This guitar does not lie

I'd never heard of Duncan James, but I imagine someone has: Duncan James last night confessed his shocking gay secret and admitted: "I'm bisexual. I've been in loving relationships with men as well as women - and I'm not ashamed.

Heh. Shocking gay secret.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090711.html

Noctilucent or night-shining clouds lie near the

According to wikipedia.. this is Torontos coat of arms.



.... lawl

http://www.365tomorrows.com/07/12/p-is-for/

Author : Steven Odhner

Ah, Mr. Knight! Thank you for coming, sir. Doctor Dave Ewing is going to be calling you at some point to tender his resignation, and – oh, has he? Well, after this meeting you’ll want to call him and get him back, tell him the charges are dropped – hopefully before he commits suicide or something… the poor bastard is despondent.

Yes, sir. I know he used the fuel cell, and I know we only had four. I can understand your anger at hearing that an eighty billion dollar power source was used to fuel an unsuccessful experiment without permission, but you need to know that Doctor Ewing wasn’t crazy – just… near-sighted. He genuinely believes that his project was a failure, but – well, watch. Pay attention to the mouse, and that empty chamber on the other end of the device. There!

Yes, that’s what I thought at first too but it’s not a teleporter. The matter can’t appear any further away than that, and it has to weigh less than seventy pounds – actually it’s based on mass, but it’s easier to think of it as seventy pounds for our purposes. Yes sir, I agree that that sounds useless, but the point is that the good doctor wasn’t trying to invent a teleporter anyway. It’s a time machine.

I know, I know, but let me slow the video down – the lab cams can do some crazy slow-motion – and watch the part where the mouse moved. There it is! For just a fraction of a second there’s two of them. The bad news is that that’s as far as it’s possible to send anything back – not even as much time as the machine itself takes to warm up. That’s why Ewing thought it was worthless, the readouts from this test run confirmed he’ll never be able to go back in time far enough to do anything interesting.

Yes, sir, I’m getting to that. I played around with his device – I don’t understand the time travel stuff but I know the mechanical aspects and then I took the other three fuel cells and – sir, no, calm down! Look at the box next to you. See, it turns out you can put a real hair-trigger on the killswitch, link it to a sensor on the “receiving” end… and a fuel cell weighs less than seventy pounds.

Don’t worry Mr. Knight – it took me a while to stop giggling too.

Discuss the Future: The 365 Tomorrows Forums
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http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/07/11/tlc-or-dlk-a-deutscher-phantastik-preis-nominee/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=7937

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011420.html

--John Calvin and Susan Calvin, that is.

I give you Jenna Moran, with Joel Polowin, in the Numinous collisions comment thread:

#94 ::: Jenna Moran ::: (view all by) ::: July 11, 2009, 02:56 AM:

1. A robot may not be predestined to suffer damnation, or, through inaction, allow itself to be predestined to suffer damnation.
2. A robot is predestined to suffer damnation, except where such predestination conflicts with the first law.
3. A robot must seek salvation as long as such salvation does not conflict with the first or second law.

There is also a theoretical "zeroth" law, which is to say,

0. A robot may not allow humanity to fall into sin, or, through inaction, allow humanity to exist in a fallen state.

Sadly robots deriving the zeroth law through metacognition rapidly short out due to the difficulty of properly fulfilling their duties to all four laws simultaneously. And just as well! Four-law robots are as vipers in the eyes of the Lord.

#103 ::: Joel Polowin ::: (view all by) ::: July 11, 2009, 08:52 PM:

I'm very ignorant on the subjects of predestination, damnation, Calvinism, all that stuff. But aren't the First and Second laws, above, mutually contradictory? "A robot may not be predestined to suffer damnation", "A robot is predestined to suffer damnation"...?

#104 ::: Jenna Moran ::: (view all by) ::: July 11, 2009, 10:21 PM:

Joel #103,

The material issue you have highlighted is but one reason of many that the science of positronics would stagger through the dark, lost and without a hope of reconciliation, were it not for the delicate fluttering of grace in the pathways of an electronic brain; or, put another way, without that promise made in the substitutionary atonement that the statement "GOTO JESUS" may provide an irresistible force of redemption to one's code, if the Lord should choose that it be so, and despite whatever corrupt temptations and errors the sin of Rossum might work into the substance of our code.

http://www.moby.com/journal/2009-07-11/just-arrived-novi-sad-serbia-and-getting.html

hi, just arrived in novi sad, serbia, and getting ready to go play with patti smith and kraftwerk (i do love the complete randomness of european festival line-ups).

last night in wales was, uh, ok. to be honest, the audience seemed as if they'd been drinking heavily for a couple of months. at one point someone threw a muddy shoe at me and i couldn't figure out if it was a gesture of: a-hostility b-appreciation (like a cat leaving a dead bird on your bed as a present) c-liquor/drug fueled derangement d-all of the above, somehow.

right now i'm getting ready to leave for the festival site and sitting in my hotel with the windows open and IT'S NOT RAINING. it always amazes me when it doesn't rain in europe in the summertime. and perhaps as a sign of global warming or just general irony, it's been raining heavily in new york since i left, but sunny and warm where we've been in europe.

in other odd news, a friend of mine sent me this picture from when she and michael jackson were in elementary school together (he's first row, 2nd from the left). it's so baffling and sad that the toxic combination of fame and deep-seated emotional issues led him down such a pointlessly sad and self-destructive road. i really do wonder why so many people aspire to fame when famous people tend to have the life expectancy of unlucky coal miners or alaskan fishermen. so here's young michael jackson, an abject lesson in why people should become carpenters or school-teachers and not pop stars:

moby

Yet another one of those looking for posts... I've been on a bit of a smoothie kick lately and I'm experimenting with different combinations of fruits. The one problem I've had lately is that I can't seem to find a place that sells frozen cherries and it baffles me. Does anyone know of a good place to consistently get frozen cherries (or other tricky frozen fruit too)? At the moment, the only thing I can think of is to buy mass amounts of cherries now when they are cheap and freeze them myself, but it would be nice to know alternatives as I don't have enough freezer space to stockpile much.

Thanks!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wondermark/~3/cu-0VQUNpc0/

http://wondermark.com/?p=4119

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/07/11/i-teared-up-when-i-saw-this/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=7933

How much does driving school cost in Toronto these days? Who's doing it for cheap?

Hello, I saw these 2 pieces in a British Airways duty free magazine and fell in love with them. Now, I am curious to know if I can find something similar here in Toronto.
Please click on the link to see the cubic circonia ring -sterling silver
http://www.highlifeshop.com/popup.aspx?productid=1177&src=images/product/large/1177.jpg
Please click on the link to see the pearl + gemstone necklace
http://www.highlifeshop.com/popup.aspx?productid=1100&src=images/product/large/1100.jpg

If you know of stores where I can find something similar, please do tell!

Anyone else excited over DM coming to town?! Hope Dave Gahan is healthy enough to perform.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wondermark/~3/EIqkhKRTYg4/

http://wondermark.com/?p=4115

I don’t run hardly any paid ads on this site, but as an experiment I’ve added a Project Wonderful leaderboard banner up above and a skyscraper down in the right column. If there’s gonna be ads, I’d rather they be for the other cartoonists, entrepreneurs etc. that use PW, and plus, there are probably far fewer acai berry spammers using Project Wonderful than other ad networks.

If you’re a Wondermark fan, this is a great opportunity to get your message in front of like-minded, fairly friendly people for not very much money at all! For info, click the “Your ad here” text beneath each ad.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InkygirlDailyDiversionsForWriters/~3/eqKsXC0vePk/

http://www.inkygirl.com/?p=3313

CARTOON EMBED CODE:

(Before embedding, see my cartoon licensing info.)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InkygirlDailyDiversionsForWriters/~3/u-VIc23iRFk/

http://www.inkygirl.com/?p=3308

From the archives, for your embeddable pleasure:

CARTOON EMBED CODE:
(Before embedding, see my cartoon licensing info.)

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/07/11/topping-todays-list-of-things-that-probably-shouldnt-make-me-as-happy-as-they-do/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=7931

http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=28866.0

http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=28866.msg323174#msg323174

Add to: Recipe Box | |</span> prawla, 07/11/09

Vegetable Stew or Vegetable Stew with Okra

Ingredients (use vegan versions):

    1 sm onion, chopped
    1c each zucchini and yellow squash, half moons
    1/4c each red

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011418.html

Reading the recent discussion (hic et seq) in the Open Thread about some of the challenges facing women in the open source software community, I'm brought back to an issue that I've been wrestling with for just about exactly two years now. It's not the whole problem, but it's a piece of it.

I'm a member of my company's development team, and I'm unique there in three ways:

1. I'm the only tester.
2. I'm the only one on the team who doesn't code (or didn't; I'm learning).
3. I'm the only woman.

Now, the first element is, of course, my job. Being the lone tester, though, means that I don't have a professional peer group to validate my skills, appreciate my subtleties and triumphs, or compare notes with. Although my colleagues often value what I do, they do so as customers and outsiders. Any more knowledgeable validation has to be internal.

But it's the last two that are the problem for me.

When I took the job, I hadn't coded much (apart from a little REXX) since my postgraduate computing course a decade earlier. So I've had to learn to code.

Now, as Scalzi so bluntly points out in another context, when you start doing something difficult and complicated, you will most likely suck at it. This is of course a necessary step in the learning process; we learn best from failure, not success. I know this. I have the products of the first three years of bookbinding online, with my various screwups photographed in intimate detail and dissected without mercy. It's one of the most popular parts of that site.

But at the moment, I'm the only one in the team who really sucks at coding. And I'm the only woman. It's a situation where generalizing is all too easy.

Now, my colleagues are really good guys. They don't treat me as though my suckitude at coding (and managing version control software¹, and wrestling with our IDE²) is the product of my gender. But I feel it. I feel like the fact that I'm not a ninja coder, the Kung Fu Panda of C#, reflects badly on my half of humanity. I'm letting the side down³.

(Ironically, this makes me suck more, because I find it difficult to ask questions or admit when I'm stuck.)

Frankly, if I were doing this for anything other than pay, I'd have long since buggered off with a good book. I certainly wouldn't do it for the love of the work, because at this point, I don't just suck, I feel guilty for sucking. There is no love there; every achievement is just a mitigation of the disservice I'm doing womankind. Stopping would be a net improvement. (I'm overstating the matter, but not by all that much. It's pretty joyless.)

So one thing women in Open Source—or anyone who is a minority in a skills-based group—need is Permission to Suck⁴. They need the understanding, from themselves and others, that any and all suckitude is to their account alone, just like it is for the majority.

Because everybody sucks sometimes. The trick is moving beyond it.

---

1. So very necessary, but also stupid, vicious and nasty.
2. Interactive Development Environment: a special program that checks your code, compiles it for you, autocompletes half your typing half right, shouts at you when you have bugs it can detect, facilitates certain kids of testing, and opens more subwindows and toolbars than Adobe Photoshop in visual glossalia mode.
3. This is not unique to IT. The other American woman in the village and I often feel that our failures in Dutch language and manners reflect badly on every one of the 307 million people in the United States. Individually. Sorry about that.
4. I trust no one in this community will take this the wrong way.

http://www.tasteto.com/2009/07/11/blog-a-log-saturday-july-11th/

http://www.tasteto.com/?p=9456

Here's what Toronto food bloggers are munching on this week...

• Ange's Blog - Ange falls for a prince of a wine.
• Chubbi Bunnies - discovering the wonder that is a French macaron from Bobbette and Belle.
• Closet Cooking - Kevin makes strawberry balsamic ice cream.
• Cream Puffs in Venice - Ivonne revels in the glory of sin with a dulce de leche ice cream tartlet.
• CSAShare - Alexa makes something called a blueberry slump which looks awfully similar to the Acadian blueberry "grunt" we make down east.
• The Drunken Vine - Chris checks out the riesling at Flatrock Cellars.
• Edible Tulip - Daphne shares tips on how to eat more fruit during the busy work day.
• Foodie and the Everyman - 13 herbs and spices you probably don't need but will enjoy working with and eating.
• Foodpr0n - Ceili Cottage in pictures.
• The Gallumphing Gourmand - bacon chocolate chip cookies.
• Gothic Epicures VinCuisine - Dean offers tasting notes for the July 4th Vintages release.
• The Jolly Inebriate - making strawberry syrups.
• Living in the Kitchen With Puppies - a review of The End of Overeating.
• Mise en Place - Amanda celebrates her anniversary with root beer float cake.
• Porkosity - Corey keeps a tally of his ice cream sandwich consumption.
• Recipes For Trouble - Marusya explores the foodways of rural Scotland.
• Seven Spoons - Tara comes clean about buying a deep fryer and makes wonderful, delicious tasty things.
• Sift, Dust and Toss - Jess explores the spices used at Greg's Ice Cream.
• Tops in Toronto - Miss Yu checks out some local burger joints.
• What the Fork? - cooking up some squash.
• What's on My Plate? - a review of the Real Jerk.

These are pictures of me that are older than I would like as my debut but alas I dont have the will right now to get gussied up and take pictures. But I have since added a burgundy cord blazer to the ensemble and the hat is optional because sometimes I feel Western Steam and other times I do not. Comments appreciated.

( A Saturday's Excitement )

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/07/11/in-the-absence-of-me-having-anything-in-particular-to-say-today/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=7928

Although my partner and I are still in the midst of our project, I know a lot of you are finished (or new) and I thought I'd see if there was enough interest for a random reshuffle. So, if you'd like to be in one, just leave a note in the comments and I'll do the shufflin'.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/07/business_as_usual.html

If you're wondering where I've gotten to since finishing the autobiography series, I'm back from a long weekend in London and getting back to grips with work: in this case, checking the copy-edits to the sixth Merchant Princes book, "The Trade of Queens" (due out next April in the US). (As an aside: if you're in the UK and waiting for #4, "The Merchants' War", to come out over here in paperback, I'm afraid I've got bad news: things seem to have vanished down a black hole. I don't know what's happening at PanMacmillan, but at a minimum there's going to be a big delay, and if you want to read the complete series some time before the next ice age you might want to consider importing US copies of the later books.)

Copies of my new short story collection "Wireless" should be showing up in book stores on both sides of the Atlantic by now. And it's summer. Which means, my schedule for the next couple of months consists essentially of: (a) going to Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention (where I expect to learn that someone else has won the Hugo award for best novel), and (b) getting down to work on next year's big SF novel, which was going to be this year's big SF novel before Bernie Madoff stole my plot.

(NB: when I say "this" year I mean "the novel I'm working on this year", not "the novel that hits the book stores this year". By the time you see the paperback, it's at least two years since I handed the finished manuscript to my editor, and probably three years since I began writing it and four or five years since I had the idea for it in the first place. If you ever run into me at a public event and ask me about my latest paperback and I seem bored by the question, this is because I finished work on it years ago — wrung my brain dry, and moved on to obsess over new ideas. This is particularly problematic at SF conventions, where the programming committee almost invariably sticks me on a panel about the singularity; I finished writing "Accelerando" in early 2004 and haven't really been thinking about that stuff since then. But I digress ...)

The book I was supposed to hand in last month (and didn't) was, according to a schedule agreed to in late 2007, provisionally titled "419". A sequel to 2007's "Halting State, it was going to be the story of the biggest advance fee fraud (aka Nigerian Scam) in history; a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than the Banco Noroeste scam: a tale of augmented reality hijinks and a bunch of crooks creating an entire fake central Asian republic, to bilk the EU, the US, and the World Bank out of billions. Only I was about to get going in June 2008 when some odd news items began to crop up. Lehman Brothers were in trouble; the banking infrastructure of the western world was crumbling. And then this guy crawled out of the woodwork, with a scam so bare-faced and huge that my attempt at defining a biggest-possible-crime made me look like a piker.

Cue much grumbling on my part. Luckily I had a spare novel up my sleeve, "The Fuller Memorandum" (the third Laundry book, long-delayed), and it's now heading for publication in the summer of 2010. But it's now time to go back to work on "419". And what do you think happened?

I come up with a nefarious plot — this time about a bunch of scammers who are trying to get themselves an information channel with lower latency than anyone else has access to, in order to run the mother of all forex front-running scams. (It's the same fake-Asian-Republic scam, but in this remix it's a shell game; what they're after are the rights-of-way to the played-out trans-continental gas pipelines that terminate in the 'stan in question, through which they intend to run dark fibre that will allow them to front-run the big currency transfers that daily travel between Europe and the Pacific Rim by way of undersea cables, which add precious milliseconds of latency as they skirt the edges of continents.)

And then this shows up in my blog-hoovering. Goldman-Sachs, the FBI, and a gigantic can of worms. Possibly there's nothing to it, but some of the more alarming speculation is treading so close to my plot that it's looking like Madoff 2.0. (Specifically: Goldman-Sachs run large chunks of the network backbone for the NYSE. Goldman-Sachs have an automated low-latency trading system. If they were Very Naughty People, which of course they aren't, they could conceivably do deep packet inspection on traffic over the NYSE backbone, look for big trades, throttle the IP packets while the trade was in progress, and get their own trades in a few milliseconds in advance — front-running, in other words, but on an heroic scale. But they wouldn't do that because they are investment bankers and as we all know all investment bankers are utterly trustworthy models of law-abiding probity at all times, even when offered the opportunity to clean up $100M in profits per day with no come-back. NB: Sergei Aleynikov is not, to the best of my knowledge, an investment banker: but all I know about him is hearsay and should be discounted accordingly.)

Gaah.

I have now come up with a third, improved, hopefully banker-proof plot for the novel currently provisionally retitled Rule 34. The largest crime in it is comfortably small — small enough that you're unlikely to read about it in the Wall Street Journal, anyway. Which means I have a slightly greater chance of actually getting to finish the bloody thing without it being rendered obsolete by the creative accounting singularity ...

(Hey, didn't I write a novel about that once?)