator, I invite you to visit my website at http://bennet.senate.gov/. Again, thank you for contacting me.
Sincerely,
Michael Bennet
United States Senator
So basically, I'm getting: "The naked scanners are okay because the pictures are deleted and the person who gets to look at them is in another room anyway, and those patdowns you all are whining about are only 3% of travelers anyway. So it's no big deal. Suck it up."
Thanks, Senator Bennet. It reminds me that voting for you was really just voting against Ken Buck for being a total misogynist nut. Glad to know that assaultive patdowns as a form of punishment for opting out of the creepy scanners are okay when it's only a few people getting them. And that you think complete invasion and trauma can somehow be fixed by sensitivity training.
You know what? I'll trust the TSA employees like I trust other professionals when you start training them and paying them like professionals. And you also seem to be under the mistaken impression that no medical or law enforcement professional has ever abused the public trust and it's not something we should worry our pretty little heads about.
GRRRRR.
The Expendables
Toward the end of this movie, there's an odd scene that takes place in the passenger area of the Expendables' ass-kicking cargo plane of doom, where the token black guy (Terry Crews) shows off his weapons to one of his fellow mercenaries. His final weapon is an extremely shiny straight razor with a handle made of transparent, neon-yellow plastic. The sight of that weapon literally made me say, "What the fuck?"
This is pretty much a metaphor for the entire movie experience.
I really wanted to like this movie. I really did. It had the hallmarks of the ridiculous but fun action flick. Kind of like The Scorpion King, a movie that I like in a sort of shame-filled way.
There was a good amount of fake, spraying blood. There was a gun that, at the beginning of the movie, literally tore someone in half and left the legs comically standing alone for a moment while the torso splattered against a wall. There were a dizzying array of knives (most of them wielded by Jason Statham's character) which were apparently made with steel with such a strong anti-reality resonance that bone simply ceased to exist as soon as it contacted the blade.
But. But.
I don't ask for a lot of plot out of my action movies. But I do like what little plot there is to be, I don't know, coherent.
The Expendables feels less like a film and more like a series of loosely collected scenes that have been arranged randomly. And all of the dialog was drawn, half a line at a time, from a box. I think that some of the scenes were supposed to be character development. Instead, it normally amounted to two characters saying random things to each other for about three minutes, at which point the spraying blood and explosions would mercifully resume.
I wish I could give you a plot summary, but I really can't. The best I can manage is that Stallone and his group are mercenaries. Except one of them burns out and goes crazy and tries to kill Stallone in the middle of the movie, after miraculously transporting himself to and from the tiny Latin American island hell hole where the Evil General lives. There is a douchey guy in a suit, who I initially guessed must be an American politician; I was close, he was an ex-FBI agent gone evil. There was the crazy general, who spent most of his time oscillating randomly between spanish and nonsensical English. He is sort of the pawn of the douchey suit guy, who wants him to grow drugs, or something, except nothing is getting done because the general's soldiers keep kidnapping civilians and then not putting them to work in the plantations. There was the evil general's daughter, who was Stallone's love interest. There was Charisma Carpenter as Jason Statham's girlfriend, causing a strange little sideplot where Mr. Statham beats the ever-loving shit out of a bunch of jerks on a basketball court.
The movie culminates in an orgy of gunfire, stabbing, and explosions, where the douchey suit guy shoots the general and then tries to kidnap his daughter for no apparent reason, despite the fact that earlier in the movie he was all for just killing her and having done with it. And I can't even say the spraying bullets and blood were all that interesting, because on several occasions during the climactic action sequence the focus was jumping between three or four individual fight scenes with no logic or warning.
That's also how the two major car chase scenes go as well. They actually become boring because it's impossible to tell where the vehicles are relative to each other, and it's really just an unnecessary pause in the bloodletting anyway.
The movie is an exercise in wasted potential. Jet Li appears in the film, but spends most of his time getting his ass handed to him by much taller white guys. Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger appear in the movie for a combined total of five minutes and then, no doubt feeling the threat to their careers, never appear again. Mickey Rourke plays a tattoo artist who was presumably once a mercenary himself - he's quite good at throwing knives - but spends most of his time trying to develop a character that is wholly uninvolved in the plot (such as it is) and has about as much depth and charm as Sarah Palin anyway.
The movie doesn't so much end as drop in its tracks, exhausted by its own meaningless existence, with Statham making up a "poem" that had me trying to crawl between the couch cushions to escape it.
You will notice that at no point do I name any of the characters. This is because, over the course of the movie, I simply could not be bothered to learn them. The names, like the characters themselves, felt like an afterthought, a formality added to the mix to justify this as a movie rather than one hundred minutes of random people getting shot and stabbed and blown up.
Before it was over, I tried to convince myself that The Expendables was some sort of high-level satire of the action genre. What convinced me this couldn't be possible was a scene in the middle of the movie where the general's daughter is waterboarded by the douchey suit guy. That one scene in the midst of the ridiculous mess of a movie was disturbing and strong. And it also made me realize that, to a certain extent, the movie was meant seriously. Which somehow makes it worse.
We don't ask much of our action movies, but this one fails on all counts. You're better off watching nearly any other movie that any of these actors have been in. My personal recommendation would be Die Hard. Or, failing that, you'll still get better quality story and acting from - and it pains me to say this - The Scorpion King.
This is pretty much a metaphor for the entire movie experience.
I really wanted to like this movie. I really did. It had the hallmarks of the ridiculous but fun action flick. Kind of like The Scorpion King, a movie that I like in a sort of shame-filled way.
There was a good amount of fake, spraying blood. There was a gun that, at the beginning of the movie, literally tore someone in half and left the legs comically standing alone for a moment while the torso splattered against a wall. There were a dizzying array of knives (most of them wielded by Jason Statham's character) which were apparently made with steel with such a strong anti-reality resonance that bone simply ceased to exist as soon as it contacted the blade.
But. But.
I don't ask for a lot of plot out of my action movies. But I do like what little plot there is to be, I don't know, coherent.
The Expendables feels less like a film and more like a series of loosely collected scenes that have been arranged randomly. And all of the dialog was drawn, half a line at a time, from a box. I think that some of the scenes were supposed to be character development. Instead, it normally amounted to two characters saying random things to each other for about three minutes, at which point the spraying blood and explosions would mercifully resume.
I wish I could give you a plot summary, but I really can't. The best I can manage is that Stallone and his group are mercenaries. Except one of them burns out and goes crazy and tries to kill Stallone in the middle of the movie, after miraculously transporting himself to and from the tiny Latin American island hell hole where the Evil General lives. There is a douchey guy in a suit, who I initially guessed must be an American politician; I was close, he was an ex-FBI agent gone evil. There was the crazy general, who spent most of his time oscillating randomly between spanish and nonsensical English. He is sort of the pawn of the douchey suit guy, who wants him to grow drugs, or something, except nothing is getting done because the general's soldiers keep kidnapping civilians and then not putting them to work in the plantations. There was the evil general's daughter, who was Stallone's love interest. There was Charisma Carpenter as Jason Statham's girlfriend, causing a strange little sideplot where Mr. Statham beats the ever-loving shit out of a bunch of jerks on a basketball court.
The movie culminates in an orgy of gunfire, stabbing, and explosions, where the douchey suit guy shoots the general and then tries to kidnap his daughter for no apparent reason, despite the fact that earlier in the movie he was all for just killing her and having done with it. And I can't even say the spraying bullets and blood were all that interesting, because on several occasions during the climactic action sequence the focus was jumping between three or four individual fight scenes with no logic or warning.
That's also how the two major car chase scenes go as well. They actually become boring because it's impossible to tell where the vehicles are relative to each other, and it's really just an unnecessary pause in the bloodletting anyway.
The movie is an exercise in wasted potential. Jet Li appears in the film, but spends most of his time getting his ass handed to him by much taller white guys. Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger appear in the movie for a combined total of five minutes and then, no doubt feeling the threat to their careers, never appear again. Mickey Rourke plays a tattoo artist who was presumably once a mercenary himself - he's quite good at throwing knives - but spends most of his time trying to develop a character that is wholly uninvolved in the plot (such as it is) and has about as much depth and charm as Sarah Palin anyway.
The movie doesn't so much end as drop in its tracks, exhausted by its own meaningless existence, with Statham making up a "poem" that had me trying to crawl between the couch cushions to escape it.
You will notice that at no point do I name any of the characters. This is because, over the course of the movie, I simply could not be bothered to learn them. The names, like the characters themselves, felt like an afterthought, a formality added to the mix to justify this as a movie rather than one hundred minutes of random people getting shot and stabbed and blown up.
Before it was over, I tried to convince myself that The Expendables was some sort of high-level satire of the action genre. What convinced me this couldn't be possible was a scene in the middle of the movie where the general's daughter is waterboarded by the douchey suit guy. That one scene in the midst of the ridiculous mess of a movie was disturbing and strong. And it also made me realize that, to a certain extent, the movie was meant seriously. Which somehow makes it worse.
We don't ask much of our action movies, but this one fails on all counts. You're better off watching nearly any other movie that any of these actors have been in. My personal recommendation would be Die Hard. Or, failing that, you'll still get better quality story and acting from - and it pains me to say this - The Scorpion King.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Addendum to the TSA Post
Just a quick one, but I think this is very worth reading: TSA Enhanced Pat Downs: the Screener's Point of View
The basic point is, some TSA employees are incredibly unhappy with this situation as well. Which I'm not surprised about; I don't think most employees of the TSA are there because they get their jollies being jerks to travelers.
This doesn't mean that I'm changing my opinion about the porno scanners or assaulting patdowns. If anything, I am angrier. In effect, the TSA's rules have created a situation where both parties end up feeling violated, and have created a rapidly deteriorating atmosphere of hostility between screeners and travelers. How lovely. I'm sure that makes for some effective airport security.
And it's great for pilots too, apparently.
So who exactly is this supposed to be helping? Other than the backscatter scanner manufacturer. Can't forget about them.
The basic point is, some TSA employees are incredibly unhappy with this situation as well. Which I'm not surprised about; I don't think most employees of the TSA are there because they get their jollies being jerks to travelers.
This doesn't mean that I'm changing my opinion about the porno scanners or assaulting patdowns. If anything, I am angrier. In effect, the TSA's rules have created a situation where both parties end up feeling violated, and have created a rapidly deteriorating atmosphere of hostility between screeners and travelers. How lovely. I'm sure that makes for some effective airport security.
And it's great for pilots too, apparently.
So who exactly is this supposed to be helping? Other than the backscatter scanner manufacturer. Can't forget about them.
Adding Disqus
I'm not overly thrilled with how Blogger handles commenting (sadly, I think LJ does a much better job) so I'm giving Disqus a whirl. I've installed the widget now. So if it looks like all the comments on this blog have disappeared, it's not that I hate you and want to censor you (please, just pick one), or that Loki took over everything this morning and decided that you are all a giant distraction that's keeping me from paying enough attention to him. It's that I'm still in the process of trying to import them over to Disqus. Just so you know.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
TSA - "Total Sexual Assault"
The more I hear about the TSA porno scanners and their crotch-grabbing "enhanced pat downs," the more nervous I am about flying out to England in December. Because you know what? I am not okay with a wage slave in a booth looking at a ghostly image of me in my altogether. I am not willing to just trust them when they say that all the images are immediately deleted. I am also not okay with a TSA agent touching my breasts or my lady bits. No one but me, my husband, or my doctor gets access to those. And for the record, I am likewise not okay with a TSA agent touching my husband's junk. Period.
I got patted down once in Heathrow airport. It didn't bother me. The security agent also assiduously avoided my naughty bits. And contrary to popular belief, I did not in fact blow up our flight home that year. Imagine that.
Making us take off our shoes and throw away our water bottles was already pointless security theater, trying to thwart specific attacks that had already been thwarted. This is a step beyond security theater. For most of us, this is an exceptionally creepy, upsetting invasion of privacy. For those who are survivors of sexual assault, it's nothing short of inhumane.
I agree with Janiece. This is the point where we all tug our shirts straight and get some Captain in us. And by that, as she said, I mean Captain Picard:
I don't know what the environment of the DIA security checkpoint is going to be like in December. I don't know if they have the naked picture show installed there, or if they'll be insisting on the grope fest if you look at them funny. Maybe I'll get lucky and the giant, loud protest over this government-sanctioned assault will just get bigger and louder and it'll all be fixed by the time I'm flying. But I'm not counting on it. I'm already planning to be at the airport several hours earlier than normal, in case I feel it necessary to make a scene. So if I'm absent for Pat's amazing teeny sausages wrapped in bacon at Christmas this year, this little corner of the internet will know why.
I love Mike's family, and I love our friends in Brighton, and I want to see them. But the price for that should not be letting a stranger stick their hand in my crotch.
If you need a little levity to get around all the sexual assault, here's Next Animation's take on the issue. I don't recommend watching it while drinking anything.
I got patted down once in Heathrow airport. It didn't bother me. The security agent also assiduously avoided my naughty bits. And contrary to popular belief, I did not in fact blow up our flight home that year. Imagine that.
Making us take off our shoes and throw away our water bottles was already pointless security theater, trying to thwart specific attacks that had already been thwarted. This is a step beyond security theater. For most of us, this is an exceptionally creepy, upsetting invasion of privacy. For those who are survivors of sexual assault, it's nothing short of inhumane.
I agree with Janiece. This is the point where we all tug our shirts straight and get some Captain in us. And by that, as she said, I mean Captain Picard:
We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back...Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far and no further!
I don't know what the environment of the DIA security checkpoint is going to be like in December. I don't know if they have the naked picture show installed there, or if they'll be insisting on the grope fest if you look at them funny. Maybe I'll get lucky and the giant, loud protest over this government-sanctioned assault will just get bigger and louder and it'll all be fixed by the time I'm flying. But I'm not counting on it. I'm already planning to be at the airport several hours earlier than normal, in case I feel it necessary to make a scene. So if I'm absent for Pat's amazing teeny sausages wrapped in bacon at Christmas this year, this little corner of the internet will know why.
I love Mike's family, and I love our friends in Brighton, and I want to see them. But the price for that should not be letting a stranger stick their hand in my crotch.
If you need a little levity to get around all the sexual assault, here's Next Animation's take on the issue. I don't recommend watching it while drinking anything.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Coming Soon to an Internet Near You!
Exciting times! I've signed two contracts in the last week, so I'll have two short stories in print (of the real or digital variety) soon!
Transportation has found a home with Anotherealm. I'll know when it'll be appearing around Christmas, when they put up their new lineup.
The Falling Star will be appearing in Aurora Wolf's New Fairy Tales Anthology. I don't have an exact date on that either, though the publisher wants the anthology in print before Christmas. I'll post as soon as there's a firm date or when the anthology is available for purchase.
The long-suffering Isaac has finished his second go-through of Throne of Nightmares so my goal is to give it one last polish and start querying agents before the new year. Wish me luck!
Transportation has found a home with Anotherealm. I'll know when it'll be appearing around Christmas, when they put up their new lineup.
The Falling Star will be appearing in Aurora Wolf's New Fairy Tales Anthology. I don't have an exact date on that either, though the publisher wants the anthology in print before Christmas. I'll post as soon as there's a firm date or when the anthology is available for purchase.
The long-suffering Isaac has finished his second go-through of Throne of Nightmares so my goal is to give it one last polish and start querying agents before the new year. Wish me luck!
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Woo at CU: The Everything Has a Price Edition
No fun name for this post, since it's short and sweet. Stuart has the dirt over at his blog.
A friend of ours let us know that there's an article about the magical "because ions makes it sound sciency!" wrist bands at the Sports Business Journal. Unfortunately, the article is hidden behinda paywall. But here's the salient point, thanks to the magic of google caching:
Now, I'm going to guess that the seven-figure thing is probably a couple of deals to encompass all of the schools, rather than per school. But still, it's a significant wad of cash involved, and that's probably why we're being told not to worry our pretty little heads about how it looks for a major research university to be promoting magical silicone bracelets that sell for something like $30. I guess infusing the material with all those "ions" is what cranks up the price.
Also?
You know, I never realized how much it actually hurts to try to laugh and sob at the same time. Until now. Official supplier of ion-infused products indeed! What next, an official university supplier of magical fairy dust? An official university supplier of wishful thinking? Or maybe just an official supplier of unicorns that fart rainbows?
I would totally buy one of those, by the way. My car's about to crap out, and I hear those babies get amazing fuel mileage and don't pollute at all.
A friend of ours let us know that there's an article about the magical "because ions makes it sound sciency!" wrist bands at the Sports Business Journal. Unfortunately, the article is hidden behinda paywall. But here's the salient point, thanks to the magic of google caching:
The seven-figure deals were each negotiated through the two leading multimedia rights agencies in the college space, IMG College and Learfield Sports, which will give Power Force marketing and media rights at most of the nation’s top colleges.
Now, I'm going to guess that the seven-figure thing is probably a couple of deals to encompass all of the schools, rather than per school. But still, it's a significant wad of cash involved, and that's probably why we're being told not to worry our pretty little heads about how it looks for a major research university to be promoting magical silicone bracelets that sell for something like $30. I guess infusing the material with all those "ions" is what cranks up the price.
Also?
On each of the campuses where Power Force made a deal, it will be recognized as the official supplier or preferred supplier of ion-infused products.
You know, I never realized how much it actually hurts to try to laugh and sob at the same time. Until now. Official supplier of ion-infused products indeed! What next, an official university supplier of magical fairy dust? An official university supplier of wishful thinking? Or maybe just an official supplier of unicorns that fart rainbows?
I would totally buy one of those, by the way. My car's about to crap out, and I hear those babies get amazing fuel mileage and don't pollute at all.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Sunday, November 07, 2010
Woo at CU 2: Electric Boogaloo
Remember a week or so ago, when I was unleashing my amazing Powers of Sarcasm on the topic of Powerforce bands being sold with the CU logo? I've gotten a reply, and I thought I would share it with the internets.
To review: Powerforce power bands? Still total bullshit. Still claiming that "ions" are going to "give you confidence from within."
Reply to the e-mail I sent to the Chancellor's office:
I believe that, in legal circles, this is what's known as "the novelty item defense." Right up there with "the metaphor" defense.
Rather than write a completely separate blog entry, I thought I would simply publicly repost the reply I sent to Mr. Hilliard a few minutes ago. While I admit that I would dearly love to say some snarky, snarky things, I don't think that would be fair to Mr. Hilliard, who has been very polite to me.
HOWEVER. If you can't survive without your daily requirement of snark on this one, Please see Stuart's blog. He has taken up the baton of sarcasm and run with it most admirably.
I will admit that when I first read Mr. Hilliard's point about the other universities involved with this "novelty item," I heard my mother's voice very clearly in my head, asking me, "If all your friends were jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?"
Hm, do ions help you develop psychic powers?
To review: Powerforce power bands? Still total bullshit. Still claiming that "ions" are going to "give you confidence from within."
Reply to the e-mail I sent to the Chancellor's office:
Dear Rachael:
Allow me to answer your query regarding the University’s athletic marketing of the “Power Force” Power Band.
First, let me explain that the previous response that went out to a few individuals who e-mailed Chancellor DiStefano was supposed to be a reply on behalf of the chancellor by a staff member in our Buffalo Sports Properties office, not a reply from the chancellor himself. I apologize for the way the reply was worded – it was confusing as to who the author actually was.
Regarding your query: members of the senior administration staff have carefully reviewed your concerns, looked into the University’s contract with the company that markets the bands, examined our peer universities’ relationships with the company, and reached the following conclusions:
· As you suggest, the claims of the company regarding the efficacy of the band aren’t based on firm scientific ground. However, the band is being marketed by through the athletic department as a novelty with affinity- inspired athletic branding that is unique to CU Athletics. The symbol it uses – the charging Ralphie – represents CU sports teams, not the university as a whole, and certainly not its research entities.
· In the same spirit, our sports-labeled products include everything from sweat bands to golf tees to lawn gnomes. These are all designed to create affinity and build school spirit, not to be literal representations of the University and its academic work.
· Likewise, the company is offering the same Powerforce Power Bands for universities that include Cal, Penn State, Missouri, Pitt and a host of other peer schools. These are quality institutions that, like us, have elected to promote a novelty item with an athletic logo for affinity and commercial purposes.
I appreciate your concern and that of your fellow graduate students and other skeptics. Your respect for science and the scientific method is manifest inyour concern, and your dedication to advancing our highest academic values is impressive.
We do not believe in the end, however, that novelty items like the “Power Force Power Band” are threats to these values.
Sincerely,
Bronson R. Hilliard, director of media relations and spokesperson
University of Colorado at Boulder
I believe that, in legal circles, this is what's known as "the novelty item defense." Right up there with "the metaphor" defense.
Rather than write a completely separate blog entry, I thought I would simply publicly repost the reply I sent to Mr. Hilliard a few minutes ago. While I admit that I would dearly love to say some snarky, snarky things, I don't think that would be fair to Mr. Hilliard, who has been very polite to me.
HOWEVER. If you can't survive without your daily requirement of snark on this one, Please see Stuart's blog. He has taken up the baton of sarcasm and run with it most admirably.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my e-mail. I would like to address a few of the points that you've made, so please indulge me in that.
[Snip: Mr. Hilliard's point about Ralphie representing the athletics teams rather than the academic departments.]
My impression has always been that in the public view, the sports teams and the university are inextricably linked. The student athletes that make up our teams are just that - students as well as athletes. In many ways, what sports teams do and promote can represent the school in some very profound ways. At an extreme, bad behavior by student athletes (eg: assaults, etc) can reflect extremely poorly upon whatever school that athlete belongs to. I bring this example up not because I would in any way equate a violent assault with the promotion of a pseudoscientific product, but more to exemplify my view that the athletic team of a university is not necessarily viewed as a completely separate entity.
And likewise, while Ralphie is most assuredly the emblem of the athletics teams, he is likewise associated completely with the name of the University of Colorado at Boulder. I think that it's important to note that those of us here primarily for academic pursuits still have a certain level of team spirit and affection for our mascot. We don't view Ralphie as the property of the athletic department alone and completely separate from us either. School spirit is school spirit, whether we are taking pride in CU because we're fans of the football team or because we're building a mission to Mars - or both.
[Snip: Mr. Hilliard's point about novelty items.]
I think the salient point here, however, is that neither golf tees nor lawn gnomes are claiming to power one's "inner force" with "ions." There are novelty items, and there are novelty items.
Items that tacitly promote nonscientific or pseudoscientific ideas often get a pass with the label of "novelty item" - dowsing pendants, Ouija boards, and some very questionable medical devices spring to mind here. While many people doubtless consider pendants and Ouija boards to be nothing but silly novelties, it's also undeniable that some people do take these items, and their claims very seriously. Sometimes to their very real harm. Another example of this would be ear candles, which have not been approved for medical use by the FDA but can still be sold (with a nod and a wink) as "novelty items."
My concern here is, if we are going to promote the sale of a "novelty item" that makes such a questionable claim, where will the line be drawn?
[Snip: Mr. Hilliard's point about the other universities.]
I actually find it quite distressing that such prestigious universities are associating themselves with this company and its carefully non-specific but nonetheless embarrassingly unscientific claims. I also feel like I have less standing to voice a complaint to the faculty at those schools, as I am not a student there.
That Penn State or Cal have decided to promote an item such as this should, I think, not be a justification for CU to do so as well. Rather, this could be an opportunity for CU to lead the way in standing on principles of both scientific rigor and team spirit. We can show our team and school pride in many ways (even with the occasional lawn gnome) while subtly brandishing out academic credentials as well.
Again, I think you for your time.
I will admit that when I first read Mr. Hilliard's point about the other universities involved with this "novelty item," I heard my mother's voice very clearly in my head, asking me, "If all your friends were jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?"
Hm, do ions help you develop psychic powers?
Friday, November 05, 2010
Second Chances
You may recall that back in July, Isaac helped me get a cat out of a tree. I tried to shove the poor, frightened animal into a carrier then, and it escaped. I kept an eye out for the cat after that, and thought I might have seen it a couple of times, but it was always far too wary.
A week ago, the kids that live next door told me there was a cat, hiding under one of the cars in our parking lot. It was the same cat. It was wary, frightened, skittish, but it also wasn't running away like it had been. I went inside and grabbed a bowl of cat food. Despite the fear, despite the little kids that were trying desperately to help and in reality only getting in the way and scaring the poor thing more, it came out from under the car and started eating. And eating. One of the kids went and got it a bowl of water, and it sucked half the water down.
The cat was the same one Isaac helped me get out of the tree. It was also rail thin, with big awkward feet that would have been white if its fur weren't so filthy. After it sucked down one bowl of food, the cat let me pet it, and even managed a rusty, uncertain purr and a sad, squeaky little meow.
Mike wasn't that happy when I dragged him outside to see the cat. He's always been more pragmatic than me. I was all for dragging the little cat into our house right that instant. He pointed out that it might have FIV, or feline leukemia, or fleas, or who knows what else. But he also knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep, just leaving the little one outside. My next door neighbor was in the same situation; she has two other cats as well, and he husband wouldn't have been happy to suddenly acquire a third.
So Mike and I made a deal; we'd take the cat to the emergency vet, have it checked out, and then we could keep it overnight in the spare room so I could take it to the shelter the next day.
The cat turned out to be a she, was 6-8 months old, and got a clean bill of health other than being incredibly thin - just six pounds. We sat in the chilly exam room while the vet took the cat to the back room to the quick tests for FIV and leukemia, and I sent a text message to Evan, one of my fellow grad students. He'd mentioned that he wanted a cat. I told him that I'd found one, and the first thing he asked was, "Aw, is she cute?"
For the last week, she's been living in my spare room. I've spent time with her every morning, and when I come home, and before I go to bed. She has a purr twice as big as her body, and a meow like a rusty gate. I've been just calling her Squeaker. She's sweet and loving, but also skittish; it's not hard to imagine how hard her life must have been up until now. She loves to be petted, to lean against my leg and purr. She doesn't know quite how to play right with humans, and gets a little bitey. I'm glad that Evan decided to take her. After just a day, I don't think I could have taken her to a shelter. But I can let her go to a good home.
Evan's going to make a good dad for a skinny little cat that needs a lot of love. He decided to name her Shiraz (hopefully I spelled that right). When he loaded her into his car a couple of hours ago, she was wailing and carrying on. It's hard, not being able to explain to someone that their life is about to get better, so much better.
So tonight the cat we dragged out of a tree four months ago went to her forever home. And I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm already missing her, but the two brats are already much happier without another cat lurking behind a closed door. I'd also be lying if I didn't admit I was crying, just a little, right now. But I think I'll get to see her again soon, in her new home.
I don't think that second chances in life are all that uncommon. They happen all the time, little opportunities to correct mistakes or backtrack on bad decisions. But I also think that the second chance to save a life, even a small, humble life, doesn't come around all that often.
A week ago, the kids that live next door told me there was a cat, hiding under one of the cars in our parking lot. It was the same cat. It was wary, frightened, skittish, but it also wasn't running away like it had been. I went inside and grabbed a bowl of cat food. Despite the fear, despite the little kids that were trying desperately to help and in reality only getting in the way and scaring the poor thing more, it came out from under the car and started eating. And eating. One of the kids went and got it a bowl of water, and it sucked half the water down.
The cat was the same one Isaac helped me get out of the tree. It was also rail thin, with big awkward feet that would have been white if its fur weren't so filthy. After it sucked down one bowl of food, the cat let me pet it, and even managed a rusty, uncertain purr and a sad, squeaky little meow.
Mike wasn't that happy when I dragged him outside to see the cat. He's always been more pragmatic than me. I was all for dragging the little cat into our house right that instant. He pointed out that it might have FIV, or feline leukemia, or fleas, or who knows what else. But he also knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep, just leaving the little one outside. My next door neighbor was in the same situation; she has two other cats as well, and he husband wouldn't have been happy to suddenly acquire a third.
So Mike and I made a deal; we'd take the cat to the emergency vet, have it checked out, and then we could keep it overnight in the spare room so I could take it to the shelter the next day.
The cat turned out to be a she, was 6-8 months old, and got a clean bill of health other than being incredibly thin - just six pounds. We sat in the chilly exam room while the vet took the cat to the back room to the quick tests for FIV and leukemia, and I sent a text message to Evan, one of my fellow grad students. He'd mentioned that he wanted a cat. I told him that I'd found one, and the first thing he asked was, "Aw, is she cute?"
For the last week, she's been living in my spare room. I've spent time with her every morning, and when I come home, and before I go to bed. She has a purr twice as big as her body, and a meow like a rusty gate. I've been just calling her Squeaker. She's sweet and loving, but also skittish; it's not hard to imagine how hard her life must have been up until now. She loves to be petted, to lean against my leg and purr. She doesn't know quite how to play right with humans, and gets a little bitey. I'm glad that Evan decided to take her. After just a day, I don't think I could have taken her to a shelter. But I can let her go to a good home.
Evan's going to make a good dad for a skinny little cat that needs a lot of love. He decided to name her Shiraz (hopefully I spelled that right). When he loaded her into his car a couple of hours ago, she was wailing and carrying on. It's hard, not being able to explain to someone that their life is about to get better, so much better.
So tonight the cat we dragged out of a tree four months ago went to her forever home. And I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm already missing her, but the two brats are already much happier without another cat lurking behind a closed door. I'd also be lying if I didn't admit I was crying, just a little, right now. But I think I'll get to see her again soon, in her new home.
I don't think that second chances in life are all that uncommon. They happen all the time, little opportunities to correct mistakes or backtrack on bad decisions. But I also think that the second chance to save a life, even a small, humble life, doesn't come around all that often.
Enough With the Zombie Hamburgers
A while ago, there was a rash of postings all over the internets about the sinister Happy Meal That Would Not Die or the utterly disturbing McDonald's hamburger that had been preserved since, I don't know, the last ice age or something. The conclusion of the woman with the ancient hamburger is:
Note: everything is made of chemicals. Everything.
This even got a mention on Skeptic's Guide to the Universe (#274), with many a good hypothesis as to why a hamburger might act this way. It was something that definitely could be tested scientifically, and no one had bothered.
Until now.
This is why I love, love, love reading Serious Eats. Some of the contributors are made of 100% pure WIN.
Read the post, but the punchline is that the author made his own ("all-natural") hamburger the same size as the McDonald's one and set them head to head. They both dehydrated nicely and turned into hamburger jerky. This comes as no surprise to anyone who doesn't ascribe to the idea that McDonald's is trying to destroy the world by feeding everyone food made out of plastic. Or whatever.
Of course, it's a small sample size and yadda yadda. We must need some replication! It sounds like an awesome way to flavor the air of your house with the stench of old hamburger. This would, I think, make an EXCELLENT science fair experiment for a kid with extremely tolerant parents.
Good on you, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Good on you, Serious Eats. You get a skeptic gold star today.
Ladies, Gentleman, and children alike – this is a chemical food. There is absolutely no nutrition here.
Note: everything is made of chemicals. Everything.
This even got a mention on Skeptic's Guide to the Universe (#274), with many a good hypothesis as to why a hamburger might act this way. It was something that definitely could be tested scientifically, and no one had bothered.
Until now.
Every day, I monitored the progress of the burgers, weighing each one, and carefully checking for spots of mold growth or other indications of decay. The burgers were left in the open air, but handled only with clean kitchen tools or through clean plastic bags (no direct contact with my hands until the last day).
This is why I love, love, love reading Serious Eats. Some of the contributors are made of 100% pure WIN.
Read the post, but the punchline is that the author made his own ("all-natural") hamburger the same size as the McDonald's one and set them head to head. They both dehydrated nicely and turned into hamburger jerky. This comes as no surprise to anyone who doesn't ascribe to the idea that McDonald's is trying to destroy the world by feeding everyone food made out of plastic. Or whatever.
Of course, it's a small sample size and yadda yadda. We must need some replication! It sounds like an awesome way to flavor the air of your house with the stench of old hamburger. This would, I think, make an EXCELLENT science fair experiment for a kid with extremely tolerant parents.
Good on you, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Good on you, Serious Eats. You get a skeptic gold star today.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Happy Voting Day
I can't begin to tell you how happy I am that it's election day. You know why? Because that means this will hopefully be the last day that Robert Ramirez, Grover Norquist, and some lady named Cynthia who claims to be from Arvada robocall me multiple times in the space of 24 hours and urge me to vote for Ramirez. This is even more aggravating because:
1) Robocalls leave voice mails, which I have to keep going into my mailbox and deleting.
2) I've already voted, and it sure as hell wasn't for Robert Ramirez. I'm certain he's a lovely human being, but I like my current state representative (Debbie Benefield).
3) And, let's be honest. Having Grover Norquist pulling for you is really not something to be advertised if you want to impress me anyway.
It's enough to make me want to ask for my mail-in ballot back, just so I can make sure the circle next to Debbie Benefield's name is good and dark.
There's no need to even go in to detail about the amount of spam (both digital and analog) I've gotten over the last week. Though I am a little disappointed that I didn't get any crazy mail from Focus on the Family this year. That's always good for a rage-filled cackle.
Anyway, if you're American, go vote! And while I normally try to just emphasize the awesomeness of civic duty because I don't want to sound like the Cynthia from Arvada robocall, I do have one request for this year - please remember that women are people too, and it would be nice if the government didn't want to lodge itself in our collective vagina. Shocking, I know. (PSST. That means if you live in Colorado, for goodness' sake VOTE NO ON 62! And non-high-heels wearing senate candidate Ken Buck doesn't think much of women either, it should be noted.)
And tomorrow we can all celebrate the end of robocalls and political spam for another, oh, year and a half. Right up until the Presidential race really gets cooking.
1) Robocalls leave voice mails, which I have to keep going into my mailbox and deleting.
2) I've already voted, and it sure as hell wasn't for Robert Ramirez. I'm certain he's a lovely human being, but I like my current state representative (Debbie Benefield).
3) And, let's be honest. Having Grover Norquist pulling for you is really not something to be advertised if you want to impress me anyway.
It's enough to make me want to ask for my mail-in ballot back, just so I can make sure the circle next to Debbie Benefield's name is good and dark.
There's no need to even go in to detail about the amount of spam (both digital and analog) I've gotten over the last week. Though I am a little disappointed that I didn't get any crazy mail from Focus on the Family this year. That's always good for a rage-filled cackle.
Anyway, if you're American, go vote! And while I normally try to just emphasize the awesomeness of civic duty because I don't want to sound like the Cynthia from Arvada robocall, I do have one request for this year - please remember that women are people too, and it would be nice if the government didn't want to lodge itself in our collective vagina. Shocking, I know. (PSST. That means if you live in Colorado, for goodness' sake VOTE NO ON 62! And non-high-heels wearing senate candidate Ken Buck doesn't think much of women either, it should be noted.)
And tomorrow we can all celebrate the end of robocalls and political spam for another, oh, year and a half. Right up until the Presidential race really gets cooking.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Your Ions. They Make Me Feel So... Confident
Recently a friend of mine - who wishes to remain nameless at this time - saw a product marketed at a CU Buffs football game. It's the Power Force Wrist Band.
I will note that the Power Force website is actually fairly unimpressive, particularly since it looks like a lot of the pictures are badly trimmed. But even more unimpressive is the description of the product in question:
Emphasis mine. Now, it could be that I just haven't gotten far enough into chemistry, but what I do recall about ions tells me that they're ubiquitous, important, and have absolutely nothing to do with one's self-confidence1. The phrases "your body's natural inner force" and "your body's energy" are essentially meaningless. They also strongly call to mind the justification behind many types of "alternative medicine," which is that the body has some sort of energy field that permeates it and can be manipulated. (Reiki is one example of this.)
I will also note that, upon inspecting the site, the products look eerily like another silly energy bracelet, the Power Balance Wrist Band, which claims:
The claims of Power Balance have been thoroughly taken apart by Dr. Harriet Hall at the Science-Based Medicine Blog and Device Watch.
To be fair, there is no solid proof that Power Balance and Power Force come from the same company; both are owned by LLCs of different names, and the two sites were registered to different people. Rather it's just the similarity of the claims and the look of the products that caught my attention. And frankly, it's an alt-med rip-off whether the silly plastic bracelet is claiming to optimize your body's non-existent energy flow or promote your "inner force" with ions. Both statements are the sort of thing that cause physicists (and biologists) to laugh uncontrollably or curl up in a corner, sobbing, because it's just not any fun to watch somebody torture your beloved science.
For more science and less sarcasm on this topic, I urge you to go read Stuart's post over at Exposing PseudoAstronomy.
Beyond the normal skeptic grumbling about ridiculous products, there's another reason this silly "ion" wrist band is upsetting. CU Boulder is most well known for two things - our football team, and our research. The University of Colorado at Boulder is a Research I University, which means we award a lot of doctorates and get a lot of federal research funding. We have three Nobel laureates in the physics department - a poster outside of the physics building advertises this fact.
So to advertise the brain power and research acumen of CU in one breath and then advertise a bunch of pseudoscientific crap in the next seems like a real problem to at least this little nerd.
It also sounded like a problem to my friend, who wrote an unhappy e-mail to the Chancellor of the University and the Athletics Director. The answer they got back was most unfortunate:
Okay, I have no idea where this magnet therapy thing came from, considering the Power Force website only mentions ions. But lest we forget, magnet therapy is also largely crap as well. Dr. Steven Novella has a nice historical overview at the NeuroLogica Blog, which ends on this lovely research note.
I'll be writing my own e-mail to the office of the Chancellor shortly, just to add my voice. I ask that you consider doing so as well.
Oh, but it's just a silly little plastic bracelet. Really, Geek, what's the harm?
1 - Well, except maybe for the tungstate ion. It makes me feel all warm and squishy whenever I think about it.
I will note that the Power Force website is actually fairly unimpressive, particularly since it looks like a lot of the pictures are badly trimmed. But even more unimpressive is the description of the product in question:
Power Force's Innovative Products were developed to work with your body's natural inner force. Within each Power Force powerband are ions that work with your body's energy to give you confidence from within. Your inner force is limitless. Channel this force with Power Force powerband. Power Your Inner Force.
Emphasis mine. Now, it could be that I just haven't gotten far enough into chemistry, but what I do recall about ions tells me that they're ubiquitous, important, and have absolutely nothing to do with one's self-confidence1. The phrases "your body's natural inner force" and "your body's energy" are essentially meaningless. They also strongly call to mind the justification behind many types of "alternative medicine," which is that the body has some sort of energy field that permeates it and can be manipulated. (Reiki is one example of this.)
I will also note that, upon inspecting the site, the products look eerily like another silly energy bracelet, the Power Balance Wrist Band, which claims:
Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body.
The claims of Power Balance have been thoroughly taken apart by Dr. Harriet Hall at the Science-Based Medicine Blog and Device Watch.
To be fair, there is no solid proof that Power Balance and Power Force come from the same company; both are owned by LLCs of different names, and the two sites were registered to different people. Rather it's just the similarity of the claims and the look of the products that caught my attention. And frankly, it's an alt-med rip-off whether the silly plastic bracelet is claiming to optimize your body's non-existent energy flow or promote your "inner force" with ions. Both statements are the sort of thing that cause physicists (and biologists) to laugh uncontrollably or curl up in a corner, sobbing, because it's just not any fun to watch somebody torture your beloved science.
For more science and less sarcasm on this topic, I urge you to go read Stuart's post over at Exposing PseudoAstronomy.
Beyond the normal skeptic grumbling about ridiculous products, there's another reason this silly "ion" wrist band is upsetting. CU Boulder is most well known for two things - our football team, and our research. The University of Colorado at Boulder is a Research I University, which means we award a lot of doctorates and get a lot of federal research funding. We have three Nobel laureates in the physics department - a poster outside of the physics building advertises this fact.
So to advertise the brain power and research acumen of CU in one breath and then advertise a bunch of pseudoscientific crap in the next seems like a real problem to at least this little nerd.
It also sounded like a problem to my friend, who wrote an unhappy e-mail to the Chancellor of the University and the Athletics Director. The answer they got back was most unfortunate:
Dear [Name redacted at request of original e-mail recipient],
I asked our athletic department for an explanation for you regarding how products receive permission to use the CU logo and its endorsement. Buffalo Sports Properties owns the rights to all the advertising and sponsorship opportunities so this is their response.
" The company Powerforce went through all of the appropriate channels for approval to use the CU marks and logos. They applied for the CU license through CLC and based on the company's information, goals and objectives, a license was granted. Additionally, the company has paid for a sponsorship with CU Athletics, which is the product was promoted on the video board.
As for the actual product, there has been research about magnetic therapy and its effects on pain, stress, fatigue, and concentration. While I don't have access to our campus library (which may have better access to scientific research), here are two links to websites with articles about magnetic therapy.
http://www.articlesbase.com/medicine-articles/magnetic-bracelet-therapy-case-study-by-dr-carlos-vallbona-usa-2268067.html
http://www.magnetictherapyfacts.org/magnetic_therapy_research.asp
Thanks,
[Name and contact info also redacted by request of the e-mail recipient]
Thank you for your interest and support of CU.
Go Buffs!
Philip P. DiStefano, Chancellor
University of Colorado Boulder
Okay, I have no idea where this magnet therapy thing came from, considering the Power Force website only mentions ions. But lest we forget, magnet therapy is also largely crap as well. Dr. Steven Novella has a nice historical overview at the NeuroLogica Blog, which ends on this lovely research note.
I'll be writing my own e-mail to the office of the Chancellor shortly, just to add my voice. I ask that you consider doing so as well.
Oh, but it's just a silly little plastic bracelet. Really, Geek, what's the harm?
1 - Well, except maybe for the tungstate ion. It makes me feel all warm and squishy whenever I think about it.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
MileHiCon and W00tstock: More Geek Than Should Be Legally Allowed
MileHiCon 42 was a lot of fun. At least the little bit that I saw of it was a blast. While I paid for a full weekend, I didn't make it on Friday since I was too busy punching things, and today I was helping someone move. (Or more accurately, waiting up in Westminster to help someone move who didn't get there until much later than expected due to a flat tire near the Wyoming border.)
So yes. Fun.
I got to go to several very interesting panels. One was a little workshop to make a two-sentence elevator pitch. I was very pleased with how mine turned out, since I tried to come up with one for Throne of Nightmares. I wrote my two sentence summary, the panel chopped about half the words out, and now it's quite lovely. Are you ready to witness its awesomeness? HOLD ON TIGHT!
BOOM.
Yes. I can sense that you wish to shower me with dirty handfuls of cash now. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Also I went to a panel about applying fiction skills to writing non-fiction. I was expecting it to be more about the actual writing process, but the panelists had a lot of useful advice on how and where to look for non-fiction work. So if I ever have time to do so, I will try to apply that advice. Some extra money would be quite lovely.
Late in the afternoon there was a fun panel about all sorts of misconceptions about fighting (of all kinds) that get perpetuated in books and film. Dan Dvorkin moderated it, and it was mostly a ridiculous amount of fun. I think "boisterous" or perhaps even "rowdy" would be a good word to describe the panelists.
And now... are you ready for the name dropping portion of this blog post? Because here it comes.
An event that I almost chickened out on - since I'm absolutely crap at meeting new people and not acting like a giant space moron - was "Speed Date a Science Fiction Author." I'm pretty sure that's what it was called. Anyway, I'm glad that I hung in and gave it a try. Something like 20 authors got packed into a room, and you could go around for three minute "dates" to get to ask them about their books.
I can't quite go down the list of all the lovely people I got a chance to (briefly) talk to. It took about thirty seconds to cover the "What of yours should I read" and then after that, conversations normally veered off into all sorts of random topics.
Ian Tregillis was the only one of the authors in the room I'd actually heard of, since I'd seen his book Bitter Seeds mentioned in io9 and it sounded like something I wanted to read. He was very sweet and seemed a little shy, but he was a lot of fun to talk to. His day job is as a physicist at the National Laboratories in Los Alamos (that's one hell of a day job) so I mostly just asked him questions about that. I'm really looking forward to reading his book.
Rather than repeat again and again that each and every one of these authors was nice, and charming, and lovely, I'll just say here that they all were. Then again, I wouldn't expect a writer willing to participate in an event like this would be an egotistical jerk. But yes, everyone was a lot of fun and I'm glad that I didn't wimp out.
I spent a lot of time before the event chatting with Donita K. Paul prior to the event. She's also doing an MDA lock up, so if you've got a few extra dollars, maybe consider helping her get out of jail a little quicker, since it's for a good cause.
I've actually sort of heard of Daniel Abraham before, to the extent that I've seen the book cover for his short story collection on a blog and thought it was very nice looking. (I'm a sucker for watercolors.)
Rob Rice was definitely the most snazzily dressed of the bunch. And yes, he was wearing exactly the same thing as he's pictured wearing on his website. He'd also been on the panel that did the elevator pitches, and he told me that he thought my novel sounded interesting. Squee!
Sarah Hoyt and the rest of the Hoyt trio were quite fun. I actually finished off the event talking with her son, who is in pre-med. We spent a lot of time mutually complaining about just how awful it is to be in school and have no time.
Melinda Snodgrass has the best last name ever. And I love her hair. And she wrote the script for the freaking "THE MEASURE OF A MAN" Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. I am unashamed of the amount of fangirling I did.
Nicole Kurtz was one I spent more than my three minutes talking with. She gave me a lot of really excellent advice. And she writes books where the heroines are best described as "sassy," which I just can't get enough of.
So that was at least some of the highlights of the speed dating. And I of course must also mention that I went to the one hour reading/Q&A that Paolo Bacigalupi did. I now now how to pronounce his last name, which means I'm at least one IQ point smarter than when I started out. (Clue: Not "bunchachalupas") He read a bit from his new novella, and talked a lot about his interest in environmental issues, economics, and the interactions between them.
I want to be Paolo Bacigalupi when I grow up. But with a last name people can pronounce. And still be a girl. But really, I just mean I want to be able to write stories that involve big issues like that, and still have them be compelling and fascinating stories.
I fled from MHC at five, since I needed to get home for the Not-Quite-But-Almost-W00tstock in Boulder. I was hoping to get to eat dinner beforehand, but that was not to be. There was construction on I-25 and so I got home barely in time for David to collect me for the ride up to Boulder.
W00tstock was definitely worth it. Paul and Storm were HILARIOUS. Phil Plait's litany of astronomical dick jokes was likewise hilarious. (And even funnier, that was the first time David had actually seen Phil lecture. So there you go.) And Adam Savage? Oh, the glee. He got the one standing ovation of the night for making an absolutely horrific Michael Jackson joke that almost caused me to pee my pants, I was laughing so hard.
The Captain's Wife's Lament took 23 minutes to finish. I know that's not a record, but I still feel like I did my part.
ARRRR!
So yes. Fun.
I got to go to several very interesting panels. One was a little workshop to make a two-sentence elevator pitch. I was very pleased with how mine turned out, since I tried to come up with one for Throne of Nightmares. I wrote my two sentence summary, the panel chopped about half the words out, and now it's quite lovely. Are you ready to witness its awesomeness? HOLD ON TIGHT!
Drew suffers a traumatic injury at the hands of his former friend, and emerges able to see interdimensional predators. Soon Drew must choose between godhood and a normal life, between saving his friend and saving himself.
BOOM.
Yes. I can sense that you wish to shower me with dirty handfuls of cash now. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Also I went to a panel about applying fiction skills to writing non-fiction. I was expecting it to be more about the actual writing process, but the panelists had a lot of useful advice on how and where to look for non-fiction work. So if I ever have time to do so, I will try to apply that advice. Some extra money would be quite lovely.
Late in the afternoon there was a fun panel about all sorts of misconceptions about fighting (of all kinds) that get perpetuated in books and film. Dan Dvorkin moderated it, and it was mostly a ridiculous amount of fun. I think "boisterous" or perhaps even "rowdy" would be a good word to describe the panelists.
And now... are you ready for the name dropping portion of this blog post? Because here it comes.
An event that I almost chickened out on - since I'm absolutely crap at meeting new people and not acting like a giant space moron - was "Speed Date a Science Fiction Author." I'm pretty sure that's what it was called. Anyway, I'm glad that I hung in and gave it a try. Something like 20 authors got packed into a room, and you could go around for three minute "dates" to get to ask them about their books.
I can't quite go down the list of all the lovely people I got a chance to (briefly) talk to. It took about thirty seconds to cover the "What of yours should I read" and then after that, conversations normally veered off into all sorts of random topics.
Ian Tregillis was the only one of the authors in the room I'd actually heard of, since I'd seen his book Bitter Seeds mentioned in io9 and it sounded like something I wanted to read. He was very sweet and seemed a little shy, but he was a lot of fun to talk to. His day job is as a physicist at the National Laboratories in Los Alamos (that's one hell of a day job) so I mostly just asked him questions about that. I'm really looking forward to reading his book.
Rather than repeat again and again that each and every one of these authors was nice, and charming, and lovely, I'll just say here that they all were. Then again, I wouldn't expect a writer willing to participate in an event like this would be an egotistical jerk. But yes, everyone was a lot of fun and I'm glad that I didn't wimp out.
I spent a lot of time before the event chatting with Donita K. Paul prior to the event. She's also doing an MDA lock up, so if you've got a few extra dollars, maybe consider helping her get out of jail a little quicker, since it's for a good cause.
I've actually sort of heard of Daniel Abraham before, to the extent that I've seen the book cover for his short story collection on a blog and thought it was very nice looking. (I'm a sucker for watercolors.)
Rob Rice was definitely the most snazzily dressed of the bunch. And yes, he was wearing exactly the same thing as he's pictured wearing on his website. He'd also been on the panel that did the elevator pitches, and he told me that he thought my novel sounded interesting. Squee!
Sarah Hoyt and the rest of the Hoyt trio were quite fun. I actually finished off the event talking with her son, who is in pre-med. We spent a lot of time mutually complaining about just how awful it is to be in school and have no time.
Melinda Snodgrass has the best last name ever. And I love her hair. And she wrote the script for the freaking "THE MEASURE OF A MAN" Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. I am unashamed of the amount of fangirling I did.
Nicole Kurtz was one I spent more than my three minutes talking with. She gave me a lot of really excellent advice. And she writes books where the heroines are best described as "sassy," which I just can't get enough of.
So that was at least some of the highlights of the speed dating. And I of course must also mention that I went to the one hour reading/Q&A that Paolo Bacigalupi did. I now now how to pronounce his last name, which means I'm at least one IQ point smarter than when I started out. (Clue: Not "bunchachalupas") He read a bit from his new novella, and talked a lot about his interest in environmental issues, economics, and the interactions between them.
I want to be Paolo Bacigalupi when I grow up. But with a last name people can pronounce. And still be a girl. But really, I just mean I want to be able to write stories that involve big issues like that, and still have them be compelling and fascinating stories.
I fled from MHC at five, since I needed to get home for the Not-Quite-But-Almost-W00tstock in Boulder. I was hoping to get to eat dinner beforehand, but that was not to be. There was construction on I-25 and so I got home barely in time for David to collect me for the ride up to Boulder.
W00tstock was definitely worth it. Paul and Storm were HILARIOUS. Phil Plait's litany of astronomical dick jokes was likewise hilarious. (And even funnier, that was the first time David had actually seen Phil lecture. So there you go.) And Adam Savage? Oh, the glee. He got the one standing ovation of the night for making an absolutely horrific Michael Jackson joke that almost caused me to pee my pants, I was laughing so hard.
The Captain's Wife's Lament took 23 minutes to finish. I know that's not a record, but I still feel like I did my part.
ARRRR!
Monday, October 18, 2010
Goodbye, Realms of Fantasy
Realms of Fantasy looks like it's gone for good now.
The more I think about it, the more depressed I feel. I've actually been a subscriber to RoF since its first issue. It was what motivated me to start really trying to write, in a half-hearted, teenaged kind of way. While I make a lot of jokes about my collection of rejection slips now, the first rejection that I ever got was from RoF, years and years and years ago. It was my goal to some day get a story published in the magazine, because I just knew I had it in me to write stories that could make someone laugh, or sniffle, or cheer, or cringe, or think like the ones in RoF did.
And now it's a goal that I will never attain. I guess it says something that until this day, I've kept alive one of the dreams that I had as a nerdy, awkward fat girl pecking away at the keyboard of a 486. I've come far since then, but not far enough. What I took out of high school was mostly a lot of stupid insecurities and confusion. But RoF remained something that my adult self could share with the awkward teenager of my memories, and it was without question wonderful.
I'm going to miss you, RoF. More than I can say.
The more I think about it, the more depressed I feel. I've actually been a subscriber to RoF since its first issue. It was what motivated me to start really trying to write, in a half-hearted, teenaged kind of way. While I make a lot of jokes about my collection of rejection slips now, the first rejection that I ever got was from RoF, years and years and years ago. It was my goal to some day get a story published in the magazine, because I just knew I had it in me to write stories that could make someone laugh, or sniffle, or cheer, or cringe, or think like the ones in RoF did.
And now it's a goal that I will never attain. I guess it says something that until this day, I've kept alive one of the dreams that I had as a nerdy, awkward fat girl pecking away at the keyboard of a 486. I've come far since then, but not far enough. What I took out of high school was mostly a lot of stupid insecurities and confusion. But RoF remained something that my adult self could share with the awkward teenager of my memories, and it was without question wonderful.
I'm going to miss you, RoF. More than I can say.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Curse you, passive voice!
I've been reading a lot of scientific papers lately; I'm in two classes, and I'm trying to get in a sufficient amount of reading on topic before my research starts up. Easier said than done... for the most part, scientific papers tend to knock me out, even if I'm not tired when I start reading. And it's not a fatigue issue, anyway; if I'm reading something that I'm interested in, it doesn't matter how tired I am. I'll stay up until four in the morning just because I need to read One More Page.
I think papers just knock me out because, for the most part, they're badly written. There's a lot of jargon, but that's unavoidable in a specialized field. I think the bigger problem tends to be writing style. I'll go out on a limb and guess that most scientists aren't like me (writing fiction as a masochistic hobby) or my friend Evan (who has a BA in English). When I took my "writing in the geosciences" undergrad course - which I wasn't terribly impressed by - most of the other students were just miserable about being there, because they hated writing so much.
Actually disliking the process of writing is not going to help when it comes to producing a coherent, interesting paper. I suppose the more the writer feels like he or she is fighting with the English language, the more the reader will feel like it, too.
There are a lot of things that make scientific papers a giant slog to read. I think one of the major ones is the ubiquitous use of passive voice. In prose, passive voice is the kiss of death. It's something to be avoided entirely or used only sparingly, because it tends to interfere with the reader's ability to connect with the action.
Of course, scientific articles aren't fiction. Most of the time.
But the thing is, a lot of people who write scientific papers tend to use passive voice. I think it's because it makes them sound somehow more impartial - one of the big uses of passive is to remove the doer from a sentence. "A simulation was run" as opposed to "we ran a simulation." I can understand that desire, but it makes it damn hard to read and stay interested, particularly when it sounds like the methods section is just kind of running itself without any sort of human intervention.
I bring this up because I read an article in Geology over the weekend that didn't hammer the reader with passive sentences, and it was a treat to read. I was tired, and it didn't knock me out. I was interested. I felt engaged by the writing. Now, I can't really say too much about the subject itself, since it deals with climate modeling and that's not something I personally do. But the writing was definitely a step above most of the other articles I've read lately.
Go check it out for yourself, if you have Geoscience World subscription: CO2-driven ocean circulation changes as an amplifier of Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum hydrate destabilization (Lunt et al)
It's a sad statement on the writing in this field when article that doesn't make me fall asleep at my desk warrants an excited blog post.
I think papers just knock me out because, for the most part, they're badly written. There's a lot of jargon, but that's unavoidable in a specialized field. I think the bigger problem tends to be writing style. I'll go out on a limb and guess that most scientists aren't like me (writing fiction as a masochistic hobby) or my friend Evan (who has a BA in English). When I took my "writing in the geosciences" undergrad course - which I wasn't terribly impressed by - most of the other students were just miserable about being there, because they hated writing so much.
Actually disliking the process of writing is not going to help when it comes to producing a coherent, interesting paper. I suppose the more the writer feels like he or she is fighting with the English language, the more the reader will feel like it, too.
There are a lot of things that make scientific papers a giant slog to read. I think one of the major ones is the ubiquitous use of passive voice. In prose, passive voice is the kiss of death. It's something to be avoided entirely or used only sparingly, because it tends to interfere with the reader's ability to connect with the action.
Of course, scientific articles aren't fiction. Most of the time.
But the thing is, a lot of people who write scientific papers tend to use passive voice. I think it's because it makes them sound somehow more impartial - one of the big uses of passive is to remove the doer from a sentence. "A simulation was run" as opposed to "we ran a simulation." I can understand that desire, but it makes it damn hard to read and stay interested, particularly when it sounds like the methods section is just kind of running itself without any sort of human intervention.
I bring this up because I read an article in Geology over the weekend that didn't hammer the reader with passive sentences, and it was a treat to read. I was tired, and it didn't knock me out. I was interested. I felt engaged by the writing. Now, I can't really say too much about the subject itself, since it deals with climate modeling and that's not something I personally do. But the writing was definitely a step above most of the other articles I've read lately.
Go check it out for yourself, if you have Geoscience World subscription: CO2-driven ocean circulation changes as an amplifier of Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum hydrate destabilization (Lunt et al)
It's a sad statement on the writing in this field when article that doesn't make me fall asleep at my desk warrants an excited blog post.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Weekend That Wasn't
I did survive the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, though at this point I'm still not sure if that's an entirely good thing. Two days of questionable food and a ridiculous amount of stress have taken a toll on my insides. I'm a miserable human being at the moment.
I did all of the driving, which was awful in a special way. I normally drive a Honda Civic with a manual transmission. On the trip I drove a Suburban with an automatic transmission. It made me feel strangely bloated. I think the only reason I was able to handle the car without going completely out of my mind was that I've still got some memory of the ol' ambulance driving days. As it was, the defensive driving I learned then served me well when someone did a dead stop in front of me on Grand Avenue without signaling their intention to turn. I apparently did a masterful swerve into the right hand lane, which I got a lot of compliments for once my passengers had gotten their hearts restarted. I also apparently reached across the seat to hold on to my friend Gaby with my hand that wasn't clutching the steering wheel. I don't actually remember this, but Gaby insists it's true and it likely means that I'm turning in to my mother.
The Suburban and I disliked each other to the bitter end. I managed to lock my luggage in the car and then returned the key before I noticed, and I blame the Suburban for that as well. I had to drive up to the motor pool early this morning to retrieve my luggage. The woman behind the counter handed over the key without argument, though she did accompany it with a look that clearly said, "You are a moron." Which I suppose I richly deserved.
And if you haven't figured out how this works yet, the minute I do something mortally embarrassing and stupid, I have to tell everyone about it.
Generally I feel like the weekend was a colossal, stressful waste of my time, and I'm sorry to say that. I only had three interviews, so I should be grateful just for the chance at practicing my interviewing skills. However, once I got there I realized that the meeting was more supposed to be a chance for students to schmooze potential recruiters. And to say that I'm not much of a schmoozer is an understatement. A couple of my fellow students were Born To Schmooze, so to speak, and watching them in action just left me feeling like the awkward fat kid on the playground.
We'll see if I get an internship out of this, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I only feel like one of the interviews went really well. And everyone was surprised that I only got three, since I have five years of industry experience on my resume. Considering that in one of the interviews I was asked pointedly if I couldn't just go back to my old company and get a job this summer, I'm thinking it's something of a two-edged sword.
There was also some excellent highschool-style drama during the trip, which is a good reminder for me that while we all can't help but get older, we definitely aren't required to get any wiser. And I ruined my dress shoes somehow; the sole on one of the shoes developed enormous cracks in three places. Cracks bad enough that they cause me to wobble as I walk. This means that there is shoe shopping in my very near future. All I can hope is that the evil fascist conspiracy taking place in my digestive tract will finish me off before I get that far.
On a positive note, the Comfort Inn we stayed at had waffle irons in the breakfast room, so I got to make a fresh belgian waffle for myself two days in a row. And that's certainly worth something.
I did all of the driving, which was awful in a special way. I normally drive a Honda Civic with a manual transmission. On the trip I drove a Suburban with an automatic transmission. It made me feel strangely bloated. I think the only reason I was able to handle the car without going completely out of my mind was that I've still got some memory of the ol' ambulance driving days. As it was, the defensive driving I learned then served me well when someone did a dead stop in front of me on Grand Avenue without signaling their intention to turn. I apparently did a masterful swerve into the right hand lane, which I got a lot of compliments for once my passengers had gotten their hearts restarted. I also apparently reached across the seat to hold on to my friend Gaby with my hand that wasn't clutching the steering wheel. I don't actually remember this, but Gaby insists it's true and it likely means that I'm turning in to my mother.
The Suburban and I disliked each other to the bitter end. I managed to lock my luggage in the car and then returned the key before I noticed, and I blame the Suburban for that as well. I had to drive up to the motor pool early this morning to retrieve my luggage. The woman behind the counter handed over the key without argument, though she did accompany it with a look that clearly said, "You are a moron." Which I suppose I richly deserved.
And if you haven't figured out how this works yet, the minute I do something mortally embarrassing and stupid, I have to tell everyone about it.
Generally I feel like the weekend was a colossal, stressful waste of my time, and I'm sorry to say that. I only had three interviews, so I should be grateful just for the chance at practicing my interviewing skills. However, once I got there I realized that the meeting was more supposed to be a chance for students to schmooze potential recruiters. And to say that I'm not much of a schmoozer is an understatement. A couple of my fellow students were Born To Schmooze, so to speak, and watching them in action just left me feeling like the awkward fat kid on the playground.
We'll see if I get an internship out of this, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I only feel like one of the interviews went really well. And everyone was surprised that I only got three, since I have five years of industry experience on my resume. Considering that in one of the interviews I was asked pointedly if I couldn't just go back to my old company and get a job this summer, I'm thinking it's something of a two-edged sword.
There was also some excellent highschool-style drama during the trip, which is a good reminder for me that while we all can't help but get older, we definitely aren't required to get any wiser. And I ruined my dress shoes somehow; the sole on one of the shoes developed enormous cracks in three places. Cracks bad enough that they cause me to wobble as I walk. This means that there is shoe shopping in my very near future. All I can hope is that the evil fascist conspiracy taking place in my digestive tract will finish me off before I get that far.
On a positive note, the Comfort Inn we stayed at had waffle irons in the breakfast room, so I got to make a fresh belgian waffle for myself two days in a row. And that's certainly worth something.
Friday, October 08, 2010
Meandering thoughts
The last two weeks have been absolutely ridiculous, in terms of my free time suddenly melting away and drying into a gross chalky powder like an unattended ice cream cone in the Mojave. I somehow got myself put in charge of a wad of department funding for the student trip up to the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous this weekend (an event where students go to beg petroleum companies to hire us and shower us with wads and wads of dirty oil money) so maybe that's what's been sucking all of my free time away.
What little time I've had left, I've used to do kung fu, or writing stuff. I just finished polishing up about five stories, so I'm bouncing those around and collecting an exciting new round of rejection notices to pin to the wall over my desk. No, I'm not kidding. I actually do that. It makes a rejection feel less like a punishment and more like an exciting collectors' item.
Last night I didn't actually make it home until midnight, since I was late at school working on a stratigraphy lab and finishing up my grading. I'm thankfully starting to figure out some grading strategies that make the process faster, or I probably would have ended up just sleeping in my office. Or I hear the couch in the undergraduate lounge is quite comfortable.
At least we're in to October now. This is my favorite time of the year; the September heat is finally going away, and we're getting cool, cloudy skies. It feels like autumn ought to feel. And of course the leaves turning makes it extra pretty.
Anyone starting the betting pool on if it'll snow this Halloween? My money's on yes, since we've had such nice weather the last several years. It can't last. And the kids need a good Halloween snow storm. Makes 'em work for the candy.
What little time I've had left, I've used to do kung fu, or writing stuff. I just finished polishing up about five stories, so I'm bouncing those around and collecting an exciting new round of rejection notices to pin to the wall over my desk. No, I'm not kidding. I actually do that. It makes a rejection feel less like a punishment and more like an exciting collectors' item.
Last night I didn't actually make it home until midnight, since I was late at school working on a stratigraphy lab and finishing up my grading. I'm thankfully starting to figure out some grading strategies that make the process faster, or I probably would have ended up just sleeping in my office. Or I hear the couch in the undergraduate lounge is quite comfortable.
At least we're in to October now. This is my favorite time of the year; the September heat is finally going away, and we're getting cool, cloudy skies. It feels like autumn ought to feel. And of course the leaves turning makes it extra pretty.
Anyone starting the betting pool on if it'll snow this Halloween? My money's on yes, since we've had such nice weather the last several years. It can't last. And the kids need a good Halloween snow storm. Makes 'em work for the candy.
Saturday, October 02, 2010
A child should be a choice
Today I hung my No On 62 sign on my patio door. I don't actually have a yard, so yard signs aren't really possible. I also got my Blue Book today, which I tore in to immediately. Mostly because I was curious about what the Blue Book had to say about Amendment 62, since the proponents of the measure tried to sue over it a couple weeks ago.
Likely because the arguments of the proponents are either filled with emotionally charged language, which has no place in the exceptionally dry and matter-of-fact style of the Blue Book, or because the arguments were patently untrue.
I will Give Garcia-Jones the benefit of the doubt and not accuse him of lying in this case. I think he simply does not understand the unintended consequences of banning abortion absolutely. Take a look at what's happened in El Salvador; doctors become reluctant to give care for miscarriages, since they may be afraid that they will be accused of causing the miscarriage, or the miscarriage itself might be the result of an illegal abortion. And frankly, I think if abortion were made absolutely illegal, doctors might very well not want to treat women of childbearing age because they may become pregnant at any time and not necessarily realize it. If you want to define a fertilized egg as a person, well, last I checked even if you accidentally kill a person, you don't just get a pat on the head and a wave to go on your merry way.
Of course, I'm naughty for even using the phrase "fertilized egg." One of the proponents said:
A fertilized egg is a zygote is a fertilized egg. ACOG certainly uses the term "fertilized egg" without blushing. I think it's really an attempt by the 62 proponents to up the emotional charge on the language, because they know that they can't win with either logic or science. I'm actually quite surprised Mason isn't insisting on calling it a baby from the instant of conception onward, but that's probably a little too extreme.
I'd like to throw one more quote at you, where the proponents try to squirm out of the fact that the amendment would ban many extremely popular forms of birth control, including my favorite, the pill:
This quote characterizes everything that is wrong with the position of the Amendment 62 proponents - and delineates why I don't just think they're idiots, I actively hate them.
To begin with, Hanks brings up the "Creator" and the Creator's intentions as a means to justify banning birth control. For those of us that don't believe in gods, this is an argument that holds no water. It makes the point very clear that Amendment 62 is about making a personal religious belief into a law that would control the lives of all women that live in Colorado.
But even more to the point, everything in that quote is about the baby. The woman is reduced to a womb, to "where his or her Creator" intends the baby to reside. In their efforts to grant "personhood" to a fertilized egg, they simultaneously remove "personhood" from the woman involved.
That is what makes me angry, and filled with hate, and very afraid. Since I first became aware of the abortion debate, I honed in immediately on the fact that efforts to ban abortion reduce women to less than full citizens, chattel who do not truly own and control their own bodies and can be forced by the state to complete a pregnancy. I don't appreciate my rights, my life, my existence being reduced to the state of one organ within my body.
And perhaps that's the cruelest joke of this horrible debate. These people have made me resent the very idea of being pregnant, have made me resent babies. Because I can't help but resent anything and anyone that would reduce my life from a glorious adventure that I (mostly) direct to an existence that is wholly outside of my own control.
I often see bumper stickers around here, that say: "It's a child, not a choice." I could not disagree more. It is a choice. It should be a choice. It must be a choice.
I have several friends that have children, who they love very much. Each and every one of these amazing women, whether the pregnancy was intentional or not, ultimately chose to change the course of her life and become a mother. That choice made the baby a cherished and loved member of the family, rather than a burden forced on the mother by the state.
I don't want to be a mother right now. I may never want to be. But I want that chance, to decide for myself. I want that choice. I want all women to have that choice. In the future, I want my niece to have that choice.
No on 62.
"They have not included a single word — not a single word — of our arguments," Garcia-Jones said.
Likely because the arguments of the proponents are either filled with emotionally charged language, which has no place in the exceptionally dry and matter-of-fact style of the Blue Book, or because the arguments were patently untrue.
Garcia-Jones said that the Blue Book's arguments against Amendment 62 are false because it could never, as the booklet states, cause women to be denied medical treatment for a miscarriage. The amendment could not, he said, put doctors and other health professionals at risk of legal action for providing medical care to women of childbearing age.
I will Give Garcia-Jones the benefit of the doubt and not accuse him of lying in this case. I think he simply does not understand the unintended consequences of banning abortion absolutely. Take a look at what's happened in El Salvador; doctors become reluctant to give care for miscarriages, since they may be afraid that they will be accused of causing the miscarriage, or the miscarriage itself might be the result of an illegal abortion. And frankly, I think if abortion were made absolutely illegal, doctors might very well not want to treat women of childbearing age because they may become pregnant at any time and not necessarily realize it. If you want to define a fertilized egg as a person, well, last I checked even if you accidentally kill a person, you don't just get a pat on the head and a wave to go on your merry way.
Of course, I'm naughty for even using the phrase "fertilized egg." One of the proponents said:
“I think it's important to note with the term fertilized egg, that's the same thing as using the N word for an African American,” said Mason. “Because it's a dehumanizing term and it's not based in science. The term would be a zygote, or an embryo, speaking of a unique individual.”
A fertilized egg is a zygote is a fertilized egg. ACOG certainly uses the term "fertilized egg" without blushing. I think it's really an attempt by the 62 proponents to up the emotional charge on the language, because they know that they can't win with either logic or science. I'm actually quite surprised Mason isn't insisting on calling it a baby from the instant of conception onward, but that's probably a little too extreme.
I'd like to throw one more quote at you, where the proponents try to squirm out of the fact that the amendment would ban many extremely popular forms of birth control, including my favorite, the pill:
True contraception prevents fertilization and personhood for pre-born babies will legally protect every baby from the beginning of his or her biological development," said Hanks in an e-mail. "Only those forms of "birth control" that extinguish a life that has already begun will be impacted. Many of the oral "contraceptives" have an action that makes the womb inhospitable to a developing embryo and hence, the new living, growing baby is prevented from residing where his or her Creator intended until birth."
This quote characterizes everything that is wrong with the position of the Amendment 62 proponents - and delineates why I don't just think they're idiots, I actively hate them.
To begin with, Hanks brings up the "Creator" and the Creator's intentions as a means to justify banning birth control. For those of us that don't believe in gods, this is an argument that holds no water. It makes the point very clear that Amendment 62 is about making a personal religious belief into a law that would control the lives of all women that live in Colorado.
But even more to the point, everything in that quote is about the baby. The woman is reduced to a womb, to "where his or her Creator" intends the baby to reside. In their efforts to grant "personhood" to a fertilized egg, they simultaneously remove "personhood" from the woman involved.
That is what makes me angry, and filled with hate, and very afraid. Since I first became aware of the abortion debate, I honed in immediately on the fact that efforts to ban abortion reduce women to less than full citizens, chattel who do not truly own and control their own bodies and can be forced by the state to complete a pregnancy. I don't appreciate my rights, my life, my existence being reduced to the state of one organ within my body.
And perhaps that's the cruelest joke of this horrible debate. These people have made me resent the very idea of being pregnant, have made me resent babies. Because I can't help but resent anything and anyone that would reduce my life from a glorious adventure that I (mostly) direct to an existence that is wholly outside of my own control.
I often see bumper stickers around here, that say: "It's a child, not a choice." I could not disagree more. It is a choice. It should be a choice. It must be a choice.
I have several friends that have children, who they love very much. Each and every one of these amazing women, whether the pregnancy was intentional or not, ultimately chose to change the course of her life and become a mother. That choice made the baby a cherished and loved member of the family, rather than a burden forced on the mother by the state.
I don't want to be a mother right now. I may never want to be. But I want that chance, to decide for myself. I want that choice. I want all women to have that choice. In the future, I want my niece to have that choice.
No on 62.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Fluffy Kittens Are Good (II)
Tengu would like to take this opportunity to remind you that he, too, is freakishly adorable.
Not much going on at the moment; it's been a very busy week, but not in what could be even broadly defined as an interesting way. I did have an interview with ExxonMobil earlier this week, but I'd like to hold off saying anything about that until I know if the super exciting possibility with them comes true.
So yes. Kittens.
Not much going on at the moment; it's been a very busy week, but not in what could be even broadly defined as an interesting way. I did have an interview with ExxonMobil earlier this week, but I'd like to hold off saying anything about that until I know if the super exciting possibility with them comes true.
So yes. Kittens.
Friday, September 24, 2010
CRUNCHsquish goes the cockroach.
So yeah. That was one of the highlights of my day. And by highlight, I actually mean OH GOD WHY. As I was leaving the geology building to head home after sequence stratigraphy, I decided to hit the bathroom. Except the doorway of the women's room in the basement was guarded by an enormous cockroach. It was at least the size of a cocker spaniel.
I was planning to just slink quietly away and use one of the restrooms on the upper floors, where the cockroaches have at least had the good taste to remain hidden. Instead, one of my mineralogy students popped up and informed me that I should squash it, since I was wearing real shoes and he was wearing moccasins. I made gagging noises to signal my disagreement. Part of this is because I'm too soft hearted to even squash most spiders, and part of it was because I couldn't begin to imagine what it would feel like to try to step on a bug that size - what if I only wounded it, and made it angry? What if it had a knife?
So then he told me to give him my shoe. Which I did. And he slammed it down on the cockroach. Twice. Then ground it in to the floor, at which point it made that awful CRUNCH noise that almost made me gag.
And then he threatened to wipe the bottom of my shoe off on my shirt sleeve before giving it back to me.
My students. They really know how to ingratiate themselves.
I ended up using one of the other bathrooms anyway, since I didn't want to go near the gross, squashed cockroach. Gah.
Other than that, decent enough day. Had my weekly meeting with Mary, discussed some basic isotope geochemistry for the PETM and I think I understand at least the broad strokes of it okay. I also asked her if there was much on the petrology of the basin, and it turns out there is basically nothing. I have to see if I still like thin sections by the time I'm done with this sedimentary petrology class, but it sounds like there might be a good opportunity for a project there if I can find money to have approximately a bajillion thin sections made. Also talked to her about masters versus PhD, since I've started wondering if I made a mistake just applying for an MS. Apparently that's something that can be changed pretty easily mid-stream, so I'm going to stop worrying about it until I settle on a project, at which point I'll see if the scope of that project is more suited to an MS or PhD.
I was planning to just slink quietly away and use one of the restrooms on the upper floors, where the cockroaches have at least had the good taste to remain hidden. Instead, one of my mineralogy students popped up and informed me that I should squash it, since I was wearing real shoes and he was wearing moccasins. I made gagging noises to signal my disagreement. Part of this is because I'm too soft hearted to even squash most spiders, and part of it was because I couldn't begin to imagine what it would feel like to try to step on a bug that size - what if I only wounded it, and made it angry? What if it had a knife?
So then he told me to give him my shoe. Which I did. And he slammed it down on the cockroach. Twice. Then ground it in to the floor, at which point it made that awful CRUNCH noise that almost made me gag.
And then he threatened to wipe the bottom of my shoe off on my shirt sleeve before giving it back to me.
My students. They really know how to ingratiate themselves.
I ended up using one of the other bathrooms anyway, since I didn't want to go near the gross, squashed cockroach. Gah.
Other than that, decent enough day. Had my weekly meeting with Mary, discussed some basic isotope geochemistry for the PETM and I think I understand at least the broad strokes of it okay. I also asked her if there was much on the petrology of the basin, and it turns out there is basically nothing. I have to see if I still like thin sections by the time I'm done with this sedimentary petrology class, but it sounds like there might be a good opportunity for a project there if I can find money to have approximately a bajillion thin sections made. Also talked to her about masters versus PhD, since I've started wondering if I made a mistake just applying for an MS. Apparently that's something that can be changed pretty easily mid-stream, so I'm going to stop worrying about it until I settle on a project, at which point I'll see if the scope of that project is more suited to an MS or PhD.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Inescapable Gravity Well Located In Mikael Blomkvist's Shorts
WARNING: Major, MAJOR spoilers ahead for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. At least the book. I have no idea what the movie is like.
I am not going to spoil the central mystery of the book, by the way. I actually enjoyed that part enough that it's what actually got me to finish the thing. No, my problem with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo begins and ends, like all things in that book, in Mikael Blomkvist's shorts.
Which is to say, I'm talking about his penis. Or more specifically, his penis and the inability of every female character in the book under the age of 50 to not immediately latch on to said organ and take it for a joy ride.
I'm not a prude. I swear. I read Laurel K. Hamilton, for gods' sake, at least until the killing stuff to sex ratio slipped into values of less than one. I don't have a problem with characters getting it on... as long as it actually makes sense and doesn't interfere with the story.
So it made sense when Blomkvist was banging his female friend/coworker/lady he was having an affair with that caused his divorce. Sure. I can dig that. She's a pretty cool character, actually.
Then he goes to the island, and one of the Vangers immediately squirms into his pants. Because she's apparently wanted to do that since she clapped eyes on him. Which I think is kind of a dumb reason to bang some guy you barely know, but hey, people do it all the time.
Then Blomkvist hooks up with Lisbeth, and that's about where I went WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK and just put my foot down. For starters, the sudden hop into Blomkvist's bed made absolutely no sense from the character Lisbeth had been built to be - at least in my opinion. Moreso, because in the beginning of the book she'd been the target of a very violent sexual assault, and that's something that didn't seem to even cross her mind once she encountered Blomkvist. Some very thin reasoning was given as to why she decided to ride his baloney pony, but frankly, I still think it's total crap.
Add to that the fact that as Blomkvist is described, he's not really anything all that remarkable in looks, is maybe a bit above average in the intelligence department, and it becomes more of a puzzle. If Blomkvist's beauty were at least described in creepy, cooing detail like that of D in the Vampire Hunter D Novels, I could at least buy everyone around wanting to bang him. Since hey, it apparently works that way if you're a half-vampire. Which Blomkvist manifestly isn't.
So, all I can conclude is that there's some sort of inescapable gravity well centered around Mikael Blomkvist's penis, and as soon as a woman gets within about two feet of him, she goes tumbling past the event horizon and can't escape.
And I further concluded this morning that if, during my fanfiction days, I had wrote anything remotely like a male character with a black hole in his shorts, the fan community would have cut me to shreds. And they wouldn't even have paused to sharpen their knives first, because sharpenin' is too good for dirty, lowdown scoundrels that write Mary Sue fanfiction.
The hell of it is, I really liked Lisbeth Salander as a character up until she started working with Blomkvist and slipped past the foreskin event horizon. And then to add insult to injury, not only does she bang him for no discernible reason, but she then decides that she's in love with him, for the thinnest of thin reasons. I almost threw the book across the room, except that it's not my book and my mommy raised me better than that.
I rather think the author's fallen into the gravity well, himself.
Also, the book once again continued the sad pattern that occurs in almost every action novel - if there's a small, cute animal, such as a cat, the evil killer will do something awful to it, just to show how awful and evil he is. Kind of like the way all psychopaths in the movies and on television are also avid scrapbookers.
I wanted to like the book, but considering the plot is caught between a horribly dead cat and a penis black hole, I just can't bring myself to recommend it.
I am not going to spoil the central mystery of the book, by the way. I actually enjoyed that part enough that it's what actually got me to finish the thing. No, my problem with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo begins and ends, like all things in that book, in Mikael Blomkvist's shorts.
Which is to say, I'm talking about his penis. Or more specifically, his penis and the inability of every female character in the book under the age of 50 to not immediately latch on to said organ and take it for a joy ride.
I'm not a prude. I swear. I read Laurel K. Hamilton, for gods' sake, at least until the killing stuff to sex ratio slipped into values of less than one. I don't have a problem with characters getting it on... as long as it actually makes sense and doesn't interfere with the story.
So it made sense when Blomkvist was banging his female friend/coworker/lady he was having an affair with that caused his divorce. Sure. I can dig that. She's a pretty cool character, actually.
Then he goes to the island, and one of the Vangers immediately squirms into his pants. Because she's apparently wanted to do that since she clapped eyes on him. Which I think is kind of a dumb reason to bang some guy you barely know, but hey, people do it all the time.
Then Blomkvist hooks up with Lisbeth, and that's about where I went WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK and just put my foot down. For starters, the sudden hop into Blomkvist's bed made absolutely no sense from the character Lisbeth had been built to be - at least in my opinion. Moreso, because in the beginning of the book she'd been the target of a very violent sexual assault, and that's something that didn't seem to even cross her mind once she encountered Blomkvist. Some very thin reasoning was given as to why she decided to ride his baloney pony, but frankly, I still think it's total crap.
Add to that the fact that as Blomkvist is described, he's not really anything all that remarkable in looks, is maybe a bit above average in the intelligence department, and it becomes more of a puzzle. If Blomkvist's beauty were at least described in creepy, cooing detail like that of D in the Vampire Hunter D Novels, I could at least buy everyone around wanting to bang him. Since hey, it apparently works that way if you're a half-vampire. Which Blomkvist manifestly isn't.
So, all I can conclude is that there's some sort of inescapable gravity well centered around Mikael Blomkvist's penis, and as soon as a woman gets within about two feet of him, she goes tumbling past the event horizon and can't escape.
And I further concluded this morning that if, during my fanfiction days, I had wrote anything remotely like a male character with a black hole in his shorts, the fan community would have cut me to shreds. And they wouldn't even have paused to sharpen their knives first, because sharpenin' is too good for dirty, lowdown scoundrels that write Mary Sue fanfiction.
The hell of it is, I really liked Lisbeth Salander as a character up until she started working with Blomkvist and slipped past the foreskin event horizon. And then to add insult to injury, not only does she bang him for no discernible reason, but she then decides that she's in love with him, for the thinnest of thin reasons. I almost threw the book across the room, except that it's not my book and my mommy raised me better than that.
I rather think the author's fallen into the gravity well, himself.
Also, the book once again continued the sad pattern that occurs in almost every action novel - if there's a small, cute animal, such as a cat, the evil killer will do something awful to it, just to show how awful and evil he is. Kind of like the way all psychopaths in the movies and on television are also avid scrapbookers.
I wanted to like the book, but considering the plot is caught between a horribly dead cat and a penis black hole, I just can't bring myself to recommend it.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
It's hard to write with your brain full of snot.
I have a cold. In fact, the cold, the one that's been slowly burning its way through the geology department. It got Dave (my fellow TA) last week, and my advisor, and one of the nice ladies from the office. To put it lightly, I feel like poop on a stick.
I somehow survived the second field trip today. Don't ask me how. I think it's entirely up to the wonderfulness that is TA!Dave, who came along to help do the driving and ended up running most of the field trip. Which I guess works out, since he's done the field trip many more times than me. Joe was along yesterday and basically ran everything then, too. I only had a little bit to add about sedimentary rocks at that stop, but in all honest, from the perspective of mineralogy, sedimentary rocks are pretty damn boring. Today Joe was off seeing if he could salvage anything from his house... hopefully it's not as grim as it sounds, but it's hard to feel hope on the subject of wild fires. We actually caught a glimpse of the burn damage on the drive. The ridge we passed by was black with a few skeletal trees still clinging to it. The entire area looked like a shadow with clear skies overhead.
I think I may just not go in tomorrow, since I've only got a BS class in the later afternoon. And I've already canceled my office hours.
The real question is... will I get any writing done when my brain has been replaced with snot?
Also, I want to write a ranty thing about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - the book version that is. As a sneak preview, the intended title of the post will be: "The Inescapable Gravity Well Surrounding Mikael Bomkvist's Penis." Or something along that vein.
I somehow survived the second field trip today. Don't ask me how. I think it's entirely up to the wonderfulness that is TA!Dave, who came along to help do the driving and ended up running most of the field trip. Which I guess works out, since he's done the field trip many more times than me. Joe was along yesterday and basically ran everything then, too. I only had a little bit to add about sedimentary rocks at that stop, but in all honest, from the perspective of mineralogy, sedimentary rocks are pretty damn boring. Today Joe was off seeing if he could salvage anything from his house... hopefully it's not as grim as it sounds, but it's hard to feel hope on the subject of wild fires. We actually caught a glimpse of the burn damage on the drive. The ridge we passed by was black with a few skeletal trees still clinging to it. The entire area looked like a shadow with clear skies overhead.
I think I may just not go in tomorrow, since I've only got a BS class in the later afternoon. And I've already canceled my office hours.
The real question is... will I get any writing done when my brain has been replaced with snot?
Also, I want to write a ranty thing about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - the book version that is. As a sneak preview, the intended title of the post will be: "The Inescapable Gravity Well Surrounding Mikael Bomkvist's Penis." Or something along that vein.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Field Trip Called on Account of Fire
Just in case you hadn't heard, bits of Boulder are on fire. That made today at school a little unpleasant. Campus isn't in any danger, but it was very hazy (I could barely see the Flatirons from the geology building) and everything smelled like smoke. My sinuses are feeling extremely irritated now.
The only mineralogy field trip for the semester was supposed to happen this week as well. I must say, canceling a field trip because of fire sounds a lot more butch than canceling it due to rain. Maybe next time we'll be able to ratchet it up even more and cancel it on account of alien invasion or giant panda attack.
People weren't talking about it that much, but the smoke is pretty oppressive, and fire that close to town is a little scary. At least one of the faculty has had his house burn down. He seemed to be taking it a lot better than I ever would, but at least he had his computer with him when everyone got evacuated. So he might have lost a lot of books and other prized possessions, but at least he didn't lose any research he was working on. Another person I met in the building today mentioned that he'd been evacuated from his house, and he hoped that it didn't end up burning down because he had all of the literature reprints he needed for an article he's been working on for 10 years in his office, and if that goes up in flames he'll pretty much just have to give up on it.
Maybe it's that both of these gentleman are a lot older than me, or that when you live out where you can see something approaching wilderness from your front door, you have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes nature is one mean mother. But man, they both seemed pretty calm and resigned.
This is one more thing that makes me glad to live in the suburbs, though. Stuff is just stuff, but I also have kitties to worry about.
Also: Phil Plait has pictures over at his blog.
The picture of the sunset freaks me out a little - it makes me think of the Hayman Fire, when at midday in south Denver the sky was orange and ash was raining down. Brrr.
Don't fuck with mother nature.
The only mineralogy field trip for the semester was supposed to happen this week as well. I must say, canceling a field trip because of fire sounds a lot more butch than canceling it due to rain. Maybe next time we'll be able to ratchet it up even more and cancel it on account of alien invasion or giant panda attack.
People weren't talking about it that much, but the smoke is pretty oppressive, and fire that close to town is a little scary. At least one of the faculty has had his house burn down. He seemed to be taking it a lot better than I ever would, but at least he had his computer with him when everyone got evacuated. So he might have lost a lot of books and other prized possessions, but at least he didn't lose any research he was working on. Another person I met in the building today mentioned that he'd been evacuated from his house, and he hoped that it didn't end up burning down because he had all of the literature reprints he needed for an article he's been working on for 10 years in his office, and if that goes up in flames he'll pretty much just have to give up on it.
Maybe it's that both of these gentleman are a lot older than me, or that when you live out where you can see something approaching wilderness from your front door, you have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes nature is one mean mother. But man, they both seemed pretty calm and resigned.
This is one more thing that makes me glad to live in the suburbs, though. Stuff is just stuff, but I also have kitties to worry about.
Also: Phil Plait has pictures over at his blog.
The picture of the sunset freaks me out a little - it makes me think of the Hayman Fire, when at midday in south Denver the sky was orange and ash was raining down. Brrr.
Don't fuck with mother nature.
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