Private Mars Rocket

Link Salad, Guns and Violence Edition

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:52:21 GMT

Various gun-related links that have accumulated in the link-hopper:

1) A fascinating video about real-world gunshot injuries. It's a bit graphic and has some medical tech, but interesting for writers and policy. Key takeaways:

Over 75% of people shot in the US are shot with a pistol

6 out of 7 people shot survive

Leading cause of death from a pistol shot is bleeding out, which means that:

Most people shot with a pistol do not just "drop and die."

Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

is not new

"We Have Always Fought - Challenging the "Women, Cattle and Slaves" Narrative.

Monday

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:46:42 GMT

Between various LiveJournal issues and hectic work schedules, I haven't posted very much lately. To make matters worse, I spent all day Friday and Saturday attending a Rotary District Conference at Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, Wisconsin.

First, the resort. Per their web page, there's been some sort of resort on the site since 1878. The current iteration has a nice golf course (which I didn't have a chance to play on - more below) and otherwise nice facilities. The resort was actually recently renovated - it changed ownership in 2010 and the new owners put a lot of money into a highly visible renovation. The food and service was also pretty good, and the conference center facilities were well-laid out.

Second, unfortunately, the conference was not well-ran. Partially this was due to several members of the committee quitting a couple of months before the conference. This forced several people to jump in and attempt a last-minute rescue.

My biggest beef with the conference was time management. Rotary conferences are mostly plenary sessions, in which everybody is together in one room. All of these sessions ran way over the allotted time. If you give a passionate person a microphone and say "talk about your passion" they will run over unless you aggressively manage the time. Call it Gerrib's "Law of the Microphone."

Smart conference runners will have two schedules - the published schedule and the real schedule. The real one will be shorter than the published one, thus allowing for overages. This didn't happen, and so we had marathon sessions that made a hash of the schedule. Thus endeth the lesson.

ConQuest KC, Memorial Day Weekend

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:42:16 GMT

I will be attending ConQuest, a science fiction convention in Kansas City, over Memorial Day. Herewith is my tentative schedule:

Friday 1700-1800: Vampires, Werewolves & Zombies (Monarch)

Saturday 1300-1400: Pros and Cons of Small Press Publishing (Monarch)

Saturday 1730-1755: Reading/Q&A/Autographs [MOD] (Regency)

Sunday 1100-1200: Have I Got a Book for You (Imperial)

... The Salt Mines

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:14:16 GMT

I'm back ~~in the salt mines~~ at work after being gone for two days. I new staffer started (yeah!) but between his arrival and the accumulated workload, my day has been consumed by locusts.

Rotary Link Salad

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:21:20 GMT

Rotary day, so have some link salad.

A) I've spoken before of Elizabeth Smart. Well, with this morning's news of three girls having been kidnapped and held for years, she's talking about why she didn't run. The short version - abstinence-only sex ed. Her quote: ""I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, I'm that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.' And that's how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value."

B) The NRA debunks a myth its membership is fond of: No, Virginia, the Federal government is not trying to drive up the price of ammunition.

C) A very interesting article about the long and sad story of exploiting textile workers and killing them in poorly-built factories. On a related note, our new Pope called the Bangladeshi working conditions "slavery." Good on him.

D) On the gay marriage front, how do you "civilly disobey" a law that doesn't affect you?

Django Unchained, Vibrato and Winter's Bone

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:18:57 GMT

Over the weekend, I took in a pair of movies on the pay-per-view machine. (My floor's not sticky, the chair's more comfortable and the drinks are cheaper.) Herewith are my thoughts on the screening.

Django Unchained

Django Unchained is Quentin Tarantino's slave revenge fantasy. Set in 1858-1859, it's got Peckinpah-ish levels of violence, and at nearly three hours it's a bit long. There's a term in singing which I think is "vibrato" - taking one long note and converting it to multiple notes. It's very popular on the win-a-recording-contest TV shows as a way to showily demonstrate "artistic" talent.

Django Unchained has the movie equivalent of vibrato. There are dozens of subtle and not-so-subtle nods to various western movies of the past, and, perhaps deliberately, Tarantino's Mississippi looks shockingly like California. Overall, I found the movie merely okay.

Winter's Bone

If Django Unchained is full of "art for art's sake," then Winter's Bone is the anti-Django. Shot extremely starkly with handheld cameras, Winter's Bone is the story Ree Dolly, played by then 19-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, and her struggle to avoid loosing the family farm during an Ozark winter. It's bleak, filled with poor people cooking meth and shooting squirrels to survive. You could consider Lawrence's role as an extended audition for her role in The Hunger Games. Winter's Bone is an independent film, so it may be hard to find, but it's well worth looking for.

Cranks & SFWA, or A Correct Prediction

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:26:05 GMT

So, as I predicted - the crank Theodore Beale AKA Vox Day did not win the election as President of SFWA. Per his site, he got 44 out of 493 votes = 8.9% of ballots cast.

SFWA dodged another bullet.

Guns and Kids

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:57:45 GMT

Comes news that a 5-year-old kid in Kentucky shot and killed his 2-year-old sister, apparently with a gun like this. For those not clicking through, the gun is a weapon specifically designed and sized for a small child.

Again, I own guns, and have been around them my whole life. I don't recall exactly how old I was when I first shot a real gun, but it wasn't age 5, and my dad was very much in control of me and the gun. (I'm actually not sure but that the true purpose of that outing was to scare Young Chris into not messing with guns for a while.) At any rate, I was in high school before I had my own gun - by which time I was well aware of gun safety.

I am very saddened by this incident in Kentucky. The kid and his family will have to deal with this tragedy for the rest of their lives. Having said that, I find media coverage of the event, especially by right-wing sites, to be horribly hypocritical. As this fellow says:

It is not in any way "normal" to hand a kindergartner a firearm. If a mother from the inner-city of, say, Philadelphia did that, and the kid subsequently shot his sister to death, Fox News never would stop yelling about the crisis in African American communities and the Culture Of Death, and rap music, too. If your culture is telling you that children who have only recently emerged from toddlerhood should have their own guns, then your culture is deadly and dangerous and that should concern you, too.

Empathy, Intelligence, Politics and Writing

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:30:14 GMT

Found, via that great means of randomly surfing the Internet, this great thought regarding intelligence:

Empathy is a way of seeing, and therefore a way of knowing. To avoid empathy is to limit one's own perspective to only one's own perspective — to choose not to see and therefore to choose not to know. Worse than that — it is to choose not to be able to know.
Empathy, in other words, makes you smarter and wiser. Rejecting empathy makes you dumber and more foolish. To choose not to see what empathy shows us is to choose stupidity. (source = The Slacktivist)

The author was talking about the Tea Party, which has become synonymous with the modern Republican Party. I will let his assertion stand or fall on its own merits, which covers the "politics" part of this post's title. I will also point out that empathy is like any other sense-based skill - you can work to enhance it or not, and just like there are no blind painters, some people simply don't have the ability to perceive empathy.

Where I want to go with this is with regards to writing. Simply put, it's hard to write characters if you, the writer, don't have empathy. After all, writing a character is creating someone else's perspective. A lot of people without empathy write fiction and it shows - they end up with virtuous good guys and bad guys who are bad just because. Except, many "bad guys" don't think they are bad. They think that everything they are doing is right, correct and true.

Circling back to intelligence, even crazy people do things for a logical reason. The logic may be crazy, but it makes sense to the person doing it. Without empathy, you end up with characters doing things not because it makes sense, but because it's convenient for the author.

If you want to write believable characters, develop a sense of empathy.

Been Working, So Have Some Mindless Content

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:10:42 GMT

I ended up working all day Saturday and a couple of hours on Sunday, relocating one of our branches to their permanent home after renovations. Thus, I find myself really dragging today, so, have some links on the lighter side.

1) Sent to me via email: a fascinating video tour of the International Space Station. It's about 30 minutes long, so get comfortable. What struck me was the amount of junk, hoses and cables strung randomly in the station.

2) An interesting question: Why do old men love to hang out naked (pun intended) in the locker room? Presented for amusement value.

3) An amusing quiz: 18th century resident of Connecticut or muppet character?

ETA: Just got another sales call. Transcript:
Caller: How are you. Having a good day?
Me: Yes. Who are you and what can I do for you?
Caller: I'm Sara, and Mister O'Kelly said you can help me.
Me: I never heard of a Mister O'Kelly.
Caller: click, followed by dial tone.

Hail Good Fellow, Well Met! (Or Maybe Not)

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:06:31 GMT

I've had a string recently of exceptionally irritating sales calls at work. They all start with somebody calling me and randomly asking "how are you doing?" or "are you having a good day?" The caller does this with all the (seemingly) hearty good cheer of one of a drinking buddy holding a spot for me at the bar. Except of course I've never even spoken to the person calling, let alone hoisted a few brews with.

Look, I recognize that I will be bombarded by sales calls. I buy IT stuff for sixteen banks, and the economy yadda yadda yadda. But don't pretend to be my long lost friend. Just cut to the pitch, buddy.

Random Links, Presented Randomly

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:14:35 GMT

Random links, presented randomly:

A) Interesting trivia about WWII - True fact: The last Nazi SS troops defending Berlin were…French. The Nazis were very concerned about racial purity when the war was going well, but by 1943, they changed their tune and busily recruited everybody they could find. This "everybody" included Indians from then British-governed India. Guess where those folks were stationed? Normandy on D-Day! Yep - some of the folks shot while Saving Private Ryan were dark-skinned Indians.

B) I've said it before, but the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion was no accident. The plant had been ignoring safety rules for decades.

C) Yesterday was ANZAC Day, the 98th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings in WWI. Future historians will divide this period of history into pre-WWI and post-WWI, as that was by far the most influential war of the 20th Century.

D) What writers earn - a cultural myth. (Note - 1 British pound = $1.50 US)

Three Thoughts

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:54:16 GMT

Thought The First

Being smart is not the same as being wise or right. Many smart people tried to treat fevers by bleeding the patient. Most wise people are smart, but not all. Wisdom includes things like judgment, risk management, and understanding what you don't know. Right, well that includes actual research and investigation.

Thought The Second

We are told that there is an "epidemic" of obesity, and we are also told that being obese is a major health risk. There is also evidence that being overweight can improve your resistance to decease. Here's my admittedly unscientific thought - what's really unhealthy is a lack of exercise. The problem is that there is a very high correlation between obesity and lack of exercise. It's difficult, perhaps even impossible, to separate the two factors when doing a study on health.

Thought The Third

A staple of science fiction stories is having the Space Patrol charge people for rescuing them. This professional rescuer thinks that's a bad idea. The article is well-written, but the tl;dr version is:

1) In the world of ships, commercial vessels also rescue each other. Do we want them to charge-back for a rescue?

2) Many rescues are needed due to bad decisions on the part of the rescue-ees. Do we want the financial cost of rescue cause them to make more bad decisions like not calling for help, thus leading to more dangerous rescues?

Link Salad, Political Edition

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:46:08 GMT

Various links with a political theme, presented so as to get them off of my desk:

1) President Obama is a natural British conservative. Not sure what that says about modern American conservatives.

2) Some of Obama's critics think he's not very effective at getting legislation passed, and they contrast him unfavorably with people like FDR. Here's a quick reminder why FDR was so effective. Having an average majority in the Senate of 44 votes can be really helpful.

3) A useful note: "This is the point at which people start asking what we can do to prevent attacks like this in the future. The answer is clear: nothing."

4) Tying in with my "questions" post: The 11 Most Mystifying Things the Boston Bombers Did. Like, bringing a BB gun when they (finally) decided to run.

Oblivion, A Great Movie, and The Joys of Monday Movies

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:07:37 GMT

So, I've been wanting to see the new Tom Cruise SF movie Oblivion. However, thanks to the current movie-marketing craze of hyping the movie weeks in advance, I forgot it actually opened this weekend. I rectified that problem by catching the 5:15 PM show yesterday. I'm glad I did, for several reasons.

First, Monday night is a great time to see a movie. There were maybe six people in the theater, easy parking and no lines anywhere. It's still expensive ($20 including small popcorn and pop) and the floor was still sticky, but at least I wasn't elbow-to-elbow with somebody.

Having said that, here's the most important thing - go see Oblivion now! It was a great movie! Don't read the Wikipedia plot summary - much of the joy of the movie is watching the characters figure out what's really happening. And Oblivion is largely a character-driven movie. Yes, it's Tom Cruise and Hollywood, so guns do blaze, but there's quite a bit of non-gunfire-driven stuff going on. It's also (for Hollywood) shockingly plausible and logical.

Overall, highly recommended.

Questions, Boston Marathon Bombing Edition

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:43:53 GMT

I guess I'm in a questioning mood today, and apparently ready for potential controversy, so here are some questions regarding the Boston Marathon bombing.

1) It's hard to argue with success, but I'm kind of like this guy - did we really need to lock down a major US city to find one guy? Yes, he was a terrorist - but surely Boston has had other desperate gangbangers who've killed three or four people running from the law before, and to my knowledge they didn't close the city.

2) Apparently, the fertilizer factory in West, Texas violated Federal anti-terrorist regulations by storing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate. Since the explosion killed 14 and destroyed a town, will the plant owners be charged as terrorists?

3) We are and will continue to hear a lot about how the Tsarnaev brothers were "radicalized" by Islam. How is this different then whatever process radicalized the Aurora Colorado shooter or the nutjob in Arizona? Isn't it equally plausible that the older Tsarnaev felt disconnected and went to find an outlet for his discontent?

4) Related to the above - does anybody really think somebody with the (lack of) planning skills implied in the need to rob a 7/11 for getaway money was backed in any substantial way by Al-Qaeda? I mean, maybe some Al-Qaeda nut is sitting in his hole clapping enthusiastically, but is that "backing?" ETA: Apparently they just visited the 7/11, not robbed it. The question remains - what realistic level of support do we see from Al-Qaeda?

It's Friday, Have A Video

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:48:14 GMT

From my publisher, Hadley Rille Books - a reminder of what else they have on offer.

Link Salad, Build An Ark Day Edition

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:30:06 GMT

Here in Chicago, it's been raining for a good 24 hours, most of that in the form of downpours. If it can flood, it did. This includes the street in front of my house, which delayed my arrival to work by a couple of hours.

Many of my coworkers didn't make the effort - the parking lot at our main building was flooded as were two major interstate highways and innumerable side roads. (See, "if it can flood, it did," above.) Since I'm out of ideas, have some links instead.

1) A brief history of taxes in America, in cartoon format. (From jaylake)

2) A sad and sordid story of Canadian teens pimping out their "friends."

3) The reason we have peer-reviewed science - math error invalidates influential economic study.

4) You might live in a small country if you need an app to decide if the person you're about to have sex with is your cousin or not. Presented primarily for amusement value.

The Fascism of Knowing Stuff

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:13:56 GMT

Via daveon comes this wonderful article entitled The Fascism of Knowing Stuff. Basically, the article points out that modern society really is complex enough that we have to rely on the judgments of experts.

For example, my dad is a very smart individual, yet he asks me to fix his PC. I think I'm a smart individual, but if I need something mechanical repaired or built, I ask him. We both ask accountants, doctors and lawyers for advice in their fields of expertise, because we don't have sufficient knowledge in those fields.

The best line from the article: The price of technology, comfort and hopefully greater understanding of the universe and our place in it is an acceptance that we may not know best in all events and common sense, a hammer and a bag of leeches may not get you through it all.

I've had unfortunate dealings with a number of libertarians, and this "fascism of knowing stuff" really gets under their skin. They (as a group) don't seem to understand why we should defer to climate scientists or FDA regulators. The answer "because they've forgotten more than you'll ever know" is accurate but apparently unacceptable.

Now, this does not mean all experts get an automatic pass. For example, a pair of experts released a study in 2010 that purported to show that countries with high debt-to-GDP ratios always had low economic growth. Now we learn that the study is flawed, including errors in Excel spreadsheets. Peer review matters, but in the end, we will end up relying on experts.

Keep Calm And Carry On

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:41:27 GMT

I have no personal knowledge or expertise to contribute to the Boston bombing discussion. I will say that most of what we are seeing in the news is uninformed speculation, guesses and at best partial pictures from bystanders.

One of the best responses I have seen is this from a 78-year-old runner. You've seen the video - he's the guy who was knocked off of his feet by the first blast. Well, he got up (with help from a race volunteer) walked over the finish line, and walked to his hotel.

He kept calm and carried on. In the dark days of WWII, Great Britain, facing the most serious invasion threat since 1588, somebody came up with a propaganda poster to be displayed if the invasion happened. It didn't, so nobody saw it for decades. But it fits my mood today.

Taxes

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:09:18 GMT

It's tax day, which I only know because it's all over the news. I get a refund and have an accountant file my taxes (write-offs from writing, don't ya know) so by the time April rolls around taxes are but a distant memory for me. Even before I got published, I would use TurboTax or Kiplinger's Tax Cut (H & R Block) software and efile, usually in mid-February. So, tax day always catches me a bit by surprise.

At any rate, since I'm thinking about tax day and TurboTax, it was interesting when i read that TurboTax is not your friend. It seems that Intuit, the parent company of TurboTax, spends millions of dollars lobbying Congress. What they don't want? "Return-free taxes."

See, for most people (AKA, "those not running a side business like writing") the IRS already knows all of your information. They could either mail you a pre-filled return or direct you to a website where your return is pre-filled. If you agree, sign or click okay, if not, make the changes. But that would seriously cut into Intuit's business (and other tax preparers), so lobbying efforts are expended to kill that idea.

Happy Tax Day!

Gutbomb!

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:38:12 GMT

I had a hankering for Chinese at lunch today. I was unable to find a Chinese restaurant, so I went to Panda Express, where I ordered my usual - fried rice, orange chicken and beef with broccoli, washed down with a Diet Coke.

Now, I have no illusions that orange chicken is anything but bad for you, but the placard of 400 calories per serving got my attention. So, thanks to the miracle of Google and a slow afternoon, I ran the calories as per Panda's handy online calculator. The result? 1010 calories! Ouch!

More gym, less Panda.

More of a Whine Than a Rant

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:00:00 GMT

I firmly believe one needs to engage the opposite side (or all sides) of a debate. However, in many of the current political debates, I find myself getting weary of engagement.

For example, any time I post on Simberg's Flying Circus two or three of his commentors will fairly shortly post personal insults directed at me. They don't actually engage anything I say; rather they attack me as a person. So, I've decided to not bother myself on that site. I've talked before about getting kicked off Jordan Bassior's site for the crime of pointing out that Treyvon Martin had a right to live as well.

Now, I visit Marko Kloos site to note that background checks seem a reasonable part of a "well regulated militia." He informs me that, back in 1787, "regulate" didn't mean "regulate," it means “smooth out and make work”, not “put restrictions upon.” Well, no, "regulate" means "Control or supervise (something, esp. a company or business activity) by means of rules and regulations." Did then, does now.

So, my whine is this - why bother? If your opponent's response to engagement is insults, banning and/or torturing the English language, what good does engagement do?

Post, Three Things Make

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:15:02 GMT

Thing #1

(Recycled from a comment on daveon's LJ regarding Hugo whining)
There is a tendency that, if you don't do something, to think that doing it is easy. If, for example, one is not an IT person, it's easy to assume that all IT people do is sit on their computer and surf the Internet all day. Now, obviously that DOES happen, (exhibit A = this post) but that's far from ALL that happens. (Says the guy who was at work until 8:30 last night performing an upgrade on the bank's phone switches.)

Thus with the people who have you so exercised. They don't "do" con-running, so therefore con-running has to be easy and consist mostly of standing around in hotel bars. Again, this DOES happen, but that's usually after a metric shitload of hard work has been done to get the con off of the ground.

Thing #2

I voted in yesterday's municipal elections. I mentioned that at November's election I voted before 8 AM and was ballot #140 (or so). Today I voted after 5 PM and was ballot #100. Municipal elections have low turnouts.

Thing #3

I finished John Scalzi's serialized novel The Human Division last night. I have to say I was a bit disappointed to find that the ending was a cliff-hanger. It's one thing to have Book One of what's clearly marked as a serial end on a cliff, and it's quite another to end a (supposedly) free-standing book on a cliff. Don't get me wrong - I trust John would have released an ending even if Tor didn't up for Book Two. My complaint is that had I known it was a series I might not have bought in.

ETA: There's a discussion thread about this on John's site, and one person made a good point. Their point - if one considers The Human Division as more like a TV series than a book, a cliff-hanger is perfectly acceptable.

Laser Death Rays of Death, Part 6 - USN Edition

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:42:49 GMT

As many geeks have already seen, the US Navy, long working on ship-mounted lasers, has one that's demonstrated the ability to shoot down small targets. There's a cool video of one at the link. More importantly, the self-contained albeit a bit too large laser will be heading to the Persian Gulf next year for operational testing.

Lasers - they're not just for breakfast any more.