The Book Project

A casual visitor to Lem's blog would read the topics and the comments, and then sit back and drink a few belts of whiskey muse for a few moments about the high level of writing that has evolved on this blog.  There really is no place like Lem's, he said clicking his heels together.  The originality and creativity of the writing are testament to the diversity of personalities and perspectives of the writers.

With Lem's support I am proposing that we write a book.

The premise is simple.  As many of us who want to participate in The Book Project will volunteer to write one chapter every few weeks.  For example, if there are ten writers, then each one will write and post a chapter every ten weeks.  There will be a basic cast of characters at the start, and each author has latitude to add, kill off, or otherwise change the characters and their various settings.   You don't need to be a regular poster to participate.  Your chapters can be emailed to Lem or to me for posting when it's your turn.

The chapters need not be lengthy, just interesting.  Keep the plot moving, add twists and turns and surprises. A new chapter will be posted, once each week, on the same day each week, until we have reached the end of the book.  How will we know when we've reached the end?  No idea, but we will.

Some of us are artists.  That's a big plus. Photoshopped pictures, gifs and other art that explains or enhances your chapters is wonderful.  Or add background music.  Really, you have a lot of liberty in what you write and how it is presented.   Be original, and don't personalize your writing with any remarks about other commenters.

Are you in?  Send Lem an email with your email address.  Lem will sent that information to me, and I'll be in contact with more details.

Have you ever ducked and covered?

Here are some low-lights of a New Yorker article showing how the management of the U.S.'s nuclear program mirrored and mirrors the movie, Dr. Strangelove. 

"Aware that his decision [to allow military officers freedom to launch nuclear missiles] might create public unease about who really controlled America’s nuclear arsenal, Eisenhower insisted that his delegation of Presidential authority be kept secret. At a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he confessed to being “very fearful of having written papers on this matter.”

President John F. Kennedy was surprised to learn, just a few weeks after taking office, about this secret delegation of power. “A subordinate commander faced with a substantial military action,” Kennedy was told in a top-secret memo, “could start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiative if he could not reach you.” Kennedy and his national-security advisers were shocked not only by the wide latitude given to American officers but also by the loose custody of the roughly three thousand American nuclear weapons stored in Europe. Few of the weapons had locks on them. Anyone who got hold of them could detonate them. And there was little to prevent NATO officers from Turkey, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany from using them without the approval of the United States.

...Harold Agnew, a Los Alamos physicist who accompanied the [Congressional NATO tour] group, was especially concerned to see German pilots sitting in German planes that were decorated with Iron Crosses—and carrying American atomic bombs. Agnew, in his own words, “nearly wet his pants” when he realized that a lone American sentry with a rifle was all that prevented someone from taking off in one of those planes and bombing the Soviet Union.

It's Friday!

I love that song and so does my wife. She calls it "the song that just keeps giving" because it's so relentless.

I saw The Nuge not once but twice in the 1970's, before his music went south.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: 'You need a tandem social moral code to go along with it'

"Renowned astrophysicist and StarTalk Radio host Neil deGrasse Tyson has some pretty wild ideas for how we should improve the human body, but he turns serious as he explains how we should appreciate the fragility and finiteness of life."

Business Insider

First Justin Bieber, then Polar Vortex, now Canada exporting ghost ships swarming with cannibal rats http://t.co/jI7fbTYl4F #fuckyouCanada
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) January 24, 2014

Mommy's little helper

Goodfella Arrest: Not a Believer

 

An Alleged 'Goodfella' Gets Indicted, Decades Later 

"More than 30 years after the crime, authorities in New York have charged an alleged mobster in connection with the Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport. At the time, it was the biggest robbery in US history. It's still one of the most famous, thanks to the film, Goodfellas."

#visitors

Visitors - Official Trailer (2013)

 

Staring at You, Staring at Me

Variations on a theme

Follow the link to find an unusual father-daughter project. A self-taught Australian photographer and his 5 year-old daughter team up to recreate classical portraits. Even on a much lesser scale, this would be a fun idea to do with young kids. 

via XRay, via Insty

Open Thread

What's on your mind today?  Anything bothering you?  Post it in the comments section.

Isn't it time this blog did the obligatory debate about how sucky one tradition or another is?  Or let's mock the idea of manliness and teaching boys to be boys.  Or perhaps glow over some drivel written by an obscure east-coast columnist in a magazine no one has ever heard of?

We're falling behind the times here and frankly, this situation embarrasses Lem when he goes to those top-secret blog masters private gatherings in Davos.  The other blog owners point their fingers at him and say "Ha ha ha!  You have no post-deconstructionalism on your blog, you behind-the-times person."  And then they hide his appetizers.  You can only imagine how dejected Lem must feel.  It bothers him all the way back home, aboard the Lem's Levity Gulfstream G4 jet.

Lem has a jet?

Of course he does.  And proud of him we are, because Lem started out as a Little Lebowski Achiever.

"IRS Requests Hollywood 'Right Leaning' Group's Sensitive Information"

"The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the organization’s confidentiality strictures, and to avoid complicating discussions with the I.R.S."

"Those people said that the application had been under review for roughly two years, and had at one point included a demand — which was not met — for enhanced access to the group’s security-protected website, which would have revealed member names. Tax experts said that an organization’s membership list is information that would not typically be required. The I.R.S. already had access to the site’s basic levels, a request it considers routine for applications for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status."

The IRS questionable treatment of citizen groups, seeking non-profit status, continues.

In the NYT comments...
Pierre Anonymot, Paris

These people have every right in the world to meey secretly as long as they're not seditious. But not on my taxpayer's dime.

Jeroom

Cartoonist set up in the Facebookiverse had me cracking up laughing. He has a set of animal characters that like to party and he has a bizarrely uncomfortable fixation of on the crucifixion and breakfast cereals, also strange sexual wanderings into animal pairings. The praying mantis killed me.

Christine Sinicki

OMG...this speech is so full of shit. wish I could get up and walk out. 

Why don't you? Guess: Too unseemly for you. 

Wisconsin representative displeased with Walker's State of the State speech. The link goes to Twichy with screenshot (before it disappears.) 

I'm always curious what representatives who speak as I do look like. I sense a kindred spirit, the impatience, the irreverence, the unprofessionalism resonate with me.

That does help. I feel as if I know her already.

*reaches across, takes hand* Tell me, what parts of this speech are so full of shit that you characterize the whole thing shit and irks you so bad the impulse you resist is to leave. 

I looked at that speech, admittedly quickly, my fast outline follows, (skip it) and I didn't see anything objectionable. 

I'm very good at this sort of thing. Getting to the heart of the matter.

Therapy, if you like.

My street cred is piling up, just tonight right before this I passed a guy slouched against an empty brick planter, a bundle put up where a bush would normally be but removed to discourage loitering, and it's cold outside now so I stopped and asked him, "What are you doing out here?" And, Brother, did the floodgate open, jeeze, the outpouring was unexpected, it whizzed by actually, the torrent did, I lost most of it because he began automatically rapid fire rattling, he went from teaching people how to loose weight to smoking pot to drinking alcohol to doing meth to shouldn't have called the cops given his distrust of authority figures and the bitch's family got money and the guy doesn't have to worry about anything, and his kid was taken away and she does dope and cannot be trusted but he never gets in trouble because he has protection.

"You have boy?" 

"Oh my boy? Uh yeah. No, she don't got him he was gonna be in foster care but then they wanted Utah got this thing where if you don't have 69% then, back then when I was paying alimony and child support they can come and so they wanted her family to have him because they're actually, I believe this, like a cult, her family to take him 'cause they got money but nothing will ever happen to that guy because he's got money and protection.

"My nads are freezing. Here." 

He said, "Thank you for talking." 

So you see, I'm a regular psychologist over here. I'll listen. And you won't even have to pay me. I'll pay you. 

Anniversary of Loss

In this post, Ace brought to my attention President Obama's statement on the 41st anniversary of the legalization of abortion and the emotional response I had to that statement lingers. As I was talking about it with a friend a bit ago my chest felt physically heavy as I considered the words "opportunities to fulfill their dreams". How can one encourage another to "fulfill their dreams" at the cost of an innocent human life?

Someone dear to me chose not to bear the only child she was ever given a chance to carry. For her, every Mother's Day is filled with pain and sadness. Loss. Her dreams often include a vision of, she imagines, the child she will never know. These are the dreams that sprang to mind as I read President Obama's words.