Marie Brennan's Blog, page 254

revisiting high school chemistry class

My brain is tired, yo.

I just spent a chunk of time taking notes on a bunch of different early photographic techniques: daguerreotypes, calotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes, the wet-plate colliodion process, the dry-plate gelatin emulsion, albument prints, etc. My notes are a festival of chemical terms I haven't used since high school: silver nitrate, potassium bromide, pyrogallic acid. And I'm not yet done; now that I have all this stuff noted down, I need to figure out just how I'm going to use...

last chances, drawing near

You have until tomorrow to put your name in for one of three advance copies of A Star Shall Fall up for grabs on GoodReads, and until the 15th to submit a non-alcoholic drink recipe for the launch party (with a signed copy of Deeds of Men as the prize). Time's running out!

Edited to add: Remember, you don't have to be coming to Sirens to enter the drink contest; it's open to everybody. (The costume contest, for obvious reasons, requires that you be there.)

re: the baptism post

Making a new post here because it's easier than replying to everybody who brought up the same points.

Thanks for the input from everybody. I can't give you the reason why my characters want a second baptism performed, as it would be too much of a plot spoiler, but the short form is that this is a fantasy novel; the reason for it is metaphysical, and can't be solved by that character going to confession. You've given me what I need, though: the reason why baptism isn't repeated, and then the ...

calling for Catholic help

To my Catholic readers, or anybody else familiar with the nuances of Catholic policy regarding baptism, especially nineteenth-century policy on same:

1) If an adult converts to Catholicism, do they receive a Catholic baptism? Is the answer to that question dependent at all upon whether they were previously baptized in a different Christian denomination? Does age affect it, and if so, what's the cut-off point for different treatment?

2) If there were, for plot reasons, a character who had orig...

::yawn::

For no explicable reason, I slept until 1:30 today.

Apparently I was really, really tired?

In which your correspondent's feet continue gimpy

Sometimes I think it might be refreshing to break my arm.

I don't want a broken arm, of course. But if I'm going to injure something, it might be a nice change of pace to have it be something on the upper half of my body, instead of the lower.

What brings this on? Oh, the little toe of my left foot, which I have just broken for the third freaking time. Also the middle toe of that foot, which is sprained: a nice companion to the sprain in the big toe of my right foot that I suffered last year...

Real bookses!

Today has not started off terribly well, but it's at least partially ameliorated by the fact that I got author copies for A Star Shall Fall! They are so very shiny. (Okay, they're actually not shiny at all; the cover is matte, not glossy. But you know what I mean.)

In celebration of this, and of the A Star Shall Fall contest, and of the discussion for Midnight Never Come and In Ashes Lie, I'm giving away some more copies on GoodReads -- three this time, actually. Plus you still have one da...

1 last Prop 8 upd8

I promise I won't keep going on about this forever. But if you want a one-stop shop for the highlights of Judge Walker's decision on Perry v. Schwarzenegger, this one's pretty good; for bonus points, you can read about what's up with those "strict scrutiny" and "rational basis" things.

I am so very much not a lawyer, so if there are flaws in either of those posts, I cannot point them out to you. (Actually, can anybody explain to me what's up with the way the material from this trial will be ...

Privileges and Rights

With various responses to the Prop 8 decision floating around out there, I was particularly struck by this tweet, which articulates a divide I've been chewing on for some time: Californians knows that marriage is a civil right, not a privilege.

"Privilege" is a word that's seen widespread use lately, in the context of society's treatment of different groups of people: white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, able-bodied privilege, etc. There are many lists out there pointing out w...

Prop 8 ruled unconstitutional

The decision on Perry v. Schwarzenegger has come down, and the ruling is that Proposition 8 (declaring that California only recognizes marriages between a man and a woman) is unconstitutional.

Which is hardly going to be the end of this; the case will end up in front of the Supreme Court eventually. But it's good news for equal rights.

I've been following the court case off and on. If you haven't, you really ought to take a look -- because it's astonishing, how incoherent the Prop 8 defense i...