Elizabeth Moon's Blog, page 119

Blog updates

Couple of new posts on the Paksworld blog, about some details of the revision process.   With one exception (something I left unchanged because I need to get to the end before deciding exactly how to handle it)  I'm within 100 pages of the end of the main levels of revision.    

And then this puppy can go off to agent and editor and I can concentrate on getting the next one well underway before their comments come back. 

So...three days, huh?

Supposedly I haven't updated this in three days.  So says the little notice at the top of my LJ home page.   Sigh. 

Well, Saturday meant the big rehearsal for Sunday's Evensong, plus work on revisions (a daily work session until it's all done) and also meant the lurking headache pounced.   I had a fair bit of city shopping to do but didn't get much of it done.

Sunday was our anniversary (40th) but I was singing two services at St. D's (where the whole alto section blew an entrance on the...

New blog posts

New posts are up at both the Paksworld blog and the 80 Acres blog, the latter with pictures.  

Meanwhile I'm hoping the headache and scratchy throat don't mean I'm coming down with Something.  Any of the Somethings.  Big choir rehearsal--for both of us, in different places at different times, with Michael working somewhere else on a different schedule.  Eeep!

Climate Change IV: So What Options?

Leveling, if not reducing, CO2 and other greenhouse emissions should be a major goal.   The quickest and most massive way to lower them is to stop cutting down tropical forests.   CO2 emission is an immediate result of cutting down a rainforest tree: the soil is full of active decomposers who get to work on the tree's now-dead root system.  Decomposers, like us, use carbon-containing molecules as fuel--they use oxygen to burn the carbon and release CO2.   At the same time, the tree that was f...

Climate Change III : Why the Enemy Is Us

The arguments against a human cause of a) the increased carbon dioxide and b) global climate change rest on several false assumptions.   First, that because there are other sources of CO2, the human contribution must be so paltry as to be insignificant.   Second, that  CO2 isn't a major component of greenhousing--it's all sun cycles or something. 

But there again the evidence is on the side of the original thesis...that this round of global climate change is being accelerated by human...

Climate Change II : Effects of a Warming Change

The next issue is whether global warming is good or bad for a) the world as we know it and b) humans.  Aside from the enthusiasts for having apple orchards in the Arctic and banana trees in Brooklyn (yes, I actually read that some years back--someone thinking that you could easily turn tundra into farms) the harm done to our existing ecosystem and human society and culture is clear.

Global warming has a negative effect on agriculture--our food source--in multiple ways.   Successful...

Climate Change I: sources of evidence for change

Although this is not a rant, it's also not an invitation for every anti-climate-change enthusiast in the known universe to come barging in here and argue.  You have your spaces to hold forth, which I don't go causing trouble in, and I have mine.

Having issued that warning, I was privy to another discussion in a closed list, and once more amazed at the misunderstanding of the original thesis and subsequent events within the scientific community as well as in the public mind.

The...

Blog updates

Yup, there are new blog updates on the Paksworld blog, and will soon be on the 80acres blog because I had a fantastic walk this afternoon.  Pictures should be up by 9 pm tonight.   I saw a deer walking quietly through the creek, but she saw me (though I stood still, maybe 20 yards away) and flagged her tail and leaped away.  No picture of that one.  I didn't try to raise the camera at all.  No snipe today (alas) but lots of damselflies mating and ovipositing, some hatchling fish, and some...

Writer's Block: Yes, offense taken

If a friend or relative makes a racist or homophobic remark, do you tend to confront them or let it slide? Are you more likely to confront them if it offends you directly or someone else who seems reluctant to speak up?

View 1158 Answers

 
I confront them.   With varying results, but that's not the point.   The point is that if you don't confront them, they think you're agreeing with them.

It's not easy, but it's necessary.

New blog posts

New posts are up in both the 80acres blog (about the most recent walk around the land, including discovering another species for the list) and the Paksworld blog (some new character names.)