Hummingbird on the Wing

Ginger Cookies

2010-01-06T02:49:39Z

Brought these to B'more this weekend and got a request for the recipe. Here it is!

From allrecipies.com with small modifications, most significantly the addition of allspice.

3/4 cup butter (no substitutes), softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp salt
~2 tbsp sugar

Place oven racks at middle-high and middle-low positions. Preheat oven to 350 F. Cover two (or more) baking sheets in parchment paper. Combine the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt; set aside. Cream butter and sugar in a separate mixing bowl. Beat in egg and molasses. Gradually add dry ingredients to the other ingredients. Roll into 1 1/2" balls, then roll in extra sugar. (I used a piece of rubbermaid, but I think a pie plate is more traditional, and really, any plate with a slightly raised edge would work better. The key concept is flat, so the cookie can reach all the sugar.) Place 2" apart on baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10-12* minutes or until puffy and lightly browned, switching position and rotating back-to-front halfway through.

*More like 14 minutes for me, but I think my oven was running a bit low.

I like these because they're basically soft sugar cookies with tons of spices. It's easy and relatively painless to clean up after (unlike any recipe that starts, "melt the chocolate"), but if I'm bringing these to an event with a crowd I'd probably double the recipe.

Three Things Make an Update: New Year's Eve, New Year's Weather, Last Year's Goals

2010-01-06T00:29:51Z

Me versus the epic work stack; my short day was not. Dump the work stuff at home, get back out the door. Bring an umbrella. Definitely bring an umbrella. Sacrifice a scarf to the Metro Center gods. Drink mead. Who knew mead was delicious? Contribute alphabet soup hilarity to the federal contract lawyer stories. Watch a rhinestone light show. Chaos at the metro transfers: stay ahead of the fools dropping glass ex-Baccardi on the platform and busting open a six-pack. Doze through the crowds, walk through the night, fall in the bed. Happy 2010!

New Year's Day was unusually warm, but 2010 is making up for a gentle start with fierce cold. 20 F isn't that bad, as long as you're dressed for it, and as long as the wind doesn't kick up. However, the colder it gets, the less wind is necessary to feel you're getting chomped to the bone.

Looking back at the last year's goals, I didn't do a great job, but I made progress on most goals. I took my GREs; I took major trips to Chicago, Madison and San Francisco; I at least tried to exercise, though not consistently. I saved like a reasonable person and not a lunatic; I was good about culling things I wasn't using, but lousy about vacuuming. The social life was a mixed bag.

2010 Goals:

1.) Social life: expand this. Dating may be involved.
1a.) Be nicer to people.
2.) Better living through actual budgeting. Spreadsheets may be involved.
2a.) I can haz car? Please? Please please please please? (To be answered by upcoming annual reviews and end of fiscal year bonuses, if any.)
3.) Level up professionally: start hacking on Perl, coming to grips with bioinformatics, and positioning myself from there. Spend more time thinking career and less being annoyed with the problem of the day.

Broad strokes, but why think small?

My Life is Fascinating to Me

2009-12-30T04:22:00Z

Tonight I am zoning out in front of a Nova special on evolutionary biology instead of doing anything that might be related to actually working on biology. Apparently, the magic apathy number is about 9.5 hours of sunlight and/or 27F and/or leaving the house when the sun is barely up and leaving work when the sun is gone, take your pick. I was in a bizarrely great mood when we had two feet of snow on the ground: I blame the albedo.

(BTW, the Nova sponsors are hilarious, because I know these names. Hi HHMI! I was always too timid to ask you for money as an undergrad: now I know better! Hi Promega! Your machines make my day better.)

Before I left for dad's this Christmas, I turned the thermostat down to 64F in the name of environmentalism and my electricity bill. Neither Oshkosh nor I has bothered turning it up since. When poor heat-loving M. gets back from her Hawaiian vacation, she's going to be so traumatized.

For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I get to spend tomorrow's lunch hour trying to rent a car for next weekend. Since I plan to open phone calls to the nearest rental stores by asking what additional insurance I need / should get as a non-car-owning person, I am super thrilled, but hey, better now, when I am trying to avoid epic zipcar charges, than in a crisis. When I am done, there may be a "how to" post, if only for myself.

Holiday Weekend

2009-12-28T04:07:37Z

Yesterday I experienced a five hour Lego fugue while watching The Hunt for Red October and Band of Brothers. Apparently I really am an eight year old boy at heart: this hypothesis would also explain why I think of makeup as something that happens to other people.

Dad and Second Wife are enthusiastically packing in preparation for March, when Second Wife hits retirement and they relocate to Arizona. This has been coming since about 10 seconds after dad figured out his career track didn't include transfer back to the West: dad's decoration style since 1989 has been American Southwest In Exile. (Sometimes he mixes it up and adds some electric elements, leading to the adobe-and-computer-and-chili-pepper-lights themed home office.) So this weekend we ate lavishly, baked, sorted deep-storage boxes for moving / donation / trash, recounted horrible family stories about the dead and absent, and watched (for values that include extensive laptop time) Quantum of Solace. Second Wife thought it was dumb, which brought out my "yeah, Bond flick, duh" side.

When I returned home with the final dregs of my childhood (see "moving and sorting") I thought, "I should try to reconstruct the Legos, take a couple of snapshots for posterity, then donate them somewhere." Five hours later I was thinking, "I should buy more Legos and we should make them an entertainment fixture in the living room! It would be a roommate bonding experience!" Regression is hilarious.

Today I saw Avatar in 3D with samthereaderman (cathydalek bowed out with a head cold). It is a triumph of really spiffy special effects over an average-to-obnoxious screenplay. I saw it called Dances with Blue Cats and there is an unfortunate ring of truth to that. So this is likely to piss off people involved in disability activism, or actively engaged in the standing cultural appropriation / racism discussion, or anyone who can count the number of awesome women in the film vs the number of awesome women who die for the cause. Also, the sound effects and soundtrack did not win me over (the future has to sound right) and I think the laws of physics as established in the movie took a beating for the sake of the plot. So I am on the fence: I loved the visual effects, and my "the future is shiny" nerve center got a nice hit, but the screenplay didn't live up to the eye candy.

Tomorrow I go to work. I plan to motivate myself with Sherlock Holmes some day after work. Do I need to see RDJ in theaters? Technically, no. Do I need a reason to be sunny and upbeat at work? Yes I do.

Brown Sugar Cookies

2009-12-26T18:29:18Z

Brown Sugar Cookies
From Cook's Illustrated

When I made these, they came out of the oven fairly soft, but hardened so much they were only really edible as "dipping cookies" (dip in milk / drink of choice) the next day. If you think the only way to eat cookies is with milk, this is fantastic, because they do a great job absorbing liquid and softening into crumbly deliciousness, but if you like your cookies without milk these aren't as good. Note: before/after pictures not only not particularly to scale, they're probably not even on the same scale relative to each other.

14 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 3/4 sticks)
1/4 cup granulated sugar (about 1 3/4 ounces)
2 cups packed dark brown sugar (14 ounces)
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour plus 2 tablespoons (about 10 1/2 ounces)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk(1)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1. Heat 10 tablespoons butter in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes(2). Continue to cook, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl. Stir remaining 4 tablespoons butter into hot butter to melt; set aside for 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 large (18 by 12-inch) baking sheets with parchment paper. In shallow baking dish or pie plate(3), mix granulated sugar and 1/4 cup packed brown sugar, rubbing between fingers, until well combined; set aside. Whisk flour, baking soda, and baking powder together in medium bowl; set aside.

3. Add remaining 1 3/4 cups brown sugar and salt to bowl with cooled butter; mix until no sugar lumps remain, about 30 seconds. Scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula; add egg, yolk, and vanilla and mix until fully incorporated, about 30 seconds. Scrape down bowl. Add flour mixture and mix until just combined, about 1 minute. Give dough final stir with rubber spatula to ensure that no flour pockets remain and ingredients are evenly distributed.(4)

4. Divide dough into 24 portions, each about 2 tablespoons, rolling between hands into balls about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Working in batches, toss balls in reserved sugar mixture to coat and set on prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart, 12 dough balls per sheet. (Smaller baking sheets can be used, but it will take 3 batches.)

5. Bake one sheet at a time(5) until cookies are browned and still puffy and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft (cookies will look raw between cracks and seem underdone), 12 to 14 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking. Do not overbake.

6. Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes; using wide metal spatula, transfer cookies to wire rack and cool to room temperature.

(1)I haven't figured out what to do with the white. When I was a kid we'd make angel food cake and yellow cake at the same time to solve this problem, but so far no really elegant solution for the One White Problem has presented itself.

(2)Like a fool, I dumped in all 14 tablespoons at the beginning.

(3)Or a big plate.

(4)By then it's pretty stiff.

(5)Uh, yeah, I sort of skipped that part too.

Double Chocolate Cookies

2009-12-25T23:44:03Z

Dad's Double Chocolate Cookies

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cups white vanilla sugar

3 eggs
3 tsbp vanilla extract

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp expresso powder

2 1/2 cups 60% dark chocolate pistoles (think little flattish chocolate thingies - try dark chocolate chips, or a bar of dark chocolate chopped up)

Move oven racks to middle-top and middle-bottom positions, and preheat oven to 350F. Cover cookie sheets in parchment paper. Sift or whisk together dry ingredients: flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, expresso powder. Set aside. Cream butter, and dark and white sugars, until light in color and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add dry ingredients (in two parts?), mix on low until just incorporated. Add pistoles, mix until just incorporated. (Note: dough will be very dense and hard to work with at this point, so good luck mixing even that much.) Cover mixing bowl with plastic wrap and let sit ~ 15 minutes. Use a tablespoon to measure out cookie dough: roll between hands and place on covered baking sheets. Stick in oven for ~16 minutes, rotating back to forward and switching top and bottom racks halfway through. Cool on baking sheets or wire cookie racks.

Additional notes: several of the "specialty" ingredients (vanilla sugar, dutched dark chocolate, dark chocolate pistoles, expresso powder) are items dad's trying to get rid of and are probably amenable to substitution. The original recipe called for cherries soaked in rum and toasted pecans, which would probably be excessively rich with all that chocolate.

If I See One More Piece of Chocolate I May Lose My Lunch. Which Was Also Chocolate.

2009-12-25T18:33:50Z

My father has never heard of Celine Dion.

"Celine Dion?", I said, over blueberry pancakes and all natural pomegranate juice. "Celine 'My Heart Will Go On' Dion? 'It's All Coming Back To Me Now'? Queen of the '80s and '90s power ballad?"

Now dad's accusing me of making him look like a blithering idiot on the internet. He is pulling up a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young documentary on the HD as an example of "real music". Apparently, liking CSNY is proof you are not an idiot. This would be a lot more convincing if he weren't reminiscing about what he got up to when he saw CSNY in '74; also if I hadn't seen people try to use Coldplay and the Decemberists as evidence against the same charges. Bless you, dad: 30 years is the only thing separating you from the hipsters.

Next up: double-chocolate cookies in the oven. Dad and I agree the recipe is suspect, but that's okay: I know where to find a triple-ginger cookie recipe for backup desert.

At the Homestead

2009-12-25T03:43:41Z

I got out of work on time today. I still haven't recovered from the shock. However, Chinese buffet with dad and Second Wife helped a lot.

It's good to see dad, and it's great to veg out and mooch delicious food (tomorrow may be Experiments With Baking day), but I am mildly creeped out because there are no bookcases in the house. I finished one book on the metro, so I am down to a collection of best fantasy short stories of 2006. And the internet, of course. Send help. Send nonfiction. Send my bookcases. I go home Saturday to my to-do list.

To those who celebrate, have a happy Christmas Eve, and a merry Christmas. Everyone else, enjoy your Friday.

My Three Day Weekend (Which Was Really One and a Half)

2009-12-23T03:21:25Z

Thanks for the "what to do with shredded papers" suggestions: chucking in the garbage/recycling seems to be security-acceptable. (I would ask, "what would you do with my identity? I have nothing worth stealing," but I am certain someone would come up with an appropriately gruesome story. So let's skip storytelling hour and say thanks again for the advice.)

Tonight's attempt at ginger sugar cookies ended in a single, flat, burned "cookie" the size of the pan, that tasted like pure butter. Tentative guesses: overbeat ingredients, not enough flour (2cups flour to 1 cup butter seems...low). I may find another sugar cookie recipe and try adding ginger to it as a workaround.

Snowpocalypse has been a blast: the official snowfall was 22" - 24", but it felt more like 17" in my neighborhood. I had adventures in the snow on Saturday and Sunday, and took some lousy pictures that might eventually be photoshopped into decency. (Or cat macros. Is it still a cat macro if there isn't a cat?) Some of the drifts were hip-high, and I felt lucky I didn't have a car, at least until I volunteered to help dig out M's. Continuing what is becoming a tradition of practical gifts, someone is getting a snow shovel for Christmas. I have great hopes for January and February.

The Perils of Paperwork

2009-12-22T03:01:37Z

So once I've faithfully shredded many, many financial papers, what do I do with the fluff? Throw it in a dumpster? Loose it on the four winds? Sink it in a river? Set it on fire? I'm clueless here.

"Snowfall rates of one and a half to three inches an hour are likely..."

2009-12-19T06:03:25Z

...therefore, my life has blown past the other side of FML into awesome. And I have just the fabulous snow boots for the occasion.

Hump Day Is Over

2009-12-17T04:14:33Z

Let's take a look at the week so far:

MONDAY: Fillings.
TUESDAY: Pay let us never speak of that final again.
WEDNESDAY: New-to-me thing takes four and a half hours, not three as planned. Broken lab equipment is broken. HR lunch presentations day one of two.
THURSDAY: Second half of Wednesday's thing; HR lunch presentations day two of two.
FRIDAY: Cannot come soon enough.

Looking at the first half of the week, maybe there's a reason I was so on edge today.

LJ is having a promotional: paid users get "$10 off a one year paid account" coupons that can only be used by unpaid journals. As blatant promotionals go, this one's pretty obvious. But if you've been on the fence, comment or PM, and I'll punt a coupon your way.

Baking on the Internet

2009-12-16T02:04:11Z

So I have a recipe which calls for one egg plus one egg yolk. What can I do with one egg white?

ETA: I froze it. Egg-and-a-half omelet this weekend, I guess.

On a Lighter Note

2009-12-14T17:43:34Z

I am pleased to say that Operation Spend Down That HSA got a significant boost from this morning's dental fillings. I will have a brilliant, cavity-free smile as soon as the novocaine wears off and I can ~~drink without spitting or drooling~~ feel my cheek again.

If only I could find my study mojo, I would be all set. Unfortunately, it turns out I am really freaking bored with class. Next semester: different study routine. Maybe more reading the 90% irrelevant background material before class, then lecture review after class to cement the big points? Or blowing off the second half of medical genetics in favor of statistics or a computer language class. I'll deal with it after tomorrow.

Super-mean Rant WRT Peter Watts' Lousy Week

2009-12-13T23:49:49Z

I have figured out why my photoshop output's dropped since college: I've had no exams that needed study procrastination. Someone please tell me if I got over-enthusiastic and illegible with the text.

The big news in the SF blogs last week was 1.) payment rates for short stories, 2.) Canadian author Peter Watts' run-in with American border police. I have no comment about the first, but on the second: the border police suck! Who knew that getting out of your car and engaging an armed officer of the law in a hostile fashion would end badly? I'm rolling by eyes pretty hard, because it's like a bunch of privileged people noticed that hey, abuse of authority sucks, wow. Somewhere, the many, many people who look "kinda like that Bin Laden guy" and were too afraid to cuss out the border patrol in Spanish and Greek and Hindi are mocking the pasty white people. I am most in sympathy with Jo Walton's reaction that says, "well, do you want to live in a police state?" Because my answer is "not really, but the other option is taking the feds to court and spending a lot of time losing on appeal." There is a small, mean part of me that is glad some vaguely middle-class white guy with a lot of internet buddies got pepper-sprayed and dumped back in Canada with callous thoughtlessness, because law suits are not started by the most downtrodden, and I don't particularly care for the security paranoia that's still griping the US. (If you really want your head explode, I recommend the TSA blog. It's almost not worth your time to find examples of CYA and security a hapless 20something could defeat by accident. Not that I've ever carried through shampoo, conditioner, antifrizz serum and a fourth bottle of liquids, nope. Cough.) So I wish Mr. Watts a long and vicious lawsuit for great justice.

Just, you know, my $0.02 American.

...and back to the lecture review I am obviously displacing some hostility from.

All-Important Polling

2009-12-10T00:03:57Z

View poll: Cookie poll!

Important context for bonus question: I thought about this for two days. Then I got a Christmas check in the mail. Then I thought about it for another day. Now I am posting a poll.

Sheepage! Question Meme

2009-12-08T04:29:43Z

I am taking a break from mind-numbing lecture review. There are eight days until the final, and after tomorrow night I will be about two lectures behind on reading and review. But some of this is really basic, so I can focus on the parts that are blatant and cruel memorization, more difficult material, or new to me. If I never hear another lecture about a restriction enzyme ever again, I'd be really okay with that. And apparently I have finally absorbed the fundamental rules of Hardy-effin'-Weinberg equilibrium. Application is still going to be an adventure, but that's why I put in a leave request for next Monday.

In the meantime, meme from twistedchick:

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is futile." or "Resistance is useful."

• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

1. You have been given unlimited travel money and a year away from any responsibilities. Where will you go? What will you do? (It can only be used for travel expenses.)

The time would be even better than the money, because the first thing I'd do is visit everyone I haven't seen in a while. So I would visit Ann Arbor, MI; Santa Barbara and Irvine, CA; Austin, TX; Chicago; Blacksburg, VA; and then I'd start on the "places to go before I die" / "seven big continents" list. Back to San Francisco; Montreal, Canada; the Big Island of Hawaii and the observatories on Mauna Kea; Japan; Australia; India - I think India would be overwhelming, really amazing if it didn't kill me; Dubai; Antarctica/McMurdo (with associated HELP PENGUIN TRAUMA HELP messages) come to mind quickly. Hit Macchu Piccu, maybe? And Africa. Oh! I could go to the World Cup playoffs! (South America, June 11th - July 11th.) Do I get to bring people with? I would make tessfawcett drag me around Eastern Europe.

I think I could fill a year with travel. I'd be pretty tired at the end, though.

2. What author from the past (any era, any past) would you like to meet?

I have already met some of my childhood and teen heroes, either in person or through his or her internet presence, so that's tough! I think it would be interesting to meet Alice Sheldon, or Rosemary Kirstein (okay, I'd mostly pump Kirstein for details about the next Steerswoman book, and general series spoilers). Sheldon lived a really diverse life, and I'd be curious to meet her at different points in her life.

3. What, if any, is your favorite curse word?

Fuck. With a little creativity, it has infinite applicability in infinite situations.

4. What music that you especially like do you think I should listen to?

If you haven't listened to Dar Williams, I'd check out her album Mortal City. I think "The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis Of A Co-Ed" is hilarious. I also like the final song, "Mortal City", even though I don't think it's very good. It speaks to me on an emotional level, if that makes any sense.

5. What does your ideal dream car look like?

Four wheels, goes voom? It's more about the sound: fantastic speakers, well-tuned engine. In good weather, a convertible, and in bad weather, a roomy sedan with sunroof and moonroof suitable for throwing boxes in the back and driving to better weather. Something like a Honda Civic or a Mazda 3: engine block appropriate for its size, handles highway speeds and city parking, economical in the sense that I can buy it and drive it into the ground with lots of maintenance and few crises. If I have a choice, I want a car which is neither white (dirt), black (heat and night driving), gray (fog), red (insurance) or beige (bo-ring). Bright blue would be good, but color is not a deal-breaker. Except for maybe red. The sunroof may be a deal-breaker: I am that sort of over-privileged snot. If I can't have a sunroof, I will take the bus in the dark, cold winter nights until I can make it happen.

So apparently I am answering meme questions instead of finishing my lecture review. Really, can there be a few hours more in the day? Just a couple? Please?

Winter Wonderland? (Bah Humbug Version)

2009-12-05T05:26:11Z

Today's forecast called for snow tomorrow, but I am wise to the ways of DC weather: until I see actual white stuff, I'm betting on slushy flurries in the predawn, transitioning to rain by noon. Were it January I might have hope - or fear - that my Saturday shopping plans would be adversely impacted by the weather.

My Life is Awesome

2009-12-04T04:54:19Z

This is the week that will not stop giving: if I got home before 7 PM any night this week, it was so I could turn around and run errands. Work has also been a classic example of trying to fit 9 hours of work into an 8 hour day. It's been busy bordering on crazy busy, and I do not think I have always organized my time for maximum efficiency. If I had, my room would not be piles of stuff.

That Was Unexpected

2009-12-01T02:35:33Z

Today I learned that brussels sprouts fried in olive oil are sweet and delicious. Tomorrow's lunch: brussels sprouts and asparagus with dad's lentil and sausage stew-like soup! Mmmm, food.

Holiday Bonding Through HD TV

2009-11-28T01:26:49Z

Me: "Alaska State Troopers"?
Dad: Uh-huh.
Me: You're kidding me.
Dad: Ha ha, no.
Me: It's not a parody?
Dad: Nope.
Me: Not "Reno 9-1-1, Alaska Edition"?
Dad: I think it's pie time.

Apparently, pie includes brown sugar ice cream.

High Concentrations of Tryptophan and Potatoes

2009-11-27T02:30:18Z

Happy American Thanksgiving! For the rest of you, have a nice Thursday evening. Today I am grateful for dads who cook. Tonight I am noodling on Perl For Bioinformatics and generating about 20 lines of error message with a single extra backslash. Troubleshooting is hilarious, especially when pecan pie is on tap.

Backlog to the Future (October Reading)

2009-11-26T04:44:30Z

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin): I'm starting to notice a trend: I like biographies that do a great research job on the individual, and tie that person into the larger social context. (Case in point: the Alice Sheldon bio.) So take a heavily end-noted biography that does all that and is about science, and I say it is the best thing ever. The incidental trajectory of advanced physics' fall from innocence and entanglement with 20th century politics is a toe-curling bonus. Intellectually, I think I should be aware that science and politics have rarely not interpenetrated, because what you know affects what you can or think you can do, but it's possible to tell this story that starts "once upon a time in Copenhagen, a decade and a half after the Miracle Year" with Niels Bohr and the physics of the '20s, and make up a very romantic story about the trajectory of physics through the '50s, the h-bomb, and the cold war. And Oppenheimer's rise in the sciences, movement through Los Alamos and '50s politics, and fall from political grace are strongly tied into that story.

What I got out of this: Robert Oppenheimer was a scary smart, very complex person. Also sometimes very quotable. Not a particularly good parent. I want to write, "I can make it clearer; I can't make it simpler." (J. Robert Oppenheimer) somewhere prominent and obnoxious. Bird and Sherwin paint a fascinating portrait of someone who had a very firm, individual approach to life, internally consistent but frustrating to people who wanted a yes-man. In the 1930's, Oppenheimer was active in the leftist and radical intellectual circles; after the war, Oppenheimer gave a speech which the biographers quoted:

"It is a cruel and humorless sort of pun that so powerful a present form of modern tyranny should call itself by the very name of a belief in community, 'communism', which in other times evoked memories of villages and village inns and of artisans concerting their skills, and of men learning [to be] content with anonymity. But perhaps only a malignant end can follow the systematic belief that all communities are one community; that all truth is one truth; that all experience is compatible with all other; that total knowledge is possible; that all that is potential can exist as actual. This is not man's fate; this is this not his path; to force him on it makes him resemble not that divine image of the all-knowing and all-powerful but the helpless, iron-bound prisoner of a dying world." (p475)

An extensive look at a fascinating life. Absolutely recommended. In the land of small coincidences, this was my reading on my San Francisco trip (and for several weeks afterward); my sister and I nearly went to the Exploratorium, founded by Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank, but couldn't get the scheduling to work. Maybe next time.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A Novel (Mark Haddon): 15-year-old Swindon boy tries to solve the murder of a neighbor's dog. Oh, he's got an unspecified autism spectrum disorder. Someone recommended this a couple years ago, and I just now got around to it. If you have any familiarity with autism spectrum disorders, you can check off the characteristic behaviors as you read. Some cursory googling suggests that people who do not have autism found this interesting and entertaining, but people who are autistic or routinely interact with autistic individuals are a little less sanguine, pointing out that Christopher Boone - the protagonist - is an amalgam of autism spectrum traits, and is remarkably self-reflective, and can't stand in for every autistic person everywhere. So I would say, if you're using this as a Handbook to Dealing With Your Autistic Whatever, you'd do better to google "autism" or "autism books" and do some nonfiction reading, but if you're looking for an interesting story, this may be of interest.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party (M. T. Anderson): A fictional slave's narrative in immediately pre-Revolution Boston. What people always neglect to mention about the American Revolution is that it was an illegal (if highly popular) guerrilla action against a legitimate (by England's lights) government, and without that little detail it feels like another retelling of first-grade history. I think the focus on how, really, the Boston revolutionaries were in it for the money and property (westward expansion, slaves) makes it much murkier and interesting.

I also flipped through many of Catherine Asaro's Skolia stories: Primary Inversion, The Radiant Seas, The Moon's Shadow, Skyfall, "Stained Glass Heart", "A Roll of the Dice", "Walk in Silence", "Aurora in Four Voices", The Quantum Rose. It's a sickness. Every few years I dip back into the romance-of-genealogy, and eventually I run out of books and get my head screwed back on straight. I am very lukewarm on Asaro's novels; I want to like them, but my enjoyment is generally derailed by repetitive plots: boy/girl meets girl/boy, someone is sexually menaced by a third party, generally one of the genetically engineered empire-running sadists, there's some explosions and maybe a standoff and some people-swapping and the boy and girl live happily ever after, usually with adorable, precocious biological children. Sometimes I have more specific issues. I know that The Quantum Rose is supposed to be a romance and a metaphor for quantum scattering; I am insufficiently physics-enabled to say how well the metaphor maps, but I did not react well to the romance: I can hear tessfawcett saying, "Her ex-fiancee was abusive, but her new husband is an alcoholic and she will cure him with the power of her love. So that's all right!" in a pretty sarcastic tone. I live in hope that Asaro will write something I like as much as The Radiant Seas, but so far no joy. Just be glad that this time, I stopped before the newest book, Diamond Star, where - this is what Amazon tells me - a prince of the Ruby Dynasty runs away to Earth under an assumed name, where he pursues his dream to become a rock star. I cannot make this stuff up: telepathic noble rock star. I don't think I'm allowed to read that without altering my consciousness through booze or trauma.

Science Fiction: The Best of the Year (2006) (Ed. Rich Horton): From the dollar rack at the used book store.

The good: "The Jenna Set" by Daniel Kaysen is a cute double-romance with some statistics noise and weak AI/really good answering machines. I was entertained. Michael Swanwick's "Triceratops Summer" met my expectations without exceeding them. "The Fate of Mice" by Susan Palwick was cute, but featured a plucky little girl and a talking lab rat. "The Policeman's Daughter" (Wil McCarthy) is set in his 'Queendom of Sol' universe, started on a low note for me, and gradually built to the final line - "Fool! She's five months from dumping you!" - which is what tipped it over for me. "Finished" by Robert Reed is not a good story, but it's an interesting failure: the premise is an immortal pyramid scheme, where people with a great deal of money or a very large loan can be transformed from a biological person to a silicate/metal body, who can accumulate experience but are 'finished' - can't change on a neuron level. What's interesting is that it's also a little like the "memes" Richard Dawkins described in The Selfish Gene: something that evolves, replicates, mutates in a human ecology. Finishing relies on an initially human population, and on convincing people that being finished will increase ecological fitness. Whether this is true is severely undermined by the actions of the finished in the story, so it makes me look at the entire story from a biology perspective: are the finished parasites on humanity, or commensals? What are the opportunity costs of the process? I think this is a very interesting story to me, but mostly because of the experiences I bring to it, and I'm not sure it's actually really good, or would appeal to a larger audience in the same way.

The meh: "Bank Run" by Tom Purdom is the epitome of "meh": for two weeks I read about two pages a day. It had a couple of interesting ideas severely hampered by presentation and my dislike for the main character. Douglas Lain's "A Coffee Cup/Alien Invasion" was experimental in the "someone else's interesting failure" way. "The Edge of Nowhere" (James Patrick Kelley) featured the Steadfast Girlfriend and the Adventurous Boyfriend; servicable without doing a thing for me. "Heartwired" by Joe Haldeman was trite. It was a vignette in search of a hook, and the "choose your own ending, only not" conclusion did not work for me. Howard Waldrop's "The King of Where-I-Go" has been oversold to me. James Van Pelt's "The Inn at Mount Either" hangs on whether I care about dumb tourists who can't follow safety precautions. Mostly I was distracted by the vagueness of the precautions. "Search Engine" by Mary Rosenblum wants to be a novel; a novella is the wrong pacing. Alastair Reynolds' "Understanding Space and Time" is, like, the back half of 2001, only with Elton John hallucinations likely to date this horribly. I got nothin' to explain this one.

The ugly: "Bliss" by Leah Bobet explores many American middle-class substance abuse cliches. Because, you know, druggies will roofie your Christmas dinner. Uh-huh. It's bad story-telling and a lousy understanding of addiction with a light garnish of hilariously bad phamaceutical R&D on the side, with bonus random blood draws for employment-related drug testing! It's not good. " 'You' by Anonymous", by Stephen Leigh lost me on the second line: "You also grimace a bit at the use of the second pronoun, thinking it both a bit akward and pretentious..." yep. Not to mention a lousy hook, and such stiff prose I didn't even bother skipping to the last sentence.

Skin Deep (Mark Del Franco): Laura Blackstone: PR director by day, freelance druid and/or high-powered player on the DC scene by night. Now her public and secret identities are on the trail of the same blown drug bust that may have political implications.

So: billed as a thriller, with magic. About a century back, the faerie realms merged/dumped magical beings into Earth, with surprisingly little backlash. Now the Irish and Germanic magical courts interact with the governments of the 21st century, with the Fae Guild - Laura Blackstone's employers - acting as the public face of the Fae Court, based out of what used to be Ireland. Laura works out of the DC branch, which is where my first major bump comes in: where the heck is the Guildhouse? Sort of by the Reagan building? On Capitol Hill? Up and over in NE or NW? del Franco fails the "feels like DC" suspension of disbelief test hard: for one thing, no one complains about the metro. Granted, that's because the milieu is high-powered fae who don't take public transit, but I'm pretty sure at least one of Blackstone's personas - the broke one - should have some familiarity with chronic weekend single-tracking and trying to find a decent grocery store in the city limits. And parking. There is a reason metro is so popular in DC, despite its many failings. Once you've broken the suspension of disbelief, I started questioning more of the setup - so, Farie is now on Earth, circa 1900-ish, how did WW1 go down? Religious implications? Racial/ethnic tensions? And why are all the paranormals drawn from European tradition? - which distracted me from the Burning Hunk of Love subplot, alas. Not sold.

Unfallen Dead (Mark Del Franco):Connor Grey, druid, ex-Guild guy who's lost his magic and is stuck on disability, sometimes Boston PD free-lancer, starts the book with an occult murder and ends it confronting the Opening of the Ways between life and death. I actually finished this at the beginning of November, but it sort of comes as a set with Skin Deep. The two novels share a universe, but Unfallen Dead is actually the third of a different series set in Boston, with different characters. Since Boston may as well be Faerie as far as I'm concerned, any setting issues completely passed me by: I was too busy enjoying the wacky characters and situations. norabombay did not mention the transdimensional motorcycle ride during her initial pitch, but it holds a special place in my heart. Connor's sometimes-girlfriend sometimes-it's-complicated Meryl Dian, the reappearance of Connor's partner from his high-flying New York City days, and my irrational appreciation for abrasive Boston-style social interaction may have played significant parts in my enjoyment of this novel.

Again, this is the third of the series, which probably explains a lot about why I liked it. On one hand, I generally try to read series in order; on the other, I really, really like picking apart the character evolution from the original premise stuff when I jump in midseries. (My first Darkover novel was Exile's Song at 13-ish, which, because of its semi-coauthorship status, can almost be considered post-series. I was disappointed to realize all the parts I liked best were side-effects of being the n book in a series written over 20 years.) Worldbuilding is my bulletproof attractor, and reverse-engineering the worldbuilding makes some deep-seated part of my brain hum happily.

Complaints? Oh, I could whine. The Fae are unthinkingly European, the "it's noir with fae, no wait it's urban fantasy with noir" trope mess is a mixed bag - okay, I actually like peanut butter in my chocolate, but it's not for everyone - and Connor's skewed disability-slash-evolving-superpowers could all be considered detractors, but this is the first book to make me laugh out loud in a really long time (seriously: transdimensional motorcycle ride, it's better than alcohol or even the red matter* for completely unhooking my logic processes). If you're looking for entertaining in the delightfully pulpish way, this is awesome. If you're looking for highbrow literature or a racefail-compliant experience, your head will explode about 100 pages in. All of my complaints fade in the light of entertainment, and my one true complaint: the cover is hideous. I am horribly tempted to photoshop something that offends my eyes less, because the novel is going to entertain me for years.

*It's been half a year since I saw the new Star Trek movie, and just saying "red matter" still cracks me up.

Numbers: 6 total plus Asaro rereads. 6 new, ~2.5 reread; 5(+~2.5) fiction, 1 nonfiction. 1 short story collection.

American Thanksgiving Will Rock

2009-11-25T05:47:12Z

Yesterday I had magic hands at work; today I had Hardy-effin'-Weinberg after work; tomorrow morning I will have crockpot chili for lunch, and an eight hour countdown to four free days. M. has been persuaded that she wants to spend Thanksgiving with me and dad instead of driving to Michigan; Oshkosh's boyfriend showed up tonight; I was catching up with tashok and cleaning up from a double batch of chocolate chip cookies when they got in. Now I am regretting the amount of sugar in my system. Mmm, chocolate.

The Backlog, Part One (September Reading)

2009-11-24T04:43:08Z

I had brilliant plans for a special two-month deal, but then I noticed it was swiftly heading for a three-month book log. So here's September.

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University (Kevin Roose): The subtitle says it all: a Brown University student transfers to Liberty University, bastion of evangelical thought, to learn what's behind all those conservative Christian stereotypes.

Basically, I was sold in the first section, "Prepare Ye", where Roose seeks help from one of his Christian friends to prepare for "Bible boot camp":

"So, do you think you're ready for a semester of Christianity?" she asked ... "No, that's not what I mean. I mean, are you spiritually ready?"

She took my silence as a no.

"Kev, places like Liberty are designed to transform skepticism into belief, and you're not going to be immune to that. You have to be open to the possibility that this semester is going to be bigger than you think." (p14)

Roose's frankness about the participatory nature of his semester (culturally) abroad is a key point: he talks about the changes in his perspective and ingrained behaviors as a result of obeying Liberty's stringent written and unwritten rules. He also takes a very human approach to his exploration of Liberty's culture, focusing on his interactions with individual dorm-mates and other people on campus. This is, fundamentally, about the building blocks of culture: individuals, in concert with their environment. One of Roose's Brown friends comes down for a weekend, and on seeing him interact in the dorms, Roose reflects: "Liberty students who struggle with lust. Secular Quakers who enjoy prayer. Evangelical feminists who come to Bible Boot Camp out of academic interest. I used to think my two worlds were a million miles apart. But tonight, the distance seems more like a hundred thousand miles. It's not a total improvement, but it's not meaningless, either." (p213) Which is not to say it's all smooth sailing, but Roose does a great job reminding liberals that hey! Conservative evangelicals are people too.

The Language of Bees (Laurie R. King): First of a two-part Russell-and-Holmes adventure which - about - I keep trying to type "Holmes' illegitimate son by Irene Adler comes for assistance finding his missing wife and daughter" with something like a straight face, and I cannot do it. Small adorable girls make a cameo, people race about England in dramatic fashion, and the arts world is mildly mocked. This is the umpteenth in the series, do not start here; people who like the series, you will like this. I am not sure if I should mention the thing with the ending or not; it's a spoiler but might be nice to know going in. I keep waiting for tragic foreshadowings of WWII and Holmes' passing, and remain disappointed that so far, this has not been played for significant pathos. I am not in love with the Holmes canon or character, so other people may have different reactions.

Science Fiction: The Best of the Year (2007) (Ed. Rich Horton): I saw this on the discount shelf and picked it up because ann_leckie had a story in it, and I realized I hadn't read any of her fiction, even though we've been reading each other's LJs for a couple of years now. I liked her story, and would love to do a book club sort of discussion of it, because I think different people would get different things out of it it. It wasn'tmy favorite in the collection, because Walter Jon Williams made an appearance in the table of contents. WJW is one of those writers who isn't high on my radar, but rarely fails to entertain me. Carolyn Ives Gilman's "Okanoggan Falls" also happened to hit several bullet-proof story attractors, including a major hook for further development. I am a novel-reader at heart. Blurbs for particular stories:

"Another Word for Map is Faith", Christoper Rowe: stopped just when it was getting interesting. How is faith capable of material feats in this future world? Is the callback to Le Guin's "Another Word for World is Forest" deliberate?

"Okanoggan Falls", Carolyn Ives Gilman: alien invasion story. This is interesting because of context, and because it opens so many doors. Okay, the alien sex pheromones didn't hurt. What's the difference between collaberation, survival, and assimilation?

"Saving for a Sunny Day, or the Benefits of Reincarnation", Ian Watson: the worldbuilding premise is, "AIs rule the world through soul-brokering", but about halfway through the driving question becomes, "why do AIs want to rule the world, and is this kind of evil?" but the story answers this with "well, maybe the AIs are controlling us all as part of their plan to survive the heat death of the universe, and there's something about farm animals and now we're done." There's a change in story focus from "AIs mediate reincarnation" to "what are the AI motives?" that causes a major story wobble.

"The Cartesian Theater", Robert Charles Wilson: flashback story about death and the soul, in a sort of hard-boiled venue. It's like a perfect recipe to make me say "meh", until the last paragraph, where it looks like the AIs (different AIs than Watson's) may have engineered a Scene for their own purposes.

"Hesperia and Glory", Ann Leckie: Epistolary story about a man who tried to return to his romantic Burroughs-esque Mars, as seen by a man who says, "how many Princes of Hesperia can there be? There is only room in the story for one. What of the rest of us?" This isn't a story about a Mars that never was, this is a story questioning the motives for never-Mars stories and why people keep writing them. Or that is my interpretation. Perhaps I have been hanging out with angry fangirls too much, but I appreciated the message while not being entirely sold on the narrative; epistolary stories start out one down with me, because I find the format so distracting.

"Incarnation Day", Walter Jon Williams: WJW proposes a world, tells a story about that world, delivers a twist and nests the small story of an "incarnation day" party into a larger story about the nature of AI-to-flesh children in an undated future. Rock on. The prose worked, the story fit the style and length, I was entertained and my brain pleasantly buzzed by the idea of virtual kids.

"Exit Before Saving", Ruth Nestvold: Woman goes crazy from overwork. Or something. Women going crazy and imploding? Really not my fictional thing.

"Inclination", William Shunn: Son sent by his father to labor with the posthumans for the good of the "pure" human society. It's an interesting setup: old-school space fanatics separate themselves from the larger community of self-modifying semi-post-humans with good AI, but story itself is a classic "religion sucks, and makes your daddy abusive" straw man. At the point where the protagonist is weeping for angel wings to bear him away from his harsh, conservatively religious life, I lost it. The conclusion, and the protag's inclusion into the larger world, is a satisfactory end,

"Life on the Preservation", Jack Skillingstead: Postapocalyptic suicide bomber chick has a perfect day in a time-looped fragment of the past. The end is a bit coy about whether she followed her orders to trash the time loop, but the story was sufficiently pedestrian - seriously, "she turned the cone in her hand like the mysterious artifact it was"? Awkward ice cream descriptors as indicators of postapocalyptic deprivation? Is that the best I should expect? - I wasn't invested either way.

"Me-Topia", Adam Roberts: Future Neanderthals on a future space expedition run into a posthuman homo sapiens space environment. Then they run into the landlord and sole resident. Unimpressed.

"The House Beyond Your Sky", Benjamin Rosenbaum: War in very few pages. I hated it because I hate war stories played for death and angst and killing characters as a source of pathos. It's not intrinsically bad, but it's so very much not my thing I can't say I liked it.

"A Billion Eves", Robert Reed: Consumer culture propagating through alternate Earths, and a final question: can you develop a sustainable lifestyle? The basic setup is scary and abhorrent, and the author is aware of that, which gets points in my eyes.

Numbers: 3 total. 3 new, 0 reread; 2 fiction, 1 nonfiction. 1 short story collection.