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Thursday, August 31, 2006 The Thursday Threesome: Fluffy Bunny Rabbits Onesome: Fluffy-- is as fluffy does! It's almost lemon meringue season at that pie shop. Do you do fluffy pies? ...or is it fruit all the way for you? (Okay, Southerners: go ahead and expound on rhubarb...) I'm all for fruit pies (except for maybe blueberry). I haven't baked any lately because I don't have time. Twosome: Bunny-- slippers? Yes? No? Barefoot? Shoes? What do you schlep around the house in when it's cold outside? Socks and slippers Threesome: Rabbits-- Have you ever had little furry pets? What varieties? Are there any in your future? No. Because I don't have time (or rather, I'm only at home to go to sleep) to devote to any pets. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:59 PM : Science Reading Tangled Bank #61 is up at Epigenetic News. Some of the links are borked so I've just provided an abbreviated list of the articles that I could find: Wells vs. Mooney Wolves on the Range Viscosity I: "Stickiness" in Neutron Stars Khayyam, Galileo, fundies and the finger salute Telomere length as a biomarker of stress and aging How similar are apes and humans? Lichtenberg Figures What is a Plover? Name that contamination! Water Cycle Gresham's Geocache The Clean-Up Pro More Tiny Things One Year Later: Katrina and the Environment Cystatin C As A Prognostic Tool for Cardiovascular and Kidney Diseases Genetically Engineered Tomatoes With Enhanced Flavonol Content What Would Alien Life Be Like? Influenza virus and design Starchild Abraham Cherrix Rainforests Last "Rational" Reason for Opposing Embryonic Stem Cell Research is Gone Circadian expression of nuclear receptors *Yeah, maybe posting all of the Tangled Bank links if you're not the host is not completely kosher, but look at it this way--I'm doing my little part to drive traffic to deserving science blogs. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:55 AM : Wednesday, August 30, 2006 Strangely Enough Hm. My site for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series is cited as an external link for Terry Windling's Wikipedia article but not for the other editors of the anthology or even for the anthology itself. I'm just puzzled about the inconsistency more than anything. I think most people would just look up information about the series through Amazon or Googling. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:59 AM : Tuesday, August 29, 2006 Fighting Modern Superstition Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience by Martin Gardner. I'm not particularly enamored with the writing style, but I think it'll be useful for people who need to articulate reasons why something is bunk. There's everything from evolution vs. creationism to egg balancing and Elvis-like sightings of the "Wandering Jew." Gardener points out the wishy-washiness of IDers (intelligent design) who try to discredit science yet remain mum about their own beliefs. Or, in regards to the Star of Bethlehem, why religious nuts insist on trying to find a natural explanation for it when they already believe in the miracles performed in the Bible. There's also a bunch of other present day pseudoscience and New Age beliefs that leave you shaking your head: reflexology, urine therapy, Freudian theory, UFOs, numerology. What I found most interesting were the essays on famous historical scientists who had some really weird beliefs. Isaac Newton actually spent very little of his time on physics--he wasted most of his efforts on alchemy. Thomas Edison--who the public views as a hard-working inventor--was also a bit of paranormalist. He even tried to make a machine to communicate with the dead. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:42 AM : Monday, August 28, 2006 It's the Little Things... ...that drive me up the wall. I arrived home to see the box of books I had ordered on my doorstep. Opened. All the books were present and accounted for (as well as the receipt), but who knows what else might have gone missing. On the box, there is a note written in pen: "Opened by mistake." How the heck can you open a parcel by mistake? Don't people read the label? And what's up with rejections that just say, "Thanks for your submission but we're going to pass on this"? Did they even read my submission? Or is my writing so bad they can't bring themselves to say anything else? Writing short stories is such a thankless job. Sometimes I think I should just give up since slush readers apparently don't care. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:02 PM : Sunday, August 27, 2006 On Reading and a Book about Preserving How to Read. (via Third Level Digression) Nick Hornby argues that you should read what you want and not what you think you should read. Are you slogging through a "turgid political biography" when you want to read The Da Vinci Code? Then toss the biography and read the thriller. I think that for every book I've finished, there are probably about five or six other books that I've put down after reading a sentence or a paragraph or one chapter. I've learned to stop reading most books that just don't appeal to me. Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard. Which is subtitled, "How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World." (This, of course, brings up the observation of the many books that are subtitled "How X Changed the World." We get it already. That's why the book exists in the first place.) The original reason people preserved food was to save food for scarce times. Later on, technology to preserve food was mainly advanced for those on long sea voyages or on the move--like an army. There's a bit of everything in Pickled, Potted, and Canned--from drying and salting to concentrating and fermenting. I found it amusing to note that artificial freezing was at first regarded as "ungodly" because people deemed it unnatural to make ice during the summer. Ah, isn't this always true for all new technology? This book has a lot of neat little facts--which probably means it's better kept as a reference. I'm never going to remember all of what I've read in a month. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:18 AM : Saturday, August 26, 2006 Getting High, Mouse-Style Mouse Party. (via easternblot.net) Groovy, man. Learn some biochemistry by putting mice on drugs! In this interactive flash game from the University of Utah's Genetic Science Learning Center, drag a mouse to "the chair" and find out what's happening inside his drugged out brain. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:00 PM : Friday, August 25, 2006 Hits Hm. I just realized that I got my 75,000th visitor sometime earlier this week and I have no idea who it was. Anyway, whoever you are, thanks! And if I'm lucky, I'll hit 100,000 by the end of 2007. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:43 AM : Help With Plotting The Johari Window (suggested by Wayzgoose) looks like an interesting tool to help build character interactions. I'll probably give this a test run over the weekend to see how well it will work with the current planning I have this year for Nanowrimo. (Cross-posted at Writing Sya.) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:27 AM : Thursday, August 24, 2006 An Update Yay! I finally updated my science article index. I probably need to update my blogroll as well--but one thing at a time! [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:34 PM : The Thursday Threesome: Name that Tune Onesome: Name-- Ah, what about names? How did your blog name come to be? Is there a story there? There's nothing particularly weird about how I came up with this blog's title. I named my blog after my pseudonym. Perhaps it would have made more sense if I named it "Syaffolee's Blog" instead, but I don't particularly like the word "blog" in the title. Twosome: that-- and this. We've all thought about a change of locations from time to time: is there any place you'd like to try living for a while? (You can go back home when you're done with the tryout.) I just moved about 2000 miles a little over a month ago. I don't think I'm going anywhere else soon. As for somewhere other than my current location--I've always wondered what it would be like to live in northern England. Threesome: Tune-- us into what you're listening to lately. ...anything on your radar we should be aware of? Er...I've been listening to some random flamenco music. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 12:12 AM : Wednesday, August 23, 2006 An Addendum Frangled Tank: Extra Servings. (via Pharyngula) This is an addendum to last week's Tangled Bank that didn't get posted on time. Interesting stuff. Although I also have to note, I submitted something to them last Tuesday and they still haven't put it up. I guess I got rejected again. I'll submit again for next week. If I get rejected--well, my track record is going to look like the pile of rejection slips I have for my fiction submissions. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 10:09 PM : The Clean-Up Pro As of this writing, there are already 367 bacterial genomes completely sequenced in the NCBI Genome Project. More sequences get completed every week. The sheer amount of information accumulated is enough to make one boggle. Many of the sequenced organism are of pathogenic importance--some cause diseases in humans others in plants, etc. And then, there are those of ecological importance. Take for instance, ecological disasters. The damage to the marine wildlife by oil spills (such as the Exxon Valdez in 1989 and the Gulf War in 1991) extends way beyond the initial accident as heavier toxic petroleum products persist in the environment for long periods of time. A variety of methods are used to clean up oil spills. Setting the oil on fire could burn it away. The spill can be contained by booms and collected by skimmers. Or dispersants can be added to break up the oil into small droplets so it can be easily dispersed in water. Yet another method is to introduce microbes to speed up the biodegradation of the spill. For eukaryotes, petroleum products are toxic to life. Not only can these chemicals attack the membranes of cells, but they also have adverse effects oxidative stress reduction, the cell cycle, and DNA damage repair. Benzene, for example, is strongly associated with leukemia in humans. But luckily for us, there are microorganisms with the ability to metabolize hydrocarbons in petroleum. Pseudomonas, Rhodocccous, Psychrobacter, and Bacillus species all have the ability to munch on oil for lunch.  In this month's issue of Nature Biotechnology, Schneiker et al. have published the sequence to Alcanivorax borkumensis, an oil-eating marine bacterium. In fact, not only is the Alcanivorax genus a group of bacteria that can metabolize petroleum-based products, but they prefer doing so. A. borkumensis is so picky that it doesn't even use sugars and amino acids--the staple diet of so many other known bacteria. In 1991, A. borkumensis was isolated from sea sediment at the Isle of Borkum (off the northwest coast of Germany in the North Sea) by Passeri et al. while they were screening for biosurfactants. Compared to other oil-eating bacteria from the soil or fresh water, A. borkumensis did not have toxic effects on other organisms.With the A. borkumensis genome at our fingertips, what characteristics can we determine that make this organism so good at degrading petroleum products? The bacterium's ability to degrade alkane is encoded in a genomic island that has similarity with other unrelated oil-eating bacteria--hinting that A. borkumensis acquired the ability from some horizontal gene transfer in the past. Another important ability is emulsifying oil with water which are usually mediated by proteins called glycosyltransferases--this organism has several genes for this as well. Other important genes include those that are involved in biofilm formation (to separate oil into droplets to be easily digested) and DNA repair (since petroleum products can damage DNA). So with this blueprint available, not only can we begin to understand how the microbial milieu in the oceans keep the waters from clogging up with oil spilled from natural processes--such as natural seeps in the sea floor--but also possibly engineering a "super bug" to help clean up human-made messes. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:41 AM : Tuesday, August 22, 2006 The Human Side of Science LabLit.com. (via A Blog Around The Clock) Finally, a site dedicated to the fact that science and fiction aren't mutually exclusive. But I especially like the essays. Stress and the Scientist. Stereotypes of scientists in the lab! You know there's always someone who's hoarding the reagents or being anal about the cleanliness of the equipment. I am most definitely not #2 (a schmoozer) or #6 (party person). [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:41 PM : Monday, August 21, 2006 Zzzzz The Mirror: A History by Sabine Melchior-Bonnet. I really wanted to like this book--there's a lot of potential for the subject of mirrors to be really interesting. Instead, it nearly put me to sleep. I don't know how the writing style in the original French is like, but the translator's style is just a zonker. The book is divided into three parts: how the mirror was invented and spread in society, how the mirror was portrayed in the arts, and the psychological significance of the mirror. I will say that I was interested in the first part of the book--the technological advancements made with the mirror. Making reflective glass just so is no easy matter and mirrors remained fairly expensive until the late 18th and 19th centuries when a series of innovations made mirrors cheaply produced at the factory. My favorite part was at the beginning of Chapter 2 when Melchior-Bonnet recounts a tale of espionage and murder at the Royal Glass and Mirror Company in 17th century France. At the time, Venice had the monopoly on fine quality mirrors yet every other country wanted a part of the market share. So there was plenty of double-dealing, political maneuverings, mayhem, and underhandedness to satisfy thriller-geeks. But after that, it was all downhill. The basic question the latter two-thirds of the book wanted to answer was, "What is the meaning of the mirror?" Artists and painters and writers all had different ideas--for some, it was humanity's narcissism. For others it was morality. And yet others, mortality. I think one can always wring meaning out of a reflection, but when the author tacks on the subtitle A History to a text, she should not go haring off to the po-mo hinterlands trying to explicate every painting in the Louvre that has a mirror. I will admit, however, that I'm not really the intended audience for this book. I like to find out how things work--this is probably why I liked the first third of the book which was a bit more technically oriented. But when it comes to explaining the symbolism of things--oh, boy--do I shake my head. To me, explaining art is mostly BS. It's making things up (with citations to other people making things up to make it look legitimate)--and what means one thing to one person may mean something completely different to another. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:30 PM : Saturday, August 19, 2006 Getting Beaned Okay, I didn't really get beaned. The closest I got to that were flying lollipops parade participants were flinging out to the audience. So what warranted a parade? The National Lentil Festival, that's what. It's an example of one of those events of local importance that becomes evidence that a Rockwellian America is still alive and kicking. I arrived in Pullman at around 10 AM to try one of the festival's specialties: lentil pancakes. To me, the combination of lentils and almost anything else was a little dubious. Maybe this stemmed from personal experience. I've tried cooking lentils before and most of the time, they have never turned out very well. After slathering on the syrup, I sat down at a table where a man was stuffing his mouth and gabbing on his cell phone at the same time, a little boy was complaining about how much he disliked lentils, and his grandmother who was praising the pancakes and wondering where she could get the recipe. The pancakes were...not bad. The lentils are mostly tasteless. I suppose one could imagine that these were walnut pancakes. With really bland walnuts.  The parade started soon afterwards. It was your typical parade--marching bands, cheerleaders with shiny pom-poms, the politicians surrounded by their fan clubs, fire trucks, the local businesses with their mascots (not to mention the lentil mascot for the festival), virginal (or at least I'm assuming) beauty queens sitting on the back of a convertible practicing their Miss America hand waving, the sheriff doing motorcycle tricks. The batteries in my camera died around float #60. The amusing part of the parade was two horse riders followed by a trio of boys lugging a wheelbarrow and shovels for errant manure. (I'm sure these boys were totally mortified, but hey, I feel their embarrassment.) The most head-scratching part were the Asian floats. It just seemed really strange to me to see middle-aged Caucasian women in traditional Chinese clothing and white girls in kimonos.I was confused as to where the actual festival was taking place, but I had no need to worry. After the parade, I just followed the thousands of migrating people to Reaney Park where various booths (food, arts, kiddy, commercial) were set up. I overheard someone saying that there was nothing there and that they should just leave. I think this is only true if festivals are not your idea of fun. I had a hoot just wandering around. Ever tried chickpea snacks? Or even lentil brownies? Let's say you're a trendy, big city person. And maybe your idea of a good time is bar hopping and clubbing. Then this is not for you. But if you enjoy the slightly quirky, the National Lentil Festival might be something to see if you're in the area around August. And if you have younger kids, this is definitely an event to go to. It's extremely kid-friendly--maybe a little overly so at times. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:11 PM : Friday, August 18, 2006 Why People Stop Reading Yesterday, I encountered a very depressing statistic--very few undergraduates read for pleasure. Less than twenty percent. (I can't quote the exact statistics to you because I was in one of those brain-glazing TA training seminars where pretty much everything was sort of depressing.) So after reading Tess Garritsen's post about Legume Literature, I began thinking--maybe part of the reason why people don't read is because of school. Specifically, English lit requirements. Okay, I admit, I have never taken a literature class I didn't want to. I majored in biology so anything non-science related (aside from two humanities requirements) was completely optional. Perhaps for most people, reading gets associated with school (and yes, for some people, that can be a bad thing). Then there is Garritsen's point--when we get older, we're expected to read literature that is good for us. The key here is "literature". I think that in today's culture, there's this totally bogus expectation that literary fiction is actually good. The only thing that's true is that literary fiction is good for those who think so. If somebody looks down on your reading taste, they just don't understand the whole concept of actually reading. Otherwise, why waste your time reading what's good for you when in reality it's really to look good for other people? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:49 AM : Thursday, August 17, 2006 Meme-ish Animalcules Volume 1, Issue 11 is up at Snail's Tales. Yep, Animalcules is another blog carnival I've discovered, but its about...microbes! Way cool. The Thursday Threesome: Free Amazon Prime Onesome: Free-- isn't always free! What "freebie" have you discovered over the years that really isn't? I can't think of anything--probably because I know there will always be a catch. Twosome: Amazon-- It's been a bit since we've done our Amazon Survey: do you use Amazon? Good? Bad? Indifferent? I've only used Amazon rarely, but I've always gotten the things I ordered. Threesome: Prime--Time! Are there any shows you are looking forward to seeing in the Fall lineup on TV? (okay, football counts). Um, I do not watch TV. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:28 AM : Wednesday, August 16, 2006 If You're Reading This, Go Read... The latest edition of Tangled Bank, a carnival for science blogging, is up at FrinkTank. I know, I know, it's been a while since I've posted a link to Tangled Bank, but this is no fault of the carnival (one of the very few carnivals I ever read)--rather of my really sporadic posting for about a year and a half. (Yes, this means I'm regularly posting now. Not that anyone will care--I think everyone stopped reading me around last May.) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:01 AM : Tuesday, August 15, 2006 Commensal and Pathogen: Not So Black and White Anymore  Move over HPV and EBV, viruses are no longer the only microbes that can mess with your DNA. In a recent Science paper by Nougayrède et al., Escherichia coli was found to induce DNA damage in eukaryotic cells.E. coli is well-known for being the workhorse of the molecular cell biologist and one of the usual residents of the gut microflora. Some E. coli also cause disease. So far, so good--we know that some strains live in relative harmony in our digestive tract and other strains make us sick. But from the observations of Nougayrède et al., this distinction isn't so cut and dried. E. coli is a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde--what some strains consider an aid for surviving harmoniously with a host, others use as virulence factors. When E. coli was added to different mammalian cells, the researchers noticed that the commensal strains and the strains isolated from meningitis and urinary tract infections caused a decidedly different reaction to the cells than laboratory or enteropathogenic/enterohemorrhagic strains. Adding certain E. coli strains caused the host cells to undergo megalocytosis--in other words, the cell became terribly bloated and ceased to divide. This phenomenom was not seen when the mammalian cells were incubated with dead bacteria or when the bacteria were separated from the cells with a 0.2 mm permeable membrane. The cause of megalocytosis, then, was not caused by any toxin that the E. coli was excreting but from something happening during direct bacteria to cell contact. Nougayrède et al. discovered that E. coli induced megalocytosis required a set of genes which they called the "pks island." This genomic island contains the instructions needed to make peptide-polyketide hybrid compounds--nonribosomal peptide megasynthases (NRPs) and polyketide megasynthases (PKs). NRPs and PKs are also produced by other bacteria and fungi, some of which are used for therapeutic agents. At any rate, the compounds made by E.coli aren't so nice. Here, it wreaks havoc on genomic stability as a genotoxin. The pks island allows the bacterium to deliver its PK-NRP hybrid compound to the eukaryotic cell which causes DNA double-strand breaks. When DNA damage is induced, a cellular signaling pathway is activated to halt the cell cycle. Ultimately, cells enlarge and then die. Further survey of different E. coli strains revealed that the pks island was only found in the B2 group of E. coli which contains commensal strains as well as strains that cause disease outside of the intestine. Nougayrède et al. speculate that the pks island acts as a fitness factor enabling the bacteria to stop the cell cycle to effectively colonize the host. Because different strains make different amounts of genotoxin this may affect whether a particular strain can live as a harmless commensal or a pathogen as well as being a possible link to intestinal cancer. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:39 AM : Monday, August 14, 2006 Five Things (a modified meme via So Anyway) Five Things In My Fridge: That may only interest a dietician. A bottle of mustard Two avocados One nectarine Three containers of vanilla yoghurt A jar of pickles Five Things In My Medicine Cabinet: Which may bore you even more. A bottle of foot lotion Nail clippers A hand-held mirror Q-tips Tylenol Five Things In My Storage Bin: Which is very unorganized. Newspapers Maps A plastic bag A 2006 calendar The latest issue of Giant Robot Five Things In My Backpack: That are not portable electronic devices. A folder One Ziploc bag Black pens A small legal pad A bottle of water Five Books on My Bookshelf: Which I am currently reading. The Mirror by Sabine Melchior-Bonnet Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? by Martin Gardner Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard Nabokov's Blues by Kurt Johnson and Steve Coates [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:07 PM : What Are They Thinking? Are Smart People Grumpier? They gave a bunch of people some personality tests and now they've concluded that smart people are either young and friendly or old and grumpy. But I don't know--don't people generally get grumpier when they get older anyway? Harry Potter and the mystery of an academic obsession. I think the author is a little bit too clueless in regards to Harry Potter fan culture (or fan culture in general), but I do think she's right in that academic discussions about it are over the top. J.K. Rowling wrote the books for entertainment, not for pushing literati boundaries. State of the Blogosphere, August 2006. (via Alembic) Like some commenters, I would like to know how many of those 50 million blogs are really active blogs. And what percentage of those blogs are people who are going to stick around for a while? Maybe a majority of the spikes are just people who fiddle around with a blog for a couple months or so and then drop it--like a fad. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:33 AM : Sunday, August 13, 2006 A Colored Tale One of those inane questions that people put in their bios or answer on those time-wasting personality tests is "What is your favorite color?" I think this is really crazy because my answer can depend on the day or the hour. Sure, I have my default answer (green), but sometimes I might prefer blue or orange or black or even purple. These days, we take for granted that we can get whatever color we want fairly easily. If I was feeling like orange, I could just drop by the nearest retailer and get an orange shirt. Before the Industrial Revolution, wild-colored shirts--let alone wild-colored anything else--was no easy matter. Colored dyes had originated from natural sources. Purple dyes were extracted from thousands of mollusks (either Murex brandaris or Murex trunculus) just to make one robe. Cochineal, a crimson dye, came from cactus insects--but 17,000 of them were required to make even a single ounce of dye. So how did synthetic dyes develop? In Mauve, Simon Garfield tells the story of how color mass production began with an experimental mishap. During 1856, the eighteen-year-old William Perkin was performing some chemical experiments on coal tar in his London laboratory. He was attempting to find a way to synthesize quinine as a treatment for malaria. He failed in doing so, but he didn't just throw the resulting sludge away. This sludge--as other chemists might have quickly dismissed--became the basis for a purple dye. Mauve became an instant hit and made Perkin a very rich man. Queen Victoria donned the color for special occasions and the fashionistas of the time obsessed over it. Mauve also lead to other coal tar-derived or aniline dyes which took fashion by storm. But this didn't mean that there weren't detractors. Critics detested the bright new colors calling them gaudy. And the synthetic dyes weren't all benign--early processes in making these colors involved arsenic acid for oxidation. The dyed clothing weren't so much of a problem as the pollution that the factories dumped on the surrounding countryside. Perkin's mentor, August Wilhelm von Hofmann, was at first against him going into industry--thinking that he was throwing away his academic promise in favor of crass profit. Perkin's motive, however, was to find applications for work in chemistry. While he was involved in the dye industry--and even when he got out of it during his thirties--he continued doing research. But even though he never got recognized for his later research, such as his work with magnetic rotary power, Perkin is credited with taking the field of chemistry from the theoretical to the practical. Companies which had originally specialized in dyes soon branched out to perfumes, plastics, medicine, and even explosives. I liked how Garfield manages to weave the history of the dye industry with the life of an overlooked late nineteenth century chemist. There were sections of the narrative which seemed incongruous to me--especially at the end of the chapters when the author jumps from telling Perkin's story to an interview he has with someone in the modern day. Sure, it's amusing to read about color experts who only wear black themselves claim that pumpkin or lime green will be in next spring, but what does that have to do with the story being told at that moment? It would have made a lot more sense if these snippets were delegated to the last chapter where an author would have more freedom to muse about where the industry is going today. But other than that, it's a nice little tale of how a modest chemist changed the world with a color. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:53 PM : Saturday, August 12, 2006 Paranormals Defanged I find it amusing that whenever someone (usually a woman) wants to be taken seriously but is caught reading a romance novel, the first thing out of her mouth are the words "guilty pleasure." Or she becomes defensive if the other person disapproves. She doesn't want to be blamed for condoning trashy books or labeled as anti-feminist. But you know, even if they're in a genre with more than its fair share of terrible covers, they're just books. Anyways, this does not mean that I give the romance genre a free pass. The main problem I have is that romance is particularly susceptible to commercial pressures. Romance writers are always looking for the next hot fad to exploit. And once they've found it, the market is saturated with similarly plotted novels that aren't very good. One such fad that has jumped the shark is the subgenre of vampire romances*. There really hasn't been any innovation with this monster since Anne Rice. (I feel like I can make this statement with some authority since I've read or partially read many of the authors writing in this field.) Making a character a vampire is more like a plot crutch. Please, no more angsty vampires. I don't even bother looking at those books anymore. On the other hand, humor--particularly of the parodying kind--can excuse a lot of things if done right. Or maybe I was just feeling nice when I read A Bite To Remember by Lynsay Sands. PI Jackie Morrisey has been hired to protect Vincent Argeneau, theater guru and vampire, from a crazy (possibly another vampire) stalker. However, Jackie has some serious control issues when it comes to vampires (the rest of the characters and the reader--me--got beat over the head with it one too many times), and she's the type of gal who'd run after the bad guy herself, preferably without the hero tagging along. And to top it off, she has a sidekick named Tiny. While Jackie has all the machismo, Vincent is decidedly not your average vampire--or even alpha hero. He likes shopping. He likes color coordinating toasters with his kitchen. He won't even bite the pizza delivery guy if it means the psycho lurking nearby will kill the human after he's had his snack. And he (as are the other vampires in the book) is not particularly angsty. Actually, the vampires aren't really undead either--this is explained with nanobots which could have potentially hilarious and/or profound consequences if the author had bothered to expand on this aspect of her universe. A note: A Bite To Remember is stand-alone although it is part of a series. If you like this one, you'd probably also like A Quick Bite. The books before that one aren't quite as good (I did not manage to finish them). I think Sands is actually one of the few romance writers who actually improves with her newer works rather than rehashing old themes. *Another gripe I have is with paranormal romances in general. Although I like the idea a lot (after all, I'm totally into speculative fiction of all types), almost no romance author has done anything original or plausible with it. It's as if the only research they've done was watching re-runs of Buffy. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:08 PM : Friday, August 11, 2006 Links Letter to Paris. (via 2Blowhards) Neil at Citizen of the Month believes "that personal bloggers are way more important than political bloggers." Which I suppose is true, if you're not a political junkie. I tend to avoid political blogs. I know blogs are all about opinion, but you can be too opinionated, ya know? However, this doesn't mean that I only read personal blogs. Critters Writers' Workshop. I doubt any professional writers are actually active in this critique group. They're probably all too busy working on their next novel to waste an hour looking at some amateurish drivel. But, I did sign up for this thing, so I'll see how it goes. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:22 AM : Thursday, August 10, 2006 The Thursday Threesome: Disc Golf Season Onesome: Disc--overy channel madness: did you catch the Mythbusters show with the bit about the Mentos and Diet Coke (episode 57)? Have you tried it at home yet? What am I talking about? Psst: it's a fun project with the kids... Since I don't watch any TV, the first time I read through this question, it made no sense. And after looking at those links, this is also assuming that people have cable. And no, I have not tried that experiment. Twosome: Golf-- Do you play? Do you watch? Do you care? Even the Opens? Just wondering... I don't like golf. So no, I do not play, watch or care (even about the Opens). To be fair, I don't like a lot of sports. But if you see me on a kiddie mini-golf course, it will be because someone else has dragged me there and I'm attempting to play to humor other people. Threesome: Season----ing salt? What spices do you routinely use when you're cooking up a little something for yourself? A little tarragon? Cinnamon? White pepper? What perks up a meal for you? I don't like adding spices to food unless the character of the dish really depends on it. And sometimes, not even then. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:56 AM : Sunday, August 06, 2006 Two Fantasy Movies Recently, I got the chance to watch The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and MirrorMask. Although both are fantasy movies intended for kids, they are also both very different and appeal, somewhat, to opposing sensibilities. Narnia is one of those classics that fantasy buffs grew up reading. I distinctly remember it as being the first fantasy novel that I had been introduced to. And after being familiar with the books themselves for many years and remembering the childhood pleasure I had reading the books (allusions to religion notwithstanding), it's understandable to be a bit weary about a movie version. And coming out so soon after The Lord of the Rings, comparisons are inevitable. But I know that movies can never follow the book exactly, for various reasons. So I came in with the mindset to watch the movie as a movie and to not nitpick (too much) about whether it lived up to the expectation that the book had engendered. Narnia is one of those movies where you can just sit back and not think. It's one of those slick (perhaps too slick) pieces where the audience can ooh and ahh on the technical achievements of the cinematography and the kids can wallow in it in giddy pleasure. For about ten minutes after it has ended. Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter seemed a little too perfect. Mr. Tumnus didn't have enough hair. The White Witch wasn't as deviously played as she could have been. She was like Cate Blanchett's Galadriel on acid. And Aslan...I simply couldn't work up much enthusiasm for a CGI lion. The huge problem I had with it was that the entire film was unoriginal. It was just a big Disney-fied blockbuster following in a formula based on successes of previous fantasy films. I am sure C.S. Lewis would have been much happier with this compared to previous adaptations. But the bottom line is, I didn't see much heart to it. Just dollar signs. MirrorMask, on the other hand, is a modern fantasy. Since the story was created by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, one would immediately expect the weird, surreal, and maybe even a little bit of humor. At first, I was not too keen on the visual aspects of the film. Unlike Narnia, there's no slickness. It's a bit gritty and jarring--a collusion of early Dada and lush Gil Bruvel. But the thing is, it works. The mish-mash of hand drawings and computer imagery reflects the turmoil of the main character who must come to grips with the angst of growing up. It may seem contradictory, almost oxymoronish, but I felt that the depiction of Helena's dream world was a far more accurate portrayal of dream worlds in general. Other movies make their dream worlds realistic. Not so with MirrorMask. Sure, the story wasn't all that original. The struggle of growing up and redefining one's relationship with one's parents is something that everyone has to go through. Teenage temper tantrums, despising authority, and a reluctance to leave the nest are themes de rigueur for any storyteller wanting to reach the young adult audience. But it was the way that Gaiman and McKean told the story that made it interesting. No character was flat. Every character had complex motivations making them neither black or white (even if their labels suggested otherwise). It was one of those pieces where you come away thinking, and if you watched it over again, you'd probably come away with something new. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 2:47 PM : Friday, August 04, 2006 And Briefly... This was not the first time I've been up close and personal with a cow, but it was darn close to it. One would have to wonder why I was on a farm in the first place because for one thing, I am definitely not a farm girl. I'm just basically your run-of-the-mill science and book geek. People who talk about farm animals like their aunts and uncles slightly puzzle me. Anyways, back to why I was on the farm. I was not there to look at any ordinary cows. I was there to check out a couple of cannulated cows. This means that a hole has been cut into the cow's left side as a "window" into the rumen--the largest of the cow's four stomachs that acts like a large fermentation vat in which food is digested. Yep, I got to look first-hand into the depths of a bovine-housed microbial heaven. Okay, so maybe the words "farm" and "heaven" in the same paragraph don't compute in the minds of the average person. Heck, it doesn't exactly compute with me. It was all sort of surreal: the earthy stench of manure, the gross fascination of it squishing underneath your shoes, the swarms of flies (like being trapped in one of those old fly vials used for genetics). And, of course, actually watching hay being turned over and digested into a goopy green-brown muck. Meanwhile, the feisty Holsteins under observation were gazing at me with round, black eyes, probably wondering if I was the crazy one in the place. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:32 PM : Thursday, August 03, 2006 Bwhahaha! Okay, I finally figured out this wireless network stuff on campus. Last time I tried it, it fried my laptop. Lemme tell you, I was definitely not happy when that happened. I'm also thinking about updating my "about me" page since frankly, I'm not in limbo any more. Or haven't been in a while. I might get it up sometime tonight. And more enigmatically, I might blog about cows tomorrow. We'll see. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 4:22 PM : The Thursday Threesome: Time to Fill Onesome:Time-- wasters in your life... Just a brief jump onto your soapbox: What is the biggest bother you have in this department? I mean, something you can post without incurring familial or job related problems... If you want semi-ranting, see the second part of question three. Twosome: to-- beat the heat! It seems like it's all sort of hot all over the Northern Hemisphere this Summer! What are you doing to handle the heat? ...and for those Down Under? Well, your turn may come in just a few months; do you have any plans for then? The usual stuff: opening windows, turning on fans, wearing shorts instead of a parka. I don't have AC, but that doesn't bother me much. It's actually not so hot where I'm at (although the long-time locals might differ with me on that). Today, it's not supposed to go past the lower eighties. Threesome: Fill-- your cup with a cold something! What are you drinking this summer to keep cool? ...and if you're a tea drinker: is it "ice tea" or "iced tea"? Just curious... For the first question: water. For the second question: either way, it's an abomination. You're not supposed to drink tea cold! It's like eating raw meat or leaving your shoes untied because you think it's cool. Tea is supposed to be served hot. No ice, no sugar, no milk, nada. I don't care if it's 106 out there. Ice/Iced tea should be banned. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:17 AM : Wednesday, August 02, 2006 Odds & Ends I don't understand people who speed and weave in and out of traffic in small towns. What's the hurry? At most, you're going to arrive at your destination about thirty seconds ahead of me. As for speeding, I think I've gotten all the speed traps worked out now. There are cops parked a couple yards after every 25mph sign. Especially during "rush hour." (It seems rather stupid to call the times people get to work and come home from work "rush hour" in a small town.) On used books: I obtained another copy of Strunk and White. Sure, I could have borrowed it from the library, but for a small, handy-dandy reference, it's just not the same. Literally, for years I've been attempting to find my first copy but it has never turned up. It probably got stolen with the rest of my other books when I lived in California. I also finally broke down and bought a baby name book. One thing I hate about all baby name books is the fact that they're called Baby Name Books. People don't just name babies--they can rename themselves, or a pet, or even inanimate objects. Just call it a Name Book. Anyways, I figure it'll be so much easier to have that on hand to name a character quickly rather than going online--because half the time, I'm not on the computer writing. (Yes, I handwrite some of my stories. Call me an old fogey or even just plain crazy, I don't care.) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:27 PM : |
