Synova

...as if there was any doubt. A local shop had some pretty rocks with fluorite crystals (note on them says "Fluorite NM" but I don't know where in NM they were collected). The others might have been more spectacular but I wanted this one (which was my Christmas present from my husband) because it had three different minerals that form isometric crystal structures.  That means that they form (or can form) perfect geometric cubes.  The white crystals are calcite (CaCO3), which has a hexagonal crystal structure, and I think if you zoom in on the bottom half of the rock there are some sorta hex shaped white nuggets.  But no one cares about the calcite.  So... the fluorite crystals (CaF2) are the clear purple/blue cubes.  There are also galena crystals (PbS), but they are hard to see in this picture.  Galena is super showy.  The crystals look like perfect little metallic cubes with mirror-shiny faces.  Most of the galena crystals in...

Self, when making krumkake do not touch the base of the krumkake iron with your bare fingers. What I was making: Recipe: 3 eggs, beaten 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup butter 1 tsp vanilla, or almond, or lemon, or cardamom 1/2 cup flour Do the usual stuff with the butter and sugar, flour and eggs, and flavoring. Cook a teaspoon at a time on a krumkake iron over low-ish heat until they are golden.  Roll onto a tapered dowel while hot.  Slide off the dowel.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar if you must.

Trying out Google docs survey form for the fist time. Check this out!

I was reminded of this book today and I suddenly thought, "Hey, a prison chaplain's memoir is the sort of thing a bunch of people at Lem's would probably like." So... I haven't read it, but I've heard that it's very good.

Sister Time This is old. This is new. Sometime, June-ish, the science fiction and fantasy world blew up over a chain-mail bikini and a couple of old guys talking about science fiction publishing over 60 years ago in which they spoke admiringly of "lady writers" and "lady editors" and mentioned that someone or other was particularly good looking. The. World. Ended. This ancient June history is important because World Con just happened and the call for inclusive science fiction is continuing to gain strength with the article from the Guardian stating the dire state of modern science fiction.  Both articles are extremely short and informative concerning events, though I'm having trouble finding something pithy to quote from them.   Mostly, though, it's assertions of fact that are easily disputable. Science  fiction  loves a good paradox. Here's one for you: how can a genre that dreams up alien cultures and mythic races in such minute detai...

So... this weekend was Bubonicon again.   I'm on my fourth year as Gofer Wrangler (elsewise known as the Volunteer Coordinator or cat herder... actually, my volunteers are awesome) so I was working rather than going to panels (and this seemed like a good idea, why?)   I got to one panel on publishing by a gentleman named Robert Vardeman which was wonderful and informative. Most of the time, though, I was holding down a table.  When I wasn't holding down a table I was badge checking programming venues.  We had some great Guests of Honor... Brent Weeks and Tim Powers. .. but I never saw any of their panels or went to their readings. Because we also had George.   You know George... as in R.R. Martin?   Yeah, him.   Well, I didn't go to any of his panels or reading either.  I was *working*. The pen that George used. Poor guy is local so we're all terribly unimpressed, though that might be rather restful for him, who knows.   But anyh...

Ace posted a link to an article on writing by Elmore Leonard. (One article about him from the Guardian) Elmore Leonard was elderly and passed away and I know nothing about him other than that he wrote "Fire in the Hole" which I've never read but was turned into the first season of the television show "Justified" which I liked a whole lot. After that show came out I noticed his name quite a bit but I still hadn't read anything that he'd written.   Until I read this.  Having partaken in a fair amount of writing advice over the years I will say that his 10 rules for writing (and summation of the 10 rules in the rule "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.") is short, to the point, and spot on. It's concise and even laconic.  As far as I'm concerned writing fiction shouldn't be about the author, it should be about the story. Part of what I don't trust about "literature" is (other than the mistrust born of sci...

"Hey, did you see what I did there?"  I've just seen both Pacific Rim and The Wolverine. Both are popcorn movies and not meant to be particularly deep. Both had obvious and less obvious elements included in their construction. Some of those included details may have been meant to support other parts that ended up on the cutting room floor, but I'd like to think that sometimes an artist/writer/director/actor includes some detail on the sly because the story-word demands it, even if very few people will notice what they've done.  I also think that including open hooks instead of set explanations makes for richer writing and better stories. People think more when you don't do all of their thinking for them or demand that their "take" is the same as you, the creator, intended.  I don't intend to "spoil" either of the movies, but if you're worried about it you'd probably better not read the rest.

Over at According to Hoyt. Ladies, Gentlemen, Beings of Furritude, I come not to bury grey goo plotting but to yawn at it and to sigh “I don’t care what happens to all these characters” and — occasionally, when a novel rises a little bit above the common style –, to sigh and say “I want them all dead by chapter two.” (Ah, for a minion I could dispatch to story world. “Guido, see to it. I want them all dead by chapter two before they all start the belly button contemplating until it reels the mind. Make them dead. Hide the bodies.” Of course, in many cases this would improve the pacing and action of the plot. In others no one would notice.) The antidote is called Human Wave fiction. The Garage Sale is a list of (mostly) Kindle special deals from authors who have promised not to serve up grey goo or contemplate belly buttons. Scroll down, but don't skip reading Sarah's post because each and every word is put there with malice aforethought to engage and entertain ...

I took a grammar class in college this spring (and aced it, natch) so I thought I'd share from my textbook. Pg 200… "The absolute phrase (also known as the "nominative absolute") is a structure independent from the main sentence;(...) The absolute phrase introduces an idea related to the sentence as a whole, not to any one of it's parts:"  It goes on with examples... I'll skip those.  "Absolute phrases are of two kinds - with different purposes and different effects. (...) ...the first kind: the absolute that explains a cause or condition. (...) the absolute phrase could be rewritten as a "because, "when" or "since" clause:" The other type... "The absolute construction, on the other hand, leaves open the possibility for other reasons...." etc.,  "Perhaps the most famous absolute phrase is the one found in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And, as we know, it is open to more t...

It went like this: A pro-gun hot-head posting comments to a CNN article proclaimed that he’d taken an oath to uphold the Constitution long ago and had every intention of putting himself on the line to do so now. The “reasonable” not-against-the-second honest-trust-me commenter said: What if the Constitution changes? I answered:  “I think that when a contract is altered that it's a new contract. The one you swore to uphold is the one you swore to uphold. If it's a different Constitution, you'd have to swear over again to the new Constitution.”  Apparently this is absurd.

One of my kids does this art . (I asked permission to share.)

I have miniatures that I have painted myself, but this is one I bought today.  Someone had brought in an old box of miniatures to the comic book store where I go to paint and where I used to play D&D.  They were dusty and brown and *old*. This fellow caught my fancy. He's almost certainly lead instead of a newer alloy. When I turned him over I could see that a few of the scales were bright colors and the bronze paint on the underbelly had a metallic sheen, but mostly he just looked brown.   I brought him home and gave him a very gentle, soapy, bath. I just love his flat little face and jewel colored scales. Look at his scales and his long skinny neck! The fellow with a dryad I painted. Another picture of my dryad. She's one of my favorites, though I dropped her and broke her arm off several times and chipped the paint on her head more than once, too.

The conditions necessary for an armed citizenry are largely caused by having an armed citizenry. I’ve heard the argument that if a given group of unarmed and massacred people had been armed, that the results would have been different.  What is usually meant by that is that the massacred group would have been able to defend themselves and their families from their government or from their enemies.  But given the same conditions an influx of weapons might have only meant that the massacres were multiplied.  That is, “given the same conditions,” but would the conditions have remained the same? A culture of gun ownership, of supporting an armed citizenry, changes the conditions.  In the way that actions “say” things or send messages, it’s impossible to have, within a population, a systematically oppressed sub-group that is also legally armed.  Arms are an absolute endorsement by the government and by the rest of the citizens stating that members of the population su...

I'm taking a class this semester with Dr. Agee, who is mentioned in this article about a new Mars meteorite find.

What I've seen about having a colony on Mars tends to assume that everyone will be vegan because bringing animals is too much trouble.   But being vegan doesn't solve any problems if people go crazy.   Humans seem to get a great deal of emotional help from animals.   Sure, maybe you don't, but in general it seems like, when we can't abide people any more, or if we're feeling isolated or lonely, having an animal to pet helps us emotionally.  That will be important.  Because we're going to be crammed together and bound to feel like we can't abide people any more, from time to time, and bound to feel exceedingly isolated and lonely from time to time. Here's a little bit that Instapundit linked about therapy llamas visiting a nursing home.  Llamas may not be the first choice to bring to Mars, but it still illustrates something important.  We probably ought to plan on bringing a couple cats or dogs or have a couple of the individual "farm" animal...

Maybe the people who are seriously considering a one-way colonizing trip to Mars have thought this through, but I don't think that regular folks have any idea how much space is necessary for food production per person.   How big of a garden do you need to feed yourself?   How long between planting and harvest?  Remember... you can't go to the store if you run short. Greenhouses and hydroponics are well established and understood and I'm sure that the production rate information is out there.  Remember... you can't just order another tanker load of hydroponic nutrient mix. I looked around and found this... "1 square foot will yield roughly .112 lbs of winter wheat or .107 lbs of spring wheat. For 4 cups of flour you would need to plant roughly 9 square feet." For sake of argument, assume that using hydroponics the per foot yield is doubled.   So 9 square feet will get 8 cups of flour...  in about three months.   Or somewhere between 4 cups and 8 c...

I said, first, the Pascal Dome.   Drop a huge chunk of ice and cover it up. The second thing for a Mars Colony is to understand that PEOPLE HAVE TO LIVE. The assumption that colonists will have to be vegan (not just vegetarian) assumes a lot of things about what can actually be produced usefully in greenhouses.  Seeds are inefficient.  Grains.  Nuts.  Anything that takes a full growing season to ripen into the form we want to eat it.  Anything that grows on trees or vines is inefficient.  Anything perennial or seasonal is going to be inefficient and expensive.  It will still need to be done, however, and trial and error (also expensive and inefficient) to see what grows well.  And even then, the food results will be an occasional treat to break the monotony of rabbits and rabbit food, ie., salads and rabbit stew. Bread?  Only on Sol Prime bozo.   The most reasonable thing for Mars is a paleo-diet. Rabbits are probably the mo...