The XKCD hypothesis

According to a recent XKCD post, if you pick any page on Wikipedia and click on the first link not in parentheses or italics, you will eventually wind up on the page for Philosophy.  As an experimental scientist, naturally I had to try this out.

Leeroy Jenkins > Internet Phenomenon > Internet > Computer Network > Computers > Machine > Energy > Physics > Natural Sciences > Science > Knowledge > Facts > Information > Sequence > Mathematics > Quantity > Property > Modern Philosophy > Philosophy

Well, what do you know.

Wish Me Luck!

I just submitted “Ravensdaughter’s Tale” to a fantasy zine that specializes in fairy tales.  I’m knocking on wood and all that, and expecting to hear back in a couple of weeks.

In other news, I just found out that the Facebook Publicize feature on WordPress broke over a month ago and Facebook users haven’t been getting updates.  Urgh.  I think I fixed it now.  Facebook folks, expect to be getting a big backlog the next few days.

The Confederacy of Heaven Ch. 35

When Nasan came to, she was back in the tent, lying on the meaningless-pattern blankets.  She felt all over like she’d been tenderized, but to her relief, she was herself again.  No more shiny armor skin.  Nice. Menkar sat cross-legged across from her.

“I’m sorry.  I forgot how hard our dimension is on humans.  I shouldn’t have let your testimony go on for so long.”

She sat up painfully.  “I feel terrible.”

Continue reading →

The Slenderman Cometh

If you want to scare your pants off, go look up the Slenderman on the Internet.  Actually, don’t look up the Slenderman.  Really.  Take my word for it.

He’s an Internet meme invented in 2009 that was specifically designed to be terrifying.  Victor Surge – and all the people who’ve expanded on the mythos since then – have taken all the scariest bits from all the boogeymen you have ever feared and rolled them into one.  The Slenderman likes to show up in your photographs.  You’re reviewing your images on the digital camera, and there in the back of that nice picnic, there’s a ten-foot tall man in a suit with no face.  Just standing there.  Watching you.

Nobody really knows what he is or what he wants, but once you know about the Slenderman, he’ll start following you (sorry, everybody).  You’re walking around your house at night and you happen to look out the window … and there he is.  Just standing there.  Watching you.  The more you think about Slenderman, the more powerful he gets, the more powerful he gets, the easier it is to see him, the more you see him the more you think about Slenderman … arrrgh!  Your own brain is out to get you!

But there is something you can do.  Quick, look:

Cartoon of Slenderman riding a swing

Yep.  That’s the riddikulus spell at work.

Lithops: Living Stones

I got a lithops, I got a lithops, I got a lithops, hey, hey, hey, hey!

Lithops plants look like aliens because they’re adapted to one of the most extreme environments on the planet.  They’re native to the Namibian Desert, which averages about 5mm of rain.  Per year.  These little guys survive entirely on the fogs that blow in off of the ocean sometimes.

I stumbled across my lithops at a plant sale fundraiser at grad school last week.  As I’d only ever seen lithops at a botanical garden before, I didn’t know you could even buy and sell them.  But then there they were, rows and rows of little 2″ pots of them on the table, right next to the cactus.  Want.

I started quizzing the guy at the table.  How do you take care of these?  They were only four dollars each, but I didn’t want to kill one.  Turns out they’re easy to take care of as long as you remember two things: don’t water them, and give them lots of light.  Up here in Minnesota, I’m going to have to supplement them with an artificial plant light.

So I brought one home, and I’ll see how it goes.  I feel a sort of kinship for the little guy.  He’s a transplant from a very different part of the world, too.

Papers is awesome

If you’re a fellow graduate student, you’ll know what I’m talking about: that mass of .pdf’s you’ve got kicking around your computer.  Journal articles.  The literature.  That stuff you gotta read.

I’d always managed smaller research projects okay with folders inside folders inside folders in the Finder and some text file indexes.  But a dissertation project is an entirely different ball game.  You spend four years on one project and you’re going to accumulate hundreds of .pdfs.  So I finally tried out this program a friend recommended to me:

Whaaaaa!  It’s like iTunes for journal articles.  You can see folders, a list, and front-page previews all at the same time – and, yes, the folders can have multiple labels.  You can read any paper fullscreen within the program just by double-clicking on it, and – be still my heart – all the biblio data is right there!  It’s just there in the panel on the right!

I should probably not be so excited about this program.