Rich McAllister

cherylmmorgan @ 05:57 pm: Ash

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

When this year’s Hugo short list contained three books marketed as YA a lot of people complained about “dumbing down” and the like. That’s by no means necessarily the case. A book written for teenagers can be just as complex, if not more so, than a book written for adults. However, the writing in YA books is often very straightforward and transparent. Gene Wolfe could probably get away with writing like Gene Wolfe for a teenage audience, but if he was an unknown it is unlikely that he’d be able to sell such a book. And when you read a YA book that is straightforward and transparent you never quite know whether it being so is evidence of lack of skill on behalf of the writer, a conscious decision on behalf of the writer, or something that the writer has been bullied into by her editor.

All of which is necessary preamble to saying that I sped fairly quickly through Malinda Lo’s Ash because once you know the basic conceit (it is a lesbian re-telling of Cinderella) the book is straightforward and transparent. You know who all of the characters are, and what is going to happen, and Lo tells that story in a simple manner. That doesn’t mean it is a bad book. Indeed, it was cute and entertaining. And let’s face it, who would want Prince Charming when the most Charming thing about him is his wealth, especially if you could have his seriously sexy huntress instead?

So Ash is a fun book, and a good book for broadening the minds of young girls who might otherwise be reading Twilight and mooning over sexy vampires. It is very promising for a first novel. Malinda Lo isn’t in the same class as Robin McKinley yet, but give her time, or simply ask her to write for adults, and she may well be.

Tags: books

cherylmmorgan @ 05:12 pm: SF Studies Special

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

I should really be reading novels, but I have been distracted by the latest issue of the academic journal, Science Fiction Studies. It is a special issue on “Science Fiction and Sexuality”. Most of the material is fairly sense, but there’s also a symposium comprising a bunch of short essays (and in some cases rants) by well known writers and academics, including Nicola Griffith and Farah Mendlesohn. You can find that online here, together with the abstracts for the papers in this issue. Academics can be a dry lot at times, but they have wide-ranging interests. The paper titles include things like: “Technofetishism and the Uncanny Desires of A.S.F.R. (alt.sex.fetish.robots)” and “Kill the Bugger: Ender’s Game and the Question of Heteronormativity”.

I am mildly annoyed that if I had been able to attend ICFA last year my paper from there might have had a chance to be in this issue, but at least I should get a chance to present it next year.

Tags: feminism, gender, science fiction

calimac @ 04:38 pm: concerts review: four of them
Besides everything else that happened over last weekend – carpet cleaning, telephone repair, and all – I got to hear a lot of music: concerts on four successive days.

( Old Henry Cowell and all )

calimac @ 12:32 pm: The Nine Nations of China

This fascinating article addresses all the questions that come to my mind when I look at a map of China.

kevin_standlee @ 11:54 am: No Pressure
As part of my health-maintenance regimen, I check my blood pressure each morning using a manual cuff I bought shortly after my original diabetes/high-blood pressure diagnosis. This morning, while pumping up the cuff, I found it wouldn't hold pressure anymore. One of the hoses has sprung a leak. Combined with a dent in the stethoscope, I guess it's time to go buy a new blood pressure kit. I hope it's something my health-care spending account covers.

Tags: health

fla_sunshine @ 02:41 pm: Shuttle Launch
We just watched another Shuttle Launch from our back porch. I like our view. :)

fringefaan @ 09:19 am: Still remembering Dave Vecella
I was reminded yesterday that the 13th was the anniversary of Dave Vecella's death. I wrote about learning of his death last January. The reminder of the anniversary also reminded me that a few months after we heard the news from our Yapese friend, Theo, my brother discovered a blog post indicating that Theo's story about how Dave died was wrong. But the post that my brother found was still very vague on the details, so I did some more googling yesterday and found something with further details that seem to confirm this other story.

What Theo told us, as I wrote on February 1st, was that "[Dave] had apparently taken some people out diving, and a young woman started heading away from the group, going deep without heeding the danger. He went after her, and by the time he caught up with her she was out of air. He shared his air with her as they headed to the surface, but he started running low too and so he held his breath and let her have the rest. ... They made it to the surface, and he said he had a headache. He went to the hospital but told them he was feeling fine now. They let him go home, and he went to bed and never woke up."

What this forum post says is, "What I heard from several sources was that he was deep diving with (his buddy). They went down to 284 ft. on the way up they were supposed to pick up tanks at 150 ft that they had left on the reef, but they couldn't find the tanks because of currents. Apparently (his dive buddy) started to panic and he shared his air . . . . they ran out of air about 60 ft. and had to head up fast. They were both taken to hospital and put in the chamber. He was in a couple of times I think, but he was non responsive and then his heart failed . . . ."

These stories are obviously significantly different, other than that in both he shares his air and surfaces before the nitrogen has left his bloodstream, causing the bends. The second story is still hazy on why the hyperbaric chamber was unable to save him. Above all, however, I really wonder how Theo's version of the story -- with the foolish girl leading Dave to his death -- came into existence. Was Dave's diving buddy a woman? Is this other story meant to protect somebody's identity? The dive they were on is described elsewhere as a technical exercise, perhaps to see how deep they could go. When my niece and I took the advanced diving course from Dave, the deep dive we went on was 100 feet, which is the level at which you supposedly can start suffering from nitrogen narcosis, or "raptures of the deep."

Anyway, as I was thinking about Dave this morning, there was part of me that felt I should correct the story here. Doug Faunt is out sailing, so he won't see this, which is too bad. He was the one who helped me understand what it was that probably killed Dave after I related Theo's version of the story.

In any event, here's to you, Dave. I hope someday to visit your grave on the hill above Kadai, looking out on the reef and beyond.



Tags: memorial, yap

chiefwirehead @ 09:45 pm: The goblins of Crater Lake
Not all of Crate Lake is Crater.
Nor lake, actually.

Off the beaten (circular) track is a ravine with very spooky formations:



well guarded by goblins:




Didn't notice any dragons here, though.

kate_schaefer @ 07:44 pm: My hair hurts

I have a talent for growing hair. This is not a skill, mind you; no amount of practice at growing hair makes me get any better at it. If I neglect my hair growing exercises, my hair will not grow more slowly. It grows. I wash and brush it. Times goes by. It gets longer.

When I was a small child, I wasn't allowed to indulge this talent, because I was the middlest of five children. Long hair on a small child isn't something the child takes care of; it's something a parent takes care of, usually the mom, and our mom was way too busy to let us grow our hair long. I thought this was a great injustice, especially when I looked at Susan Miller, whose hair was waist-length and who was rumored never to have had a haircur when we started first grade (in retrospect, this was obviously untrue, because she had bangs, and bangs don't form themselves without assistance from some cutting instrument, but it was close enough to true for six-year-olds).

By the time I was a medium-sized kid, I was inured to the perpetual pixie cuts and the appalling Toni perms that came around just before school pictures. My beautiful older sister grew her hair long once she became a teenager and was free from parental hair care; I kept mine short for a few more years just because I didn't want to be like her, or because it was less trouble, or something. Whatever my reason was, by my senior year in high school it was clearly no longer because it was less trouble, because that year, I set my hair with pincurls every single night to give myself tight little curls, to the point that when I stopped, one of my friends with naturally curly hair asked me enviously how I'd managed to straighten my hair. What a loon I was in those days.

I went to college and grew my hair long, because I could, because my mother wasn't telling me not to, because no one was comparing me to my sister any more. It looked pretty good.

Three times so far, I've cut it all off and donated it. I have really enjoyed the period immediately after cutting it really short, when I went from about two feet of hair to three-quarters of an inch of hair. The difference in weight, heat, and upkeep was substantial. Each of those times, I had been having some back problems, and getting rid of the hair alleviated a bit of the pressure. Long hair gets caught between the back of a chair and my back, and that sudden tug when it's caught can be very unpleasant if my back already hurts.

Every time I grow it really long, I think, this time, I'm going to keep going. This time, my back won't hurt because I'm doing lots of yoga and taking walks and lifting weights. This time, I'm going to grow my hair into Crystal Gayle territory.

And this time, in fact, my back doesn't hurt.

My rotator cuffs do.

Jesus, does it ever hurt to brush that damn hair for half an hour. I shouldn't have to brush it for such a long time, since it's straight, but now that I'm post-menopausal, it tangles more than it used to. I've been late for yoga a few times because it took so long to braid my hair. Doing yoga with the hair down is not an option; it covers my face in triangle pose, it gets caught under my back in bridge pose, it flops around and generally acts like a limp nuisance with bad manners. Sometimes I put it into just one braid, which doesn't take as long as the whole Pippi Longstocking thing, but that's less convenient for yoga than two braids, because then there's the lump right at the back of the neck.

Okay, Kate, if you're so all-fired whiny about your hair, why not just cut it off? What a great suggestion, Ms. or Mr. Interlocutor. Yes, that's just what I'll do. I made an appointment to cut about half the hair off and donate that chunk while still having longish hair left on my head. I counted the hours till the appointment. It was scheduled for 3:30 today. By 4:30 this afternoon, I'd have shoulder-length hair and a tidy hank of hair to send to Cleveland.

Instead, I've had a weekend of cancelled engagements, gallons of hot tea, and languid naps in the middle of the day. I blame society; if I didn't socialize, I wouldn't have encountered this energy-sapping virus.

And I still have over two feet of hair.

fringefaan @ 01:55 pm: Image of the Day


Gaslight (1940)

Tags: film

n6tqs @ 12:53 pm: "All men shall be sailors, until the sea shall free them"
I certainly haven't been freed. We're just 15 miles north of the
Dominican Republic, heading NNW at about 6 knots under power.
The winds are forecast to be in our bow for the rest of our trip,
so all sails are furled and the yards are all braced sharp.
We'll be in Florida on Friday, apparently. And I'll be home for
Thanksgiving. Any one want to give turkey to a sailor?

We just did swim call, again, and I've now done my other goals-
I jumped from the tip of the jibboom (very nearly as high as the
tops), and I've dived from the channel at the base of the main
shrouds.

We did a number of man-over-board drills, and the last included
trying to get the big boat close enough, under sail, so we could
pick up someone in seas too bad to launch the small boat, and
with engine failure. Each attempt meant tacking a 170-foot
squarerigger three times in 12 minutes. I was at the helm for
all three times we tried it, and it was a VERY busy time. And we
were pretty successful. A concious and active swimmer could have
reached us the first two times, and the third time we were 4 feet
to windward of our target.

San Juan was great. A couple of us made the trip to the radio
telescope at Arecibo, with our local "friend of BOUNTY", who is
in a group that re-enacts the 1797 battle when 1000 Spanish
repelled a large British invasion force. That meant we were
fired upon as we arrived- unfortunately, we were not in a
position to fire back with our four cannon. The food was good,
and many chores were done. We left Thursday evening, since no
sailor leaves port on a Friday, and especially a Friday the 13th.
BTW, we also keep the pots in the galley hung top forward, to
catch more luck, and whistling is frowned upon.

And I've found what I want for a tattoo- a compass rose, on my
inner forearm. I need to research the customs and traditions to
see if there there are any considerations, and choose an exact
design, but after MANY hour's at the helm looking at the compass,
it'll be a good memento of this trip. It was actually inspired
by the one on the arm of our server at the Cafe Puerto Rico.
She's not been to sea, and unfortunately, we're headed in the
wrong direction to tempt her- she wants to go to Europe, not
Florida.

kevin_standlee @ 12:25 pm: Fun in the City
I had a great time getting out of the house where I've been semi-quarantined this past week. In light of petrea_mitchell's concerns, I should point out that it has been at least seven days since my first symptoms and more than two days after I stopped running a fever, so I felt fairly confident that I'm no longer contagious. I will probably be coughing for weeks, given how colds and the like take up residence in my lungs and induce chronic bronchitis.

Anyway, I was happy to get up to the City, meeting friends for dinner before the SF in SF reading (and having a good, filling, and remarkably affordable meal at Henry's Hunan), the reading itself, and then going on to the Marriott for after-meeting drinks in The View. I hadn't been in the Marriott for several years -- they've remodeled the lobby and got rid of the water sculpture that I'd always thought of the lobby's centerpiece. (If we'd actually been able to hold a Worldcon there, I anticipated lots of people saying, "Meet me at the water sculpture" before heading out to dinner.) Drinks in The View are overpriced, of course ($6 for a small glass of Diet Pepsi), but you're paying for the view.

Enjoying the conversations so much, I nearly missed the fact that it was past 11:30 and those of us with BART trains to catch needed to get a move on. I caught the 11:49 out of Powell Street, which is cutting it closer than I would have liked, although I think there's at least two more trains after that at that hour from that station that could still get me back to Fremont. As it was, I didn't get to bed until around 1:30 or closer to 2, and I was in no hurry to get up today. Indeed, I'd easily have slept all day, except I do have a few errands that need doing this weekend -- some grocery shopping, and also I need to go get the oil changed in my van. I should have done it last week, but I was obviously limiting my public exposure. (And you hardly need an oil change if the vehicle isn't turning a wheel.)

Tags: friends, health, travel

cherylmmorgan @ 12:23 pm: Of Intelligent Fungi and Zombies

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Yesterday’s trip into San Francisco went very well. Kevin and I picked up a lot of good books and some good food, and had a lovely evening with friends.

Mary Robinette Kowal managed to turn up for the pre-reading dinner event before having to rush off into the Mission for Writers with Drinks. We went to a very nice Chinese restaurant called Henry’s Hunan just off 2nd where we ate very well for $14 each. The very low price was in part due to us ordering fewer entrees than we had diners and sharing, but even so we all had plenty to eat. Mary demonstrated her awesome organizational abilities by handling the ordering and payment with an ease I have rarely seen at a big group meal.

This SF in SF was special because yesterday was Rina Weisman’s birthday. The reading series is very much her creation and I’m in awe of how hard she works to make it happen. I was delighted to see that we had a full house for the event.

The first reader was S.G. (Scott) Browne who I had seen briefly on the zombie panel at World Fantasy but otherwise didn’t know. His novel, Breathers, is very funny. It also does something very interesting with zombies. By writing the book from the point of view of a zombie, and making his zombies sentient, Browne has found a good way of writing about social discrimination issues without having to negotiate the minefield of talking about actual minority groups. I was impressed, and bought the book on the strength of the reading.

Jeff VanderMeer read from Finch rather than Booklife, though we did talk about the latter during the Q&A. Jeff made a point of assuring us that the grey caps are not intelligent fungi, they just use fungal technology. I would tell you more, but that might be a spoiler for Finch, which you should read.

I got to talk to Jeff quite a bit and I’m pleased to discover that he has a very interesting project lined up that I can’t talk to you about yet. It will be awesome, I promise. He also mentioned the possibility that there might be another Ambergris book after all. I hope so, because the idea he floated is just the book I thought needed to be written after I had finished Finch.

I also got to chat with Andrew Wheeler, who is in San Francisco on business, and Jeff Prucher, the creator of the awesome (and Hugo-winning) Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction.

Fellow hamtrax survivor, Kevin Roche, was also at the reading. He and his husband, Andy Trembley, had taken a room in the Marriott for the night, and after the reading all trooped off to the View Bar with Jeff in tow. I know it is an expensive bar, but the views of the city really are awesome and that makes it a great place to take visitors to The City.

Tags: books, personal, science fiction

lin_mcallister @ 12:04 pm: Jirel's Excellent Adventure

At least in her opinion: pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/44616363@N04/sets/72157622672368105/detail/

On Tuesday, Jirel, our year-old calico, went out and having absolutely no concept of danger or common sense headed up the neighbor's redwood, the tallest tree on the block. She got about 25' up and couldn't figure out how to get down. Of course she picked a spot out of reach, and it was almost dark Remebering the adage that one rarely sees cat skeletons in trees we decided to let her find her own way down – just jump, you dumb feline.

akirlu @ 10:05 am: Understanding the Irony Gap
I think it just gets down to experience at school, and subsequent norms of acceptability in social intercourse. One of the reasons Americans don't see it when Brits are being ironic, is because Americans simply will not believe that anyone is so unkind and so socially shriveled that they would casually use deadpan cruelty and nastiness on a perfect stranger for the sake of "a laugh". So an American must interpret an interaction like that as straight, rather than ironic, otherwise they would have to, by their own lights, believe something reprehensible about Britons. In general, Americans simply don't get the idea of cruelty without anomie.

This is part of why I say that Americans are dogs, and Britons are cats.

calimac @ 08:19 am: news roundup
1. Here's one of Bruce Schneier's great columns on counter-terrorism. As he's pointed out, he says the same things over and over - this is because nobody in charge is listening to him - but he says them so well. I wouldn't have the patience.

I particularly liked this on what he calls "security theater":

These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning. If we spend billions defending our rail systems, and the terrorists bomb a shopping mall instead, we've wasted our money. If we concentrate airport security on screening shoes and confiscating liquids, and the terrorists hide explosives in their brassieres and use solids, we've wasted our money. Terrorists don't care what they blow up and it shouldn't be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets.

It seems to me that planning against the last attack, like the French planning for the last war, operates on the principles used for planning against natural disasters. If, say, you live in an area prone to earthquakes and your buildings fall down, you build stronger buildings. It won't make the earthquakes go somewhere else. If you live in a city that was flooded by a hurricane, and you build dikes that would have been proof against that hurricane, it won't make the next hurricane say, "Woah, that won't work any more; I'd better go hit some other city instead."

But terrorists are not natural disasters. They have two things that earthquakes and hurricanes, at least outside of horror novels, don't: malevolence and agency. If you change your plans, they can change theirs to match yours. That never seems to occur to planners.

2. Here's an article on being rude back to rude cell-phone users. I have a few thoughts on this:

a) Why is hearing half a conversation from a person alone at the next table with a cell phone so much more annoying than hearing a whole conversation from two people at the next table? I think it's because people tend to talk more loudly on cell phones, which in turn is probably because reception is so bad. So this is a problem that may have a technological fix.

b) I have hardly ever yet overheard a cell phone conversation in which the caller did not, at some point, describe exactly where he or she was located and what they were doing. This includes, on one memorable occasion, "I'm in the theatre watching a movie."

c) The apostolic descendant of Emily Post advises politeness on the grounds that "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." This is fallacious on a couple of grounds. First, it is factually incorrect. Vinegar makes a great fly-trap; better than honey, and you can leave it out longer. Second, I for one only use the "vinegar" approach only after I've tried the "honey" one and it doesn't work.

3. Here's Levi Johnston making ads. You know, I feel almost sorry for him. When he and Bristol went canoodling, her mom was not yet a celebrity. (Obscure governors of unpopulated states are just not that important.) There are thousands of ordinary schlubs out there who carelessly raked their oats into teenage fatherhood. This one, and only this one, became the subject of burning media attention and the butt of a nation's humor. If he wants to respond by milking his fifteen minutes for all they're worth, I may avert my eyes but I can hardly blame him for trying to get some kind of silver lining out of his humiliation.

ceemage, posting in tuckerverse @ 03:41 pm: Steve Green's TAFF Tales re-run
( Technical neepery and an apology )

Steve Green tells us all about his TAFF trip and what he got up to at the Worldcon (re-run)

• Sunday 15th November, 1.00 pm PST (Pacific Standard Time)
  
• Sunday 15th November, 4.00 pm EST (Eastern Standard Time)
  
• Sunday 15th November, 9.00 pm UTC (Co-ordinated Universal Time)
  
• Sunday 15th November, 9.00 pm GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)
  
• Monday 16th November, 5.00 am WAST (Western Australian Standard Time)
  
• Monday 16th November, 8.00 am EADT (Eastern Australian Daylight Time)
  
• Monday 16th November, 10.00 am NZDT (New Zealand Daylight Time)

The ustream channel remains at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/novacon

sharikkamur, posting in eastercon @ 12:21 pm: Illustrious - A bid for Eastercon 2011
At the Novacon opening ceremony on Friday it was announced that there is at least one definite bid for Eastercon 2011 - Illustrious.

This is brought to you by a committee comprising Chris O'Shea (the_magician), Nik Whitehead (sharikkamur), John Dowd, Fran Dowd (frandowdsofa), John Harrold, David Mansfield, and Hayley Fazzani (quasi_hayley), aided and abetted by several others and would be held at the Hilton Metropole at the NEC in Birmingham (the DiscworldCon hotel).

It will have the normal wide-ranging programme (organised by Dave) but will have two themed streams - SF through the decades and Military SF.

There is a eastercon2011 community where discussions about the Eastercon 2011 (not just about the Illustrious bid) occasionally take place. The bid website is at www.illustrious.org.uk, and there is also a Facebook event (Illustrious2011) for the bid.

We are NOT taking pre-supporting memberships (it just makes the book-keeping complicated) so memberships will only be available if we win the bid at Odyssey next year. Nevertheless, if you want to get involved then please come and join the discussions on the eastercon2011. More news, ideas and discussions will occur when the rest of the bid committee get back from Novacon.

Cheers,

Nik (Co-chair)

jackwilliambell @ 04:01 am: Shouting into the wind
Twittering as jackwilliambell.

• 15:26 At the Science Fiction Museum with some friends. #
• 16:21 In the Experiance Music Project now. Fooling around in the Sound Lab. Friends exlporing rest of EMP. #
• 18:58 Dinner at Red Mill Burgers and drinks at Murphey's. Been a very Seattle evening. #

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calimac @ 10:42 pm: did you miss me?

No phone, no Web, no Internet
Not a single luxury
Like Robinson Caruso*
It's primitive as can be.

*That's how they pronounced it

Thursday afternoon I came home and discovered our DSL was out and we had no Internet connection. Well, this has happened before, and when resetting it didn't work, I picked up the phone to call tech support, only to find that it wasn't the DSL that was dead, it was the phone line.

A call to Repair on my cell phone - the one with the lousy signal around here, so forget the obvious question - later, I had a twelve-hour window on Friday during which they'd supposedly show up.

And indeed, near the end of that window, and a mere 27 hours after I'd submitted my plaint, I got a call on said cell phone from a technician who said that the problem appeared to be out on the connection to the main line. Shortly thereafter it was fixed, but that's long enough to be without it. Good thing I haven't succumbed to the fad of keeping all my documents on the web.

This was all in the middle of some complicated e-mail exchanges with liveavatar regarding meeting up for a concert, and I didn't want to burden the conversation with TMI about how I had to run down to the public library to check my e-mail. After such patience, the desired conjunction did take place on Friday evening, in a previously unknown location up twisty roads, stumbled over in the dark, with the acoustics of a wine cellar, and cryptically lasting three and a half hours. More on that later.

In the meantime, it is, or was recently, late October, the anniversary of our move to Minnipin Cottage, which meant it was time to clean our alarmingly light-colored carpets, the more so after what the cats have been doing recently. That got done today. This meant a trip to the supermarket to buy assorted red bottles of toxic fluids and rent the carpet cleaner, a machine that looks like a modernist bust of Stalin and sounds like an anemic jackhammer, with an impressive ability to turn clear sudsy water in one compartment into dirty grey water in the other compartment. The carpets even looked a little cleaner, but if there were a chemical that could just change the water color without doing anything else ... well, it doesn't bear thinking of.