1 tablespoon olive oil
1 carrots, finely diced
1/4 finely diced red onion
1 stalk finely diced celery
4 minced cloves garlic
1 teaspoon pomegranate molasses
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup diced eggplant (peeled)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
handful kalamata olives, roughly chopped
1/2 preserved lemon, chopped
3/4 cup Israeli couscous
1 can chicken broth
1 1/2 cups cooked chick peas (or one can, rinsed)
Heat a skillet and add olive oil. Once the oil is heated, add carrots, onion, celery, garlic, salt, pepper and pomegranate molasses and fry lightly, for about 5 minutes. Add eggplant, lemon juice, olives and preserved lemon and lightly fry for another 5 minutes. Remove veggies and add couscous. Toast for 1 minute, then add broth, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring continuously. After the third addition of broth, add veggies back in as well as the chickpeas. Finish cooking until couscous is soft and liquid is mostly absorbed. Serve with cheese. Serves 2-4.
It may not be a very big jungle… …but I am KING of it!!!
Picture by: Megan Caption by: grayceworks via Advanced Lol Builder
Each year millions of visitors stream through the rotunda of the National Archives in Washington, DC, to view the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. These foundational documents of our democracy are on public display because of the importance of openness in government.
Openness promotes accountability by enabling journalists, researchers, government officials, and the public to scrutinize, question, and ultimately improve how government works. But, as with many aspects of Democracy, openness must evolve. The Progress Report on Open Government to the American People describes how the Administration is doing just that.
Recently, for example, the Obama Administration began to publish online the names of everyone who visits the White House offices; provide online access to White House staff financial reports and salaries; disclose and limit lobbyist contacts; publish the membership of Federal advisory committees in downloadable form; and create unprecedented ways to track how the government spends taxpayer dollars. Advancing that trend, yesterday the White House released an historic Directive requiring all agencies to adopt aggressive open government policies that will further promote the principles of transparency, participation and collaboration. (For those who can’t wait till the end, click here to see what others have said about the Administration’s Open Government policy and why it matters.)
This new degree of openness is enabled in part by 21st century technology, which makes it possible for government to open its doors and databases more than ever before. From online listening tours and chats to web-based brainstorming by government officials with the American public, the White House and federal agencies are opening up the way they work to improve accountability in government and deepen our democracy.
But creating an open government – one that is committed to transparency and civic engagement – does more than promote accountability. Working in the open fosters collaboration between government, private industry, and the public to improve the lives of Americans in their communities.
To mark the publication of the Directive and the Report, every Cabinet Department is launching a new open government project.
For example, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is unveiling “Virtual USA,” a collaboration among DHS, eight states, and the emergency response community that uses new technology to share emergency response information seamlessly among Federal, state, local, and tribal first responders. The Virtual USA system links these partners’ disparate tools and technologies to share the location and status of power and water lines, flood detectors, helicopter-capable landing sites, emergency vehicle and ambulance locations, weather and traffic conditions, evacuation routes, and school and government building floor plans, and does so without requiring any participating entity to change either the system it now uses or the way it does business.
During a recent Virginia Nuclear Power Plant exercise, the ability of decision-makers to gather, analyze, and disseminate information via the Virtual USA information-sharing system reduced by 70 percent the time it took to make a decision about evacuation. In addition, Virtual USA provides mechanisms for Americans in their own communities to contribute information to complement that of police, fire, and other government workers, essentially crowdsourcing a more detailed picture of disaster and recovery capabilities.
The Department of Agriculture is using open government innovations to address the obesity epidemic, one the Administration's top priorities. This week the Department made available for download on Data.gov nutrition data for standard portion sizes of more than 1,000 most common food items. In addition, it is launching a national competition that challenges entrepreneurs, software developers, and students to leverage the newly released data to create educational games to help children make healthy eating decisions. By making reliable government data available to the American people and inviting their collaboration in developing new products and tools for the public good, the Department of Agriculture is taking the values of openness and translating them into practical ways to address a national priority.
Open government initiatives are also helping fledgling businesses convert government information into entrepreneurial opportunities that can create jobs and strengthen economic growth. Government agencies are home to treasure troves of data and information, but much of it is buried in websites or exists in formats too cumbersome to be of practical use. Now a group of six departments and agencies has worked together to offer easy access to information on publicly-funded technologies that are available for license, opportunities for Federal funding and partnerships, and potential private-sector partnerships. By making information from multiple agencies available in RSS and XML feeds on Data.gov, the government empowers innovators to find the information they need and receive real-time updates instead of having to probe government websites repeatedly.
At the same time, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has committed to make all published patents available for download so they can be easily searched by entrepreneurs and innovators.
These are just a few of the innovative approaches being announced this week to continue the process of lifting the veil from the workings and resources of the Federal Government. By turning its philosophical commitment to openness into real policies and practices, the Obama Administration is empowering all Americans to address the many pressing challenges of our time.
P.S. We’re not the only ones who think this is big. An array of experts on government transparency and accountability are praising the Obama Administration’s unprecedented Open Government Directive. The following is just a sample of their reactions:
U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee: “I commend President Obama for issuing an historic directive on government transparency, participation and collaboration that will make our government more accessible and accountable to the American people. I am particularly pleased that, for the first time, the public will have immediate access to government data that for too long had been shielded from view by excessive secrecy and outdated technologies.” [Press Release, 12/8/09]
U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, Chairman, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee: “The President’s Open Government Directive is heartily welcomed by those of us who have worked to make government more transparent and accountable to the American people. Back in 2002, I authored and Congress passed the E-Government Act, which helped spur Federal agencies to make documents and services more accessible to the general public. The Federal government has come a long way since 2002 and today, it takes a giant step closer to taking full advantage of available information technologies to maximize not just the transparency, participation, and collaboration of people with their government but also to maximize management efficiency.” [Press Release, 12/8/09]
In alphabetical order by last name:
Steven Aftergood, Federation of American Scientists: "It's an ambitious attempt to open up the government and to change the way that agencies do business.” [USA Today, 12/8/09]
Gary D. Bass, Executive Director, OMB Watch: "The results appear to be well worth the wait. The president demanded the directive be built around three main principles -- transparency, participation, and collaboration. The new directive, issued today, delivers on all three principles with specific requirements and deadlines for all agencies." [Washington Post, 12/8/09]
Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, President and Founder, AmericaSpeaks: “I applaud the Obama Administration for taking bold steps today to open the government and make it more transparent and accountable. Clearly the President and his team have listened to and taken seriously Americans all across the country who want a stronger voice and a seat at the table in American democracy.”
Patrice McDermott, Director, OpenTheGovernment.org: “The Open Government Directive, when fully implemented, will take the Federal government many steps toward real openness. Far from representing the end of the process, today’s announcement is the beginning of an on-going effort to build transparency and accountability into the way government operates.” [Press Release, 12/8/09]
Ellen Miller, Executive Director and Co-Founder, Sunlight Foundation: “The Open Government Directive issued today demonstrates the seriousness of administration's commitment to data transparency and citizen engagement. It is evidence that the administration recognizes that transparency is government's responsibility. At the same time, it shows the administration is matching aspirational goals with concrete policies and accountability measures." [Washington Post, 12/8/09]
Peter M. Shane, Author of Madison’s Nightmare: “What is arguably most impressive about the Directive, as highlighted in a public briefing by CIO Vivek Kundra and [sic] CTO Aneesh Chopra, is its specificity and focus on execution.” [Huffington Post, 12/8/09]
Jim Tozzi, Advisory Board, Center for Regulatory Effectiveness: “The Open Government initiative is a real piece of work – an excellent document.” [Communication to opengov@ostp.gov, 12/9/2009]
Anne Weismann, Chief Counsel, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW): “This directive represents the kind of bold and far reaching initiative President Obama promised on his first full day in office. By establishing a new paradigm of public access to government information, the administration has paved the way for a truly transparent and accountable government.” [CREW Press Release, 12/8/09]
John Wonderlich, Policy Director, Sunlight Foundation: "[W]e are very excited. They're really taking on a lot of initiatives and doing so in an aggressive fashion. We couldn't have written it better ourselves. It's very ambitious." [CNET.com, 12/8/09]
Norm Eisen is Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform
Beth Noveck is United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and Director of the White House Open Government Initiative
If there are any problems with the comic or website, or if you have any questions, comments, or complaints you would like to address directly to Randy, please email him at choochoobear@gmail.com.
I don't think it's any mysterious thing.
If you ask me who am I- or where am I- I would say I feel like a cloud hovering over my forehead.
Interestingly, this is where God was in the Tabernacle/Temple. He was above the Ark cover between the Cherubim.
This Tabernacle/Temple could be schematized as a face, with the brain being the Ark(inside was the essence of the "Torah") and the mind being the God who hovers over the Ark; the eyes would be the Menora and the face-bread table(that which is illuminated); the nose would be the Golden insence altar; the mouth would be the altar of burnt offerings(God's "food").
God is saying to us, you want to know where I am? I am in the same place you are: a mind hovering above the brain, on a face.
By hovering above the Ark, God is saying that- just like the your mind- He doesn't inhabit time and space either.
So the Tora teaches us how to think of/locate our souls: the soul is another name for the mind that hovers above the brain.
There are brain studies which corroborate this- I mean, the transcendence of the mind in brain studies.
What do you think about this?
Subterranean Press zipped over to me a couple of early copies of the “Judge Sn Goes Golfing” chapbook so I could pet them and love them and rub my scent all over them (okay, that last bit was more than you needed to know), and I have to say I am delighted with how they’ve turned out. They look great, and by “great” I mean holy cow look at me I got a story illustrated by Gahan Wilson. In collaboration terms that’s a little like having Eddie Van Halen drop by your home studio to give song chorus you’ve been working on a little extra push. I’m so happy I could just plotz. You’ll know what I mean when you get it.
This reminds me that I’ve had a couple of questions about the length of “Judge Sn.” It’s 32 pages plus the cover, which is signed by me on the inside back. It’s the sort of thing designed specifically for fans and collectors, rather than the general public, which is why there’s a limited number of them out there. I think it’s worth the cost, but then I would. Heck, I think it’s worth it for the Gahan Wilson illustrations alone. Have I mentioned how geeked out I am about them? Well, I am.
Moving from “Judge Sn” to The God Engines, Paul Witcover reviewed TGE in the February Realms of Fantasy magazine (out now at news stands). I won’t reprint the whole thing here — hey, go buy a copy of the magazine, man — but here’s a nice pull quote:
[G]rippingly dark and subversive… though The God Engines is indisputably a work of fantasy, it is simultaneously a brutal critique of fantasy, a searing evisceration of the valuation of blind faith and magical thinking that underlies so much of the genre, at least at its most popular and mindless.
The whole review is actually very interesting (albeit with spoilers, which I suspect are unavoidable with this particular work), so check it out if you can.
We also have a cable modem.
We do NOT have our telephone service provided by our cable company on the cable data line. This means that we've got two separate lines of communication to the outside world.
Which is good, because I'm posting this. And our phones are out. Even the plug-in one in the kitchen.
Maybe it's finally time for me to break down and get a cell phone, so I can have three lines of communication.
There are many questions raised by this Jon Stewart clip: what does it mean for the Democrats that Stewart is openly mocking their indecent race to spend $200 billion that we thought, incorrectly, that we had thrown down a rat-hole? What does it mean for Obama that Stewart is openly mocking the emptiness of some of his grandiose promises?
But most importantly, why is it that you can say “hand job” on the air, but you have to beep out the “blow” in “blow job”? Is there an FCC regulation that says that? Is there a principled distinction? Is the concept of a hand job (and therefore a direct reference thereto) acceptable to the public, but the concept of a blow job scandalous? Is the FCC run by Catholic high-school girls?
Americans want to know how a transformed health care system will affect prospects for employment and job creation. On an issue this consequential, it's important to separate fact from fiction. Analysis of the economic impact of health insurance reform by the President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) finds that health insurance reform as proposed in the Senate, and already passed in the House, contains many beneficial effects for labor markets. These findings have been supported by numerous independent analysts including the Business Roundtable and the Congressional Budget Office.
Key benefits to the labor market include the following:
By slowing the growth rate of health care costs in the public and private sector, health insurance reform will improve take-home wage growth, improve standards of living, and encourage private sector job growth. More efficient labor markets will spur entrepreneurship, productivity, and growth at small firms, a key source of job creation. Expanding coverage to the millions of Americans who currently lack health insurance will improve health status and reduce disability, increasing labor supply. And finally, reform makes direct investments in the health care infrastructure that will create new jobs in research, information technology, medicine, and public health.Lowering the cost of healthcare will lower the unemployment rate in the short-to-medium run. Bringing down the cost of healthcare will be good for jobs. Academic studies found that slowing health costs helped boost job growth in the 1990s and that the rapid rise of health costs in the 2000s hurt jobs, especially in manufacturing. Putting in place serious reforms to improve quality and slow cost growth will, in the short-to-medium run, lower the burden on businesses and enable them to hire more workers.
The CEA estimated that if the annual growth rate of health spending slows by 1.5 percentage points per year, then the unemployment rate could fall by 0.24 percentage point and jobs could rise by 500,000. Analysis by business groups such as Business Roundtable and other independent analysts shows that reform would slow the growth rate of costs, freeing up funds for job creation. The delivery system reforms and revenue provisions (such as the excise tax on high cost plans in the Senate bill) in current legislation provide incentives and create new measures to contain health care spending, allowing employers to hire more workers rather than spending money on rising health insurance premiums. A newly released CBO report finds that premiums will fall by as much as 3 percent in the large group market and 2 percent in the small group market after reform, showing that employers will reap the cost savings necessary to hire more workers and invest in new property, plant, and equipment.Health reform will spur entrepreneurship, productivity, and growth at small firms, helping fuel a key engine of job creation. Health reform will lower costs for small businesses through tax credits and pooled purchasing on a competitive exchange – reducing their competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis larger firms, thus helping to fuel a key engine of job creation in the economy.
Firms with fewer than 20 employees accounted for approximately 18 percent of private sector jobs in the year with the most recent data, and nearly 25 percent of net employment growth from 1992 to 2005. In the current health care market, small firms must compete for workers alongside large firms that may able to afford better benefits due to their size. Under reform, the health insurance exchange will expand options for coverage, making small businesses a more attractive place for people to work, and encouraging people to start up businesses of their own.Health market reforms will improve the functioning of labor markets by reducing job lock. By ending limitations on coverage based on pre-existing conditions and expanding portable coverage options, health reform will help reduce "job lock," freeing up workers to be more flexible – increasing the flexibility and productivity of the economy, and increasing labor supply.
Reform legislation invests directly in making the health care system more efficient, creating jobs in research, information technology, medicine, and public health:
Reform and the health provisions of the stimulus bill invest billions in modernizing the health care infrastructure, creating high-tech jobs for skilled workers to modernize medical records and work to interconnect health information technology throughout the health care system. The reform bills in Congress create new jobs for doctors, nurses, and other health care providers by investing billions of dollars directly in the health care workforce, especially in the areas that have the greatest need for more health care providers. Reform legislation will create science and technology jobs by encouraging the development of new drugs and new treatments. The bills in Congress create new pathways for the approval of pharmaceuticals and medications such as biosimilar drugs, which will create jobs for the scientists, laboratory workers, and doctors who develop these drugs and conduct the tests needed to ensure their safety and secure their approval. Health Insurance Reform will create jobs for skilled researchers who analyze wellness and public health. Reform legislation devotes millions of dollars in funds toward research in wellness, epidemiology, and public health, investments that will create job opportunities for skilled workers in fields that improve the nation’s health.Christina Romer is Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
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kilah_hurtz and baronlaw , two people who actually kinda go together in an odd sort of way... like pillars on a Tarot card. Huh.Anyway. May your safety net always hold when you most need it, E. And B, may your bike have a perma-sphere of safety around it. Okay, that one's for me. For you, I give you three skunk games in Cribbage, to claim from the ether when you most need them.
And love. Lots of it. For both of y'all.
As previously predicted, as soon as they deemed my fil "stable" for transfer, out the revolving hospital door he went, back to the Rehab on Friday. My frantic phone calls from work (I feel so sorry for my patients, but I haven't killed anyone yet, I swear) did make some difference: as per my request to the doctor, relayed through his brother, who was down visiting last week from Washington, there was a specialty bed waiting for him when he arrived. The Rehab personnel then proceeded to remove this bed, replacing it with an ordinary bed, because they needed another doctor's order for the new bed. The doctor from the Medicare Advantage Plan had to get it approved, you see. Since that order was not immediately forthcoming, D_ had to lay on an ordinary bed until Saturday afternoon, when they finally got the approval. I was afraid he might have to be on a hard surface for the entire weekend. Thank God I was wrong.
He already seems less alert than he had in the hospital. I think he is at his best in the mornings, but by the time Kyle and I arrive in the afternoon or evening, he is mostly dozing on and off. Currently, he is sharing a very crowded four bed ward, with barely a foot or two of space between the beds, with no chairs for visitors. We went to Office Depot and bought some folding chairs to use when we are there. On the bright side, there is a window to look out of, facing the street, with traffic and noise providing something to look at other than the wall or the television screen. He commented about the window which made me very happy.
I don't have any experience with nursing homes other than this one but the care does seem very fragmented. The RN knows the least of all, which is the opposite of the way it works in an acute care hospital, where your nurse is responsible for knowing everything about you. The medication nurse knows about your medications and your tube feedings, although not why you are on them. The treatment nurse knows about your dressing changes. The nurses aid knows little more than that you need to be turned and kept clean. Even the doctor isn't a reliable source of information. I asked D_'s doctor if he knew why he was so anemic when he was admitted to the hospital. "Didn't they tell you when he was admitted?" he demanded.
"No, no one told us anything except that he had a urinary tract infection and pneumonia," I admitted. I did speak directly to the gastroenterologist who was consulted but he said there was no sign of a bleed. The Rehab Doctor's story was that it was a combination of things that must have caused the anemia. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe we'll never know. He was surprised to hear that the tube feeding was being turned off for four hours a day but at least he wrote orders to increase the rate from slow starvation to barely adequate.
I'll be heading over there later today. I forgot to write down a sick call Monday while I was covering the charge nurse's lunch, so when the sick person didn't show up, I volunteered to stay while they got someone else to come in. This meant I worked from 7:00 am to 9:30 pm and didn't get home until after 10:00 pm. I am way too old to be working fourteen hour shifts, so despite my best intentions, I barely made it out of my pajamas yesterday.
In more pleasant news, I am rereading Malus Genius by Maybe Amanda and Plausible Deniability for
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xf_book_club. ( read an excerpt )
How could I have forgotten how funny this story is? So who do you think was responsible for naming the cheerleader nymphet "Brittany Woodall," Amanda or Plausible Deniability? As a form of cognitive therapy, I have decided to cheer myself up by rereading all of the humorous stories recced at the book club, starting with The Airport by Jess Mabe, which may be the funniest, smuttiest PWP set in the O'Hare Airport Chile's Restaurant in any fandom. Jess M. had quite the inventive mind, she did.
( read another excerpt )
Also, tomorrow is the beginning of the official sign-up period for
operation80, the community for people who want to remix an original series episode in the Reboot!Trek Universe. Is this not a brilliant idea or what? It is first come, first serve, but right now the community is tiny, plus if you don't get your first choice this time around, there is a grace period when EVERYONE can rewrite "Amok Time" and "Mirror, Mirror," because after all, there just aren't enough stories in the fandom already about Pon Farr and the sex lives of Mirror Universe characters. Heh.Personally, I am torn between "Mudd's Women" and "I, Mudd." Hey, I think Harry Mudd is a great character, and let's face it, anything I write for this challenge is going to end up on the humorous end of the scale. I don't think I can write solemn and serious right now, not and keep my sanity. This is causing some problems with my story for
xf_santa, because all of my ideas for that are kind of depressing ones. Let's face it, Christmas and The X-Files is not an easy combination, even if you aren't trying to write holiday fic, per se. The other thing is, I can't read sad, serious, or dramatic stories either, so if you are expecting comments from me on your non-humorous stories, maybe next year? I love you all, but no. I'm sorry.Wait! I know, "The Trouble With Tribbles"! Perfect!
- Mood:
crazy
The story behind the spiral.
Well, about. What it was is not known at this time.
Nicked from mckitterick
21%? Twenty-one percent of Americans believe our president is or may be the Antichrist? I am appalled.
(If you take these statistics a step further and make the reasonable [I think] assumption that all of these people belong to the 78.4% of Americans who identify as Christian of some form or another [the Antichrist being a Christian theological concept], you're looking at something in the neighborhood of 26% of American Christians who believe this.)
beckyzoole. I think it's accurate in assessing "spirit" (by the quiz's meaning) as the highest success in my life, but I think that "mind," "friends and family," and "love" should be higher than they are. I suspect that not checking "I read great literature" lowered my "mind" score, but I can't explain the others.| This Is My Life, Rated | |
| Life: |  6.9 |
| Mind: |  7.5 |
| Body: |  5 |
| Spirit: |  9.6 |
| Friends/Family: | 7.2 |
| Love: | 7.3 |
| Finance: | 7 |
| Take the Rate My Life Quiz | |
Those who know that I am a nontheist may be surprised at the exceptionally high "spirit" score, but I am not. The quiz results said, "Your Spirit score is very high, much higher than the average. If you wouldn't mind, please take a little time to explain how you manage to succeed so well at this aspect of your life." This was my response:
I call myself a nontheist: I think that if there is an entity worthy of what we mean by the title "God," it is irrelevant to that entity whether I believe in it or not. I sometimes say that I don't "believe" in anything; my viewpoint is "This is what I think right now, based on my observations, experience, and knowledge. As those aspects are added to, what I think may change." I do not need certainty, and so it seems I have less stress, less fear, less worry than many people. Some time after I developed my moral code, I discovered that it is much like Kant's "Categorical Imperative," which is "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." My viewpoint is that I cannot control anyone or anything in this world except myself; therefore, there is one, and only one, thing that I can do to make this world more like I want it to be: be that way myself.
In other news, many of my novels have secret titles undisclosed. I may have mentioned this before, but this one? The Game of Cat and Dragon. Which one of them will have to lose.
In other other news, sickness is like a second adolescence: my head hurts, and all I want to do is lie on the sofa and imbibe. Soup, tea, whisky. Stargate and Neal Stephenson. That's about the limit of it. I was not an ambitious adolescent...
I can be ambitious for my friends; it would be a fine thing, it seems to me, if y'all went out and bought copies of Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox for all your friends for Xmas. Then they could read it just in time for the sequel, Jade Man's Skin, and love you for evermore. Wouldn't that be nice...?
Urgh. Aargh. *creeps off back to sofa*
Shop Green for the Holidays!
Joint Editorial on Climate Crisis
Three Questions: Secret Holds
News: Nuclear India
Weekend Meet-n-Greet 12-5-09
News: “Commonwealth Champions Adaptation Fund”
Call to Action: Processed Food Safety Act
- Mood:
busy
Multiple studies have been done on the people who pirate music, and they've found that, on average, people who pirate buy more music than people who don't. That makes sense, if you stop and think about it, because music has a very high replay value. I discovered one of my favorite bands, We're About 9, when my friend Merav gave me a mix tape—the oldest form of music piracy—with one of their songs on it: I've since purchased several albums, including the one with that original song. I don't tend to listen to the full albums very often, but every time the individual tracks come up in my iTunes shuffle, I remember that I want to buy more music by these authors. It's music piracy as a form of private radio, and most people—not all, but most—understand that if you want to keep hearing things you like on the radio, you need to support the artists.
Just about everyone I know has at least a few pirated songs. I recently acquired a pirated copy of Freddy's Greatest Hits, a parody album featuring none other than Freddy Kreuger himself. It's been out of print for twenty years. I do not feel any shame about listening to this rare treasure from the horror graveyard...although I'll definitely buy the actual album, if I ever find it.
Book piracy is different, because the way people interact with the media is so different. According to my iPod, I've listened to the Glee cover of "Don't Stop Believing" over two hundred times. Two hundred times. Of course I paid for it. That song is part of the soundtrack of my life now. Looking at my bookshelves, the single book I've probably read and re-read the most times is Stephen King's IT, where I lost track at eighty. I'm a dedicated re-reader. I re-read IT at least once a year, and frequently more often than that. And I'm only up to eighty. Many people don't re-read the way I do, and very few people re-read immediately. So if I download a torrent of the new Ikeamancer novel, I'm pretty unlikely to run right out and buy myself a copy...and if I want to re-read the book six months later, I may just dig the file out of my hard drive, because it's there. Never underestimate the power of instant gratification.
Past experience tells me that this is the point where someone says "Does that mean you hate libraries/people who loan their books to friends/used book stores?", and the answer to all these things is the same: No. In all of these cases, someone has bought the book. In the case of libraries, the number of copies purchased by a given branch is determined by the number of people who request the book, or check it out once it's in the system. Yes, ten or twenty people may get to read a single copy, but with a pirated book, that number is a lot higher, and that initial sale may not have happened. If I loan a book to a friend, the book comes with a high recommendation ("Here, read this"), and even if my friend doesn't buy their own copy, we're looking at one sale for two people, not one sale (or one OCR of a library copy) for some unlimited number. Even used bookstores are limited by the size of the print run, since they can't get more copies than were initially sold, and are thus a vital part of building the readership for ongoing series. They're part of the natural ecosystem.
People complain about how slow some publishers are to adapt the e-book format, but honestly, the concerns over piracy are a really, really big deal, just because of the impact it can have on a book's overall sales—especially for a beginning author. No, I'm not saying that best-selling authors somehow "deserve" to be pirated, but piracy is likely to be a much smaller overall part of the book's footprint. Dan Brown is not going to be told not to write another sequel to The DaVinci Code over piracy. The author of the Ikeamancer books...might.
Publishing is changing. E-books are, and will continue to be, a big part of that. But unless people remember that book piracy isn't exactly the same as music piracy (and hence culturally viewed as "try before you buy," but almost always leading to that eventual purchase), they'll also continue to be a problem.
- Mood:
thoughtful - Music:Duffy, "Mercy."
As many of you know, earlier this year President Obama launched the SAVE Award — a program that offered every Federal employee the chance to submit ideas about how government can save money and perform better. Over the course of three weeks, Federal employees submitted more than 38,000 ideas. Staff at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) assessed the submissions and narrowed them down to the final four ideas.
Voting began on Monday and will only remain open until 11:59pm tomorrow. Already, we’ve received over 65,000 votes – so don’t miss out on your opportunity to help choose the winner. The person whose idea is voted the best will get to meet the President, present the winning idea directly to him, and have that idea included in the FY2011 Budget.
You can vote on the ideas by rating each idea on a scale of 1 through 5, with 5 being the highest rating you can give. (You may vote on each idea only once. If you re-vote for an award, your previous vote will be overwritten.)
If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch the President annouce the four finalists.
Peter Orszag is the director of the Office of Management and Budget
I discovered an absolutely fantastic widget yesterday from LibraryThing that will display a random selection of the books I've copyedited. Check it out at the bottom of http://deannahoak.com/home. It will unfortunately only load three widgets-full of books at once, so you can't see all the covers, though you can click through to the whole list.
Also, once the books are entered, LibraryThing very helpfully prints up a list of all the awards the books have won or been nominated for, and I was pleased to note that books I've copyedited have won even more awards than I was aware of: http://www.librarything.com/profile/dhe
Anyone who wants to call out a selection of books would likely find the widget very helpful. If you'd like one of your own, you can find the widget-maker at http://librarything.com/widget.
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ysabetwordsmith, is intriguing and fairly accurate, I think. The only place it's a little "off" is the rating for friends and family. I have fantastic friends and family! (But no one I call Best Friend, which, I think, is what made the ranking a little lower.)| This Is My Life, Rated | |
| Life: | 7.6 |
| Mind: | 7.8 |
| Body: | 5.5 |
| Spirit: |  8.8 |
| Friends/Family: | 6.7 |
| Love: | 9.1 |
| Finance: | 6.7 |
| Take the Rate My Life Quiz | |
( Life Score Analysis )
This entry was originally posted at http://beckyzoole.dreamwidth.org/34657.h
Moving along...
I dove back into dailies yesterday. No progression with this one, I've got a different lengthy post I'm working on for later today. Without further ado, here's yesterday's daily:
Just under 3hrs. Initial background and creature painted loosely in ArtRage, without any base linework used. Then 'ported it to Photoshop, working around a dozen or so layers of varied filter, opacity, and selective erasing on the creature. Brought in foreground and background cloudiness. Rendered in the wreckage in the background with a couple of my custom brushes. Gave the eyes a touch of bioluminescence. Signed the bugger and called it done.
X-posted from Artimancer.com
- Location:66226
- Music:The Chemical Brothers - The Test
isis_lives !- Mood:
happy
i wear da sweater u give me nog
but teh nog maeks u do crazee fings.
Picture by: dunno source Caption by: lolspeak via Our LOL Builder
I think I saw Margaret Hamilton whirl by.
And the highway construction is done! I was able to take my old route to work for the first time in ages. This also means my trip to the internist Friday will be much simpler, as I can take the direct route. Boy, will that be a long day: 8 AM blood draw and physical (where I think I"m going to ask about this apathy and lethargy I've been suffering from for the last 5 months), then work (where I must finish payroll and billing), THEN the company holiday party, AND if I have any energy left there's one of my regular spiritual discussion groups.
Had acupuncture last night. She did some points to help with sleep and hormones, and wonders if my vitamin D levels are off (as well as my thyroid). Usually the needles are no problem, but this time many of them hurt like the dickens. She asked if I was dehydrated; maybe I was - I don't think I've been drinking as much water as usual.
- Mood:
cold
Alexa Ray Joel survives attempt to commit suicide by placebo.
Traumeel tablet ingredients.
Well then. I thought as much: some of you got what I was saying, a good chunk of you didn’t. Some of you liked what I said, many didn’t. But I’m surprised it was so civilised – I had expected people to go on forums and do whatever is the forum equivalent of using my face as toilet paper.
I think that Morgan is right in blaming a zeitgeist shift but wrong in picking the one he does: lots of old timey SF reads like it was written for not particularly bright teens with very basic tastes in fiction and anger management problems (specifically, the kind that lead one to fly into a rage when presented with fiction that requires any kind of effort from the reader). I think there are two (related) problems: the future people used to imagine 50 years ago was wrong and the ones people, particularly Americans, can conceive of today are not ones readers find particularly interesting to spend a few hours in. We can tell this is true because readers are in general not choosing to spend a few hours in those futures.
- 09:27 I want a new drug: Ecstasy pills shaped like Barack Obama hit the streets. tr.im/H23j #
- 09:34 RT @mattklewis: Hmm, Bush had an 'Imperial Presidency' - yet Obama is using EPA to sidestep passing climate change legislation in Congress? #
This entry was originally posted at http://radarrider.dreamwidth.org/577818.h
Stacie is doing a fabulous job! Go read her comic, Tribute Waters, right now! You know you want to!!!
( Sock Surgery Ahead! )
Am I right in thinking this is at least the second time in the last month or so where poll numbers on Fox added up to much more than 100%.
Nicked from Andrew Ducker
On the desolate ruins wrought by heresy, the sublime knowledge of God will build her temple.
- Abraham Isaac Kook
Elders of Zion:
Reading the works of anti-Semites as divine writ.
Evangelical Judaism:
Promoting missionary work in Africa to replenish the fold.
Gnostic Judaism:
Cultivating hidden manna in the desert of the real.
Hebrew Orthodox Church:
Practicing Eastern Orthodoxy as it was before Byzantium.
Islamojudaism:
Acknowledging Mohammad as apostle to the Arabs and crypto-warrior Jew.
Jews for Gentiles:
Chosen to serve the nations as priests and financial advisors.
Neo-Essenes:
Regrouping to await the end of the world at Qumran.
Semitic Nations:
Preaching Arab-Jewish holy war against the Aryan-Iranian hellspawn.
Temple of Latter Day Prophets:
Affirming the ancient Hebrew presence in America and renewing it as divine mission.
Yahweh's Witnesses:
Going door to door to spread His word.
Zevianity:
Spreading the good news that Sabbatai Zevi converted for our sins.
And it was going before I got up the stairs to upload the pictures. Meanwhile, 30 mile an hour wind gusts and other various delights. But no snow! So that’s something. I may not have to eat one of the pets after all. Unless one of them annoys me.
I look up from the Ai-Naidari vocabulary, so long neglected, and find the Calligrapher waiting.
"I wish I knew," I murmur. "I miss you and Shame and Kherishdar."
"...but?"
I smile faintly. "I'm scared of the First Servant. I wish I could write something quieter again, like The Aphorisms. I don't suppose you have a cousin?"
"Most of us do," the Calligrapher says, sitting politely near enough to talk, but also politely distant enough not to intrude. He glances at the word on my notepad and adds, "You have defined that one wrong."
I glance down at tainanpad. "That doesn't surprise me. I have incompetent. Or incapable. Or insane. Which is it?"
"A little of all, a little of none," the Calligrapher says. "A person is tainanpad when they are... emotionally disabled. In a state where they are incapable of fulfilling their duties or responsibilities or courtesies, or their ability to do so is impaired." He pauses. "I do not know where you found 'insane'."
"Probably because our legal system allows people to claim insanity as a reason for acting the way you describe," I mutter. "Why do you have a word for this?"
"Why do we have words for anything?" the Calligrapher asks. "It allows us to identify someone with a problem. And make allowances for their inability to fulfill their promises."
"For which," I am guessing, because they are Ai-Naidar, "you do not blame them."
"No," the Calligrapher says. "They need repair or Correction. Blaming them rarely solves the problem."
"Which is that they're broken," I say.
"Which is that they are creating a hole in the fabric of society," the Calligrapher corrects.
I look up at him sharply.
"Are you surprised?" the Calligrapher asks. "You know our focus is less on the soloist and more on the song."
I look at the word a little longer. "I'm guessing you wouldn't leave them alone to work things out on their own. Even if they wanted to."
"Of course not," the Calligrapher says, serene. "They are tainanpad: impaired. Their own judgement is faulty. That is part of the purpose of society, of other people. You know another word that sounds like this one, do you not?"
I flip through the lexicon until I see:
tainankest [ TYE naan KEHST ], (noun) -- A state of being outside society, to exist outside the system; to refuse civilization and your ishas and to attempt to be separate from all other Ai-Naidar. To be free, when freedom is isolation, loneliness and meaninglessness. To be unnamed. To not fit. A heinous, horrible thing.
"You understand?" the Calligrapher says. "To be incompetent, to be mentally incapable of participating in society, is to be lost. When one is lost, one needs a guide to lead one home."
Kherishdar is implacable in so many ways: if you are lost, you will be found. If you have fallen off the grid, you will be pursued. If you need help, you will have it: whether you're willing or not... or unable to accept it. Tainanpad. "Is there a word for something that is both comforting and menacing?" I wonder.
He just looks at me and shakes his head.
Stardancer Home.
- Mood:
tired - Music:Depeche Mode - Fragile Tension
Granted, the cold has come with lovely, blue-sky days, but also enough wind to cut right through what passes for winter clothing here. I've dug out the silk long-johns (yay, silk long-johns) and handknit hats and gloves, but still: Brrrr.
More to the point, crossing my fingers that the changing weather forecast for the end of the week continues to improve. A couple of days ago it was calling for freezing rain on Friday night, when my play opens, and that would pretty much suck; today the more refined forecast seems to suggest that that could hold off till Saturday morning, and then things should start to warm up.
Somehow, between work and rehearsals, I need to find time to hit the grocery store before
johnpalmer gets here tomorrow night; there's nothing much resembling actual food in the house. I remembered to put a load of laundry in this morning, so at least we'll have cat hair-free pillowcases...Brr.
"They did what?!?"
That's right, children: kids who misbehave turn Santa's smile upside down.Kind of like Wreckerators.
(Although Wreckerators do it more literally.)
And do you really want to be responsible for that? Huh? Do you?
And you thought no one knew about the hamster incident.
Whereas major offenses, on the other hand...
[wincing] Oooh, not good.Yes, Santa's cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding:
you are SO not getting another flame thrower this year.
- Related Wreckage: Totally Cheating
I’m thrilled to share that I’m featured on Oprah’s Holiday 2009 website along with some other fantastic bloggers and good friends like Gluten Free Girl & The Chef, Kalyn’s Kitchen, Stephanie O’Dea, Jennifer Perillo and Fuji Mama!
Come check out all of our holiday recipes – we’ll be contributing all season long!
I’m a lazy lazy baker.
My oven gets to sweet action unless I’ve got someone else to help me along in the kitchen — my kids even are forced bake their own birthday cake. So much for winning Mom of the Year award, eh?
And this is exactly why I love No-Knead breads like the No Knead Sticky Pecan Caramel Cinnamon Rolls (beware…I just gained 2 pounds saying that out loud), No Knead Pizza Dough: Pear and Gorgonzola Flatbread with Baby Arugula, No Knead Nutella and Hazelnut Challah. A couple years ago, when Andrew was 4 years old, he even made the original No Knead Bread (if he can do it, you can do it)
First things first…you’ve gotta mix the dough the night before. Or at least 10 hours, up to 18 hours (though secretly I’ve let it go 24 hours…see I told you I’m a lazy lazy baker!)
Mix together bread flour, salt, sugar, yeast, water. This is the night before and the boys are making bread in their PJ’s. Nathan wanted me to send along a message, “please don’t make fun of my pajamas or my Mom will kick yer butt.”
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 10-18 hours. But wait. It’s winter. Your “room temperature” might be different that mine. If your house is cold, put the bowl in the warm spot. Or you could let the dough hang out for 24 hours to give the chilly yeast more time to do its magic.
And if your house is REALLY cold, put the dang bowl under your covers and cuddle with it 
Once you’ve let it hang for 10-18 hours, scrape the dough out on your floured counter. Wet your hands and fold the dough over a couple of times to shape it into a flattened ball. Wet hands prevents the dough from sticking to your hands.
Set the dough ball seam side down, tuck the edges and seams under.
Brush dough with olive oil, cover loosely and let rise for 1-2 hours. So hey, that red towel? Bad idea. Even though I dusted with flour, it still stuck.
Divide the dough into 4 equal parts.
The dough should be soft ‘n stretchy. Stretch each dough ball into a long, thin baguette.
Place each baguette on a nicely oiled baking sheet and embed some goodies in each one.
Brush with olive oil. Actually, it was more like drizzle and dab the olive oil.
Sprinkle generously with salt. Go easy on the olive one – olives are salty already.
My favorite one was the tomato, so I made 2 of those.
Send ‘em to the oven to bake for 15-25 minutes 500F. If your oven doesn’t go that high, crank it up as high as you can and add a couple more minutes to baking time.
Voila!
Beautiful.
Festive.
Eat right away…the salt on the bread will make the bread soft once it cools down. If you’re not eating right away, you can pop ‘em back into the oven for a few minutes right before serving to crisp up again.
Of course, you can cheat and instead of making your own dough, just go to the store and get a fresh pizza dough ball at your supermarket (usually refrigerated in the bakery department) and stretch them out into thin baguettes. Now that’s way lazy. I like it.
PrintNo Knead Baguette (Stecca) Recipe
Recipe from 
My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey. If you want to keep the baguettes plain, just skip the step of embedding the garlic, olives and cherry tomatoes.
3 cups (400 grams) bread flour
1/2 teaspoon table salt
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon instant or other active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups (350 grams) cool 55-65F water
additional flour for dusting
20 pieces of the any combination of following: whole garlic cloves, whole olives, halved cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
3/4 teaspoon coarse sea salt or kosher salt
1. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, table salt, sugar and yeast. Add the water and, using a wooden spoon, mix until you have a wet, sticky dough, about 30 seconds. Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature until the surface is dotted with bubbles and the dough is more than doubled in size, 10 to 18 hours (24 hours if you have a cold cold home.)
2. When the first rise is complete, generously dust a work surface with flour. Use a bowl scraper or rubber spatula to scrape the dough out of the bowl in one piece. Fold the dough over itself to her three times and gently shape it into a somewhat flattened ball. Brush the surface of the dough with some of the olive oil and sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon of the coarse salt (which will gradually dissolve on the surface).
3. Grab a large bowl (large enough to hold the dough when it doubles in size. you could also use a large pot) and brush the insides of the bowl with olive oil. Gently place the dough, seam side down into the bowl. Cover bowl with a towel. Place in a warm draft free spot to rise for 1 to 2 hours. The dough is ready when it is almost doubled. If you gently poke it with your finger, it should hold the impression. If it springs back, let it rise for another 15 minutes.
4. Half an hour before the end of the second rise, pre-heat the oven to 500F, with a rack in the center. Oil a 13″ x 18″ x 1″ baking sheet.
5. Cut the dough into quarters. Gently stretch each piece evenly into a long, thin, baguette shape approximately the length of the pan. Place on the pan, leaving about 1 inch between the loaves. Embed the garlic cloves, olives or cherry tomatoes into the loaves, about five pieces per loaf. Drizzle, tab or brush olive oil on each loaf. Sprinkle sea salt or kosher salt over each loaf, remember to go light on the olive loaf since the olives are salty.
6. Bake For 15 to 25 minutes, until the crust is golden brown. Cool on a pan for five minutes, then use a spatula to transfer the baguette to a rack to cool thoroughly.
Note: The baguette may become a bit soggy in just a few hours because of the salt on the surface. If that happens, reheat the loaves in a hot oven until crisp.
Winter Storm Dumps On Wisconsin Storm Expected To Drop Foot Of Snow In Some Areas - http://www.channel3000.com/weather/2190
Authorities urge residents: Please stay home! - http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/a
The heavy snow has not only caused pile up on the interstates, causing closures, it's snapped power lines, leaving thousands with no power. At this point they don't want anyone on the roads.
Madison Buses Delayed No Start Time Available - http://www.channel3000.com/news/2190500
So yeah. The State of Wisconsin is closed.
Edit: More links.
http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/787
UPDATE: Governor Jim Doyle has ordered the closure of all state government and University of Wisconsin campuses for public business.
UPDATED Wednesday, December 9, 2009 --- 8:40 a.m.
Press Release:
Governor Doyle Orders State Government Closure:
MADISON – In response to the blizzard that has impacted the state, Governor Jim Doyle today ordered the closure of all state government and University of Wisconsin campuses for public business.
“Wisconsin’s emergency workers are working hard to keep people safe,” Governor Doyle said. “State offices are closed for business to ensure we are keeping people off the roads and allowing emergency response crews to do their jobs.”
The Governor’s order directs that state employees are not to report to work unless their job duties include the provision or support of an emergency response, public health, or public safety function, and their absence would compromise delivery of essential public health, public safety, or emergency response functions that are required to continue despite weather conditions.
http://www.wisgov.state.wi.us/journal_m
Relating to a Declaration of a State of Emergency
http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/788
Traffic Alerts Issued by the State Patrol. UPDATE: Major issues on I-39/90/94.
http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/786
http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.a
Posted: Dec 08, 2009 5:53 PM CST MADISON (WKOW) -- Governor Jim Doyle Wednesday morning announced the official closure of all state government and University of Wisconsin system campuses.
The Governor's order states that employees should not report to work Wednesday unless their job duties include emergency response, public health or public safety.
http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.a
Plows and wreckers are in the area working to clear out the roads at the time.
The State Patrol recommends taking Highway 30 to Hwy. 51 into Madison, then north or south back to the Interstate. That route has just been plowed.
In addition, all ramps on to I39/90/94 from Highway 51 northbound and southbound are closed due to snow accumulation.
I was thinking of going to the discussion group at Pathways tonight but with the weather and the tree still needing to be finished so that we can get these boxes out of the living room - maybe I'll just stay home where it's warm. :)
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