Professor of Indefinite Studies
Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a video showing all known nuclear explosions from 1945-1998 – 2053 of them. Zipping past at one month per second, it’s a fascinating and disturbing picture of nuclear testing and warfare. It starts slowly, but the 1950s go flashing by. Even if you don’t want to watch the middle, having gotten the idea, do watch the recap from 12:10 to the end.
(via lauriepink)
Wikipedia offers a timeline and more detail on the various national testing programs.
They obviously didn’t show up here, but the words had to have gone somewhere, right?
Right.
Some of them went to the Crossed Genres July issue, my first short story sale.
More showed up in the Clarkesworld July issue. This one’s a non-fiction piece about controlled ecologies for space travel.
I like writing about science for science fiction writers. My latest Science in My Fiction piece is on plate tectonics and worldbuilding. This is part of a “science of worldbuilding” series that has covered biome placement and satellite images. The next installment, in August, will be about naming organisms: how will scientists decide what to call alien lifeforms? What will people who live with these alien species call them? I’m not sure what comes next: are there ecology or worldbuilding topics you’re interested in? Anything that can be used in science fiction is fair game, which really means anything is possible.
There were other things too: a zombie story submitted to an anthology, agonizing over a Viable Paradise writing workshop application. (If you’re interested in writing zombie stories, the deadline for anthology submissions has been extended to July 15).
And, you know, work, family, business stuff (busiest month ever, on top of everything else), houseguests, interminable yardwork. This was a ridiculously busy June, with umpteen deadlines, and for a while I wasn’t sure I was going to make them all. I did, but only because one thing I said I’d help with didn’t materialize (or rather, they didn’t need my help after all). Whew!
Plans for the rest of the summer: I’m teaching a weaving class in Albuquerque in a few weeks, and have to finish my class materials. That’s the top priority.
I have a novel to finish, and a couple of short stories to wrap up and submit.
I have a nonfiction book proposal that my mental map had finished a year ago, but isn’t.
I’m working on fiction database project that I’ll tell you about when it’s farther along.
I have some travel planned for work, and a week at Pennsic, but the whirlwind of houseguests is over, the major deadlines have been met, and I think this is doable. Even if contemplating it makes me want to go back to bed.
I haven’t been writing much for the blog because I’ve been writing for other projects:
Thus, not much writing brain or time left for blogging. I’m having a little bit of trouble balancing everything, and blogging tends to fall off the bottom of the list.
“The American academic scientist earns less than an airplane mechanic, has less job security than a drummer in a boy band, and works longer hours than a Bolivian silver miner,” notes Philip Greenspun, a humorist, pilot, prolific blogger, a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science, and a software engineering teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
And it’s worse if you’re female. Read more of the article at Inventor’s Digest. This is something I have some personal experience with, and some strong feelings about, and a problem that a lot of people don’t even recognize.
Changing the subject completely, this article on “Create, Connect, and Consume” was fascinating. The basic premise is that creative professionals interact with the world in three ways: creating their own art, connecting with people, and taking in information from elsewhere. All three are necessary, and the things we devote time to should serve one or more of those areas.
And a third and final topic switch: from an interview with Mike Resnick reprinted at Suvudu:
Athans: Please define “fantasy” in 25 words or less.
Resnick: Fantasy is fiction that purposely and knowingly breaks one or more of the known laws governing the universe.
Athans: Please define “science fiction” in 25 words or less.
Resnick: Science fiction is concerned with an alternative past, an altered present, or an imagined future and obeys the known laws governing the universe.
Nice short definitions, as you might expect from Resnick. But I’d go further and add that anything that sounds like science but has no justification is really fantasy. As Russ Colson says, if you can substitute the word “magic” into the sentence and have it make just as much sense, you aren’t really writing science fiction.
There’s a new blog in town, Science in My Fiction, devoted to getting science fiction and fantasy writers thinking about new developments in science. It’s been running for about a month, and there are some thought-provoking articles already.
My first contribution, on learning science, appeared today.
Please go take a look, and leave a comment on any post you find interesting. You’d make me and the whole staff very happy.
Elizabeth Blackwell wanted to go to medical school. She’d been reading medicine at home, but wanted proper training and formal education. She was rejected from all the first-rate schools, and most of the rest. Only one medical school even considered her application. When the Geneva Medical College received her application, the administration asked the students whether they’d be willing to work with her. The students thought it was a practical joke and agreed.
Not so, and when Elizabeth Blackwell showed up for school she met with a great deal of hostility. She was persistent, doing all the hands-on work along with the men in her class, and on 11 January 1849 Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn a medical degree.
Abolitionist, feminist, doctor – Elizabeth Blackwell was a woman of strong convictions and very ready to act on them. She wrote, taught, treated, advocated for what she believed in. And by becoming the first female doctor she led the way: by 2005 nearly half of all US medical school graduates were women.
You can learn more about Dr. Blackwell from the NIH here or here.
That’s right, it’s Ada Lovelace Day again. You can also read last year’s post.
Five things make a post.
1. From Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station, Glenn Beck Killed My Father-In-Law. I’ve ranted about health care here before, but Jim does a much better job than I do. For one thing, his vocabulary and phrasing was honed by 20 years in the Navy. Do please read this.
2. Mars in 3D via Discovery News.
3. XKCD: geek humor, now with even more charts!
4. Oh, that explains it!
5. I have no thing five. I do have a large deadline that’s a month earlier than I thought, so I may (should) be scarce for the next couple of weeks. I’m also travelling a lot from late March through mid-April, so don’t panic if you don’t see much of me online, okay?
5a. It’s SPRING!
Just a quickie, as I have to go shovel snow. Again.
Here’s one way to depict my day at work: a mousepath. Today was for numbercrunching.
You can get the mousepath software yourself (Mac/Linux, Windows – by Anatoliy Zenkov and picked up by me here).
Hey, guess what? Having a blizzard does not invalidate global climate change. Really. I’m certain of this.
David Brin provides some additional insight into why this has become such a contentious issue. This anti-intellectual, anti-expert bias may worry me more than any other recent societal shift in the US. (Marketing manifestation: all of those “discovered by a mom” ads. Because really, who better to manage your health than someone with no medical training whatsoever.)
Boing-Boing found a redeeming quality for My Little Pony: training future scientists.
Sunday afternoon, fiddling around on the computer and organizing stuff. Fiction, non-fiction, photos… it’s all a mess, and all needs sorted out. At least if I post the links I’ve been accumulating, I don’t need to keep track of them any more.
That takes care of a good-size chunk of my back links, though by no means all of them.
