I’ve always had a fondness for Toxoplasma, to the point of featuring it prominently in one of my novels. It’s a protozoan after my metaphorical heart and my literal brain (specifically the part that synthesizes dopamine), and many of yours as well; in past installments (scroll down to May 6 on the right-hand side) I’ve […]
Burn & Crash
Category: miscA lot of science going on these days. This week’s issue of Science is an all-you-can-eat synthetic biology extravaganza; there’s also a recent paper on sex and death and parasites concerning an old friend, and the wondrous albeit old news that parasitic jellyfish live in the bloodstreams of mammals and birds. (It came out in […]
He Said/She Said
Category: miscWhat I said: We come here today in defiance of biological reality. We know that mammals are not monogamous (except for a few species of meadow vole with abnormally high levels of endogenous oxytocin). We know that monogamy is not the normal human state, the self-serving claims of various religious institutions notwithstanding. Women are inclined […]
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
Category: Dumbspeech, fiblet“Believe me.” Moore smiled faintly. “There are worse things than extended unconsciousness.” “Your zombie switch.” It was out before he could stop it. The Colonel didn’t say anything for a very long time. Then: “Just as a general rule, you probably shouldn’t take everything Sengupta says as gospel.” “Okay,” Brüks said slowly. “What about that […]
Jump Start
Category: Dumbspeech, fiblet“Close your eyes.” Brüks obeyed; the insides of his eyelids glowed brief bloody red as the laser scanned down his face “Word of advice,” Moore said from the other side. “Don’t tease the zombies.” Brüks opened his eyes. “I wasn’t teasing him, I was just chat—” “Don’t chat with them either.” The Colonel ran his […]
A Picture is Worth 20,000 Words
Category: Dumbspeech, writing newsThis one is, anyway. This one shows the current state of a chunk of Dumbspeech: individual passages, whole scenes, teensy philosophical inserts that take us from Low Earth Orbit all the way down to the center of the solar system. Everything else more or less hangs together; this chunk here is why I haven’t been […]
The Coming of the Lord.
Category: ass-hamsters, astronomy/cosmology, just putting it out there...There are a couple of different ways we could be living inside a computer. The Matrix model looms largest on the pop-culture landscape for obvious reasons, notwithstanding that the Matrix movies presented at best a half-assed iteration of the concept: that live human brains were being fed a digital simulation of reality while being hosed […]
Chip and Chipper
Category: misc, writing newsFor those of you not on facebook (and I salute you), I might as well mention here that “The Things” took the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story over at Readercon last Sunday. I post this now because the only other thing I’d have time to post before the perogies are done would involve […]
Either/Or
Category: interviews, writing newsYeah, I know. Bad time for the ‘crawl to go into therapeutic coma, what with all the nifty neuroethical and neurocognitive and neurodeep-sea-mineral-exploitation stuff piling up on the feeds. I’ve jammed out on this month’s Gibraltar Point workshop as well, if it’s any consolation. On the plus side, though: 80,000 words down on State of Grace […]
An Episode that Siri Keeton’s Dad Would Just as Soon Forget
Category: Dumbspeech, fiblet“Wait.” Brüks held up his hand. “Start over. How did it — I mean, if it wasn’t viral epilepsy, how—” “Viral something,” Li crowed. “Viral zombieism.” Ventilator sounds filled in the sudden silence. “Bullshit,” Brüks said softly. “Oh he didn’t do it deliberately the larva was just collateral. Some evildoer cooked up a basement bug […]