Linkee-poo is boggled

Spent last night catching up with reading instead of studying. It was that bad of a day that I felt sabotaging my courses was the wiser form of action. Sometimes I'm not entirely rational.

SF/F authors writing about the climate and what response they've gotten. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)

And speaking of Tobias, happy book day, dude. Arctic Rising is now available for sale. Get a copy before it comes true. Which may be in a few years.

(said in fanboy squee voice) ZOMG, Jim Hines talks about fame and fanboy fails. Having seen that from both ends of the stick (but not as the object of fanboyism - yet), yeah, that. I think it's affected me in another way. When running into people who are "famous" I no longer get all squee about it. I don't go and introduce myself to all of them, only the ones that I am a very big fan of. Now, if I ever happen to be in the same room as Neil Gaiman and there's a break in the goth girl contingent, I can't guarantee that I also wouldn't pee myself a little, because, you know, it's Neil Frickin' Gaiman.

Andrew Wheeler with some more inside baseball on the publishing industry. I'm also not sure that the pre-orders wouldn't count as first week sales as Amazon neither charges your account or (obviously) ships the book until they have it (which would be when it would go live on their site anyway). So I would think that the sales wouldn't be registered until you're actually charged for the book. Now, how it would appear on Amazon's ranking lists is another ball of wax. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Chuck Wendig talks about the funny and asks for comments and recommendations. Oh, yeah, we're going to be checking that out. Because, you know with the you know, you know?

Jeff VanderMeer talks about the obsession with word count and staying in contact with your writing.

Lynda Williams on writing what you know, but is really about how to instill verisimilitude.

We always knew R2D2 was saying something they didn't want us to know. He was a precurser of Bender, only more vulgar. (Grokked from George Takei)

And now tilt-shift comes to video (the music is a bit much, but I've seen a few commercials that use this technique in a limited way. I wonder if this look will translate to generations in the future who won't have grown up watching cheaply produced stop animation and puppet shows? Wait a sec, are those storm trooper marching down the road for Carnival? (Pointed to by John)

Vince brings us the end of the slippery Santorum slope, the anti-Copernican, Big Bang, Evolution mouth breathers rise. I'm pointing to Vince's blog, he has the video, because I don't want to give any more link love to those people.

Do you know you Rick Santorum from a Dave Mustaine (former head of Megadeth and Metallica guitarist)? (Pointed to by John)

Just how biased is your media? I need to download the podcast to get all the info there. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

NPR release their new ethics handbook. "At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly." Good luck with that, NPR. Given the well know liberal bias of reality, I expect the mud slinging and "defund NPR" shouting to begin in 3… 2… 1… (Grokked from Tobias Buckell, I think)

With all the various tax plans of the GOP candidate, having a handy dandy chart would be nice. Oh look at where all the divergence from current policy happens. Why, it all seems to be above the $100-200,000 mark with most of the divergence coming above the $500,000 level.

And last, but certainly not least, God weighs in on the political campaign and shows us part of his plan. (Pointed to by Sheila)