Nature abhors a (power) vacuum...

...but alecaustin doesn't.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/17/lowest-difficulty-setting-now-on-kotaku/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18609

Hey there! Wanted to comment on “Lowest Difficulty Setting” but missed before I closed up the comments? You’re in luck! Kotaku has reprinted the post, and their comments are open! Fire away!

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/17/journey-to-planet-joco-at-tor-com/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18606

Over at Tor.com, I’m part of a two-week festival of all things Jonathan Coulton, in a feature called “Journey to Planet Joco.” JoCo is starting a tour starting on June 1, and so I sat down to talk with him about those songs of his with a science fictional bent to them, a journey that culminates in a very special event: On May 29, we will debut a brand new song by Coulton. And this new song? It’s awesome (yes, I’ve heard it).

The first installment is up now, in which we talk about songwriting, story telling, and science fiction. You can hear an audio version of our interview or read a transcription. We’ll be talking every day through May 29th. Check it out and tell your friends. It’s as much fun as you can have with your ears.

http://worldsf.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/interview-with-german-writertranslator-cora-buhlert/

http://worldsf.wordpress.com/?p=3163

Ty Johnson interviews German writer and translator Cora Buhlert:

Besides being a writer, you also offer translation services from German to English and English to German, and are a native German speaker. Do you feel this gives you a nearly unique perspective as a writer? Do you think it affects how you approach writing?

Well, I’m not completely unique, since there are a few writers who write in a language that is not their mother tongue, including a handful of Germans writing in English. And some of these writers are bound to be translators, since it’s a natural career choice for those who are fluent in two or more languages.

Regarding my translation work, I have done a bit of fiction, but the overwhelming majority of my translation work is non-fiction, business and tech translation, because that’s where the money and the work is. Even though it’s unfair that tech translation pays so much better than fiction translation, because fiction translation is very difficult to do well.

As for whether being bilingual and writing in a language that is not your mother tongue gives you a different perspective as a writer, it certainly does. First of all, being bilingual gives you a heightened sensitivity for language in general and improves grammar and vocabulary skills as well. There’s plenty of research to back this up. And since language transmits culture, being multilingual also heightens cultural awareness, which is extremely useful when writing about people (or if you’re an SF or fantasy writer, beings) that are different from yourself.

A curious side-effect of writing in a language that is not the language you grew up speaking at home and in school is that writing swearwords and the like won’t make you cringe. Because the sense of violating a taboo while swearing is something that we acquire in childhood and you only acquire it for whatever language the world around you is speaking during that time. But while I intellectually know which English words are considered very rude or even completely taboo, these words don’t evoke the visceral cringing that the equivalent German word would evoke.

Finally, writers are the sum of their influences. And due to having grown up in Germany (though I also spent part of my formative years in the U.S., the Netherlands and Singapore), I have a couple of influences e.g. British or American writers don’t have. I even wrote non-fiction articles on a few of those influences such as the Dr. Mabuse series, pulp heroes John Sinclair and Jerry Cotton and the German Edgar Wallace film adaptations of the 1960s. And of course these influences show up in my fiction, even though I have published only one story which is set in Germany (The Other Side of the Curtain, a spy novella set in 1960s East Germany) with another, a historical novelette set in the late Middle Ages in the Rhine-Moselle region, coming soon. – read the full interview.

From 1-3 June, I will be the Klingon Guest of Honor at DucKon 21 in St. Charles, Illinois, just outside Chicago. It's my second time as that con's KGoH, and I'm really looking forward to going back. Here's my schedule:

Friday
7-8pm: Opening Ceremonies (New Orleans Ballroom)
8-10pm: Ambassador's Reception (location TBA)

Saturday
10am-12pm: Training Day, w/David West and Daniel Molinari (New Orleans Ballroom) -- an open interactive Martial Arts seminar/discussion/workout session.
1.45-2.45pm: autographing (MegaCenter)
3-5pm: Klingon People's Court, w/Ronnie Virga and Lee Busko (MegaCenter main stage) -- We will be putting JJ Abrams on trial for crimes against humanity/Klingons/Vulcans and even Romulans. He will be made to answer for such crimes as: Killing the Star Trek franchise and then killing the Vulcans. That was our job!
5-6pm: reading (Gallery Hall-Chagall)
10pm-12am: Klingon Love Poetry, w/Ronnie Virga and Lee Busko (MegaCenter main stage) -- Come to the 21st celebration of the longest running ORIGINAL Klingon event in the country!

Sunday
10-11am: How to Love Your Editor, w/Gene Wolfe and Steven Silver (Gallery Hall-Vermeer) -- Having a strong author-editor bond is a huge benefit to being successful. What should you do to improve your relationship with him/her? How do you develop a unique partnership?
11.15am-12.15pm: Collaboration: Go Team!, w/John Everson, David Benton, and W.D. Gagliani (Gallery Hall-Vermeer) -- Our panelists discuss the benefits or drawbacks of putting together collaborative literature.

Hope to see many of you there!

Anything else I had to say about the Criminal Minds season finale is subsumed in ZOMG Reid knitted it himself!

He makes a pretty good Four.

Also, I'm glad they did the Emily thing the way they did the Emily thing; it's good to see Will but he should have known better; I'm pretty sure that UNSUB plan fails on usual the Evil Mastermind overclever subroutine of relying on a coincidence they could not have known about in advance; I bet that's Kevin's cousin; Penelope needs a Stern Talking To of the variety she just gave Morgan a few weeks back; I'm still the only person in this fandom who likes Strauss, but dammit I still like Strauss; and FASTER JJ KILL KILL!

Discussion in comments of parallels between JJ in Hit/Run and Hotch in 100 is open for business.

Once upon a time, there was a cafeteria. Now, this cafeteria had been in existence for decades, and for a long time it was the habit of the people who worked there to actually put bugs in the food. Sometimes they said it was because the customers deserved to eat bugs. Sometimes they said that it was good for the customers to eat bugs--extra protein, extra crunch, and hey how was it any different from lobster? They only wished they could have so many bugs for lunch! Because, of course, when they made their own lunches bugs were conspicuously absent. And some workers didn't really ever wonder why, it was just how they'd always done things.

After a lot of noisy and sometimes violent protest, the cafeteria workers stopped deliberately putting bugs in the food. Some resented this and felt they ought to still be able to, but many had realized that, in fact, finding half a roach in your chicken caesar salad wasn't actually much like a lobster dinner. Many had come to the realization that putting bugs in people's food was really a pretty nasty thing to do.

So that was good. But because for a long time nobody had really cared if bugs accidentally got into food (because they were already putting them there on purpose) the workflow in the kitchen included lots of points where bugs could crawl into that day's turkey sandwich. And the kitchen was, in fact, densely populated with bugs. Because until recently, it hadn't bothered anyone, it had just made it extra handy when you wanted to pop a couple more into the soup.

The cafeteria workers were very focused on avoiding the deliberate act of planting bugs in the lunch. And that was good. It improved the cafeteria a lot. But there were still a lot of bugs in the food. So the customers went to the manager and complained.

This angered the manager a great deal. Were the customers saying she was the sort of person who would put bugs in people's food? She most certainly was not! She had never put a bug in anyone's food. And neither had any of her staff. How dare the customers complain? Surely being accused of bug-planting was just as bad as--perhaps worse than!--eating a few roaches. She certainly felt it was. (Of course, she had never put a forkfull of mashed potatoes in her mouth only to discover they were suspiciously, horrifyingly crunchy, so she really had no basis for comparison.)

The customers explained that actually, they didn't think any of the staff was deliberately planting bugs. Still, no efforts had been made to keep bugs out of the food. All they really wanted was for the manager to call in an exterminator and then make sure the staff got some basic food safety and sanitation instruction.

But this was out of the question. To do that would be to accuse her staff of planting bugs in people's food, which was obviously a seriously bad thing or the protests that had instigated recent reforms wouldn't have been so loud and violent.

No, the problem wasn't that there were still bugs in the food. The problem was, the customers bringing up the problem. Their complaints were causing the problem. If they would just be quiet and eat, like nice customers, everything would be fine. If there were still problems, customers ought to fill out a special form--seventeen pages long, with lots of detailed questions, ten pages of which were to contain an essay on why it might not be pleasant to find bugs in your food. Because the manager needed to really understand that part of the situation before she could take any action. Bad penmanship, of course, would cause a form to be rejected. Any hint of an actual complaint would cause the form to be rejected. But this form was, the manager insisted, the only viable way to address any problems the customers may have imagined they had with the food. Which couldn't possibly have any bugs in it.

To this day, the manager insists that there are no real problems with the food. Customers who complain are oversensitive, or have a chip on their shoulder, or just hate cafeteria workers. Customers who try to complain with the approved form are brandished as proof there are no actual problems. The food has fewer bugs in it than a couple of decades ago. Which, that's great, but you know, one roach on your pizza is too many.

All it would take to fix things would be some basic sanitation measures. It's almost--almost!--as though the manager and her staff had some kind of investment in not acknowledging the bugs in the kitchen. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe she, and the other workers, can't actually see how bug-filled the kitchen is, because it's been like that for decades and it seems perfectly normal.

Maybe one day the manager and her staff will finally see that the kitchen is crawling with bugs. On that day, the manager will likely cry out, "Why are you making me feel so guilty for being the kitchen manager? I didn't build this kitchen! What do you expect me to do about it?" And she'll sit down and weep bitter tears at being bullied by those mean customers for something that just isn't her fault.

But I won't feel very sorry for her.

The following contains discussion of fitness, health, and weight issues. If that is triggery for you, please page down now!

Ob. Disclaimer: I absolutely support anyone's right to live in their body as they choose, at any size they find comfortable. This is entirely about me, and my efforts to reclaim my health and strength after half a decade of abusing and neglecting my poor body.

---

Well, I'm wearing a pair of jeans that, based on the brand and cut, must date back to 1987 or so.

They're Chic, size 14 tall, and in high school they would have been baggy on me. Now, they fit loosely except for the waist, which is a bit snug--but then, that happened when I was sixteen, too, though the jeans were size 11 then. This is because eighties jeans were cut to fit absolutely nobody except a young Brooke Shields. They do, however, still make my ass look fantastic, a characteristic generally not shared by modern lower-rise jeans, which make nobody's ass look good. Not mine, not yours. Possibly Jessica Simpson's.

But they do let one bend at the middle without pinching one's ribcage on the waistband, which I suppose is a win.

I guess that means I am officially back in my high school clothes, generously speaking. As I also have a black bat-winged sheath dress from Chico's that I loved in high school, and have been hanging on to for sentimental reasons. I might dust it off for an eighties party later this year. If only I had some slouchy elf boots.

I suspect I will save the jeans for eighties nights at goth clubs. I think I still have one pair of slouchy socks hoarded away somewhere... ;-)

This is all prelude to saying that I'm hovering somewhere around 187, and have been for about a month now with the usual ups and downs--but I'm obviously building muscle, because I seem to be shrinking. At one point a month or so ago I noticed I had obliques, there under the slack middle-aged tummy. This week, I noticed the top set of ab muscles. Also, my thighs are no longer getting in my way during most of yoga--that stopped after scott_lynch and I walked somewhere around 40 miles in three days of NYC. I can do Hero's Pose and Lightning Pose without cheating now, and my body doesn't actually interfere with my ability to do a lunge anymore.

It's still getting in the way of twists, and my biceps interfere with Eagle Pose, but that's not new. I'm a solid girl.

I can also wear most of my beloved old corp-goth work clothes again, justifying my hoarding tendencies. Two suits are a bit tight, but they were always on the skinny end of the rack. I had to move the buttons back on a green suit I love, that I had expanded a bit when I was gaining weight. It's a size 12.

I am facing the surprising possibility of shrinking out of my wardrobe again. In any case, look for a much better-dressed Bear at conventions this summer, since I love these clothes and don't have a dayjob to wear them to anymore.

Curiously, I'm about 17 pounds heavier than the last time I fit in these clothes, which tells us about the power of rock-climbing. Muscle is heavy!

My current weight goal is somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 pounds. Which should make the same size, roughly, as when I was in high school and weighed 150-ish. I was on track and field then, and at my most muscular before now, but I'm pretty sure my upper body now dwarfs what I had then. (Shoulders! They're awesome!) Also, um. Boobs. Some cup sizes have come to roost since then. Ahem.

So I'm less than thirty pounds from my goal, which is very pleasant. My body is behaving as it should; everything physical is so much easier than it was in 2004, when I couldn't walk a half-mile without agonizing pain (now I can run five 12-minute miles back to back); and I'm enjoying the reduction in back and joint pain and the ability to sleep comfortably on my side or back again without feeling like my own belly is crushing me.

I seem to be part of a coterie of SFF writers and fans on the "get healthy the old-fashioned way; move more and eat less crap" bandwagon, which pleases me. (personally, I have been following the efforts of Scalzi, Doctorow, Lynch, Sykes, Downum, Silverstein, Connolly, Buckell, and I'm sure a few others whose names are eluding me because it's time for lunch.) It pleases me because I'd like to see a lot of these people around for a damned long time.

I'm also noticing changes in appetite, which tell me my body is adapting to its new lower caloric demands. Two whole pieces of fruit is too much to eat with lunch now; I am contented with half of each (plus some protein and vegetables and brown carbs, of course). (I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, about ten servings most days; I've finally figured out how to reach my RDA minimum of potassium, and it goes like this: a cup of fortified cereal in the morning (Special K protein plus, since I can't find Total Protein around here anymore), half an orange, a small banana, eight ounces of green coconut water, and half a sweet potato. Some strawberries or mango don't hurt either, or some beans.))

For those who are curious about how I did it (my doctor was, and she laughed out loud when I said, "Counting calories, restricting sweets and saturated fat, and getting off my ass!" She then replied, "So doing all the boring shit we tell people to do, huh?"), here's my plan, fondly called The Discipline:

It's a refined version of the Hacker Diet, which relies on good old thermodynamics to make things happen. I'm keeping my caloric intake around 1700-1900 calories a day, exercising for about an hour a day on average, drinking lots of water and not too much caffeine, avoiding refined carbs (mostly: I get 100-200 calories of "treat" a day, which could be a glass of wine or a beer, or a brownie, or... PRO TIP: Guinness is lower in calories than most "lite" beers, and tastes a fuckload better. Now you know.), eating roughly twice as many vegetables as the FDA suggests, and trying to keep my protein intake around 20% and my fat intake around 25%--and also trying to keep my protein intake above 100g a day without too much reliance on red meat, or meat at all. (I do use protein supplements--whey and soy, mostly.) I eat a lot of high-protein dairy (skyr!) and I try to limit myself to 100-200 calories a day from refined sugar, which is roughly 20-40 grams. Or, well, half a can of non-diet Coke.

Managing sodium intake is a killer. But I'm working on it.

Sleeping eight hours a night also pisses me off, but it seems to be necessary. I got six last night, and noticed the difference on my run this morning--I kept having to walk up hills I normally cruise up in second or third gear.

I also exercise six days a week--usually two days of climbing (with a little yoga); three days of running; one day of yoga. I also try to get in some vigorous outdoor time when possible--kayaking, hiking, walking the dog. Walking to the store. Picking up my jump rope for five minutes on an otherwise sedentary day.

As I said, one of the most successful weeks of the Discipline recently was when Scott and I were on Manhattan, eating every goddamned thing in sight. But we also made a point of walking two-thirds the length of the island at least once (Riverside to Chinatown, with side trips), and we walked as much as time permitted, otherwise. I know it sounds like my fitness routine is crushing, and seven or eight years ago, it would have crushed me. (Hell, I had the pleasant experience recently of putting in a Rodney Yee video that, in 2006, I could do maybe fifteen minutes of, and having the full hour workout be only just pleasantly challenging.)

But remember, when I started out, I weighed 285-290 pounds and could not walk a half mile. One good habit builds on another, it turns out--and I find myself drinking more green and herbal tea because black tea doesn't taste good after the first mug, and I find myself not hungry for seconds unless the food is exceptionally good, and even then not always. There's not actually a lot of privation; I just want more of what's healthy for me.

It's okay if I have a measured ounce of cheese on my beans and rice, instead of as much as I can fit in the bowl. It still tastes just as good! Better, since it's as easy to afford small quantities of really delicious food as it is large quantities of sort of icky food. And far more satisfying.

Who knew?

Which is so different from all my old pathological ways of dealing with food and drink that it's a little croggling.

Most of this, of course, is just basic health maintenance stuff, and not too hard once you get the hang of it. And it's not like I don't give myself days off: I will in fact have two or three drinks on a night out, for example. I'm fully planning on onion rings after archery tonight when I get dinner with the Thursday Night Shooters.

Just... not too damned often. And budget for it.

It's not the extremes that set one's level of health; it's the baseline.

A big day for the possible future of space travel, and the return of US capability to launch people into orbit after the retirement of the shuttle, comes with SpaceX’s text flight of the Dragon capsule. It’s been delayed due to checking the software for the docking test over and over, and now looks to be locked in for this Saturday.

Mirrored from Tobias Buckell Online.