I'm going to be posting a weekly noir serial which I'm calling Count.

It's roughly a novella in length, I think. At 2-3 pages per week, that puts me finishing it around next year. We'll see how I do.

If you want to check out the full story, you can see it here, and it would probably be a good idea for me to start including that link at the top.

Feel no obligation to read it, but I thought I'd be clear about what I'm doing (although at this point it was probably obvious).

I'm mostly doing this to keep in the habit. To get this up to the level of quality I'd want to submit it for publication in whole, I would need to do all this writing under my own motivation, then re-work it a LOT. I'm giving all this effort away for free mostly so I can feel like I have some momentum.

A note of warning, noir style lends itself to indulging my excesses. With more time between writing and editing I'd probably cut a lot more. But this is about getting something I don't hate out there quickly, so there you go.

The hall leading to Hendel's office was more pleasant than the alley, but only just. The red striped wallpaper, dark-stained oak doors, and brass sconces and doorknobs were an attempt at old world style. But the chrome under the brass was showing through in places and the gleam on the finished wood was blurred by layers of fingerprints. The wallpaper appeared to have undergone eons of subtle tectonic forces which had created a miniature topography of trenches, hills, and seams.
( Read more... )

Edit: Grumble, linking to internal test systems doesn't seem to work so well... sorry.

I found a cool and short article from Wired on how Diamond Strike-Anywhere matches are put together.

It's amazing how much technology goes into a small, disposable flame-twig.

The door I faced framed my right fist. I uncurled my thumb so that it protruded into the night like an empty flagpole on the wall of an abandoned outpost.

( Read more... )

I found this blog post about a researcher in Japan who discovered (insert uncertainty qualifiers here) a symbiotic relationship becoming an organ-organelle relationship.

So there's this predator cell. It has a mouth through which it eats smaller cells.

But if it eats an algae it doesn't really eat it. The algae expands in its gut and is not digested. The mouth becomes an eye that allows it to move to the light. The algae gets locomotion to help it stay in the sun. The predator gets a steady supply of food.

This seems odd because the mouth and the eye seem like completely unrelated functions. I'm sure when you look at it closely it makes complete sense that these functions would be related.

The predator also has to know when it eats this algae as opposed to the other stuff it eats, which is kind of unusual, too.

I've touched before on specialization (in that case, in education) and some folks had some pretty good things to say in favor of it.

But I was just listening to a Colorado Matters article about a program to train veterans for green jobs.

The program I have no comment on--it was an offhand comment that caught my ear. He said that often a veteran from, say, the infantry comes back with specific skills in weapons, armor, tactical positions, etc. but no "hard skills" in, say, construction, clerical work, mechanical, or light industrial jobs that they might move into. So there is a higher rate of unemployment among veterans than among others of the same age.

( Caveats and expansions on this subject )

This is one of those things I can't google easily, so I'm turning to readers with teh smrts.

What is Israel's motivation for building or expanding settlements?

It seems to me that settlements, for all their value as advanced military bases, pose a terribly challenging security problem. All those civilians, all within easy reach of mortars, let alone rockets.

I could understand the if the goal was establishing an Israeli population in those areas, extending their territory. I could also understand if the goal was integration with the Palestinian people.

But my understanding is that neither of these is their goal. So why take the risk? The land itself can't be that valuable?

Anyone have insight?

Lives of the Saints: The Comic Book

By George Tautkus. I took this from the Catholic Goths group. You know me and my goth tendencies.

I only read the couple of pages he has up of St. Benedict, but, as odd as this sounds, I believe he's actually melded the "lives of the saints" style with the comic book style very successfully.

Those of you who did not grow up Catholic may not know what I'm talking about with the "lives of the saints" style. It's part of the pre-Vatican II cultural style called "Devotional Catholicism," which could be contrasted to the post-Vatican II style which is more personally participatory and experiential.

There are definitely things that are important about the devotional style that people legitimately lament, although on the whole I would argue things have gotten better as a result of this cultural trend.

Anyway, the LoTS style is where you summarize the life of a saint in a way that makes them utterly and unabashedly heroic. When the saint ends up in conflict with religious authorities, it's because the authority has become corrupt in some way, hidden from the incorrupt superiors. When the saint suffers, they do so willingly and ask for more. They never question or doubt anything.

It's great for what it's intended for--a simple model for Christian living that anyone can understand. It fails a bit at making these people seem human--and that was always the disservice for me. They were never someone you could hope to become, because even at eight years old you've already been more of a sinner than these folks. The parts of the lives of, say, St. Augustine, St. Ignacius Loyola, or St. Francis that were not dedicated to religious fervor are skimmed over. It may be good at putting the spotlight on the parts of their lives to emulate, but it doesn't honor the struggle in these people's lives very much.

But superheroes are the same way. Even if Peter Parker is geeky and poor there's no way you can be poor and geeky with such grace and style; even if Ben Grimm is self-pitying and grumpy there's no way you could be as noble and self-sacrificing; even if Batman is psychotic there's no way to be the raw embodiment of justice the way he is. By pulling the saints into a similar frame, we can understand how to understand them as totems or icons.

Which, ironically, is what the comic book superheroes were modeled after, and that was pulled from religious experiences. So full circle and whatnot.

Google posted an interesting study that shows that people use the web more often when it's faster.

This statement, in the long tradition or reporting third-hand on study results, oversimplifies the matter a lot. So read the article, try to filter out the bias, and make your own decisions.

Running afoul of the "three strikes and you're out" law, "Lil" Bunny Foo-foo was arrested today by the Good Fairy. As per the new law, punishment was administered immediately and without trial.

Asked for comment, Ada Gamache mercilessly giggled and said, "Again!"

No word from the Foo-foo family at this time. More as the situation develops.

A few things came together (Tolstoy and economics) and made me look up this information:

The Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia gave 23 million serfs new rights as citizens, which included the right to arrange their own marriage, own property, and run businesses.

The Emancipation Proclamation (1862-3) in the U.S. freed around 20,000 slaves. Of course, that's because only 20,000 of the 4 million slaves were in the north.

This made me curious about populations:

1860 population:
US Total Free Population: 27,489,561
US Total Slave Population: 3,953,760
Russia: 74,100,000

OK, so the final tally:

Percent of US population enslaved in 1860: 12.6%
Percent of Russian population privately* enserfed in 1860: 31.0%

I don't really have a point. I just thought it was interesting.

In other news, at our sister company....

*The Proclamation did not apply to Emperial serfs.

..."Lady Gaga" would be a father's pet name for his infant daughter, rather than a slutty pop star who asks the world to poke her face.

I'm sorry to report, gentle reader, that this is not a reasonable world. The only consolation I can offer, meager as it may be, is a few quotes from Tolstoy and a few thoughts about them. (No, zalena, I still have yet to finish the book, thought I'm closer by about 10 pages every day.)

( Anna Karenina, trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky )

Not really. But this guy looks a lot like dragonweaver's brother.

Maybe you, after looping this a few times.

I like this guy, from what little I've read. He has an explanation of the rhetorical construct of a one-way hash.

In short, it means that it's easier to lie than to tell the truth. But do read the article. It's his reason why democratizing arguments can be problematic to the level of the discussion.

Update: This one is good as well, about the perils of over-simplifying philosophy.

...but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get something truly awful.

Based on the results of surveys on what people (in aggregate) like or don't like about music, Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier produced two songs:

The Most Unwanted Song

The Most Wanted Song

I know which one I vote for. I think it was the opera singer rapping about life as a cowboy that really drew me in.

Thanks to rg_rothko for helping me study over the last 9 months or so.