Controlled Deorbiting

1. I have walked a little over 30 miles in the last 10 days.

2. The south of France is very hot in summer. And no, it's emphatically not a dry heat.

3. The French Alps are not particularly hot, especially at 7000 feet. But alas, neither the French nor the Swiss share the American obsession with air conditioned public spaces. And, according to some schools of thought, hotels also count as public spaces.

4. I drank nearly 1/2 of my body weight in expensive bottled water on this trip. At 2-3 Euros a liter, I'm afraid to calculate what that must have cost me in US dollars. And I think nearly 2/3 of that expensive bottled water left my body in the form of sweat.

5. Oh, but I did so much better than those poor suckers at the Astronomical Optics meeting! Not only did they lack A/C, they also had twice as many people as available seats. And apparently the $800 of registration fee did not include water breaks. (Fishboy almost received a NASA grant on the spot when he discovered the conference staff had hidden bottled water beneath the display tables.) Several people complimented Chris on the wisdom of his decision to play hooky for the first three days of the conference.

6. French delivery truck drivers are apparently all clinical sociopaths who are incapable of experiencing either fear for their own continued health/well-being, or any basic human sympathy for other drivers. Chris says: "Oh, I see. The reason why France doesn't have any Formula One drivers is because they're all too busy driving garbage trucks."

7. And that goes double for the dingbats on the mopeds.

6. My camera is gone. We think we might have left it in the rental car when we returned it? It was a Canon Powershot SD870 IS, and it had all of our pics from our first three days of driving around southern Provence. And just typing all that makes me deeply angry, so I think I'll move on to the next point now.

7. I was almost too tired after 25 hours of flying to realize, when I finally glimpsed the ocean as we drove into Marseille two Sundays ago, that I had never before seen the Mediterranean Sea.

8. I have now been swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. It wasn't much of a swim, admittedly. But it was another hot afternoon, and the water felt wonderful. And I had seaweed in my hair afterwards.

9. This was also my first time in the Alps. I really can't say enough wonderful things about hiking in the Alps in summer, so I'll just link to David's pictures instead.

10. Baguette-ham-and-butter sandwiches in the south of France are not quite as good as the equivalent sandwiches in Paris. (And sandwiches in Geneva are simply terrible.)

10. There were dogs hanging out on the high-speed trains and at all of the brasseries. And at the three-star Michelin restaurant! France is an awesome place to be a dog and/or dog owner.

11. It is, however, less wonderful for vegetarians.

12. And it must be an absolute nightmare for persons with physical disabilities. There are staircases everywhere, but NO wheelchair ramps; even when there are escalators/elevators, they're very often broken.

13. Bumblebees on lavender make me tremendously happy.

Marseille to be precise. French people keep trying to tell us that Marseille is a dirty hole of a city. And maybe it's all relative, but somehow I'm having a hard time believing them.

Poll #1207817 important international travel questions!
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Should I take my laptop?

Yes, I do.

And now I'm completely beat, so that's all the blogging you get. Hope you enjoyed it!

Okay, no. I guess my week isn't going that badly.

note how the guy with the camera thoughtfully zooms in for a closer shot, rather than, say, offering assistance.

A best-of-the-best collection of the Earth as photographed from space: The Sky, From Above.

(via harvestar)

IN MADISON STOP HAVE MIGRAINE STOP SEND ICE PACKS AND CHOCOLATE COMMA ALL MY LOVE COMMA JACKIE

(seriously, I had so much work to get through this week before I could go to wiscon, I almost wished I could just stay home.) (I did have a brief period of honest-to-gosh pre-wiscon anticipatory excitement on Sunday night. From about 11pm until 1:30am. And then I took a sedative.)

(via James)

Because sometimes I suspect we are talking about two very different movements...

Poll #1187179 connotations
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

When you hear the work "Feminism," do you think of...

What else did I forget?

When you hear "Feminist Science Fiction," do you think of...

What else did I leave out?

Let me tell you, learning that the place where you grew up is/was a well-known sundown town? Really diminishes the old hometown charm.

This book is amazing. I am embarrassed and horrified by how little I know about the history of the hemisphere in which I have lived my entire life.

When I grow up, I want to be Christopher Rowe^*. Seriously. People talk about a sense of place? Nobody has as strong a one as Mr. Rowe.

* Er, which is not to say that I want to marry Gwenda. With all due apologies to Gwenda.

is 18 years old today.

(via Dr. Lisa, who has students that old sitting in her class. Eek, I say.)

Thank you all for the book recs, guys. I do see plenty of people talking about plenty of books during my semi-circadian stroll around the internet, but... well, it can be overwhelming, you know? For one, I can't read as fast as most of the people whose blogs I read. I certainly can't keep up with 20 people who read at 10 times my speed.

Plus, it's nice to just sit people down and have them talk about the best books they've read in the last year.

---

Topic change. Everybody's heard about the alleged dark matter detection from the DAMA group? Yes? I hear that the NY Times science reporting is pretty good this time around; Bad Astronomy also has a nice write-up. Cosmic Variance has the skeptic's guide to all the ifs, ands, and buts.

The actual science paper is here. wait, the project lead is a woman? This is like... the best day EVER.

I was going to read Moby Dick next (what? stop looking at me like that) but I can't seem to locate the $2.50 copy I purchased last week at the used bookstore. (It originally sold for $1.25! In 1960! How's that for inflation?) And I don't feel like reading any of the other books I've piled up in my to-read list...

So what have you all read recently and enjoyed? And feel is a must-read? Where "recently" is defined as "within the last year."


ps. Who has my copy of Green Glass Sea? And is it the same person who's holding my copy of O Pure and Radiant Heart?

While googling searching for a conversion from UK women's size 12 to US sizes, I came across the following picture:


On the left we have model Jen Hunter; on the right, model Marianne Berglund, who appeared in the same swimsuit as fellow finalist Ms. Hunter on the reality TV show Make Me a Supermodel.

Poll #1168612
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Which do you find more attractive/visually appealing?

( Here's the insane part )

Male Anna's hummingbird in my front yard this evening:




( The kids next door have named him Hubert )

This National Geographic article on animal intelligence is interesting, of course. But what really got me was the description of how the late great Alex-the-parrot would occasionally request a view of the tree just outside the lab window.

Meanwhile, this elephant is painting its own self-portrait (via cute overload):


And I can't help but think that this brings the humanitarian^* arguments against culling elephants with helicoptors and sharp-shooters very sharply into focus.


* Even the word "humanitarian" is wretchedly anthropocentric, you know?

Because humans will make pets out of just about anything.

I can't help but notice that you seem to be spending a disproportionate amount of time on the internet defending the character of various acquaintances, fellow editors, and close personal friends in the SF community who have been accused of indulging in slight-to-egregious acts of verbal (and occasionally physical!) misogyny/sexism/racism.

And while I realize that this comment of mine will likely come back to bite me twenty years from now when I find myself standing up to defend members of my own generation against aspersions of neolithic wrongheadedness... still, I feel compelled to point out that the sheer number of times that you've recently had to act as character witness coupled with the logic of Occam's razor implies that on at least some of these occasions, some of these folks did indeed say and do just exactly that.

Sincerely,
Jackie M.


ps. Just a general comment, and not directed at Datlow... what Nora said. Why does it seem like every time someone complains about "political correctness," it's because they've just exposed the ickiest, ugliest corners of their hearts? And now they're cross about having been called out for it?

You are about 20 years old

The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that you can hear is 16.7kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

trogon and I can both hear up to 16.7 kHz. livewire_monkey can only hear up to 12 kHz. She suspects the multiple ear infections she suffered as a child are to blame.

We can't tell what the cat can hear; her reaction to the tones was to lie down and take a nap.

A few more pictures from my cell phone here.

And I think that's really all there is to say. (Or at least until I get home and get proper internet. Or at least, internet that doesn't cost $.50 a minute.)

the Joss-Whedon-Is-Not-A-Feminist thing to me? I mean, hell, Joanna Russ thinks he's a feminist...

EDIT: I'm drafting an e-mail to the Wiscon Concom to nominate Whedon for a GoH invite. Full of the usual typos and crap, of course. If anybody wants to dissuade me and/or co-sign and/or buy me a cupcake, speak up...

Homage du Greg:


( blurry cell phone pictures, now with ocean view )

Remember, every time a moderate white male American votes for Obama, an angel gets its wings!

You don't want all those nice angels to have pay $50 for a cab ride every time they need to get to an airport do you?

Science Fiction Community n. 1. A group of individuals united not so much by their common passion for the genre of space ships, time travel, alien worlds, and far-flung futures of flying cars and fully-automated kitchen appliances, but rather by their shared ability to become rapidly and disproportionately irate when confronted with one another's ad hoc attempts at classifying/describing some aspect of the wider world and/or one another's defenses/criticism thereof.
2. And Niall.

Via yhlee and coffeeandink, a quote from shati:

"Late at night on February 3rd, a student at my college was stalked, harassed, threatened, and called racial slurs by two men (not students, and unconnected with the college) lurking outside his window. Which they then smashed. The student -- Jason -- called the police, but before they arrived, the two men busted into the dorm and attacked Jason, breaking his nose. He defended himself, and the men were stabbed (no one's said whether the men brought the knife in with them or whether it came from somewhere else); all three of them had to be transported to a hospital afterward. When the police arrived, they restrained and handcuffed Jason, who is of Jamaican descent, before finding out that he was the one who had called them for help.

Jason has no previous criminal record -- instead he's got a record of social service and volunteer work. He's been arrested on multiple charges, including two counts of assault with intent to murder. At first he was the only one charged; since then, one of his attackers has been charged with hate crimes and disorderly conduct, and the other still has not been charged at all. Both are white.

There's a blog up called Justice for Jason. It has more information on the incident, on the legal fallout, and on how to help Jason's family with the legal costs of his defense, which could be as much as $15,000."

Guess which university? ( Answer under the cut! )

A new mnemonic for memorizing the 11 planets.

Wait, how did we get back up to 11 again? Wasn't there a vote? Quick, somebody discover another 20 or 30 Pluto-sized Kuiper belt objects so we can stop forcing schoolkids to memorize comet names.

I guess I never knew that:

On July 23, 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Black Hills were illegally taken and that remuneration of the initial offering price plus interest — nearly $106 million — be paid. The Lakota refused the settlement, as they wanted the return of the Black Hills instead. The money remains in an interest-bearing account which now amounts to over $757 million, and in spite of their poverty the Lakota still refuse to take the money.

For reference, the Lakota took the land from the Cheyenne around 1776; the Treaty of Fort Laramie, granting the Lakota the area, was signed in 1868; the Black Hills War took place from 1876-1877. Sitting Bull was killed during his arrest by the US army on December 15, 1890; the Massacre of Wounded Knee took place two weeks later, on December 29, 1890.

Construction on Mt. Rushmore began in 1927.

One very useful thing I learned while taking apart my laptop: removing an airport wireless card from an Apple laptop is fairly easy, reversible, and has no effect whatsoever on the other functions of the computer. It does require a pair of pliers, and I do recommend downloading and referencing the relevant Take Apart manual the first time you try it... but for those of you who have also observed an inverse correlation between your daytime productivity and the strength of your wireless signal, it may be something to consider.

I'd post pictures of my latest voyage into the labyrinthine hardware heart of my Powerbook, but at this point I'm rapidly becoming weary of the whole business.

I've been without my laptop for the last week. Which feels like having an arm amputated. Those of you who have seen me hauling my 10-lb. backpack around museums and conventions and into fancy restaurants as if it's some sort of beloved security blanket, I'm doing it because my backpack contains my laptop. And my laptop contains, well, everything. A little universe in an aluminum shell.

Late last week it started crashing. A lot: the screen would dim and an error message in four languages would inform me that I needed to reboot. The machine would then proceed to crash halfway through the boot sequence. After a few more attempts it would make it all through, only to crash as soon as I opened up Firefox or X11. It crashed whenever I moved the laptop. It crashed if I looked at it strangely. It crashed if I avoided eye contact too pointedly. Closing the lid was absolutely taboo; rather than crash, it would simply turn off. (I honestly don't know if the crashing was in any way related to the water spill/delete key incident. The spill was on Sunday; the crashing didn't start until late Wednesday night. Maybe causal? Maybe not. Computers are voodoo, you know?)

When I told the IT guys at work about it, they got very grim: "Kernel panic, not good. Probably the logic board. Which might be corrupting the data as you copy it off; you probably want to remove the hard drive and attach it to another machine to copy over the data, just to be safe."

Which I believe actually translates to: "Take it to a certified Apple repair specialist and have them remove the hard drive and copy over the data."

But I figured, the laptop is already over the extended warranty period. And I've already downloaded the Take Apart Repair Manual, and it sounded like maybe it was already a doorstop. Why pay someone else $30 an hour to take apart your doorstop?




So. Ever wonder what your sleek, expensive, and oh-so-indispensible Apple laptop looks like if you crack open its shell and eviscerate its innards?

( The horror, the horror. )

Quick! Does anybody out there know of anyone out there with a room booked for Wiscon who is currently looking for a roommate? Not that I need one, see...

Okay, for the sake of argument, let's just assume that I had a roommate... but that this roommate had to back out on me due to financial difficulties. And that within 24 hours I had found myself not just one but three replacement roommates... and that within 24 hours of that my old roommate e-mailed again to say that she was unexpectedly awash in cash due to the untimely death of her beloved great-great aunt Agnes. Or because of a 3-book sale to Bantam, with the happy news arriving in her inbox four hours after she'd backed out of our prior roommate agreement. Whatever. Point is, I feel obligated to make sure my old would-be roomie has Wiscon arrangements... but also obligated to my three awesome brand-new roomies. And if there were two rooms between the five of us, this would be easy-peasy. But at the moment I just have the one reservation.

So. I guess I'm selling Kameron off to the highest bidder. Who's in?

My laptop has taken to crashing whenever I move the case too suddenly or press on the keyboard a bit too hard. This means it's officially gone belly-up, doesn't it?

I know you're all very sad on my behalf. What can I do to cheer you up? Let's see, here's a picture of a rottweiler dressed as Princess Leia. Which I stumbled across while surfing through Celia's dog photos. And of course, there's always giant drooly bulldogs falling in love with adorable little kittens:


It's like a little slice of copyright-violating heaven.

EDIT: Did somebody post the bulldog thing last year? Now that I'm watching it, I seem to remember having a couple of conversations about whether or not it was a tear-jerker.

Is it wrong for me to cheer on the nascent Iranian space program?

One of these years I will wake up early enough to participate in the annual MLK parade from the University of Arizona to Reid Park. And I will take my dog, and it will be A Day Well-Spent.

In the mean time, here's a bunch of links I collected after last year's Blog Against Racism Week:

• Sherman Alexie's "I hated Tonto (still do)". (Originally via silk_noir)


• And yhlee did quite a bit of interesting reading before/during/after last year's IBARW, including: Debra Van Ausdale & Joe R. Feagin's The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism; Leonard Steinhorn & Barbara Diggs-Brown's By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race (also here); Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities: Children in America's School; and Kenneth C. Davis' Don't Know Much About the Civil War: Everything You Need to Know about America's Greatest Conflict but Never Learned. (Better quick click on those links of you want to see them--Lee's been threatening to shut down that LJ sometime in the next day or so.)


• Lee also links to a couple of discussions about those annoying people who persist in asking persons of Asian-American extractions where they're from even after the individual under interrogation has already stated that they were born in Houston.


• N.K. Jemison/nojojojo discusses the (often exclusionary) whiteness of geek/nerd culture. (Original NY Times article on nerdiness here.)


• Okay, since Lee went and deleted her journal just as I was linking to it Okay, never mind, she's back. Good. Anyway, here's oyceter on the topic of racism in people of color. And everybody's favorite excuse: "But Japan is Racist Too!"


• And coffeeandink on Four ways to unlearn racism.

Average speed from Mesa to Picacho Peak State Park: 82.2 mph
Average speed from Picacho Peak State Park to Tucson^*: 6.78 mph 13.56 mph.

But we did manage to get back in time to reclaim Bartleby from the dogsitters.


* Or more specifically, from Picacho Peak State Park (I-10 exit 219) to Tangerine Rd. (I-10 exit 240).

Best pizza in the U.S.?: Pretty darned good. Maybe even worth the three-and-a-half hour wait? Just maybe.

(Happy birthday, P.)

Claire Light makes a few remarks about The Missing Black Woman Formation. As usual, she's mostly right, but... dear God, do I want to argue with her. (EDIT: Light's post is a response to Scott Westerfeld's post on the same topic.)

And coffeeandink takes a look at the race vs. gender issue in the Democratic Primaries (and in particular, the pros and cons of the arguments put forth by Gloria Steinem and Melissa Harris-Lacewell re: Steinem's op-ed on Clinton vs. Obama in the New York Times). As usual, I think coffeeandink hits all of the relevant nails squarely on the head. And also maybe I'd like to marry her.

Last but not least, Darren Garnick of Slate.com is on a mission to get his 5 month-old daughter Dahlia photographed with every front-running presidential candidate. Newsflash: American politicians are still suckers for babies in pumpkin outfits. (Via Celia and Pam Noles.)

...

Seriously, people. How the heck do I vote in this primary?

Is George Smiley masquerading as Obi-Wan Kenobi, or is Obi-Wan Kenobi masquerading as George Smiley? I'm so confused.

TIRED STOP FLIGHT WAS FINE STOP DIALUP ONLY MORE LATER STOP

69 words

(Actually 72 words per minute, but three were typo-d.)

Via msisolak