Just to let you all know, I'm doing an online chat tonight (at 7pm eastern, in a little more than an hour) with the fabulous Scott Westerfeld, over on Suvudu.com.

http://www.suvudu.com/author-chat/naomi-novik-scott-westerfeld/

Should be fun! Drop by and pelt us with questions! :D

Details tomorrow!

This is in the FAQ, and many of you know this already, but there's no harm in repeating it for all of you wonderful participants (and for the Yuletide newbies):

There is absolutely no requirement that your story has to have anything to do with a holiday. Obviously, there's no reason *not* to write a holiday story either, if you are so inclined, but Yuletide is an exchange of presents--and the present you choose to give to your recipient can be anything at all. As elyn's icon says, "Warning! Yuletide might contain: anything. Bears."

(Also, my icon has probably given you an earworm. You're welcome.)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/RjJcoxqjSVs/peter-bagge-comic-ab.html

Cartoonist Peter Bagge did a funny one-pager about Ayn Rand for the December issue of Reason.

Peter Bagge on Ayn Rand

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/v_zmSBPL6XE/happy-birthday-lsd.html

"LSD was first synthesized on November 16, 1938 by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland." (Thanks, Mike!)

The phrase "X is defined heuristically" seems to be a surprisingly successful way of saying "we made X up off the top of our heads and have no theoretical justification for it" and getting published anyway in the papers I have been looking at recently.

It seems that one consequence of this value of ill is that I am damnably suggestible to earworms and puns (even more so than normal), and also to visual images, which is not normally all that much of an issue.

I can endure another half-hour or so of work even earwormed with "Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina"*, damn it.

*O Patricia Morrison how far art thou fallen.

j4 observed, a week or so ago in a discussion I meant to have time to go back to, that one can't reason people out of positions which they did not reason themselves into.

I am disinclined to believe this as a universal, because I can think of several examples from my own experience of succeeding at exactly that. Usually starting from a variant perspective or an additional datum which it has never occurred to the person in question to consider in the context of the position in question, or which has not been known to them.

When I have some brain I need to think about where in general it's worth applying this.

• 14:06 Walked around Independence Hall and told Kara the story of American Independence. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

If I were home in bed, I would feel enough better that I would be tormenting myself with guilt about not being in work.

Nonetheless, I am far from sure it was optimal to actually go to work today.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/ljiVe5wd00U/the-senster---roboti.html

Today and Tomorrow has some photos and a video of a cool robotic sculpture from the late 1960s, designed by Edward Ihnatowicz. Senster would be right at home at Maker Faire!

The Senster was a robotic sculpture developed by Edward Ihnatowicz in the late 60’s. It was commisioned by Philips and part of their permanent showplace, the Evoluon, in Eindhoven between 1970 and 1974. It was the first robotic sculpture to be controlled by a computer and could react to the behaviour of the visitors with its sound and movement sensors. The computer used to control The Senster was a Philips P9201 and had only 8K of core memory. Now, almost 40 years later, every interaction student could make something like this and fit the logic in a small box. But this is still an amazing project.

The Senster (Via Mt. Holly Mayor's Office)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/HeKBlAvB9Aw/after-parties-held-i.html

Prankster/artist Jason Eppink threw "Print After Parties" inside newspaper boxes in honor of the the death of print. Very clever. From Eppink's project description:

Abandoned by floundering media conglomerates, thousands of neglected newsracks command valuable real estate on busy street corners across New York City, remnants of diminishing demand and a disintegrating economy. Many have already been reclaimed and transformed by urban alchemists, whether as canvases for stickers and paint or clever conceptual works that turn the once important vessels of information into repositories for garbage.

The Print After Parties continue this line of collaboration with blinking LEDs, disco balls, cut-out silhouettes, and handheld radios. When the last vestiges of a collapsed empire litter the landscape, there's only one thing to do: throw a bumpin' party and dance on the ruins.

Jason Eppink (Thanks, Imaginary Foundation!)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wwdn/~3/TjJ48LtWtbk/dont-blame-the-sweet-and-tender-hooligan.html

Did I mention that I turned in Angel One to my editor last week? That means that this week, I'm working on what was commonly called "one oh one oh one oh one oh one oh one" by my friends on TNG. It's also known as The One With The Bynars, and I recall thinking that it was pretty good. I loved working on it, but until I watch it later today, I don't remember exactly why.

Some people have asked me how I put these things together, but I never know exactly how the memories will shake loose for me while I'm watching it. There are some things I remember clearly, like Jonathan crashing into the turbolift doors on the bridge, and then there are others that I haven't thought about in years, that hit me like one of those snowballs Wesley Crusher threw out of the holodeck at Captain Picard - like the time Lawrence Tierney scared the shit out of me just outside stage 16 while we were filming The Big Goodbye. I plan to spend more time with my friends from the cast and crew while I work on Volume Two than I did with Volume One, mostly because it's a great excuse to get together with people I like, but also because I love the Roshomon-like experience of sharing our memories of the future. For example, when I was talking with Brent about The Big Goodbye, he remembered that Lawrence Tierney showed up for work his first day, and for some reason, rather than waiting for the guard on Melrose to open the gate, drove his car right through it. When Brent told me that, I remembered it like it had just happened, but it was something I hadn't thought about in ages. Incidentally, Brent told me that everyone was as scared of Lawrence Tierney as I was, which surprised me.

I'm excited to dig into the second half of the season, mostly because the Memories of the Futurecasts have been so much fun, and have been so well-received by so many people, that I feel inspired and energized. I'm not going to lie to you, Marge, some of the episodes in Volume One were a real slog and not much fun at all, and I think that unfortunately comes through in those chapters. Now that I know how much at least a few thousand people (and hopefully more) want to read Volume Two, I can't wait to see what I can come up with.

Okay, some business that needs attention before I get to work:

Have you caught a typo or formatting error in Memories of the Future, Volume One? If you have, would you please leave the page and paragraph number in a comment on this entry? I'm going to do an ePub version (Lulu now supports that, in addition to PDF) ... so I'd like to repair any mistakes before I do the conversion.

Would you be interested in a limited edition, signed and numbered hardback, similar to what I did with Happiest Days of Our Lives? I ask because it's going to cost me a not-insignificant amount of money to make them, and I kind of need to know that it's even something people are interested in. It would be $50 like the other one.

Speaking of The Happiest Days of Our Lives: everyone who pre-ordered from Subterranean Press and is getting antsy because they've waited so long deserves a big apology from me. A couple of things happened while we were putting the book together which were not my fault (OpenOffice and MSOffice not playing nicely was a significant setback for the timetable) but the latest delay is squarely on my shoulders. I've been working my way through just over 2000 signature sheets for several weeks. I've only had time to work on a 100 or so a day until last week, because I just didn't have any other time in my schedule. This has worked out pretty well for the final product, because my signature starts to break down after about 200 pages, but it's increased the wait quite a bit. The good news is that I have about 400 left, and I'm doing them in two sessions today. They'll be sent off to Subterranean Press tomorrow, so the book can go to press and get into your hands real quick. Oh, did I mention that this wait has allowed me to secure a pretty awesome Afterword from my son Ryan? I couldn't be happier about that.

Finally, if you've written or seen a review of Memories of the Future, Volume One, would you leave a link in the comments here? I'd like to collect them all together and share them in a post later this week.

Okay, that's it. If you haven't heard this week's Futurecast, you should be able to get it in the usual way, or you can go to MemoriesoftheFuturecast.com and pick it up directly.

Hello fellow procrastinators!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the Yuletide Procrastinators' Mutual Support Group (aka yuletide_nudge) is there to give a daily "nudge" to people who need a little help with getting stories done on time.

For the last two years we've mostly posted daily writing and/or anti-procrastination tips, so I thought we'd try something different this year. I'd like to select a few yuletide_nudge members at random each day and make them Featured Writers. Featured Writers would answer a few questions about themselves, their fandoms, how long they've been doing Yuletide, and -- most importantly -- how they're coming along on their stories!

So that people who are picked actually want to participate, I'm making it opt-in. If you would be willing to be a featured writer on the [info]yuletide_nudge comm, please take the poll in this post.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/AMtyGyBcQsM/conservative-childre.html

A new conservative children's book titled Help! Mom! The Radicals Are Ruining My Country! prominently features Nancy Pelosi as an evil villain. Author Katharine DeBrecht, whom you may have seen on Fox News, explains:

When Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House all we heard was how wonderful it was that a mother and grandmother rose through the ranks to such a position. In reality, that mother and grandmother has played an enormous role in ensuring that our children and grandchildren are shackled with debt for decades to come.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/1aL7EXKM89A/laser-interface-for.html

Researchers are developing a laser-based system to connect the human nervous system to robotic prosthetic limbs. Brain-machine interfaces provide the output for controlling prosthetics but ideally the system would also provide feedback, for example the sensation of picking up an object. The challenge is that electrodes wired to a particular nerve can also zap surrounding nerves, triggering false sensations. Vanderbilt University researchers developed a method to precisely stimulate nerves with pulses of a laser. From IEEE Spectrum:

Using a similar laser aimed at the sciatic nerve of laboratory rats, they caused some part of the animal’s legs to involuntarily twitch with each laser pulse. A slight movement of the beam across the nerve bundle—which causes the narrow beam to shift its focus from one fiber within the nerve to another—can cause the rat to switch from, say, curling its toes to flexing its foot.

Stimulating nerves with lasers, says Anita Mahadevan-Jansen, a professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt and the person who hit upon the idea of using light instead of current, may someday make artificial limbs as dexterous as human arms and might lead to such devices as patches that zap nerves to give relief to chronic pain sufferers...

To make the device as compact and inexpensive as possible, the researchers wanted to use a diode laser like the ones used in CD players and laser printers, says Jansen. For human trials, the Vanderbilt researchers are currently working with Aculight Corp., a Bothell, Wash.–based maker of laser systems for military applications, to ready a diode laser–based prototype that is roughly the size of a hardcover book.

The prototype laser has been used in the surgical suite at Vanderbilt’s children’s hospital during rhizotomy procedures in which a nerve identified as the cause of debilitating spastic jerking is removed from children with cerebral palsy. Before the nerve is cut, the laser is fired on it, and its response is recorded.

"Engineers Work on Laser-Based Brain-Machine Interface for Prosthetic Arm" (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/uFME-poRuAM/lou-jing-half-black.html

A 20-year old Shanghai woman of mixed race has sparked a discussion about race in China. Lou Jing is half black; she was raised by a Chinese mother and speaks and acts like any other Chinese girl. But when the aspiring TV anchor entered an American Idol-like contest and rapped on-stage, she attracted both sensational admiration and ignorant hate. The presenters adoringly called her "chocolate girl" on stage — meanwhile, on web forums, people called her gross and ugly and criticized her mother for having sex with a black person out of wedlock. In an interview with NPR's All Things Considered, Lou Jing says: "I've always thought of myself as Shanghainese, but after the competition I started to have doubts about who I really am." Lou Jing has never met her dad, who left China without knowing he had gotten her mom pregnant. She hopes to study journalism at Columbia University.

Stories about Lou Jing on NPR, Time, Shanghai Daily Image via Shanghai Daily

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/upvSb7IGy0E/117-spm-sneezes-per.html

A video by Joe Sabia. I'd stop watching it, or laughing at it, if only I could. My LOLs are like her sneezes. Stick with it, 0:32 sneaky panda FTW.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/h_3PkZxZM_0/springy-origami-toy.html

Here's a neat spring you can make (if you have a lot of time and patience) by folding a piece of paper.

UPDATE: I changed the link, as the other one might have pointed to malware. Origami Spring, invented by Jeff Beynon (Via Evil Mad Scientists)