Not much writing or blogging getting done these past few days. There's a simple reason: real life has stepped up and swept me to highs and lows both:

• my lovely wife defended her Ph.D. dissertation Monday night, so there was quite a build-up to that. She did great of course, and I'm now happily married to a doctor - albeit not a medical one :-)


• at the same time my grandmother took a turn for the worse. She's in hospital now, we'll see how she recovers. As she's suffering from oncoming dementia, it's difficult to tell how well she will cope.


• the day job is extremely busy and demanding.

Still, some links for the day:

>> Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing spotted a story about a group of eighteen-year-olds who sent a helium balloon 100,000ft up (just over 30km), right to the edge of outer space; their simple craft had a basic Nikon digital camera which survived the drop (at its extreme height the balloon popped because of the too-low air pressure) and brought home amazing pictures of its rise over the Barcelona area, up into space, and back down again.
Did some digging of my own and the full story with lots of pics and info is here: Meteotek 08 (this is the students' project blog in Catalan).

>> Mind-boggling wordage to be seen over at Jay Lake's. He's updated his bibliography. He has sold 240(!) short stories and written 8 novels so far. Blimey.

Bad Astronomy has a post on science coverage by the media, science education (all in the USA) and how it relates to the sorry state of scientific understanding displayed by many citizens. The research and articles cover the US situation only, but I'm afraid it applies to much of Western Europe as well; although perhaps just a little less so.

The post links to an study (PDF here) that illustrates just how bad the situation is. Some striking things that popped up: in many media outlets, pseudo-science hogwash gets the same attention as real science (e.g. in evolution vs intelligent design series, or in the many "docufiction" series produced by Hollywood for news channels). Not surprising that people start believing idiotic theories if they hear about them on tv every day.

The discussion on Bad Astronomy was sparked by the terrible results of a national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences (phone survey of 1,000 people in December 2008). The lowdown:

• Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.


• Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.


• Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water. (the survey allowed answers between 65-75% as okay)


• Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.

Quite stunning to see this. 41% of Americans think humans and dinosaurs coexisted? Oh my.

As I noted above, I would think, or hope rather, that the situation here in Belgium is better. Then again, on second thoughts, it might not be. We don't get pelted with conservative Christian ID propaganda, and science is not considered as "evil" or "anti-religious" by most of our religious tendencies. On the other hand, evolution is vehemently disavowed by our large Muslim minority, and recent debates on evolution have shown that that is likely to become a problem in the future.

I can only try to stimulate my own kids to question their environment, to probe it in an inquisitive and rational manner. So far that seems to be working quite well, as evidenced by my four-year-old's constant questions that I find myself almost unable to answer... How is steel made? How does electricity work? What am I made of? Why is electricity dangerous? Where do the photos go once we've printed them, are they in the computer still?
And so on. Challenging, for sure, but also good fun trying to come up with answers that are understandable at his age, but not too "bad science-ish".

Via - I first got this off Jay Lake's link salad.

Wired has a nice round-up of their top ten annoying geek partner habits.

I guess that as an SFF afficionado, an ex-RPG player and because I work in an IT company, I qualify as a "geek"... but do I have the annoying habits?

1. Punning.
Hmm. Not so much, I think.

2. Using Klingon or other such lingo's.
Nope.

3. Celebrate holidays in weird freaky ways
No. Dress-up cons are my idea of hell.

4. Dissecting movies
Erm, well, yes maybe a little. But not at home, I think, just with some of my like-minded friends.

5. Wear geeky t-shirts
Nope.

6. Require extra room in house for geeky stuff
Oh yes. There's the old RPG books I can't get rid of. There's computers, SF book collection, some comic books. Guilty as charged!

7. Geeky toys
Nope.

8. Looking up info while the discussion is still in progress
Yes, I've been known to do that. I pride myself on my Google-Fu!

9.Need to watch TV shows ASAP.
Nope.

10. Geeky home projects.
Nope.

So all in all, only two and a half out of ten. Not a great score. Mild geekiness only? What's your score?

Finally got around to some wordage tonight. Nothing dramatic, but an important five hundred words nevertheless - as they're the opening scene of a new short piece. Tentative title Galton's Dreams.



WIP:

Frozen in fearful panic, I could only stare as the intruder swung through the opening in the fractured panes of glass, and stepped crunching onto the shard-littered corridor. She straightened and only then spotted me in the doorway ahead. The figure was a she, that much was clear, and the sharpest edge of the fear ebbed away as I realized the girl was alone. No police squad in sight.

We were both absolutely still, studying each other. It was difficult to make out her features; she wore a dark training suit and the moonlight slashing through the broken window was the only illumination. It leeched all the color from her face, and the sharp shadows cast across her narrow face gave her a ghostly aspect. Then she turned her head a little and the shadows shifted favorably - No, it could not be.

Destination: Future is the title of an upcoming anthology by Hadley Rille books. They're looking for submissions in the SF field, pay 3 cents a word plus royalties if the book earns its expenses back.

Note to self: write and submit to this one. No excuses this time.

Leeched off Scalzi's scrumptious Whatever blog, but it's an image that is just too good not to repost!



Article on the student protest here at the Chicago Maroon. What happened was about a hundred students taking to the streets as a reaction to a few Westboro Baptist wingnuts protesters. The Westboro Baptist Church seems to think Obama is some kind of devil, as they were deriding the University for employing him in their Law school. Duh.

Some other good quotes from the student signs: "God hates the New Facebook", "Jesus rebuked the fig as an evil abomination" and "God Promises Terrible Vengeance Upon Any Fig-Loving Nation" (both referring to the remarkable Fig Tree incident in the Bible, Mark 11:12–14, in which Jesus curses a fig tree because it is not bearing any fruits - outside the fig season), and of course my favorite "Cthulhu Hates Chordates".

It's nice to see University of Chicago students using christian fundies' tactics right back at them. With the Cthulhu mythos of Lovecraft no less! I'm quite into that at the moment. Got a box full of sixties, seventies and early eighties SF and horror paperbacks from my mom a few weeks ago and I'm currently exploring the Lovecraft volumes in there... Dagon was my latest read.

Tir Na Nog Press has bought Realms of Fantasy and is going to release a first "new" issue in May. Barebones site here.

SFScope has a complete article with some more details, including reactions by new publisher Warren Lapine as well as the editor Shawna McCarthy who will apparently be staying on. Continuity seems guaranteed:

Lapine is not anticipating any changes that will be visible to the public. Realms will continue paying authors the same rates, on acceptance, and leave the editors in place. He hopes to have his first issue out in May. "Our plan is to miss only one issue. The next on the schedule would have been 15 March, and for obvious reasons, that's not going to happen."

Finally some good news from the SFnal magazines...