Truly ‘Off the Grid’?

July 29th 2010 at 4:53 pm

Is It Possible to Go Truly ‘Off the Grid’?:

I’m not against sustainability – I’m for anything that saves resources, improves systems, and may save our planet before we fry it in its own petroleum-based oils. But driving your grid-produced pickup to get your grid-produced lumber at a big box store, driving on grid-paved highways to your mountain acres whose streams are protected by multiple layers of grid-powered government, and then using your grid-supplied plans to build a windmill to power your grid-produced computer as it gathers its information from grid-produced satellites? And then pointing at your windmill and your satellite dish and your septic tank and saying, ‘Look at me! I’m off the grid!’

I don’t buy it.

Again: Use less, burn less, waste less, I’m for it. Smart grid? Sure, whatever that turns out to be. Let’s make it, invest in it, do it. But unless you’re spinning your own cloth and making buttons out of clam shell – and not using grid-produced sandpaper to smooth the edges, mind you – you’re no more off the grid than President Obama.

Yes. That.

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A reminder about books for sale

July 29th 2010 at 3:41 pm

Just a reminder, I’m selling original hardcovers, signed, of my books, and you can pick the price. The deal ends tomorrow, when I ship them all out. Details here.

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To achieve more: daydream more

July 29th 2010 at 2:18 pm

I’m deep into working on Arctic Rising at full pace once more, after spending a few weeks with Arctic Rising on a back burner, getting fewer words in per day, as I focused mainly on a novella for a secret project (hopefully you’ll get to hear more about that soon).

I’d left the book at a bit of a junction, I wasn’t entirely sure how to get over the next four or so chapters to the next big piece of action I had plotted out. After writing what bits I could at my secondary office (the local coffeeshop) yesterday, I came home to an empty house. Emily had taken the kids out to visit her dad. After I finished up my freelance work for the day, I set about tackling the tricky chapters I was facing.

I did this by shutting the computer off, plugging my headphones into my iPhone, and laying down on the floor for half an hour.

My goal was not to sit and actively think about the next four chapters, but to just lay there and not think about the chapters and let my mind wander and free associate.

Eventually the back brain began to return to the issue of what the next few chapters could be like. Ideas bubbled up, and I just daydreamed and kept daydreaming until I began to come up with some ideas that just plain psyched me up.

After that I began to mull the ideas, critique them, consider them from various angles, which created a second round of good ideas, until I felt that ‘aha’ moment come where I knew I’d found a really nifty way to move my character along to the next mile marker in the book. It involved tossing out some bits that I’d thought would happen, and changed some dynamics, but it was cool.

I’ve been reading a lot of neurophysiology books of late, about the nature of creativity and productivity. I’ve started to actively try to create more and more moments in my life to allow creativity. One is to only work on a project when I’m excited to do so: structured play. To prevent boredom, I rotate several projects in and out, and let my hindbrain cook a project while its out of rotation. I’ve been setting aside time to read every night, regarding it as important creativity seeding time. No matter what, I will read. I’ve been breaking out my legos three times a week and building random structures, just for fun. There’s been no ‘point’ to it, it’s to occupy my brain and let it have fun. I’ve taken walks whenever hung up on plot points.

As a result, even though I have less energy and physical strength than I did when I first left to freelance due to my recovery from health issues, I’ve been strangely energized and enjoying the day to day work of being a writer. The moment is fun. It’s a lot more play than work.

And I’ve been productive without burning myself out. In the last ten months I’ve written a novel, three novelettes, two short stories, half of Arctic Rising, and a whole book about writing (Just A Draft, my agent is currently looking it over while we decide what we should do with it, which is why online posting of it is currently paused). It’s not as productive as other people can be, but it’s been a very good pace for me, particularly since I’ve fit this around a bunch of freelance work over the last year.

Yet, on many days, from the outside, I look like a lazy dilettante, ending work early because its frustrating, and working on something else merely because it is more fun. Going for walks because I’m bored. Playing with children’s toys.

But as I’m learning from books, the idea that you should throw yourself against the wall over and over again is, as far as what scientists are learning about creativity, will net results, just not good ones. And for me, with a strong blue collar work ethic, its been hard over the last year to grapple with this concept.

Play more to be more creative. To be more productive.

Sounds crazy. But I can’t deny the results.

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Framing kids’ deviance by race

July 28th 2010 at 5:30 pm

Two seven year old kids steal a car to go joyriding in separate incidences. One is white, one is black.

One will be tried as an adult and probably see juvenile prison, one will not.

One will be treated by the media as a god-fearing church goer who did something silly. The media host will laugh with the child about their actions and small punishment. One is the subject of a media expose of a criminal-in-the-making.

Guess who?

Unfortunately, Latarian says all the right things to make the narrative fit. He says he likes to do “bad” things, calls himself a “hoodrat,” and seems unremorseful, even defiant, for at least part of the interview (he looks a bit sheepish in the end when he finds out his grandmother is going to have to pay for the damage he did to other cars).

One way to interpret this is to say that Latarian IS a pre-criminal. That he DOES need to get into the system because he’s clearly a bad kid. Someone inclined to believe that black people were, in fact, more prone to criminal behavior could watch these two videos and feel confirmed in their view.

But there is good evidence that people, beginning as children, internalize the stereotypes that others have of them. As Ann Ferguson shows in her book, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity, black children, especially boys, are stereotyped as pre-criminals; not adorably naughty, like white boys, but dangerously bad from the beginning.

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CO2 filtering ‘necklace’

July 27th 2010 at 11:35 am

Ecouterre has a link to this bizarre oxygen necklace thing that looks better off in an SF flick of some sort. Maybe its something you’d use on a recently terraformed planet? This screams like its part of a stillsuit from Dune.

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Selling copies of my books direct for this week

July 26th 2010 at 2:51 pm

After I got back from Oddcon I sold some books direct via the website. Some others had hoped I would do it again, and I promised I would. Also, we’ve had a houseguest for a week holed up in my office, and after getting back into my office, I realized wouldn’t mind clearing out some more shelf space to store some of my non-fiction reference books in the large closet I use to house all the extra books I have hoarded. I’m trying to eliminate some shelves from my office with an eye toward simplifying my workspace from clutter a bit more.

With that in mind, I’m offering books for sale, hardcovers of the novels, and you can name your own price. I’m hoping to move a good shelf’s worth just to free up space, so as long as a fair offer comes in, I’m more than happy to get them out of here.

I’ll take orders until Friday at lunch, at which point I’ll be trucking these all up to the post office to mail them out in one big batch.

Step 1: The books for sale

Pick a book or two or more from the list here, add up your total…

Crystal Rain – hardcover – 1st edition – signed – $nameyourprice
Ragamuffin – hardcover – 1st edition – signed – $nameyourprice
Sly Mongoose – hardcover – 1st edition – signed – $nameyourprice

Halo: Evolutions – trade pp. – 1st edition – signed – $nameyourprice
Halo: The Cole Protocol – trade pp – 1st edition -signed – $nameyourprice

Step 2: Shipping

For one book:

Media mail – add $4 for S/H
Priority – add $6 for S/H

For two books:

Media mail – add $5 for S/H
Priority – add $11 for S/H

For three or more books:

Media mail – add $7 for S/H
Priority – add $13

update: for international shipping, use http://ircalc.usps.gov/ to calculate shipping (books weigh 1.3 lbs each).

Step 3: Payment and telling me what you’re buying

Add everything up and then head on over to Paypal where you can use any standard credit card or your paypal account via that link to send the total on over to me (if you want to use a credit card, look at the lower left area of the page it sends you to, where you can click to use a credit card instead of paypal).

When you do that, also include what books you’re buying in the instructions field (2 crystal rains, 1 ragamuffin, for example), as well as write down any special instructions you have. For example, if you’d like them signed to you, please say that, or they’ll just arrive generically signed. If you want them signed to a friend, etc, please include that.

Best,

Tobias

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Living in the Antarctic

July 26th 2010 at 11:51 am

Worldchanging has a fascinating write up of a student who created a very cool diorama of their ideas about how to create a living space in the Antarctic by burrowing underground.

The presentation is probably the most amazing part of the ideas. Models and magnifying glasses, combined with shots from inside the diorama, make a surreal, totally SF-nal series of visions.

Hoth, eat your heart out.

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The Nook

July 24th 2010 at 8:36 am

So last Friday I went down to Columbus. Ostensibly I was having lunch with the estimable Charlie Finlay and Paul Melko, but a side goal was that I was also picking up a B&N Nook. I’ve been doing some freelance work in eBook conversion for people,  and it was time to get a Nook for troubleshooting.

The physical side of the Nook is great. It’s a very comfortable size. Particularly if I had a purse. It’d slip right in. But I don’t. But it is also very easy to palm and read, something you can’t do with the iPad. In fact, an iPad of about this size would be *very* appealing to me. The Nook also looks nice: white plastic, easy grip. The two arrows on either side for paging are well placed. It’s thicker than the Kindle’s I’ve read on, which makes it easier to hold for me.

The combo of touchscreen and eInk is nice, but it’s not what I’m now trained to expect. I keep, constantly, pecking at the eInk display to try and make it launch things. And the touchscreen on the bottom, while nice, is faster on its refresh than the eInk display. There’s a disconnect there, by like a full second, which makes everything feel totally laggy and non-responsive. Like a program that’s hung up. eInk display is much like any other, slow to refresh, but crisp. My eyes aren’t bothered by backlighting, so I actually do prefer the iBook’s Retina display.

Sideloading your own content is easy. Jack the Nook in via a standard USB cable, it mounts as a removable drive on your desktop. Slap a book on there, disconnect just like a thumb drive. No fuss. Kudos for not forcing us to install some management program, B&N.

It’s not bad, but I still find the eInk technology experience uncompelling, and still gravitate toward my iPhone as my primary e-reading device. I certainly would have returned it had I not needed it for the eBook conversion testing. But the more devices/approaches the merrier, as each niche serves a different kind of consumer.

B&N does need to offer their employers a big discount on the Nook or pull an Apple and put one in every long term employee’s hands. They were very nice when I purchased it the device, but low on specifics or understanding about the details when I started asking questions about the Nook.

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A touching essay about the impact of the ADA act

July 23rd 2010 at 2:58 pm

Moving words from Haddayr Copley-Woods:

As the physically disabled parent of a developmentally disabled child, I am deeply grateful today.

Things used to be different for people like us: such as for Barb, a girl I knew growing up. She was bright, ambitious and she also had a form of autism. Her parents had to fight to keep her in regular education classes — sometimes unsuccessfully. After the senior class elected her president, the faculty advisor resigned. The advisor said she wouldn’t work with a girl she called a “retard.” For Barb, the emotional and educational impact was devastating.

And in the ’70s and ’80s, all of this was perfectly legal.

and

I think about the protests in the ’80s. People blocking the road: Glorious, bold, furious people with palsy, paralysis, atrophied muscles, missing limbs. I think about them throwing themselves out of their wheelchairs onto hard, filthy city streets to block traffic.

Having not lived in the US in the 80s, I had no idea there were protests and that these were accommodations that had to be wrested painfully from the mainstream. I’m not surprised that it was so, this piece of history is 100% absent from any teaching or pop culture memory, that until I read this article I was unaware. I knew the ADA act had been passed in the 80s, but every article I read just mentioned it had been passed, as if it just came out of the heads of politicians. But of course that isn’t true… I’m grateful to have been educated today.

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What gapminder points out about colonialism

July 23rd 2010 at 12:11 pm

I often get people determined to defend colonialism by talking about the sorry state of African countries and telling me they would be better off if white people had remained in control.

While its true some countries have slid back, the truth is, its fewer countries than people realize. On the whole, particularly if you look at Hans Rosling’s graphs, conditions have been improving.

More startling is to watch his graphs showing what happens to China and India once they gain self-determination. Previous to that, mortality is high, income is low, for the majority. Within forty years both countries have accelerated madly.

African countries are not moving as quickly, but spend some time watching Hans Rosling. He’s reshaping narrative assumptions in important ways.

Watching these graphs, my intuitive sense is that all these countries would have remained flat, as they did for a long time under colonial rule.

When people talk about the glory days of colonialism, it’s a high level of development only for a tiny elite. Self determination has changed the world over the last 40 years drastically, with China and India leading the way.

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