links

Jo Walton posted these links on her LiveJournal

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In two linked posts, NY Times Bestselling author Jennifer Crusie posts a NaNoWriMo-riffic rough draft, and two days later posts about her process for analyzing the scene for revision.

Jo Walton and other smart people discuss it here on her LJ. I’m in there talking, too.

Personally, I do something very like this when I have a scene that doesn’t work but I can’t figure out why. I don’t normally think in terms of antagonists and beats, though. I usually examine scenes by the character goals, the resources it needs/introduces, and the work it’s supposed to do.

I hadn’t considered the concept of “frames” before–I think I’m going to steal that one. As for identifying the antagonists, well, in the Twenty Palaces books, pretty much everyone is an antagonist. It’s identifying the non-antagonists that gives me headaches.

Randomness for 11/12

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1) Detroit: failed city/urban planning petri dish. via James Nicoll

2) New ocean forming in Africa.

3) Superfreakonomics and horseshit. via Paul Krugman

4) Elegant wedding reception breaks down into moving brawl. ‘The fighting ruined the reception and some of the guests and wedding party members headed to their hotel nearby where the fighting erupted all over again in the parking lot of the Marriott Residence Inn which is located at 4312 Boy Scout Boulevard. A woman put the groom’s 74 year old grandmother, Mary Wright in a choke hold.

Wright told 10 Connects that she was trying to calm down the crowd and tell them not to fight on such a special occasion. She says that’s when her attacker said “I’m going to have to choke you out.”‘

5) 50,000 lost soldiers found, 2,500 years after they were lost.

6) Google auto-complete reveals class and education differences. “Someone once told me that there is nowhere we are more honest than the search box.” via Ezra Klein

7) TV cook accidentally does science. Here’s your big surprise for the day: eating decent food improves schooling. I know! Shock!

8) White privilege even extends to virtual environments. Fer Chrissakes.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger…

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I was going to put this link into a “Randomness” link compilation post, like this:

Texting teen falls into open manhole. Oh, how I laughed. via tnh’s Particles

Go ahead and read it. I’ll be waiting here.

Done? Good. Did you laugh? I already admitted that I laughed, too. But I still feel sorry for that kid.

Now, I’ve heard a couple people say what a shame it is that her mom plans to sue over this, but I’m on their side (pending further facts, ‘natch). Leaving aside the fact that Americans aren’t nearly as litigious as our culture seems to think, workers shouldn’t leave an open manhold without warning cones or something around it. I don’t really care if she was texting at the time. What if she’d been distracted by something else? What if she’d been in the middle of an intense conversation with the friend beside her? What if she’d been on her cell, trying to get the latest on her grandmother’s ailing health?

By all reports, texting is incredibly distracting. Almost off-the-scale distracting. But that doesn’t mean the incident was all her fault. Workers have been cordoning off open manholes for longer than text-capable phones have been around, and for good reason. So I hope she gets a settlement that helps cover her doctor visit, at least.

I still laughed at the story, though.

Health care reform with private insurers

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Ezra Klein has a fascinating interview with Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson here (Part one | Part two).

It’s no surprise that he’s not a fan of nationalized single-payor system, but the man makes a good case and he brings up great points. It’s no secret that KP is one of the leading lights in U.S. health care (no snickering!) and if this issue interests you, check out what the man has to say.

Money quote:

The Commonwealth study looked at 5 million claims across a broad population and asked how much care shouldn’t have happened. They concluded that of $2 trillion spent, $500 billion was for the wrong care. Milliman did the same study but asked what would happen if we took the practices of the best medical plans, how much will we save? They got $500 billion.

Reviews of Child of Fire part 3

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I should probably save this until I have more, but what the heck. Link roundup: Continue reading

Randomness for 11/3

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1) Gore Vidal can go fuck himself.

“So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?”

via bookslut

2) Malcolm Gladwell: Football, dogfighting and brain damage. I don’t think I’m going to be able to watch football in the same way again. Actually, I’m thinking of giving it up entirely.

3) On a slightly lighter note: America pays more for its health care, in convenient chart form. The interesting thing about this is that people say Medicare spending is unsustainable, and also that they don’t pay enough for doctors et al to keep their doors open. Aside from the fact that those two are pretty much contradictory, it’s instructive to see how much more money Medicare spends than foreign payors.

4) Now for something upbeat: Writer Carrie Vaughn: The Best Advice I Ever Got. How perfect the timing of this is for me!

5) And then there’s this: Supernatural collective nouns. via tnh’s particles.

Woo-hoo!

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ZOMG, Child of Fire just made the Publisher’s Weekly “Best Books of 2009” list!

Holy crap! I’m no longer wigged out about spending most of yesterday underneath the kitchen sink, fixing a leaky connection and scrubbing you don’t even want to know what. (I even dreamed about it, gah!)

Holy crap!!

::Does a little dance:: :D

Also, thank you to the folks who helped me with the cover copy of book two in my previous post. As soon as I stop floating around my living room, I’m having another go at that.

Randomness for 11/1

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1) New book explains why Tina Fey hates Sarah Palin. Apparently, they play different kinds of characters on TV.

2) The Ten Funniest People on Twitter. You’re welcome.

3) In *my* day we had to roll the dice ourselves… And we were happy to do it, too!

4) Free web games, with tips for winning them.

5) Nine questionable Batman toys. I’ve linked to the water pistol before, but the bath foam is even more disturbing.

Happy Halloween!

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House Haunted By Tortured Souls Of Current Residents

“HARTFORD, MI—On the outside it may look like any other home, but within the walls of 6535 Maple Ave. lies a terrifying secret: Every night, when the sun goes down and the moon comes out, this suburban bungalow is haunted by the restless, tormented souls of its current residents, the Davidson family.”

E-Book Stuff

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I missed this when it first blew up last week (thanks a lot, missing LJ-feeds!), but apparently there was an online dustup about the fact that Kindle owners can have more than one Kindle (or iPhone) on a single account. There’s no requirement that the machines all belong to the same person, or that they all live at the same address, either. This lets people who download a book onto their Kindle share it with friends.

Apparently, this came up in a NYTimes article, and some authors went on a name-and-shame campaign against the reader named in the article because the article made it seem that she was bending the rules. Dear Author covers the situation pretty well, and makes some good points about e-books and book-sharing.

Me, I think it’s great that Kindle readers can share. That brings me closer (but not to) the point that I’d be willing to get one. People: Share my books with your friends and I will be happy!

Oh, and writers shouldn’t call readers “thieves.” Duh.

On that note, John Scalzi points out that Amazon.com has a new patent that would track e-book piracy by altering the text of the book in unique ways–essentially substituting synonyms for words in the book.

Scalzi, quite sensibly, calls bullshit on that. Jane at Dear Author likes the idea better, although she seems to be promoting an idea similar to but not identical to what Scalzi’s talking about.

For me, I hate it. I have zero faith in a computer’s ability to substitute synonyms sensibly. In fact, readers would probably be astute enough to spot the switches.

And it reminds me of certain horror stories, such as the English author who who discovered that the editors who published their book in the U.S. were concerned enough that American readers would be confused by British terminology (“They went back to his flat.”) that they did wholesale search-and-replace. At which point one of the characters delivered a line of dialog “apartmently.” Ungood.

I’m with Scalzi on this one (and I hope that “apartmently” story is apocryphal).