Then again, I could believe that the meaning of life could be nothing more than a nice bologna-and-cheese sandwich once in a while.

(Technorati tags: 42)

Apart from that maxim about good writers borrowing and great writers stealing, that is. But that's not what I'm talking about.

I got an email the other day from a reader who worried about the fact that I've posted my fan fiction online. Aren't I worried, this reader wondered, about someone stealing my ideas and selling them and making an obscene amount of money off them and, presumably, laughing at me all the way to the bank?

What I told the reader: No, of course not. Writers don't have to steal -- we all have more ideas of our own than we'd ever get to in our lifetimes, even if we lived to be 200, even if we stopped having ideas today. (Which doesn't happen. Writers are constantly inundated with new ideas.)

Plus, you know: Writers don't sell "ideas." They sell the execution of ideas.

Plus, you know: Writers don't get paid an obscene amount of money. Not the vast majority of us, anyway.

(Technorati tags: writers, ideas)

Has apparent freedom fighter Cory Doctorow turned evil?

Internet freedom advocates--a group that includes just about every blogger--are up in arms at the revelation that Boing Boing, the incredibly popular this-and-that blog, has purged its archives of all the works of Violet Blue, a blogger who also contributes to Gawker sex site Fleshbot. The reason for the disappearance is unclear; but whatever it is, it can't fit in well with Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow's free speech crusading.

Damn, I thought he was one of the good guys...

(Technorati tags: Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, censorship)

Customs agents are seizing laptops and cameras without cause, without a warrant, without any reason of any kind:

[S]ays Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, "customs officials do not go through briefcases to review and copy paper business records or personal diaries, which is apparently what they are now doing in digital form. These pda's don't have bombs in them."

(from U.S. News and World Report; Raw Story has more)

Civil servants are spying on private citizens:

Who made it 2008 already?

Because it still feels about April 1992 to me.

Barack Obama, caving on FISA: 15 electoral votes...

On January 29, 2008, Obama said:

I strongly oppose retroactive immunity in the FISA bill.... No one should get a free pass to violate the basic civil liberties of the American people - not the President of the United States, and not the telecommunications companies that fell in line with his warrantless surveillance program. We have to make clear the lines that cannot be crossed.

In late June of 2008, Obama changed his mind:

By me:

If it's tourist season, does that mean we can shoot the tourists?

I often ponder, several times of the year -- mostly Christmas and summer -- the fact that the residents of Alaska, every single one of them, get a check every year from the state, their cut of the state's income from oil revenues. Because we New Yorkers are supposed to believe, during those seasons when the sidewalks and subways are clogged with people from Iowa or wherever who don't understand the etiquette of navigating a crowd, that it's Good For The Economy that we get frequently inundated with people who don't know to move the fuck to the right on an escalator so those of us who are in a hurry and cannot freakin' stand to stand still just because the stairs are moving at a snail's pace can get by because we have somewhere to be. I ponder Alaska and its oil-revenue checks to citizens because it never happens that I get a check for the State of New York for my cut of the tourist income. And since I'm the one who has to deal with a herd of slow-moving Nebraskans spread out across the entire width of the sidewalk and gawping up into the air because they've never seen buildings more than three stories tall, I think it would be only fair if I were to get a sliver of the hotel taxes they're paying.

One time, not more than a year or two ago, I pointed out to a group of tourists that they were blocking the sidewalk. And one of them had the nerve to ask me what I was doing in Times Square if I wasn't a tourist. And I, being the polite New Yorker than I am, refrained from reminding her that Times Square is not Disneyland, and that people actually live and work there.

I cannot wait till the kids go back to school, because then I will be able to move on the sidewalk again at a pace that assures I will arrive at my destination before 2029.

(Technorati tags: New York City, tourists)

This was the news last December, and it was alarming:

The hot Northern Hemisphere summer sharply increased the rate at which Arctic ice is melting and scientists now believe summer ice could be gone completely within five years.

Six months later -- not five years, six months -- we hear this:

My rent went up this month, and just today one of my major freelance clients cut me back to half the work (and half what they were paying me). My other major freelance client hasn't raised my hourly rate in four years.

Forget about getting ahead: I can't even stay in the same place. Which I wouldn't be doing anyway today when the prices in the supermarket keep jumping from week to week.

But hey! My cat just died, so think of all the money I'll save on cat food and cat litter... after I pay off the vet for the job of sticking a needle in her and killing her. So why should I be complaining?

Boy. I thought these numbers, from August 2005, were horrific. They're looking damn good today:

You know who else is making a ton of money these days, besides the oil companies? Whoever makes those numbers for the gas price signs. I bet they're running up the 5's and 6's now, getting ready for the summer driving season...

(Technorati tags: gas prices)

The Doctor (of Doctor Who, that is) in "Silence in the Library":

I'm thick! Look at me, I'm old and thick, head's too full of stuff. I need a bigger head!

(Technorati tags: Doctor Who)

Oh my god:

US musician and writer David Rothenberg has recorded a whale's response to the sound of his clarinet - and says that sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

You can listen to a recording at BBC News. It amazing and eerie and beautiful.

I've always figured that there's no way we're ever gonna be able to figure out how to talk to any extraterrestrials we may encounter if we can't figure out to communication with whales, elephants, and maybe dolphins, too. I mean, we're so closely related to these creatures -- certainly infinitely more so than we will be to any ETs -- and if we can't even talk to them, with whom we have so much in common, relatively speaking, surely the chasm between us and aliens will be unbridgable.

I sometimes think that, because we've had to stop using tool-usage as a way to divide us humans from "the animals," one other clearer dividing line -- because obviously there is something that distinguishes homo sapiens from other animals -- may be that we make art, that we tell one another stories. And then, as a corollary, I sometimes imagine that whalesong is actually whales telling stories to one another... and that, when we discover that, instead of attempting to move that bright line again, we'll finally give in and acknowledge that whales are "people" too. (Is "elephant art" art? I don't know... but I know it like it.)

duet link via Americablog

(Technorati tags: whalesong, interspecies communication)

I'm in this book. I think. I mean, author Lisa Chamberlain interviewed me while she was in the process of writing Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction, and I was invited to the book launch party, so I'm figuring something of what I spoke to her about being an independent thirtysomething creative person in the 2000s ended up in the book. Even if I didn't end up in the book, though, I'm looking forward to reading it, because Lisa and I are definitely sympatico on the whole Gen X thing. From her intro (which is available on her blog for the book):

Slackonomics is not an academic white paper; it is written for people who, for example, understand family dynamics from watching "Married With Children" and "The Simpsons." It is written for women who got in touch with their post-feminist rage through riot grrrl music and Thelma and Louise. It is written for people who might have dabbled in Corporate America, but found themselves working at one time or another in an entirely new arena or as free agents without having exactly planned for it. It is written for people who, regardless of whether they have taken a traditional route to marriage, parenthood, and homeownership, still don't exactly feel (or look or act) like "grown-ups." It is written for people with a sense of humor, who long ago developed an appreciation for the absurdity of life. (Pardon me if this is starting to sound like an Internet dating ad.) In other words, this book is a portrait of a generation, not a screed; it is descriptive not polemical. It is written for people interested in understanding the context that shapes our lives and how this generation will influence the future.

Wow. The International Space Station is almost starting to look like a real place:

In fact, it's almost starting to look like the ISS at the moment in the opening credits of Star Trek: Enterprise when the history of humanity's quest to explore shifts into humanity's future:

(That montage always makes me cry. Always. Even with the Russell Watson song.)

ISS image via Astronomy Picture of the Day

(Technorati tags: International Space Station, Enterprise)

Just came back from jury duty -- my first subpoena in a little over four years. And I gotta tell ya, I just about burst into tears watching the little juror-orientation video, which is, I think, the same one they showed us four years ago, but I don't remember it making me want to cry last time. There was all sorts of nonsense about our wonderful Constitution and the rights it extends to all humanity regarding justice and trial by jury and all that rot, and how the Baby America encoding these rights in its very DNA in the 18th century was A New Thing, and how it protects us all from dictatorish rule (kings used to tell juries how to vote, you know!), and stuff like that.

From George Carlin (1937-2008):

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

It's official:

TUCSON, Ariz. - Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.

"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

There's water on Mars. Say it again: There. Is. Water. On. Mars.

Can we please pack up the Conestoga wagons now and get our asses out there?

And hey! Now I can finally write that story that's been kicking around my head for years, the one about the first Irish bar on Mars. Cuz you know that'll be, like, the second business we establish there.

(Technorati tags: water on Mars)

My cat Cassie died last night. I took her to an emergency vet and had her put to sleep. It was a kindness: she was no longer enjoying her life, and a tumor that she'd had in one her feet since at least last autumn, which had not been bothering her much at all, suddenly became infected. She was suffering, and I was haunted by the fact that she had been suffering, for at least a couple of days, and there was nothing else to do.

From Rebecca West, who said this in 1913:

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.

And it's still true almost a century later.

Spotted at zombieswan, who seemed to take a bit of heartening from the fact that the bias meter at FlickFilosopher.com resulted from an embracing of a negative criticism, instead of letting said criticism bring me down. But that's the only way you can take some negative criticism: as an indication that you've hit a raw nerve. And that's a good thing to do, sometimes.