Geek in Disguise
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Jim Kling" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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06:21 pm
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ValhallaCon 1.0
I think it's fair to say that the first ValhallaCon was a success. Though exhausted, the concom nevertheless began plotting 2.0 during the Dead Viking party held last night.
We got a nice post-con article from the Bellingham Herald.
Our author guest of honor Nancy Kress also wrote a blog entry during the convention.
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09:17 am
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more ValhallaCon guests, less sleep!
I'm happy to announce that Jonathan W. Sodt (A.K.A. Fenmere, the Worm) will be our local artist guest. He's been a fixture in the Bellingham art community for a long time. You can see his work at Grass Dog Studio.
George Dyson will also be at ValhallaCon and will give his traditional Orion Project presentation. For those who don't know, the Orion Project was a 1950s effort to build spaceships propelled by nuclear bombs that was championed by George's father, physicist Freeman Dyson. It was also a key plot element of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's book Footfall, and the event just happens to take place here in Bellingham.
"General, have your people do what you can for the people of Bellingham. They're Americans, too."
I've always felt this should be Bellingham's motto: "We're Americans, too."
Also joining us wil lbe Clete Smith, author of "Grandma's Intergalactive Bed and Breakfast," which will be published in 2010 and for which he has already sold movie rights.
And, if you thought author guest of honor Nancy Kress's book Beggars in Spain was fiction, think again. According to the New York Times, researchers have identified a genetic mutation that causes a need for less sleep. htshhksmn
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04:49 pm
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ValhallaCon update
In the past week, the concom has decided to scale back ValhallaCon a little bit. There will be one track of programming as well as informal coffee klatsches, gaming, and a central hospitality room. To reflect these changes, we've lowered the membership to $35, where it will stay through the end of the convention.
We will have lots of great guests, including writer guest of honor Nancy Kress and science guest of honor Peter Ward, who is a paleontologiist at the University of Washington. Other great guests include author Alma Alexander, editor Patrick Swenson (Talebones and Fairwood Press), and author Cat Rambo, as well as up and coming authors from the Bellingham area.
Because this is a small convention, it will be a really intimate gathering that gives you the chance to connect personally with the authors and other guests.
The membership rate on the site will remain at $45 for a little while because our Paypal person is at Worldcon. In the meantime, you can make a check out to VikingCon Organizing Committee and send it to PO Box 5171, Bellingham, WA 98227. Please make sure to include your name, address, phone number, email, and desired badge name.
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09:49 pm
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ValhallaCon is on!
After our meeting this past weekend, the ConCom decided to go forward with ValhallaCon, which is happening on Labor Day weekend (September 4-6) here in Bellingham. Author Guest of Honor is Nancy Kress and science GoH is University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward. We'll have quite a few local authors on hand as well as some from farther afield.
More updates as they happen. For more information or to buy a membership, go to Valhalla.
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08:44 am
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Washington Post essay
I'm pleased to announce that an essay of mine is appearing in today's Washington Post, about my reaction to a genetic test.
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02:01 pm
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If only I could draw...
I just envisioned an editorial cartoon: Chimpanzees dressed in suits and reading newspapers in a waiting room outside the New York Post's human resources department. Inside the HR office, a chimp is being interviewed by a human NY Post employee. The caption reads: "Why do you think you're qualified to be an editorial cartoonist?"
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10:47 am
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Here's why I'm voting for Barack Obama (and you should, too)
Okay, so I don't like to get political, but I finally decided it's time to weigh in with my own opinion -- partly because I looked at CNN's electoral map and discovered that Washington state is only *leaning* towards Obama. Leaning?!
Reason #1: Sarah Palin. If you haven't seen the Katie Couric interviews (day 1, day 2) by now, you really need to. Living next to Russia and Canada does not give you foreign policy experience. Stringing together catch phrases and buzz words in nonsensical order is not an answer to a question about the $700 billion bailout plan. If McCain is elected president, Sarah Palin could well end up sitting in the most powerful seat in the world. This scares the willies out of me.
Reason #2: John McCain. When he was nominated by the Republican party, I was pleased. I thought, 'here's a guy that I can live with as president of the United States.' I knew that I would prefer Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, but McCain seemed far more moderate in his views than the current administration. So if the Democrats lost the general election, I thought that the altenrative was at least acceptable. Then he nominated Sarah Palin to be his vice president. She is clearly unqualified for the position. So why did he do it? Pretty clearly it was for political reasons -- to shore up his conservative base and to attempt to win over women. This is appalling. He chose to nominate someone that he believed would improve his odds of being elected, with no thought for the awful risk of putting someone so unprepared into the White House.
Contrast that with Barack Obama. He could have chosen Hillary Clinton as his running mate. It would have immediately healed much of the rift in the Democratic party. It would have helped his status among women voters. But he feared (rightly or wrongly) that the Clintons at his side would have had their own agenda and made it more difficult for him to govern. So he chose Joe Biden, whose foreign policy experience (he is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Policy Committee) helps to shore up one of Obama's weaker areas. Senator Obama chose a running mate who would help him be a better president, not one who would make him a better candidate. That's a decision that was made for the good of the country.
And that leads me to...
Reason #3: Wise leadership. Barack Obama thinks ahead. His responses to questions are measured and soft spoken. He obviously does his homework. He has convinced me that he will govern wisely. Every candidate has gaps in his or her knowledge. Every candidate is weak in some areas and strong in others. The important thing is that a president realizes when he *doesn't* know the answer -- when to consult his advisors and listen to them. To govern wisely.
I don't agree with every one of Barack Obama's positions, but I trust him.
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12:21 pm
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more video goodness
More brilliance from The Onion: Disney Lab Unveils Its Latest Line of Genetically Engineered Child Stars
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12:05 pm
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Ninja cat
Ninja Cat Comes Closer Without Moving
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11:23 am
[Link] | Science Now has an interesting story about the genetic evidence that the FBI used to implicate Bruce Ivens in the anthrax attacks.
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11:44 am
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what's wrong with this picture?
A site called Magazine Art has pictures of covers from a magazine called Electrical Experimenter here (the more interesting pictures start on page 2). Fascinating views of what the future looked like in the 1920s. Also fodder for the intermittent Call of Cthulhu game that I run.
But I take issue with this picture...
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08:27 pm
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wolves in the North Cascades
After 80 years, they're back. A remote camera in the Methow valley area of the North Cascades captured images of wolves and a group of pups.
There are also links to the pictures and to some audio.
Tags: wildlife
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02:14 pm
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Indeed it has, Dave (redux)
The illustrious ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jackwilliambell has pointed out that Hulu allows you to create clips to post.
So without further delay, the clip of News Radio wherein Dave confronts Stargate Defender:
Tags: tv videogames
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12:09 pm
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Indeed it has, Dave
So jackwilliambell informed me of the new site Hulu, which lets you watch various television shows and movies. Among the treasures are The Tick, The Land of the Lost, and News Radio (the list is here).
As I was looking, I recalled an episode of News Radio in which the station gets a Stargate Defender video game, which includes some of the funniest scenes I've ever seen, of Dave interacting with the video game. Now, these scenes are funny anyway, but if you are a child of the 80s coin-op video game generation (I'm looking at you terminusest), you absolutely must watch this episode.
Tags: tv videogames
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04:14 pm
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article up
An article that I wrote for NASA's astrobiology portal is now up, about a researcher working with ice taken from just above Antarctica's Lake Vostok. Lake Vostok is buried beneath two miles of ice, but remains liquid probably due to hydrothermal vents. The ice accreted to the surface of the lake, where it was retrieved by an expedition in the late 90s. The ice contains trapped bacteria, which scientists would like to study as a window into Lake Vostok's sunless ecosystem.
Tags: article ssp astrobiology
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02:35 pm
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FDA articles up
I have a couple of articles up on MSN Health, about FDA reform and recent drug withdrawals.
Tags: ssp articles
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09:56 am
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My pithy freelance post
A lot of folks on my friends list have been talking about freelancing, so here's my $.02, adopted from a post that I made in resposnse to ellameena in her journal.
She wonders if saying 'no' to assignments from editors will cause them to stop calling her for future assignments. My experience is that editors don't stop calling if you say no occasionally -- though that probably depends to some extent on how long you've been working for them. Editors understand that they're not your only client, and that sometimes you're just booked.
Think of it this way -- they're opinion of you might just go up if you say no because it means you must be busy. And if you're busy, then other people know how good you are -- so they had better appreciate you!
For me, optimism and leaps of faith are keys to freelancing. If you don't say no once in awhile, or if you don't quit working for clients that you're not happy with, you get stuck in a rut of doing work just to pay the bills and never expanding into new areas that might be more lucrative and satisfying. More than once over the past 12 years, I've quit doing work for a client with no sure thing lined up to replace it, but inevitably something does come up, usually surprisingly quickly. Of course, I only do it when I've got a steady diet of work from other clients to soften the blow.
For every assignment accepted, there's what economists call an 'opportunity cost' -- the time you spend on it and the energy taken up by it cannot be applied to other potential projects, like pitching stories to new clients. And another cost: if you're overbooked, you can't give each project the attention it deserves and the quality of your work could slip. In that case, clients truly might stop calling you.
Tags: freelancing
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10:18 am
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for SCIENCE!
Yesterday, mareklamo and I brought lilaboux and ahltis to the vet for a checkup. The vet commented on how healthy lilaboux is for an 18-year old cat, and then asked if we would be willing to enroll her in a clinical trial for a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (Robenacoxib), sponsored by Novartis Animal Health. They took some blood samples and X-rays to determine if she has physical signs of osteoarthritis, which the drug is designed to treat, and to be sure that she is sufficiently healthy to participate. If she meets the criteria, we'll be given either the drug or placebo to administer once a day for 30 days. mareklamo will keep a journal recording any changes in her gait or other signs of improvement. mareklamo and I initially marveled at the idea of including a placebo for a study on cats, but then we realized it's for us -- since we'll be the ones monitoring her and recording changes. If we expect the drug to cause improvements, then we might exaggerate improvements or see improvements that aren't really there.
Unsurprisingly, lilaboux disapproves.
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12:12 pm
[Link] | An interesting and amusing youtube video of wildlife captured on remote cameras in the North Cascades. It comes courtesy of the Cascades Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project.
I'd be interested to know what the deer-like animal is that shows up at about 1:53. It has two horns that are more or less straight but appear to have a slight spiral to them. Person Field Guide to Mammals is no help. Anyone konw what it might be?
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12:04 pm
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a travel tale
Yesterday was a long day. We woke up at 6:00 am central time, and left my sister's place in Ames, Iowa to drive to the Kansas City airport, for our 2 pm flight. We flew through Kansas City because it was significantly cheaper than Des Moines. We saved some more money by doing two one-way car rentals -- one from Kansas City to Des Moines on December 18th ($80) and one from Des Moines to Kansas City on December 28th ($105). A car for the full week and a half would have cost over $400.
When we woke up it was snowing, and I wasn't looking forward to the ostensibly 3 1/2 hour drive to Kansas City, but we headed out and drove 40-50 mph most of the way, and arrived without incident. The snow plows were out all morning and the roads were icy, and there were lots of cars in the ditch and in the median.
In Missouri, we passed a double-trailer truck on the median, obviously a recent victim of the ice. As we drove by, I turned to get a better look (I didn't slow down, so mareklamo wouldn't berate me for rubbernecking), and I saw an alarming sight -- the driver was slumped over the steering wheel. It took a few moments for it to sink in, and then I reached for my cell phone to call 911.
"This is 911."
"Hi, I want to report an accident. There is a truck in the median of the highway, and the driver is slumped over the wheel."
"Where did you see it?"
"On Interstate 35, southbound, just before mile marker 67."
The operator laughed. "Is it a double-trailer, in the median?"
The light-hearted tone of the 911 operator took me by surprise. "Yes," I replied.
"He's asleep. He's waiting for the tow truck to arrive."
Clearly, I was not the only alarmed motorist who had been calling 911. I thought, 'you should go wake him up.' Who sleeps slumped over the steering wheel?
When I told the story to jackwilliambell over dinnner last night at Shalimar in Seattle, he answered the above question: "A sleep-deprived truck driver who just drove off the road."
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