Professor of Indefinite Studies
The USPS has released four new Forever stamps featuring US scientists.
A female physicist, a male botanist, a Spanish-born male biochemist, and a male chemist: not a horrid attempt at diversity in people and disciplines. Only three Nobel-prizewinners, though, since there’s no Nobel for botanists, even if Asa Gray hadn’t died before the first prizes were awarded.
After the fun of the Friday night story, I’m back to the slog of novel revisions. Finally decided that the thing that I’ve been worried about really doesn’t work, and that I’m going to have to rewrite a fair bit, including the climax, to make it work. Not amused, but also not surprised.
I’ve had lots of help to keep me going.
I’d hoped to get a lot of revising done this weekend, but what with one thing and another I’ve only made it through three chapters, and they were some of the most polished ones. This may take a while…
Back in the days of Twitter, Morning Cat Face was a meme. You probably don’t remember those, do you? Memes were kind of like viruses. No, don’t make that face. They were ideas, not really viruses at all. But they were ideas that spread from person to person. When there was an internet, everyone could share their ideas immediately, and twitter was the fastest way of all. I had a couple thousand followers, could tell them all something any time I wanted. But only 140 characters.
But what was I saying? Oh, right. Cats. If we still had twitter, and memes, and all that, I’d take a picture of this beast and add it to the list. I still don’t know how the damned thing gets into the bunker, but every morning it’s standing on my chest. I don’t think cats carry the virus though. Do they?
Yes, the damned thing is cute, and you like to make it chase bits of string. But I still wish I knew how it got in here.
And yes, we had electricity and computers and internet connections, and we used it for Morning Cat Face. I know, I know, you’d do it differently if you had all those resources. If we weren’t so busy trying to grow food and not get bitten and simply stay alive. We wasted it all. But how were we to know?
You’re right. I get it. We knew about global warming and peak oil and water shortages and all that other stuff, and we should have been more careful. But it was hard, and we were distracted. I still say there’s no way we could have known about the virus.
I’m working. Do you have to keep bothering me like that? Go play with the kitten. No, I don’t want to go weed the vegetable bed. It’s raining. This is important too. It is not either stupid. We need computers to help us figure things out, so I’m building one. It’s a mechanical representation of logic gates. I’m sure Charles Babbage would have used Tinkertoys and Legos if he’d had them. You might be smarter than I am, though I doubt it, but you’re not nearly as well educated. So what do you know?
It’s getting dark out. You’d better come inside. I’m sorry I said that. It’s not your fault that you couldn’t go to grad school like I did, or even to high school. I know you’re trying really hard, reading books and asking questions. And it’s okay that you lost it there for a bit, though I wish you hadn’t smashed those bottles against the brick wall. We’re getting low on storage containers, and I don’t know a damned thing about blowing glass. The screaming bothered the horses, and me too really.
Come in, let’s have dinner. Maybe we could even have a drink. No, I know the fermented cider I tried to make turned to vinegar, but there’s a little bit of vodka left. I think now might be a good time to have a drop. Yes, we should save it for a disinfectant. You’re right. We won’t drink it.
I had a dream last night, one that I’ve had for a long, long time. I was going somewhere, driving. No, not the horses. I didn’t know anything about horse-drawn wagons until after. In a car, the old kind with an internal combustion engine.
Yes, gasoline. No, I’m not going to apologize again. I know we fucked up.
So I have this recurring dream, about driving somewhere in a car. But the car has a mind of its own, and it goes in the wrong direction, and it takes me somewhere I never intended to go and don’t want to be.
No, I don’t know what it means. Why does it have to mean anything?
Hey. Are you awake?
The kitten is in here again. It bit me on the nose. I think I know whether cats carry the virus.
No, I don’t think I’m going to get back to sleep. Maybe I’ll get up and make breakfast. I’ve got a few hours. What would you say to a scrambled egg sandwich? There’s bread leftover, and I found a few eggs yesterday. One of the hens pecked me, but I don’t suppose my sore finger matters any more.
You have some bullets left, right?
Friday night, home alone. I’m wrapped up in trying to write well, which is important, but is making it not-fun. I have enough other things in my life; if writing isn’t fun I won’t do it. That would be sad.
So I polled Twitter for writing prompts, with the idea of writing a quick story using all of them as a fun way to spend the evening. I got some good suggestions:
@marjorie73 zombies and kittens
@qitou things are not what they seem
@thejayfaulkner someone’s last meal and the things that led to it being their last meal
@quasigeo Charles Babbage’s difference engine.
@notanyani more food & booze
@ariandalen A screaming fuss fit, scrambled egg sandwiches, a brick wall
@ticia42 A possessed car should be in your story… Or a haunted spaceship.
The story owes a small bit to @kylecassidy too, for the Morning Cat Face meme.
It’s a rough draft, entirely unedited. I gave myself an hour, and no more, to turn the disparate ideas into a working story, or as close as I could come. It’s rough, but it was FUN, and that was the point.
Thanks, Twitter!
With only the names changed, to protect both the innocent and the guilty.
twitterconservative: RT: President Obama Takes away National Day of Prayer, But we have “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month’? God Help Us!
afriend: I can’t find any authoritative information to that effect. I think you were duped.
twitterconservative: yep Guess you did miss it
me: If by “cancelled” you mean “issued proclamation recognizing” then sure.
http://1.usa.gov/iNVOnQ
twitterconservative: so close minded. open ur eyes to the truth and dint try and twist words and be politically correct
twitterconservative: and since ur a scientist as u say I’m sure u don’t believe in God either so that’s why u try and spruce up the cancelation phrase
twitterconservative: nope no confusion.he flat out spoke out and did not allow the prayer on the steps that’s a tradition
twitterconservative: Obama is about as non Christian as u can be and we all know that he lies with every word he says
Let’s see: poor reading comprehension, no understanding of sarcasm, incapable of assessing competing claims, extrapolating wildly without data. I think I had twitterconservative in my intro biology class a few years ago.
The short bits first: the monthly writer’s social project this time was six word stories. There’s an assignment every month, something suitable for discussing over beer and burgers.
My contributions:
My balloon rises, valve stuck open.
My garden’s overrun. Maybe it’s Triffids.
And the long bit: I have a new article at Clarkesworld this month: “Building Forests, Remaking Planets,” about the science and ethics of terraforming. Have a read, leave a comment. Science is fun!
Is here.
Last December there was a big fuss about the arsenic bacteria reported in a NASA press conference. I followed along, read all kinds of wild speculation online, and tried to refute some of the more obvious errors people were making, as well as explain why arsenic-using bacteria could be very exciting.
After the excitement died down a bit, I and other scientists started to think more closely about the methods and results, and the claims the research team had made. I’m not a microbiology, but I read both the Science article and much of the online discussion, and came away disappointed.
Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her collaborators said they would only respond to formal critiques. Eight such, as well as a response, were published online in Science today, and will appear in print in the next issue. There are no new research findings, but further discussion and clarification of what was already reported.
I haven’t read the new papers yet, but will do so and summarize the claims and counterclaims this weekend. You can also read Dr. Rosie Redfield’s first impressions here. She is a microbiologist, one of the original and most vocal critics of the arsenic bacteria claims, and the author of one of the Science papers.
The most interesting thing I’ve noticed so far is that the authors are making their bacterial culture available to other scientists. That will go a long way to resolve the lingering questions, eventually.
And a cheap one it is. The Camping rapture people, they’re just too easy. Now Harold Camping says that the Rapture did happen, we just didn’t notice. And the world will be ending on October 21, thank you very much.
But one of the associated websites still says May 21, with a cute little count-down of the months and days: now sitting idly at 0 Months, 0 Days. Awwww. This screenshot was taken today.
And look, the book has been pened! That is the past tense of the plural of “penis,” obviously, so the sign that you’ve been Raptured is that your dick falls off. You wouldn’t be using it in Heaven anyway, right? Making the discarded body parts into books seems a bit much though.
I wonder if they still have free bumper stickers.
On to more interesting material.
The secret of procrastination revealed by Fake Science. Now if only they post the solution.
NASA has officially given up on Spirit, the Mars rover that made it seven years instead of 90 days. A triumph of science and engineering; now let’s do it again.
For all the stupid things that people do, we can do some awesome ones too.
As always, XKCD puts it best.
