Link dump for 20110427

Links

• "How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)" by Austin Kleon (Writing, HowTo, Advice)
• "Native American" Names That Don't Have The Meaning They're Supposed To (Name, Anthropology, Translation, American, NativeAmerican)
• 10 'Sexy' Super-Heroine Costumes That Really Aren't - ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews (Superhero, Costume, Fail, List, Sex)
  The world of super-heroes has always had some crazy ideas about what constitutes "sexy." A great artist can make just about any costume look good -- just flip through any Justice League International comics where Kevin Maguire and Adam Hughes draw Fire's halter-top corset, jean jacket and headband -- there are a lot of super-heroine costume designs that have aimed for hotness and landed in what the hell is going on here.
• 10 Elements of the Intellectual Thriller (Writing, Thriller)
• 10 Good Grammar Resources | Writing Forward (Writing, Grammar, Link, List)
• 10 Most Awesome Fake Martial Arts (MartialArt, Fiction, Fictional, List, io9)
• 10 Scifi films that are better than Serenity and Empire Strikes Back (SF, SciFi, Movie, Film, Recommendation, List, io9)
• 10 Steps to Secure Your WordPress Blog From Hackers -- There Are No Rules (WordPress, Security, Advice)
• 10 useful Android apps for IT pros - Computerworld (Android, App, List)
  Manage files, monitor servers, discover network devices, remotely access desktops and more
• 10 Ways of Looking at Blade Runner (BladeRunner, Interpretation, SciFi, Film, SF, Movie, io9)
• 10 Ways of Looking at Firefly (TV, SF, SciFi, Western, io9, Interpretation)
• 10 Ways to Start Your Story Better -- Writer’s Digest (Writing, Beginning, Advice)
  A good opening line is a powerful thing: It can grab an editor’s attention, set the tone for the rest of the piece, and make sure readers stay through The End. Here are 10 ways to steer your story toward success. / 1. Build momentum. / 2. Resist the urge to start too early. / 3. Remember that small hooks catch more fish than big ones. / 4. Open at a distance and close in. / 5. Avoid getting ahead of your reader. / 6. Start with a minor mystery. / 7. Keep talk at a minimum. / 8. Be mindful of what works. / 9. When in doubt, test several options. / 10. Revisit the beginning once you reach the end.
• 10 Ways to Start Your Story Better -- Writer’s Digest (Writing, Beginning, Advice)
  A good opening line is a powerful thing: It can grab an editor’s attention, set the tone for the rest of the piece, and make sure readers stay through The End. Here are 10 ways to steer your story toward success. / 1. Build momentum. / 2. Resist the urge to start too early. / 3. Remember that small hooks catch more fish than big ones. / 4. Open at a distance and close in. / 5. Avoid getting ahead of your reader. / 6. Start with a minor mystery. / 7. Keep talk at a minimum. / 8. Be mindful of what works. / 9. When in doubt, test several options. / 10. Revisit the beginning once you reach the end.
• 100 Best Last Lines From Novels list (Reading, Literature, End, Ending, Writing, Spoiler)
• 15 Sci-Fi Romances Your Boyfriend Will Love (SF, SciFi, Romance, Reading, Recommendation, List)
  When Simon of Eat My Zombies blogged about “15 Sci-Fi Movies Your Girlfriend Will Love,” I thought, why should girlfriends have all the fun? There are lots of exciting adventures in science fiction romance for the discriminating boyfriend. As long as the tales include a number of guy-friendly elements, many would willingly give them a try. / Therefore, I compiled a list of 15 sci-fi romances that geek girlfriends can recommend to their geek boyfriends.
• 15,000-year-old campsite in Texas challenges conventional story of American settlement (PreHistory, Human, America, Archeology, io9)
  15,000 years ago, humans camped in a lush Texas valley, leaving thousands of artifacts behind, from tools to face paint. This could be definitive proof that ancient people arrived in America by boat, not by walking the Bering Strait. / Anthropologist Michael Waters and colleagues announced their findings today, detailing the almost 16,000 artifacts - including tools and facepaint - they found near Buttermilk Creek, outside the Austin area. Their discovery will change everything you thought you knew about how people arrived in the Americas.
• 150 Years of Mary Sue, by Pat Pflieger (MarySue, 19thCentury, History, Fiction, Writing)
• 17 Reasons WordPress is a Better CMS than Drupal | MikeSchinkel.com (WordPress, Drupal, CMS, Comparison)
• 19 Must Watch Summer TV Shows (TV, Watch, Recommendation, List, 2011, io9)
• 1984 in music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (1984, Music, Reference, Wikipedia)
• 1984 MTV Yearbook | 1984 Top Hits. Artists and Songs from 1984 | MTV (1984, MTV, Music, MusicVideo, Top, List)
• 3 Questions to Ask Before You Jump on the Indie Publishing Bandwagon -- Anne R. Allen's Blog (Writing, Publishing, SelfPublishing, Publishing.Self)
• 3-Part Recipe for PERFECT Agent Queries -- Writer’s Digest (Writing, Agent, Query, Advice)
• 3D printed Difference Engine - Boing Boing (3D, 3D.Printer, Fab, Fabbing, Babbage, DifferenceEngine, BoingBoing)
• 5 Ways Phillip K Dick's Insanity Changed the World of Movies | Cracked.com (Movie, Film, SF, SciFi, PhilipKDick)
• 50 Problem Words and Phrases (Writing, Reference, Words, English)
• 54 Tips For Writers, From Writers (Part I) | Casual Writers (Writing, Advice, Author, List)
• 7 Horrible Ways The Universe Can Destroy Us Without Warning | Cracked.com (Astronomy, Physics)
• 7 Things I've Learned So Far, by Stephen Graham Jones -- Guide to Literary Agents (Writing, Advice)
• 8 Fiddly Things You Can Do To Your Manuscript To Make Your Editor's Day - Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room (Writing, Manuscript, Editor, Advice)
• 85 Authors Protest At The BBC’s Treatment Of Genre Fiction (BBC, SF, SciFi, Fantasy, Horror, Author, Protest, Reading, List, Genre)
• 9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes (Watch, Government, USA, Politics, Wealth, 2011)
• A Brief Overview of Superhero Fiction -- Blog -- fritzfreiheit.com (Superhero, Fiction, Blog, Overview, Fritz, FritzBlog)
• A Brief Overview of Superhero Fiction -- FritzWiki -- fritzfreiheit.com (Superhero, Fiction, Wiki, Overview, FritzWiki, Fritz)
• A conversation with Paula Smith (who coined the term Mary Sue) -- Cynthia W. Walker (Fandom, MarySue, StarTrek, 60s, 70s, Convention, History)
• A Darwinian explanation for the Fermi paradox | KurzweilAI (FermisParadox, SETI, Evolution, Survival, SurvivalOfTheFittest)
• A different kind of magical realism - Books Life Blog (Wodehouse, Writing, Humor, Character, ShortStory, Analysis)
  Discusses the short story "Romance at Droitgate Spa".
• A Hopefully Unbased Universal test of intelligent for nonbiological systems, animals and humans (NonHumanIntelligence, NonHuman, Human, Intelligence, Test)
  A new intelligence test, which can be taken by any living creature is being developed that will enable comparison of intellect between humans and animals.
• A plan from the 1920s to drain the Mediterranean Sea and create the nation of Atlantropa (BigIdea, Mediterranean, MegaEngineering, MegaProject, 1920s, io9)
• A possible new target for treatment of multiple sclerosis (Watch, MultipleSclerosis, Treatment)
  The immune system recognizes and neutralizes or destroys toxins and foreign pathogens that have gained access to the body. Autoimmune diseases result when the system attacks the body's own tissues instead. One of the most common examples is multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is a serious condition in which nerve-cell projections, or axons, in the brain and the spinal cord are destroyed as a result of misdirected inflammatory reactions. It is often characterized by an unpredictable course, with periods of remission being interrupted by episodes of relapse.
• A reader's advice to writers: Beware of Mary Sue - Laura Miller - Salon.com (Writing, Advice, MarySue)
• Action vs. Adventure -- Some Space to Think (Action, Adventure, ActionAdventure, Comparison, Genre)
  I realized yesterday that my genre expectations for 4e have been skewed. I think of it (and most RPGs) as being adventures, but I think it might be more accurate to describe 4e as part of the related-but-different action genre. / What's the difference?
• Adding a JavaScript-based diff - Glen Smith (Diff, JavaScript, API, Google, Java)
  I've been on the hunt lately for some JavaScript based diffing routines.I've had a look at a few of them, and the one I've settled on is google-diff-match-patch which they use in the Grails wiki!
• Advanced civilizations might be able to live inside Black holes (BlackHole, Galaxy, Civilization, FermisParadox, Orbit, Life, ExtraTerrestrial)
  Inside a rotating or charged black holes there are bound periodic planetary orbits, which not coming out nor terminated at the central singularity. The stable periodic orbits inside black holes exist even for photons. We call these bound orbits by the orbits of the third kind, following to Chandrasekhar classification for particle orbits in the black hole gravitational field. It is shown that an existence domain for the third kind orbits is a rather spacious, and so there is a place for life inside the supermassive black holes in the galactic nuclei. The advanced civilizations may inhabit the interiors of supermassive black holes, being invisible from the outside and basking in the light of the central singularity and orbital photons.
• AISFP 117 – Howard Andrew Jones — Adventures in SciFi Publishing (Fantasy, Author, Interview, Howard.J)
• Algae could replace 17% of U.S. oil imports (Watch, Tech, BioTech, Fuel, Alternative, Renewable)
  A new study shows that being smart about where we grow algae can drastically reduce how much water is needed for algal biofuel. Growing algae for biofuel, while being water-wise, could also help meet congressionally mandated renewable fuel targets by replacing 17 percent of the nation's imported oil for transportation, according to a paper published in the journal Water Resources Research.
• Algorithms identify and track the most important privately-held technology companies | KurzweilAI (Algorithm, Activity, Tech, Commerce, Private, Company)
• alien romances: Worldbuilding - Building a Fictional, but Historical, World (WorldBuilding, Writing)
• Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan | LibraryThing (SF, SciFi, Noir, Novel, Pick, LibraryThing)
• Amb() in JavaScript / Blog / Mishoo's homepage (JavaScript, Interesting, Lisp)
• America's tech decline: A reading guide - Computerworld (Watch, Tech, USA)
  A growing body of literature says America's best days may not be ahead
• Analysis: How Rogue Ended Up On The Sofa -- Gamasutra (RogueLike, Game, Essay, Analysis, PlayerExperience)
• Ancient Greek calculating device continues to reveal secrets (Greek, ComputationDevice, ComputationDevice.Mechanical, Antikythera)
  It's known as the Antikythera mechanism, a metal gear driven device found over a century ago on a sunken Roman ship, near the island of Antikythera, that for just as many years has had scientists analyzing, scratching their heads and offering suggestions as to its purpose.
• Announcing the Best Agent Blogs of 2011... -- Guide to Literary Agents (Publishing, Agent, Agent.Literary)
• Another Movable Feast – A List of Unusual Tools For Writers On The Internet | The Review Review (Writing, Tool, List)
• Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware Live Rescue CD DVD Download | Malware Help. Org (Security, LiveCD, Recovery, AntiVirus, AntiSpyWare)
• Antimatter gravity could explain Universe's expansion (Antigravity, DarkMatter, DarkEnergy, Physics, Cosmology, Mass, Symmetry, Gravity)
  In 1998, scientists discovered that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Currently, the most widely accepted explanation for this observation is the presence of an unidentified dark energy, although several other possibilities have been proposed. One of these alternatives is that some kind of repulsive gravity – or antigravity – is pushing the Universe apart. As a new study shows, general relativity predicts that the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter is mutually repulsive, and could potentially explain the observed expansion of the Universe without the need for dark energy.
• Are Superhero Stories Even A Genre? (Superhero, Genre, Quote, io9)
  Says All-Star Superman writer Grant Morrison, "I'm not even sure if there is a superhero genre or if the idea of the superhero is a special chilli pepper-like ingredient designed to energize other genres."
• Assumptions Contrary to Everyday Experience: More Thoughts on the Novum in Fantastika -- SF Signal (SF, SciFi, Fantasy)
• Asteroid Mining: A Marker for SETI? (SETI, Idea, Asteroid, MegaEngineering, IainBanks)
  Having just finished Iain Banks’ The Player of Games, I’m thinking about the ‘orbitals’ he describes in his series of novels about the Culture, a vast, star-crossing civilization that can build space habitats in the form of massive rings. Orbitals are smaller than the kind of ‘ringworld’ Larry Niven envisioned, but huge nonetheless, bracelets of super-strong materials housing billions who live on their inner surfaces as they orbit a parent star. The visual effects Banks pulls off in describing these habitats are spectacular. And now a new paper by Duncan Forgan (University of Edinburgh) and Martin Elvis (Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) has me wondering about the kind of mining activities it would take to produce the raw materials for such constructs.
• At the intesection of physics simulators, games, and awesomeness | MetaFilter (Game, Science, Java.Applet, MetaFilter)
  Somewhere between the ultimate physics simulator and a freeform 2-D version of Minecraft lies The Powder Toy, a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux. With over 150 elements available to build from (and a full implementation of the game of life), users have built "working" electricity-generating reactors, rockets, and destructible city models. The Powder Toy is a variant on the venerable Falling Sand Game, the most impressive version of which is the Powder Game, now up to version 8, and playable online as a Java applet.
• Attack! Expansion | Image | BoardGameGeek (Hex, Map, Earth, BoardGameGeek)
• Author who claimed JK Rowling stole idea for Harry Potter ordered to pay £1.5m 'security' before plagiarism case starts | Mail Online (HarryPotter, Plagiarism, UK, Law)
  The man claiming that one of JK Rowling's Harry Potter books was lifted from another work has been ordered to pay more than £1.5 million into court as security for the costs of the author and her publisher - or the case will be struck out.
• Automatically generate regular expressions with Txt2re - Boing Boing (RegExp, Tool, BoingBoing, Generator)
  A programmer who hates coming up with regular expressions has produced a visual tool for automatically generating them. You paste in a block of text, identify the parts of it you'd like your regexp to catch, and it produces an (admittedly inelegant but absolutely functional) regexp ready for your use. The programmer explains, "It's free because I have been helped in my career so much by the programmers who generated free systems like linux, apache, php and mysql - this is the only free labour that I have ever given back to the community."
• Automating OpenOffice.org - Part 1 - LXF Wiki (OpenOffice, Automation, Basic)
• BASSData (LiteraryFiction, Publication, Magazine, 00s, SpreadSheet)
• Beam me up ... Quantum teleporter breakthrough (Physics, Quantum, Tech, Watch, Communication, Information)
  Researchers have achieved a breakthrough in quantum communications and computing using a teleporter and a paradoxical cat.
• Benjamin Rosenbaum: Never trust an astronomer with a sinister goatee (FTL, Interstellar, Colonization)
• Bestselling Author Turns Down $500K Deal to Self-Publish -- There Are No Rules (Ebook, Publishing, SelfPublishing, Publishing.Self)
• Biases in Science Fiction -- NeuroLogica Blog (Bias, Bias.Cultural, SF, SciFi)
• Bibliophile Stalker: Yet Another Sucker Punch Movie Review (Movie, Film, Review, SuckerPunch)
• Big Bang simulated in metamaterial shows time travel is impossible (BigBang, Simulation, MetaMaterial, Cosmology, Time, TimeTravel)
  By observing the way that light moves inside a metamaterial, researchers have reconstructed how spacetime has expanded since the Big Bang. The results provide a better understanding of why time moves in only one direction, and also suggest that time travel is impossible.
• Bone marrow cells that transform into skin cells could revolutionise approach to wound treatment (Watch, Tech, MedTech, BioTech, Biology, Human, Cell)
  Researchers at King's College London and Osaka University in Japan have identified specific bone marrow cells that can transform into skin cells to repair damaged skin tissue, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
• Book Review Commentary Goes Awry (read: Entertaining) | MetaFilter (Review, AuthorResponds, DoNotDoThis, Fail, MetaFilter)
  An author takes exception to a review of her book & comments on the reviewer's site. What could possibly go wrong? --> http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html
• Breaking down Doctor Who's epic new trailer shot by shot (DoctorWho, 2011, Trailer, Analysis, io9)
• Calendar patterns (Writing, Film, Criticism)
• Category:1984 - Wikipedia (1984, Category, Wikipedia, 80s)
• Chemists fabricate 'impossible' material (Watch, Tech, NanoTech, MaterialScience)
  When atoms combine to form compounds, they must follow certain bonding and valence rules. For this reason, many compounds simply cannot exist. But there are some compounds that, although they follow the bonding and valence rules, still are thought to not exist because they have unstable structures. Scientists call these compounds "impossible compounds." Nevertheless, some of these impossible compounds have actually been fabricated (for example, single sheets of graphene were once considered impossible compounds). In a new study, scientists have synthesized another one of these impossible compounds -- periodic mesoporous hydridosilica -- which can transform into a photoluminescent material at high temperatures.
• China calls out US human rights abuses: laptop searches, 'Net porn (USA, Politics, Government, Privacy, Internet)
• Chop Chop -- The Spark -- Press (Music, SpaceOpera, Album)
• Chris Hedges: Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig (2011, Politics, Education, Corruption, Microsoft)
• CMS, Novels, and Formal Writing | Deanna Hoak (Writing, Fiction, Copyedit, CopyEditor, ChicagoManualOfStyle)
• Color Meanings by Culture | Globalization Group, Inc. (Color, Culture, Reference, Psychology, International)
• Command decision | MetaFilter (History, CivilWar, USA, MetaFilter)
• Comparison of e-book formats - Wikipedia (Ebook, Format, Comparison, Wikipedia, Publishing, Reference, Book, Wiki)
• Confessions of a Slush Reader: Why Should I Care? :: Shimmer (Writing, Advice, SlushPile, Character)
• Confidential! | MetaFilter (WW2, Spy, Sabotage, Training, Video, MetaFilter)
  Derailing a train isn't as easy as you might think. [1944] (Declassified WW2 OSS training video.) / OSS WWII Secret Agent Training Film – How to be an Undercover Agent (parts 2, 3, 4). / Advanced Briefing: Project Gold Dust, using propaganda and misinformation to demoralize the enemy.
• Convert ASCII text by eliminating extra paragraph breaks -- OpenOffice.org Forum (OpenOffice, Macro, Paragraph, Format)
  This macro removes the excess paragraph breaks from an ASCII editor type file and also works on text coped & pasted from the Web that has line breaks inserted like a message in these forums. / It also provides provides other options to indent each paragraph, reduce the spacing between paragraphs, chage spaced indent to tabs, remove excess interior spacing, strip all indents and justification of he results. One routine in this macro is designed to reformat text that has been scanned and then OCRed directly into OO. If your OCR program creates a left margin by inserting spaces before each line then you might find this handy. / Trying to reformat an ASCII file is an exercise in guesswork at best and you shouldn't expect perfect results. This macro has to make assumptions about what is truly the end of a paragraph, a title or part of a list.
• Corpus-based word frequency lists, collocates, and n-grams (English, Language, Corpus, Words)
  This site contains what we believe is the most accurate frequency data of English. It contains word frequency lists of the top 60,000 words (lemmas) in English, collocates lists (looking at nearby words to see word meaning and use), and n-grams (the frequency of all two and three-word sequences in the corpora). / Any frequency list is only as good as the corpus (collection of texts) that it is based on. Our data is based on the only large, genre-balanced, up-to-date corpus of American English -- the 400 million word Corpus of Contemporary American English. You can be sure that the data that you find here represents what you would encounter in the real world.
• County Health Rankings (USA, Health, Analysis, County, Stats, Reference, Database)
• Creating power from water (Energy, EnergyGeneration, Watch, Tech, Water, FuelCell)
  Creating power from water. I bet when I say that you picture a dam or a large turbine being pushed by hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, all rushing at tremendous speeds. It is a cool, and accurate, image of how most power comes from water. That is not to say that it is the only way that power can come from water. / Researchers at the The Tata Group have been working with Daniel Nocera, an MIT scientist and founder of SunCatalytix, have found a new way to coax power out of water. If you're wondering how that was accomplished here are the basics. / The research team placed an artificial sheet of artificial cobalt- and phosphate-coated silicon into a jar of water. This produced an effect similar to photosynthesis. The splitting of hydrogen from water was used to generate power from the sun. Interestingly enough, this technique was able to produce more power than the current generation of solar panels.
• Critique Groups - part 2 -- Falling In Love With Romance (Critique, CritiqueGroup, Writing)
• Critiquing Etiquette -- Y.I. Washington Writer/Poet (Critique, Critiquing, Etiquette, Writing)
• Dark Matter could make some planets habitable even without a host star (DarkMatter, ExtraSolarPlanet, Life, Theory)
  In many models, dark matter particles can elastically scatter with nuclei in planets, causing those particles to become gravitationally bound. While the energy expected to be released through the subsequent annihilations of dark matter particles in the interior of the Earth is negligibly small (a few megawatts in the most optimistic models), larger planets that reside in regions with higher densities of slow moving dark matter could plausibly capture and annihilate dark matter at a rate high enough to maintain liquid water on their surfaces, even in the absence of additional energy from starlight or other sources. On these rare planets, it may be dark matter rather than light from a host star that makes it possible for life to emerge, evolve, and survive.
• Dark Patterns || wiki.darkpatterns.org (Pattern, Design, DesignPattern, Wiki, Malign, Reference)
  Normally when you think of "bad design", you think of laziness or mistakes. These are known as design anti-patterns. Dark Patterns are different – they are not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind.
• Dark Roasted Blend: Radical Screw-propelled Vehicles (Design, Engineering, Photo, Transportation)
  Ever since Mr. Bronze Age had the inspired thought that led to the wheel, humans have been trying to think of new ways to get from point A to point B. First British inventor Richard Lovell Edgeworth came up with the continuous track method of locomotion (which is just another way of saying "tracks on every tank and tractor", if you don't recognize the term).
• Data storage and retrieval on a plastic spintronic device | KurzweilAI (Spintronics, Watch, Tech)
• Dear Hollywood: How’s That Bigotry Working Out for You? | Epiphany 2.0 (Hollywood, Racism, TV, Film, Movie, Conservative, Culture, Economics, Audience, Fail)
• Death Trap - Television Tropes & Idioms (DeathTrap, Supervillain, Trope, TvTropes, PlotDevice)
• Deathtrap (plot device) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (DeathTrap, Supervillain, Trope, PlotDevice)
• Defining Sword & Sorcery -- Guest Post -- bryanthomasschmidt (SwordAndSorcery, Defintion, Howard.J)
• Democracy revoked. | MetaFilter (Watch, Politics, USA, Michigan, MetaFilter)
  Benton Harbor's elected officials have been unelected by the Governor of Michigan. / Under sweeping new laws, Rick Snyder the CEO Governor of Michigan can now remove elected officials from power, and he's done so in Benton Harbor.
• Democrats in Congress on Paul Ryan Budget: "Aw, C'mon" -- The Rude Pundit (Watch, Politics, USA)
• Description 911: Over Expressed Emotions -- The Bookshelf Muse (Writing, Advice)
• Digital Subscription Prices Visualized (aka The New York Times Is Delusional) (Subscription, Internet, Resource, Comparison, Graph, Cost)
• Discover Projects » Writing & Publishing — Kickstarter (Project, Writing)
• Dispensing Justice Glossary of Terms - NovaGenesisWiki (Glossary, NovaGenesis, NovaGenesisWorld)
• Display tag library - Overview (CSS, Tag, OpenSource, Library)
  The display tag library is an open source suite of custom tags that provide high-level web presentation patterns which will work in an MVC model. The library provides a significant amount of functionality while still being easy to use.
• Do You Hear The Pipes Cthulhu -- YouTube (Filk, Cthulhu, YouTube, Music, MusicVideo)
• Doc Savage Python Island -- Audiobooks (DocSavage, Audio, Book)
• Does the pharmaceutical industry exaggerate their R&D costs? - Boing Boing (Drug, Economics, Watch, BigDrugCompanies, BoingBoing)
  One of the principle claims for allowing pharmaceutical companies to continue their hold on current patent practices, is that research and development (or R&D) is very expensive. It just keeps coming up, and seems to be all the rage when arguing against things like the passing of Bill C-393 (which you can learn more about in this recent Boingboing post). Although the fact that there are high costs is obviously true, a recent paper published in Biosocieties would suggest that the oft cited statistics, the ones always used to support this assertion for lobbying or public relations purposes, may in fact be over inflated.
• Earth and other unlikely worlds: How To Write A Generic SF Novel (Writing, SciFi, SF, Humor)
• Eggs, Beans and Crumpets - Wikipedia (Wodehouse, ShortStory, Anthology, Humor, Pick, Wikipedia)
  Eggs, Beans and Crumpets is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on April 26, 1940 by Herbert Jenkins, London, then with a slightly different content in the United States on May 10, 1940 by Doubleday, Doran, New York. / Most of the stories feature regular characters: Drones Club member Bingo Little, Mr Mulliner, Ukridge and, in the US edition, Freddie Widgeon and the Oldest Member. / Notably, this contains the short story "Romance at Droitgate Spa".
• Eggs, Beans and Crumpets by P. G. Wodehouse | LibraryThing (Wodehouse, ShortStory, Anthology, LibraryThing)
• Elements of a Successful Fiction Platform -- Writer’s Digest (Writing, Publishing, Platform, WritingPlatform)
  To really make your name, you need to put it out there—and not just on the cover of your book. Here, novelists share which strategies for attracting readers work, which ones don’t, and why craft is still as important as ever.
• Elgan: Why Digg failed - Computerworld (Digg, SocialNetworking, SocialMedia, Fail)
  The Digg social bookmarking site is now so obsolete that even its founder and former CEO prefers Twitter
• Emergency Financial Manger Fires Entire Government of Benton Harbor, MI | AlterNet (Watch, Politics, USA, Michigan)
  As you probably know, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder recently signed legislation passed by the Republican-dominated House and Senate that gives State-appointed Emergency Financial Managers (EFMs) historically broad and sweeping powers. These new powers allow the EFM to cancel or modify contracts (including with unions) and even to fire the municipality's government. / Today, for the first time, a EFM did just that. According to a press release from the Michigan AFL-CIO, Joseph L. Harris, EFM for Benton Harbor, Michigan issued "an order prohibiting all action by all city boards, commissions, authorities and other entities, except as authorized by the emergency manager."
• English Proverbs | The Phrasefinder (English, Proverb, List, Reference)
• EPUB - Wikipedia (EPUB, Format, Book, Ebook, OpenSource, Wiki, Reference, Wikipedia)
• Experimental philosophy opens new avenues into old questions (Philosophy, FreeWill)
  Philosophers have argued for centuries, millennia actually, about whether our lives are guided by our own free will or are predetermined as the result of a continuous chain of events over which we have no control.
• fail_fandomanon: Posts and Weather (WorldBuilding)
• Fairy chess piece - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Chess, Variant, Game.Variant, Game.Rules, Rules, Wikipedia)
  A fairy chess piece or unorthodox chess piece is a piece analogous to a chess piece. It is not used in conventional chess, but is used in certain chess variants and some chess problems. These pieces vary in the way they move and possibly in additional properties. / Because of the distributed and uncoordinated nature of unorthodox chess development, often the same piece is referred to by different names or the same name is used for different pieces in various contexts (chess problems, various chess variants).
• Filter extensions - OpenOffice.org Wiki (OpenOffice, Extension, XSLT)
• Firefox 4 adds speed and tames your tabs - Computerworld (Firefox, News, Release, Comparison, Firefox.4)
  It's been a long wait for Firefox 4; it was nearly two years ago that Firefox 3.5 was released. A lot has changed in the browser world since then. But though the wait has been a long one, it has paid off for those with patience: Firefox 4 is a winner. / It features a clean interface, competitive speed, HTML5 compatibility and two of the best browser features to be unveiled in a long time: the tab-wrangling prowess of Panorama, and the multicomputer synchronization power of Sync. ... / With Firefox 4, the "Chrome-ization" of the browser world is complete -- all of the major browsers now use a variation of the simple, stripped-down interface pioneered by Chrome. Firefox doesn't go quite as far as Chrome in its leanness, and it adds several new features of its own. By and large, the basic look and feel of browsers seems to have crystallized around simplicity, with Web page content the focus, and menus and navigation scaled back.
• Firefox 4 on Android will make iPhone users jealous | VentureBeat (Firefox, Android)
• First galaxies were born much earlier than expected (w/ video) (Cosmology, Astronomy, Galaxy, Video)
  Using the amplifying power of a cosmic gravitational lens, astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy whose stars were born unexpectedly early in cosmic history. This result sheds new light on the formation of the first galaxies, as well as on the early evolution of the Universe.
• First practical nanogenerator produces electricity with pinch of the fingers (Watch, Tech, Power, PowerGeneration, Electricty, NanoTech)
  A nanogenerator, which scientists used to energize an LED light and an LCD display, could power portable electronics in the future using electricity generated by body movement. Credit: Zhong Lin Wang, Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology / After six years of intensive effort, scientists are reporting development of the first commercially viable nanogenerator, a flexible chip that can use body movements — a finger pinch now en route to a pulse beat in the future — to generate electricity. Speaking here today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, they described boosting the device's power output by thousands times and its voltage by 150 times to finally move it out of the lab and toward everyday life.
• Flogging the Quill: Free FtQ chapter—head-hopping (Writing, PointOfView)
• For Timecop, Murder Is Forever! 20 Tag Lines You'll Never Forget - AMC Blog - AMC (Movie, Film, Action, TagLine, List)
• Free Submissions Database for Download (And Help Me Add Some Bells and Whistles) | Diabolical Plots (Writing, Submission, Database, OpenOffice, OpenOffice.Base, Tracking, Free, Tool)
• Friday Guest Blog: Gabrielle Harbowy – Successful Slushing- The Dead Robots’ Society (Writing, SlushPile)
• fritz_freiheit Home | LibraryThing (LibraryThing, Fritz, Reading, SocialNetworking)
• From candy floss to rock: Study provides new evidence about beginnings of the solar system (AstroPhysics, Geology, SolarSystem, Formation)
  The earliest rocks in our Solar System were more like candy floss than the hard rock that we know today, according to research published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. / The work, by researchers from Imperial College London and other international institutions, provides the first geological evidence to support previous theories, based on computer models and lab experiments, about how the earliest rocks were formed. The study adds weight to the idea that the first solid material in the Solar System was fragile and extremely porous – much like candy floss – and that it was compacted during periods of extreme turbulence into harder rock, forming the building blocks that paved the way for planets like Earth.
• Galileo’s great bluff and part of the reason why Kuhn is wrong. | The Renaissance Mathematicus (History, Astronomy, Science)
• Getting published– even if you’re a “nobody.” -- Let The Words Flow (Agent, Advice, Query, Publishing, SlushPile)
  There’s a big misconception in publishing that a writer has to “know somebody” or have substantial writing credits in order to get an agent, and thus, get published. / So here’s the truth– keep in mind I’m talking about fiction here– Non-Fiction has a lot to do with platform so things are different in that field.
• Getting to know the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of the universe (Physics)
  In new work, high-energy physicists have observed two long-sought quantum states in the bottomonium family of sub-atomic particles. The result will help researchers better understand one of the four fundamental forces of the universe — the strong force — that helps govern the interactions of matter.
• Giant Chess by Köksal Karakus (Chess, Variant, Rules, Game, Game.Varient, Game.Rules)
• Golden Age Comic Book Stories (SF, SciFi, Illustration, Art, DocSmith, Lensman, SkylarkOfSpace)
• Goldman Traders Attempted to Manipulate Market in 2007, Senate Report Says - Bloomberg (USA, Trading)
• Google Web Fonts (OpenSource, Font, Web, Google)
• Gravity satellite yields 'Potato Earth' view (Gravity, Visualization, Physics, Map, Earth)
• Growing The Beard - Television Tropes & Idioms (TvTropes, Recommendation)
• Habitable planets and white dwarfs (ExtraSolarPlanet, Astronomy)
  The search for habitable planets similar to Earth has routinely focused around active nuclear burning stars. However, in a recently published paper by Eric Agol from the University of Washington, the idea to expand the search to white dwarfs shows promise.
• Halting State by Charles Stross | LibraryThing (SF, SciFi, Novel, CharlesStross, Pick, LibraryThing, POV.2ndPerson, 2ndPerson, PointOfView)
• Has Fermilab really discovered an entirely new subatomic particle? And could this change the universe? (Physics, io9)
  Yesterday, physicists announced the discovery of a strange anomaly, one that cannot easily be explained by our current understanding of particle physics. We examine what's really going on here, and why we all may have missed the really exciting discovery.
• Health Statistics by County | MetaFilter (USA, Health, Analysis, County, Stats, MetaFilter)
  The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has sponsored the most detailed ever look at county-level American health data. Access to the data--including a ranking of health in each state by county--was made available today at CountyHealthRanking.org
• Hex map of the World? | Wargames | BoardGameGeek (Map, Earth, Hex, Game, Game.Board, BoardGameGeek, Forum)
• Holly Black - YA Mafia and the Ruination of Careers (Writing, YA, Publishing, Cabal)
• Hosting Matters, Inc. (Host, Host.Web, Web, WebHost, Internet)
  Web Hosting, Domain Hosting and Dedicated Servers, Domain Names, Reseller Hosting
• How Amazon has outsmarted the music industry (and Apple) | ZDNet (Watch, Apple, Amazon, CloudStorage, Music)
  What Apple took away, Amazon has restored. / I’m talking, of course, about Lala, the pioneering digital music service that Apple purchased in December 2009 and shut down more than a year ago. The first thing Apple did, almost immediately after purchasing the company, was to disable its Music Mover feature, which allowed Lala members to upload their personal music collections to a cloud-based locker where they could play it from any web browser. / Yesterday, with the double-barreled launch of its Cloud Drive storage service and the tightly linked Cloud Player, Amazon brought that capability back to a mass audience. They’ve executed their strategy brilliantly, and they’ve painted the recording industry and their archrival Apple into a corner. / As far as I’m concerned, Amazon just moved the needle significantly on the music industry. Yes, the recording companies are whining already. I have no doubt that legal teams from all of the major record labels are in war-room mode right now...
• How and where to begin a story -- TalkToYoUniverse (Writing, Advice, Start, Beginning)
• How can 30% of nickel in Rossi’s reactor be transmuted into copper and other information on the Energy Catalyzer (Watch, Tech, Nuclear, Power, PowerGeneration)
• How do you make TV's most criminally insane cartoon? The creators of Adult Swim's Superjail! fill us in (Cartoon, Hmmm, io9, ToCheckOut)
  What if Willy Wonka presided over a deathtrap prison stuffed to the gills with deranged inmates, killer robots, ancient gods, and horrible mutants? You'd have the premise of Adult Swim's Superjail!, perhaps the most violent cartoon on television. / Superjail! returns for its second season next Sunday (here's our exclusive clip of the first episode), and we talked with series creators Christy Karacas and Stephen Warbrick about life in animation's most frightening candy-colored big house. The duo told us about the show's origins and how they organize their mayhem.
• How Hydrogen Teaches Us the Temperature of Dark Matter! : Starts With A Bang (Hydrogen, Physics, DarkMatter, AstroPhysics, Feature, Characteristic, Deduction, Logic, Theory, Validation)
• How many times have your favorite heroes saved the universe? (Hero, Universe, SaveThe, io9, Superhero, DoctorWho)
• How not to respond to someone being wrong on the interwebs « Kirstyn McDermott (Writing, Author, Review, Criticism, Fail, DoNotDoThis, Bullying)
• How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write - WSJ.com (Writing, Publishing, Ebook, Ereader, Tech, Book, Reading, Revolution)
• How The World of Star Trek Taught Me to Write | tor.com | Science fiction and fantasy | Blog posts (Writing, HowTo, StarTrek, Analysis, Inspiration)
• How to Amp up Dialogue with Emotional Beats -- Writer’s Digest (Writing, Dialogue, Advice)
  Dialogue benefits from variety. A good way to maintain your reader's interest is to insert a variety of beats into your dialogue. Beats are descriptions of physical action—minor or major—that fall between lines of speech. Try the following techniques to punch up your dialogue. / Use facial expressions. / Make them talk with their hands. / Add movement. / Don't forget the big stuff.
• How To Better Track Links You Share Through Social Media (Link, HowTo, Google, SocialNetworking, SocialMedia)
• How to Craft Compelling Characters -- Writer’s Digest (Writing, Character, Advice)
• How To Get Into Rebel Space Opera Blake's 7 (TV, SpaceOpera, SF, SciFi, Blakes7)
• How to jailbreak your iPhone 4 or 3GS, even on iOS 4.3.1 - Computerworld Blogs (IPhone, HowTo, Jailbreak)
• Idiot Authors (or, just because you’re published doesn’t mean you’re not a douche) -- Genrewonk (Author, DoNotDoThis)
  I’ve written enough about authors that have shown very public displays of ill judgment that it seemed to be almost mandatory that I talk about Mr. Patrick Roscoe (his name is not a link because you absolutely must hear the story before landing on his site.) This is especially true because my list of authorial asshats seems to be overwhelmingly female, and we do need some gender balance.
• If we could genetically re-engineer the human body from the ground up using logic and reasoning to determine the best result rather than natural selection, how would you have it differ and why? : AskReddit (TransHumanism, QandA, Forum)
• Inappropriate Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books for Lil' Nerds: And the Winners Are... - Topless Robot (Hmmm, SF, SciFi, Fantasy, Title, Satire, Humor)
• Internet probe can track you down to within 690 metres | KurzweilAI (Internet, Map, GeoLocation)
  Yong Wang, a computer scientist at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and colleagues at Northwestern University have used businesses and universities as landmarks to achieve as much as 100 meters accuracy in identifying a computer’s location. / Wang’s team used Google Maps to find both the web and physical addresses of such organisations, providing them with around 76,000 landmarks. They then used three steps involving ping times to the target machine and Google Maps landmark servers. / The method could be useful for certain kinds of geo-specific advertising. / The current best system can be off by as much as 35 kilometers.
• Interstellar Predation Could Explain Fermi Paradox - Technology Review (FermisParadox)
• Introducing The New Slush Readers – Grasping for the Wind (Wiring, Publishing, SelfPublishing, POD, SlushPile, Reader, Review)
• Introduction to Statistics Using OpenOffice.org Calc (OpenOffice, Stats, Tutorial, Intro)
• iPhone and iPad with iOS 4 records your moves (w/video) (Watch, Apple, SpyWare, IPhone, IPad, Privacy)
  Security researchers have discovered that any iPhone or iPad that has been updated with iOS 4 records everywhere you have been to a secret file. The file is also copied to the owner’s computer whenever the two are synchronized.
• Is ET avoiding us out of a fear of human galactic conquest? (FermisParadox, io9)
• Is sugar a poison? - Boing Boing (Health, Diet, BoingBoing)
• It’s a Start: What Not to Worry About in a First Draft -- The Other Side of the Story (Writing, Advice, Draft, BarfPhase)
• Jeeves, I’d Like Some Mood Music | MetaFilter (Mood, Music, MetaFilter)
  There are days that your MP3 player has died, searching YouTube for music feels like too much work, and you just want some sounds to mask the world. A few options: / 8Tracks has playlists to suit your mood (having a one-person dance party, gaming, sad, and many more); if you want something a little more ambient, SimplyNoise provides white, pink and brown noise; RainyMood, the sounds of an endless rainy day.
• Jobs - ArborWiki (JobHunt, Job, Employment, AnnArbor, Link, List)
• John Hughes: Revisited -- Oh No They Didn't! (Movie, Review, 80s)
• language agnostic - What are the lesser known but cool data structures ? - Stack Overflow (Algorithm, DataStructure, Reference, Programming)
  There are some data structures around that are really cool but are unknown to most programmers. Which ones are they? / Everybody knows about linked lists, binary trees, and hashes, but what about Skip lists and Bloom filters for example. I would like to know more data structures that are not so common, but are worth knowing because they rely on great ideas and enrich a programmer's tool box.
• Laser sparks revolution in internal combustion engines (Watch, Tech, Automotive, Laser, Engineering)
  For more than 150 years, spark plugs have powered internal combustion engines. Automakers are now one step closer to being able to replace this long-standing technology with laser igniters, which will enable cleaner, more efficient, and more economical vehicles.
• LibreOffice development on track after Oracle move - Computerworld (LibreOffice, News, Watch, Oracle)
• Lice are as old as the dinosaurs...and this could change everything (Evolution, Dinosaur, Bird, io9)
  There's a popular theory that bird and mammal evolution kicked into high gear after the dinosaurs went extinct. But now it turns out lice were already diversifying long before the dinosaurs died out. / This is significant because lice would only start to diversify when their various hosts - in other words, birds and mammals - were themselves starting to diversify into lots of different species. We know that, in the last hundred million years, birds and mammals have spread into almost every available ecological niche, and most researchers assumed that this happened shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, thus opening up all this prime ecological real estate.
• Literary Mixtape: Elizabeth Bennet -- Flavorwire (Audio, Music, MixTape, PlayList, JaneAusten)
• Livia Blackburne: An Experimental Psychologist's Take on Beta Reading Part II: Recruiting Betas and Getting Them To Read (Writing, Reading, BetaReader, Psychology)
• Lower cost molding of Microstructures at the millimeter to micron scale (Watch, Tech, Manufacturing, Surface)
  The award was presented for Hoowaki’s surface engineering technology that increases energy efficiency by improving friction, fluid drag and heat transfer. This innovation comes from the laboratory of William King, Chief Technology Officer of Hoowaki and Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois. “Microstructures molded onto a surface can change the properties of that surface,” says King. “By molding microstructures into a surface, we can engineer the surface friction, heat transfer coefficient, or water repellency. All of these are in demand for energy efficiency applications, from hydraulic equipment to air conditioners to batteries.”
• Maddow: Mich. Gov. Snyder using new ‘Emergency Financial Managers’ law to assist corporate land grab from the poor | Raw Replay (Watch, Government, Michigan)
• Magical patterns in stories | Graham Edwards Online (Writing, Reading, Pattern)
• male and female etiqu 8.pdf (application/pdf Object) (Etiquette, PDF, Regency, 19thCentury, Reference, Culture)
• Managing Information and Surprises -- Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop -- TalkToYoUniverse (Writing, Advice)
• Marvel Comics in prose--an unofficial guide (Comics, MarvelComics, Superhero, Fiction, Prose, Novel, List)
• Mary Sue - FritzWiki (MarySue, Writing, Critique, Fan, Fanfic, FritzWiki, Fritz)
• Mary Sue Deserves Respect! -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG (Writing, MarySue)
• Mass Super Empowering Event - Television Tropes & Idioms (Superhero, Origin, Supervillain, WorldBuilding, Trope, TvTropes)
• Matthew Continetti: Calling Evil Good | Crooks and Liars (Watch, Politics, USA)
• Maximum wind and wave power limited by free kinetic energy and maximum wind power extraction would be as bad as doubling atmospheric CO2 (Power, PowerGeneration, Renewable, Limit)
  The availability of wind power for renewable energy extraction is ultimately limited by how much kinetic energy is generated by natural processes within the Earth system and by fundamental limits of how much of the wind power can be extracted. Here we use these considerations to provide a maximum estimate of wind power availability over land. We use several different methods. First, we outline the processes associated with wind power generation and extraction with a simple power transfer hierarchy based on the assumption that available wind power will not geographically vary with increased extraction for an estimate of 68 TW. Second, we set up a simple momentum balance model to estimate maximum extractability which we then apply to reanalysis climate data, yielding an estimate of 21 TW. Third, we perform general circulation model simulations in which we extract different amounts of momentum from the atmospheric boundary layer to obtain a maximum estimate of how much power can be ...
• Measuring political bias of network news (MSM, News, Bias)
  That FOX Broadcasting Company has a conservative slant and MSNBC skews liberal may reflect widespread opinion, but a Washington University in St. Louis study suggests that news networks’ biases can be measured.
• Megamind - Television Tropes & Idioms (Megamind, TvTropes, Superhero, Supervillain, Movie, Film, Animation, Pick, Dreamworks)
• Men's Adventure Magazines: More of Wil Hulsey’s MAN’S LIFE covers – deadly snakes, killer crabs and bloodthirsty monkeys… (Pulp, Art, 50s, Adventure)
• Meta Origin - Television Tropes & Idioms (Superhero, Supervillain, Origin, WorldBuilding, Trope, TvTropes)
• MTV Video Music Awards | 1984 | Highlights, Winners, Performers and Photos from the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards | MTV.com (MTV, Music, MusicVideo, 1984, Award)
• Music Videos on the Roq of the 80s (80s, Music, Video, MusicVideo, List)
• must-read-10-buzz-building-secrets-every-writer-should-know from... - StumbleUpon (Writing, Publishing, Advice, Buzz, Promotion)
• New interactive tool puts tax rates into historical context | Remapping Debate (Visualization, Tool, Tax, Economics, 20thCentury, Money)
  ... the halving of the tax burden from 1945 to 2011 for a married couple with taxable income (in 2010 dollars) of $1,000,000 saves that couple more than $340,000 over the tax bill that they would have had to pay back in 1945. A similar percentage reduction in tax burden for a married couple with taxable income (in 2010 dollars) of $30,000 saves that working class couple only about $3,350 over the 1945 bill.
• New laser technology prepares to revolutionize communications (Watch, Tech, Laser, Communication)
  As fiber optic technology continues to advance, it faces challenges from both its physical properties and its use of infrastructure. One emerging high-speed solution being developed at Stevens Institute of Technology uses lasers to transmit data through readily available open space, with the potential of expanding past the limitation of fibers into a system known as optical free space communications. Dr. Rainer Martini has overcome a number of free space challenges to develop a high-speed communications technology that is not limited by a physical conductor. With an optical system that is stable enough, satellites may one day convert to laser technology, resulting in a more mobile military and super-sensitive scanners, as well as faster Internet for the masses.
• Newest 'openoffice-writer' Questions - Stack Overflow (OpenOffice, LibreOffice, OpenOffice.Writer, StackOverflow, Tag)
• Newest 'openoffice.org' Questions - Super User (OpenOffice)
• Nick's Writing Blog: Ten Top Twitter Follows for Writers (Twitter, Writing)
• Not Just A Grid (CSS, OpenSource, Web, Design, Framework)
  Not Just a Grid is a flexible and modular css framework that is designed to assist in the rapid prototyping and development of websites. It has been designed for the future with larger screen sizes and the use of CSS3 for progressive enhancement and richer user experiences.
• Nova Genesis World.com (NovaGenesis, NovaGenesisWorld, Fritz)
  Starting to spin up...
• Novel Revisions: Sharing the Pain » Inkpunks (Writing, Revision)
• NYT: Is Sitting a Lethal Activity? - Boing Boing (Health, BoingBoing)
• Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Society | Vanity Fair (2011, USA, Economics, Culture)
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service - James Bond Wiki (JamesBond, Movie, Film, Pick, Wiki)
• One cold May morning in June -- The gaping silence (Writing, UK, Comedy, TerryPratchett, Discworld, WorldBuilding)
• OpenOffice.org Base Switchboard | OpenOffice.org repository for Extensions (OpenOffice, Database, LibreOffice, Extension, Interface)
• OpenOffice.org wr.Makros (OpenOffice, Macro, LibreOffice, FreeWare)
• Optimize PDF’s for reading on your Kindle 3: crop then (optionally) convert to AZW | freewaregenius.com (PDF, Tool, FreeWare, Review, Ebook, Format)
  If you have a Kindle 3 (the one with the 6? screen) chances are that you love it, as I do. Except that reading most PDF ebooks and documents on Kindle 3 is rather annoying and can be downright impossible, with unreadable, miniscule text and lots of wasted white space in the margins. This is the case because the Kindle 3 attempts to display each page of a PDF document fully on its 6? screen, and the zoom function seems like it was purposely designed to be as unpractical and un-user-friendly as possible, segmenting your PDF pages into strange quadrants that make reading a chore. / In this post I am suggesting that the best way to read a PDF on a Kindle 3 involves cropping it first so that the white space in the margin as well as page numbers and any text in the header and footer is removed. This process can in itself result in a PDF that is perfectly readable on the 6? screen; but if not, I will also describe how to then convert your cropped PDF to the Kindle friendly AZW format, ...
• Our Favorite Tropes - Babel Clash (Trope)
• Parents' 'um's' and 'uh's' help toddlers learn new words, cognitive scientists find (Language, CognitiveDevelopment)
  A team of cognitive scientists has good news for parents who are worried that they are setting a bad example for their children when they say "um" and "uh." A study conducted at the University of Rochester's Baby Lab shows that toddlers actually use their parents' stumbles and hesitations (technically referred to as disfluencies) to help them learn language more efficiently.
• Peace News Log « How to Fill In Your Census Form without Lockheed Martin Profiting (long version) (UK, Politics, Money, War, Protest)
  Lots of people are angry that the UK Census has, once again, been awarded to blood-soaked arms dealer Lockheed Martin. The following anonymous article sent to PN explains how you can fill in your Census form without benefiting Lockheed Martin or creating funding problems for local authorities.
• Periodic Table of Storytelling by *ComputerSherpa on deviantART (Writing, Trope, Visualization, Design, Art, Humor, PeriodicTable, Classification)
• Perry Rhodan (US) - Series Bibliography (PerryRhodan, English, Series, ISFDB)
• phpMyProxy - free and Open Source PHP proxy script (Proxy, ProxyServer, PHP, Imp.PHP, OpenSource, FreeWare)
• Pitch Perfect: How to Craft Your Book's Hook -- Guide to Literary Agents (Writing, Pitch, Query, Advice)
• Pitching and Catching: The Five Rules of Constructive Criticism -- Triumphal Writing (Writing, Criticism, Critique, Critiquing)
• Planets Take Shape In Embryonic Gas Clouds - Science News (Planet, SolarSystem, Formation, Theory)
• Polymer-dipped carbon nanotube catalysts better than platinum and 650 time cheaper (Watch, Tech, MaterialScience, Catalyst, NanoTech, Carbon)
  Catalysts made of carbon nanotubes dipped in a polymer solution equal the energy output and otherwise outperform platinum catalysts in fuel cells, a team of Case Western Reserve University engineers has found. Platinum, which represents at least a quarter of the cost of fuel cells, currently sells for about $65,000 per kilogram. These researchers say their activated carbon nanotubes cost about $100 per kilogram.
• Possible Technicolor Force and new particle spotted at Tevatron supercollider (Physics)
• Power Of Two (fiction)@Everything2.com (Superhero, Fiction)
• Primordial beryllium could reveal insights into the Big Bang (Physics, Cosmology, BigBang, Beryllium, Nucleogenesis)
  Some chemical elements appear much more abundantly in nature than others, which is partly due to how the elements originally formed. Scientists know that the light elements (hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and traces of lithium) were produced by fusion in the early Universe. Today, lithium, beryllium, and boron are constantly being produced in cosmic rays, while the heavier elements (up to iron) are formed by fusion in stars. Elements heavier than iron are formed by supernovae.
• Primordial weirdness: Did the early universe have 1 dimension? (Physics, Cosmology, BigBang, Theory)
  Did the early universe have just one spatial dimension? That's the mind-boggling concept at the heart of a theory that University at Buffalo physicist Dejan Stojkovic and colleagues proposed in 2010.
• Priorities in the Land of the Free - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com (Watch, Government, USA)
• Privacy Blocker app for Android spoofs your personal data - Boing Boing (Privacy, Android, App)
• Prophecies of the Internet, 1971 - Boing Boing (Internet, History, Prediction, 70s, BoingBoing)
• Public health and nutrition determines a lot of per capita IQ which determines a lot of per capita GDP (Nutrition, Health, IQ, GDP, Relationship, Wealth, Study, Results)
  Two studies bring together the following correlations: / Public health (disease reduction during childhood and teenage development and nutrition) determines about 70% of average IQ and average IQ (and the IQ of the top 5%) determines a lot of per capita GDP. / A study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers analyzed test scores from 90 countries and found that the intelligence of the people, particularly the smartest 5 percent, made a big contribution to the strength of their economies.
• Put your secondary world to the test -- TalkToYoUniverse (WorldBuilding, Writing)
• Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge | LibraryThing (SF, SciFi, Novel, Pick, LibraryThing, VernorVinge)
• Refuge In Audacity - Television Tropes & Idioms (OverTheTop, TvTropes)
• Religion on the verge of extinction in many countries: math study (Religion, Study, Results)
  A study recently released by a team from Northwestern University and the University of Arizona shows that religion and religious affiliations may be on the verge of extinction in the nine countries studied. Utilizing a mathematical model of nonlinear dynamics, the team analyzed data from censuses taken in nine different countries dating as far back as a century.
• Replacing time with numerical order of material change resolves Zeno problems of motion (Theory, Time, Motion, Paradox)
• Repost: That demmed elusive . . . Heroes as Villains, and Villains as Heroes -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG (Writing, Hero, Villain, Character)
• Research shows that P-B11 Aneutronic fusion will work better than previously thought (Watch, Tech, Nuclear, Power, PowerGeneration)
  The new insight makes the boron-fusion reaction even more interesting as a possible alternative to the nuclear fission process used in reactors in Japan and other parts of the world. A reactor based on this process could produce electricity without radioactive wastes. It also would not produce the carbon dioxide and other gases emitted by coal-powered plants.
• Rest in Peas: The Unrecognized Death of Speech Recognition - robertfortner's posterous (History, AI, Language, Speech, SpeechRecognition)
• RipTiger - Capture and download web video and TV automatically (Video, Capture, Software, Web)
• Romance at Droitgate Spa (Wodehouse, ShortStory, Character, List)
• Saving 37 million lives per year, boosting IQ by 20 points for 4 billion people and a better world economy - micronutrients, vaccines, air pollution control and more (Investment, Future, People, Preventative, Nutrition, Vaccine, Economy)
  WHO estimates that better use of existing preventive measures could reduce the global burden of disease by as much as 70%. Affordable steps can be taken to reduce the burden of disease and accidents. / More creativity is needed to identifying and better solve these problems. The problems can be more difficult to solve then expected on a first pass. The Economist describes how it requires some stealth to get needed micronutrients into foods that people will eat. The healthier choice needs to be in an automatic process. The solution need to just happen without resistance or dodging.
• Schlock Mercenary - Sucker Punch (Movie, Film, Reivew, SuckerPunch)
• Schopenhauer's 38 stratagems, or 38 ways to win an argument (Argument, HowTo, Reference, Logic)
  Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), was a brilliant German philosopher. These 38 Stratagems are excerpts from "The Art of Controversy", first translated into English and published in 1896.
• Science Fiction Collection - Imgur (SF, SciFi, Art)
• Scientific management's unscientific grounding: the Management Myth - Boing Boing (Managment, Myth, RealValue, Question, BoingBoing)
  Matthew Stewart, who went from a PhD in philosophy to an unhappy career as a management consultant, lays into the "science" of management, from its historical roots to the vacuity of its modern-day practice. On the way, he indicts the MBA program as a largely pointless exercise, and accuses business consultants of blindly applying simpleminded heuristics and deploying "obfuscatory jargon" to cover their pointlessness.
• Scientist creates 3-D scanner iPhone app (w/ video) (3D, SmartPhone, App, Scanner, Scanner.3D)
  Leave it to an iPhone app developer to turn a tool that cost hundreds of dollars a year ago into something that can be done with a 99-cent app. Grant Schindler, research scientist in Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, created Trimensional, the first app that allows users with an iPhone 4, iPad 2 or recent iPod Touch to take 3-D scans of faces or other objects and share them by e-mail. Now in the latest update, users can also e-mail animated videos of their 3-D models. For a few dollars more, artists and designers can even export their creation to CAD programs or 3-D applications, such as Maya.
• Scientists create stable, self-renewing neural stem cells (Watch, Tech, MedTech, StemCell)
  In a paper published in the April 25 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco and colleagues report a game-changing advance in stem cell science: the creation of long-term, self-renewing, primitive neural precursor cells from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) that can be directed to become many types of neuron without increased risk of tumor formation.
• Search for advanced materials aided by discovery of hidden symmetries in nature (MaterialScience, Symmetry, Research)
  A new way of understanding the structure of proteins, polymers, minerals, and engineered materials will be published in the May 2011 issue of the journal Nature Materials. The discovery by two Penn State University researchers is a new type of symmetry in the structure of materials, which the researchers say greatly expands the possibilities for discovering or designing materials with desired properties. The research is expected to have broad relevance in many development efforts involving physical, chemical, biological, or engineering disciplines including, for example, the search for advanced ferroelectric ferromagnet materials for next-generation ultrasound devices and computers. The paper describing the research will be posted early online by the journal on 3 April 2011, prior to its publication in the journal's May 2011 print edition.
• Seth Godin Marketing Guru Simplifies the Death per TWH article (Health, Power, PowerGeneration, Stats, Visualization, Death)
• SF Signal: Discrete Charms, Bourgeoisie? The Mainstream Needs to 'Critically' Marginalize Fantastika (SF, SciFi, Genre)
• SF Signal: Is There a Fantasy Equivalent to the SF Novum? A Rather Nerdy Exploration... (SF, SciFi, Genre, Fantasy, Comparison)
• SF Signal: MIND MELD: Influential Non-Genre Books (MindMeld, Reading, Recommendation)
• SF Signal: MIND MELD: The Last Book That Blew Your Mind (MindMeld, SF, SciFi, Reading, Recommendation)
• SF Tidbits for 1/13/11 -- SF Signal (SF, SciFi)
• SF/F Books You Must Not Read -- Black Gate (SF, SciFi, Fantasy, Reading, Recommendation, List)
• Shatner Performs Palin -- YouTube (Shatner, YouTube, Video, Poetry)
  This version includes some of the original speech by Palin (which can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A8NaB9x8WM )
• Should Book Reviews Mention Content Issues? -- Sci-Fi Fan Letter (SF, SciFi, Fantasy, Genre, Reading, Review, Bias)
• Silicene: It Could Be The New Graphene - Science News (Watch, Tech, MaterialScience, Silicene)
  Single-layer sheets of silicon might have electronic applications
• Six Core Analogies for the Six Core Competencies (Writing, Advice, Analogy)
  1. Concept / 2. Character / 3. Theme / 4. Structure-Plot / 5. Scene Execution / 6. Writing Voice
• Skylark Three by E. E. Smith -- LibriVox (Audio, SF, SciFi, SpaceOpera, SkylarkOfSpace, DocSmith)
• So Who Should I Read Next? -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG (Reading, Recommendation)
• Social Customs During The Regency Era « Jane Austen's World (19thCentury, England, Culture, Society, Regency, JaneAusten, Link, List)
  Please note: The long lists of links are arranged by topic in alphabetical order. To learn about Regency customs and life from the people who actually lived in the era, please visit the Original Sources page on top of this blog. You will find many of the resources you are seeking there.
• Solar power without solar cells: A hidden magnetic effect of light could make it possible (Watch, Tech, Light, Power, PowerGeneration)
  A dramatic and surprising magnetic effect of light discovered by University of Michigan researchers could lead to solar power without traditional semiconductor-based solar cells.
• Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman | LibraryThing (Superhero, Novel, Pick, LibraryThing, AustinGrossman)
• Space Opera: The Junction Between Worlds -- bryanthomasschmidt (SpaceOpera, SF, SciFi)
• Standing desk tips - Boing Boing (Desk, StandUp, Desk.StandUp, BoingBoing)
• Subtext: The Most Critical Tool in the Story-Teller’s Box -- Write Anything (Writing)
• Summary of lasers for weapons (Laser, Military, MilTech, Watch, Tech, Weapon, WeaponSystem, WeaponSystem.Defensive)
• Superhero Fiction: The Next Big Thing? (Superhero, Fiction, io9)
• superhero novels (Superhero, Fiction, Forum)
• Supervillain Lair - Television Tropes & Idioms (Supervillain, Lair, Trope, TvTropes)
• T-Carbon: A Novel Carbon Allotrope (Watch, Tech, MaterialScience, Carbon)
• Taming the flame: Electrical wave 'blaster' could provide new way to extinguish fires (Watch, Tech, Electricty, Fire)
  A curtain of flame halts firefighters trying to rescue a family inside a burning home. One with a special backpack steps to the front, points a wand at the flame, and shoots a beam of electricity that opens a path through the flame for the others to pass and lead the family to safety.
• Tattoo This Message On Your Brain - Jim Nichols - Media Mixer - Forbes (Writing, Imagery, Visual, Impact, Advice)
  Word choice can have a significant impact on how your message is perceived. In the study they created two different styles of messaging to describe a fictional town’s crime problem. ... / “In one study, 71 percent of the participants called for more enforcement when they read: ‘Crime is a beast ravaging the city of Addison.’ That number dropped to 54 percent among participants who read an alternative framing: ‘Crime is a virus ravaging the city of Addison.’” / ... note the concrete visual that is attached to the words used. You can picture a beast in your mind but you can’t really “see” a virus. The use of concrete imagery is often a primary reason why someone remembers one message over another. The Heath brothers covered this extensively in their book, “Made to Stick.” / The Stanford researchers further concluded “People like to think they’re objective and making decisions based on numbers…They want to believe they’re logical. But they’re really being swayed by metaphors.”
• Terry Pratchett and Terry Jones to produce Discworld TV crime drama - Boing Boing (TerryPratchett, Discworld, TV, BoingBoing)
• The 10 Best Fantasy Movies - and Why They Rock (Fantasy, Film, Movie, Recommendation, List)
• The Awakening mashup introduces super kids « "YA" Need Books (Superhero, Novel, YA, Review)
• The Best Alternative Histories in Literature on AbeBooks (SF, SciFi, Reading, AlternateHistory, History.Alternate, Recommendation)
• the blank page || oglaf.com (Muse, Writing, Humor, Pick, NSFW.Mild, WebComic)
• The Book Challenge - BBC CHALLENGE (Reading, List, Novel, Book, BBC, Challenge)
  Hmmm, only read about 16 of the 100.
• The Care And Feeding Of Your Favorite Authors (Author, Publishing, Writing, Support, SupportYourFavorite)
• The Chess Variant Pages (Chess, Game, Variant, Variation, Game.Variant, Game.Rules, Reference)
• The Death of the Slush Pile -- Bartlett's Screenwriting Tips (Writing, SlushPile)
• The Delete Key: The Published Writer’s Best Friend « Storytellers Unplugged (Writing, Editing, Revising, Process)
• The Desecrator by Steven Brust and John Stanko | tor.com (ShortStory, Fantasy, Dragaera, SteveBrust)
• The e-book that launched a thousand flame wars - Writers and Writing - Salon.com (Author, Review, Fail, DoNotDoThis)
  A self-published author takes on a critic -- and becomes a cautionary tale
• The economic effects of immigration policy. | MetaFilter (Economics, Immigration, Analysis, UnintendedConsequences, MetaFilter)
  "When undocumented workers are taken out of the economy, the jobs they support through their labor, consumption, and tax payments disappear as well." / A joint report from The Center for American Progress and The Immigration Policy Center calculates the striking costs for trying to remove undocumented immigrants from Arizona. Although S.B. 1070 has not been fully implemented in AZ, were it to be, it would: decrease employment by 17%; result in the loss of ~600k jobs; reduce state tax revenue by 10%; and, shrink the state economy by ~$49 billion. Intro and summary (pdf). Full report (pdf).
• The Ethics of Interstellar Colonization -- Auxiliary Memory (Colonization, Ethics, Interstellar)
• The first mind to split the atom could have changed world history (History, WW2, Physics, Nuclear, io9)
  How would World War II have gone if the idea for the atom bomb had come five years earlier? It sounds like alternate history, but almost happened, thanks to Ida Noddack - the German chemist who first described nuclear fission.
• The Freight Train That Is Android « abovethecrowd.com (Google, Economics, Android)
• The guy who says he owns 50% of Facebook produces E-Mails | MetaFilter (Facebook, Fight, Ownership, MetaFilter)
  Paul Ceglia has refiled his lawsuit against Zuckerburg and Facebook. With a much larger law firm. And a lot more evidence. Ceglia has produced more than a dozen of what he says are emails between him and Mark Zuckerberg from July 2003 to July 2004, the year in which Facebook was created. / In these purported emails, which we have included below, Zuckerberg and Ceglia discuss "the face book" project in detail. They discuss how Ceglia will fund the project. They discuss how Ceglia has funded the project (proof of payment). They discuss how Zuckerberg has met some upperclassmen--the Winklevosses, presumably--who are pursuing a similar project, and how Zuckerberg is "stalling" them. They discuss how Zuckerberg has failed to complete the "face book" project on time. They discuss the launch of the face book, which Ceglia agrees looks great. / Two months later, Zuckerberg writes Ceglia an email telling him he's thinking of shutting down the Facebook site, because ...
• The Intern: why queries get rejected—a pie chart in the manner of Kate Hart (Query, Rejection, Reason, Stats, Writing, Publishing)
• The Irrelevance of D&D -- GROGNARDIA (RPG, DungeonsAndDragons)
  I've argued before that the immense popularity of D&D in the late 70s and early 80s was a fluke never to be replicated again. The more I reflect on it, the more I recognize that D&D appeared during that brief period when interest in both fantasy and interactive entertainments was on the rise but before home computers were both cheap and powerful enough to satisfy these interests. Consequently, the hobby swelled with many people who were became involved in it only because there was no viable alternative yet available. Tabletop roleplaying was the best thing on offer at the time. The advent of games like Wizardry peeled a lot of people away from the hobby and, I suspect, provided a better form of entertainment for many others who might have picked up gaming as a second best choice in a world that had not yet invented something they would have actually preferred.
• The NEW SF Sub Genre Is Here! | The Crotchety Old Fan (SF, SciFi, Reading, Genre, Rocketpunk)
  Perhaps what we need is a new sub genre. A word or phrase that will neatly sum up the tropes and memes represented by all of those older works (or a large percentage of them) that will nevertheless convey newness, something special, a recognizable (and marketable) niche. / ... / name for this new sub genre, this new specialty branch of science fiction that encompasses the terrain between steampunk and cyberpunk; a realm that is characterized by middling-to-high technology that eschews the use of advanced electronics; paper tape, vacuum tubes, open iron sites, navigation through space via dead-reckoning, interplanetary space travel using rocket power (immensely efficient rockets utilizing some as-yet-unknown reaction mass of extreme density and velocity); spaceships domed control rooms; Sol system planets inhabited by amphibious Venerans, tripedal Martians, ephemeral Jovians; time travel devices, linear accelerators ramping up Mt. Everest. / .. / Rocketpunk
• The Official LAwritersgroup.com Blog: Should you read in the genre you write? (Writing, Reading, Advice, Genre)
• The Other Side of the Story: Quiet Time: Handling the Non-Action Scenes (Writing)
• The Other Side of the Story: Real Life Diagnostic: Crafting an Opening That Draws You In (Writing, Opening, Start, Analysis)
• The Real Housewives of Wall Street | Rolling Stone Politics (2011, 2008, USA, Politics, Economics)
• The REAL reason Sucker Punch will lose money (Movie, Film, Analysis, Economics, BoxOffice, io9)
  The REAL reason Sucker Punch will lose moneySince Sucker Punch failed to conquer the box office, there's been lots of speculation about why it was a box office failure. Was it too stylized? Was it the reviews? Did it fail to appeal to women or older adults? / Actually, there's a very simple reason why Sucker Punch won't make back its money, and why its box office returns are disappointing. Are you ready? Here it is: / It's because Sucker Punch cost $82 million to make. If it had only cost $30 million to make, it would be considered a triumph.
• The Roq of the 80s (80s, Music)
• The Roq of the 80s (1984, KRIOQ, PlayList)
• The Seething Resentment Reading Series -- McSweeney's Internet Tendency (Writing, Writing.Group, Satire)
• The Skill List Project: Reading Analytically at SF Novelists (Reading, Analysis, Writing, WarOfTheWorlds, SF, SciFi, Novel)
  I imagine most people reading this post have done this type of analysis before—you were forced to do so in high-school English class. But it’s one thing to look at prose when a teacher is asking you to jump through hoops for marks, and quite another to do it for yourself when you’re trying to learn to write. Let me offer a set of questions suggested by what we just looked at. In any passage of prose, what is the effect of the tone of voice? What do you learn about the character of the narrator/viewpoint? What mood is established by the content (above and beyond the bare narrative facts)? Is the writer playing tricks you can learn from?
• The solution to quantum gravity is ready. | MetaFilter (Gravity, DarkMatter, Physics, Theory, MetaFilter)
  ... and there is no dark matter/energy! Dr. Philip Mannheim has succeeded in developing a cosmological and quantum field theoretic consistent PT symmetric theory that contains no kind of dark matter and dark energy. Space is flat in the absence of matter, and even the largest galactic rotation curves are predicted. Perhaps most interestingly, it also handles the cosmological constant and zero-point energy 'problems' simultaneously! (This is the final paper in a long list of publications, but it makes the case such that it's importance is immediately recognized. I leave it to the experts to recognize it's true beauty.) All hail the internets!
• The Sunk Cost Fallacy -- You Are Not So Smart (Economics, Psychology, Emotion)
  The Misconception: You make rational decisions based on the future value of objects, investments and experiences. / The Truth: Your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.
• The Ten Craziest Superman/Batman Stories (Batman, Superman, Hmmm, io9)
• The three phase crisis cycle -- Pavlos's Thoughts (Watch, Banking, MonetaryPolicy, ConflictOfInterest, Economy, History, Crisis, RealEstate)
  We’re in the third phase of the financial crisis that peaked in 2008. The events of 2007-2009, which are generally called “The Crisis”, were only phase two. The three phases are: / * Phase One: Creation of false assets by private speculators, mostly banks and individuals who play the property market. These assets have a nominal value way in excess of their real earnings potential, and that gap is hidden. / * Phase Two: Transfer of the deficit of those assets to state budgets under emergency conditions. Private insolvency becomes state liability, while the gap between nominal and real wealth remains open and is now visible. / * Phase Three: Closing of the gap by a transfer of real funds from the public to states. This is achieved by means such as austerity, taxation, default, or inflation. These different options hurt or benefit different groups.
• The Ultimate James Bond Resource - James Bond Wiki (JamesBond, Wiki)
• The Union of Superhumans (Superhero, SF, SciFi, PodCast)
  The Union of Superhumans | Feeling Special? Feeling Different? We May Want to Speak With You.The Union of Superhumans
• The Value of Beta Readers: How They Help You as a Writer and Reader -- Guide to Literary Agents (Writing, Critique, Critiquing, BetaReader)
• The value of critiques: clarifying story problems | Jamie Todd Rubin (Writing, Critique)
• Theory that vacuum becomes superconducting when the magnetic field is over 10 quadrillion tesla (Physics, Vacuum, VacuumEnergy, Superconductivity)
  Arxiv - Spontaneous electromagnetic superconductivity of vacuum in strong magnetic fi eld: an evidence from the Nambu{Jona-Lasinio model The required magnetic field dwarfs even the most magnetic things in the universe today - neutron stars called magnetars, which boast fields of up to 10^11 Tesla.
• Thunderball - James Bond Wiki (JamesBond, Movie, Film, Pick, Wiki)
• Tips on Keeping Short Stories from Becoming Long Stories -- Eric James Stone (Writing, Advice, ShortStory)
• Top 20 Sites To Improve Your Twitter Experience (Twitter, Tool, List)
• Trailer Talk: ‘Star Wars Uncut: A New Hope’ /  It's Just Movies (StarWars, Movie, Film)
• Tungsten dust cloud: New radical idea proposed to clean up space junk (NearEarth, EarthOrbit, Junk, CleanUp)
  Anyone who has been following space flight knows we have a big problem on our hands; one that is growing worse every year. It’s space junk, the detritus left over from fifty years of both manned and unmanned space missions that has grown, like the islands of junk out in the middle of our major oceans, into a major navigational hazard. But now, there is a new proposal to create a cloud of tungsten to bring it all down.
• Up Against It: smart, whiz-bang space opera pits astro-bureaucrats against rogue AIs - Boing Boing (SF, SciFi, SpaceOpera, Book, Review, BoingBoing)
  MJ Locke's Up Against It is the cracking first volume of WAVE, a space-opera series that manages to be both original -- full of smart new ways of looking at science fiction ideas -- and old fashioned -- full of the kind of whiz-bang action-adventure that made so many of us fall in love with the field in the first place.
• User-friendliness and fascism | The Economist (Politics, Microsoft, Apple, Freedom, Fascism)
  JOSH MARSHALL highlights a reader's comment on "iFascism", or the question of whether Apple, despite being traditionally seen as the "counterculture, leftist" operating system, actually represents more uniformity and centralised control than Microsoft, traditionally seen as the "rightist, fascist" operating system. "The interplay of aesthetics (which Mac has in spades) and centralised control (which Mac also has in spades) is an interesting one," Mr Marshall writes. There is an interesting kernel here, but it's less about Apple's focus on clean aesthetics than about the seamless interoperability and user-friendliness of the entire Apple product line; clean aesthetics are just one part of that. And that's an issue that really does have sharp relevance for contemporary politics. In many areas—health reform, financial reform, urban-planning reform, and more—efforts to make life more user-friendly for citizens are targeted by both libertarians and by vested commercial interests as ...
• Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket - Wikipedia (Propulsion, Engine, SpaceCraft, Wikipedia)
  The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) is an electro-magnetic thruster for spacecraft propulsion. It uses radio waves to ionize and heat a propellant and magnetic fields to accelerate the resulting plasma to generate thrust. It is one of several types of spacecraft electric propulsion systems. / The method of heating plasma used in VASIMR was originally developed as a result of research into nuclear fusion. VASIMR is intended to bridge the gap between high-thrust, low-specific impulse propulsion systems and low-thrust, high-specific impulse systems. VASIMR is capable of functioning in either mode. Costa Rican scientist and former astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz created the VASIMR concept and has been working on its development since 1977.
• Venture Brothers renewed for two more seasons, with an animated short coming this summer! (VentureBrothers, Announcement, 2011, io9, Huzzah!)
• Vintage Ad Browser (Advertising, Vintage, History, Reference, Search, Image, Design, Art)
• Virgil Finlay -- Golden Age Comic Book Stories (VirgilFinley, Art, Illustration, List, SF, SciFi, Fantasy)
• Wait For It: Hook Lines and the Dramatic Pause -- The Other Side of the Story (Writing, Hook)
• Wallpaper search (doctor who) -- Wallbase.cc (DoctorWho, Wallpaper, Search)
• Warm water causes extra-cold winters in northeastern North America and Northeastern Asia (GlobalWarming, Weather)
  If you're sitting on a bench in New York City's Central Park in winter, you're probably freezing. After all, the average temperature in January is 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But if you were just across the pond in Porto, Portugal, which shares New York's latitude, you'd be much warmer—the average temperature is a balmy 48 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Websockets in HTML5 turbocharges web communications (HTML5)
  Under the original HTTP protocol, a client, such as a Web browser, must open a connection to a server, make a request, wait for a response, and then close the connection. If the client needs more data, it must open a new connection. It's like hanging up the phone and redialing after every sentence of a conversation. And if the server has new info for the client, it must wait until the client requests it rather than sending it over instantly.
• Weight loss improves memory: research (Health, Weight, Memory, Research, Results)
  John Gunstad, an associate professor in Kent State University's Department of Psychology, and a team of researchers have discovered a link between weight loss and improved memory and concentration. The study shows that bariatric surgery patients exhibited improved memory function 12 weeks after their operations.
• What Editors Want; A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines | The Review Review (Writing, Advice, Publishing, Editor, Magazine)
• What Grabs Readers and What Keeps Them (Writing, Attention)
• What Happened in 1984 inc. Pop Culture, Prices and Events (1984, History, PopCulture)
• What happens when you go on vacation, and leave a chatbot behind (Chat, ChatBot, io9)
  Writer Joanne McNeil went on vacation earlier this year, but didn't want to lose touch with people she knows online. So she set up a chatbot to carry on her friendships without her. And the results were intriguingly weird.
• What I found in the 1942 issues of Astounding Science Fiction | Jamie Todd Rubin (SF, SciFi, 40s, Signature, Author, Magazine)
• What If Your Characters Don't Want Anything? (Writing, Character, Advice, io9)
  It's one of the most common pieces of writing advice: Know what every character wants in a scene. But what if your characters are just apathetic? / It could happen. I mean, in real life, most of the time, people want something kind of boring, that barely qualifies as a "want." You want to get your work over with so you can go home. You want to eat dinner. Maybe you want to watch that new zombie movie. Or maybe you just want to go to sleep so you can get up and go to work again. / Sure, those things are "wants" – but they're not going to drive a story forward. And they're going to be difficult to foreground. So how do you make sure your characters want things, so your readers will want to keep turning pages?
• What Writers Need to Do Besides Write -- Guide to Literary Agents (Writing, Publishing, Promotion, Presence)
• What Writers Need to Do Besides Write -- Guide to Literary Agents (Publishing, Selling, Author, Writer, Writing)
• Where to start in Matter series by Ian M Banks? : scifi (TheCulture, Reading, SF, SciFi, IainBanks)
• White dwarfs could be fertile ground for other Earths | KurzweilAI (Astronomy, ExtraSolarPlanet, EarthLike)
  University of Washington associate professor of astronomy Eric Agol has proposed that potentially habitable planets orbiting white dwarfs could be much easier to find than other exoplanets located so far. / White dwarfs, cooling stars believed to be in the final stage of life, typically have about 60 percent of the mass of the sun, but by volume they are only about the size of Earth. Though born hot, they eventually become cooler than the sun and emit just a fraction of its energy, so the habitable zones for their planets are significantly closer than Earth is to the sun. / “If a planet is close enough to the star, it could have a stable temperature long enough to have liquid water at the surface – if it has water at all – and that’s a big factor for habitability,” Agol said.
• Who Said Science Fiction Never Predicted the Internet? -- SF Signal (SF, SciFi, History, Internet)
• Why 1000 words a day is easy and quick – Christopher Ruz - Designer & Author (Writing, Process, Advice)
• Why Digital Self-publishing Frightens Some Authors | Stormwolf.com (Ebook, Publishing, Author, Psychology)
• Why don't you just act, dear boy? -- One Big Bad Wolf (Acting, Quote, Pick)
  This is the phrase that Laurence Olivier supposedly uttered to Dustin Hoffman on the set of Marathon Man after the latter ran around the block to appear appropriately out of breath for an upcoming scene. Whether this is a true story or not, it depicts the difference between two major schools of acting thought.
• Why Looking at the “Big Picture” Can Be Bad -- Guest Author Lisa Shearin -- The Other Side of the Story (Writing)
• Why Not a Negative Income Tax? by Guy Sorman - City Journal (Economics, Politics, USA, Government, Policy)
• why you should never submit unagented to publishing companies -- Editorial Ass (Writing, Publishing, Agent, Advice, Submission)
• WiFi Extension Problem Solved: DD-WRT | Linux Magazine (Wireless, Linux, Router, Hardware)
• William Cronon and the American Thought Police - NYTimes.com (Watch, USA, Politics, Science, 2011, NYT)
• William Shatner reads Sarah Palin Twitter poetry -- YouTube (YouTube, Video, Shatner, Poetry)
  The original version of Palin's speech can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A8NaB9x8WM
• Woodward effect - Wikipedia (Propulsion, Engine, SpaceCraft, Physics, Theory, Controversy, Wikipedia)
• WordPress Peekaboo Plugin (WordPress, PlugIn, Text, Hide)
• WordPress › Jetpack by WordPress.com « WordPress Plugins (WordPress, PlugIn)
  Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.
• WordPress › WP Static HTML Output « WordPress Plugins (WordPress, PlugIn, HTML, Static, Export)
• Writer2ePub | OpenOffice.org repository for Extensions (OpenOffice, Publishing, LibreOffice, Extension, Ebook)
• Writer’s Tools for OpenOffice.org « OpenNotes (Writing, OpenOffice, OpenSource, Novel, Extension)
• Writing a Superhero Story in a Non-Visual Medium - TV Tropes Forum (Superhero, Fiction, Forum, Reading, TvTropes)
• Writing Advice Database | Nathan Bransford, Author (Writing, Advice)
• Writing Can Be Learned—But It Can't Be Taught -- There Are No Rules (Writing)
• You Are Solving The Wrong Problem -- Aza on Design (Design, Process, Productivity, Flight, Learning, LearningFromYourMistakes, Thinking, Thinking.Lateral, IterativeDevelopment, ProblemSolving, Analysis, WhatIsTheRealProblem)
  There is some problem you are trying to solve. In your life, at work, in a design. You are probably solving the wrong problem. Paul MacCready, considered to be one of the best mechanical engineers of the 20th century, said it best: “The problem is we don’t understand the problem.” / ... / What’s the take-away? When you are solving a difficult problem re-ask the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
• Young Adult Books and Who Reads Them -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG (Reading, YA, Writing)
• Your teacup is infringing on mine. Nu-uh, I remixed it. | MetaFilter (IP, Law, Fabbing, MetaFilter)
  Cheap 3D printing has the potential to change the way we produce and consume objects in the same way the cheap PCs and the internet changed the way we produce and consume information. Once again it is hobbyists and university labs who are democratizing the technology. They are looking forward to the day when anyone can make designer bath fixtures, functional appliances, custom surgical implants, or even business opportunities at the click of a button. / However some are warning that overly broad patents could derail the whole revolution. Even more worrisome is the prospect that existing IP law is completely unprepared for a future where the cost boundary between ideas and physical objects has crumbled. Will commercial interests demand a crack down on "pirated" printouts? Will Open Source manufacturing bring about a Star Trekian utopia? It's hard to predict what will happen when everything is commodified.
• YouTube - Shiny toy guns -- Puttin' on the Ritz (cover) (YouTube, Music, MusicVideo)
• ‘Artificial leaf’ could power a home: MIT scientist | KurzweilAI (Watch, Tech, Power, PowerGeneration, Hydrogen)
  Scientists today claimed one of the milestones in the drive for sustainable energy — development of the first practical “artificial leaf.” Speaking at the 241st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, they described an advanced solar cell the size of a poker card that mimics photosynthesis.
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com (Fantasy, TV, Review, NYT)
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com (Fantasy, TV, Review, NYT)

Tagged ActionAdventure

• Action vs. Adventure -- Some Space to Think

Tagged AI

• Rest in Peas: The Unrecognized Death of Speech Recognition - robertfortner's posterous

Tagged Art

• Golden Age Comic Book Stories
• Men's Adventure Magazines: More of Wil Hulsey’s MAN’S LIFE covers – deadly snakes, killer crabs and bloodthirsty monkeys…
• Periodic Table of Storytelling by *ComputerSherpa on deviantART
• Science Fiction Collection - Imgur
• Vintage Ad Browser
• Virgil Finlay -- Golden Age Comic Book Stories

Tagged Author

• 54 Tips For Writers, From Writers (Part I) | Casual Writers
• 85 Authors Protest At The BBC’s Treatment Of Genre Fiction
• AISFP 117 – Howard Andrew Jones — Adventures in SciFi Publishing
• How not to respond to someone being wrong on the interwebs « Kirstyn McDermott
• Idiot Authors (or, just because you’re published doesn’t mean you’re not a douche) -- Genrewonk
• The Care And Feeding Of Your Favorite Authors
• The e-book that launched a thousand flame wars - Writers and Writing - Salon.com
• What I found in the 1942 issues of Astounding Science Fiction | Jamie Todd Rubin
• What Writers Need to Do Besides Write -- Guide to Literary Agents
• Why Digital Self-publishing Frightens Some Authors | Stormwolf.com

Tagged Book+Review

• Up Against It: smart, whiz-bang space opera pits astro-bureaucrats against rogue AIs - Boing Boing

Tagged Criticism

• Calendar patterns
• How not to respond to someone being wrong on the interwebs « Kirstyn McDermott
• Pitching and Catching: The Five Rules of Constructive Criticism -- Triumphal Writing

Tagged Critique

• Critique Groups - part 2 -- Falling In Love With Romance
• Critiquing Etiquette -- Y.I. Washington Writer/Poet
• Mary Sue - FritzWiki
• Pitching and Catching: The Five Rules of Constructive Criticism -- Triumphal Writing
• The Value of Beta Readers: How They Help You as a Writer and Reader -- Guide to Literary Agents
• The value of critiques: clarifying story problems | Jamie Todd Rubin

Tagged Fandom

• A conversation with Paula Smith (who coined the term Mary Sue) -- Cynthia W. Walker

Tagged Fantasy

• 85 Authors Protest At The BBC’s Treatment Of Genre Fiction
• AISFP 117 – Howard Andrew Jones — Adventures in SciFi Publishing
• Assumptions Contrary to Everyday Experience: More Thoughts on the Novum in Fantastika -- SF Signal
• Inappropriate Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books for Lil' Nerds: And the Winners Are... - Topless Robot
• SF Signal: Is There a Fantasy Equivalent to the SF Novum? A Rather Nerdy Exploration...
• SF/F Books You Must Not Read -- Black Gate
• Should Book Reviews Mention Content Issues? -- Sci-Fi Fan Letter
• The 10 Best Fantasy Movies - and Why They Rock
• The Desecrator by Steven Brust and John Stanko | tor.com
• Virgil Finlay -- Golden Age Comic Book Stories
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com

Tagged FermisParadox

• A Darwinian explanation for the Fermi paradox | KurzweilAI
• Advanced civilizations might be able to live inside Black holes
• Interstellar Predation Could Explain Fermi Paradox - Technology Review
• Is ET avoiding us out of a fear of human galactic conquest?

Tagged FreeWare

• OpenOffice.org wr.Makros
• Optimize PDF’s for reading on your Kindle 3: crop then (optionally) convert to AZW | freewaregenius.com
• phpMyProxy - free and Open Source PHP proxy script

Tagged Firefox

• Firefox 4 adds speed and tames your tabs - Computerworld
• Firefox 4 on Android will make iPhone users jealous | VentureBeat

Tagged Game.Board

• Hex map of the World? | Wargames | BoardGameGeek

Tagged Generator

• Automatically generate regular expressions with Txt2re - Boing Boing

Tagged Genre

• 85 Authors Protest At The BBC’s Treatment Of Genre Fiction
• Action vs. Adventure -- Some Space to Think
• Are Superhero Stories Even A Genre?
• SF Signal: Discrete Charms, Bourgeoisie? The Mainstream Needs to 'Critically' Marginalize Fantastika
• SF Signal: Is There a Fantasy Equivalent to the SF Novum? A Rather Nerdy Exploration...
• Should Book Reviews Mention Content Issues? -- Sci-Fi Fan Letter
• The NEW SF Sub Genre Is Here! | The Crotchety Old Fan
• The Official LAwritersgroup.com Blog: Should you read in the genre you write?

Tagged Java

• Adding a JavaScript-based diff - Glen Smith

Tagged JavaScript

• Adding a JavaScript-based diff - Glen Smith
• Amb() in JavaScript / Blog / Mishoo's homepage

Tagged Movie

• 10 Scifi films that are better than Serenity and Empire Strikes Back
• 10 Ways of Looking at Blade Runner
• 5 Ways Phillip K Dick's Insanity Changed the World of Movies | Cracked.com
• Bibliophile Stalker: Yet Another Sucker Punch Movie Review
• Dear Hollywood: How’s That Bigotry Working Out for You? | Epiphany 2.0
• For Timecop, Murder Is Forever! 20 Tag Lines You'll Never Forget - AMC Blog - AMC
• John Hughes: Revisited -- Oh No They Didn't!
• Megamind - Television Tropes & Idioms
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service - James Bond Wiki
• Schlock Mercenary - Sucker Punch
• The 10 Best Fantasy Movies - and Why They Rock
• The REAL reason Sucker Punch will lose money
• Thunderball - James Bond Wiki
• Trailer Talk: ‘Star Wars Uncut: A New Hope’ /  It's Just Movies

Tagged OpenOffice

• Automating OpenOffice.org - Part 1 - LXF Wiki
• Convert ASCII text by eliminating extra paragraph breaks -- OpenOffice.org Forum
• Filter extensions - OpenOffice.org Wiki
• Free Submissions Database for Download (And Help Me Add Some Bells and Whistles) | Diabolical Plots
• Introduction to Statistics Using OpenOffice.org Calc
• Newest 'openoffice-writer' Questions - Stack Overflow
• Newest 'openoffice.org' Questions - Super User
• OpenOffice.org Base Switchboard | OpenOffice.org repository for Extensions
• OpenOffice.org wr.Makros
• Writer2ePub | OpenOffice.org repository for Extensions
• Writer’s Tools for OpenOffice.org « OpenNotes

Tagged OpenSource

• Display tag library - Overview
• EPUB - Wikipedia
• Google Web Fonts
• Not Just A Grid
• phpMyProxy - free and Open Source PHP proxy script
• Writer’s Tools for OpenOffice.org « OpenNotes

Tagged Philosophy

• Experimental philosophy opens new avenues into old questions

Tagged PHP

• phpMyProxy - free and Open Source PHP proxy script

Tagged Pick

• Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan | LibraryThing
• Eggs, Beans and Crumpets - Wikipedia
• Halting State by Charles Stross | LibraryThing
• Megamind - Television Tropes & Idioms
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service - James Bond Wiki
• Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge | LibraryThing
• Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman | LibraryThing
• the blank page || oglaf.com
• Thunderball - James Bond Wiki
• Why don't you just act, dear boy? -- One Big Bad Wolf

Tagged Publishing

• 3 Questions to Ask Before You Jump on the Indie Publishing Bandwagon -- Anne R. Allen's Blog
• Announcing the Best Agent Blogs of 2011... -- Guide to Literary Agents
• Bestselling Author Turns Down $500K Deal to Self-Publish -- There Are No Rules
• Comparison of e-book formats - Wikipedia
• Elements of a Successful Fiction Platform -- Writer’s Digest
• Getting published– even if you’re a “nobody.” -- Let The Words Flow
• Holly Black - YA Mafia and the Ruination of Careers
• How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write - WSJ.com
• Introducing The New Slush Readers – Grasping for the Wind
• must-read-10-buzz-building-secrets-every-writer-should-know from... - StumbleUpon
• The Care And Feeding Of Your Favorite Authors
• The Intern: why queries get rejected—a pie chart in the manner of Kate Hart
• What Editors Want; A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines | The Review Review
• What Writers Need to Do Besides Write -- Guide to Literary Agents
• What Writers Need to Do Besides Write -- Guide to Literary Agents
• Why Digital Self-publishing Frightens Some Authors | Stormwolf.com
• why you should never submit unagented to publishing companies -- Editorial Ass
• Writer2ePub | OpenOffice.org repository for Extensions

Tagged Reading

• 100 Best Last Lines From Novels list
• 15 Sci-Fi Romances Your Boyfriend Will Love
• 85 Authors Protest At The BBC’s Treatment Of Genre Fiction
• fritz_freiheit Home | LibraryThing
• How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write - WSJ.com
• Livia Blackburne: An Experimental Psychologist's Take on Beta Reading Part II: Recruiting Betas and Getting Them To Read
• Magical patterns in stories | Graham Edwards Online
• SF Signal: MIND MELD: Influential Non-Genre Books
• SF Signal: MIND MELD: The Last Book That Blew Your Mind
• SF/F Books You Must Not Read -- Black Gate
• Should Book Reviews Mention Content Issues? -- Sci-Fi Fan Letter
• So Who Should I Read Next? -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG
• The Best Alternative Histories in Literature on AbeBooks
• The Book Challenge - BBC CHALLENGE
• The NEW SF Sub Genre Is Here! | The Crotchety Old Fan
• The Official LAwritersgroup.com Blog: Should you read in the genre you write?
• The Skill List Project: Reading Analytically at SF Novelists
• Where to start in Matter series by Ian M Banks? : scifi
• Writing a Superhero Story in a Non-Visual Medium - TV Tropes Forum
• Young Adult Books and Who Reads Them -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG

Tagged Recommendation

• 10 Scifi films that are better than Serenity and Empire Strikes Back
• 15 Sci-Fi Romances Your Boyfriend Will Love
• 19 Must Watch Summer TV Shows
• Growing The Beard - Television Tropes & Idioms
• SF Signal: MIND MELD: Influential Non-Genre Books
• SF Signal: MIND MELD: The Last Book That Blew Your Mind
• SF/F Books You Must Not Read -- Black Gate
• So Who Should I Read Next? -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG
• The 10 Best Fantasy Movies - and Why They Rock
• The Best Alternative Histories in Literature on AbeBooks

Tagged Review

• Bibliophile Stalker: Yet Another Sucker Punch Movie Review
• Book Review Commentary Goes Awry (read: Entertaining) | MetaFilter
• How not to respond to someone being wrong on the interwebs « Kirstyn McDermott
• Introducing The New Slush Readers – Grasping for the Wind
• John Hughes: Revisited -- Oh No They Didn't!
• Optimize PDF’s for reading on your Kindle 3: crop then (optionally) convert to AZW | freewaregenius.com
• Should Book Reviews Mention Content Issues? -- Sci-Fi Fan Letter
• The Awakening mashup introduces super kids « "YA" Need Books
• The e-book that launched a thousand flame wars - Writers and Writing - Salon.com
• Up Against It: smart, whiz-bang space opera pits astro-bureaucrats against rogue AIs - Boing Boing
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com

Tagged SF

• 10 Scifi films that are better than Serenity and Empire Strikes Back
• 10 Ways of Looking at Blade Runner
• 10 Ways of Looking at Firefly
• 15 Sci-Fi Romances Your Boyfriend Will Love
• 5 Ways Phillip K Dick's Insanity Changed the World of Movies | Cracked.com
• 85 Authors Protest At The BBC’s Treatment Of Genre Fiction
• Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan | LibraryThing
• Assumptions Contrary to Everyday Experience: More Thoughts on the Novum in Fantastika -- SF Signal
• Biases in Science Fiction -- NeuroLogica Blog
• Earth and other unlikely worlds: How To Write A Generic SF Novel
• Golden Age Comic Book Stories
• Halting State by Charles Stross | LibraryThing
• How To Get Into Rebel Space Opera Blake's 7
• Inappropriate Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books for Lil' Nerds: And the Winners Are... - Topless Robot
• Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge | LibraryThing
• Science Fiction Collection - Imgur
• SF Signal: Discrete Charms, Bourgeoisie? The Mainstream Needs to 'Critically' Marginalize Fantastika
• SF Signal: Is There a Fantasy Equivalent to the SF Novum? A Rather Nerdy Exploration...
• SF Signal: MIND MELD: The Last Book That Blew Your Mind
• SF Tidbits for 1/13/11 -- SF Signal
• SF/F Books You Must Not Read -- Black Gate
• Should Book Reviews Mention Content Issues? -- Sci-Fi Fan Letter
• Skylark Three by E. E. Smith -- LibriVox
• Space Opera: The Junction Between Worlds -- bryanthomasschmidt
• The Best Alternative Histories in Literature on AbeBooks
• The NEW SF Sub Genre Is Here! | The Crotchety Old Fan
• The Skill List Project: Reading Analytically at SF Novelists
• The Union of Superhumans
• Up Against It: smart, whiz-bang space opera pits astro-bureaucrats against rogue AIs - Boing Boing
• Virgil Finlay -- Golden Age Comic Book Stories
• What I found in the 1942 issues of Astounding Science Fiction | Jamie Todd Rubin
• Where to start in Matter series by Ian M Banks? : scifi
• Who Said Science Fiction Never Predicted the Internet? -- SF Signal

Tagged SpaceOpera

• Chop Chop -- The Spark -- Press
• How To Get Into Rebel Space Opera Blake's 7
• Skylark Three by E. E. Smith -- LibriVox
• Space Opera: The Junction Between Worlds -- bryanthomasschmidt
• Up Against It: smart, whiz-bang space opera pits astro-bureaucrats against rogue AIs - Boing Boing

Tagged Superhero

• 10 'Sexy' Super-Heroine Costumes That Really Aren't - ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews
• A Brief Overview of Superhero Fiction -- Blog -- fritzfreiheit.com
• A Brief Overview of Superhero Fiction -- FritzWiki -- fritzfreiheit.com
• Are Superhero Stories Even A Genre?
• How many times have your favorite heroes saved the universe?
• Marvel Comics in prose--an unofficial guide
• Mass Super Empowering Event - Television Tropes & Idioms
• Megamind - Television Tropes & Idioms
• Meta Origin - Television Tropes & Idioms
• Power Of Two (fiction)@Everything2.com
• Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman | LibraryThing
• Superhero Fiction: The Next Big Thing?
• superhero novels
• The Awakening mashup introduces super kids « "YA" Need Books
• The Union of Superhumans
• Writing a Superhero Story in a Non-Visual Medium - TV Tropes Forum

Tagged Tech+Watch

• Algae could replace 17% of U.S. oil imports
• America's tech decline: A reading guide - Computerworld
• Beam me up ... Quantum teleporter breakthrough
• Bone marrow cells that transform into skin cells could revolutionise approach to wound treatment
• Chemists fabricate 'impossible' material
• Creating power from water
• Data storage and retrieval on a plastic spintronic device | KurzweilAI
• First practical nanogenerator produces electricity with pinch of the fingers
• How can 30% of nickel in Rossi’s reactor be transmuted into copper and other information on the Energy Catalyzer
• Laser sparks revolution in internal combustion engines
• Lower cost molding of Microstructures at the millimeter to micron scale
• New laser technology prepares to revolutionize communications
• Polymer-dipped carbon nanotube catalysts better than platinum and 650 time cheaper
• Research shows that P-B11 Aneutronic fusion will work better than previously thought
• Scientists create stable, self-renewing neural stem cells
• Silicene: It Could Be The New Graphene - Science News
• Solar power without solar cells: A hidden magnetic effect of light could make it possible
• Summary of lasers for weapons
• T-Carbon: A Novel Carbon Allotrope
• Taming the flame: Electrical wave 'blaster' could provide new way to extinguish fires
• ‘Artificial leaf’ could power a home: MIT scientist | KurzweilAI

Tagged TransHumanism

• If we could genetically re-engineer the human body from the ground up using logic and reasoning to determine the best result rather than natural selection, how would you have it differ and why? : AskReddit

Tagged TV

• 10 Ways of Looking at Firefly
• 19 Must Watch Summer TV Shows
• Dear Hollywood: How’s That Bigotry Working Out for You? | Epiphany 2.0
• How To Get Into Rebel Space Opera Blake's 7
• Terry Pratchett and Terry Jones to produce Discworld TV crime drama - Boing Boing
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com
• ‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Sunday on HBO - Review - NYTimes.com

Tagged Video

• Confidential! | MetaFilter
• First galaxies were born much earlier than expected (w/ video)
• Music Videos on the Roq of the 80s
• RipTiger - Capture and download web video and TV automatically
• Shatner Performs Palin -- YouTube
• William Shatner reads Sarah Palin Twitter poetry -- YouTube

Tagged Visualization

• Gravity satellite yields 'Potato Earth' view
• New interactive tool puts tax rates into historical context | Remapping Debate
• Periodic Table of Storytelling by *ComputerSherpa on deviantART
• Seth Godin Marketing Guru Simplifies the Death per TWH article

Tagged WebComic

• the blank page || oglaf.com

Tagged WordPress

• 10 Steps to Secure Your WordPress Blog From Hackers -- There Are No Rules
• 17 Reasons WordPress is a Better CMS than Drupal | MikeSchinkel.com
• WordPress Peekaboo Plugin
• WordPress › Jetpack by WordPress.com « WordPress Plugins
• WordPress › WP Static HTML Output « WordPress Plugins

Tagged Words

• 50 Problem Words and Phrases
• Corpus-based word frequency lists, collocates, and n-grams

Tagged WorldBuilding

• alien romances: Worldbuilding - Building a Fictional, but Historical, World
• fail_fandomanon: Posts and Weather
• Mass Super Empowering Event - Television Tropes & Idioms
• Meta Origin - Television Tropes & Idioms
• One cold May morning in June -- The gaping silence
• Put your secondary world to the test -- TalkToYoUniverse

Tagged Writing

• "How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)" by Austin Kleon
• 10 Elements of the Intellectual Thriller
• 10 Good Grammar Resources | Writing Forward
• 10 Ways to Start Your Story Better -- Writer’s Digest
• 10 Ways to Start Your Story Better -- Writer’s Digest
• 100 Best Last Lines From Novels list
• 150 Years of Mary Sue, by Pat Pflieger
• 3 Questions to Ask Before You Jump on the Indie Publishing Bandwagon -- Anne R. Allen's Blog
• 3-Part Recipe for PERFECT Agent Queries -- Writer’s Digest
• 50 Problem Words and Phrases
• 54 Tips For Writers, From Writers (Part I) | Casual Writers
• 7 Things I've Learned So Far, by Stephen Graham Jones -- Guide to Literary Agents
• 8 Fiddly Things You Can Do To Your Manuscript To Make Your Editor's Day - Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room
• A different kind of magical realism - Books Life Blog
• A reader's advice to writers: Beware of Mary Sue - Laura Miller - Salon.com
• alien romances: Worldbuilding - Building a Fictional, but Historical, World
• Another Movable Feast – A List of Unusual Tools For Writers On The Internet | The Review Review
• Calendar patterns
• CMS, Novels, and Formal Writing | Deanna Hoak
• Confessions of a Slush Reader: Why Should I Care? :: Shimmer
• Critique Groups - part 2 -- Falling In Love With Romance
• Critiquing Etiquette -- Y.I. Washington Writer/Poet
• Description 911: Over Expressed Emotions -- The Bookshelf Muse
• Discover Projects » Writing & Publishing — Kickstarter
• Earth and other unlikely worlds: How To Write A Generic SF Novel
• Elements of a Successful Fiction Platform -- Writer’s Digest
• Flogging the Quill: Free FtQ chapter—head-hopping
• Free Submissions Database for Download (And Help Me Add Some Bells and Whistles) | Diabolical Plots
• Friday Guest Blog: Gabrielle Harbowy – Successful Slushing- The Dead Robots’ Society
• Holly Black - YA Mafia and the Ruination of Careers
• How and where to begin a story -- TalkToYoUniverse
• How not to respond to someone being wrong on the interwebs « Kirstyn McDermott
• How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write - WSJ.com
• How The World of Star Trek Taught Me to Write | tor.com | Science fiction and fantasy | Blog posts
• How to Amp up Dialogue with Emotional Beats -- Writer’s Digest
• How to Craft Compelling Characters -- Writer’s Digest
• It’s a Start: What Not to Worry About in a First Draft -- The Other Side of the Story
• Livia Blackburne: An Experimental Psychologist's Take on Beta Reading Part II: Recruiting Betas and Getting Them To Read
• Magical patterns in stories | Graham Edwards Online
• Managing Information and Surprises -- Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop -- TalkToYoUniverse
• Mary Sue - FritzWiki
• Mary Sue Deserves Respect! -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG
• must-read-10-buzz-building-secrets-every-writer-should-know from... - StumbleUpon
• Nick's Writing Blog: Ten Top Twitter Follows for Writers
• Novel Revisions: Sharing the Pain » Inkpunks
• One cold May morning in June -- The gaping silence
• Periodic Table of Storytelling by *ComputerSherpa on deviantART
• Pitch Perfect: How to Craft Your Book's Hook -- Guide to Literary Agents
• Pitching and Catching: The Five Rules of Constructive Criticism -- Triumphal Writing
• Put your secondary world to the test -- TalkToYoUniverse
• Repost: That demmed elusive . . . Heroes as Villains, and Villains as Heroes -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG
• Six Core Analogies for the Six Core Competencies
• Subtext: The Most Critical Tool in the Story-Teller’s Box -- Write Anything
• Tattoo This Message On Your Brain - Jim Nichols - Media Mixer - Forbes
• the blank page || oglaf.com
• The Care And Feeding Of Your Favorite Authors
• The Death of the Slush Pile -- Bartlett's Screenwriting Tips
• The Delete Key: The Published Writer’s Best Friend « Storytellers Unplugged
• The Intern: why queries get rejected—a pie chart in the manner of Kate Hart
• The Official LAwritersgroup.com Blog: Should you read in the genre you write?
• The Other Side of the Story: Quiet Time: Handling the Non-Action Scenes
• The Other Side of the Story: Real Life Diagnostic: Crafting an Opening That Draws You In
• The Seething Resentment Reading Series -- McSweeney's Internet Tendency
• The Skill List Project: Reading Analytically at SF Novelists
• The Value of Beta Readers: How They Help You as a Writer and Reader -- Guide to Literary Agents
• The value of critiques: clarifying story problems | Jamie Todd Rubin
• Tips on Keeping Short Stories from Becoming Long Stories -- Eric James Stone
• Wait For It: Hook Lines and the Dramatic Pause -- The Other Side of the Story
• What Editors Want; A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines | The Review Review
• What Grabs Readers and What Keeps Them
• What If Your Characters Don't Want Anything?
• What Writers Need to Do Besides Write -- Guide to Literary Agents
• What Writers Need to Do Besides Write -- Guide to Literary Agents
• Why 1000 words a day is easy and quick – Christopher Ruz - Designer & Author
• Why Looking at the “Big Picture” Can Be Bad -- Guest Author Lisa Shearin -- The Other Side of the Story
• why you should never submit unagented to publishing companies -- Editorial Ass
• Writer’s Tools for OpenOffice.org « OpenNotes
• Writing Advice Database | Nathan Bransford, Author
• Writing Can Be Learned—But It Can't Be Taught -- There Are No Rules
• Young Adult Books and Who Reads Them -- BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG

Tag Cloud

00s 1920s 1984 19thCentury 2008 2011 20thCentury 2ndPerson 3D 3D.Printer 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s AI API Acting Action ActionAdventure Activity Adventure Advertising Advice Agent Agent.Literary Album Algorithm AlternateHistory Alternative Amazon America American Analogy Analysis Android Animation AnnArbor Announcement Anthology Anthropology AntiSpyWare AntiVirus Antigravity Antikythera App Apple Archeology Argument Art Asteroid AstroPhysics Astronomy Attention Audience Audio AustinGrossman Author AuthorResponds Automation Automotive Award BBC Babbage Banking BarfPhase Basic Batman Beginning Beryllium BetaReader Bias Bias.Cultural BigBang BigDrugCompanies BigIdea BioTech Biology Bird BlackHole BladeRunner Blakes7 Blog BoardGameGeek BoingBoing Book BoxOffice Bullying Buzz CMS CSS Cabal Capture Carbon Cartoon Catalyst Category Cell Challenge Character Characteristic CharlesStross Chat ChatBot Chess ChicagoManualOfStyle CivilWar Civilization Classification CleanUp CloudStorage CognitiveDevelopment Colonization Color Comedy Comics Commerce Communication Company Comparison ComputationDevice ComputationDevice.Mechanical ConflictOfInterest Conservative Controversy Convention CopyEditor Copyedit Corpus Corruption Cosmology Cost Costume County Crisis Criticism Critique CritiqueGroup Critiquing Cthulhu Culture DarkEnergy DarkMatter DataStructure Database Death DeathTrap Deduction Defintion Design DesignPattern Desk Desk.StandUp Dialogue Diet Diff DifferenceEngine Digg Dinosaur Discworld DoNotDoThis DocSavage DocSmith DoctorWho Draft Dragaera Dreamworks Drug Drupal DungeonsAndDragons EPUB Earth EarthLike EarthOrbit Ebook Economics Economy Editing Editor Education Electricty Emotion Employment End Ending Energy EnergyGeneration Engine Engineering England English Ereader Essay Ethics Etiquette Evolution Export Extension ExtraSolarPlanet ExtraTerrestrial FTL Fab Fabbing Facebook Fail Fan Fandom Fanfic Fantasy Fascism Feature FermisParadox Fiction Fictional Fight Filk Film Fire Firefox Firefox.4 Flight Font Format Formation Forum Framework Free FreeWare FreeWill Freedom Fritz FritzBlog FritzWiki Fuel FuelCell Future GDP Galaxy Game Game.Board Game.Rules Game.Variant Game.Varient Generator Genre GeoLocation Geology GlobalWarming Glossary Google Government Grammar Graph Gravity Greek HTML HTML5 Hardware HarryPotter Health Hero Hex Hide History History.Alternate Hmmm Hollywood Hook Horror Host Host.Web HowTo Howard.J Human Humor Huzzah! Hydrogen IP IPad IPhone IQ ISFDB IainBanks Idea Illustration Image Imagery Immigration Imp.PHP Impact Information Inspiration Intelligence Interesting Interface International Internet Interpretation Interstellar Interview Intro Investment IterativeDevelopment Jailbreak JamesBond JaneAusten Java Java.Applet JavaScript Job JobHunt Junk KRIOQ Lair Language Laser Law Learning LearningFromYourMistakes Lensman Library LibraryThing LibreOffice Life Light Limit Link Linux Lisp List LiteraryFiction Literature LiveCD Logic MSM MTV Macro Magazine Malign Managment Manufacturing Manuscript Map MartialArt MarvelComics MarySue Mass MaterialScience MedTech Mediterranean MegaEngineering MegaProject Megamind Memory MetaFilter MetaMaterial Michigan Microsoft MilTech Military MindMeld MixTape MonetaryPolicy Money Mood Motion Movie MultipleSclerosis Muse Music MusicVideo Myth NSFW.Mild NYT Name NanoTech NativeAmerican NearEarth News Noir NonHuman NonHumanIntelligence NovaGenesis NovaGenesisWorld Novel Nuclear Nucleogenesis Nutrition OpenOffice OpenOffice.Base OpenOffice.Writer OpenSource Opening Oracle Orbit Origin OverTheTop Overview Ownership PDF PHP POD POV.2ndPerson Paradox Paragraph Pattern People PeriodicTable PerryRhodan PhilipKDick Philosophy Photo Physics Pick Pitch Plagiarism Planet Platform PlayList PlayerExperience PlotDevice PlugIn PodCast Poetry PointOfView Policy Politics PopCulture Power PowerGeneration PreHistory Prediction Presence Preventative Privacy Private ProblemSolving Process Productivity Programming Project Promotion Propulsion Prose Protest Proverb Proxy ProxyServer Psychology Publication Publishing Publishing.Self Pulp QandA Quantum Query Question Quote RPG Racism Reader Reading RealEstate RealValue Reason Recommendation Recovery Reference RegExp Regency Reivew Rejection Relationship Release Religion Renewable Research Resource Results Review Revising Revision Revolution Rocketpunk RogueLike Romance Router Rules SETI SF Sabotage Satire SaveThe Scanner Scanner.3D SciFi Science Search Security SelfPublishing Selling Series Sex Shatner ShortStory Signature Silicene Simulation SkylarkOfSpace SlushPile SmartPhone SocialMedia SocialNetworking Society Software SolarSystem SpaceCraft SpaceOpera Speech SpeechRecognition Spintronics Spoiler SpreadSheet Spy SpyWare StackOverflow StandUp StarTrek StarWars Start Static Stats StemCell SteveBrust Study Submission Subscription SuckerPunch Superconductivity Superhero Superman Supervillain Support SupportYourFavorite Surface Survival SurvivalOfTheFittest SwordAndSorcery Symmetry TV Tag TagLine Tax Tech TerryPratchett Test Text TheCulture Theory Thinking Thinking.Lateral Thriller Time TimeTravel Title ToCheckOut Tool Top Tracking Trading Trailer Training TransHumanism Translation Transportation Treatment Trope Tutorial TvTropes Twitter UK USA UnintendedConsequences Universe Vaccine Vacuum VacuumEnergy Validation Variant Variation VentureBrothers VernorVinge Video Villain Vintage VirgilFinley Visual Visualization WW2 Wallpaper War WarOfTheWorlds Watch Water Wealth Weapon WeaponSystem WeaponSystem.Defensive Weather Web WebComic WebHost Weight Western WhatIsTheRealProblem Wiki Wikipedia Wireless Wiring Wodehouse WordPress Words WorldBuilding Writer Writing Writing.Group WritingPlatform XSLT YA YouTube io9

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• 2011/04/27