My pledge: I’m going to stop doing moon research and write the book, and not draft-1 of the book, I’m going through the last outline and writing all the chapter placeholders, all the gaps in draft-1. And I’m going to start pushing out snippets to prove it. And if not that, than the YA book, and if not that, then something. Word counts word counts word counts.

So:

“What do you think the chances are it blows out?” Megumi asked.
Shhhhh.
Megumi sighed. “I don’t know,” James said. “It’s why we’re running the test.”
Megumi made a face. “I know….” She said. “Okay. I think it’s a hundred percent.”
The two vendors looked over, and James’ eyebrows shot up.
“What?” Megumi asked. “No? You think it holds? Care to make it interesting?”

In the days after riding huge distances, my body has three reactions:
1. Holy crap I’m sore, what just happened?
2. To prevent you from doing anything that ambitious again, I’m going to go into sleep mode every couple of hours and render the brain powerless to motivate action
3. In case you figure out a way around that, I’m going to require massive calorie intake every time you wake and every few hours, so if you decide to run a marathon or something I’ll be prepped

I feel pretty good considering I biked over 200m Saturday and was criminally undertrained.

Item 1: I don’t usually eat pork, or beef, but on the fourth of July, say, I’ll make an exception and have a hot dog, or a brat (in the same way I don’t go to eat at someone’s house and make a stink if there’s sausage on the pizza).

Item 2: From Science Daily:

A new study by researchers at Rhode Island Hospital have found a substantial link between increased levels of nitrates in our environment and food with increased deaths from diseases, including Alzheimer’s, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s. The study was published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

I’ve got a new short story, about black holes, astronomy, and redemption and prepared food, in the latest (August) issue, on newstands and in mailboxes now. Well, probably before now, I just got back from vacation. It looks like so:

Check it out.

From the crits of my short story:
“It didn’t feel like one of your stories, and not because it was good.” — Mark
“I was waiting to find out if we were at a Renaissance Faire.” — Kira
“You could lose nine pages and I wouldn’t notice.”
and
“As a reader I hate it when characters are smarter than I am.” — Caren

Of course, that’s only fragmentary and quotes are funnier when they seem inadvertently negative, so that’s not how the crits went. But it’s still funny.

I love that when I try to get something 50% improbable working on the Mac, like get some crazy piece of unsupported hardware working, it’s so absolutely chilled out about it. It doesn’t flip out and blue screen or freak out and start throwing errors at me. It doesn’t work, doesn’t work, hey, it works. It’s 95% less stressful than doing equivalent tasks on the PC.

Which, not coincidentally, is now on my desk in pieces and unbootable.

Here.

HOST: Is there some cost to you, psychologically or emotionally, in using these techniques?

TONY: Yes. When I came back I was experiencing intense guilt. I’m still dealing with that, and I think that any sane person put in the situation that I was of brutalizing a helpless person, it doesn’t matter who they are, you’re going to suffer psychological consequences. A friend of mine trained with me as an interrogator and trained in Arabic with me. She was sent to Iraq and asked to use these harsh techniques in the interrogation booth in Tal Afar. She refused, twice. She was ultimately taken off of her post. She… she killed herself rather than use these techniques. We’re asking our young servicemen and women to make a choice. To torture people or destroy themselves, and I don’t think that’s how we want to treat our service people.

I always do a little eye roll when I see crazy spec ads or package designs for cool products. Yeah, it’s great, you did a funny ad for condoms. I’m sure it made your friends laugh. I’ll throw it on the pile of funny ads for condoms. What else do you have? Quirky wine labels! Outstanding.

What I’m really interested in seeing is how you do something difficult.

#3, I Hate It When by Stefanie Stalder made me happy.

To criticize, it might be a little too much of the “clean look with text” thing. But our of those four, it’s not the most eye-catching or obviously clever. But wouldn’t you hire the person trying to find more difficult challenges and solve them?

Andrew Sullivan

One way to look at how the Bush administration redefined torture out of existence, so that it could, er, torture human beings, is to compare their criteria for “enhanced interrogation” with those for rape. Raping someone need not leave any long-term physical scars; it certainly doesn’t permanently impair any bodily organ; it has no uniquely graphic dimensions …. and although it’s cruel, it’s hardly unusual….

So ask yourself: if Abu Zubaydah had been raped 83 times, would we be talking about no legal consequences for his rapist – or the people who monitored and authorized the rape?