interesting things

And now, something fun

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Woody from Dan Britt on Vimeo.

via Andrew Sullivan

Randomness for 9/23

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1) qotd: “I don’t mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface.” — James Nicoll

2) Best Fiction Generator Ever.

3) Reverse image search. Pretty cool.

4) What are the effects of killing all the pigs in Egypt? via Jay Lake

5) “Writers want to write short fiction and they’re going to keep finding ways to get them to readers. Writers seem willing to keep writing, even in the face of comparative commercial indifference.” Short fiction as loss-leaders for novels? As hobbyist activity? via matociquala

6) Real estate agent sends listing to sf/f lit agent for two and a half million dollar mountaintop retreat, because of course her millionaire genre writers will want to snap that right up. I wish she’d linked to the listing; I’ll bet Castle would look great perched on a rough wooden bench, staring thoughtfully into the morning mist.

6a) How to get rich as a writer? (geniusofevil, skip this part) Donald Maas’s free e-book has some interesting conclusions about the things writers do and don’t do to make a six-figure salary. I can’t help but wonder if he’d get the same results if he ran that survey again.

7) International Beard and Moustache Championships. Honestly, some of these make me a little sick.

8) Homes with cats 8 times more likely to contain mrsa. Not that it isn’t totally worth the risk!!! More interesting are the things listed that do not increase the germ risk.

Randomness for 9/21

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1) Parasite eats fish’s tongue, then lives in its mouth feeding off its food. This one gives me goosebumps.

2) For The Love Of Scottie McMullet — Romance novels retitled to match their covers. I wish they’d do some sf/f/h novels.

3) PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, a micro-budget horror film from a few years ago, is finally going to get a release. Check out the trailer, too.

4) Making your own video game monsters. I don’t know a thing about Bioshock, but even I know this is cool.

5) OMG, one week until Child of Fire‘s book release day.

Randomness for 9/16

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I was planning to take a break from these for a couple days, but the universe has other plans.

1) The Philadelphia Free Library is closing for lack of funding. The city of my birth is about to join southern Oregon as a place I will never, ever live in.

2) On a lighter note, a haiku about the Sub-mariner, in comics form.

3) The Dan Brown sequel generator, which I can’t see at work. Is it funny?

4) Birth of a meme! “Whose responsible this!” via glvalentine

5) Dungeons and Dragons, the sodas! I’m going to be all over Digby’s Crushing Thirst Destroyer.

Followup to yesterday’s post

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Evidence is increasing that obesity is not simply a matter of self-indulgence and self-control. While I’ve seen articles here and there about chemical influences on weight and diabetes, this is the first article I’ve come across that ties several research threads together.

Obviously, this all comes with the caveat that it’s science reporting, which is likely to be wildly inaccurate in the details and the implications. However! If the research is solid, it could go a long way to understanding the health implications of the chemicals we use everyday, not to mention the difficulties people have with their weight.

And while I’d heard of the problems associated with DDT and other pesticides, this is the first time I’d heard of preliminary results linking childhood obesity to soy.

It’s interesting stuff, and it really challenges the typical moralizing about food and weight in this culture. Also interesting is that that article linking obesity to chemicals hasn’t attracted the trolls the way the article about the link between obesity and genetics has.

On a personal level, I took my son to the pool yesterday for his “swim lesson” (really just an excuse to get out and move around). Generally, I don’t like swimming–I dislike being submerged in something I can’t breathe, and my son really hates it–but it was great to spend an hour playing without a full day’s worth of knee and ankle pain.

Randomness for 9/15/09

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1) Tron light cycles build out of Lego. Pretty cool, but it’s not something for my son–he’s never seen the movie.

2) Strange and spectacular sinks/wash basins. I expect you think I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel, link-wise, but these are pretty amazing. I want the Art Ceram, myself. via marthawells

3) Newsweek does a story called The Real Cause of Obesity: It’s not gluttony. It’s genetics. Why our moralizing misses the point. The comment section, as you might expect, is a disaster of dim-witted moralizing. “Mr. Friedman is not very well informed. Genetics is only a very small factor in obesity. The role that it plays is that as a person eats junk food, is sedentary in their overall activities, it weakens the genetic code and gets passed on. But not only do the genes get passed on, the bad habits get passed on to the offspring and the genetic code continues to get weaker. ”

4) Sexual assault prevention tips that are guaranteed to work when employed correctly. via james_nicoll and theweaselking

5) One thing I struggle with in my writing is how to show mental states of many characters in a first-person POV. This TED talk about the development of the part of the brain that recognizes other people’s mental states doesn’t address my struggles specifically, but it’s pretty interesting.

6) You know who wants more Americans to have government-run insurance? Doctors. Yeah, doctors complain about Medicare reimbursement rates, but private insurance is an even bigger headache.

Chat with a Campbell winner

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Tomorrow, 9/15/09 at 7pm EST, Suvudu.com will be hosting a chat with John W. Campbell award winner David Anthony Durham.

Check it out.

Randomness for 9/13/09

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1) Glenn Beck “doesn’t think the race thing works anymore.”

2) The Facebook Song. I know, you’ve probably already seen it, but I’m kinda new to Facebook, so I’m just catching up.

3) Animals with lightsabers. via matt_ruff

Randomness for 9/12/09

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1) Toilet Birthdays. Because every blog needs a purpose. Or every purpose needs a blog.

2) You know that new show The Vampire Diaries? Well, it’s based on some very strange books. Very.

3) “Whiteout” is so staggeringly bad that it achieves a kind of transcendent poetry. It’s ignorant of how things are in the real world, of what makes a thriller a thriller, of why people seek out entertainment. It’s a movie made for an irony-free world populated by impaired moviegoers who are amused simply by shapes and sounds and shiny things…

A chimpanzee could’ve finger-painted a better movie. A chimpanzee, somewhere in the world, probably has.

Attention, chimpanzee: Send your finger-painted screenplay to Tom Skerritt. He’ll sign on for it. He signed up for “Whiteout,” after all.

4) How to hide an airplane factory.

5) Writer Beware examines the myth that you have to know someone to get published. ::raises hand:: As a data point, I didn’t know my agent or my editor before I signed with them, and I didn’t have any connections, either. I did it by cold-query.

6) A Main Force Patrol T-shirt. I’m thinking my friend Mike would love this one, but check out the categories. The designs are really well done. via serialkarma

Randomness for 9/10/09

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1) MightyGodKing offers an interesting take on secret identities for two of the most iconic superheroes in comics.

2) The browser on my work computer won’t let me comment there, but Genreville’s Josh Jasper draws the line and I am in complete agreement with him. That bullshit should never be tolerated.

3) A review of The Playboy Sheikh’s Virgin Stable Girl. (Weirdly, the URL has “playbot” instead of “playboy,” which is not a thought I needed to have right now.