William Gibson holds forth on his process. Frankly, I think part of his description and reasoning is, "we have to be entertaining during an interview." (Grokked from Warren Ellis)
Jay Lake shares his outline for Mainspring. Actually, I think it's more of a synopsis, but still an interesting peak into another author's process.
Because it pings on my day job and night passion, Philip Jose Farmer's calling cards. (FYI, calling cards are slightly different than business cards) Proving, yes, you can have humor in your daily communications. (Grokked from Joe Hill)
"Nothing good gets away." A letter about love from John Steinbeck to his son. (Grokked from Camille Alexa)
Yo, is this racist? Or, if you have to ask, or start a comment with, "I'm not sure if this makes me racist," you can bet your last dollar, it's racist. (Grokked from Catherine Shaffer)
Another in the long line of friends lost to "the greatest healthcare system in the world." This is what it means to not have a universal healthcare system, people die before their times and alone. Like Random Michelle says, there's no guarantee that with screening our friend wouldn't have died, but it does mean that she wouldn't have died the way she did. Being poor means hoping the pain goes away. Fuck cancer.
And speaking of long lines, another new "promising" diet-in-a-pill. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Evolution explained pretty damn well. It's the luck of the draw, there is no plan, and it follows the tautology of "what survives, survives." Just as side note, in a later paragraph there is the mention of one human point mutation that causes sickle cell anemia and how it's a "terrible disease." This is true in one sense (it's a very painful, debilitating disease that can lead to necrosis and death), however sickle cell provides natural immunity to malaria. So, another lesson is that sometimes a mutation can help, but still be a "bad" thing. Also not discussed is the various ways bacteria and (and early single celled life could) "trade" genes, which is another form of mutation. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
The Rush sees the problem with attacking Romney for being a greedy capitalist (because, that's pretty much 1 - his business plan and 2 - goes against the "GOP, we like rich, white people" slogan). Well, Rush, yeah, we can do better than that when we make our attacks on Romney ("Corporations are people, my friend" and "I like firing people" - the man writes better than we can outsource it). "'Newt is not sounding like a conservative when he’s making these attacks,' Limbaugh said Monday." Yes. Newt is attacking someone for being a corporate raider/1%er who was more interested in lining his pockets with crisp Benjamines every quarter instead of taking the long view, helping all boats rise, and growing businesses, jobs, and prosperity for all (or at least a larger percentage). I agree with Limbaugh here. That tact is very definitely not what conservatives are all about. You have to coddle the corporate raider/1%er, and screw everybody else. That's the conservative mandate.
And speaking of using conservatives own words against them. Sure, conservatives are all against government making the connection between inaction and commerce when it's the ACA, but when it was about marijuana growing, they argued in the opposite direction. While the article says this is to "box Scalia", I think they've quickly forgotten that shame, stare decisis, and logic have been excised from the conservative panoply.
Arizona has some money burning a hole in its governmental pockets, so it's going to buy its government
buildings back. On the plus side, the real estate market has improved for Arizona, having sold their capitol in 2009 for $81 million (in a total $735 million deal), the company that owns it is willing to part with the property for a mere $105 million. The article doesn't discuss how much the State had to pay to lease back the properties for the past two years. Tell me again how Republicans are better business people (all this done under Jan Brewer and a Republican controlled legislature), 'cause I keep forgetting. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
A long but interesting look at South Carolina, the Tea Party maturation, Mitt Romney and the upcoming primary election. There's a lot of interesting psychology going on in there, all along the lines of "One of Us or Not One of Us." It's the absolutism and moral rectitude that I find so repelling in the TP. "As we sat in leather armchairs on either side of a coffee table, Loftis (S.C. State Treasurer, swept into office as a TPer) explained to me that, now that he was actually serving in elective office, he had come to understand how important it was to choose a candidate who could actually do the job in question, rather than one who said all the right things about slashing government and all of that." Strange how when you get more involved with something, a lot of the extraneous BS falls away and you look for ways to get things done.(Grokked from Jay Lake)
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