Geek in Disguise

Washington Post essay

2009-02-24T16:44:12Z

I'm pleased to announce that an essay of mine is appearing in today's Washington Post, about my reaction to a genetic test.

If only I could draw...

2009-02-19T22:01:52Z

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?"

Here's why I'm voting for Barack Obama (and you should, too)

2008-10-15T17:47:00Z

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.

Ninja cat

2008-09-17T19:05:13Z

Ninja Cat Comes Closer Without Moving

jkling @ 2008-08-19T11:23:00

2008-08-19T18:24:04Z

Science Now has an interesting story about the genetic evidence that the FBI used to implicate Bruce Ivens in the anthrax attacks.

what's wrong with this picture?

2008-08-14T18:50:55Z

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...

wolves in the North Cascades

2008-07-29T03:35:44Z

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.

Indeed it has, Dave (redux)

2008-03-20T21:17:45Z

The illustrious 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:

Indeed it has, Dave

2008-03-20T19:16:29Z

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.

article up

2008-03-17T23:14:20Z

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.

FDA articles up

2008-03-14T21:35:41Z

I have a couple of articles up on MSN Health, about FDA reform and recent drug withdrawals.

My pithy freelance post

2008-02-27T17:56:57Z

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.

for SCIENCE!

2008-02-01T18:18:52Z

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.

jkling @ 2008-01-29T12:12:00

2008-01-29T20:12:47Z

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?

a travel tale

2007-12-29T20:04:39Z

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."

major surgery

2007-12-29T19:48:11Z

Happily, performed by me, rather than on me.

Some time in early December, my laptop's fan started making sounds reminiscent of a meat grinder. jackwilliambell suggested that I should replace the fan ASAP because it was probably about to die, and the motherboard would soon follow. So I ordered a replacement fan, but it didn't arrive until after mareklamo and I left for Iowa for the holidays. It was there when we returned last night, so this morning I closed the office door (to keep lilaboux and altis out), then performed the surgery.

It went rather well, as Dell's instructions for taking apart a Latitude D400 were (shockingly) very well written.

The patient is now resting comfortably.

In memory of Anita

2007-12-11T20:54:08Z

I've been slow to post because I have been a little unsure what to say.

I've known Anita since I met Jack ten or so years ago. For years, I wondered what she thought of me. She always seemed a bit distant towards me, and for awhile I wondered if she disliked me. I eventually understood that it was nothing of the sort -- probably just the chemistry between us. I came to a deep affection and admiration for her, especially her courage in the face of illness.

Comments by mcjulie and mareklamo really resonated with me:

mcjulie said: "I think maybe the person who received the most from her grace is Riley. As a child, he needed her more than anyone else could, and she seemed to give him exactly what he needed -- a steady presence, gentle discipline, and palpable love. It was a joy to watch them together."

mareklamo said: "It's impossible for me to think of Anita without also thinking of your grandson R. The Jesuits say "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." R is only five, but I think it is safe to say that Anita's positive influence on him will be lifelong."

I see Riley as one of Anita's most important legacies, and having provided some care for Riley in the past couple of years, I feel very vested in that.

So, I will cajole and pester and support Jack, and mareklamo and I will provide more Riley care as needed. It will be our way of honoring Anita's memory.

Anita Rowland, gone but not forgotten

2007-12-11T20:34:51Z

On Monday, December 10, 2007, Anita Marie Rowland passed away in Seattle at the age of 51 after a long battle with cancer. She is survived by her two sisters, Martha and Betsy Rowland, and by her husband, Jack William Bell. She will be missed by them, by the children and grandchildren she took as her own, and by everyone tha knew her...

Some people shine so brightly they light the way for others; Anita was such a person. Having that light snuffed out so soon is a loss to the world.

Anita, we love you. We will miss you forever.

Jack William Bell

P.S. Please forward this message to anyone who needs to know.

Her husband Jack Bell is inviting anyone who knew Anita to post a memory or other thoughts at his LJ site: http://jackwilliambell.livejournal.com/198715.html?style=mine

Fall Color

2007-10-31T17:40:02Z

A turning leaf. The red color comes from carotene pigments in the leaf that are masked by chlorophyll until it starts to break down in fall.

Nicked from Molecule of the Day.

I predict...

2007-09-29T02:59:16Z

... that kilonazis will be the next great buzzword to hit the internet -- specifically as a quantitation of evil. For the Order-of-the-Stick-uninitiated: Roy, the leader of adventuring party, has died and gone to whatever passes for Lawful Good limbo, where he is explaining to a celestial bureaucrat why he associated with a chaotic evil character. The kilonazi bit is in the second to the last panel.

'Kill 'em all, Frankie!"

2007-09-25T06:05:23Z

mareklamo and I watched Million Dollar Baby, featuring Bellingham's own multi-Oscar award winning actress, Hilary Swank. Good movie, over all, but there was a moment of detachment for me...

So, Frankie is agonizing over whether to help the paralyzed Maggie take her own life -- convinced that it's a sin if he does, and that it's a sin to keep her alive just because he wants her around. The priest he's talking to advises him to leave her in God's hands.

I immediately piped up: "The solution is clear. He's got to set fire to the rehabilitation clinic (where Maggie is staying). Let God sort it out."

Then I got to thinking about the phrase "Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out." So I googled it and found this. I have no idea whether it's true or not, but it amused me.

It's possible that I was insufficiently touched by this movie.

jkling @ 2007-09-20T11:30:00

2007-09-20T18:30:59Z

Happy birthday terminusest!

It was only a matter of time...

2007-09-19T06:54:38Z

... before multi-level marketing invaded blogs.http://www.blogrush.com/

Two words make a post

2007-09-04T17:31:34Z

Those being... "The End."

I wrote those late last night to conclude the first draft of my first novel. anghara, you may now stop pestering me! rdeck, mareklamo, debtaber, and the rest of the Sunday crew will be subjected to it this weekend.

Now, all I need to do is go back and rework the thing so that it makes sense (it evolved significantly as I wrote). Nothing dramatic, but there are major inconsistencies that need to be cleared up before I can send it to beta readers.