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December 31st, 2009
slashdotscience
| 09:12 am - NASA WISE Telescope Starts Taking Pics
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/Y_wlG5pKrmg/NASA-WISE-Telescope-Starts-Taking-Pics coondoggie writes "NASA said its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft successfully popped the cover off its infrared telescope and began “celestial treasure hunt” mission of sending back what will be millions of images of space. The WISE lens cap served as a safety system keeping the ultra-sensitive lens and telescope system safe until the spacecraft positioned itself correctly in orbit. The cap also served as the top to a Thermos-like bottle that chilled the instrument. WISE’s infrared telescope and detectors are kept chilled inside a Thermos-like tank of solid hydrogen, called a cryostat."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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secritcrush
 | 09:50 am - One last poll before the end of time ...
Poll #1505446 Time and tolls
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13It's 9:40; what time is it? Did 'Twenty of ten' make you say 'What?!?' Is a 2-hour drive long?
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cassiphone
 | 07:50 pm - 2009: Done and Dusted
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there. I’m not doing anything to commemorate the end of the decade because I can barely contemplate the concept and short of a meme to tell me how to organise said thoughts, I’m ignoring it for now (cough okay while I was putting this together people came up with a meme, I’ll get to it eventually). The year is another matter.
Here with commentary is the wishlist I set out for 2009 a year ago:
*get my driver’s licence
Achieved in March, after great suffering and stress (and failing in January and February). My honey was a rock through this utterly torturous process and I broke at least one more driving instructor in the process. I am particularly grateful to ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) godiyeva who helped me bridge the gap between Raeli starting school & me finally getting my license by “carpooling” with me for the school run, and letting me practice at the same time. Nine months on, I still love my car and the independence of driving, and still do not take it for granted. Driving out last week to pick girliejones from the airport made me feel ridiculously grown up.
*go to my first Aurealis Awards ceremony
This was just the most fun ever. I was nearly three months pregnant when I left and I knew that this (and ROR, two months later) would be one of my only chances to do the pro writer abroad thing without consideration of baby baby baby. I got to play the grown up again, picking myself up from the airport, catching a train to the city to meet my Pulp Fiction Press editor Diane and go to high tea, and then again catching a taxi out to the apartments where girliejones and I were staying. It was a lovely weekend of talking and thinking like a writer, meeting new friends and connecting with old ones.
*start logging the books I read in a spreadsheet again
It might not seem like much, but while the time I took off from logging my reading worked to take some of the Must Read pressure off, I did miss the record. I read 115 books this year, and I doubt that’s going to change between now and midnight. I really wanted to make 120 but – not a bad tally, considering.
*see my daughter start kindergarten
This was a big one. Watching Raeli blossom at school has completely justified all the work it took to get her through the early entry process. She has enjoyed her two days of school a week so much that she became quite snobbish about going to daycare on the other days. She particularly loves music class. Seeing her become more confident on the play equipment, make friends, and advance from knowing her alphabet to being able to read has been beyond awesome.
( Read the rest of this entry » )
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grimmwire
 | 03:21 am - NYE meep
Am back in Montreal after a nice week in Ontario doing the Xmess thing.
Went to a Full Moon Party tonight with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rezendi. Yes, a party on the night before New Years Eve. It was packed and just starting to cook when I left at 1am. Montreal is one crazy decadent place.
Now if only I had some plan for NYE itself. It's snuck up on me again and I have no clue what I'm going to do tomorrow night. Any ideas out there?
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catrambo
 | 12:01 am - Things I Tweeted Today
Today I used my bandwidth to say:
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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apod
| 05:12 am - Spitzer s M101
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091230.html  Big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is one of the last
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catsparx
 | 03:40 pm - 2009
Never seen another year like it. Never want another one anything remotely close. Aside from my Father being bashed to within an inch of his life, this year claimed five friends of mine way before their times. And its leaving with another handful battling scary cancers. And some other stuff. This year the firestorm happened all around me and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to help. Off now to build a wicker man in my backyard. Happy new year everyone. Inshallah.
Dr Anna Donald
Kris Hembury
Glayne Louise Blackmore
Charles Brown
Professor Jim Hagan
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slashdotscience
| 02:44 am - Russia Plans To Divert Asteroid
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/KUubdh50eHY/Russia-Plans-To-Divert-Asteroid CyberDong writes "Roscosmos, Russia's Federal Space Agency, will start working on a project to save planet Earth from a possible collision with Asteroid Apophis, which may happen in 2036. NASA specialists believe that the collision is extremely unlikely. Russian specialists will choose the strategy and then invite the world's leading space agencies to join the project."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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wendy_waring
 | 03:13 pm - Not another reading list...
I'm not very good at keeping track of what I've read during a year. Nevertheless, I comb other people's lists for suggestions, and it struck me as selfish that I wasn't contributing to the general festschrift celebrating the year 2009. So here are a dozen or so books I read this year (although not published in 2009, sorry), that, months later, still hold their shape, resonate, or echo down into my present. In a brain overburdened by infotainment and administrivia, that's clearly an accomplishment.
The year of magical thinking Joan Didion
Didion is one of my favourites from the Sontag generation, and this book, about the year after her husband dropped dead of a heart attack, captured me completely. Didion finds the large in small details, and has a gift for encompassing this with artful phrases. No soppiness. The work of grief sculpted in sinewy relief.
The Lacuna Barbara Kingsolver
I've just finished this, so perhaps it's unfair to place it on the list, but I'm pretty sure it will stick with me. It was slow to start, which is why I'm mentioning it straight up. Stick with it, if someone has gifted you with it. The whole in the heart of a certain US history.
The Book of Negroes (in Oz, Someone knows my name) Lawrence Hill
I interviewed Hill for Good Reading magazine, so I "had" to read this, but the story, which cannot help but skirt the repulsive as it limns the history of slavery in Canada and the US, is made beautiful by the heroine, who is sharp-witted, astute, and generous.
The woman in the fifth. Douglas Kennedy
Another crossover novel which is, as far as I know, entirely billed as litfic. If you like Stephen King, and you've spent any time in Paris, you could enjoy this.
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett.
For charming whimsy, I don't think you could beat this one. It's short, you can polish it off in the dentist's office. Wear hat and gloves.
Kim Westwood's postapocalyptic Australian novel, Daughters of Moab. Mad Max meets Jeanette Winterson. Entirely homegrown, with international finishes. You ain't gonna read anything quite like this anywhere else.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.
I liked this the way a watchmaker likes an 18th-century Swiss watch. I kept wanting to take it apart and see how Haddon had pulled off the engaging yet difficult POV character. And of course, I liked the story.
Joshua Ferris' novel, Then we came to the end.
There's an injunction that goes: "Write what you know!". Anyone who's spent any time in a writers group will add: "but not if it's about your life in a cubicle farm. Please. NOOoooo...!" This first novel about, wait for it, life in a cubicle farm, manages to breathe life into its subject, and there isn't even a whiff of zombie. I think Ferris' gift for dropping in unexpected yet apt sentences to invigorate his paragraphs draws you along until you're ineluctably lost to the stories at the heart of the cubicle labyrinth.
Andrew Hussey's Paris: the secret history
is a Parisophile's book on Paris. Much more argumentative than British doyen of French history Alistair Horne's The Seven Ages of Paris, and so, much easier to love.
The enchantment of Lily Dahl by Siri Hustvedt.
Like a plain girl who turns out to be quite lovely, this small-town mystery story in Hustvedt's hands is definitely worth asking out.
The City & the City China Mieville.
This is not the most byzantine of Mieville's works, nor the most challenging politically, but I found myself pondering it in odd moments in the weeks after I finished it. I'd like to read it again.
Shelter, Susan Palwick.
I liked this because there just isn't enough homely sf out there.
And in June this year, to my 2-yr-old niece Mary, I read the Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham, and Michael Dugan's Wombats can't fly. Apparently, the latter did the trick. She recently mounted the kitchen table and announced, flapping her arms, "I Mary and I fly."
That's why we read books.
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slashdotscience
| 02:44 am - Russia Plans to Divert Asteroid
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/rrSqYqD3FE0/Russia-Plans-to-Divert-Asteroid CyberDong writes "Roscosmos, Russia's Federal Space Agency, will start working on a project to save planet Earth from a possible collision with Asteroid Apophis, which may happen in 2036. NASA specialists believe that the collision is extremely unlikely. Russian specialists will choose the strategy and then invite world's leading space agencies to join the project."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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jack_yoniga
 | 09:15 pm - Only one more day to order Douglas Smith's CHIMERASCOPE!
Folks: Tomorrow is the last day to order Douglas Smith's first full short story collection, Chimerascope, as a signed, limited edition hardcover (signed by the author, Introduction writer Julie Czerneda, and cover artist Erik Mohr):
http://www.horror-mall.com/CHIMERASCOPE-by-Douglas-Smith-Limited-Edition-p-19466.html
PLEASE NOTE: The hardcover edition features the story "Murphy's Law," which will not be included in the trade paperback edition.
Grab this baby while you still can!
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marcy_italiano
 | 09:02 pm - Big fish in a little pond smashes into edges
I don't have a lot of time these days, we have events and visits planned for pretty much every day of the hoidays, and I have year-end work to do. But I would like to request one thing of all parents with kids of different ages.
If you go to a TODDLER playground (oh, say Busy Bees today) and have an older child coming with you, this does not mean you can completely ignore the older child. They are too big for the toys. They are rough, run too fast, and can scare the smaller kids who are SUPPOSED to be playing there safely. And you know what? Kids just aren't that smart.
Let's use a hypothetical example of what kind of bad things can happen. A back room used for changing with mats on the floor might have tables lined up along a window. An older child jumping up and leaping from one table to another might break a leg off of a table, send it crashing down and send the rising edge smashing into said child's face propelling him backwards. Sitting there screaming with no mommy in sight, other mommys have to pick up your child and look for your lazy ass to take him home. (It wasn't me it was another lady, I don't have a kid I can leave alone for a few minutes yet.)
K was so traumatized watching this (and hell, so was I) that even after he played more and found Grandma, he brought her back to that room and showed her while saying, "Table, owie!" I won't mention other older kids that were rough. There is a place called KidZone that is for that age group, take them there.
Or, hey, here's a concept, watch your fucking children.
I've also realized I that might become a germaphobe. *shudders at ball pit* That's my rant for the day. :) Have a pleasant evening.
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tobias_buckell
 | 08:55 pm - Watch out Czechs!
This magazine arrived in the mail today, the issue of Pevnost, which includes my story Waiting For The Zephyr in it.
I’m hoping a lot of Czech Stephenie Meyer fans pick it up and read it in utter confusion.
I’m just kidding. I know Pevnost is doing the media covers. The last few issues of SF Age did something similar, and the range of material in Pevnost is interesting. It has articles about SF/F literary and media news, book reviews, columns, and fiction. Not sure if we have anything as eclectic in the field anymore.
(post slightly edited to remove Cold War era geography hiccups on my part. Wow, who knew that stuff was so embedded?)
Originally published at Tobias Buckell Online. You can comment here or there.
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slashdotscience
| 12:45 am - The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/xzgIQhMLYd8/The-Neuroscience-of-Screwing-Up resistant writes "As the evocative title from Wired magazine implies, Kevin Dunbar of the University of Toronto has taken an in-depth and fascinating look at scientific error, the scientists who cope with it, and sometimes transcend it to find new lines of inquiry. From the article: 'Dunbar came away from his in vivo studies with an unsettling insight: Science is a deeply frustrating pursuit. Although the researchers were mostly using established techniques, more than 50 percent of their data was unexpected. (In some labs, the figure exceeded 75 percent.) "The scientists had these elaborate theories about what was supposed to happen," Dunbar says. "But the results kept contradicting their theories. It wasn't uncommon for someone to spend a month on a project and then just discard all their data because the data didn't make sense."'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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December 30th, 2009
cristalia
 | 08:19 pm - The 2009 Books
Despite my inability to get it through my head this year, I have most of my gifts put together, there is a chicken in my fridge for the big New Year's Eve dinnerstravaganza, and it is time to do this post. I'm leaving the Grand Metrics for tomorrow, since I do plan to write a bit tonight.
( So here is what I read this year: )
There are a couple notable trends this year: one is that I reread a lot of already-owned books this year. This is what I do when I'm stressed. You can pretty much pinpoint the months I was having a rough go of something by those clusters of rereads.
The other is that I rarely read anything new when it came to genre fiction. This year, I read backlist. I read literary novels. I read Toronto books by Toronto authors about Toronto. I read graphic novels. I read WWI and 1920s research books. But I didn't especially read new genre fiction.
This is the second year in a row where I've been feeling like I am just Not The Target Audience (tm) for most of what's coming out in genre: I'm not especially fond of either paranormal romance or military SF, and those seem to be where a lot of energy is focusing -- and not wrongly, since the paranormal romance makes money and we all like having that. A lot of my favourite genre authors didn't have books out this year, the hard SF section felt exceedingly thin, and that odd, niche style of fantasy I like didn't make much of an appearance, either. When it did it was spectacular -- see: The City and the City and The Manual of Detection -- but it was pretty far between.
It is also, methinks, possible that my tastes are just changing. I may be becoming more of a literary reader. But that's something to revisit next year, to see if it bears out.
Stuff I loved gibberingly and unabashedly, and would handsell like an evangelist at Rapture time if still at the bookstore: The Last Hot Time, Pattern Recognition, The Manual of Detection, The City & the City, Girls Fall Down, Freedom & Necessity, The Maltese Falcon and weirdly enough The City Man, which I didn't think much of right after finishing and then had grow on me slowly and steadily. I had good luck, by and large, with the Coach House Books list: even the stuff which made me occasionally roll my eyes and I didn't so much love gave me some take-home value.
The to-read shelf is decently stocked at the moment, although it's mostly with more Dashiell Hammett, literary novels, essays, and nonfic, and hopefully once I'm through that some of the 2010 books I'm looking forward to will be available. Or I'll discover a rich vein of criminally-neglected backlist. Or someone will have written me some goddamned hard science fiction already.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/goth_girl/working.gif) busy
Current Music: Cracker -- Minotaur
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buymeaclue
 | 06:39 pm
I'm working on a new theory about what's up with Tuck. My new theory is, illiteracy is exactly the opposite metaphor from what's actually going on. That is, I think the problem is not that he has no idea what it means when I apply a given aid. I think the problem is that he has too many ideas. And, more to the point, that I've been insufficiently clear about how I've been using and combining them and when that goes on for a sustained period of time, he starts to go, "La-la-la, that isn't meaningful," and tunes me out. Which is fair, if all I'm giving him is static.
It's just a theory, and it may be totally off-base. But it would fit with the way he gets snarky and grouchy about the dressage in the winter but is generally double-plus thrilled to be jumping and/or hacking out, where I tend to be a lot more get-the-job-done and a lot less now-I-will-entangle-myself-in-nuances.
So we'll see. If nothing else, it's really easy for me to sympathize with someone feeling overwhelmed, so even if it's not the cure for everything that ails us, maybe it will help me keep my head in a more productive place about things.
( What we did today and how it worked )
I've also been doing some thinking about ( priorities while riding )
And here we are again at dynamic balance, literally and figuratively, and at the need to develop one's feel and to be creative in one's horsemanship.
In other news, water? Still wet.
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aliettedb
 | 11:51 pm - Back
Came back from Brittany, slowly digging my way out of emails and various stuff.
The novel is now at 68K words; I’m taking a brief break to research a city my main character has to visit, and hopefully I’ll swing back into the spirit of things.
(I think I’ve figured out why Brittany works out so well for me: nothing to do but write, since there’s no Internet. New Year’s resolution for 2010: cut down on the WWW addiction…)
Cross-posted from Aliette de Bodard
Leave a comment at original post, or comment here.
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lonesome_crow
 | 04:57 pm - The daily detritus
So, in the last 2 days I wrote a 3300-word story. It isn't like my usual stuff. I tried to keep my normal sentimentality and melancholy out of the piece. So, it likely isn't any good. It's straight-up horror. And it has a dreadful working title: "And the Sky Will Squeal With Dark Laughter." Perhaps, with a title change, it'll be someone's cup of tea. I've already sent it out the door.
Also, Amazon placed another order for Apparitions. This time for 2 books. Yay!
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slashdotscience
| 08:48 pm - Geoengineering a Snow-Free Winter Fails In Moscow
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/yz7QqFr-Ohs/Geoengineering-a-Snow-Free-Winter-Fails-In-Moscow dinoyum writes "Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's promise of a winter without snow in the capital city has fallen short. While cloud seeding is not a new concept for Russia, often used on major holidays, geoengineering snow has never been done to that magnitude. Carrying off the $6 million procedure required jets to spray silver iodide into coming clouds, ensuring that all precipitation fell before it reached the capital. However a combination of disrupted radar, wind control, and faulty weathermen have been blamed by Luzhkov for his failed attempt at playing with mother nature. For now, Russia can go back to enjoying snow."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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