Phoenix Living

Got some nice creative insights from attending panels and good conversations yesterday at ArmadilloCon.  There’s still stuff happening today if you’re Austin-local!

I thought this was a well-balanced article about an interesting person in the adult entertainment industry: Uncovered — the real Traci Lords.

This looks like it would be an interesting book to read with a group and discuss/debate afterwards.

You’ve heard the urban legend, now see the news potentially confirming it: Hitler Jewish?

My futurism starts to catch up with me again, check out this cool concept design for body art computing.

For my friends with eating issues, you likely already know these things, but now they have Science! backing them up: 2 ways to feel more full and eat less

Elizabeth Moon drawing aim on how often women writers are still overlooked professionally: It Ain’t Equal ‘Til It’s Equal…

One of the things that has always frustrated me about our educational system is that history (and other) classes are set up to dilute, filter, and lie about what actually happened, such that only if you manage to have a good teacher in the upper grades or college (if you attend) will you start to get accurate and less biased info about America and our country’s local and global choices and conduct.  Read this link, follow its embedded links, and learn how (at least for everyone else but us in the world) Hiroshima and Nagasaki are war crimes.

Abusive relationships are sometimes tough to identify, especially when in the middle of them.  Check out a nice sample quote from this article I recommend reading:  “If somebody is investing time, resources, and energy into convincing you of your own worthlessness, that same somebody has revealed to you that they have a lot to lose if you don’t believe them. They’re protecting their own loss of power. Which means they perceive you as somebody who can take that power away. If somebody is putting in the work to knock you down, it’s because they’ve got something to fear about you if you’re standing up.’”

Parents of teens and almost-teens might want to read this thought-provoking article posted by a friend, about managing drama overload in the home and how to avoid falling into immature social dynamics with your teenager.

Nicely written, not-too-frothy examination of some of privilege’s invisibility here.

Delightfully provocative and sweet video sent to me by a friend: Love for All

Wantwantwant!  3D Printable Fabrics

Screw worrying about no coral snake antivenin, I’d have died half-a-dozen times if it weren’t for antibiotics — and I might still have that in my future, if we don’t figure out something else quickly.  C’mon, nanotech!

I’m hoping to get a couple articles written about some recent observations about pop music and some of what I see it doing lately, including some music video-watching parties at our place soon (the computer that plays them has been under extended repairs).  Here are a few we might be watching, discussing, analyzing, and possibly debating:

Rihanna, “Rude Boy”

Lady Gaga, “Alejandro”

Eminem ft. Rihanna, “Love the Way You Lie” — note this last one is the video equivalent of my recent short story “Acceptance”.  It’s fairly uncomfortable to watch and potentially triggery content.

If any of these get thoughts moving in your mind, consider joining us at our Music Video Deconstruction viewing parties!

Here’s one reader’s take on living the non-A/C way on her own journal.  The lovely Andrea O’Sullivan of Natural Obsessions Fiber is participating in a marathon blogging effort to raise funds for a charity that benefits the children of families affected by cancer.  Go read along, leave comments, and help out with a few dollars to bring happiness to others!

For those passing around the latest version of the “my biology made me sleep around” argument (an article that several friends have linked to this week), might I suggest reading the book The Prehistory of Sex, by Timothy L. Taylor.  While we are indeed biological creatures, our brains and social dynamic patterns have been superseding and overriding our biological “imperatives” for hundreds of thousands of years.  Plus, if other people read this book, I might finally get to have some rousing discussions and debate about it.  I read it during my first week post-surgery, which definitely gave an interesting mental flavor to the reading experience.

Random awesome author link:  If you don’t read Marissa Lingen’s work, you should at least be following her blog. She is consistently witty, engaging, dryly humorous, and insightful.  She’s also a personal friend and an amazing person, but for today I advertise the spiffiness of her writing voice.  Go read, join her throngs of adoring fans (ok, help create the throngs of adoring fans)…

C’mon all you non-capitalists, let’s hear your rants on this one!

Coral snake antivenin about to disappear

And capitalists who want to play, take a moment and explain how the above situation is a good or necessary part of said system, since it certainly affronts my inner scientist at the least…

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How to reduce dependence on air-conditioning

I have some friends who have chosen a non-A/C life here in Central TX, and while I’m not against the concept I do think the article writer was a bit idealistic on some parts and glossed over important other parts. (The toss-off line in there about how some homes designed with A/C in mind might be hard to modify safely to a non-A/C lifestyle — oh, you mean like every home in the last 50 years? — is a perfect example.  My friends succeed at their lifestyle in large part because their home was built in the 1940s and catches breezes MUCH better than our two-story model-realtor-home rental monstrosity.)

And yet, next week we’ll be working around here on ways to make our use of A/C more efficient (one of those serendipitous timing things where I made the chore decision and then half-a-day later found this article), thanks to a hideous electric bill last month.  Not surprising, since adding a new person to a household always causes hiccups and shifts during the transition period.

What do you do to keep the heat down — especially you poor non-A/Ced Northern folk dealing with a dangerous heat wave this year?  (Oh by the way, Texas has had one of the most mild summers in the past decade — mid-80s in July, what madness!)

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(from Jay Lake’s blog)

Foreign bank re-thinks lending strategies while squashing stereotypes

As far as I’m concerned, they can’t expand fast enough.  Go, Grameen!

The Tesla Project (for kids) — this is where we’ll be tomorrow afternoon, anyone else with kiddos want to join us?  Hope to see you there!

Learn about Drowning Signs — anyone who swims or sails should read this, drowning doesn’t look in real life like it does on TV

Lusty Literati Reading Series — I’ll be reading a short story of mine for this group on September 14th, time and place details will be announced closer to the event date

Andrea and others are organizing a marathon fiber-spinning-and-knitting event called SpinAThon to help raise funds for our copious medical expenses incurred from the recent breast cancer adventure. It’s happening May 1st (and hopefully May 2nd as well, if we get enough donations!) in the Austin area and occasionally elsewhere — and we’re broadcasting the volunteer spinners and knitters on internet-streaming webcam so you can watch the progress in your own home!

How can you help? Well, sponsoring several minutes (or hours) of spinning will most definitely help us, both in the raising of funds and in making SpinAThon a more noticeable event. (Last I checked we were already up to 18 hours; our goal is to reach 48 hours or more.) As little as $5.00 will sponsor 5 minutes of spinning, and larger donations will sponsor fiber time at the same $1 per minute rate. Visit the main SpinAThon page and click the “Donate” button there (found just above the pictures of me) if you want to jump directly to the donating part.

If you can’t donate funds but still want to help, here are a few ways:

Are you local to Austin, TX or not local but with a webcam, and do you spin or knit? Consider joining the volunteer spinners and knitters practicing their craft for the event. Contact Andrea (naturalobsessions@gmail.com) to get more details on how to sign up for this and when to schedule your spinning time. She can also help you get set up with the free streaming webcam service several spinners are using for the SpinAThon.

If you don’t knit or spin, and can’t afford to donate at this time, consider linking to this post or to the SpinAThon website itself and spreading the word. The more people who know about this, the more likely we are to reach our goals and create an awesome event for everyone!

And of course, the days of the SpinAThon itself, you can watch the progress of the volunteers as they create the novel sport of endurance fibercraft on Live (Really)Reality (Internet)TV! Any questions not answered here? Check out our SpinAThon FAQ (90% written by yours truly) or contact Andrea directly with your question. You can also leave questions in the comments on this post or over on the Reesa Brown Fan Page where it’s also linked.

Thanks to everyone for all the help that continues to come in, it makes a positive difference in my recovery!

If anyone in the Austin-ish local area wants to see this next one, let me know! I go out to College Station about once a week to check on my business there, we could easily turn one of those trips into a sf exhibit roadtrip. Not too many people know that the Cushing Library extension of the Texas A&M library system has the second-largest collection of science fiction-related private author papers and other rare items in the country. Here’s the current exhibit on display until January 2011.

I’ll be listing some of the cancer resources that have been useful to us, marginally or more, as we progress through cancer and recovery. The obvious first one to start with is the American Cancer Society, an umbrella organization that has many local chapters and handles information about many different types of cancer, including breast cancer.

And for a fun wrap-up link, gamers can enjoy this Nintendo emulator site, and play again all those games that sucked away so many productive hours in your youth.

Over 100 years of Popular Science issues have been digitized and made available for free on the internet!

A good article for anyone interested in the cutting edge of neuroscience and how it connects to story.

And I’m thinking about attending the World Fantasy Convention this year in Columbus, Ohio. I have extended family living in a suburb of Columbus, and it seems like it would be fun to have the DreamCafé and my mom and brother along for the trip. With this many months to plan it, we might even make it happen! Any feedback from the readers on this convention, if you’ve previously attended?