Lazy Linkage!

It's been a while since I did this, hasn't it? I am, once again, going to try to be better about regularly updating this blog. Of course, we've heard that before, haven't we?

:: Apparently the person who runs the social media for San Francisco's mass transit system, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), finally decided to take a different approach in his/her responses to negative comment on social media. The result is some breathtakingly blunt honesty, and it really points up, in my mind, the odd American insistence on creating government services that are just good enough to be disappointing, and then complaining about them without actually committing, as a public, to do better. The money quote here is when this poor soul points out that the BART system was designed to move 100,000 people in a week, and it now moves over 400,000 people each day.

:: Moby Dick, read aloud, by the likes of Stephen Fry, Neil Tennant, Fiona Shaw, Will Self, Benedict Cumberbatch, China Miéville, Tony Kushner, John Waters, Simon Callow, Sir David Attenborough, and Tilda Swinton. Wow! I don't really like listening to audiobooks -- my mind wanders too much and I miss important stuff -- but this might bear investigation!

:: CGI recreation of the destruction of Pompeii. Wow, those people had a bad day.

:: The filmmakers of Airplane! reflect on that brilliant movie's making. Such a classic...although I got in trouble when we watched it as a family years ago, because The Daughter was six or so, and I figured, it's rated PG. I'd forgotten the gratuitous shot of waggling breasts during one of the air-turbulence scenes.

:: Finally, I didn't get around to properly observing Pi Day this year, but I did repurpose some older pie video footage of mine into a possible commercial for a new topical treatment for Resting Bitch Face, of which I am a sufferer....


I'm not promising more next week!

Stuff for a Sunday!

Some links before we head out to brunch in Manhattan, as people do! (I am so going to miss this city...but more on that another time!)

:: A couple of Star Wars links first. Here's an interesting interview with Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote The Empire Strikes Back and co-wrote Return of the Jedi, and has now returned to Star Wars to write episodes VII, VIII, and IX. Kasdan also wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark and Silverado, two other faves of mine.

:: Here's an interesting history of Marvel Comics's first foray into Star Wars comics, back before the Expanded Universe or the Prequels or just about anything else. There were some really fun stories in those Marvel comics, and I especially liked the creative team that was in charge at the end of the series's run; I wish they'd have had more time to flesh out the story they were working on before the series's abrupt cancellation.

:: Exploring an active volcano via kayak. Don't try this at home, kids!

:: Many years ago -- in 1980 or so -- my mother took me to see the Ice Capades when we were living in Portland, OR. The chief attraction was Dorothy Hamill, of course, but to our dismay, Ms. Hamill did not perform when we went, because she was sick or something. But still, I got to see the Ice Capades! I'd pretty much forgotten all about it until a random check of the RetroSpace Flickr stream, whereupon I found that they posted captures of some of the pages from that Ice Capades program. I had this program book, and wow, does this take me back to when I was no more than nine years old!


And yes, the Ice Capades really were that cheesy, which is why it was awesome!

That's about all...behave, folks, and regular stuff should resume mid-week! (Today's our last full day in NYC and then tomorrow we're on the Amtrak all day.)

Sunday Linkage Clearing House!

Some links that have been gathering dust in my bookmarks!

:: "Why would you waste cream and sugar on anything that you don't like?" Nifty little video on one restaurant's tradition of celebrating departing crewmembers with a pie in the face.

:: Universes that blur the line between SF and fantasy. The genre lines are not sharp borders....

:: Found: Map of Middle-earth, annotated by JRR Tolkien himself.

:: Behold the most complicated watch in the world. This thing is amazing.

:: The tangled cultural roots of Dungeons and Dragons.

:: Unopened mail...from 400 years ago.

:: Making a Dagwood sandwich...and, if you're so inclined, making the original Dagwood sandwich.

:: How the ballpoint pen killed cursive. I've never been able to make up my mind about cursive and whether or not it should still be taught. I've never really understood the logic of learning to write twice, but I don't get the idea that it hurts anything to learn, so...I dunno.

:: They've found a new earliest use of the F-word! (And by the way, if you're one of those who thinks the F-word is an acronym, please stop. You're wrong.)

:: Making The Warriors. I never saw that movie, but I've sure heard of it.

:: How Richard Scarry updated Best Word Book Ever to reflect a newer world.

Finally, on a much more serious note, two pieces that pretty much encapsulate my thinking on the horror that's been unfolding in the world the last few days: The Price of Civilization by Jim Wright, and Paris by John Scalzi. I honestly don't have any great prescriptions for making our world better, although I do cling to my faith that we (as a species) are getting better, albeit so very slowly that sometimes it doesn't seem like we're getting better at all. I do hope that we don't completely give in (and by 'we', I mean the Western powers and not just the United States) to the eternally-seductive notion that if we just let slip enough of the dogs of war, for a long enough time, we'll eventually kill all the bad guys and let the credits roll on a victory. History just doesn't work like that; it never has, and I see little reason to expect it to work that way this time.

With that, I go back to writing. Excelsior, and live well, people!

Stuff for Sunday....

A couple of things....

:: Elizabeth Bathory, history's most prolific female serial killer.

:: The definitive guide to English swear words. Yes, this contains salty language. Duh.

That's all. Busy week, it was!

Sunday Stuff

Here's some stuff!

:: An article on "holloways". These are very old roadways, paths, and thoroughfares whose courses have been literally worn into the ground to the point where they are almost tunnels or walled passages.

:: Yet another hypothesis on the identity of Jack the Ripper. I'll be reading this book, because it sounds fascinating.

:: Sunset selfies. A guy lived on an island for a while, and he took the habit of making cardboard cutouts of animals or Disney characters or other things, with which he posed in front of the sunset, making wonderful silhouetted vignettes. Via Cal.

More next week. Unless there's not.

Stuff

Some links of a questionable nature:

:: I had to check to see if this is a real thing, and apparently it is.

Yes, that is a Christmas ornament, by Hallmark, depicting Kirk and Spock bidding farewell as Spock dies at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Kind of amazing that someone thought this scene, iconic as it may be, needed to be styled as a Christmas ornament.

Hey, why stop there, Hallmark? Why not an entire line of such things, so we can have an entire tree of depressing scenes from movies and pop culture? We can have the kid shooting Old Yeller! Spider Man cradling Gwen Stacy's dead body! The little girl in the red coat from Schindler's List! Brooks's suicide from The Shawshank Redemption! Merlin Olsen's wife shrieking helplessly with Mary Ingalls's baby in her arms as the flames engulf her in Little House on the Prairie! The Red Wedding from Game of Thrones! Come on, Hallmark! Let's have the Depressingest Little Christmas Tree ever!

::  Here's a fascinating article about how the maps in fantasy novels get made. I tend to be really militant about this: If you give me a fictional world, then you'd better give me a map.

::  Take this with a really big grain of salt, but I love stuff like this anyway: an underwater "Stonehenge" that may point to a civilization ten thousand years gone. I have big doubts on this, but the notion of a massive society flourishing that long ago, and having fallen so long ago that virtually all evidence is gone, is an idea that really appeals to me. Among other things, I could use it as part of my backstory for a future series of space opera novels! There would be this ancient Galactic empire that...oh wait. Did that already.

More next week, maybe! Or maybe not. I'm capricious.

Some links!

Need some Sunday linkage to go with your coffee? Sure you do!

:: Cane and I go on nature walks every Sunday. This guy goes on NATURE WALKS with his dog. Holy shit, that is one gorgeous dog. I kinda want one of those now.

:: Here's something I didn't realize: Since the late 90s, Joe Pesci has pretty much stopped appearing in things. According to IMDb, he's been in three things since 1998. I guess I just assumed that he was still out there working as much as ever, and I just wasn't seeing the things he was in, figuring he was showing up in ultra-violent grimdarky Martin Scorsese movies. Turns out he pretty much dropped out of sight: The Mysterious Disappearing Act of Joe Pesci.

:: I remember hearing about this when I was a kid: an artist-dude made a golden rabbit and hid it somewhere in England, and then he released a picture storybook filled with clues as to the golden hare's location. There's always something wonderful about a good story about a hunt for hidden treasure and the pitfalls that accompany any such hunt, like discerning clues that aren't there amidst the ones that are (or having a Staff of Ra that's too long).

Stay safe, Star Warriors!

Oddities and Other Stuff for a Sunday Morning

Here are some items of possible interest!

:: There apparently exists a Ned Flanders-themed heavy metal band called Okilly-Dokilly. I am not making this up.

:: Saying goodbye to a secret bookstore. I wish there was a secret bookstore like this in Buffalo...but...what if there is, and I just don't know about it....

:: The power of walking a million steps. An article by a man who walked the famed El Camino de Santiago in Spain...but it's also about, well, just walking. I love walking. I don't need running for that nice Zen thing; I get it walking and hiking just fine, thank you very much. Walking is an important part of my life.

:: And just in case you're wondering: At the Hugo Awards, the Sad Puppies got the equivalent of being smacked on the nose with a newspaper for messing on the carpet. Of course, since attention of any sort was their goal, they're declaring victory this morning. But really? Not so much. And of course, since people will be on the lookout for this kind of bullshit in the future and won't be taken by surprise, their wad has been pretty much shot. Oh well.

All for now!

Sunday Links!

Some stuff:

:: Here's a nifty video that spells out why so much of the whining about the "overreliance" on computer-generated images, or CGI, in movies today.


To me, opining that all that model-making and "practical" effects stuff of yesteryear somehow involved a greater amount of artistry is roughly analogous to claiming that writing was better when writers had to use quill pens instead of fountain pens, or typewriters, or word processors.

:: Eleven amazing clocks. Fascinating stuff here! I'm especially happy to see Pittsburgh's Duquesne Brewery clock featured; I've driven past that clock many a time. It's kind of disappointing that it is currently used as advertising space for AT&T, but hey, the clock's still there.

:: The Mole Problem: Why Good Animists Make Good Neighbors. Great post by a Twitter peep of mine on our relationship with the animal world, in the wake of that awful killing of a lion last week.

More next week!

Sunday Somethings

A few oddities and randomments for the lot of you:

:: One night, while we were sitting around at home reading stuff, The Wife came across this, and mentioned it to me. I said, "That can't be right," but lo and behold, apparently it was. The thing? Well, you know those incubator things they put premature babies into, so as to keep them nicely warm while they develop after their births? Apparently the guy who invented those had no luck convincing the scientific community of their validity, so he did the next best thing: he set up a sideshow at New York's Coney Island to display them to the public. Babies and all.

Sometimes human progress happens so strangely.

:: Want to get some kind of notion of the scales of the distances in space? Say, the scales the NASA people were working with in flying New Horizons to Pluto? Check out If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel. Space is big, yo.

:: For the record: the perpetrator of this prank was not me.

That is all.

Yay! Stuff! Yay!

I wrote a new post at the Official Site updating everyone on where I stand with certain projects!

Cal needs help picking which caption goes with a photo better!

SamuraiFrog appreciates Maria from Sesame Street!

My favorite "Maria Moment" from Sesame Street, for obvious reasons!

Roger comments on country music albums!

John Scalzi thinks things about gay marriage!

Alton Brown surprises with both his favorite cut of steak AND his preferred method of cooking it (but I'll try both)!

Lynn Sislo has a new catchphrase!

Finally, what better way to spend July 4 than a Major League Baseball game followed by fireworks? At least, that's what people thought in 1985 when they went to see the Braves play the Mets. The fireworks took place at 4:00 am, after the game took 19 innings and saw 29 runs scored off 46 hits.

Shtuff

Some things....

:: I have not yet watched all of the existing Star Wars movies back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Maybe someday...but meanwhile, someone has actually overlaid them all on top of one another. Once you get past the opening crawls, which are kind of headache-inducing due to the music not lining up, things get really surreal.

:: Fascinating article on the Soviet space shuttle Buran, which ended up not amounting to anything because the Soviet Union collapsed. Turns out that the Soviets might well have been on the way to designing and building a better shuttle than the United States did, for various reasons.

:: Yeah, Jason had himself a pretty good Saturday a few weeks ago.

Keep reachin' for the stars, folks!

Sunday Stuff

Oddities and amusements for your Sunday pleasure....

:: Hmmmmm:

The man behind me in the queue was trying to be helpful: “It’s true, though, right? They are used as weapons in Asia. I go there a lot and I’ve seen them do it—they’re lethal.” He made a sudden gesture, like Spiderman throwing a web.

I was torn between asking this stranger to unpack his astonishing assertion and trying to prevent the airport security guard from unpacking my luggage. I resolved the impasse by laughing nervously, which had precisely the wrong effect. The security guard studied me suspiciously. “You’ll have to come with me, sir.”

What weapon did this guy try bringing on a plane? Would you believe...a yo-yo?

:: Why Sherman was right to burn Atlanta.

:: New research methods have resulted in Shakespeare's output going up. Wow. Of course, I'm afraid that if they ever study my stuff, the conclusion will be, "Wow, this dude stole from everything!" Because I did, and do. Im shameless.

More next week!

Sunday Burst

Interesting, pretty, and/or odd stuff.

:: Pretty: The Big Dipper, enhanced. More here.

:: Also pretty: The clouds of Orion the Hunter. More here.

::  Odd: Dude named Zayn leaves mega-boy band One Direction. Actor Billy Zane is slightly baffled by the outpouring of grief.

:: And then there's this. Welcome back, Mr. Bond!


More next week!

Sunday Burst

Strange things are afoot, Watson!

:: Dude is getting married, and creates e-mail list to keep his buddies apprised of wedding plans. A typo results in a complete stranger being on the list. The stranger comes clean. The stranger ends up getting invited anyway.

:: I may have linked this before and forgotten to delete the link from my bookmarks, but it's still an interesting article: you know that pint glass that is the dominant piece of glassware for beer drinking these days? Apparently it's awful. Or so I'm told. I still like them, but other glasses are cool, too.

:: I haven't dug too deep to see if Stardancer turns up on Kindle Cover Disasters. Lord, I hope not...I'd hate to be in the same company as this:

Wow.

(Note to self: Remove all references in current manuscript to the spaceship Intrepid Monkey.)

(Note to self: Buy the book about the adventures of the Intrepid Monkey.)

More next week!

Sunday Burst

And now for something completely (meaning, non-pi or pie related) different!

:: Via John Hodgman, here's Vampire Kermit attacking Vincent Price.

:: Toronto is often used by filmmakers as a stand-in for other cities. They're usually pretty good at keeping the very obvious Toronto landmarks offscreen, but sometimes they miss a few. I've seen most of these movies, so I'm left baffled as to how I missed these.

::  It's funny how the Internet can sometimes remind you of weird stuff you'd long-since forgotten. Years ago, there was an ongoing thing in PARADE Magazine (for those who don't get it, PARADE is a supplement that's in a lot of Sunday newspapers) when one of their regular columnists, a woman named Marilyn vos Savant who is billed as "the world's smartest woman" wrote an entry on what's come to be called "the Monty Hall Problem". This resulted in quite the kerfuffle, because her answer to the problem is apparently (a) incredibly counter-intuitive, and (b) actually correct. I remember this unfolding over the course of several weeks in the paper, with some ancillary discussion at home (unavoidable with a math professor living in the house). I'd forgotten about it until reading this article.

That's all for now!

Sunday Burst

Weird and wonderful things abide....

:: I recently discovered an amazing photography artist, Michael Shainblum, whose work really evokes an amazing sense of wonder. This particular photo, from his Instagram, seems like it might have been cover art for an incarnation of my book!

:: This has been all over the place this week, but deservedly so. I love it when someone alerts the world to a rare natural occurrence, if only just to show that our world has so very many ways of surprising us. What happens here is that the super-cold temperatures in the Northeast have had the effect of giving the water in the ocean shallows a Slurpee-like quality. As the waves break, they look like something otherworldly.

More photos here.

:: If the music in Mary Poppins had been recorded not by a wonderful Disney orchestra and the practically-perfect voice of Julie Andrews, but rather by a death-metal rock band, it might have sounded like this:


:: Finally, as a final farewell to Leonard Nimoy, here is his wonderful intro to the X-Files crossover episode on The Simpsons.


More next week!

Sunday Burst

Weird and nifty things!

:: The Day the Clowns Picked the Wrong Brothel.

:: Everybody's linked this, but there's a reason for that. So if by some chance you haven't seen it, check out Dr. Phil with all the dialog removed and just the reaction shots remaining.

:: Finally: A man, a woman, and an observatory. Given the subject matter of The Song of Forgotten Stars, this article has some resonance for me.

More next week!

Sunday Stuff!

Your weekly dose of small amounts of linkage to carry you on....

:: I confess to being weary of Hollywood's incessant need to "reboot" things, but I must also confess to being mildly intrigued at the notion of rebooting Columbo, that wonderful working-class detective in the crappy coat who covered up his brilliance with an "Aw shucks" style. It would depend on the casting, of course, but I'd be interested.

:: Twelve-year-old humor alert on this next one! A lot of companies auto-generate their e-mail addresses for employees by taking some specific combination of letters from the first and last names. This occasionally has some unfortunate results. (I just love when the IT guys respond "Uh, we can't change it." I'm always amused when IT people say that they simply "can't" make the computers do what they want. Nobody can just go in and delete on e-mail address and manually add another one? There are no provisions for this?)

:: Want to see pictures of kitties captioned with quotes from HP Lovecraft? Sure you do.

More next week!

Sunday Burst o'stuff

Stuff!

:: Apparently Russell Crowe is one of those people who likes to tweet the results of his workouts. Well, some dude decided that he'd start responding, with increasingly hilarious effects. Also, apparently Russell Crowe's sense of humor is easily exhausted.

:: I only learned a few years ago that Lake Baikal in Siberia is the world's largest fresh-water lake by volume. I always figured that would be Lake Superior, but that's wrong: Lake Superior has the largest surface area by quite a bit (over twice the surface area of Baikal), but Baikal's got the depths: its average depth is 260 meters greater than Superior's.

Baikal is also apparently a very, very clear lake, which makes for stunning ice formations. Make sure to play the video at the end, when some people demonstrate some fascinating sonic properties of the Baikal ice.

:: Want to watch a surprisingly effective horror movie that only takes two minutes from beginning to end? Sure you do! (As with all such scares, it's less effective when you've already seen it and know what's coming.)

More next week, perhaps!