1) Entrepreneurship and health care. “You’ve heard of learned helplessness? This is learned corporatism.”
2) Giant stuffed microbes. Just in case you wanted to cuddle up to the swine flu.
3) Want to receive free advance reader copies of Del Rey books to review on your blog? Fill out this form.
4) Limits of human endurance: in the muscles or in the brain? Crazy-interesting, and my wife will love this. via Jay Lake
5) Do you guys like these link roundups? Anything you want less/more of?
I haven’t wanted to say anything about Josh Olson’s often-linked rant about people asking him to read their scripts.
A lot of people have already dissected this from several angles and the only thing I could contribute to the conversation is that Josh Olson used to post in that sort of tone all the time back on the Wordplayer boards. (And the search engines at the site will only cough up one result when I search for Olson and fuck. Hah! I say. HAH!) That was his thing, and it wasn’t such a big deal in that context.
There’re also several posts on the topic by John Scalzi–this is an example of where he stands–and Lee Goldberg.
But what makes me think about this are the political activists outside the library.
See, every time I make my Wednesday trip to the library, there’s a pair (or more) of young, attractive activists soliciting signatures or whatever for lefty causes. And while I support lefty causes (generally) and have a ACLU card right here in my wallet, I don’t want to stop and talk to these people. I don’t have time on my lunch break, and at the end of the day I’m trying to reach a bus.
Most of the time, they’re fine with me shaking my head and looking away as I walk by. Or they’re not so put out that I know about it. But sometimes they go a little too far.
Not too long ago, a young woman stepped up to me as I walked by with her hand extended as though we should shake. As though a busy city sidewalk was a social situation where folks meet and greet.
I perceived that extended hand as an imposition, because I knew she was trying to use social cuing to make me stop what I was doing and deal with her thing. It annoyed me, and I nearly said “Don’t do that.”
And then yesterday, I had a guy walking to intercept me, with his hand extended like he wanted to shake. And since he was moving to block my path, it came across as aggressive.
“Not interested,” I said.
“In what?” he answered, knowing very well that I had no idea what cause he wanted to run by me.
“Talking,” I answered.
Did he think I was a dick? Hell, yeah. I saw it on his face and heard it in his voice. But what that guy didn’t understand is that he was intruding on me and my time. It’s like walking up to a stranger on the street and taking a bite out of the sandwich in their hand.
He should be asking me from a distance. He shouldn’t be moving to intercept me. He shouldn’t be offering his hand to me as though we’d just been introduced by a mutual friend. What he should do is ask me, as I approach “Do you have a minute to talk about the whales (or whatever).” That’s it.
And this is why I have tremendous sympathy for Olson, Scalzi and Lee Goldberg, no matter how I feel about the tone of their comments. Some people do not understand that they are not entitled to your time. They think they get to decide how important my schedule is. They think their needs are paramount.
It’s not that people shouldn’t ask for things. It’s that they don’t know how to do it correctly.
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.
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.
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.
… Of people taken up in the Rapture.
1) People, I ask you: if we’re going to promote AIDS prevention, should we really be turning to Adolf Hitler pron?
2) How content aggregation explains that the upside of contracting AIDS is “The Spanish Civil War.” seen via tnh’s Particles.
3) New Japanese prime minister’s wife once flew on a space ship to Venus. I’m just going to assume the sex is fantastic.
They’re at work, they’re dealing with people all day, making them food and drinks and socializing a little bit. And it’s a coffee shop, not a library. People talk, they laugh, music is playing.
What I do mind is the guy sitting across from me complaining about the noise they make, calling them “ninnies.” When they talk and laugh, they’re doing it with each other–it has nothing to do with me and is easily ignored. But when a dude addresses me directly, *that* breaks my concentration.
Quick note for everyone who works in coffee shops: You are not in a library.
1) Man builds houses for low-income citizens using mostly recycled material. My wife would love this.
2) Arkansas fire chief shot in court room after criticizing local police. Apparently, while criticizing cops who do nothing but write speeding tickets, there was a “scuffle.” The fire chief was unarmed.
It’s interesting that the town where this took place has 147 residents and seven officers. According to the article, they spend their time manning speed traps, but the county sheriff dept. is investigating where all that money went, since the police cars are about to be repossessed.
As yet, no one has been charged in the shooting.
3) The GOP released a press release listing doctors who oppose the current health care reform bills. Unfortunately, the doctors on the list didn’t know a thing about it.
4) Fire ants build a life raft from their own bodies. I understand that it’s almost certainly staged to some degree, but it’s still fascinating.
5) The Coen Brothers make a short film about a man entering an art house theater. It’s simple and wonderful. “A Human Comedy of Sorts.”
I’m going to compile a bunch of random things into this post and publish them all at once.
1) via geniusofevil: Heat Wave: Richard Castle is a real writer!
2) I’ve been going back and forth on some common euphamisms. Yesterday, in a comment, I used the term “godsend.” Is that a word an atheist should use? I think not, obviously, since it bothers me. In the few stolen moments I had to type out the comment, I couldn’t come up with an alternative that said the same thing.
Except there’s “ghu” or “ghod” but I think of that as an SF fandom thing, and I’m not part of that community, either. Sometimes I write “Thank Pikachu” or whatever as a joke, even though at this point I’m the only member of my household who thinks Pikachu is cool.
I don’t really have a point. This is just something I’m thinking about.
3) Nicholas Kristof on the myth that government can’t do health care. And yeah, I spent way too much time yesterday arguing health care on John Scalzi’s blog.
3a) Arguing about health care on the web makes me hate the universe!
4) PW’s newly focused blog, Genreville (verdict: interesting so far) offers Lev Grossman the opportunity to knock over some straw men. He accepts.
6) Man builds house out of Legos.
7) Work on Man Bites World continues slowly, but this is a really difficult section. Very different from what I’ve been doing before, and I’m going to have to revise it significantly once I straighten out in my mind how the protagonist would react to extremely strange events.