How many readers are actually curious at what it’s like to have one of the more disturbing medical examinations a man can have across a language/culture barrier? Show of hands? And yes, it does involve the prostate. (And I’m fine. Just wondering whether to blog this in the interests of, well, amusing people, or not.)
Month: August 2006
Junk DNA Bet! (Expiration Date: 24 August 2016.)
So, there was this story that my esteemed Clarion classmate Guy Immega (of Vancouver, B.C.) wrote, and he asked for crits. I won’t go into the story in detail since (a) it’s his and (b) I’d rather just footnote this post when the story gets published in an SF magazine, so you can all run out and read it yourselves. But anyway, during crits, a disagreement arose between Guy and myself about the purposiveness of junk DNA. I expressed concern that certain uses of junk DNA might be problematic (especially over the long term), whereas Guy took the opinion it …
MissIzzy on Traditional Values and Economic Status of Nations
MissIzzy always has something interesting to say, and this time, what caught my attention was her thoughts in a post titled Traditionally bad is the Contemporary Good.A sampling: Countries that suffer from the yoke of traditional values and survival ethics are the worse off (Nigeria, Parkistan, Ghana) Countries that are extremely secular-rational but are on the extreme end of the survival/self-expression dimension, on the survival side (the bit characterized by low levels of subject well being, report relatively poor health etc.) make somewhat about twice as much in GNP per capita (and are some of the most progressive nations in …
BigHominid’s Mad, Man, Mad
For anyone doubting the truth of that statement, see his Konglish ravioli night post.
Nature!
Earlier in the summer, my classmate Guy sent out a couple of links (the first, the second) to webpages hosting stories that have been published in Nature‘s “Futures” column, a short story section at the back of the magazine. Well, today I didn’t get much time in the library today, but just enough to discover that the Uni does indeed have a subscription to Nature. I suppose I’ll be in the library half a day tomorrow just checking out the Futures stories… and maybe thumbing through the odd article that catches my interest. It’s just across campus, so it’s convenient …
Travel Without Tech
One of the things about traveling is that it really reminds me how my personal comfort is ridiculously dependent on gizmos. Lime and I traveled up into Kangwon province, which is a pretty interesting place in some ways. We ended up spending most of our time in Sokcho, which is a town near the most northeastern point in South Korea. It was interesting because people did seem somewhat more chilled out there than in other places. They seemed more relaxed, and calmer; I wonder if the weather had anything to do with that? Perhaps… it was a lot cooler there …
Enjoyable Things…
Here I am, waiting for the travel agent to get back to me about tickets to Australia, and I’m sitting her stuck at home, and since I wrote two and a half flash pieces yesterday, I’m feeling, well, not quite like working on fiction at this moment. So I thought I’d post about some media things (books and movies) I’ve enjoyed lately, in reverse chronological order: Dil Se.., directed by Mani Ratnam and starring Shahrukh Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Manisha Koirala, and my unfathomably favorite Bollywood star, Preity Zinta. When I came back from India, I returned with a bunch of …
Heads Are To Story Ideas As Dryers Are To Socks
I went to a wedding in Saskatoon, and at the reception afterward, this guy I didn’t know, who was the apparent date of an ex-stripper in attendance, an ex-stripper I sort-of knew from way back when — she’d been in a dramatic production that I’d been in, a stage musical, before she got into striptease, and I never got along with her, partly because I found most of her friends total freaks… wait, anyway, most of that is irrelevant to the story. (And people wonder how come I churn out novellas, and tend towards long forms… It’s all about fixating …
DataHand
I’m starting to think I should start a category on this blog for gadgets I’d like to have. Tobias S. Buckell blogged about keyboard problems and a very enticing solution in the DataHand ergonomic keyboard. Check it out.
Singularity! – A Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds
So Charles Stross is also sometimes a funny man. Go and see. I especially enjoyed the AD&D-styled stats.