science

Thursday various

  • John Scalzi on finding the time to write:

    So: Do you want to write or don’t you? If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.” And that’s fine. Just don’t kid yourself as to what “yes, but” means.

  • Janet Potter on the work of Stieg Laarson:

    Which is why, in the end, my problem with the Millennium trilogy is not its genre, or its plot, or its characters. It’s the fact that the bestselling books in the world are poorly written, erotic fan fiction that a man wrote about himself. [via]

  • Roger Ebert on the state of the nation:

    The time is here for responsible Americans to put up or shut up. I refer specifically to those who have credibility among the guileless and credulous citizens who have been infected with notions so carefully nurtured. We cannot afford to allow the next election to proceed under a cloud of falsehood and delusion.

  • Nancy Kress on bad movies:

    When you fall asleep at a movie and begin to snore, that constitutes a review. When no one around you goes “shhhh,” that constitutes another.

  • And finally, the CERN Choir on particle physics [via]:

Tuesday various

  • Textbooks Up Their Game. The Wall Street Journal looks at the evolving world of the textbook market and the role that e-book volumes will play in it.

    The iPad does seem better suited to the textbook market than most other e-readers, if only for its versatility. But I can’t see app-ready editions of textbooks having much widespread appeal (beyond the student who already owns an iPad) or impact, unless the price of Apple’s reader and/or the books comes down significantly. Students are unlikely to pay $69.99 (much less $84.99) for a book they can’t re-sell and that, once the iPad stops working or needs to be replaced, is gone too.

  • Daleks voted the greatest sci-fi monsters of all time. It’s a weird list. The original poll was for “Monsters, Supernatural Beings & Fantasy Creatures,” which means picks like Aslan makes more sense — although a CGI lion with the voice of Liam Neeson is a little monstrous, too — but Pilot from Farscape?
  • Real or not, I think I can live without J.D. Salinger’s toilet.
  • Deconstructing the Twikie. Surprisingly, this hasn’t been done by Cockeyed.com. [via]
  • And finally, I’ve really been enjoying Zach Handlen’s Star Trek: The Next Generation recaps:

    It can be difficult to convincingly show love in fiction, because the experience of falling for someone is both highly personal and curiously universal; the details and shared moments are what give the feeling texture, but the rush and elation of it are things that we all share. So you’ve got to find some way to make the small moments appear distinct and honest so that the big moments feel earned.

Tuesday various

Monday various

  • Rachel Maddow takes on the “Scare White People” tactics of the right. That this is a tried and tested method for securing votes is only slightly less disheartening than the fact that it seems to be working even today. [via]
  • Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, whose story “Mouse and I” appears in the April 2010 issue of Kaleidotrope, writes about finding her voice as a Filipino science fiction writer:

    I found myself thinking, yet again, on what kind of science fiction a Filipino would write, and how a writer can break free from being someone who emulates the works of writers he or she has admired to become a person who writes with a voice and with a story that comes from the writer’s own soul.

    What things influence the Filipino writer then? What’s our backstory? How can I as a writer coming from a country that has been so colonialized and that is still trapped in a colonial mindset free myself so I can write the fictions that only I can write?

  • She also shares a really terrific talk on “The Danger of a Single Story” by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
  • Apparently there is no gravity [via] and time is disappearing from the universe. [via] Or at least, those are some theories.
  • And finally, I don’t know if this story, about a Bosnian man who claims to have been hit by meteorites six times, is made more or less strange by the possibility that it’s all a hoax.