Steve

( Today's tweets under the cut )

Today, after sleeping on and off for 1 1/2 days, I woke up feeling almost human. I don't believe it was any kind of flu just a really awful, fast-moving cold. I'm still coughing (trying to get up the stuff that's too far down for comfort)and it hurts every time I cough--ribs, etc caused BY the coughing the first two days. I felt good enough to go out and shop for zinc (couldn't find the Odwalla Vit C drink) and groceries. And for the first time in years, I had them delivered.

I ate my first food early afternoon--yesterday I just had toast--I just didn't want anything else that I had in the house.
Making chicken soup now. Taking expectorant cough syrup, gargling with salt water, drinking lots of water.

Enroute home I picked up a four foot tall book shelf/column that I think I'll -put in my bedroom to keep the "books to be read for Best of the year"--rather than where they have been--on my floor. We'll see how that works.

And here are the photos from WFC: http://tinyurl.com/yb7j6eq

So to give you something to read, I offer you this.

*MEEP* The road construction crew is outside my house, making sounds similar to the Tardis' Cloister Bell. If they blow me up, at least I can't say I wasn't warned.

That and the mail carrier left a snotty note for the crew in my mailbox. Something about having their orange cones too close to the mail box, thereby blocking her path to the box. I handed it over the closest guy. The actual construction on the freaking road doesn't start until next year. I'm going to be even more loopy by then.

http://cuteoverload.com/2009/11/07/pnf/

http://cuteoverload.com/?p=34688

http://cuteoverload.com/2009/11/07/worst-caturday-evar/

http://cuteoverload.com/?p=34683

Plot Summary for
When Worlds Collide (2010) [...]

Alpha Centauri is on a collision course for Earth [...]

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=10140

My friend Tibor Pacher reports that the MiniSpaceWorld Design Contest is getting quite interesting, with six submissions of high quality, all going in different directions. Tibor’s goal is to build a scale model world that, like the famous Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, shows off space technology in tiny, exquisite detail. We’re used to seeing this kind of thing particularly in the model railroad world, so why not extend the idea into space as a tool for educators?

Now you can go to the site to see basic maps from the contestants. The contest award ceremony is to be held in Budapest on December 5 in the Congress Hall of the Research Centre for Social Studies, a Hungarian Academy of Sciences institute, and as Tibor notes, this is in the Budapest castle district, so there is much more to do in the area for those lucky enough to attend. Be aware that voting on the submissions is open until November 15, and have a look at the MSW site for more information.

Brand's annotations

( Read more... )

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2495

The Atlantic recently published an article called "Does the Vaccine Matter?". The quick answer is yes. If you want to know more, keep reading. They concluded, based on a narrow interpretation of a small subset of the data, that vaccines probably do not matter. The tone suggests that ...

I just started playing 360... I used to play WoW a lot (*cringe*), mainly because that's literally ALL my roommates do. I got really bored with it and we also have an xbox, so I canceled my WoW account and signed up for xbox live.

The only games I've played very much so far are L4D and Borderlands, which I picked up yesterday. I love Borderlands a lot, it's probably my favorite game in a long time. Sometimes I can coax one of my roomates into playing splitscreen with me but really I'd like to have some friends I can play online with... I don't have any.

If you don't mind playing with a n00b (I'm not terrible, just faaaar from an experienced gamer as a lot of you are) then add me? My gamertag is absterse.

Thanks =)
 

the_child and I are leaving shortly to spend the middle of the day with jeffvandermeer. I think the Japanese Garden may be in the offing, which would be splendid. After his reading tonight, I have a dinner with ginastonge. All in all, a grand day out in some glorious weather.

The rest of you get out, too.

Should I put "a majority Wildrose Alliance government running Alberta" as one of those contingencies I should be ready for or will they probably peak and decline before the next election?

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/uncertainprinciples/~3/qSd9EaPw984/great_moments_in_targeted_adve.php

http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2009/11/great_moments_in_targeted_adve.php

We subscribe to Locus, the SF review and news magazine, and every month when it arrives, I flip through it quickly to look at the ads. This is a useful guide to what's coming out from various publishers, but it's also kind of fascinating to see how the different publishers market their stuff.

In particular, it's interesting to see how Baen pitches their books, because they are aimed with laser-like precision at people who aren't me. I'm sure their ads work very well for their target audience, but they make their forthcoming books sound absolutely horrifying to me. This month's ad may be the ultimate, featuring the following plug for a Tom Kratman book:

Undercover Infidels!

Europe 2123. Dhimmitude-- assigning second-class citizenship to non-Muslims-- has dug its claws into the continent. Now a West Point grad must rescue a young girl sold into sexual slavery after her family could not pay the Christian Tax. U. S. Army vertean Tom Kratman notches up another controversial thriller!

If that didn't scream "Run away!!!" loudly enough, there's a glowing quote from Mark Steyn. I'm not sure it would be possible to construct a more appalling book ad.

Oh, wait, I stand corrected: later in the same issue, there's a plug for The Science Behind the Secret, featuring a quote from noted con man tv psychic John Edward claiming that quantum mechanics is the basis for the "Law of Attraction." This is also a Baen book, coming in March. And it pretty much guarantees that even if they publish something I might like (hey, it could happen), I'll be getting it from the library, rather than giving them any of my beer money.

Read the comments on this post...

The surface chemistry is not what we expected and there appears to be a high level of volcanic activity.

The idea of this "getting to know you meme" is that if you want to play, you comment with "resistance is futile" and I'll ask you five questions.

( My Q&A from Erinya )

Went to a fireworks night at Ruth's friend's last night. Pretty fireworks, good food. I ended up hanging around with Ruth's friends who are all fifteen and I felt like the cool big sister, which is intensely gratifying.

My interview for a phd in Edinburgh went well, though it was certainly a weird one. They were laughing with me, I think . . . I have my paper to write up anyway and I should really get a start made on that. I'm just feeling quite unmotivated at the moment. I think my walk/jog helped today though, since I made the route in 42 minutes without feeling totally knackered afterwards, so go me! Once I've gotten this internetting out of the way, I'll try do some work. Honestly

Photographed by me near Taos Ski Valley, NM. © 2006, 2009 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Viking’s jacket copy for Whole Earth Discipline

What this says to me is that the target audience isn't people like me but people in the environmental movement (both activists and passive supporters). Fair enough.

Whole Earth Discipline shatters a number of myths.

That should appeal to the contrarians. Here's hoping he diverts some money that would otherwise go to Superfreakonomics.

I do have one tiny quibble: Yes, we're in the middle of a massive wave of urbanization, yes, the climate does appear to be changing but I question the tense of biotechnology is becoming the world’s dominant engineering tool. Surely during the 10,000 years when farming and domestication were a dominant human activity biotechnology was our major tool? Entire continental ecosystems have been reshaped by humans with what are by our standards pretty basic methods of creating and encouraging lifeforms suitable to our needs. He's probably using the term in a narrower sense than I would.