It is actually a blast to read, so I figure I’d give it another plug - I’d love to discuss it with some of you :D
From Elizabeth Bear:
]]>If you have been waiting to catch up/start reading Shadow Unit until the season is over, may I respectfully suggest that it is now approximately one week until the first season finale extravaganza begins. And, um. It’s the sort of thing that is going to be much more wonderful chaotic fun to participate in real-time than to read about later.
Trust me on this.
Shadow Unit, for those of you joining us in progress, is a web serial/hyperfiction written by Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Amanda Downum, Sarah Monette, and, er, me. It’s modeled on a television show format, complete with episodic and season-long plotlines, burgeoning mysteries, and an ensemble cast of unrealistically sexy smart people attempting to save the world from the worst monsters imaginable… unless they die trying. It’s sort of what would happen if Millennium, The X-Files, and Criminal Minds had a love child, though I have to admit we have yet to have an episode with an industrial microwave. But surely, it’s only a matter of time.
Current site content comprises seven novelettes or novellas, a whole bunch of vignettes, artwork, a message board with thriving discussion threads and an awesome community (and a fine obsession with food!), a plethora of fairly lightly concealed Easter Eggs, and interactive character blogs.
Additional toys will be provided over the hiatus, and the current plan is to offer first-season community members a particularly nice toy in the fairly near future.
All content is free, unless you are moved to donate (We are currently using the Public Radio Guiltware model), and while we are exploring traditional publication options, there is no way on Earth that all the web content is going to make it into dead tree form. There’s just too much of it. So, you know. Here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor.
And one of the articles was pointing at an incredible set of book-made-art, the work of artists Sue Blackwell and Brian Dettmer. And it really is stunning.
It’s a great article, with many quotes and links and lots more images, go check it out
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You’re an old or new friend and you come here now and then? Come on then, delurk! I want to get back in touch
]]>It’s a universal fantasy, isn’t it?—that the animals learn to speak, and at last we learn what they’re thinking, our cats and dogs and horses: a new era in cross-species understanding. But nothing ever works out quite as we imagine. When the Change happened, it affected all the mammals we have shaped to meet our own needs. They all could talk a little, and they all could frame their thoughts well enough to talk. Cattle, horses, goats, llamas; rats, too. Pigs. Minks. And dogs and cats. And we found that, really, we prefer our slaves mute.
I seem to read online more, lately. Here’s short speculative story that takes a great premise and follows from it, based on the author’s ideas of human nature. Now this one is right up my alley, around science fiction and myth, and with a dash of my favorite mythical topic at that, the trickster idea (i own the anthology this is from).
It is also a story that really made me sad - because i totally bought into where she went. I fear people would be like that… It really made me pause.
It is a delightful story available for free - Enjoy! http://www.kijjohnson.com/evolution.html
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* games I watch (mostly indie at the moment)
* games reviews I earmarked in 2008 but never got around to put the link/quote in (have started adding some backdated, check the games sections)
* why i am off A list games at the moment (i.e. how great games like Oblivion, Bioshock and more just dont make me want to play more super realistic games) and a reflection as to what makes me tick in a game
* a new round of the 2 line movie reviews catchup
* a new round of the 2 line book review catchup
* great software, fiction, arts and photo sites
Of course it would be cool if some of my 30 readers would tell me if they even care about any of these anymore - have you missed it? Like the new stuff, hate the new stuff? Want the photo and art stuff to stay here or go back to the spinoff blog? Now clearly I write most of it for myself, to remember what I read, wanted etc. but now that I have 30 regular readers I start to care… how weird is that?
I’m too lazy to triple check my facts tonight, so here it is from personal memory.
Now Terry Windling is an artist of multiple talents. First she writes, and she wrote one of my favorite books, The Wood Wife. She also writes poetry (obviously!), short stories and non fiction in blogs and magazines, drawing on her extensive knowledge of myth, folk lore and all related arts. She is also a visual artist. Then she is an editor of many successful anthologies, and last - but not least, to me, since this one influences me every week , via the Endicott studio, magazine and blog she also constantly finds delightful art around myth and folk lore, and writes fascinating reflections around all mythical topics. I have mentioned Endicott more than once on this blog so I will not bore my few readers away by going on.
This poem is very much a bit of an enumeration poem, but very musical and evocative… makes it hard to pick an bit out of… besides the page states not to reproduce it without permission in any form. So just go there, I’m too chicken to ask for permission to reproduce an excerpt. But I have had the poem bookmarked a while and it makes me want to go in a forest take pictures, or even draw…
The Night Journey
http://www.endicott-studio.com/cofhs/cofinvoc.html
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Over the last several decades, new research has changed science’s picture of how we succeed or fail to seek the truth. The heuristics and biases program, in cognitive psychology, has exposed dozens of major flaws in human reasoning. Microeconomics, through the power of statistics, has shown that many facets of society don’t work the way we thought.
Overcoming Bias aims to bring the implications home.
This blog will bring up and discuss a lot of research and concepts around objectivity and bias and how people think and analyse things. It is very often quite challenging and surprising
I have been a bit disappointed lately as they seem to have fallen into a quantum trap, caught in the idea of observer-effect and a lot of the other paradoxes, and somehow thinking it might be relevant to bias. As a physicist that one annoys me (especially since there have been at least 10 posts around this, i think someone read a book recently) but I am willing to cut them some slack and see whether there are some insights at the end somewhere, who knows.
Because for about a year now they certainly have made me think, plus given me an insight into the mathematics of the social sciences (always good to learn some other fields’ maths - and half of them are my maths streched to fit). It has made me pay attention to certain biases and patterns, and given me some very interesting statistics to use, too. So it has earned some slack.
Check the site, http://www.overcomingbias.com/ Enjoy!
Some great examples from the past few months (picking at random from some i kept)
the affect heuristic
the leader gender bias (planning to write about that one one day)
the conformity experiment (why i think being a bit of a non conformist has helped me be smart 
)
overvaluing
It is worth going back a few months in this, even when you disagree with the points made or the validity of discussing some of the topics (some get quite abstract) I am sure it might make you more aware of things and more careful in your thinking.
It’s also the product of a childhood imagination pastime being reinvented by the author the child has become.
So I thought I’d check it out. Could have been self indulgence, but so far it’s good 
What is it? A donation supported episodic fiction - let me quote:
The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit hunts humanity’s nightmares. But there are nightmares humanity doesn’t dream are real.
The Behavioral Analysis Unit sends those cases down the hall.
Welcome to Shadow Unit.
Nice teaser, eh?
So it is one for the X files / Millenium / Profiler type crowd - although it has a stronger scifi and law enforcement feel.
The characterisation is very good, the plot catchy, the dialogue enjoyable - it’s all free online but be ready to see some time disappear - the episodes are long!
If you read a certain kind of fiction the list of names should hint at the quality we can expect:
Executive Producer:
Emma Bull
Co-Executive Producer:
Elizabeth Bear
Producer:
Sarah Monette
Producer:
Will Shetterly
are new mathematical truths discovered or invented? http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/31392/title/Still_debating_with_Plato
If anyone cares I’m squarely on the invented side of the argument.
I don’t buy the concept of absolute ideas that are somehow in a different sphere - and I dont buy the challenge which says that it is proven wrong by the fact that so many different people and cultures come up with the same concepts.
I really don’t see a problem, here’s my point of view, simplistically:
* we think and imagine with our brains and bodies
* our body and brain works within the universe and within whatever laws and rules govern said universe
* our body and brain will therefore produce ideas and concept which mesh with the way the universe works, because that is the way our brain and body works
* it is therefore not surprising that people thinking about certain things will often come up with similar ideas and concepts
* entities whose functioning is totally different from us, say beings made of gas, or microscopically small, or very large, would come up with maths via a different route (a gas being for example would start with continuous concepts, perhaps), but as long as we are in the same universe once their maths becomes sufficiently advanced there would congruence between their mathematics and ours.
Of course it is made easier to think this being a physicist where so many models which were mathematically different on the surface turn out to be equivalent or related…
Update: just been told my paragraph on the gas entities was too short, it could be construed as a platonician idea. I was trying to say that any beings which we would be able to find a way to communicate with, well, if we can map our languages then they are probably “wired” enough like us that their mathematics would be translatable too, and there might be things to learn from each other. Not because the concepts exist as absolute, but because both us and those beings live within a specific universe and think using intelligence which runs on matter within that universe.
I meant it, I’m up for another chat with the platonicians in my circle, same arguments for another round - its a bit pointless but inventing the mathematics of gas beings is still fun several years on
]]>This is the site of someone who left his engineering job to join the UNHCR. The stories on the site give you a different perspective on life and issues - geopolitics, the dignity of people, what people can do - but also lots of anecdotes and funny/dramatic stories.
some posts to give you an idea if you’ll like this or not
introduction: how it started
deserted island story
deportation from the us
current topic food crisis
I think this site also drove it home to me what people can do in all sorts of places, and indirectly he sparked this UNESCO idea nagging me in the back of my mind, which is that as a scientist, technology expert, small business leader and feminist, and someone who is always harping about the wonder of people and cultures of all kind… I really ought to put my skills to use for an organisation like this. How to get about it is another matter…
Anyway, enough about me, go check that site :D
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more in the ‘fun with a plant’ gallery
Each picked a different entry, here’s my choice
daily comics on a post-it savage chickens
]]>For information this is a 4 day walking festival in the netherlands - it is surrounded by a music festival and loads of other things.
http://www.4daagse.nl/index.asp?taal=en&pagina=homepagina
I am very excited now, but I also must train up a little. I know that I used to do whole weeks without much training, or 100 km straight.. but I was a bit younger.
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