Glenn Reynolds has an extensive list of charities that will be helping with relief efforts along the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Glenn is also planning to use that post as the repository for the charity blogburst scheduled for tomorrow. If you post recommending a charity, or some other action to help, link back to the post referenced in the previous paragraph. He will use that post to list both bloggers and charities. That way, readers of any blog will have ready access to recommendations on all the blogs.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As awful as things look now, they are certain to look even worse -- at least for the short term. However, I predict that five or ten years from now, New Orleans will be restored to much like it was before.

Tying this to a SciFi theme, I feel like I have "seen" this before, in my mind's eye, while reading Lucifer's Hammer, in the descriptions of the post-impact flooding. The looting, the rapid loss of civilization.

Also, I remember David Brin (a very good, albeit leftist, SF author) writing in Earth about the futility of holding back mother nature:

...The Big Easy had class all right. In decline, there remained an air of seedy blaisance, and even the inevitable bandit types believed in courtesy.

He listened to the barge horns and thought of the manatees that had inhabited this area, back when La Salle's men first poled their way through endless marshes, trading ax heads for furs. The manatees were long gone, of course. And soon...relatively soon...so would New Orleans.

The dying of any city begins at its foundation....

Logan had inspected hundreds of kilometers of embankments, thrown up in forlorn efforts to save the doomed shore. More tall levees contained the river, whose gradient flattened over time. Suspended silt began falling out even north of Baton Rouge. Soon the sluggish current no longer held back the sea. Salinity increased.

Upstream, the Mississippi fought like an anaconda, writhing to escape. The contest was one of raw power. And Logan knew where it would be lost....

Fortunately, Claire would move away long before the Mississippi burst through the Old River Control Structure or some other weak point, spilling into that peaceful plain of cane fields and fish farms....

In effect, he could only pray the Corps' new barriers were as good as they claimed. It was possible....

But rivers see decades, even centuries, as mere trifles.

The Mississippi rolled by. And, not for the first time, Logan wondered if Daisy might be right after all. I try to find solutions that work with Earth's forces. I like to think I've learned from the mistakes of past engineers.

But didn't they, too, think they built for the ages?

He remembered what Shelley had written, about an ancient pharaoh:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

...Can we build nothing that lasts? Nothing worth lasting?

Logan sighed. He had been away too long. He turned away from the patient river and took the rusted, creaking iron stairs back into the ancient city.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:57 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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(Via Clark Gable aka LDH)

Posted by: JohnL at 09:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I actually love that description. I could be that bot.

(Via LDH and Owlish).

Posted by: JohnL at 10:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Even if you're triskaidekaphobic, you should find something to like at Chan's edition of the Carnival of Music this week.

Follow all of her links, and discover some new bloggers, some new musical knowledge, or both.

We need volunteers to host future carnivals. It's easy and fun! Sign up here.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here's a few more words on my way to a million. I got bit by the bug hard last night, and I'm writing a story. I've got more than 1500 words so far, and most of the major plot mapped out.

This is intended to be a juvenile SF book, along the lines of Between Planets or Space Cadet by Heinlein. It takes place on Mars.

So far there are only two characters that I have a solid grip on: a father and a son.

I've put a snippet of dialogue in the extended entry. This is pretty rough (not heavily edited by any means), but I'm curious: does this sound like a natural conversation between a dad and a 12-year-old?

Does it make you want to learn more about these characters?

Let me know what you think.
more...

Posted by: JohnL at 10:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Has anyone (other than Stephen Green) noticed that Jeff Goldstein has been on frakkin' fire recently?

He had a brief existential crisis a few months ago, but his writing over the past few months has really sharpened, becoming even more insightful and provocative.

Take these excerpts, for example:

Posted by: JohnL at 09:54 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 94% on nerdiness

You scored higher than 47% on geekosity

You scored higher than 26% on dork

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid

And here I thought I was a geek.

(Via Nerd Owlish).

Posted by: JohnL at 08:50 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Does anyone know of a decent online archive of Martian maps, including the highest resolution scans from the most recent orbiters, organized like Google maps?

I'm thinking specifically of a draggable, clickable, zoomable Martian atlas.

I've done some googling around, but haven't found anything like this yet.

Any leads would be much appreciated.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Head on over the pond to Musicircus to check out the 12th installment of the Carnival of Music.

I especially liked the linked articles discussing programming of new music, critiquing copyright extension, and listing a huge number of jazz blogs.

Thanks, Rob, for hosting this week. Great job!

If you would like to host, we have an opening on September 5, and then a wide open schedule from September 19 on. Please let me know if you have a link to include in a future carnival, or if you would like to host.

Posted by: JohnL at 08:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Be sure to check out Lynn's new look (she substituted Palatino Book Antiqua for Times New Roman, it seems).

Also, SciFi Ranter Girl has an awesome new banner featuring the green Orion Slave Girls of Star Trek.

Enjoy the new looks!

Posted by: JohnL at 11:24 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I want one.

(I already have a folding phone, which I have to open like a classic communicator to speak into, but still...)

(via aTypical Joe).

Posted by: JohnL at 11:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jeff at Gravity Lens points us to a nice gallery of famous paintings featuring MST3K characters.

Very funny. I loved that show.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I read this and especially this part:

"Researchers continue to look for new ways to counteract the physical changes associated with long-term space flight whether through diet, exercise, medication or a combination of strategies."

What's missing from that list? How about, say, engineering? Why don't any of these studies ever look at testing a centrifugal/centripetal force method of creating quasi-gravity?

It's not like the concept is a new one. After all, Wernher von Braun had already dreamed of the "wheel" space station so poetically realized in 2001: A Space Odyssey as early as the 1950s.

I'm surprised there haven't been any tests of the concept yet. It seems like it would have been pretty simple to already have built a rat-scale ring that would have fit in a shuttle bay (or one of the station modules) to see how the forces would have affected the rats. Is there a certain minimum diameter needed to prevent disorienting coriolis effects?

Does anyone know of any tests along these lines? It seems a lot easier than trying to change human biology with medications.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Princess Cat emailed me a link to Virginia Tech's statement regarding the recent Saudi visit during which classes were segregated by sex.

Here's the nut of the statement:

Separation by gender in an instructional setting is not compatible with Virginia Tech policies and procedures. There is clearly a disconnect between our fundamental commitment to non-discrimination based on gender and our commitment to a climate for work and learning based on mutual respect and understanding.

Or, in other words, "our commitment not to discriminate based on sex conflicted with our commitment not to discriminate based upon culture."

That's the trick, isn't it? How do we maintain ourselves as an open, liberal culture in the face of backwards, closed cultures?

Posted by: JohnL at 10:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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One argument that plain-English legal drafters often face when cleaning the cruft out of old contractual boilerplate is that the old language is somehow more "precise."

Take, for example, the familiar phrases "due and payable" and "null and void." They are so common that ordinary lay people bandy them about when trying to "formalize" a business arrangement.

Yet a quick look at the respective terms' definitions reveals that these are needless dualisms. The words mean basically the same thing.

Of course, give a clever lawyer two words and she'll argue that they have different shades of meaning. After long use, there will be a strong reflex against deleting "due and payable" and substituting the simple "due."

Which is why it is very refreshing to run across a legal opinion like this one every now and then. This judge not only "gets" plain English, he explains one of the reasons why legal English frequently uses two words where one will do. Here's how he smacks down a lawyer for trying to argue that there is a difference between "free and clear" and simply "clear" title.

"Monfort contends, 'Although a "clear title" is one that is not subject to any restrictions, the case at bar involved a "free and clear" title, which is the same as a marketable title.' So, according to Monfort, a free and clear title is worse than a clear title. Say what?

"Would that Harold had not lost the Battle of Hastings.

"Free and clear mean the same thing. Using both is an unnecessary lawyerism. Free is English; clear is from the French clere. After the Norman Conquest, English courts were held in French. The Normans were originally Vikings, but after they conquered the region of Normandy, they became French; then they took over England. But most people in England, surprisingly enough, still spoke English. So lawyers started using two words for one and forgot to stop for the last nine hundred years.

"So free and clear do not mean separate things; they mean, and were always meant to mean, exactly the same thing. Just as null and void and due and payable mean the same thing. All of these couplets are redundant and irritating lawyerisms. And they invite just what has happened here - an assertion that they somehow have different meanings.

"The Norman Conquest was in 1066. We can safely eliminate the couplets now....

"Nine hundred years later, courts in Ohio are still dealing with the consequences of the Norman invasion. We can only hope that some day logic will prevail over silly tradition."

Would that there were more judges like Judge Painter. And more lawyers that would think rather than merely ape what previous lawyers have always done.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I was saddened to read today that Robert Moog, inventor of the line of electronic synthesizers bearing his name, died yesterday of a brain tumor.

Moog instruments play prominent roles in much of my favorite music from my childhood and teen years: from the Moog Taurus pedals and MiniMoogs that brought to life the Rush albums from 1977 through 1981, to the Moog III that Keith Emerson took on tour, to the eerie soundscapes that Wendy Carlos evoked in her soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange.

I own a Moog synthesizer, the Liberation.

Mr. Moog will be missed. I have been meaning to buy the Fjellestad biography, and will now make a point of doing so.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You know those awful tunes that stick with you, even though you loathe them?

"We Built This City" by Starship is one of those for me.

It seems that this awful bit of "music" also had an annoying enough video to have stuck with John (no relation) at SFSignal. John had trouble finding a clip of the worst part of the video. I was able to find and excerpt the wretched moment for his viewing "pleasure."

Here you go, John.

Posted by: JohnL at 05:54 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Having recently completed Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I can endorse without any reservation whatsoever this hilarious, accurate, and spoiler-filled condensed version of the story: Part 1. Part2.

(Via GeekPress).

Posted by: JohnL at 11:14 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Via SFSignal, a couple of great Lord of the Rings music videos.

While you're at Albino Blacksheep's site, be sure to check out these other fine videos:

• Miko Miko Nurse - teh roxxors. Like an epileptic seizure.
• Schfifty Five - "my IQ is 55." No kidding.
• French Erotic Film - and it's not erotic. More like Gilliam on acid. And Whisky.
• I Like Bukkake - Lyrics NSFW. This is just too weird.

Enjoy.

Update: And be sure to check out the Llama song. Especially you guys.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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