The Office of Second Chances now on Kindle

In 2008, I wrote a story inspired by TVTropes.org (WARNING: this site will suck your life away if you let it).  Specifically, I postulated that if the world is always in danger and the odds are always against the heroes, then sooner or later probability will win.  As the world is still around, there must be something at work to defeat probability, or at least reload the last save point.  Hence, "The Office of Second Chances."

It was a fun little story, and I sent it off to Coach's Midnight Diner, where it was published in the 2009 anthology Coach's Midnight Diner: The Back From The Dead Edition. I strongly believe that the story still has some life to it, and I've been considering other places it might thrive since the rights returned to me a while ago.  One possibility is an audio edition, but I really don't have the acting ability to do it justice.  And there are very few places that will publish reprints.  So ultimately I stole an idea from my wife.  She's decided that once her story rights return to her, she'll put them up as ebooks on Kindle. She's kind of annoyed that I did it before she did.

So "The Office of Second Chances" is now online at Amazon.  Here's a small taste:

World-threatening dangers are a fact of life. Most people can’t accept that, so they tell themselves it isn’t true and then make up stories about it. None of the details of those stories are right, but they do reflect the greater truth that there is always something threatening the world, and always a need for a hero to save it. Where they get it wrong is in thinking that the hero always succeeds. In real life, sometimes the plucky comic relief isn’t plucky enough, the wise old mentor isn’t that wise, the cryptic clues are too cryptic, or the ragtag band of heroes just can’t manage to overcome their differences. For whatever reason, there are times when the heroes don’t have what it takes to save the world.

When that happens, the world gets destroyed. Six thousand, seven hundred, and twelve times at last count. That’s why the Office of Second Chances exists. When things go wrong in the World Saving Department, they fix them.

 You can download it to your Kindle (or free Kindle app) for $0.99.  Just follow the link to your right.

Blog upgrade

I've finally gotten around to adding Bio and Writings pages to this blog.  I'd put it off because I had a feeling it was going to be painful to integrate this blog and my hosted site, and I wasn't wrong.  But they're now online, and links appear at the top of each page.  There's not much there now, aside from links to my published works and the all important Brief History of Donald, but I'll be adding more as time goes by.

Presidential suite

In case anyone's wondering what's in a Presidential Suite at a hotel, I can now say that it's about the equivalent of a nice apartment (minus the kitchen). There's a living room with couches, chairs, a television, and a grand piano. A dining room with table and chairs and a sink. A bedroom with a king sized bed and a television. Two bathrooms, the larger with separate shower and bathtub, two sinks, and a bidet. A kitchenette with a microwave. And humongous mirrors everywhere.

The real question, of course, is how I ended up in the Presidential Suite. I haven't yet figured that one out.

Keychain LED knives

There are some things I think everyone should have with them at all times.  A cellphone is a common one.  I personally like to have a multitool, but not everyone wants to carry that.  What I consider absolutely essential, though, is a flashlight and a knife of some sort.  That's why I like having a keychain flashlight/pocketknife combination.  Since I keep it on my keychain, I can be sure that I'll remember to take it with me, as long as I don't forget my keys.  I have a Buck Metro LED which I find very useful.  Unfortunately, it appears to be discontinued, though I'm not sure why.  It has an LED and a knife, along with a very sturdy "ring" to hook onto a keychain.

Recently, I bought another flashlight/knife combo, ostensibly for my wife.  She doesn't really see the need to carry it around though, so mostly it sits in our key basket, on the second set of car keys which she rarely needs.  It's a Victorinox Tech Signature Lite, and it's pretty nice.  Since she's not using it, I've considered swapping out my old knife for it, but before deciding to do so, I'd need to do a side-by-side comparison.  I figured I'd do that here.

Size: While they're both small, but the Buck knife is definitely bigger, made more to fit comfortably in the hand than in the pocket.  The Victorinox is small, the same size as their classic keychain knife, and is thus more comfortable.  Advantage: Victorinox

Blade: While the Victorinox blade is slightly longer, the Buck blade is wider and sturdier.  It also locks into position, and has a grip that makes it easy to open with one hand.  Unfortunately, it's a little bit too easy to open.  While I've never had it come all the way open in my pocket, I've had it come partially open.  Still, I have to say I prefer the Buck one.  Advantage: Buck

Flashlight: Both of them have a bright, white LED.  Either one works well for navigating in dark places.  The Victorinox has a protruding button, while the Buck has a recessed one.  Both have features to prevent the flashlight from coming on in your pocket and staying on until the battery drains (a common failing with keychain flashlights).  Victorinox solves the issue by having a button that must be held down to remain on, while Buck's clicks on, but automatically shuts down after three minutes.  I've never noticed the Buck accidentally turning on in any case.  Either one works.  Advantage: Tie

Ring: Victorinox has the standard, small wire keychain ring, the type that I find very annoying because they commonly bend out of shape and fail in their function of holding the knife and the key ring together.  In contrast, the Buck has a solid metal ring, the type you couldn't bend without a metal press.  It's also well positioned, opposite both the knife and the flashlight, while the Victorinox ring is opposite the flashlight but on the same side the knife opens, making the knife a bit awkward to use while on the keyring.  Advantage: Buck by a long ways

Other tools:  "What other tools?" is all you can say for the Buck.  There's nothing but the knife and flashlight.  It does it well, but that's all.  By contrast, the Victorinox managed to cram in most of the other things you might need in your pocket: a nail file with screw driver, scissors (probably the single most needed tool), and even a pen.  Advantage: Victorinox by default, but it deserves it anyway.

Side by Side of the two knives.

Verdict: So what's the verdict?  I love my Buck, and it has a lot of advantages.  But after working things through here, I think I'll try out the Victorinox for a week, and see how I feel about it.  There are a number of things I dislike about it, but there's enough good there that I think I should at least try it out.

Update: My wife has reclaimed the Victorinox, cutting the experiment short.  It seemed to work pretty well while it lasted.  I'll be keeping the Buck for now, but if I ever need to replace it, I now know a good alternative.

Naples: The city and Paestum

After spending two days in Pompeii and Herculaneum, we decided to spend the next day in Naples and see one of the castles.

Castel Nuovo

The problem with seeing Naple's castles is that while you can see the courtyard, and some of the interior, you can't actually go up into the towers and the battlements, which is what I'd really like to see when I'm visiting a castle.  Instead, Naples seems to have turned all its castles into art museums, which seems to me to defeat the purpose of going to see a castle.  There were some interesting paintings, I admit, including one of the Visitation of the Magi, where one of the magi was clearly a midget.  There was also this door:


Which is most interesting for the cannonball embedded in it.  This is supposedly the door to the gate, but as the sign next to it notes, it's far too small to span the gate to the castle.  It may have been part of a larger structure spanning the gate, but I believe the sign suggests that it actually belongs to another castle.

The next day we went to the Naples National Archaeological Museum.  This is where many of the artifacts recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum end up.  Once more, there seems to be an emphasis on the art rather than the archeology.  The museum mostly contained statues, mosaics, and pottery.  There were a few exhibits of everyday, household items.  These would have been the most interesting ones to Kristin and I, if any of the signage for that section was in English.  But they seemed to save their English for the more artistic items, like these:



We also managed to accidentally follow a tour group into a part of the museum which isn't normally opened to the public, displaying some of the more erotic artifacts found in archeological digs.  Let's just say that phalluses were widespread and common as nicknacks in Pompeii.  I didn't take pictures, though.

On our last day in Naples, we traveled to Paestum.  Getting there proved to be a chore, starting with a train to Sorento, and then a long bus ride to Paestum.  Getting back was easy though, as there was a direct train between Paestum and Naples, which would have made things much easier if we had known about it for the trip thre.

Paestum is the remains of a Roman colony, which was originally a Greek colony.  It has some of the oldest temples in Italy. 

A temple built by the Greeks.

A Roman house with a traditional layout.

There's also a museum, which I thought was one of the better archeological museums, not least because it had English signs for everything.

After that it was time to return to Rome, and from there to Boston, because we'd seen all of Italy we could see in two weeks.

Naples: Pompeii and Herculaneum

Last time, I talked about the first part of our honeymoon, in Rome.  I've been negligent in talking about the next part, which involved traveling to Naples.  Our goal was not so much to see Naples, but to visit the important historical sites close by: Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Paestum.  Naples, being the largest city near these, was our home base for this part of the trip.  It also had a large museum, collecting many of the artifacts recovered from these sites.

I remember, when we first got to Rome, thinking "Wow, the traffic here is worse than Boston."  Well, Naples was even worse.  The streets were filled with pedestrians, motorcyclists, and cars, all honking and zooming past one another.

A taste of Naples traffic.

But we managed to survive Naples, and even get out of the city to visit some of the important sites.  First up, Pompeii.  There was a lot to see in Pompeii, and it'd be easy to overwhelm with pictures.  Pompeii was buried in ash when Vesuvius erupted, and its rediscovery was one of the great archeological discoveries of Ancient Rome. 

Kristin walking down a Pompeian street

It's been a long process unearthing Pompeii, with many mistakes along the way (some say that Pompeii's second tragedy is that it was discovered a couple of centuries too early).  Still, there's a lot to see.  For example, this very famous mosaic (technically a copy, as the original is in the Naples museum).

Cave Canem--Beware of Dog

The best preserved building in Pompeii is the Villa of the Mysteries, famous for its paintings connected to the Dionysian mysteries.  But what I found most interesting was this room:

A storage room?

According to what I could find, this is supposed to be a storage room.  My difficulty, however, is that it apparently has no door, just the hole in the wall that looks like it was made as part of the excavation, and this window:

The only way in or out?

Maybe I'm wrong, and the door was just very narrow, and it was merely widened, but I did notice that some of the maps of the building showed no door there.  I couldn't find much more information on what most people consider an uninteresting part of the house.  But to me, it's rife with story possibilities.

And one last photo, also located in the Villa of the Mysteries.  A grim reminder of the tragedy which gave us Pompeii as we have it today:

One of the bodies found in the house.

The next day, we went to visit Herculaneum.  This city was also buried when Vesuvius erupted, but since it was buried deeper, much of it was better preserved.  Overall, I preferred Herculaneum over Pompeii.  It's better preserved, and thus there's more there for the amateur archeologist.  It's also smaller overall, so you can see all of it without being rushed.  Finally, they provide you with a free English map and guidebook, both of which you had to pay extra for at Pompeii.

Herculaneum.  The grassy area is where the beach used to be.

The view from the beach.  The cliff on the left shows how deep the volcanic tufa burying the town was.

I took many, many pictures, of which only a few will be interesting to those not fascinated by Roman archeology.

Kristin taking a picture of the impluvium (a pool for catching rainwater) in the atrium of one of the houses.

Kristin taking pictures of a shop, which probably sold those jars you see in the upper right.

One of the interesting things about Herculaneum, from an archeological view, is that some of the wood from the town was carbonized and preserved, giving us some rare samples from the time period.  That's why I have pictures like this:

Part of the door to one of the houses

Lots and lots of pictures like this.  Which maybe aren't so interesting to folks who aren't as into ancient Rome.

I was going to finish up Naples in this post, but I'm thinking maybe I can save some of it for later.  So I'll wrap things up here for now.

Donald and Kristin's Roman Adventure

On the Tuesday after our Sunday wedding, we departed for Rome, Italy. We took an overnight flight on Al Italia, arriving around 8 am on Wednesday morning. Then, on little to no sleep, we had our first day in Rome. It was tough, since we couldn't check into our hotel right away. We could, however, drop off our luggage there. After which we went down to St. Peter's Basilica (where there was a large gathering of people associated with John Paul II's beatification), got lunch, and then saw the Pantheon. By this time we were exhausted, so we went back to the hotel and checked in, and I, at least, took a two-hour nap. Kristin got maybe half-an-hour of sleep, before we went to a nice restaurant for dinner.

The Pantheon from the square outside.

The Pantheon's dome.  Note the large skylight, aka the hole in the ceiling.

For the next week, we did a lot of stuff, more than I can easily recount in one blog post, and the number of pictures is staggering. This is partly because Kristin's idea of a relaxing day is to do two museums, rather than three outdoor ruins in the hot sun. She also had very specific ideas about what restaurants she wanted to go to, based on various guide books, and she was willing to spend a significant amount of time wandering around in order to find them. My idea of a relaxing day is to spend it inside doing not much of anything, and maybe get a meal at a nice, nearby restaurant for dinner.

After our first full night's sleep in Rome, we spent the next day (Thursday) seeing the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Palatine hill. It was hot, tiring, and we took many, many pictures, mostly of things that will be boring to anyone without a deep interest in Roman history.

Me in front of the Colosseum

On Friday, we went to an Etruscan museum in the morning. It would have been more enjoyable if more of the information had been in English, but it was mostly in Italian.  We intended to take the afternoon off, but instead spent it wandering around a park lost, trying to find a restaurant. This made Kristin grumpy. The restaurant we did find really wasn't anything special. That evening we saw the Vatican museums, including the Sistine chapel, which was great fun.

From the outdoor exhibits of the Etruscan museum.  I'm not sure that it's really Etruscan, as there was no information included, but we weren't allowed to take pictures of the indoor exhibits.

From the Vatican museums, the famous statue of Laocoon and his sons being devoured by serpents.

The next day, Saturday, we saw the Imperial forums, ate lunch at a really expensive (but also really nice) restaurant, then climbed up the Capitoline hill to see the Capitoline museum. There was a whole lot of walking and climbing involved. This made me grumpy.

Kristin in a shop (taberna) at Trajan's market

Me in front of the famous Capitoline wolf.  The wolf statue may be ancient, but the infants (Romulus and Remus) weren't added until the Renaissance.

On Sunday, we went to Ostia Antica. This was an abandoned Roman city. Since it wasn't buried under mud or volcanic ash like Pompey and Herculaneum, it was in fairly poor condition. That said, the staff are much less protective of it, and visitors can wander around and through most of the buildings.

Me in a thermopolium (restaurant) in Ostium Antica.

That's me walking around the amphitheater at Ostia Antica.

 On Monday, we visited three different catacombs along the Via Appia Antica (the old Via Appia, which is famous to anyone familiar with ancient Roman history). While the guides for each tour told us largely the same information--for example, catacombs were purely for burial, the Christians never hid in them--this was fascinating for anyone interested in the history of early Christianity.  And also for any aspiring writers who think catacombs would make a great setting for a story. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside, so we have no boring pictures of the catacombs.

The outside of the catacombs.

On Tuesday, we went to Hadrian's Villa. Hadrian was a Roman Emperor who built the luxurious retreat to end all luxurious retreats (at least until the next Roman Emperor came along). I wasn't as impressed with the villa as I wanted to be, but it was still fun.

The Canopus at Hadrian's Villa.

Finally, on Wednesday, it was time for our trip to Naples, for the second stage of our honeymoon.

The Wedding of the Century . . .

...happened two weeks ago.  Prince William married . . . some woman, I presume.  I really wasn't paying attention.  I was more concerned with the wedding of my lifetime, which happened this past Sunday, when I married the lovely and talented Kristin Janz.

Kristin and I met in the writing group of Park Street Church in April of 2009.  We quickly discovered that we were both published writers who wrote similar types of stories, specifically fantasy with a society based on Ancient Rome.  This became something more, thanks largely to generous hints dropped by Kristin.  Even so, it took me awhile to notice, but by July we were dating.  Aside from going to conferences together, we've also gone camping, backpacking, and to restaurants much nicer than I would ever think of going by myself.

After a year and a half, I proposed to her in December, while we were visitng her parents in Nova Scotia.  This gave me the opportunity to ask for her father's blessing first (note that I asked for his blessing, not his permission--it's an important distinction).  We didn't leave ourselves much time to plan for the wedding.  There are limits to the times her family can travel, so that meant that the wedding would either have to be before mid-May, or we'd have to wait until October, and we decided earlier was better than later.  Less planning time encouraged us to keep things simple, which was how we preferred it.

Kristin had long dreamed of having her wedding as part of the regular church service.  It's not unheard of, but it's not something that our church had done before, so when we approached Park Street's associate minister about doing it that way, he was originally reluctant.  We laid out our case in e-mail, and apparently the senior minister was enthusiastic about the idea, so eventually the associate minister came around.  We scheduled the wedding for the 6:30 pm service at Park Street on May 8th.

Ultimately, the wedding ceremony was the easy part.  There were, over the course of the weekend, no less than four parties, although I'm using the term "party" a bit loosely. 

The first party was really just dinner out for us and our families on Friday night.  The twelve of us went out to Legal Seafood, one of the nicer family-friendly mid-range restaurants.  Present were Kristin's parents, her grandfather, her brother, and my parents, my sisters, and my nieces.




The next day was what we'd been calling "The Saturday Event."  Since the wedding ceremony was so late, the reception would be even later.  So we knew that we needed something at a time that families with children could enjoy.  We also wanted to spend more time with our families and other friends who'd come from out-of-town to see us.  For this purpose, we planned a party for Saturday afternoon, from noon to five.  This took place at our old apartments: prior to getting married, we lived in the upstairs and downstairs apartments of a two-family house.

For this, I wanted to do something special for the food, namely crawfish. Crawfish is a very Louisiana food, which you just don't see a lot up north.  For a while we didn't even know if we could get crawfish in Boston, but we discovered a restaurant called Brother's Crawfish, in Dorcester, that catered.  They delivered plenty of crawfish for our meal.




As you can see, they look like mini-lobsters.  They're good, but often pretty spicy.  I got to teach some Canadians how to eat crawfish, though, so it was fun.  My niece, Kara, already knew how to eat crawfish, of course.




Aside from crawfish, we got some barbeque and sides from Blue Ribbon.  This ensured that even those who couldn't eat shellfish (like my sister) had plenty to eat.




After we had cleaned up, Kristin and I went home to rest up for the big day.  And it was big.

The first order of business was getting set up for the reception, which would take place that evening in the same two apartments where the Saturday Event had been.  Then we picked up the food for the next party: coffee hour.  Our church has two evening services, a 4 pm service and a 6:30 pm service.  In between, they have a coffee hour.  Since our wedding was at the 6:30 pm service, we decided that we should be present there to greet guests who were coming to the wedding, but not the reception.  But since coffee hour usually only has a limited amount of food, we brought extra: a full gross of desserts from Quebrada.  We had cupcakes, croissants stuffed with fruit or chocolate, lemon tarts, fruit tarts, chocolate tarts, chocolate dipped strawberries, and five pounds of cookies.  We also brought some Italian sodas, apple cider, and some teas to drink.  We wanted to make the desserts available to the entire church, but we also knew that they'd go quickly, so we told our guests to come at 5:15 pm.  The 4 pm service let out at 5:20 pm.  By 5:30 pm, all the desserts were gone.




Nevertheless, we were able to talk to most people at the reception.

Kristin and her roommates

After that, it was time for the main event.  We had a reserved row for family, but everyone else found their own seats.

From left to right: Kristin's brother, Stephen, her parents, and her grandfather

From left to right: my sister, Rebekah, her daughter, Kara, and Hope with her mother, Sarah, my other sister

In order to keep the wedding from being too disruptive of the regular service, we kept things simple.  That meant no wedding party, just Kristin and I, no wedding dress, and no special music or readings.  When the time came, we went up, stated our intentions, received the blessing of our families and the congregation, said our vows, exchanged rings, kissed, and sat down.  Okay, sure, it sounds like a lot when written out like that, but the whole event only took about ten minutes.

Intentions

Vows

After we had our receiving line--really, we just stood where new members stand after they join the church, and let people say hello and congratulate us--we went to the fourth and final party, the reception.  For this party, we had sushi from Whole Foods, as well as fruit, vegetable, tortilla, and mediterannean baskets.



While many of our guests with children weren't able to make it, we hung out with a lot of friends, some local and some from out-of-town.

Kristin with her father, brother (Stephen), mother, and sister (Lisa)

More guests

Around midnight, we went home to our new place.  We didn't take any pictures of what happened next, though.

Our new place--taken the next day

Nuclear Power--all stop or full steam?

Given the events at Japan's Fukushima reactor, many folks, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have said that we need to take a step back and reconsider the entire question of nuclear power.  I intend to offer a contrary view--rather than slowing things down, we need to speed things up. 

The problems at Fukushima occurred because the earthquake and tsunami knocked out the backup electrical generators needed to cool the reactors (when they can't provide their own electricity for cooling), which led to the partial meltdown.  This is because the reactors used need electricity to cool the reactor, even after it has been shut down.  Because the generators were down, the reactors could not be cooled, and hence the partial meltdown.  The reactors at Fukushima use an older design of the Boiling Water Reactor.  Newer designs use a passive cooling system, which can cool the reactor even without electric energy.  However, most plants, both in Japan and the US, use the older design.

If we decide that the current design is unsafe, we have several options.  One is to mothball the current plants and replace them with something new.  The problem is that the only thing we can replace them with, that has the same energy output and baseload capacity, is coal.  For all the hype, energy sources such as wind and solar don't have the ability to match current needs.  Much more likely what will happen is that the current plants will continue to operate, but will not be allowed to expand, and new plants will be put on hold.  The problem is that these plants will continue to use the older reactors, which are just as vulnerable as the Fukushima plant.  And as they age without being replaced, they will just become more vulnerable.

I think the smartest move, if we believe that the vulnerability to earthquakes is a problem that must be solved, is to streamline the process for getting the new designs approved, and to push plants towards upgrading to the new reactor designs while making it easier for them to do so.  This would allow the older reactors to be phased out while maintaining capacity.

Storyblogging Carnival CXVII

Welcome to the 117th Storyblogging Carnival.We had to skip a month, since we were short on entries.  Unfortunately, we still only have three, but I felt that I should at least put up the ones I've received.

---

A Limerick Affair
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 75 word brief story rated R.

The tale of a cheating spouse in limerick form.

---

The Virgin Wife Chronicles
by Andrea DiGiovanni of Living Out Loud
An 1:18 minute video trailer rated PG.

The Virgin Wife Chronicles is an inspirational online serial where I share my journey through an unconsummated marriage.

---

The Confidant of Jericho
by Tim King of J. Timothy King's Stories
A 980 word brief story rated PG.

From the moment they appeared at my door, I knew the two men weren’t from around here... I try to be careful about making mistakes... (An historical short-short, based on the story of Rahab of Jericho.)

---

This concludes the one hundred and seventeenth Storyblogging Carnival.

Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

Storyblogging Carnival Cancelled

I'm afraid I didn't get enough entries for a Storyblogging Carnival this month.  We'll try again in March.

Storyblogging Carnival delayed

I hate to do this, but I don't have enough entries to do a Storyblogging Carnival.  If I get enough within the next week, I'll post the carnival then.  If not, then I'll cancel this month's carnival and save any entries I have for next time.

Superspeed

 I've been writing a Weird Western story, and as a result, thinking a bit about superspeed (as it's an ability I want some of my characters to have).

The idea of how superspeed works, at least in my story, is not that the flow of time really changes, but that you are operating at such a high speed (including your mind and your muscles), that everything else seems to be going slower.  Now, this being the case, gravity seems to slow down.  Let's say a wagon goes off a cliff.  If you're moving at superspeed, it seems to take a long time to fall.  If you're sitting on it, it still seems to take a long time to fall.  If you and the wagon become separated, you still take a long time to fall.  So from your perspective, gravity seems to be slower.  So when you move, do you move as if you're in a low gravity environment, with long leaping strides?

Now at issue is the fact that the forces of the universe haven't really changed.  Gravity isn't any weaker.  So if you move as if you're in a low gravity environment, then you're not just faster, you're stronger too, such that your leaps carry you a great deal farther and higher.  Higher strength, however, is one of the prerequisites of superspeed in the first place.  The extreme acceleration of superspeed means you need to produce that much more force.  So if you have the strength to move at superspeed, then gravity should seem weaker.

One question is whether I should deal with speed and strength as separate powers.  Technically, my story already has a Mark of Speed and a Mark of Strength, I've just been considering superspeed as coming from the Mark of Speed, and dealing with the Mark of Strength as a separate matter, not that you need the Mark of Strength to make use of the Mark of Speed.

Now, there are some disadvantages to moving at superspeed.  First, there's a lack of control.  You've seen how people on the moon move about.  Their long leaps don't exactly give them a lot of coordination.  And when you're in the middle of a jump, you have very little control at all until you reach something, be it the ground or a wall.  Second, things don't operate how you think they should.  You pull a trigger on a gun, and it's going to take a while to fire.  Let's assume that no matter how fast you're going, you're still much slower than the speed of the bullet (and the detonation that produces it).  You still have to wait an interminable time for the hammer to fall.  And while you're proportionally stronger so you can pull the trigger and activate the mechanism faster, how well will the mechanism stand up to the wear and tear?


Thinking about these things is what I've been doing tonight instead of actually writing.

Fixing the Academic Job Market

Sometimes, you read about solution so novel, you just can't wait to see it tried.  This was presented by Jeffrey J. Williams in Inside Higher Ed (hat tip TaxProf Blog):

Academe is in crisis. Young academics have been left out in the cold: according to American Association of University Professors (AAUP) statistics, only about 25 percent of new Ph.D.s find full-time, permanent jobs. We are wasting the talent of a generation.
...
Therefore, the best recourse is to solve the problem ourselves, taking matters into our own hands, as it were. To that end, I have recently founded an organization, Academic Opportunities Unlimited (AOU). Our motto is “We can’t guarantee you’ll get the job, but we can guarantee an opening.”

AOU is elegant in its simplicity, rebalancing an artificially skewed market. One of the effects of the job crisis is an aging professoriate. Since the 1970s, the scales have tipped heavily AARP-ward: while only 17 percent of faculty were 50 or over in 1969, a bloated 52% had crossed that divide by 1998. It is no doubt worse now, and strangling the air supply of potential new professors.

AOU would work to remedy this bias against youth. It would, through a rigorous screening process, pinpoint faculty who are clogging positions and select them for hits, or “extra-academic retirement” (EAR). While this might raise qualms from the more liberal-minded among us, we would argue that it is more humane, both to potential faculty who otherwise have been shunted aside and to those languishing in the holding pattern of a withered career, than our current system. The retirement would be efficient and quick, and strictly limited to those who, as the saying goes, have their best years long behind them.

This gives whole new meaning to the term forced retirement.

A Marriage Bed

I bought a bed yesterday.  Or at least a mattress and box spring.  This is a product of two circumstances:

1. I am getting married in May.
2. My old bed breathed its last.

I had been sleeping on a wooden futon frame, but rather than using a futon mattress (the only one I have is old and thin, such that you can feel every wooden slat beneath you), I used an inflatable mattress.  I found that it was comfortable, and while it got cold in the winter, I could cover it with some foam and an open sleeping bag beneath the fitted sheet, and I'd be fine.

Which worked until it sprung a leak on Thursday.  Exactly how that happened I'm still not certain, but I lay on it Thursday night, and woke up lying on the aforementioned wooden slats, with the remaining air in the mattress surrounding, rather than beneath, my body.

So I needed a new mattress fast.  Rather than going out and buying one (or ordering it on Amazon for overnight delivery), I talked to Kristin first.  Kristin's my fiancée, and we had been talking about buying a new bed when we got married.  She was not impressed with my air mattress, and her own bed is kind of small and creaky. So we used this as an impetus to get a new bed--or the mattress and box spring, as I mentioned earlier.  Said items were installed on top of the futon frame for the moment (an actual bed may have to wait until we have an actual apartment), to produce this:


Which is just a little bit tall for a bed, roughly as high as my stomach.  Apparently the mattress + box spring combination would work better on a bed frame somewhat lower than the futon frame.

Update: For reasons I haven't figured out yet, a whole lot more carriage returns were included in this post than I put there when I hit the publish button.  I've deleted them, but we'll see if they come back.

Upcoming Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, February 7th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, February 5th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Doc Rampage on Kant

It's been a while since I linked to Doc Rampage, but he's had some interesting things to say recently.  I especially like his two posts on Immanuel Kant and irrationality.  Here's a tiny piece, from the first one:

Kant is not saying what the a simple reading of this sentence suggests: that he has to ignore the facts because they make it hard to believe in God. The reasoning that Kant is referring to is not reasoning that tries to show the non-existence of God --he is referring to reasoning that tries to show the existence of God.

In Kant's time, there was a common belief that reasoning could be used to prove all truths, including the existence of God. There were various "proofs" of the existence of God considered persuasive by influential thinkers. Although there were some who didn't buy any of the proofs that they had heard, it was widely believed that the question of God's existence could be settled, one way or another, by logical proof. Kant rejected this idea.

What Kant is saying in that quote is that since reason can never, even in principle, prove the existence of God we should give up the attempt and rely instead on "faith", by which he means another way of arriving at the knowledge of God.

More generally, Kant argued that we have different ways of arriving at different kinds of knowledge. There is no single faculty that is the ultimate source of all knowledge. This is in contrast to a very popular view in his day (associated with Descartes) that pure reason was the ultimate arbitrator of knowledge. In fact the title of the book that contains this out-of-context quote is "A Critique of Pure Reason"

 As they say, read the whole thing.

Update: Doc made an update to correct for a mistake for a misreading. I don't think it makes a huge difference to his interpretation, though.

Fortune Cookies

Kristin and I had lunch at a Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant with a friend of ours, Rene, today.  Rene got a fun fortune cookie:

Keep your courage up and it will keep you up.

Which is kind of bland unless you play the "In bed" game--that's where you add the words "in bed" at the end of your fortune cookie.

My fortune cookie, by contrast, was kind of creepy:

The thing in us that we fear just wants our love.

Adding "in bed" doesn't exactly improve it.

I think that the best fortune I've ever seen wasn't one I got, but a friend of mine did one time when we were out together.  It said:

Kiss the person next to you.

She declined to follow its advice, hopefully not because I was the one sitting next to her.

Storyblogging Carnival CXVI

Welcome to the 116th Storyblogging Carnival. Once again I'm late, which is a shame, since there are some new contributors this time.

---

Not a limerick
by Stu Savory of Eunoia
An under 100 word brief story rated PG.

A video reading of a short poem.

---

Who Needs A Door, Anyway?
by Madelein Begun Kane of Mad Kane's Humor Blog
An under 150 word brief story rated PG.

A blizzard creates an unusual predicament for my husband and me 

---

Dynastic Ambitions
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 200 word brief story rated PG.

Examining the dynastic ambitions of Reginald Tweedsmuire, and why they will not be realized.

---

Grandma's Zipper by Jessica S. of Literary Journey of a Freelance Writer
An 700 word brief story rated PG.

The tale of a new town and a puppy.

---

Clark in Florida
by Stu Savory of Eunoia
An 1,300 word short story rated PG.

Mr. Inept makes a humorous insurance claim.

---

The Emperor's Edge Ebook Excerpt
by Lindsay Buroker of E-book Endeavors
A 1,695 word excerpt from a novel rated PG-13.

An excerpt from my fantasy adventure novel: The Emperor's Edge.

---

This concludes the one hundred and sixteenth Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

The four revision process

I used to have a three revision process for all my stories, which I know I posted about before, but I think the post got lost in the move back.  Since I've joined a writer's group, that's expanded to include an extra revision.  Let me describe briefly how I do it.

Rough draft - This isn't really a revision, but it is where the process starts.  The rough draft is what I write when I have a story to tell, and thus I tend to rush from beginning to end to get there.  Thus I will sometimes skimp on the details, avoid getting bogged down in things I ought to research, and even just leave out scenes I'm not eager to write.  I tend to leave notes to myself in these so I can come back and fix these issues later.

First revision - In the first revision, I fill in the gaps of the rough draft, correct the obvious mistakes, whether in plot, character, or style (or grammar!).  After this revision, I show it to my writing group.

Writer's Group - This isn't a revision for me, per se.  Rather, it's a meeting where some fellow writers come together and critique my work.  Generally, when they do their job well, I can find out what works and what doesn't, and they'll give me back my story with lots of comments in the margins.

Second revision - This is the revision where I go through the comments made by my writer's group and incorporate them in the story, as best I can.  Sometimes I'll disagree with the device, and sometimes different people will give flat out contradictory advice, and sometimes I'll see what they want but just can't figure out a way to do it.  Regardless, after this revision, I should have a much better version of the story.


Third revision - This is the hardest revision.  This is where I print the story out and read the story aloud, all the way through, making corrections as I find issues.  Generally, this means there's a lot of red ink on the page by the end of the day.  Then, of course, I take the hard copy to a computer and rework the story so it conforms to my notes.


Fourth revision - This is the final revision, where I go over the story one last time, polishing it up, and correcting issues the previous revisions either failed to correct or created.

It may sound like a lengthy process, but even at this point, it's not really done.  Oh, I'll format it and submit it to some places, but as the rejections come back, I'll make revisions based on what they say.  Or, when I'm lucky, as editors request revisions. Or as new ideas present themselves.  Ultimately, the story is only really done once it's published.