…ere’ll still be Nebula Award nominee Nancy Fulda’s awesome “Godshift” to round off the sequence). Meanwhile, I’ll be off to brainstorm more Jade in Chains, which has morphed into Thick Waters considering the way the story is developping (yeah, the whole “blood is thicker than water” thing, and a few other clever allusions in there. I’m going to need to research the history of the Seine a bit). It’s occurred to me, reading stuff over the week (two…

…to see made but probably won’t be? -Monday 2pm: “The data deluge and the end of science” Are our data gathering abilities outstripping our methods for analysing the results? Are our models of causal links inadequate for complex systems? Is scientific advance going to stagnate because of this, or will new tools, such as Bayesian statistics and network theory, allow continued progress? In between panels, I’ll be in the bar, as usual 🙂…

…s, I’d darn well better get something worth it in return, not a guy who’s fundamentally incapable of commitment (and I’m not necessarily saying sexual commitment here, the Doctor being as incapable of long-lasting friendships as he is of sex). At least the series has female characters (unlike, say, Sherlock), but I have a rising suspicion that it doesn’t really know what to do with them other than turn them into idiots pining after the Doctor. Thi…

…usly lack imagination for that sort of thing (I mean, the only things that come to mind is something with a decent main female character who’s not a Strong Female Who Still Needs to Be Rescued by Men cliché; and a female POC Doctor Who…). But judging by all the interest when I bitch about Sherlock, I’m pretty reasonably sure that some of you have got strong ideas on this 🙂 Therefore, I’m throwing the question(s) out for collective brainstorming: W…

…ercon (but stuck in a signing): there are lots and lots of friend on that list, and many congrats go to them all (I’m especially impressed that a lot of people are on the ballot twice in different categories). To single out just two of them, though: it will come as no surprise that Ken Liu’s short fiction is nominated both for Best Short Story and Best Novella (and I will be very miffed if he doesn’t take at least one of those trophies); and many…

…fensive, but I had the privilege of being able to stick to my rather large comfort circle(s). I remain confident those are issues we’re working on as a genre, and that things can only get better (I’m quite sure cons used to be much less gender-equal than they are now, for instance–this is an area where we’ve definitely made progress). And the whole discussion has given me ideas for future panels at Bradford! -Charles A. Tan on the fallacy of World…

…So… bags packed. Chocolate taken with me. Eastercon app downloaded. Leftover food (xá xíu) handed over to the H for his bánh mì tomorrow. My plane leaves at 8:00, which gets me up at 5:15am. Arg. I’ll be off for some sleep then… A reminder that my schedule can be found here; and the author herself can be found in the bar or in the dealers’ room. I will be rooming with the awesome Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, and hope to see many of you there!…

…obably not in the way that they intended, but it doesn’t make me very optimistic about the coming years. [1] You’ll wonder about the one that made sense, aka the only leaflet the husband didn’t poke holes into as he was reading it. It’s the one from our incumbent, Sarkozy. I hate many of his measures, but I have to grant him this: he presents a coherent program, doesn’t make promises I don’t believe in for a second, and I actually trust him to do…

…actually export stuff. That wouldn’t be so bad–except that Outlook doesn’t come prepackaged with CSV export, and you have to install from the CD (which, of course, I’ve lost). I then attempted to go through Thunderbird sync–which turns out to be a buggy feature that makes the Ovi Suite crash, yay. (also, apparently Nokia stopped supporting Ovi Suite, oooh, about 4 months ago, making any kind of feature update hard. Not that it was ever anything mo…

…the history of conquest and colonization is a traumatic experience for the colonized. The Philippines went through not one, but two colonizers. I wonder how many colonizers other countries had to endure. From reading these histories, it becomes clear to me that the erasure and subjugation of existing indigenous narratives were prioritized as these were viewed as being rival to the colonizing power. Well worth reading, discussing and sharing….