Month: July 2011

There. Now You Can't Say I Never Give You Flowers

Dana Hunter8 Comments

So my intrepid companion and I went to Madrona Park on Wednesday.  I’ve mentioned it before – it is, hands-down, one of the best places to go in Seattle on a sunny day.  The views are to die for, and I’ll be doing you up a proper post soon with geology and much better photos than the last time.  My old POS camera could not in any way do it justice.

Thing is, when I go out on these rambles, I come away with all these amazing photos I want to show you, but which don’t merit a post of their own.  They don’t even seem to justify a little slideshow, really.  And there may be a solution to that.  When I was playing around with different photo-editing tools trying to find something that would allow me to combine several LIDAR images into one simple package, I found this little autocollage thingy that’s got a free trial.  It didn’t work for LIDAR, but it seems ideal for those random pics I think you all would like but don’t wish to bombard you with individually.

So here is a nice little autocollage of the wildflowers at Madrona Park.



What do you think?  You like?  You want more?  Autocollages of interesting rocks and other yummy things could be in your future, if you want them to be.  All I’d have to do is spend $20 on the program, and we’d even be rid of the watermark.  I’m totally down with that.

We’ll try it out on a few other bits, and if enough people enjoy them, we’ll continue on after the trial expires.

There. Now You Can't Say I Never Give You Flowers
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Cantina Quote o' The Week: Chuang Tzu

Dana Hunter

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words? He is the one I would like to talk to.

–Chuang Tzu 



Even if you don’t know his name, you know this ancient Chinese philosopher: he’s the one who dreamt he was a butterfly.  He did a lot else beside that.


One of the things I love most about Chinese and Japanese philosophers is how they can turn concepts on their heads.  The other thing I love is how they can ask a seemingly simple question that turns out to be nearly impossible.  Chuang Tzu could have held his own with the Zen patriarchs, and he wouldn’t have been out of place among the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove.

Cantina Quote o' The Week: Chuang Tzu

Alaska, or How My Mind Was Completely Blown

steamforged2 Comments
Hi!  My handle on this-here blogthing is Steamforged.  I am here by grace of wonderful happenstance, and I could not be more honored.  Dana and I encountered each other in line for Neil Gaiman’s Seattle visit (which occurrence she wrote about in such glowing terms as to make me blush), and we hit it off so famously that about ten minutes into the conversation she asked if I’d guest blog about my Alaska trip for you awesome folks.  She’s seriously a special person, but you already knew that since you’re here too.  Thank you in advance for welcoming me here, and I hope you enjoy my posts!
A quick disclaimer: I am not a geologist, though I dearly hope to be one someday.  I’ve recently started self-teaching as I can by reading books and blogs and really anything I can get my grubby mitts on, but I’m no expert.  I might get things wrong, and if I do please PLEASE correct me!  That way I can keep on learning.  With that said, on to Alaska!

There’s this story I used to tell people by way of explaining why I wanted to visit Alaska, and I’ll share it with you folks too.  I used to work tech support for Canon, their cameras more specifically.  I talked to a lot of people, and many of those people traveled heavily; amongst all the troubleshooting I’d often hear about their vacations.  The one constant, the opinion I heard from everyone echoed as if from a vacationers’ hivemind, was that Alaska was the most beautiful place they’d ever seen.  It’s really quite the recommendation.

Finally made the trip myself and I am here to tell you that Alaska is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.




Right near Juneau.  And I thought I woke up to great views, living east of Seattle…  These folks totally have me beat.
I took hundreds of pictures, saw countless naked and wild natural wonders, and got my mind completely blown away by it all.  It’s not possible to convey everything adequately, and besides which, a lot of it isn’t really relevant to our topic here–wait, what?  There’s a topic beyond “Alaska is so super-rad,” you ask?  Sure!  I’m narrowing things down to GEOLOGICALLY RELEVANT beauty.  Otherwise I’d never shut up.  Trust me, this is for everyone’s benefit.
My visit was via cruise ship up the Alaskan Inner Passage.  There are three locations I’ll be writing about: Mendenhall Glacier, Tracy Arm, and the Klondike Highway between Skagway and the Yukon.  Three locations, three posts, simple enough!  They’ll be image-heavy, which is good, since I’m no John Muir (I just started reading his Travels in Alaska, oh wow) and can’t hope to successfully demonstrate Alaska without some photographs to help me out.  It’s just that, well…  mind-blowing.
Glacier time!
Mendenhall Glacier: my first river-of-ice, down-to-the-water, massive for-really-real glacier.  I know, Mt Rainier not only counts, but counts heavily.  Still, there’s something special about seeing an ancient flow of blue-white ice calving icebergs into the water.  It has all the bells and whistles, too.  The nearby rock faces bear parallel gouges from long years of glacial scouring; erratics litter the terrain, ranging from the size of a Volkswagon Beetle to the size of a Hot Wheels Volkswagon Beetle.  It was a beautiful day.  In fact, it was a little too beautiful.  I’m embarrassed to say that I managed to overheat myself running around near a glacier.  S’what I get for not drinking enough water!


Mendenhall Glacier in all its glory.  According to the excellent Visitor’s Center, the place I stood when taking that picture was beneath the glacier’s ice within this last century.  It’s receded quite a bit.




Even if Mendenhall Glacier wasn’t looming over my shoulder, I’d know this was glacier country.  Look at those grooves!  If memory serves, the Visitor’s Center was built directly atop the rock in this picture.  Also, I am a bad wannabe geologist, having not provided anything for scale.  This will be rectified in coming photos.


There’s so much going on in this picture!  In the foreground we have a beach made of erratics, casually dropped unsorted as Mendenhall made its slow retreat.  Then there’s Mendenhall Lake with its summer flotilla of icebergs, and further back there are the sloping hills at the foot of the mountains that cradle the glacier itself.  It really was a beautiful day.  Cloud provided for scale.




Then there are the human-sorted rocks.  I came across rock stacks wherever there were sufficient rocks to support such endeavors.  Maybe people just like to leave their mark, something to say I WAS HERE.  And check out these rocks!  You can see the striations, perfectly linear and parallel.  SO glacial.  Mountain provided for scale.



Now we’re getting close.  Those lucky folks had the money for the fancier shore excursions; I relied upon my trusty zoom lens.  That remarkable glacier blue shines through.  I love the jagged crevasses and spikes in the face of the glacier.  There’s so much texture there.  Boat provided for scale.

And finally, Mendenhall is ready for its close up.  The color is simply brilliant, down in the cracks.  I feel like there is so much going on there, in the ripples and crevasses and other ice formations, and I don’t understand any of it.  I want to, though!  Some of the smoother surfaces almost have the look of wind-sculpted sandstone formations.  …the glacier IS the scale, darnit!

The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor’s Center was really quite nice, with dioramas and a viewing deck and rangers on site to answer all kinds of questions.  I cannot recommend them highly enough.  That’s actually where I bought my copy of Travels in Alaska, which is written in such poetic language that I suspect I’ll be quoting it for years.  It doesn’t hurt that, after I commented on the formation of the nearby mountains, one of the rangers asked if I was a geologist.  TOTALLY made my year.
That’s it for my introduction and Mendenhall Glacier!  Next time: Tracy Arm, a journey into awe, my sense of self (rendered tiny) provided for scale.
Alaska, or How My Mind Was Completely Blown

Happy Birthday, America! The Reprise, With Esplodey Thingies and Geology

Dana Hunter4 Comments

Upon getting off work on July 4th, I hurried home and hied me up the hill behind my house.

I love the hill behind my house.  For one thing, I suspect it’s a drumlin.  For another, I found my garnet mica schist there.  And for the third, I can see a whole bunch of fireworks displays from all over the Seattle area from it.  Not perfectly, mind, but well enough.  And there are no crowds.  Just lotsa ba-booms.

As I was headed for the hill, I saw the lovely crescent moon shining in the last of the sunset:



And then, once I’d got up the hill, I discovered something outstanding. 

You see, when it’s cloudless here (which is like two days out of the year), you can catch a teensy little glimpse of the Olympics from that hill.  And there was one of the higher peaks, silhouetted against the twilight, with things blowing up nearby:



Okay, so the mountain’s nearly hidden behind a tree, but still.  Besides, I have this nifty video that gives a better view – and lotsa splodey things.

Is that or is that not sweet?

Speaking of sweet, folks launched fireworks in the valley down by the river, so the whole huge drumlin opposite my drumlin would be lit up like, well, the 4th of July.  I didn’t catch the really gorgeous explosions, alas, but I managed to catch this one in the act:



Watching those enormous blooms of sparks against the dark forested hill, lighting up the entire valley for just an instant, made my heart leap.  So did the ones someone on the hill above me launched – I mean, full-size fireworks going off right above my head, now, that was intense.  And more fun than I care to admit.

After a while, the entire valley filled with smoke and the faint smell of cordite.  Surreal.  I would’ve stayed out there for the finale, but there was this ridiculous long lull in the displays that allowed my extremities to clear their respective throats and say, “You know, Dana, it may be July, but we’re fairly far north, and it is frickin freezing out here, and we’d really like to go back inside.”  So we did.  I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes for about an hour afterward, but it was worth it.

Evelyn put up red, white and blue rocks in honor of the holiday, which got me to thinking about the Fourth of July and geology. There’s definitely geology involved.  Take the whole Battle of Bunker Hill thing.  That was fought on drumlins.  Having one right behind me, I can understand why the rebels wanted to be on top and why the British had a hard time assaulting those positions.  They may not be all that tall, in the relative scheme of things, but when you’re running up a hill in a hail of bullets, they probably seem very tall indeed.  And they command a fair view of the surrounding area.
Breed’s Hill, courtesy of McDee

That’s where most of the battle was fought, actually, right up there on Breed’s Hill.  We rebels wouldn’t have had such a sweet setup if it hadn’t been for the Laurentide Ice Sheet.  Somewhere between 80,000-90,000 years ago, this whole area got invaded by Canadian ice.  It carved the Boston Basin and dumped some drumlins when it left around 14,000-11,000 years ago.  Boston, it seems, aside from not having lovely mountains forced up by a subduction zone, is quite similar to Seattle: glacial outwash and drumlins and moraines, oh my.  They’re even similar in age, and for good reason: the Laurentide Ice and the Cordilleran Ice Sheet actually connected to each other.  Ice from sea to shining sea.

Most of the glaciers we associate with now are so small it’s hard to believe something as prosaic as a lot of ice left such enormous mounds of gravel, sand and clay, but they did.  We’re talking continental glaciers that were hundreds of thousands of square miles in extent and three thousand feet thick.  Even wee glaciers make good bulldozers: you can just imagine what these behemoths were capable of.  But you don’t have to imagine it.  You can go walk around and see the results for yourself, all over the northern bits of North America.

If you go, make sure you pick up a copy of Written in Stone by Chet and Maureen Raymo.  ‘Tis handy and slim.

Oh, just one more, then, because a famous drumlin close to sunset is lovely:
Breed’s Hill, courtesy of Via Tsuji

And, for the curious, a shot at the drumlin across the Sammamish River valley, taken from my own dear drumlin and favorite fireworks-watching hangout.



Drumlins are cool.

Happy Birthday, America! The Reprise, With Esplodey Thingies and Geology

Dear Richard Dawkins: You Do Not Know What It's Like to Live in Fear

Dana Hunter10 Comments

Oh, dear.  Richard Dawkins is having difficulty understanding why being invited to coffee in a hotel room at 4 in the morning by a strange man can be traumatic for a woman. And, upon realizing he’d begun digging himself a hole, proceeded to rent a backhoe.

A great many people, women who live with the reality that women are the overwhelming majority of the ones who suffer sexual assault and the men who understand that reality, have taken Richard to task.  Most have done a finer job of it, but I can’t help but add my voice.  You wanted it explained to you without the use of the word “fuck” every other sentence, and you said you would apologize if we did so.  Let’s see if you’re a man of your word, then, Dear Richard, who I still do love and respect despite this egregious error in judgment, not to mention human understanding.

By virtue of having been born with vaginas, women are under constant threat.  That is true for women in societies where patriarchy reigns, and it is just as true in America, where we’ve slowly and painfully won some degree of equality.  Richard, you seem to believe that an invitation to coffee is not on the same order as having one’s genitals mutilated, and that is true.  What you fail to understand is that this simple invitation could lead to something similar enough, or worse.

When a man approaches a woman, we have no idea of his motives.  It doesn’t matter how nice he is, or how innocent his motives, or how innocuous the question.  Ted Bundy was a very nice man.  His motives seemed completely innocent: he just wanted help with carrying his books, or loading his boat onto a trailer, or whatever other ruse he’d come up with.  And women who fell for it ended up dead.

Richard, this is what you don’t understand: women live under constant threat of rape and murder, and it’s the nice men just as much as the obvious creeps we have to be wary of.  Let me explain to you what goes through my mind when a man I don’t know asks me to join him in some isolated place: I wonder why he wants to get me, a perfect stranger, in a place where he controls my escape routes and there are no witnesses.  And you think I can use words to fend him off.

You may believe women in these situations are overreacting.  The gentleman only invited the lady to coffee, alone, in his hotel room, at four a.m.  In the world you inhabit, if someone asked you to join them for a drink and conversation, that is all it is.  For a woman, there’s every possibility that the man is not interested in coffee and conversation at all, and simply declining the offer puts us at mortal risk.

Here is what can happen with that: I can use words to tell him no, not interested, and he very possibly could go from Mr. Nice Guy to Mr. No-Bitch-Turns-Me-Down.  He could do that in an instant.  The chances of him being one of those men is small, but it’s not non-zero.  It’s not a chance I can ignore.  So while I’m telling him no, not interested, I’m having to think of the worst case scenario, and what I’ll do.  What environmental weapons do I have on me?  What are my chances against his greater strength?  Should I run now, or will facing him down without fear get me out of this situation?  What will I do if the worst happens?  How am I going to survive this encounter?

You think a man can solicit a woman for sex (and asking her to coffee alone in his room in the wee hours is nothing short of that), in an elevator, and all she has to do is say no.  You think she has an escape: press a button to get out.  Here’s a way for you to test whether this theory is plausible: ask one of your body builder friends to get you on an elevator, alone, and attempt to escape him by pressing a button and exiting down a deserted corridor.  See how easily you can break free if he grabs you; see if you can remain conscious if he punches you out.  See if anyone will bother to respond to your screams as you’re dragged down the corridor.  See if anyone bothers to call the police.  Then explain to me just how easily I can escape a potential assailant, and how “zero bad” being solicited for sex in an elevator is.

Maybe you’ll listen to a man who understands:

“Whether or not men can relate to it or believe it or accept it, that is the way it is.  Women, particularly in big cities, live with a constant wariness.  Their lives are literally on the line in ways men just don’t experience.  Ask some man you know, ‘When is the last time you were concerned or afraid that another person would harm you?’  Many men cannot recall an incident within years.  Ask a woman the same question and most will give you a recent example or say, ‘Last night,’ ‘Today,’ or even ‘Every day…..’
“It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different – men and women live in different worlds.  I don’t remember where I first heard this simple description of one dramatic contrast between the genders, but it is strikingly accurate: At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, and at core, women are afraid men will kill them.”

Gavin de Becker spoke for me when he wrote those words.  I read them a few years after I was raped, as I was still trying to find a way in the world between abject terror and dangerous overconfidence.  If you’ve never been victimized in that way, nor at any real risk of ever being sexually harmed, it’s extremely hard to understand the constant fear.  Do you want to know what my first thought is, upon meeting a male stranger?  It’s always, “What are the chances he’ll end up stalking, raping or killing me?”  And that question is asked at every stage of the relationship.  I have many close male friends who would be shocked to know I constantly reassess them for risk.  I can’t trust anymore, Richard, because it was a friend who decided that if I wouldn’t date him, he would break into the house and take what he wanted by force.  It was a friend who refused to hear the word no.  And if I could be victimized by one friend, whatever on earth would lead me to believe any other friend could be trusted to hear my words, much less a stranger?

I won’t even go in to the other bullshit women deal with in our society.  Just read a few headlines.  You’ll notice that we are constantly dealing with men who want to control our reproductive choices, who consider our health and well-being less important than theirs, who seem to believe we are more property than people.  And if we let any of that slide, even the simple things like believing it’s fine for a man to impose himself on a woman in a hotel corridor at four in the morning, then we’ll lose what precious progress we’ve made.

Men need to understand the world women live in.  They need to know what it’s like to go from coasting along without worries to instant fight-or-flight fear with a few seemingly-innocent words from a stranger.  Because until they understand that simple fact of our existence, they won’t understand all of the other subtle ways society conspires to keep women from gaining equal footing with men.

We live in constant fear.  And what right do you have, Richard, to denigrate us for our response to that simply because the situation didn’t lead to harm this time?

Because this is the truth of it: you could so easily not have been talking about Rebecca Watson because she used the example of this man’s 4 a.m. approach as an example of the kinds of things it’s inappropriate for men to do to woman.  You could so easily have been talking about her rape or murder instead.  And then all of these men, such as yourself, who are complaining that she blew a completely harmless situation out of control would be asking how she could have allowed herself to be in such a dangerous situation as being alone with a stranger.

Think about that the next time you’re tempted to explain to women just how silly their fears for their safety are.

You’re a smart man, and an empathetic man, so I think you can understand.  So listen to us.  Read the following posts, and try to comprehend why what you said was so very, egregiously inappropriate.

Blag Hag: Richard Dawkins, your privilege is showing.

Butterflies and Wheels: A priest and a rabbi go into an elevator and… and Getting and not getting.

ICBS Everywhere: On Sexism, Objectification, and Power.

Greg Laden’s Blog: Rebecca Watson, Barbara Drescher and the Elevator Guy and Women in Elevators: A Man To Man Talk For The Menz.

Almost Diamonds: Rebecca Watson Sucks at Reading Minds and A Letter to Professor Dawkins from Victims of Sexual Assault.

Bad Astronomy: Richard Dawkins and male privilege.

Pandagon: Because of The Implication.

Skepchick: The Privilege Delusion.

Bug Girl’s Blog: A letter to Richard Dawkins from Victims of Sexual Assault.  This one shows rather nicely how well words work to prevent sexual assault, i.e., they usually don’t.

This post on Shapely Prose from 2009 captures a woman’s reality perfectly, and I wish I had written it: Guest Blogger Starling: Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced. Via this excellent post, via Jen.

For those who think it’s enough to say no, and that no means no, and that men will understand a good, firm no, see Yes Means Yes: Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer.

And I know you’ve read these posts at Pharyngula, because you stuffed your foot into your mouth there, but I place them here for curious readers and men who need the example of a guy who gets it: Always name names!, The Decent Human Beings’ Guide to Getting Laid at Atheist Conferences, and Oh, no, not again…once more unto the breach. 

If I’ve missed anything (and I’m certain I have), my readers can catch us up in the links.

A note to mansplainers and men who refuse to get it (and the few women who are either hopelessly naive or willfully blind): I may or may not moderate this thread, and I have absolutely no problem publicly shaming.  Do not insult the victims of sexual assault by telling us how most men aren’t rapists, and how we don’t have to fear these little situations.  Because of you, I’m turning anonymous commenting off for an undetermined period of time, so that you won’t be free to spout your nonsense without attaching your name to it.  This means assault survivors who don’t want their status broadcast won’t be able to add their voices, and I’m sorry for that.  They should be able to speak safely.  But I refuse to let cowards spew abuse without fear of repercussion on this of all threads.

Dear Richard Dawkins: You Do Not Know What It's Like to Live in Fear

Dojo Summer Sessions: An Imaginary Reply to Tim Minchin

Dana Hunter2 Comments

During Neil Gaiman’s appearance at Seattle Town Hall, Neil mentioned a discussion he’d had with Tim Minchin the night before.  Tim wanted to know why, since Neil was a rational sort of person, everything he wrote was fantasy.

Neil made a suitably witty reply, which I shall not attempt to transcribe as the audio was teh suck at that point and big portions of it are unintelligible.  But it got me to thinking.  It’s a good question, actually: why would otherwise rational people write fantasy?  Terry Pratchett is a rational man, Douglas Adams was; SF is filled with atheists running around writing about myths and gods and so forth.

Why not write about the real world instead?

I know my gut reaction to Tim’s question was, “Are you kidding?  Why wouldn’t he write fantasy?  He’s bloody brilliant at it.”  I’m sure he’d have been very good writing about really real things and doing very realistic fiction and such like, but no way that could have had the power of Sandman, say, or American Gods.  Myth is enormously powerful.  And you can use it to say real things that may be a little too real.

I’ve never met Tim Minchin.  Possibly never will.  But let’s imagine, for a moment, that after I have achieved some modest success and have some SF books out that don’t suck, Tim Minchin and I sit down to dinner under some very odd circumstances, and he asks me that very question.  “Dana, you’re a rational woman.  You’ve written non-fiction and you’re good at it.  Why are you writing fantasy?”

Because I love it.  That’s first and foremost: I love speculative fiction.  I love science fiction, and I love fantasy, and I love mythic stories, and I love creating worlds.  I love my story people and want to do them justice.  That’s the first thing.

The second is this: the stories I want to tell are human stories, but they can’t be told here on Earth.  That’s just the way it is.  I can’t force my characters into an earthly skin; they wouldn’t fit.  I don’t want to write stories about the real world.  If I’m doing that, I might as well write non-fiction and be done with it.  But the real world deeply informs my imaginary worlds, and there’s the turn.  There’s the prestige.  You see, I’m working a little bit of magic, here.

Because I realized something long ago: people sometimes need imaginary things to help them see what’s real.  We’re surrounded by real things all the time and very much want to escape sometimes.  I do.  When I pick up a novel, I’m not looking for a perfect reflection of the real world.  I don’t want to read about ordinary lives.  I want a mirror held up, but not just any mirror: it must be one that doesn’t reflect reality faithfully, but twists it around a bit.  And I know there are a lot of people like me.  They want something fantastic.  They want something imaginary and weird and wonderful.

But we only think we’re escaping reality.  That’s the turn, you see.  The little magician’s trick to make us think we’re getting something we’re actually not.  But reality slips in, sometimes very difficult reality.  I could go through each and every fantasy novel I own, the ones with staying power, and I could point out to you a place or two or several where very difficult truths got told.  I can show you where something I had no interest in became interesting.  Things I wouldn’t have touched in a non-fiction book or looked in to on my own because I thought they were too boring, or too grim, or irrelevant, or I simply didn’t know exist.  They are things that made me think about very difficult issues, like prejudice, or torture, or morality, or politics.  They are things that introduced me to science.  I would not be sitting here with you, an atheist with a passion for science, if I hadn’t read fantasy first and started dreaming of other worlds, which in turn led me to explore this one.  I didn’t know it was going to do that, but that’s what the very best fantasy does: it changes your perspective.  It makes you think, and it makes you wonder, and it makes you explore.

Let’s take my peculiar passion.  If I write a book about geology, people who are interested in geology will read it.  And there the matter will rest.  But if I write a fantasy novel that has got geology in it, people who thought geology was just dull old rocks, people who never would have in a billion trillion years picked up a book about geology, will find themselves reading about geology.  They may not realize that.  It’s just part of the milieu of that novel, and what they’re reading about is characters in very interesting situations.  But they’re getting exposed to geology in the process.  And some of them, perhaps a lot of them, will find themselves intrigued enough by the geology bits to go out and explore on their own.  Same thing with the biology and the chemistry and the physics I slip in there.  Same thing with the other things: myths and legends and religions and atheism.  Same thing with the politics and the psychology and the moral dilemmas and – well, I could continue the list, but I think you’re getting the point about now, so I’ll stop.

Because it’s fantasy I’m writing, I can get away with a lot of things that might have sent readers away screaming if they’d been in a more realistic work.  That’s the beauty of fantasy: people expect something strange and different in it, so they’re not much fussed when I expose them to strange and different things.  Things that would’ve had them howling, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, you’re not going on about that?” if I’d presented it in another format.

We need fantasy.  We get very comfortable seeing the world in certain ways, and it all becomes very ordinary.  What fantasy does is changes our perspective.  We can use it to explore things from a different angle, perhaps an angle we’d never considered before.  It invites us to turn things around and upside down and inside out.  And when we do that, we may notice things we’d never noticed before.  It makes us think in ways we’re not used to thinking.  That can lead to all sorts of things.  That’s how discoveries are made.  That’s how the world is changed. 

And that’s the prestige.

Haven’t you heard those terms before?  What we fantasy authors are doing is a kind of magic, so let me explain.  Actually, let me let someone else do it and save myself the work:

The Pledge: wherein a magician shows you something ordinary, but it probably isn’t. The Turn: where the magician makes the ordinary object do something extraordinary. The Prestige: where you see something shocking you’ve never seen before.

That’s really what fantasy is, in the end.  That’s what it comes down to.  The ordinary, extraordinary.  Something shocking you’ve never seen or thought before.  All in the form of entertainment, because even those of us realists most passionate about reality like a bit of entertainment now and then.

The real world is phenomenal.  It is brilliant and beautiful and endlessly fascinating (as well as awful and terrifying and ugly, let’s not sugarcoat), but sometimes we have to get out of it a while so we can approach it afresh.  Fantasy takes us far, far away.  We go on a journey, and we see incredible things, and then we come back with our imaginations refreshed.  We can see the world with new eyes and new minds.  Fantasy can help us gain perspective, one we never would have had without.  That’s its power and its glory.

So that’s the speech I’d give.  The bugger then might turn around and ask me why I’m not writing pure science fiction, then, but that’s an imaginary question and reply we’ll leave for another day.

Dojo Summer Sessions: An Imaginary Reply to Tim Minchin

Google+ For the Curious

Dana Hunter3 Comments

Brian Romans wanted screenshots, and screenshots he shall have.  You’re all welcome to sneak a look.  And give thanks to Ron Schott for making it possible – he kindly sent me an invite.

Google+ is, so far, the only social media site I haven’t had to be dragged on to kicking and screaming.  All of the others – MySpace, Facebook and Twitter – struck me as a gargantuan time suck with little benefit.  Friends of mine (I call them friends) ganged up and created a MySpace profile for me, so it was get my ass on there or have them make up outrageous shit about me until I did.  Can’t remember why I joined Facebook, honestly – I think it was for some cause or other.  And Twitter is Erik Klemetti’s fault – when he left ScienceBlogs, he was only going to be on Twitter for a while, so I grumbled and I groaned but I jumped on to follow him because I couldn’t be without Eruptions.  Little did I know that Twitter would change my life for the best.  Thank you, Erik!

I think it’s that last experience that made me want to be in on Google+ from the beginning.  That, and the promise that I could organize the people I associated with into circles.  This is genius.  I don’t have to drink from a firehose – if I want to catch up on my geos, I can choose my geo circle; if I’m feeling friendly, I can view friends only, and so forth.  Here’s what my home page looks like:



You notice the selections off to the left, there?  That’s right – I can change who shows up in my stream with a click of a button.  It’s teh awesome.  I love it.

Also not the “Hangouts” button to the right.  Hangouts are genius.  Ron was kind enough to have me over for a chat earlier.  It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get audio to work, and I still haven’t figured out why it won’t save my settings, but I’m sure those issues will get sorted.  We still managed a fine chat, and you know what this means: we can all jump into a hangout, show each other rocks, and jibber-jabber.  If they come up with a recording feature, it’ll become a hugely valuable tool for us.

Posting is a breeze, and I love the look I get when I link blog posts:



It snatches a picture and a few lines from the post for me.  Completely easy and absolutely lovely.

Adding people to circles, creating new circles, and managing them is simplicity itself.  You’ll see when you get there.  It’s pretty much just drag-and-drop, and there’s all sorts of ways to add people without having to go through a lot of effort.

That’s the thing about Google+: even in these early days, it’s pretty much effortless.  I don’t know how cluttered and weird it might get later, but right now it’s relaxing, refreshing, and actually useful.  It seems like I’ll be able to connect with a huge number of very outstanding people here, and it allows a lot more depth and scope than Twitter.

Not that I’ll ever stop loving Twitter.  The two seem to compliment each other quite well so far, and let’s face facts: I’m a total Twitter addict.  But I’m happy there’s finally a social networking site that allows me to do so much more without the various irritations of Facebook.

If you’re already on Google+, come find me.  If not, hop on once they’ve opened the place up and come find me then.  I want my circles filled with awesome, and you, my darlings, are the very definition of awesome.

Google+ For the Curious

Los Links 7/1

Dana Hunter1 Comment

You know what, unless you lot prefer it a different day, I think I shall just officially move Los Links to Monday.  It’s just easier that way.  I’ll still be dating it for Friday, because that’s when I stop collecting.

Anyway.  Best news o’ the week was New York approving same-sex marriage.  FINALLY another state gets a clue.  I’m so sick of my friends being denied the curse blessing of marriage simply because they happen to love someone of the same gender.

In honor of that, I have some LGBT links.  Not all of them are happy, but all are worthwhile.

Maplewood Patch: A SOMA Kid’s View of Marriage Equality.  Okay.  You wanna feel good about the world?  You want a toasty-warm heart?  Here you go.  The kids are all right!  And anti-gay prejudice will not last forever. 

Butterflies and Wheels: “The corrupt political process in New York State.” In which bishops throw a fit over all those icky gays getting a basic civil right.

Diversity in Science Carnival: Pride Month 2011.  Queer nerds in science!  A smorgasbord. 

And this is not an LGBT post, but it’s about being other, and it’s bloody damned important, so I’m putting it right here near the top:

Slobber and Spittle: Who Are We, Really? This is in bold.  You should read it, and then forward it to people who think immigrants are icky, and people who aren’t sure, and – look, just make sure everyone reads it, m’kay?

Right, then.  On to the regular links!

Science

Smithsonian: The Giant Squid: Dragon of the Deep. Did you know that P.T. Barnum once ordered two of them?  This and many other intriguing facts await you!

Bad Astronomy: A dragon fight in the heart of Orion.  Pareidola at its finest.  I mean, really, insanely, intensely beautiful.  Also, for fans of big explosions: 100 years ago today: KABLAM!!!!!

Pawn of the Pumice Castle: Kata Tjuta – the forgotten sibling.  Oh, people.  And you thought you knew about all the awesome rocks in Australia!

Tooth & Claw: On Assignment in Heart City.  I loved this piece. It includes both journalists and scientists working in the field, and it’s charming and witty and wonderful, with just a hint of danger.

Science not Fiction: The AI Singularity is Dead; Long Live the Cybernetic Singularity.  Writers of science fiction that might include AI take note.  Also, people prone to wild claims about AI take note.

Oregon Live: Experts say an earthquake surely will devastate the Northwest.  We are so very, very fucked.

Smithsonian: The Beer Archaeologist.  It’s science.  It’s ancient beer reborn. I don’t have to tell anyone how cool this is, do I?  I say field trip!

Highly Allochthonous: Update: Christchurch aftershocks.   Chris takes a look at what’s happening to Christchurch and assesses the liklihood of a volcano going boom.  And don’t miss Flooding around the world (26 June edition), in which Anne takes us on a tour of world flooding this week.  Wear galoshes.

The Last Word on Nothing: What do you get when you put a terrorist inside of a brain scanner?  Walked away from this one feeling horrified at what my country is still doing.

Glacial Till: Video of pillow basalt formation.  If you haven’t seen this yet, you must you must you must!  And there’s Meteorite Monday: Aubrites, too!

NYT Sunday Review: It’s Science, but Not Necessarily Right.  Carl Zimmer’s provoking piece on why incorrect science so often stands uncorrected.  Methinks we need to develop a culture of replication.

Georneys: Dinosaur Bone Hunting with Nobel Laureates.  Dinosaur Bone Hunting.  With Nobel Laureates.  Serious awesome, people!

Slobber and Spittle: Sunday Photo(s). My intrepid companion’s guide to our river walk.

Seattle Times: Seattle Times special report: Twisted ethics of an expert witness.  Hoo-boy.  Wot a mess.  If you’re interested in forensic psychology, this will send a chill down your spine.

Uncovered Earth: Sunday Science Photos, June 19 – 25.  Happy sigh.  Go delight, my darlings.

Evolutionblog: Does it Spoil Anything to Know How the Tricks Are Done?  An absolutely outstanding and thorough spanking of an ignoramus who deserved it.  Speaking of ignoramuses, here’s an excellent post on Evolution and the Second Law for you to whack creationists with.

Liberty, Equality, and Geology: Cinder Cone Hike.  Drooled my way through this post.  Narrowly missed jumping in the car and going there immediately.

Through the Sandglass: Martian floods of tears – are the TSIs ESRs? Or is it just the total drag?  When exploring the geology of other worlds, it pays to keep in mind that it is, in fact, another world.

SciDev.Net: Ten top myth-busting tips.  You, too, can become a mythbuster!  Alas, not as many explosions as you see on teevee.

Eruptions: Debris flow on Mt. Rainier: Why volcanoes are dangerous even when not erupting.  Holy fucking shit, Batman, that was intense.  See the video.  Marvel at its power.  And keep in mind that locals aren’t so much worried Rainier will blow up as fall down.

Mark Lynas Geoengineering: why all the fuss?  We are “geoengineers every time we… switch on a light.”  That’s not why, but it’s still cool.

Quest: Is the Salton Sea really “15 Months Pregnant” with our next big quake?  Andrew does a masterful job tackling some really awful reporting.

Wired: Megafires May Change the Southwest Forever.  I wondered how long our great and glorious Ponderosa pines would last in all this global warming.  Looks like it may not be much longer.

Dinosaur Tracking: Terra Nova Previews “Slasher” Dinosaur.  Brian Switek, I bloody love you.  “Granted, the creators of the Slasher gave the dinosaur an embarrassing pate of wispy fuzz which makes the dinosaur look as if it needs to subscribe to the ‘Feather Club For Dinosaurs,’ but it’s not nearly enough. The Slasher is a naked dinosaur, and I can’t help but feel sorry for it.”

Writing

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: Estributors Redux.  In which we learn that agents handling your self publish
ing need
s may indeed be useful for you.  Also, I found Your Second Storefront, Attack of the Self-Publishing Memes! – A Guest Post by Barry Eisler and Interview with Catherine MacDonald from BookRooster.com to all be of great good use.

Bob Mayer’s Blog: If I were an unpublished author, would I self-publish?  Not completely sure I agree with some of this, but the advice to focus on getting some books written is sound.

Galley Cat: 7 eBook Price Points Defended.  Interesting how it’s publishers defending the highest prices, innit?  Coinkydink, I’m sure.

The Intern: on whoopie pies and elephant rides.  This has got to be one of the best extended metaphors I’ve ever read on getting what you think you wanted.

Almost Diamonds: Empathic Trauma. The high cost of high-empathy reporting.

The New Midlist: Self-published E-book Authors Who Earn a Living.  This should be of great comfort to those who realize that only a very lucky few become superstars.

Not Exactly Rocket Science:  Am I a science journalist?  In which Ed Yong empathizes with grolar bears, and admits he owns no pajamas.  Beautiful.  And I am putting it in bold because I really want you to read it.

SciDev.Net: How one man emerged from Tahrir Square with a passion for science journalism.  Genius.  Pure genius.  And oh, so true.  Read this, you science bloggers with a social conscience, and know that you can have your science writing and be revolutionary too.

Almost Diamonds: For the Squee.  SF podcast devoted to sheer awesomeness?  Oh, I am squeeing.

Atheism and Religion

Scientific American: Evolution Abroad: Creationism Evolves in Science Classrooms around the Globe.  Just so America doesn’t feel lonely, here’s a nice round-up of other countries infected by idiocy.

io9: Believing in the tooth fairy can warp your young mind.  Certainly warped my patience with loose teeth.  This will need more study to determine whether the cart’s in front of the horse, here, but it’s intriguing nonetheless.

Google News: Lebanon Sunni clergy reject domestic abuse law.  Ah, yes. Religion.  So humane and gentle.

Index on Censorship: Pakistan: Campaign against blasphemy abuse goes on.  Tell me again about the mercy and compassion of religion.  I dare you.

The Telegraph: East London Mosque breaks its promise on homophobic speakers after just eight days.  Tell me one more time about how religion is moral and good and treats people with love and respect.

LOLReligion: That should do the trick.  Advice from an atheist on how parents can prevent their children from becoming one of us.  Killer funny and wicked sharp.

Why Evolution is True: Evangelicals, evolution and atheism: the 2011 Pew Foundation survey.  Whoo-boy, this is a weird bunch.  And do they ever despise them some atheists…

Women’s Issues

Mother Jones: Kansas: The First Abortion-Free State?  There are no lengths anti-abortion zealots won’t go to in order to deny a woman’s right to choose.  This is only one of many despicable attempts to do an end-run around Roe vs. Wade.

CNN: Silence lifted: The untold stories of rape during the Holocaust.  Well past time that particular silence was broken.  We can’t pretend that war in a different era didn’t include violence against women.

The Guardian: Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges.  Ah, yes, the Conservative War on Women continues apace.  This is why fetal homicide laws, despite sounding lovely, were a terrible idea.

Think Progress: As GOP Continues Its War On Women, Study Shows Female Life Expectancy Is Declining In 313 Counties.  Here’s how I’m picturing the GOP: “No, Ms. Bond, I expect you to die.”

BBC: South Africa’s lesbians fear ‘corrective rape.’ Because we all know rape is just what the ladies need to make ’em lurv the men.  How can men be so fucking stupid?  Or is that just a pathetic excuse for mayhem?

Politics

Mike the Mad Biologist: It’s When the Pundits, Not Lobbyists, Divide Over Antibiotic Resistance, We’ll Be Screwed.  Thanks, Mike. Really needed this distopian vision of Cons jumping on the overuse of antibiotics doesn’t cause resistance bandwagon: “Then it becomes a matter of personal identity for their slavering Uruk-hai followers in much the same way creationism is.”  Argh.

Calamities of Nature: June 27, 2011 – The Indiana Pi Bill.   Ignorant pols have been trying to legislate reality out of existence for a long damned time.

The Wall of Separation: Faith-Based Frenzy: Kansas Governor Preaches Religion As Solution To Social Problems.  I’m feeling a tinge of precognition coming on.  I foresee… lawsuits.  Many lawsuits, in Kansas’s future…

Slate: Has Bachmann Met Her Waterloo?  Oh, Hitch. No one can take down a batshit crazy freak the way you can.

Society and Culture

Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech?  An extremely powerful piece (it’s Neil Fucking Gaiman, did you expect any less?) ennumerating the reasons why it’s not just the speech we like that we should protect.

CBLDF: CBLDF Forms Coalition to Defend American Comics Reader Facing Criminal Charges In Canada.  If we don’t defend freedom of speech and expression, you, too, could be arrested for the comics you carry.

Scientific American: Education Reform in the Wrong Direction: High-Stake Consequences for New York State Teachers and Their Students.  Remember when Steve spanked New York for their assessment asshattery?  This is what he was talking about.

3 Quarks Daily: Men of Straw.  Somebody grab a match.

The Telegraph: Area 51: the plane truth.  Not that conspiracy theorists will care, but here’s some of the dirty reality behind one of America’s most mythologized military sites.

Lance Mannion: Working until we drop: A fable for our times.  Grate. Now I’m depressed.  But it might just make these “raise the retirement age!” evangelists think for a fraction of a second.

The Guardian: The secret scandal of Britain’s caste system.  There are plenty of wonderful things about other cultures worth importing.  Caste systems and horrific prejudice are not among them.

Seth Godin’s Blog: The ethics of sunscreen.  Yes, ethics.  Also, an object lesson in the importance of regulations.  Send along to your libertarian friends and then ask them how well that whole free-market-self-regulation thing’s working out.

YouTube: Wits with Neil Gaiman, Adam Savage, and Gollum: “I Will Survive.” Please find a safe and comfortable place to sit and remove all items from mouth before viewing.  ETEV cannot be responsible for injuries to people or equipment resulting from watching this video.

io9: Transformers 3 is a movie about how wrong you were to hate Transformers 2.  I love a thoroughly scathing review, and this one is a thing of beauty.

En Tequila Es Verdad: When Lives Are On The Line: Part II.  Yeah, I’m linking my own blog.  That’s because if you missed my amazing coblogger’s post, you missed out on something wonderful and important.

Los Links 7/1

The (Non-) Educated Atheist

Dana Hunter4 Comments

There’s been quite a lot of talk about diversity and such in the atheism movement.  We’re looking for ways to ensure atheists as a whole aren’t represented exclusively by old white men, that women and minorities and young folk get their place at the table. JT Eberhard, he of Secular Student Alliance fame, is worried we left a category out:

I feel as though the ideal atheist, as it is portrayed at present, has four PhDs including one in Everythingology.  This can be a problem in that it isolates the people not awash in higher education and makes them feel as though they do not belong in the folds of activist non-theism.  We must to find a way to really drive home the point that intelligence can be found at any level of education, and that hard work and clever organizing are just as effective contributions to the atheist cause as scientific discovery or writing 50 books.  This message must resonate if our campaign is to be welcoming to every non-believer.

Maybe I haven’t been palling around with atheists enough, but I haven’t felt particularly left out as one of those “not awash in higher education” folk.  When I go to events (which is, admittedly, not often – I’m not a big event person), my brains get due respect.  No one seems to care that I haven’t got degrees oozing from every orifice.  I’m curious and clever and an atheist, and that’s been enough.  I get folded right in to discussions about everything, make my contribution or two, and am easily part of the group.  So, no problem on that front.

Is there really a bar to becoming an activist atheist if one hasn’t got a higher education?  I haven’t sensed it.  But then, I’m not inclined to appear on panels, do debates, or organize stuff.  Maybe there’s a hurdle I haven’t seen because I’ve never tried that particular course.  But I haven’t felt intimidated out of trying, either. 

Let me just speak to the folks who might feel that way, who think because they’re working a dead-end job and have at best a course or two at a community college under their belt that they’re somehow inferior to those famous atheists with their fancy-schmancy degrees and their book deals and their wildly popular blogs, who think they could never run in such exalted company.  If those folks exist, I have one word to say to them: bullshit.

Look at me.  I’m a call center phone jockey.  I walk people through resetting their cell phones and fill in little forms reporting network outages for a living.  Before that, I let people bitch at me about their credit card late fees; before that, I took orders for business forms, and before that, I sold books.  That’s all I’ve ever been, professionally, a customer service servant.  I have a GED, not a diploma, and my adventures in higher education began at a community college and ended when I realized that I was working alongside people with the same degree I was aiming for, and the only difference between us was that I didn’t have a shit-ton of student loans to pay off.  I took two (count ’em, 2) hard science courses in college and never ever completed a math course. 

Do you think that’s stopped me from running with the big dogs?  Don’t make me laugh.  Nearly everything I know about geology is self-taught, and yet the geoblogosphere adopted me as one of their own.  I couldn’t even dissect a damned earthworm in high school biology, but after hanging around at Pharyngula for so long and reading so many books on the subject, I can at least nod in the right places when the professionals get to talking.  Lack of formal education has never stopped me from educating myself, writing about science, or holding my own in rooms full of wildly intelligent people.

If I wanted to become a full-on activist, nothing would stop me.  You don’t need a degree to debate: you need information and a quick mind, and you can acquire and hone those on your own.  You don’t need a degree in community organizing to organize a community: you need people skills and some talent at, y’know, organizing things.  You want to be a speaker, then speak.  You don’t need a Dr. before your name to have something worth saying.

Myself, I want to be a writer when I grow up.  I learned a long time ago I don’t need an MFA or PhD for that.  Louis L’Amour dropped out of school as a young teen and went on to publish about a gazillion books, many of which, despite what PZ thinks, are quite good.  Ditto Dick Francis.  There are many other famous writers who made it without a degree, much less a diploma.  You know what you need to be a great writer?  Curiosity, passion, and the willingness to educate your own damn self.  A way with words helps, but can be developed with the liberal application of blood, tears, toil and sweat. 

Let me repeat these essential traits: curiosity, passion, and the willingness to educate your own damn self.  Have you got those things?  Good.  Are you willing to work yourself to death, or nearly so, to achieve a goal?  Excellent.  Do you have some sort of native talent, whether it be wit, a strange ability to herd cats, or mad time management skillz?  Superb.  You, my friend, can become an activist, if that’s what you want.  You, yes, you, can run with the big dogs.  The only thing that can stop you is you.  Yes, you.  You and your little, “But I’m not good enough/smart enough/hauling around enough degrees” defeatist voice.  You and your humility-to-the-point-of-humiliation.  You and your reluctance to stride up and take your place at the table.

You haven’t got a degree to wave around, so you might have to find another way to prove yourself.  Fine.  Do it.  Demonstrate a skill.  I haven’t yet run into an atheist who’s demanded to see my credentials before hearing me out.  I’ve never yet been shunned at a gathering because I haven’t got a shiny university education.  No one turns up their noses and turns away when I mention I’m the least-educated person present. Those highly-educated folk aren’t going to slam the door in your face when you show up, and if one or two misguided outliers tries that trick on you, you’ve got a foot.  Wedge the damned door open.

You have a particular skill set you can bring.  Bring it.  Like JT says, “So long as you are passionate about the cause, so long as you work, you can be a leader in this movement.  Our roles may be different from that of Sam Harris, but they are no less necessary.”

You don’t believe in God, which is why you’re an atheist, but there’s one thing you should absolutely believe in: yourself.  You don’t need a formal education to prove your worth.  Find things you’re good at and do them.  That’s all.  That’s all you need.  Movements are built on all sorts of people doing necessary things.  You can do necessary things.  That makes you an essential part of this movement.  You, even you, Mr. or Ms. Dead-End Job, can help make humanity better.

Are you really going to let a dearth of degrees stop you?

The (Non-) Educated Atheist