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dsgood
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Below are 25 entries, after skipping 25 most recent ones in the "dsgood" journal:[<< Previous 25 entries -- Next 25 entries >>]
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02:06 pm
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Definition: Garbageman Story
A science fiction writer learns that the percentage of garbage handlers in the American population is growing. By straight-line extrapolation, he comes up with a future in which all Americans fifteen and older are garbage handlers. Children between ages three and fourteen serve in press gangs which raid into Canada and Mexico.
The crisis: a diminishing supply of garbage puts the economy in danger.
The protagonist saves the day by inventing garbage-creating robots.
Too absurd to be published? In the 1950s, H. L. Gold bought a lot of these for Galaxy magazine. The only unlikely-to-see-print element here is the press gangs; 1950s American science fiction seldom acknowledged that the US wasn't the only North American country.
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01:41 pm
[Link] | Tuesday August 25, 2009 "Meyer, S/Jones, B Touched by a Vampire: Discovering the Hidden Messages in the Twilight Saga (Investigates the books' themes from a Christian perspective.)"
***To the food shelf at Minnehaha United Methodist Church.
***On the way back, I picked up a discarded Pioneer Press to see if it had anything interesting. It did: "The do-it-yourself method creates just enough meth for a few hits, allowing users to make their own doses instead of buying mass-produced drugs from a dealer."
And add another to the list of possibly-fatal things people do while driving.
***Near home, I saw someone riding a bike while walking two dogs.
***Mail: Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore/Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore newsletter for September-November. The list of recently received and forthcoming sf/fantasy includes books with strong mystery elements. The mystery list includes some with fantasy and science fiction elements.
At least one mystery novel has an ancient document which could shake the foundations of the Roman Catholic Church. And at least one has a Catholic organization involved in A Conspiracy. Where are the Protestant, Orthodox, etc. conspiracies and faith-shaking documents?
***To Southwest Senior Center, to get on the Internet. Encountered a delay: there was a very popular travel program, and the audience blocked access to the computer lab.
***Radio news: a court in Argentina had ruled that it's unconstitutional to punish people for using marijuana.
Next day I checked Google News, which gave me this from the New York Times:
Argentine Court Decriminalizes Private Marijuana Use
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: August 25, 2009
Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that it was unconstitutional to punish an adult for possessing and consuming marijuana if it did not endanger others. In a unanimous ruling, the court struck down criminal penalties for using drugs "in private." The court said public officials needed to fight illegal trafficking of narcotics while adopting methods to treat drug use as a health issue.
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01:22 pm
[Link] | August 21, 2009 Mail: Lofgeornost #96, from Fred Lerner. Mostly devoted to a trip in the South of France; makes me want to see some of the places he and his wife visited. Also discussion by various people of books which can be read in more than one order, Canada in American future-setting sf (usually absorbed by the US, till recently), and books considered overrated.
***Internet down at Southwest Senior Center. I headed for East Lake Library; library computers have a one-hour limit, but that's better than nothing.
On the way I stopped in at the St. Vincent de Paul store, which often has free food on Fridays. What they had was ten-pound packages of sliced potatoes. I wasn't interested in taking that.
When did restaurants, school cafeterias, etc. stop slicing their own potatoes?
===
Monday August 24, 2009 I was over whatever illness I'd had for the past several days.
***To Southwest Senior Center for Internet access.
Back home, saw the cat trying to beat a window curtain into submission.
The cat lost.
***That night, I found myself going over some memories which for years have aroused feelings of resentment.
Now they didn't. And so far, they still haven't.
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02:02 pm
[Link] | Monday August 17, 2009 To Southwest Senior Center. Emailed my contribution to LinkOnline (one of the two electronic writing groups I've rejoined.) I was missing one edress, hoped to get that on Tuesday.
***Learned that Readers Digest was going bankrupt. I don't consider this dire economic news; the US economy has gotten along without Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post. But it does suggest this isn't the best of times for print magazines.
***Shopped at Aldi and Cub, and then home.
***The European guidebooks I've been reading lately have included descriptions of old Jewish neighborhoods in Eastern Europe; carefully preserved, perhaps with a few actual Jews.
This evening, I began to see a resemblance to the romantic treatment of American Indians in the US. Or the 19th century revisioning of Highlanders in England and Lowland Scotland.
Or the Pagan revival? I wonder how long it will be before Arabs begin celebrating their pagan heritage.
===
Tuesday August 18, 2009 To Southwest Senior Center, to get online.
Looked up Hegel and "The End of History." Tentative conclusion: There've been many people certain they clearly understood Hegel, and they don't seem to have much agreed with each other.
Got the email address for the remaining copy of my LinkOnline zine, and sent it. After which I figured out how I could easily have had it yesterday.
***At Roosevelt Library, I took out: Po Bronson, What Should I Do With My Life? The true story of people who answered the ultimate question. Random House, New York, 2002. It lives up to its title and subtitle. Recommended.
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12:55 pm
[Link] | Friday August 14, 2009 To Southwest Senior Center, to get on the Internet.
"Guinan explains a surprising realisation that emerged from their work: 'The sun does not seem like the perfect star for a system where life might arise. Although it is hard to argue with the sun's ‘success' as it so far is the only star known to host a planet with life, our studies indicate that the ideal stars to support planets suitable for life for tens of billions of years may be a smaller slower burning ‘orange dwarf' with a longer lifetime than the sun ― about 20-40 billion years. These stars, also called K stars, are stable stars with a habitable zone that remains in the same place for tens of billions of years. They are 10 times more numerous than the sun, and may provide the best potential habitat for life in the long run'. He continues: 'On the more speculative side we have also found indications that planets like Earth are also not necessarily the best suited for life to thrive. Planets two to three times more massive than the Earth, with a higher gravity, can retain the atmosphere better. They may have a larger liquid iron core giving a stronger magnetic field that protects against the early onslaught of cosmic rays. Furthermore, a larger planet cools more slowly and maintains its magnetic protection. This kind of planet may be more likely to harbour life. I would not trade though ― you can't argue with success'."
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/3213/stars-choose-the-life-around-them
***To St. Vincent de Paul thrift store. "It's always cheaper right after you buy" department: They now had XP computers for $55.
This week, the free bread was all "Take and Bake." I don't understand the appeal of bread which you have to finish baking.
I got some green peppers and a red cabbage. Green peppers become "too hot" when they age, and I like that.
***Comments of Comment:
How to Tell What You Wrote
Jul. 30th, 2009
"Perhaps your novel begins with Neanderthalers being discovered in the hidden mountains of Louisiana. They have abilities which Homo Sapiens lacks...."
Date: 2009-07-30 From: al_zorra Dreamwidth
To start with, Louisiana doesn't have mountains, so you don't need to worry.
[The mountains are hidden very, very well.
[Next, you'll be telling me there's something wrong with the ending of the opera Manon Lescaut. (The heroine and her lover die of thirst in the desert which surrounds New Orleans.)
[I was trying for the level of accuracy which I associate with successful writers like Dan Brown.]
From: al_zorra Dreamwidth
It also strikes one that since the current crop of scholars still agree mostly that Neandertals evolved perfectly to be a successful Ice Age species -- WTF are they doing in Louisiana, mountains or not?
[Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, and has adapted to much colder climates. If Homo sapiens had died out, Neanderthals might have adapted to life in considerably warmer climates.]
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01:27 pm
[Link] | Thursday August 13, 2009 Planned a series of pieces on writing the Other. General title: "It's Not Strange From the Inside." Topics so far will be: synesthetes, ruralites (not small-towners, not necessarily farmers,) political activists, and the lefthanded. [I may drop "political activists," since I haven't been one for a while now.]
***To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
***To the Wedge Coop, to get my transit card topped up.
Across the street to Steeple People thrift shop. They had a book sale. I spent a quarter (27¢ with sales tax) on The Rough Guide to the USA.
***To Walker Library. Returned books, took out:
Jonathan Stroud, Heroes of the Valley. Disappointing. Not as imaginative as I expected from the author of the Bartameus Trilogy. And it seems to be an imitation of Norse sagas, which I don't much care for.
The Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget. That is no guidebook for old men. It has detailed information on youth and student discounts, but none on senior discounts. (Other Rough Guides do mention senior discounts.)
Barry Golson, Retirement Without Borders. One expatriate who contributed her experiences gives as the best part: "All of my expectations were fulfilled, and thank God I escaped the Republicans on TV so much!"
Snarky thought 1: How hard is it to turn off the TV or switch to another channel?
Snarky thought 2: I wonder where her conservative equivalents are moving to, now that the conservative/liberal cycle has turned?
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01:18 pm
[Link] | Wednesday August 12, 2009 Rice Owls? Rice owls would be native to Asia, of course.
Reading further in the football playbook betus.com sent me, I see there are also the Temple Owls. Is there some link between football and owls?
***To Waite House, to pick up NAPS food. [NAPS = Nutrition Assistance for Seniors.]
***Radio news: In Rio de Janero, Brazil, the host of a true crime TV program is accused of ordering executions. I didn't catch all the details, but I found the story via Google News:
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 August 2009 21.45 BST
When Brazilian police raided the house of Wallace Souza, a popular Amazonian MP who doubles as a TV presenter, they might have expected to find scripts for the next episode of his daily crime show.
Instead they discovered more than $150,000 (£90,000) in cash, a stash of weapons and a tatty piece of paper with the names of at least four dead men whose executions, police claim, Souza might have ordered in an attempt to boost the ratings of his lunchtime TV show.
Police in Manaus were this week re-opening dozens of unsolved murder cases after a 12-month investigation which authorities said indicated that the politician was the head of a sprawling criminal organisation involved in drug trafficking, gun-running and death squad killings which got air-time on his daily crime programme Canal Livre – a move designed to bolster viewing figures....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/12/brazilian-tv-host-accused-of-crime
If you read Portuguese, you can probably find more on the Brazilian edition of Google News. Got to http://news.google.com. Go to the bottom of the page, where you'll find links to all editions of Google News.
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01:13 pm
[Link] | Monday August 10, 2009 Thinking about Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, I remembered this from George Orwell(I think): -"The kind of atheist who seems to not so much disbelieve in God as to have a personal dislike of Him."- (The trilogy has the ruler of Heaven as its main villain.)
Pullman's villain claims to have created the universes, but his claims are false. It could be argued that the author wimped out. Why not the Creator as the villain?
***To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
"Today I visited the world's only time traveller supply store, the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.
"The Time Travel Mart is in a run-down district of central Los Angeles, between a bakery and a convenience store. Above the store front is a sign reading 'ECHO PARK TIME TRAVEL MART - WHENEVER YOU ARE, WE'RE ALREADY THEN.' Below is the display window, which has a robot shaking hands with a caveman, and a little sign on the front saying 'Temporal law prohibits the sale of fire to pre-Neolithic men. No upright posture, no mastery of tools, no fire. WE CARD.'"
http://squid314.livejournal.com/261596.html
***General Motors is going to sell cars on eBay. (Google News, several hundred sources.)
Has any science fiction writer or futurologist predicted anything like this? I don't think so.
Will it work? I don't know. I predict that if it does work, someone else will do better than GM at it.
Cautionary note for time travellers: You may be thinking of going back to the 1950s and selling a story which includes this. Don't try it in a serious story; it's too far out. It might be/have been/will be salable in a humorous story.
***On the way home, I saw someone with a button which seemed to say "Reality is sexy." I was disappointed when a closer look gave me "Reading is sexy."
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11:37 am
[Link] | Friday August 7, 2009 To Southwest Senior Center to use the computer lab. Including posting to and reading LiveJournal.
According to headlines on Google News, Facebook and Twitter had been down on Thursday --- thanks to Denial of Service attacks. If I'd read beyond those headlines, I would have seen that LiveJournal had also been under DOS attack.
I couldn't get to LiveJournal.
I googled on "LiveJournal down." Got reports that LiveJournal had been under attack, but had recovered. Obviously, the recovery hadn't lasted.
***I'd intended to begin planning a novel in October. For once, I got an early start; tonight I decided what it would be about.
Working title: Dreams of Strangers. Subject: contact with the political, religious, artistic, etc. beliefs of intelligent nonhumans.
===
Saturday August 8, 2009 Walked to Roosevelt Library to get on the Internet. It's a small library which was barely saved from closing; it's open three days a week.
***
[human] "Are you male or female?"
[nonhuman] "Sometimes. And you?"
[human] "Always."
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01:52 pm
[Link] | Tuesday August 4, 2009 "Washington:Seattle--When housing complex Videre opens soon, it will feature single rooms the size of a typical parking space. Project developers say the space fits the budget and lifestyle of young adults who might be working minimum-wage jobs. For about $500 a month, tenants will get a cable-ready, furnished room with private bath, utilities and broadband Internet." USA Today state news snippets page.
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I spent much of today travelling around Minneapolis.
First to Southwest Senior Center to use the computer lab.
Then the Wedge Coop, mostly to use the ATM (easiest to reach of the ones which don't charge me a fee.)
Across Lyndale to Steeple People thrift store. Since I was going to a rummage sale, this might seem odd. But I figured it would inoculate me against the "I've got to buy it all!" feeling.
Temple Israel holds its annual Garage Sale in the basement. I don't know of any car which could be gotten in there without dismantling either the vehicle or the building, but I think a motorcycle could be brought in and out.
This was half-price day. I've learned to look at stuff for sale and ask myself "Will I really mind if this isn't still available for the bag sale?" I spent fifty cents. [And I didn't return for Wednesday's bag sale.]
***Back on the bus. Looked through the Wedge's newsletter. Found two items of interest.
Volunteers are wanted to help set up a health cooperative, modeled after the Ithaca Health Fund. This looks useful, if it works.
Someone I know -- David S. Cargo -- will be teaching two Wedge classes on bread baking.
***To HealthPartners Riverside, where I picked up this month's meds.
On to the Rainbow and Aldi supermarkets along Lake Street. And then home on the Hiawatha Line.
***Walking home from the LRT station, I found myself thinking that the day's travel might have been much easier if I'd driven. Then I remembered what the traffic had been like.
Which brought up a couple of thoughts I've had about transportation in a libertarian society.
1) Streets and roads might be financed by the kind of pledge drive public broadcasting uses in the US. During the pledge drive, everything would stop till drivers and passengers had pledged enough money.
2) People likely to drive unsafely might be paid not to drive.
***This was National Night out. It suddenly occurred to me that the two nearby NNO events I knew about were both scheduled to end before dusk.
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01:14 pm
[Link] | Monday August 3, 2009 I went to St. Vincent de Paul, and I brought back a computer. Saint Vinnie's seems to be the last Minneapolis thrift store which sells computers.
It's a Windows XP desktop, competently refurbished.
Thanks to L_, who gave me and the computer a ride. And jamestrainor (LiveJournal), who helped me carry it in and get it set up.
I made some changes in the way it operates, moved freeware, text files, etc. over from the older computer, and deleted things I was unlikely to use.
Connecting it to the Internet will have to wait for a bit; probably till the beginning of September.
With any luck, my next computer will be something lighter and less bulky. Maybe a netbook, maybe whatever replaces netbooks.
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02:13 pm
[Link] | Wednesday July 29, 2009 Radio discussion on the future of newspapers. One panelist said that print newspapers don't update.
I remembered that in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_, newspapers have hourly editions. Which still means they don't update as often as some web news sites (including newpaper sites.)
Later, I started thinking about printed newspapers that would update without the need to buy new copies. They'd be on "smart paper" (something which looks and maybe feels like paper but operates electronically.)
***To Southwest Senior Center to use the computer lab, then back home.
***Oh, so THAT'S what interests me:
Reread Barbara Sher's _I Could Do Anything: if I only knew what it was_.
And realized that I'm greatly interested in the theory and practice of organizing groups.
Falling into place: The in-person and online groups I've been most interested in while they were forming. What I notice about politics, and about history. My dissatisfaction with certain fictional futures.
===
Thursday July 30, 2009 When I woke up, I couldn't remember her name. We'd met the day before, signing up for a Scandinavian History course at the spaceport community college. We had stayed together while we worked on the take-home exam. It was a promising start to a relationship, and now I'd forgotten her name.
And I couldn't remember where I'd put the filled-out exam. I started looking around, then realized it had been a dream.
***To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab. Found web bibliographies on organizing self-help groups.
***Kay Kenyon reading at DreamHaven Books. The readings are usually on Fridays; but Friday was the first day of Diversicon, at which she was Guest of Honor.
She's a native Minnesotan, but she grew up in Duluth; about as far as you can get from the Twin Cities and still be in Minnesota.
When I arrived, I saw one other person I was sure had come for the reading: Eric Heideman, who runs the readings. This was rather less than the usual attendance.
More people did show up, but fewer than usual. One factor: local writers usually attract local friends and relatives to their readings. And some people were probably resting up for Diversicon.
Kay read from her novel _Bright of the Sky_, ending on a lovely cliffhanger.
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01:28 pm
[Link] | Sunday July 26, 2009 To the Uptown Lunds for the MinnSpec Meetup. This month, it was devoted to readings by members.
Lunds is an upscale supermarket, which means it has more and better food samples than do lower-priced groceries. This is one reason I like to arrive early.
A change since I'd last been in Lunds: sharps collectors in the restrooms. Which meant they expected people to be injecting themselves in the restrooms. My guess? It's for the convenience of diabetic employees.
The Community Room was close to full when I went in, and became definitely full not long thereafter.
Introductions, announcements, some discussion of starting up new critique groups. (The general critique group and the novelist retreat have both been oversubscribed recently.) And then the readings.
Some people who read their work expressed worries about certain problems. People who commented mentioned what they saw as problems. If my memory is correct, there was no overlap.
Afterwards, I put some books into Walker Library's book return slide. (Since the merger with Hennepin County libraries, some Minneapolis libraries have started being open on Sundays. Walker isn't among them, so far.)
Then to the Uptown Rainbow, mostly to pick up flyers. It would be more convenient to get grocery flyers before Sunday's price changes, but Rainbow doesn't provide them before the new prices start (except in the early editions of Sunday papers.)
(Aldi provides next week's flyers a week early; being German-owned, they don't understand the necessity of doing things in an orderly manner.)
Packages of chicken drumsticks (which were on special) had labels saying they were beef roast -- also on special, but at several times the price.
I reported this at the customer service counter. The clerk said someone must have switched the labels.
A checkout clerk would probably have noticed the difference, but Rainbow now has self-service checkout lanes.
***On the radio, a commentator quoted a US politician as saying the Canadian medical system is so bad that four out of five patients die. The commentator explained that things were actually worse: five out of five Canadians die "at the end of their lives, or shortly thereafter."
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12:44 pm
[Link] | Saturday July 25, 2009 Minnehaha United Methodist gives away produce and bread on the fourth Saturday of the month. No questions asked, no forms to fill out. One catch is that it begins at 9 AM; and they start handing out numbers at 8 AM, rather earlier than I've been getting up.
With the help of a cup of tea, I became almost awake enough.
Construction work on the Hiawatha light rail line meant it was closed from 46th St Station to Mall of America. I went by rail from 38th St Station to 46th St Station, then by shuttle bus to 50th St Station.
More accurately, I went to the next stop after 50th St (Fort Snelling) and took a shuttle bus back to 50th St. (I did say I was almost awake enough.)
The construction is needed because light rail has become popular enough that they're converting from two-car to three-car trains.
Last time I'd been there, the food distribution was in the church basement. This time, it was outside. I took a number; a fairly high one, since I was relatively late.
The church was giving out coffee, milk, and scones. I got a scone; a bit later, I was awake enough to drink coffee.
As a result of someone deciding I was a good listener, I learned that Haitians have the world's highest level of sleep apnea. (Note: I have not yet checked this with a more authoritative source.)
Instructions were given in English, then translated into Spanish. How many of each item we could take -- ending with "One more thing: God is good."
People were taken in groups of ten, from _1 to _0. The numbers were given in English and Spanish; the translator also offered to give them in Russian.
I think the Spanish was standard Mexican. Some of the Hispanics might have had trouble with it. For example, several looked like they came from the Andes; short and very dark-skinned, and one woman wore a bowler hat.
Eggcorn of the month: Inside the church, a poster for a men's retreat said "Exploring rights of passage, and what it means to be a Christian man."
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01:03 pm
[Link] | Help. I don't know what category the novel I'm writing falls into!" The following may be useful.
Perhaps your novel begins with Neanderthalers being discovered in the hidden mountains of Louisiana. They have abilities which Homo Sapiens lacks.
If the abilities are described in pseudoscientific terms, it's either science fiction or a techno-thriller.
It's a techno-thriller for sure if the Neanderthalers are a threat to the world and only one person or a small group stand between this danger and the human race. Unless the heroes are Real Christians or True Pagans.
If the abilities are described as magical, the Neanderthalers are Evil, and disgusting things happening to characters are described in loving detail, the story is horror. Unless the Neanderthalers have spaceships, in which case it's science fiction.
If the abilities are described as magical, the Neanderthalers are Good and Wise, and wonderful things happening to characters are described in detail, the story is New Age.
Unless the Neanderthalers have spaceships.
If the abilities are described as magical, the Neanderthalers are Evil, and only a small group of Real Christians (no Papists need apply) stand between this danger and the human race, it's Christian fiction.
If the abilities are described as magical, the Neanderthalers are Evil, and only a small group of True Pagans stand between this danger and the human race, it's Pagan fiction.
If the story's emphasis is on the romantic/sexual relationship between two characters, it's either paranormal romance or erotica. If the relationship is between more than two characters, and what they do with each other is described in more detail than anything else in the story, it's definitely erotica.
If the major characters are teenagers, it's likely that no matter what the content, it will be considered Young Adult.
Note: By the time you finish your novel, there will be new categories; and boundaries between old ones will have shifted.
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01:24 pm
[Link] |
Comments and My Respones
nojay LiveJournal 2009-07-21
Charlie actually married a Mancunian, not a Scot. [Oops! I took for granted that someone with a Gaelic name living in Scotland would be a Scot.] They've lived in Scotland for over ten years though, and any Scots vernacular he attempts to perpetrate in his writings is usually vetted by local pre-readers like myself and others.
"tripe in dripping"? There's a Scottish culinary tradition of deep-frying anything we can wrestle into a large pan full of boiling lard but I don't think that tripe would survive deep-frying. Haggis, yes. Mars bars, of course. Pizza, no problem. But tripe?
al_zorra LiveJournal 2009-07-21
Where I come from, in North Dakota, dripping means bacon grease or other meat grease.
Love, C.
al_zorra LiveJournal 2009-07-21
In any case no American I know eats tripe.
Unless, maybe of Italian descent? [Philadelphia has Pepperpot Soup.]
mjlayman LiveJournal 2009-07-21
There's a Mexican restaurant nearby where I've seen people who look American eat tripe soup.
al_zorra LiveJournal 2009-07-21
Actually yes, and I even thought it at the time -- tripe soup, menudo, whatever version, is common in latin nations, whether on the Mediterranean or in the New World. And yes, many a Mexican, Puerto Rican, etc. are truly USAian, for better or worse (and for them, I mean by 'for better or worse -- it isn't always that good to be a USian).
Love, C.
lingster1 Livejournal 2009-07-21
Dripping is the meat juices plus some fat that drip from a roast into the pan under it. Once it's cold and the fat has set on the top, you can turn it over and scrape the meaty-jelly underneath. Yummy on bread!
buffysquirrel LiveJournal 2009-07-22
Tripe is eaten with vinegar. Although not by me! [Also eaten with various other things.]
don_fitch LiveJournal 2009-07-23
Now that you've mentioned it, I'm keen to find out what "tripe in dripping" means. Actually, since the phrase describes a food in one of his made-up Alternate Worlds, it can mean anything Stross wants it to mean. But my American usages have "drippings" (in the plural) as the juices & fats that drip into the pan when roasting meat or fowl. (Some or most of the fat is usually removed when making gravy (thickened with flour, most often).) I've had little experience with tripe, but that has always involved it being boiled -- in menudo, pho, and dim sum (though the latter might be just steamed) -- and it doesn't seem like something that would hold up to roasting. (Okay, so I haven't Googled "cooking tripe" yet.)
I seem to have a vague recollection of catching a similar glitch in "The Merchants' War" (maybe). Someone mentions having gotten a good breakfast, with grilled (stewed?) tomatoes. I'm pretty sure (but can't actually Point A Finger without checking, which I'm not interested enough to do) that this was in a segment set in _our_ American world. [One of the worlds is close to ours, but definitely not ours.] I don't recall ever encountering cooked tomatoes (aside from ketchup, which doesn't count) at breakfast in any U.S. restaurant. [Fried tomatoes definitely exist in the US, but I don't know what meal or meals they go with.] One slice of raw tomato, in season, as a color-garnish, occasionally, but never cooked. (I'm convinced that there's an Act of Parliament that requires British B&B's "full English Breakfast" to include either grilled/roasted or stewed tomatoes, but I quickly learned to say, when ordering, "No tomatoes, please -- I'm not British [as was made obvious by my pronunciation] and am not Required By Law to eat them for breakfast".)
Fred Lerner Jul 14
--- You wrote:
Later, I started thinking about a common science fiction device: the teleport booth. You step into a booth, dial the place you want to get to, and there you are. In the stories, it usually goes smoothly.
In practice, some people would misdial and then overlook obvious clues that they'd come to the wrong place. "Why does this supermarket have more signs in Arabic than in English? That's carrying political correctness too far! And where are the pork chops?"
--- end of quote ---
Remember the German tourist a few years back who had a marvelous time in San Francisco -- except that he didn't realise that he had got off the plane during a refuelling stop in Bangor, Maine?
Fred Lerner
I don't remember that. I do remember that in the 1990s, a truck driver couldn't find the address in Duluth, MN his delivery was supposed to go to. He asked a couple of policemen for help, but they couldn't find it either. One cop joked that maybe it was supposed to go to Duluth, Georgia.
Everyone laughed. Then the truck driver took another look at his paperwork....
Tuesday July 7, 2009 I barely missed a phone call from an unfamiliar number in an unfamiliar area code (713.) I tried to call back.
"The Department of Corrections number you are trying to call does not accept incoming calls."
I did a reverse lookup on the phone number at http://whitepages.com. It was an unpublished number in Houston. Since I don't know anyone likely to be either a prisoner or a guard in Houston, the caller almost certainly dialed the wrong number.
Or a phone solicitor at a prison which allows its inmates to earn a bit of money that way; I seem to recall hearing that's not uncommon.
Denny Lien
That makes sense! Thanks.
Ed Meskys Jul 18
thank you for continuing to send your personal zine. ed meskys
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02:45 pm
[Link] | Friday July 24, 2009 "In 1997, money manager David Leinweber wondered which statistics would have best predicted the performance of the U.S. stock market from 1981 through 1993. He sifted through thousands of publicly available numbers until he found one that had forecast U.S. stock returns with 75% accuracy: the total volume of butter produced each year in Bangladesh. Leinweber was able to improve the accuracy of his forecasting 'model' by adding a couple of other variables, including the number of sheep in the United States. Abracadabra! He could now predict past stock returns with 99% accuracy." p. 81, Jason Zeig, _Your Money & Your Brain_, 2007, Simon & Shuster.
***To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
***To the St. Vincent de Paul store. They were giving away food, including bread.
The bread was mostly take and bake chiabatta loaves and chiabatta buns. There were also brat buns, English muffins, and bagels. I took cinnamon bagels and English muffins.
Supermarkets and bakeries don't donate standard white bread; it's always something fancier. There are American children growing up with the idea that upscale bread is poverty food.
Which much of it used to be. My mother's father sometimes called Russian pumpernickel
"soldier bread." He spent part of his childhood near a military base in the Ukraine. The Tsar's soldiers got that bread in their rations, and eagerly traded it for other food.
Conversely, in America macaroni was once an upscale Italian food. Its name was extended to other fashionable things:
Yankee Doodle came to town
Riding on a pony.
Stuck a feather in his cap,
And called it macaroni.
To East Lake Library, and then home.
***The UK's oldest working TV set was featured on As It Happens (CBC radio news program, carried in the US by NPR stations.) The set dates from 1936. It originally cost as much as a new car, at a time when there wasn't much to watch.
***Also on NPR: Repeat of a story on a woman in Georgia who's having trouble feeding her family of five. She and her husband both work.
She said the food shelf in Atlanta had a six month limit. Twin Cities food shelves don't have such limits. (They do limit the number of times each month you can get food.) I wonder if there's only one food shelf in Atlanta -- or, more likely, only one which serves people in her area.
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12:59 pm
[Link] | Friday July 17, 2009 "Please don't tell my mother what I do for a living," the Wall Street broker begged. "She thinks I'm a politician."
*******
To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
***On the bus leaving there, something difficult to explain. Roughly: I changed the way I visualized my body. (It was mostly kinesthetic and tactile rather than visual, but there doesn't seem to be a good term for this.) More precisely, the way I "saw" under my skin.
The practical result: I'm finding it easier to relax my muscles.
***To the St. Vincent De Paul thrift store on Lake Street. Which turned out to be distributing free day-old bread.
They also had institutional-sized "American home fries." (They're called American fries in some parts of the US and home fries in others.) And institutional-sized mashed sweet potatoes. I passed on both of these.
***On to Aldi supermarket, and then home.
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Saturday July 18, 2009 To Pillsbury House, to pick up Fare For All food.
At the bus stop, I was approached by a Jehovah's Witness missionary. I accepted a flyer for a convention in Rochester MN, and two issues of The Watchtower.
She didn't sound like she was reading from a script. Most door-to-door missionaries
(religious or secular) do.
I'd just missed the #23 bus, so I had time to buy a can of soda. The nearby Tom Thumb had something new to me: Pepsi Throwback. No high fructose corn syrup, made with "natural sugar."
Till now, it's been inconvenient to buy cola made with cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup. Mexican Coca-Cola is available in Hispanic groceries; and Coca-Cola makes special cola for Passover.
Why special cola for Passover? Because corn isn't among the grains listed as okay to consume during Passover. Ashkenazic rabbis have decided this means it's not okay; if it was okay, it would have been listed (to the puzzlement of pre-1492 Talmudic scholars, I would think.) As I understand it, Sephardic rabbis disagree.
I consider this kind of intellectual nitpickery the reason why people of Ashkenazic Jewish ancestry have higher IQs than most ethnic groups. It exercises certain kinds of thinking. But IQ tests don't measure common sense.
At Pillsbury House, I paid for next month's Fare For All food and picked up this month's.
***Got a ride to the Mnstf picnic, in Minnehaha Park.
Attendees included Mnstf regulars, irregulars, and a few who didn't look familiar. Also two babies and a toddler. And three German Shepherds, one young, energetic!! and bouncy!! There's an ad which shows a dog on a leash, captioned "Think of him as an exercise machine with hair." This dog would be advanced exercise equipment.
Talked with people. Got a bit of unexpected praise. Ate.
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01:36 pm
[Link] | Tuesday July 14, 2009 Woke early, looked at the clock radio, and realized the plug must have come loose.
It had, but plugging it back in didn't solve the problem. There was an electrical outage.
I went back to sleep. By the time I woke again, the power was back on.
***To the food shelf at Minnehaha United Methodist. Slight delay while I filled out an annual form required by the Federal Government.
Stopped in at DreamHaven Books on my way home.
***Out again to Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
Then to East Lake Library.
On to Midtown Farmers Market. Spent one of the Farmer's Market checks I'd gotten on Wednesday.
The checks are for five dollars each, and no change can be given from them. It is a truth universally acknowledged that any Federal program is improved by adding nitpicky restrictions.
On to Savers thrift store, and then home.
***Read: Charles Stross, _The Revolution Business_. Tor Books, 2009. Crosstime novel with reasonably believable alternate worlds (one close to ours), political intrigue, interesting and believable characters, and a couple of wars (plus ruins from another war which apparently left no survivors on Earth.) Fewer idea-twists than usual for Stross; but this lack might be remedied in _The Trade of Queens_, sixth and last in the series.
Most English writers get American English wrong, one way or another. It helps to be married to an American (or have an American "long time companion,") but Stross married a Scot. So it's impressive that I caught only one glitch: "tripe in dripping" on page 232 of the hardcover edition. And this is in a version of North America whose English would be rather different from our world's.
[I thought "in dripping" would be "with gravy" in American English, but in correspondence, Stross says it isn't. He's not certain what it would be. I'm looking into this. Be prepared for more information on variations in culinary English than you've ever wanted, just in case.]
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01:54 pm
[Link] | Friday July 10, 2009 To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
Used the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base (isfdb.org) to track down an article by John Barnes: "How to Build a Future." It was in the book on writing sf where I'd originally found it -- and in the March 1990 issue of Analog.
The book would be harder to find than that issue of Analog, and probably more expensive. I didn't remember any other articles in the book, which suggested I wouldn't find them worth rereading.
I went to Uncle Hugo's sf bookstore and bought that issue of Analog.
***To Rainbow Foods at Lake and Minnehaha. Got points on my rewards card. For every $50 spent, I can get a discount on gas at participating BP service stations.
After I've spent about $45 more at Rainbow, I can fill up the car I don't own more cheaply at a service station chain which doesn't have an outlet in my neighborhood.
I'm told there will be other reward programs later, and the card doesn't take up much room in my wallet.
***Read: Randall Stross, _Google Planet_. A history of the Google company.
One thing which keeps repeating: Google begins by giving customers what they should want. In its successful ventures, it changes to delivering what customers actually want. Before Google is driven to this desperate measure, there's a period in which it explains why customers should want what Google is giving them and shouldn't want what they ask for.
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Saturday July 11, 2009 John Barnes, "How to Build a Future." Analog March 1990.
"And be aware...that spreadsheet models tend to be huge -- one I discuss below eventually took up about 600 KB of hard disk space." Nineteen years later, this doesn't sound like a huge amount.
There are no laughably mistaken predictions. No "Centuries from now, the Soviet Union will still be a superpower." (A few months after the USSR fell, there were still "Soviets invade the US" novels showing up in bookstores. And in 1988, sf writer Michael F. Flynn confidently charted the Soviet economy's course for the next century or so.)
I disagree with some of Barnes's working assumptions. This forces me to work out how and why I disagree.
***Release party for Dana Baird's _Veil of Whispers_ at Tillie's Bean. The novel is what used to be called "Spaceship and Sorcery." It's published by Sam's Dot, a small press with a good reputation.
Tyree Campbell, who runs Sam's Dot, was there with various books and magazines for sale at a dollar off list price.
Most of the people I recognized were from MinnSpec -- the Twin Cities specfic-writing Meetup group.
***To the Rainbow near Lake and Minnehaha. Got a dozen eggs for 58¢. I was hoping they had run out; then I could have gotten a rain check, and bought the eggs later.
On to Cub, which was out of what I wanted. Then to Aldi, where I got most of my groceries.
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12:47 pm
[Link] | Wednesday July 8, 2009 NAPS (Nutrition Assistance Program for Seniors) commodity distribution at Waite House.
Plus the annual distribution of checks to be used at farmers markets. Only for locally-raised fruits and vegetables: "If you find things like pineapples and peaches at the market, they are from another state or country, and you cannot buy them with your checks."
It should be possible to grow peaches in southern Minnesota, but apparently not in commercial quantities. Other states probably have different limitations; for example, Hawaii would allow pineapples but not apples.
And Hawaii wouldn't have the situation of food from the other side of the state being considered local, while food grown within walking distance across a state border is considered nonlocal.
I also got produce from Waite House's semimonthly distribution, which isn't restricted to Minnesota-grown food. I'm fairly sure plantains don't grow here.
Note: Twin Cities localvores consider neighboring states to be part of the local area.
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Thursday July 9, 2009 To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
***Walker Library. Wednesday's Minnesota Daily (U of MN student paper) reported a study showing that binge drinking had declined among US teens -- except among college students.
Current issue of The Futurist had an article which made sense -- till I got to the mention of Russia as a member of the EU.
The May issue of Discover had an article on Stephen Hawking. It gave a few paragraphs to his idea that there are multiple possible pasts, as well as multiple possible futures.
***Adult Children Anonymous. A good meeting, at which I learned something important.
***On my way home, I got off the bus at the wrong stop. As a result, I discovered that there's a Brazilian Protestant congregation a few blocks away from me.
And one street crossing away from a building I was already familiar with.
***Idea: Gods Anonymous.
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05:08 pm
[Link] | These Exotic Creatures Don't Think Like Real People: Writing the Neurological Other
A speculative fiction writer wants strange characters. In the real world, there are people with minds very different from those of normal people like him. Why not use them as characters?
In constructing such characters, he may rely on what he knows; for example, that multiple personality and schizophrenia are the same thing. ("It ain't what you don't know that hurts you. It's what you know that ain't so.")
He may do library research, though this can produce disappointing results. For example, multiple personality is now officially Dissociative Personality Disorder; and many -- perhaps most -- experts don't consider alters to be separate personalities. (Multiples may disagree; but their opinions don't count. They lack expert credentials.)
Or he might ask questions. But he won't ask these people.
Of course, the assumption that "people whose minds work like mine" equals "normal people" is often wrong.
It's possible to be synesthetic without realizing it. How? By not realizing that some of your mental machinery is a form of synesthesia. Or being oblivious to your synesthesias.
Your sexual preferences might be much less common than you're certain they are.
You might be an addict without knowing it. ("I haven't had a drink in two weeks. That proves I'm not an alcoholic.")
Traits which you think make you saner than most people might be on the checklist for one or another mental illness.
But even if you're really part of the majority, believing that persons whose minds are different from yours aren't real people will hurt your writing. At least, if you're going to write about such people.
Many readers have the quirk of wanting characters they read about to seem real.
***
Kinds of mind/brain unusualness which exist in the real world and have been used in spec-fic include:
Abnormally high sanity. For example, one character in Philip K. Dick's novel _Clans of the Alphane Moon_.
Mental illness, as defined by the writer's time and place.
Unusual mental abilities such as eidetic memory.
Brain miswiring, including autism (and Asperger's Syndrome) and Attention Deficit Disorder.
Synesthesia and other unusual perceptions.
Other things which a particular writer might consider at least as strange:
Inability to realize that popular music reached its peak during the writer's high school years.
Being in denial about sharing the writer's sexual preferences. (Persons who really don't find, for example, male domination and female submission best being nonexistent.)
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02:41 pm
[Link] | Monday July 6, 2009 To the computer lab at Southwest Senior Center.
Newsletter from Duotrope (http://www.duotrope.com). Included among the contests:
"7/31/2009: Horror stories based on the world of Oz - Shadows of the Emerald City Anthology - http://www.duotrope.com/market_3512.aspx"
***To the Cub supermarket on Lake Street. Outside the store, a woman was giving $10 Cub gift cards to people who got trial subscriptions to the Star Tribune. Which seems like an excellent way to lose money, for a newspaper already facing bankruptcy.
This Cub store has aisle signs in English and Spanish. Among the Spanish ones: "habas de refried."
***Leaving the store, I came across a small drama.
Man to male cop: "I love you."
Cop: -"Don't say you love me. How about saying you respect me?"-
***Back home: Picked up a table knife, and it felt odd. After a moment, I figured out why: my hand muscles had relaxed enough that familiar objects felt wrong.
Tuesday July 7, 2009 I barely missed a phone call from an unfamiliar number in an unfamiliar area code (713.) I tried to call back.
"The Department of Corrections number you are trying to call does not accept incoming calls."
***To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
I did a reverse lookup on the phone number at http://whitepages.com. It was an unpublished number in Houston. Since I don't know anyone likely to be either a prisoner or a guard in Houston, the caller almost certainly dialed the wrong number.
While I've lived in the Twin Cities, I've twice answered calls from people trying to phone Sydney, Australia. (Area code for Minneapolis, formerly also for St. Paul: 612. Country code for Australia: 61. City code for Sydney: 2.)
Later, I started thinking about a common science fiction device: the teleport booth. You step into a booth, dial the place you want to get to, and there you are. In the stories, it usually goes smoothly.
In practice, some people would misdial and then overlook obvious clues that they'd come to the wrong place. "Why does this supermarket have more signs in Arabic than in English? That's carrying political correctness too far! And where are the pork chops?"
***Radio interview with originators of the HBO show "Hung." It's about a male prostitute with a female pimp. (His clients are female.)
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12:38 pm
[Link] | Thursday July 2, 2009 To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
Andromeda Spaceways rejected "The Day After I Saved the Universe." Form rejection with "...we hope to hear from you in the future" and a market suggestion.
***To Walker Library.
"Walking along the closest equivalent Warsaw has to New York's Fifth Avenue one bright spring morning [in the early 1990s], I spotted what looked like an artist's canvas on a tripod outside the elegant Blikle Cafe...the Blikle display proudly announced the arrival of 'the New York breakfast' of smoked salmon, cream cheese and bagels. Expensive and exotic, the arrival of the New York branded bagel seemed to be just one more sign that borders really were coming down and that Poland was opening up to Western tastes." Maria Balinska, The Bagel: the surprising history of a modest bread. Yale University Press, 2008.
***Adult Children Anonymous meeting.
July 3, 2009 Federal holiday.
***To the shopping center near Lake and Minnehaha.
Target had netbooks marked down to $200; the advertised special was $49.99 more. These were basic machines; but some of their features (webcams, for example) haven't always been considered basic.
Ten years from now, $50 might get you a useful new computer. (No, I'm not adjusting for inflation.) And my prediction may be too conservative.
Four-function calculators once cost hundreds of dollars. Today, calculators are sometimes on sale at two for two dollars.
*Back in the 1950s, I bought a computer kit from Edmund Scientific. BRAINIAC wasn't much by current standards; it could be hardwired to add, or to subtract, or to multiply, or to divide.
I never put the kit together. If I had, I'd able to brag about being a really early home computer user.
On to Aldi for groceries, and then home.
***I decided to see if KNOW had any news. (Like other "all news" radio stations, KNOW has commentary, talk shows, and other stuff I don't consider to be news.)
There was news: Sarah Palin's resignation as Governor of Alaska. Her announcement came as a surprise to, among others, the Lieutenant Governor.
It would surprise me if Sarah Palin got a sex-change operation, became a liberal, or started making sense. I found her resignation unexpected, but not surprising.
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12:42 pm
[Link] | Sunday June 28, 2009 Saw a wheelchair brand-named "Quickie." The thought came to my mind that it lacked the room for two people to have a quickie.
To the Lake Street Rainbow Foods, to pick up flyers.
On to Cub Foods. Picked up flyers, and checked prices on shelves; mostly in the "nothing over $2" section.
On to Target. Checked grocery prices. I now know that Rainbow's cheapest ketchup is a whopping seventeen cents less than Target's cheapest. (And thirtyseven cents less than Aldi's.)
Devout frugalists search out large numbers of prices at all the supermarkets they use, and keep their price books up-to-date. For a family of six, this might make economic sense. But an economist might suggest also looking at information costs: gasoline used in driving around to supermarkets, to begin with. And opportunity costs: what else could they have done with the time?
On the other hand, I find groceries a source of entertainment. Who buys special salt for Margaritas? Premixed peanut butter and jelly? Is Hispanic spaghetti (imported from Texas; maybe sometimes from Oregon) much different from ordinary spaghetti? Wandering around the supermarkets has benefits as well as costs.
On to Aldi, where I bought groceries.
Tuesday June 30, 2009 To Southwest Senior Center, to use the computer lab.
***Back home, I turned on the radio to see if there was any interesting news. There was.
On November 4, 2008, Al Franken had been elected Senator. So the Minnesota Supreme Court said in a unanimous opinion today.
Would Norm Coleman fight this all the way up to the US Supreme Court? At the beginning, Coleman had led by a slim margin; he said that Franken should do the right thing and not file a ballot challenge. But since then, as the battle went increasingly against him, Coleman hadn't followed his own advice.
Coleman gave a concession speech.
There are activists in both major parties who believe the United States has only one legitimate political party. The Republican ones are going to be very disappointed with Coleman.
Wednesday July 1, 2009 Used the computer lab at Southwest Senior Center.
***To the Wedge Coop. Used the ATM. Bought honey and Canola oil -- small amounts of each. I don't use them up fast enough to make larger amounts at lower unit costs practical.
***To HealthPartners Riverside, to pick up meds.
***On to the Aldi supermarket on Lake Street for most of my groceries.
A solar-powered pickup truck pulled into a nearby parking lot as I was leaving Aldi. It was topped with solar panels. Otherwise, it didn't seem much different from fossil-fuel-powered vehicles. Which I suspect was the point.
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