Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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I've a long record in editorial work in book and magazine publishing, starting in 1974, as well as a variety of other work experience, but have been, in recent years, recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring major clinical depression and bipolar disorder. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. I'm available as a fill-in Guest Blogger at mid-to-high-traffic blogs that fit my knowledge set.
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their 'tendency' is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The term, then, is obviously a relative one; my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education, & someone else's ignorance."
-- H. W. Fowler
"Rules exist for good reasons, and in any art form the beginner must learn them and understand what they are for, then follow them for quite a while. A visual artist, pianist, dancer, fiction writer, all beginning artists are in the same boat here: learn the rules, understand them, follow them. It's called an apprenticeship. A mediocre artist never stops following the rules, slavishly follows guidelines, and seldom rises above mediocrity. An accomplished artist internalizes the rules to the point where they don't have to be consciously considered. After you've put in the time it takes to learn to swim, you never stop to think: now I move my arm, kick, raise my head, breathe. You just do it. The accomplished artist knows what the rules mean, how to use them, dodge them, ignore them altogether, or break them. This may be a wholly unconscious process of assimilation, one never articulated, but it has taken place."
-- Kate Wilhelm.
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 702
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 76 sign-ups; 35 cancellations; Total= 41
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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger, Abi Frost,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.
-- Lenny Bailes
[...] As for his politics, Davison has served as a Republican member of the Minerva Council for 13 years, but, despite the boiling anger that characterized his speech, describes himself as a “liberal.” He also identifies with the activist energy of the Tea Party movement, and proposes forming “a new radical branch of the Republican Party that does bring in the Tea Party activists, and that does bring in, perhaps, liberal Republicans.”
"I can guarantee with one hundred percent certainty that what you are seeing from me tonight is what everyone outside those doors is going to get over the next eight weeks!"
The video is hilarious, but also quite interesting as an example of confused anger in the Republican heartland.
View The Rest Scale: 4 votes out of 5.
ADDENDUM, 9/10/10, 1:18 p.m.: Special bonus video! Tom Lehrer does "Instant Elements" using Google Instant Search:
THE SHORT VERSION. It's actually a huge pain in the ass to reformat text from use in Typepad to Blogger, or vice versa -- at least, it is for me; there may be wonderfully quick ways to accomplish this I've not yet found.
Meanwhile, I've committed blog posts at Obsidian Wingshere, here, and here.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT is what will be coming this way in a few days, with a major update on what's going on with me, what's been going on, why, wherefore, what I'm about to do, what I'm about to ask for tips and guidance and help with, and all that there.
BETTER LUCK THAN YOU WOULD HAVE HAD WITH ARTHUR CLARKE. Ray Bradbury is not my greatest sf writer ever, though I do greatly admire much of his work, but he's certainly the greatest sf writer to many.
And we all have our chosen ways of showing our appreciation.
View The Rest Scale: only if you're amused by potty-mouthed songs about ancient skiffy writers. NSFW, primarily via language.
Ed Earl Repp just doesn't get the respect any more.
Digressively, your newfangled idea of "written language" sucks:
[...] But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them.
And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.
The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
Plato putting words in the mouth of Socrates.
In sum, people who can't memorize all their literature are weak-minded, and your so-called "writing" is simply a crutch for those unable to memorize and truly appreciate literature. Our society and its standards continue to collapse.
[...] What is it about Ray that you find so attractive?
First of all, the number one thing I am earnestly attracted to is intelligence. Writers are thus the pinnacle of intelligence. While actors are great and awesome, writers literally create new worlds from scratch. What is sexier than that? Personally, I don't know why every person out there isn't dating a writer.
And:
[...] 12:48PM Update: It has been reported to me that Ray Bradbury has watched the video twice and liked it.
[...] The peak of this year's Perseids is forecast (for North America) to come during the afternoon hours on Thursday, which means that greatest number of meteors will probably be seen late that night into the predawn hours of Friday. At these times a single observer might count anywhere from 60 to 100 per hour.
But don't overlook late tonight into early Thursday morning, when about two-thirds of that number might be seen. And even late on Friday night into early Saturday hourly rates will still be respectable, though probably numbering about one-quarter to one-half of the numbers seen on the peak night. Over this weekend you can still probably catch sight of a lingering few.
RANDOM OBSERVATIONS ON ATTENDING RECONSTRUCTION, THE 2010 NASFIC
1. I am an old fan, and tired.
2. Some things in conventions have changed, but many things plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Significant numbers of fans still like to go by one name on their name tag, like "Doug" or "Jane," which certainly helps make them memorable. Not so much.
3. I have no significant complaints or criticisms of the con committee or con; generally I commend them on a job pretty well done, as viewed from the outside.
4. The primary problem of the con was the smallness; I gather there were about 700 attendees, perhaps 800 max, and walk-ins amounted to in the neighborhood of 100 or a bit more. (If this is wrong, please correct me!)
5. As a result, spreading the con out over two hotels and a convention center ended up being... highly excessive. Ditto with that many programming tracks, audiences tended towards the the small, as in 8-40 or so, in the rooms I looked in, which I must say was a very sporadic sampling, and I did not attend any of the relatively Big Events, such as opening or closing ceremonies, or any of the GOH presentations.
6. Parties -- sorry, there were no parties, only "Meet and Greets" allowed -- were, as a rule, not overwhelming crowded, and were almost entirely conveniently grouped on the 16th and 17th floor, save for Bill Patterson's on the sixth floor, all in the Marriott, which was directly connected to the convention center, so the party circuit could hardly have been more convenient.
7. I ended up skipping the SFWA suite, since I really have no particular business being there these days, and skipping Toni's Baen Party, as it was the one party that seemed crowded, and I'm just shy, and didn't want to be presumptuous, and all that there.
8. Established that James Bacon doesn't know me from a hole in the wall, which is no surprise. All con long I played "do you recognize me?" with everyone. Most didn't. Said "hi" twice to David Hartwell, until on the third time, when we were chatting briefly, I made sure to let his eye catch my name-tag, and we had a couple of nice, if brief, chats after that.
9. Most of my chats tended to be brief. I really didn't know more than a couple of dozen people at the con, it felt like, although I also had that experience of quite a few people I either don't know, or have forgotten, greeting me with considerable familiarity, and as if we knew each other, so it's a two-way street. Still, there at least a dozen folks I'd hoped to run into, and never did, much to my regret, including particularly Brett Cox and Ranger Craig. Would have loved to have talked more with most of the folks I did talk some with, including Mike Walsh, Ben Yalow, Elspeth Kovar, Bill Patterson, Ed Dravecky, Bernadette Boskey, Arthur Hlavaty, and a number of others, but, oh well. Some folks I barely got to speak with in passing, such as Bruce Newrock, Tony Parker, Tim Illingworth, Joni Dashoff, a bit more with Judy Bemis; chatted very briefly with Steve Miller (see photographic proof on my Photo Album). I got to say only hello and goodbye to a few, such as Dave Cantor and Bruce Newrock. Saw, but did not get a chance to speak to, Joel Zakem, since I saw him at Bill and David's little biography panel, and not again. And so on.
But mostly I'm as not-very-comfortable-at-parties, unless I really know a bunch of people, and the party is pretty quiet, as ever.
And I think I was reverting to a considerable degree of shyness that I used to have in my early years, but have gotten vastly better at having less of, in the past twenty years. But the environment somehow made me much shyer again, in some curiously environmentally-induced way causing me to revert to older, poorer, habits.
11. Programming doubtless pleased many folks. I'd more or less say that I've certainly seen worse, and I've seen better. Off-hand, I'd call it kinda middling, but they also had a relatively limited number of folks to use. On the other hand, I couldn't help but notice that there were at least a couple of panels where I knew a hell of a lot more about the subject than the panelists.
Notably, a very nice seeming woman named Jennifer Liang, and Chris Garcia, did a panel on "Efanzines and blogs," which although I missed the first fifteen minutes of, by half an hour in they were saying they'd run out of things to talk about, after already engaging in a lot of digression into talking about online fandom in general, with very little talk about blogs. I did learn more about Robert Jordan fandom than I previously knew.
I tried a bit of goosing from the audience with leading questions, such as "so what would you say was the first sf blog, or the first significant sf blog?, and got "uh, I have no idea" responses. Man, they needed a moderator. And, you know, if you feel you're running out of things to say, you can go to questions, rather than repeatedly declaring the panel is probably over half way through, and every few minutes thereafter. Also, just not a great practice in general.
I may have misunderstood Jennifer Liang explaining that Tor.com was now a blog. Doubtless she said that the front page showed blogs, and the site had much else besides; my hearing isn't great, and my attention may have wandered for a moment.
12. Tiniest art show I've ever seen at any sf con of any sort.
13. The Chicago bid party had, among other decorations, a quite large blow-up of the program book of Chicon IV (1982). I was chatting with Mr. Yalow and Mr. Walsh at the party, and established that with Ben having been the Services Division head at Chicon IV, where I wore two hats as both Assistant Division head, and head of the three department Operations sub-division, and Mike was one of my Shift Supervisors, that we were the only three members of the Chicon IV committee at the party, and apparently at the con. (I'm probably wrong on the latter, so please correct me!)
14. Britain probably had the nicest party overall, although the frequent repeats on the very large screen tv of the bid video was slightly problematic for those well familiar with it online months ago, who found crowds of people constantly crowding in front of the screen.
There was a nice other video of famous British sf writers, though.
It couldn't help but occur to me that I had been the original American agent for the Britain Is Fine In '79 bid for Seacon '79, where I had even bent fannish ethics slightly by giving the bid a free function room at SunCon to throw the bid party -- although I would have done the same for the competition if they'd asked -- but none of the current British bidders would know that. As I said, old and tired. As ever, always amused to have other people explain fandom to me, or fanzines, or how conventions are run, or what they're like, etc. I pretty much nod and smile.
Not a soul at the British party recognized my D. West art tee-shirt. Or my BSFA tee-shirt. Or anyone at the con, for that matter, at least in terms of mentioning it to me.
On the other hand, my "RTFM" tee-shirt got a bunch of comments about how wonderful it was. And my "I'm not ignoring you; your comment is awaiting moderation" tee-shirt also got a few compliments, and one person's request to take a picture.
15. Overall, I had an okay time. I suppose it was worth two room nights, and the $120 membership; I was very glad to see some old friends.
I also realized that smoffing talk is of limited interest beyond a certain point when one isn't working on cons any more, but primarily because it's the exact same smof talk about how to run a con, what's gone wrong and right, etc., I already filled up on in the Seventies and Eighties, and very little has changed since then, save for some proper nouns, and relatively trivial details.
16. I remain unconvinced of the need for a NASFiC. But, hey, as long as enough people want to go to one, and put one on, it's fine with me.
17. Slightly regret not taking the cane, as a visual sign to folks that I needed to sit, not stand, and also for minor use, but was lucky that the hip pain and twinging stayed minor enough to merely make for mildly painful slight limp, with occasional oww twinges; no gout, yay.
18. Established that my preferred temperature in my hotel room is 63 degrees F.
19. I can make a few nitpicks about room for improvement in what the con did, but they're pretty nit-picky. (I would have made more spots where the daily newsletter could be found, but, as I said, this is highly trivial, and in any case, there wasn't much vital news, anyway. Stuff like that.)
20. I'll try to fill in the names of more folks I at least briefly chatted with, as I remember: met Nancy Collins finally. More to come. LATER: Saul Jaffe. Dick and Nicki Lynch. Warren Buff. Said hi to Scott Dennis. Said hello and about twenty seconds of conversation with John Hertz. Said hello to Hank Davis and received expected nod and slight grunt. Chatted at mild length with George Wells on Friday afternoon in the Fanzine Lounge, after not having seen each other since approximately 1976 or so. Heard Don Lundry was at the con! But never ran into him, drat it. Missed running into Tom Veal, unless, as is likely, I didn't recognize him; I was in the Chicago party several times on both nights, but only asked if he was there once or twice, I'm afraid. Exchanged a sentence or two with Brad Foster at the British party, but didn't get to any kind of "hello, nice to finally meet you."
21. Further random observations to come after I've rested some; I didn't have the sort of con experience that makes for a funny or amusing narrative -- I'm not saying I had a bad time, and insofar as there were negatives at the con, they were almost entirely personal, not the fault of the concom; but the con didn't provide a storyline for me worth writing up in more organized form.
22. My #1 insecurity: I have stained, bad, teeth at this point. Very visible if I open my mouth; this makes me terribly self-conscious about that until such time as I can at least get a cleaning. Also constant worry about bad breath and administering of breath minty things and mouthwash, but I'm sure some folks must have thought "ew, bad breath"; I did what I could.
Hey, and Joni Dashoff, I think it was, pointed out at one point that my fly was open, and was not being metaphoric. Oh, the shame of it all. Not to mention I noticed it happening slightly two other times; damned shorts zipper.
23. I reverted terribly to wandering self-centered anecdotes and losing my train of thought in substantial conversation; this is why I prefer to express myself in writing if I wish to be clear at any thought more complicated than a one-liner. Which even that I can mangle through the accidental word-substitution I'm more and more prone to in recent years.
24. Chatted twice with Rusty Hevelin! (If you don't know our history, I ain't tellin' ya now.)
25. Bagpipes should always be barred from sf cons as dangerous weapons. Jeebus fucking Ghu and Roscoe screwing together.
I'm talking with Elspeth and Mike at their table in the huckster room, when no less than about twelve feet away, at the table opposite, this motherfucking bagpiper opens up, and golly that helps conversation nearby.
Someone later confessed to me that he was the person who asked the guy to start performing right then, but I'll pretend I've forgotten who, for their sake, and because I have definitely forgotten that it was Steven Silver, since he has repented; so let's all pretend we don't know it was Steven's Fault. (Alternatively, to quote one of the late rich brown's favorite sayings: Or Maybe Not.)
26. Doing balloon sculptures for people is great; doing so by parking yourself in front of the escalator down to the huckster room/art show could work fine if you stood more than a foot away from the escalator entrance. Two whole feet would have been nice; three, outstanding. (Subnote: someone from the convention might have mentioned this to the fellow, but to be sure, traffic was so light it was merely a trivial annoyance, and nothing resembling in the faintest degree any kind of serious traffic blockage; you just had to say "excuse me, please," every time.)
27. Oh, yes. Many of you are familiar with: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
—James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992
This has long been passed around as by anonymous and typically shortened to "English not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
A couple of women whose company was selling tee-shirts (one of several such tables in the huckster, room, Not That There's Anything Wrong With That) had a tee-shirt with that. No attribution. I asked them if they knew who had written that. Nope. Heard of James Nicoll? Nope. Suggested they might at least send him a courtesy copy. They took down contact info for him; I took down their contact info.
Belatedly, I realize I should have taken a picture.
To be clear, they said they were selling this particular tee-shirt as produced by a third party, and it's entirely possible, and far and away most likely, that James has always known about this.
28. Two conversations with Chris Barkley. He put me on the Worldcon subcommittee mailing list to Officially Recommend WTF To Do About The Semi-Prozine Category (without my in the least asking, which I didn't have the chutzpah to do!), which pleased me no end, since I'm one of the four co-writers who created that category. That is, I wrote a motion and got Craig Miller to co-sign it, and, I think, and I need to check this against the BM minutes, because I may be garbling slightly, and Marty Cantor and Mike Glicksohn had his version, and also Dick (I know his last name perfectly well, and it will come back to me momentarily [LATER: Richard Russell]) of Madison threw in some modification, and the resulting kludge came from a compromise between these motions, and produced the Best Semi-Prozine Hugo we have all loved and cherished for centuries now, worshipped beyond reason, particularly since I co-wrote it.
29. Was disappointed to miss the "Men Write Feminist Fiction" panel, as it clearly sounded like the panel with the most potential for disaster. Alas, missed it. Heard one second-hand version that made it sound dire, but it was only a single source.
31. I amused myself in the Fanzine Lounge, particularly on Friday, while the SFC part of the display was still there, noting of zines: yup, mentioned there, loc there, mentioned there, mentioned there, several dozens of times.
I'm reluctant to note that the Fanhistory Display and Fanzine Display (incidentally combined with my invention of the independent fan programing track, and also combining the Fanzine Fan Lounge, which I also invented), all in one mini-area of the hotel, I did at SunCon in 1977, with only Susan Wood's "All Our Yesterday's" room at Torcon II as any kind of precursor (unless you count the N3F), was, er, a heck of a lot more elaborate than what Reconstruction had. Ditto the fanhistory display I did for Avedon Carol at Constellation in 1983, or the one I co-did with Joe Siclari in 1986, and even the ones I did at Lunacon in 1976 and 1977.
I'm talking major displays of material from the 1930s and 1940s, partial runs of Hyphen, Quandry, Dimensions, Spaceship, Skyhook, dittoed Psychotic, Roger Ebert's Stymie, a zine by Gene Klein, aka Gene Simmons, and on and on with so many more zines from every era, but a focus on the older the better, along with elaborate displays on apas, an entire major section on Lee Hoffman, and just dozens of immensely rare items of the pre-1960 era, as well as wall displays, pictures, mimeos, historical artifacts, program books of the forties, distributions of current fanzines, a separate display of popular recent zines, on convention history, and on and on; I had a considerable amount of granularity, and explanatory text for context, as well as carefully considered exhibits, rather than a purely random spread of zines.
Chris is a lovely and enthusiastic man, and I certainly can't say that I think NASFiC overall would have benefited in any significant way from any kind of more significant fanhistory display; I doubt more than a dozen or two dozen people at most would have cared, if that many.
But it did seem a bit on the minimal side.
Lastly, the hours seemed to be "whenever Chris or someone decided not to leave." It was open a fair amount of the time, but a heck of a lot less than the posted hours. But, again, in fairness, aside from a brief hour on Friday, when some 20-25 people were there, I never again saw more than 8 or so folks in the room at an given time, if that many. But let me stress that my sampling, which certainly amounted to well over fifteen times over the course of Friday and Saturday, and four times Sunday morning, was hardly comprehensive. And, again, not any kind of major criticism, and no kind of complaint! Just, you know, observing. And although I would have been agreeable to holding down the room for an hour or two if that would have helped, no one asked me, but it's my fault for not specifically saying any such thing to Chris.
And, of course, Filthy Pierre. Whom I said hi to, noting that he wouldn't remember me, but we'd been at many cons together in the Seventies, and he indeed noddedly blankly, which is perfectly fair, because I don't remember ever having a conversation with him of much more than a handful of words, more than, hmm, come to think of it, that time I had to tell him (at either 1976 or 1977 Lunacon, or Iggy or SunCon; probably not Chicon IV or any of the others)) that I couldn't help him get his portable organ back from the hotel until the morning, after he'd left it locked up in a now-locked function space. Or something like that.
35. Other notable parties included a Capclave party, Texas in 2013, ASFA (didn't get to that), something for or by "1984" that I didn't go into and don't know who they were, a Renovation party (where Ben Yalow was mostly glued), Friends of Liad, the aforementioned Chicago bid party, and, um, a couple of others.
36. I maintained discipline, and did not spend a single penny in the huckster room, or buying anything at the con whatever!
I did this exactly by swearing to myself that I would buy nothing, or I'd have trouble drawing a line thereafter. I gave brief consideration to the notion of a lesser rule, such as "nothing subsequent to 1972, or 1960, or 1950, and over $5 a piece" but that might still have been dangerous.
And you know what? I again, over the course of the past decade, between books sent to me for review, and abebook.com purchases of books for $.01 and $3.99 shipping, own several dozen yet unread books, many of them door stops, all of which I desperately want to read. So there's no point to adding to my to-be-read shelves, and I damn well don't do myself well by owning more possessions to move.
So my sense won out: go, me.
Although, y'know, still wistfulness and some frustrated lust. Booooks. Fanzines. Pulps. Old paperbacks. My first loves. Great fiction I haven't caught up to. Nonfiction on sf I haven't caught up to. So many books by friends I haven't caught up to.
But, hey: sense over compulsive fannishness. Yay.
37. I wish I could remember who it was who I met in person for the first time who was telling me how they'd heard so much about me, and it was all either really really good, or really really bad; I agreed that I had one of those polarizing personalities.
I had one or two other variations of that conversation over the weekend, which was fine, because it's true.
ADDENDUM, 8/10/10, 6:23 p.m. [modified at 9:06 to delete some now pointless information]: Specifically to entry #27: Unsurprisingly, this turned out not to be true. That is, James Nicoll's permission had not been asked, nor had he been even sent a courtesy copy.
Here are the folks whom the people at the table said they got the shirts from.
It does give off-shirt credit -- but the shirts are still unauthorized, and James Nicoll gets nothing from them:
English Doesn't Borrow from Other Languages T Shirt
100% Cotton Ash Shirt
This shirt has a paraphrase of a quotation made by James Nicoll. "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
ATTEMPTING RECONSTRUCTION WITHOUT OBSTRUCTION. I expect, barring problems, to be here this coming Friday, Saturday, and at least through Sunday afternoon, though probably not very late.
I'm not on any programming, or throwing any parties, or planning on doing anything more ambitious than either wandering as much as I can, or mostly planting myself in a couple of at least semi-public spots, and seeing what happens.
I'll be the fiftyish greying chubby guy in the tee shirt with the beard, so you can't miss me.
If you have ever read stuff by me, please feel free to come up to me and say hi, and then make up something flattering to say, and, best of all, slip me an envelope with a hundred dollar bill before you go. In return, I will be happy to offer vacant stares, grunts, sexual favors, mentions on my ever-so-currently-frequent "blog," political rants, acceptance of your Facebook Friend request, and tediously prolix self-centered anecdotes whose punchline I will forget. I may also pretend to be interested in you.
Also on offer: demonstrations that I'm 1000% more articulate in writing, where I can slowly consider what to write, then edit, rewrite, consult references, and Google, while refraining from stammering, mumbling, pausing, repeatedly saying "er," "you know," "and, uh," and "uh,I forget the details, but." Those come free to all.
Read The Rest Scale: as interested in possibly attending the North American Science Fiction Convention, held when the Worldcon is out of North America that year.
If you want to get in touch with me at the convention, to make arrangements to greet and meet, I do hope to check email as frequently as I can get access to both WiFi and being within 40 minutes or so of an electricity socket.
ADDENDUM, 6:51 p.m.: I'll be looking for a ride, if anyone happens to be going my way, or feeling generous, from the con, back to North Raleigh, near Falls of Neuse Road and North Ridge Center, Sunday afternoon, evening, or night, at your convenience, if anyone happens to be offering; I will be happy to pay any added gas costs.
ADDENDUM, 7/4/10, 6 p.m.: I'm reminded that the local #2 CAT bus doesn't even run at all on Sunday, so if I can't find a ride, I'm SOL, since a taxi ride of something like $50 would be the only alternative, although Google Maps says it's only about 8 miles.
NEW ORLEANS -- Police shot and killed at least five people Sunday after gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs, authorities said.
Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said police shot at eight people carrying guns, killing five or six.
Fourteen contractors were traveling across the Danziger Bridge under police escort when they came under fire, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers.
They were on their way to launch barges into Lake Pontchartrain to help plug the breech in the 17th Street Canal, Hall said.
None of the contractors was injured, Mike Rogers, a disaster relief coordinator with the Army Corps of Engineers, told reporters in Baton Rouge.
The bridge spans a canal connecting Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.
NEW ORLEANS — Four current and two former New Orleans police officers have been charged in connection with the killing of unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, federal law enforcement officials announced here on Tuesday.
A terrible crime, and now, at least, some hopes that something less than compete unjustice might yet be done.
How terrible?
[...] The details of the shootings on the bridge that began to emerge, and which were elaborated on in the indictment unsealed Tuesday, were ghastlier than many in the city had expected.
Responding to a call that the police were under fire, officers drove to the bridge over the Industrial Canal in eastern New Orleans in a Budget rental truck. Some were armed with assault rifles, others with a shotgun or a semiautomatic pistol.
Mr. Brissette and five members of the Bartholomew family were walking across the bridge to get food and other supplies from a supermarket, the indictment reads, when the officers opened fire. Four members of the Bartholomew family were shot. Susan Bartholomew, at the time 38, lost part of her arm; her husband, Leonard Bartholomew III, was shot in the head. Mr. Brissette, who was killed, was shot seven times.
Some officers then traveled to the other side of the bridge and found two brothers, Ronald and Lance Madison, who were on their way to check on a dentist’s office that belonged to their oldest brother, Dr. Romell Madison. According to the indictment, Mr. Faulcon then shot Ronald Madison to death with a shotgun. Afterward, it continues, Sergeant Bowen kicked and stomped on Mr. Madison as he lay dying on the ground.
Lance Madison was arrested at the scene and later held on eight counts of attempted murder of a police officer. He was never formally charged and was released after three weeks in custody.
“Our family has waited a long time for justice in this case,” Dr. Madison said in a statement. “These indictments represent another step forward toward that goal.”
The three officers and Mr. Faulcon were also charged along Sgt. Arthur Kaufman and former Sgt. Gerard Dugue, both homicide detectives who were assigned to investigate the shootings, in connection with a cover-up of the shootings. Sergeant Kaufman faces up to 120 years in prison, while Mr. Dugue, who recently retired, faces up to 70.
The cover-up described in the indictment is methodical and blatant. It recounts a scene in the abandoned Seventh District police station where, it says, Sergeant Kaufman and Mr. Dugue met with other officers to ensure that their stories were consistent. Sergeant Kaufman is also accused of creating fictional witnesses and planting a pistol at the scene of the shootings.
And via digby, some outrageously Obama-worshipping fascist White House propaganda from obviously communistically sychophantic Muslim country-rocker Brad Paisley singing a song that could have been written by a science fiction fan: "Welcome To The Future":
View The Rest Scale: four lumps out of five, Islamofascistcommie trash!
KICKSTART. I've been putting this off for far too long, for my usual myriad of fucked up psychological reasons, and as always my block centers around the need to write a good and thorough and clear post, and I always feel like tomorrow my head will be clearer and my feelings calmer, and then I'll be able to write that post, rather than today.
So, instead, starter to come back to: I'm going to look as hard as I can for an affordable and tolerable place to live in NYC.
Since "affordable" to me means no more than $700/month rent, including as many utilities as possible, I don't expect to be able to find a place in NYC.
But I realized it makes no sense to give up before asking if you, the typically classy, well-informed, and delightful helpful, as well as brilliant and awesome looking, Amygdala reader can help!
Leads? Do you know anyone with a basement in NYC or area to rent? Any kind of cheap and tolerable housing? I'd strongly prefer to avoid roommate situations (which is why I don't expect to find a place in NYC, especially long distance), but am open to possibilities.
It needs to be a stable place, somewhere I can count on renting for at least a couple of years.
More detail to come.
Then, when I can't find a place in NYC, my first choice, I'm going to, I expect, move to Seattle, my second choice, which while not the cheapest place in the U.S., is far more affordable than NYC (or the Bay Area or Boston or some other places), should have some choices I can manage, I should think, judging from Craigslist.
A huge stumbling point is that I can't possibly pass a credit check, have no discernable employment, and no tax records from recent years. Thus rental will almost certainly have to come from less formal sources than most brokered or most apartment buildings, alas.
So. Spread the word! Do you know of any leads for cheap NYC housing?
And, yeah, it helps kickstart me that, as expected, people have been shedding subscriptions left and right, including some 7 $5/month ones, and one $25/month sub, in the last few weeks. That's not so great.
ADDENDUM, July 3rd, 4:50 p.m.: another $5/month cancellation just arrived. Unhappy face.
ADDENDUM, July 4th, 12:33 p.m.: Another $25/month subscription cancelled. Very very bad. It's six months for a bunch of people. so I'm not entirely surprised; just very unhappy. Happy Fourth.
ADDENDUM, July 6th; one of those cancellations from a few days ago today also reversed the $5 they already had sent.
ADDENDUM, July 14th, 3:50 a.m.: Help a native return to this:
ADDENDUM, August 3rd, 4:30 a.m.: Two $5/month cancellations and a $25/month cancellation. This is very bad, and the trend is very very bad, and very worrisome. Not what I need right before trying to be copacetic at my first sf convention of this century, and then leaping into finally making the practical arrangements to move. With less and less money.
7/01/2010 07:38:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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TOO HOT. I'm still alive, I should assure people. I'm still trying to figure things out.
I do hope to get up both a substantive post about What I'm Doing, and also back to something resembling vaguely frequent blogging, as soon as I can. I don't cope at all well with heat, unfortunately, and equally unfortunately there's apt to be little relief before September.
I just wanted to point that out because I love saying "Kyrgyz."
It really should be a region on Krypton.
What we need are more countries with no vowels. (Yes, it's a stan, but that's just Persian for "place of.")
It's a shame the late Afghan leader Babrak Karmal isn't alive to take power in Kyrgyz, as well as Afghanistan (which could use a replacement for Karzai), because if he were, they could have a sweet Karmal Bishkek.
Read The Rest Scale: 2.5 out of 5.
Yes, there are actual potential serious repercussions, including for the American war in Afghanistan, but I'm not doing serious analysis here today.
[...] name, of course, which used to be Pishpek, and then became Frunze in Soviet times ("Purunze" to the locals, at least in pronunciation). Since the Soviet name was a reference to the Bolshevik political and military leader Mikhail Frunze, the post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan decided to return to the old name. Unfortunately, no one knew its etymology. I'm not completely clear why this was viewed as a problem -- perhaps local linguistic nationalism prefers etymologically transparent place names? Anyhow, it was decided to use the Kyrgyz word nearest in sound, which is bishkek, meaning "whisk to stir kumiss with".
FRAK. That's two subscription cancellations in the past 24 hours. Frakkity-frak-frak. I surely do appreciate those folks' help while it lasted, though, and thank them.
Canadian poet Christian Bök wants his work to live on after he’s gone. Like, billions of years after. He’s going to encode it directly into the DNA of the hardy bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans. If it works, his poem could outlast the human race. But it’s a tricky procedure, and Bök is doing what he can to make it even trickier. He wants to inject the DNA with a string of nucleotides that form a comprehensible poem, and he also wants the protein that the cell produces in response to form a second comprehensible poem. Here’s a peek at the hellish task this DNA Dante has condemned himself to.
Too kewl.
But ideal for creatures with immensely long lifespans: they can have a very very very slow internet with DNA nodes. All they have to do is blog in DNA, encode it as described, set their creatures loose to multiply, and then a few generations of the short-lived encoded-creatures later, other bloggers harvest some creature DNA, read the blog entry, and then write and code their response into another creature's DNA, set it free, and repeat ad infinitum!
[...] It’s like Gertrude Stein: Beyond Thunderdome.
[...]
It seems appropriate that Dhalgren, or at least the latest mutation of it, will return this month to the city of its birth. On April 1—Delany’s 68th birthday—the Kitchen will begin staging an adaptation called Bellona, Destroyer of Cities. Its director and writer is Jay Scheib, an MIT professor and rising theater-world star who’s been obsessed with Dhalgren for years. He once devoted an MIT course to the book, and has even adapted it into a play in German.
[...] He describes the set as 'buildings and rooms inside of buildings and rooms,' portions of which will be hidden from parts of the audience. Live cameras will provide glimpses into areas that can’t be seen directly, mimicking the novel’s shifting perspectives and layers of mediation.
[...] Aaron O'Connell and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, did not actually produce a cat that was dead and alive at the same time, as Erwin Schrödinger proposed in a notorious thought experiment 75 years ago. But they did show that a tiny resonating strip of metal – only 60 micrometres long, but big enough to be seen without a microscope – can both oscillate and not oscillate at the same time. Alas, you couldn't actually see the effect happening, because that very act of observation would take it out of superposition.
[...]
The key was to connect the resonating strip to a superconducting qubit – a tiny electric circuit that can easily be prepared in a quantum superposition of two energy states. "The qubit acts as a bridge between the microscopic and the macroscopic worlds," says O'Connell. By tuning the frequency at which the qubit cycled between its two states to match the resonant frequency of the metallic strip, the qubit's quantum state could be transferred to the resonator at will.
When measured afterwards, the resonator was sometimes in its non-oscillating ground state and sometimes in an oscillating "excited" state. The number of times it was measured to be in each state followed the probabilistic rules of quantum mechanics.
Remarkably, I, also, am sometimes excited, and sometimes not, but often you can't tell without affecting the results.
[...] Dark matter is hypothetical, invisible stuff that cosmologists invoke to explain why the universe appears to contain much less matter than their calculations say it should, and some think that it is made up of hypothetical particles called axions. Even though we haven't yet found a genuine axion, however, materials called topological insulators can be used to mimic them, say Shoucheng Zhang and colleagues at Stanford University, California. Magnetic fluctuations in the materials produce a field just like an axion field, his team found.
"They are an exact mathematical analogy," says Zhang.
That means we could probe the effects of dark matter in the lab. For example, the polarisation of the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang should depend on how it interacts with dark matter. Simply measuring light shone through a topological insulator could show what cosmic effects to expect.
[...]
The promise of topological insulators doesn't end there. Whack a slab of superconductor on top of one, and theory predicts you would have a nursery for hypothetical particles known as Majorana fermions. First proposed over 70 years ago by the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana, these particles uniquely are their own antiparticles.
"It would be sexy just to be the first people to observe one," says Laurens Molenkamp of the University of Würzburg, Germany, who in 2007 was the first to make a topological insulator. The materials had previously only existed in theory.
Oh, honey, talk me some spin and charm: I love me some strange. It makes me hott.
[...] Majorana fermions may also have practical applications. Pairs of them could act as bits of data for a variety of quantum computer, with one huge advantage over all other schemes for such devices: pairs of Majorana fermions encoding the same bit could be separated in space. This means that even if one is disrupted by the environment, which would render its information unusable, the other remains intact.
Take a spin
The properties of topological insulators could also prove useful in the burgeoning field of spintronics, says Zhang. Spintronics is all about storing, manipulating and transporting information using a quantum-mechanical property of particles known as "spin", as opposed to the currents of electrons used in conventional electronics.
Topological insulators are on the cusp of conducting electricity: most of the stuff insulates against current, but electrons at its edges break free and marshal themselves into lanes according to the value of their spin. Because they are not crashing into each other like electrons in conventional electric current, they do not dissipate heat – a seductive property for a blisteringly fast, low-power spintronic device. "It is a superhighway for electrons," says Zhang.
I'm sure I could use a home topological insulator, too.
[...] According to Hoagland, Obama had been prepared to finally give the Constellation program the funding it required to return Americans to the Moon. But then, in December, a remarkable thing happened in the skies over Norway. Right before Obama visited Norway to receive his Nobel Peace Prize, the Russians launched a ballistic missile on a test. The missile sailed into the northern sky and then was stopped in mid-air, grabbed while it was going thousands of miles an hour. It was stopped by some kind of massively powerful mysterious device. And when it was stopped in midair, hundreds of people across Norway saw it, and some photographed it, seeing a weird spiral in the sky that was quickly labeled the “Norway Spiral.”
This was a “double-whammy message” to both Obama and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, “that somebody has the power to stop us,” Hoagland told Coast to Coast host George Noory.
Who? Noory asked.
“Them, out there!” Hoagland replied, “…the secret space program.”
The message was apparently that humanity needed to be “imprisoned” on Earth. Once Obama got the message, he immediately canceled the American lunar program. The secret space program is based on the Moon, and we’re not supposed to go there.
Noory asked if this might have actually been extraterrestrial technology that stopped the Russian missile. Hoagland doesn’t believe that’s the case. He says that what is actually going on dates back to the last days of World War II. As the Allies were closing in, some Nazi scientists took their best technology and fled the Earth, apparently leaving for the Moon, forming “a secret off-world civilization.” There they set up shop and continued to develop their capabilities to the point where their technology is so advanced that they are practically god-like to us in their abilities. Halting the Russian missile is simply the most visible recent example of this, Hoagland said. “The physics are there and it’s all about who is controlling it and what they intend for us.” (My guess is that it’s not going to be nice.)
But of course there’s more going on than us mere mortals stuck on Earth can comprehend. Hoagland says that “there’s a war going on upstairs.” But it’s not clear if the Space Nazis are battling each other—a Space Nazi Civil War—or if they’re battling our government and we civilians don’t know about it. Hoagland believes that terrorism, and events like the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, is the terrestrial manifestation of this war. Apparently there are members of our own government who are involved in battling these Space Nazis, but they have kept Obama in the dark.
And that's why health care reform has only gotten so far.
[...] Twain himself took it on the chin from fellow Southerner William Faulkner, who called him a “hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven ‘sure fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”
[...]
Virginia Woolf saw Somerset Maugham as “a grim figure; rat-eyed, dead-man-cheeked, unshaven; a criminal I should have said had I met him in a bus.”
Charles Lamb wrote of Shelley: “His voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with,” and James Dickey, poet and novelist, said of an iconic New England poet: “If it were thought that anything I wrote were influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. … a more sententious holding-forth old bore, who expected every hero-worshipping adenoidal twerp of a student-poet to hang on his every word, I never saw.”
[...] Peter opened the door, white-faced. 'Please don't try to make me laugh,' he said. 'Even to smile uses 84 face muscles. I don't work out this early.'
With curiosity, I entered the apartment. It was spacious and quite empty. The furniture - what there was of it - was not art deco, more art stucko, just stuck around on an expanse of white carpet.
'Would you like to remove your shoes?' asked Peter.
'And your belt, braces and false teeth.'
I took off my shoes and gave them to Peter. He threw them against the wall.
'I hate Christmas!' he shouted. 'And while you're here, you'd better stay for Easter.'
'Where's Lynne?' I inquired. 'I strangled her an hour ago,' said Peter. 'You can help me dispose of the body.'
[...]
The road was empty as we sped along. We were in the countryside, the fields passing us by rapidly.
'Mein Gott!' said Peter, lapsing into Gestapo German to match his outfit. 'See those cows? They are escaped prisoners-of-war!'
He slammed on the brakes, jerking us violently forward.
'Kum!' he shouted, and leapt from the Bentley, now doubtless in his mind a Wehrmacht vehicle, probably the half-track favoured by Erwin Rommel.
Leaping over the five-bar gate, he stood and pointed at the cows dramatically. 'You! Yes you! The game is up, Englishers!'
'Oh, stop mucking about Peter,' said Lynne, stamping her feet to keep warm.
[...]
A short time later, when I entered the dining room, Peter was struggling, or jostling, with an elegant though elderly lady.
'Let us have your table, madam. You have finished your pudding and we have not begun. What is wrong with you? Have you no Christmas spirit ? You can have coffee and liqueurs in the lounge, at my expense.'
'How dare you! Leave my chair alone, you uncouth lout,' the lady protested.
'I am not name-calling. Who is name-calling?' Sellers was talking in a slightly foreign accent.
'You want me to call you names? Very well. You are a rude - and greedy - woman.
'Do you mean to start again with the soup? Very well, no. Then you do not need this table. I will sit at it until you go away, Madam. Until you retire, because I am couth, not uncouth. Couth, do you hear?'
He sat at the table as the lady tried to push him away.
'Call yourself a Christian? What is this? Unhand me, madam.'
A gentleman appeared. 'What's going on?'
'Charles, this man is trying to take our table.'
'Because we are famished. How else will we have our Christmas lunch? She is finished. You are both finished.'
'You bounder,' said Charles. 'I am Major Farnsworth of the Fourth Hussars, and I object to your behaviour, sir.'
'And I am Major Bloodnok of the Fifth Knives and Forks,' giggled Peter. 'And I object to your red nose. It's a danger to shipping. I advise you to stay well inland.'
Major Farnsworth grabbed Peter, ready to haul him out of his chair. 'I'll teach you . . .'
But Sellers was nothing like he appeared in the movies, you know.
[...] At the end of the rally, doves were released as a symbol of peace. Unfortunately, they were set free just as fireworks burst in the sky, catching many birds in the cross-fire.
I'M STILL DESOLATE THAT CINERAMA THEATERS AREN'T EVERYWHERE, MYSELF. Imagine a book with two words removed from every line, on either side of each page.
Or, why pan-and-scan is evil, and must be destroyed, and all who perpetuate it must die:
MEET EVA. What it's like to have no alternative but to live only on food stamps.
[...] Back in her living room, Eva said, “When I think, I get stressed. So I try not to think, and if I do, I try to ignore everyone and stay in my own little world. You gotta pretend you have it all.”
I'm in a constant state of either being in a state of panic and crippling anxiety, overwhelmed and emotionally and mentally unable to cope with doing many, or often any, of the things necessary for survival beyond the next week, or managing to have some steadier time for a few minutes or hours, by dint of getting out of thinking about any time-span longer than the next day or three, and by dint of not doing the things necessary to be done.
This is self-destructive, of course. And it's one huge part of why I've been so screwed up for decades.
Why can't our country do a better job of helping people meet minimal survival needs, such as safe and decent shelter, food, and a few basics of life?
"The Space Merchants takes place in a future where advertising agencies effectively rule the world. Literally, that is. In the United States, Senators and Congressmen are no longer elected from the various states, but from corporations controlled, not by stockholders, but by the advertising agencies, and each representative has voting power in proportion to the annual billing of his company/agency. A senator from a large agency, for instance, has 30 votes in the Congress, while one from a small agency has only one or two. Similar conditions prevail around the world: Russia (the Soviet Union at the time the book was written) is now RussCorp. And a former little third-world country is now the merchandising giant, Indiastries, where the entire country, thanks to an advertising agency, has been turned into one vertically and horizontally interlocked corporation.
They mention, for instance, "the Senator from Du Pont Chemicals."
That was 1952
But Pohl and Kornbluth weren't farseeing enough: they didn't anticipate actually electing the corporations themselves, as persons, to office.
For several years I've, finally, been in the process of applying for Social Security Disability, something I desperately needed to do decades earlier, but wrongheadedly struggled to avoid as my life spiraled into hell.
Many people have helped me along the way, some of you included, and now I've hit another emergency juncture and my only alternative is to plead for your help and hope a few of you will throw me another lifeline.
MY MENTAL ILLNESS is the primary disability, though I also have other ailments (gout, high blood pressure, and a lot of little things). I'm bipolar. I suffer lifelong severe clinical depression, and panic/anxiety disorders to the point of almost complete disability.
I range up and down to some degree depending on my prevailing biochemistry, my circumstances, and my treatment.
But I'm always, at best, near the verge of being thrust back into the hell of just wanting to kill myself because I can't stand the minute-to-minute overwhelming fear, and all the other desperate feelings that are so impossible to explain to a sane person, save as the product of chemicals flooding my brain, turning it a place of living hell.
I've long known that pretty much everyone first applying for Social Security disability for depression is denied, and can only be approved via appeal, and likely multiple appeals.
A few weeks ago I finally was notified that my disability application was being denied. I completely expected this result, but still, lacking resources, and knowledge of timing, I found myself unprepared for the appeal.
Simultaneously, I've been given notice by my current landlord here in Raleigh, North Carolina, that I have to move from my present circumstances to some new place to live (my original notice a few weeks ago was for a move ASAP; I've wangled a temporary extension, but still have to move as soon as reasonably possible).
Simultaneously, because my SS disability application has been denied, my current mental health help from the State of North Carolina (via the Easter Seals organization) has been cut off. I had had a therapist every 2-4 weeks, and psychiatrist every 3 months, plus medications. I'm appealing that cut-off, too.
Three crisi simultaneously: a place to live, reobtaining treatment, disability application to appeal.
I can't overstate how little able I am to cope with even one crisis at a time, as a rule.
Or even one difficult thing at a time. And for me, almost everything is difficult.
I am, alas, mentally and emotionally ill. It's not easy to say that, but at the age of 50, with severe clinical depression first having struck at least by the end of my teen years, I've come to face it.
It's something I've struggled with, mostly unsuccessfully, my whole life, and I almost certainly will have to struggle with the rest of my life.
I range from, when stressed, completely dysfunctional, no matter how absolutely life-critical doing something is, to minimally functional, accomplishing the basics of keeping fed and showered and a mild amount of optional activities, like desperately striving to stay in communication with friends.
Being crazy is crazy-making, it turns out.
I HAVE NO SUPPORT NETWORK of family, or local friends, alas. And I desperately need one, but in lieu of that, I'm asking here for the only substitute I can: your help.
(I would desperately like to afford to move to another state, to a place I didn't hate, and could afford, and a locale I had some friends, but that isn't financially feasible for now.)
The most frightening part of the appeal process is that now they tell me they want evidence of my disability going back many decades, and I just don't have that official proof. But that's stuff you can't help me with.
HOW YOU CAN HELP: overwhelmingly, through taking out a monthly subscription to my blog for at least six months, if not a year or more; stress on the "more," if possible, though obviously people should only do what they're completely comfortable with, and no one can predict the future.
That is, click the PayPal buttons below or in the sidebar so that you agree to automatically send at least one $5/month donation to Amygdala/me every month, hopefully until my disability application is finally approved.
Subscriptions can be taken out in any combination of the $5/month or $25/month or $50/month increments. So someone could donate $15/month with three $5/month subscriptions. Or $30/month with one $25 subscription and one $5/month subscription. Or $125/month with two $50/month and one $25/month subscription. And so on.
Individual donations in any amount can also be made at any time! But the stability of knowing subscription payments will be coming in in six months or more is what I MOST need.
You can cancel your subscriptions at any time, of course, though naturally I hope you won't, or at least not without advance warning.
A couple of weeks ago I had hoped that I'd be able to find a room with utilities somewhere here in the Raleigh/Durham area for around ~$350/month, and I'd thought that if I could just get approximately another $125/month in subscriptions, I could survive.
Realizing just how expensive food is, along with the other small emergencies and expenses that spring up, and after having lost $50/month worth of subscriptions in the past month, I've realized I need at least another $200/month to survive.
So I'm asking you, in desperation, if you've ever enjoyed my blog, or my comments somewhere, or I've helped you out in some way, or if you're simply feeling able to help out someone in need, someone in overwhelming pain and fear, to please consider taking out one or more subscriptions to my blog for a year or more, possible, and help me survive at least another year.
Four people at $50/month could do it. Or ten people with $5/month each, plus two at $25/month and one at $50. Or whatever. Anything you can do will be endlessly appreciated.
All I can say is that I try to pay help forward.
Thanks.
I'd like to explain the history here, but I also don't want to overwhelm people with length. Ideally I should write up a separate post with a fuller history, but experience tells me that I find this sort of thing so upsetting and depressing to write that I'm apt to do exactly what my circular problem is: not write that post, no matter how much I need to. But maybe sooner or later. Meanwhile, try William Styron's Darkness Visible.
INSIDE MY HEAD.
It's so hard to explain to sane people how I could wind up this way, and what it's like.
How I've gotten here is a long long story, but the essense is that lifelong crippling disease of depression that overwhelms me over and over again, and always, at best, hovers just at the edge of my ability to stave it off, always trying to force its way back into total control, total despair, total self-hatred and self-loathing, and a kind of psychic siren of agony and loneliness.
I range up and down, in pain and functionality, depending on circumstances, and my biochemistry, and how much my meds are or aren't helping. (Currently buspirone and Lamictal.)
When I'm doing better, I'm able to chat and do minimally functional stuff: make myself go out on walks, do some of the more important errands, give an appearance of semi-normality.
When I'm doing worse, I cry, I cower in bed, I'm overwhelmed by fear, I can't leave my room, I can't go outside, I can't cope with other people at all, I can't write, I can't communicate.
In between, I'm mostly frantically trying to maintain some communication with friends, and argue online, simply to keep myself alive, to make myself get out of bed, to feel and think of something beyond the utter despair, to keep myself alive just another day, just another week, just another, maybe, month.
I post online so much -- when I do -- because if I didn't I'd have no sanity left at all. It's almost the only connection I have with people.
It's a struggle. It's a form of therapy. It's desperation.
I can't overstate how overwhelming and out of control these feelings that overpower me so constantly are. That's the hell of it. No matter how much you know that it's biochemistry, that doesn't stop the tsunami of emotional devastation that floods your entire sense of self. It's a living hell.
I'm always just trying to maintain the barest minimum of functionality.
But anything that stresses me makes my panic disorder fly out of control. I go into panic attacks. I have to run and hide, literally. I can't get out of bed.
The more important something is, the more fearful I become of it, and the more unable I become to do it, or even approach it.
I live my life in overwhelming fear, and the rest of the time is in between periods of overwhelming fear.
Yes, I have a lot of fuckups in my head and my brain biochemistry.
I wouldn't wish them, or my life, on my worst enemy.
(It's hereditary, by the way; my father had similar problems, arguably even worse.)
And, yes, the therapy and meds in the past year have helped. But they only help if my circumstances allow me to have a place to live and continue working on improving my mental health, and GETTING STABILITY IN MY LIFE.
I hope you'll help. Subscription, please?
Thanks. Thanks so much if you do.
PayPal account not necessary to donate or subscribe!
$5/month subscription:
$25/month Supporter subscription! $50/month Patron subscription!
ADDENDUM, 3:59 p.m.: That's two $5/month subscriptions so far. Please keep them coming.
ADDENDUM, 4:29 p.m.: That's five more $5/month subscriptions altogether so far, and one $50, and a bunch of singleton donations! Yay, you people. (Of course, this sort of thing comes in a quick spurt that only lasts a day or two, and I keep that in mind.)
ADDENDUM, 4:47 p.m.: Another $50/month, plus two more $5/month for a total of 7 new $5 subscriptions so far today plus the two $50s!
(Please be warned that I'm, goddamn alas, not going to be running out of need in the near future.)
ADDENDUM, 1/26/10, 10:38 a.m.: a bunch of other donations and subscriptions have come in; with luck, more today, before linking blog posts disappear off the front pages of said blogs; I know from experience that wonderful as these spurts of help are, blog-based pleas only effectively last a day or two while said posts are visible. I'll update again tomorrow.
Typically, of course, while I take much comfort from the supportive mail and particularly the lessened insecurity of subscriptions (and donations), I find, this morning, instead of feeling happy and comforted, that I'm full of angst and worry about how long the subscriptions will last, and I'm fighting constant mental flashes to the future experience of watching subscription cancellations eventually flooding into my Inbox.
I can't escape the almost absolute conviction that I'm doomed to always have disasters strike, to exist in a state of almost continual disaster and oncoming horror, since I set them up myself by my endlessly continuous dysfunctionality.
I schedule my panic attacks in advance, as well as impromtu -- kids, this takes a professional, so don't try it at home.
(Yes, I know a bunch of therapeutic techniques at this point to at least interrupt and deal with the negative thoughts as thoughts; working on self-talk has been a huge part of my therapy: it's the physical sensations of terror that are biochemically produced by brain and hormones and body that cause the whole-body feelings is much harder to retrain from lifelong habits. I'm working on trying to practice meditation, and other therapies, to deal with those, as I can, but it's just, you'll pardon the expression, an up and down thing.
Yes, I know that both mind and body are intertwined, and that what one does with one has a huge effect on the other, and that someone with my conditions has to constantly work on both.
If I'm late sending a thank-you note for your subscription or donation, let me apologize in advance: this stuff all makes me overwhelmingly anxious, and I procrastinate. Anyway, not trying to make excuses, but I hope you'll be understanding, with my apologies, if I'm not always Speedy Gonzalez in responding personally.
ADDENDUM, 1/26/10, 2:05 p.m.; it's been a couple of hours since the last donation/subscription, and the blog hits have dropped down to around 80 or so per hour, so we seem to be in the dying tail of the fundraising moment. But, hey, prove me wrong! :-)
ADDENDUM, 1/29/10, 11:11 a.m: Hi, everyone. Sorry, I didn't mean leave such a gap, but I was kinda hoping the last two days that there might be some further links and or hits/donations/subs/etc., and I didn't want to give the impression that the need had disappeared.
Only a handful of new subs and donations drifted in during the last two days, but in the rush of Monday and Tuesday, I've garnered in new subscriptions:
4 @ $50 =200
5 @ $25 =125
31 @ $5 =155
So I have a temporary income stream, that lasts as long as people don't start cancelling subscriptions, of around $1100/month, starting now, for now, which is enough to move, along with the approximately $2000 donated to add to my savings of about $1700.
Of course, that has to make a full budget for everything, so I'll have to keep down what I spend on hookers, drugs, and Vegas visits. Most of all, I know that it's a peak figure, as over coming months subscriptions will inevitably start drifting away, eventually in droves.
But it's enough to get me into some other living arrangement, and boy does that make me feel endlessly better.
I can't thank people enough. I'm still in speechless mode, actually, but didn't want to dawdle further on this addendum. More, as always, later. Sooner or later.
ADDENDUM, February 1st, 12:33 p.m.: Jeez, housing is even more expensive and dodgy, when I look really closely at it, than I thought. Definitely going to have to spend more than I thought earlier, unless I'm very lucky. :-(
ADDENDUM, February 3rd, 11:05 p.m.: This is what I get for being obsessive about reading apartment ads for days, and being depressed about how dangerous and horrible the tenants' reports are on places I had, at first glance at ads, thought sounded find, and, anyway, my procrastinating on getting to a number of the thank-yous I owe people for subs and donations: my first cancellation of a new sub a few minutes ago. A $5/month one, but, still, already the falling away has begun. :-(
Sorry, lots of anxiety attacks again in past few days, terribly interfering with writing things up so far.
Um, please don't cancel your subscriptions?
ADDENDUM, 2/08/10, 4:41 p.m.: I very much need to do a new post on where I'm at with searching for a new place to live, etc., but I'm still catching up on all sorts of other stuff!
And, yes, still, of course, fighting constant battles with overwhelming anxiety, fears, terrors, etc., about anything the remotest bit stressful, which includes anything that reminds me of anything worrying....
One clarification: I'm really hoping that people who subscribe can commit to at least a year, if possible. In all honesty, my fears are overwhelmingly about where I'll be in nine months, and a year, and two. My problems are the opposite of short-term. I don't *expect* anyone to make any commitments, but the more people can, the endlessly more of a relief it is.
Meanwhile, thanks so so much to all who have given support in any way!
