David Erik Nelson's Blog, page 30
December 10, 2020
Xappy XrismanuKwanzXanukahNacht!!! ♪♫♪♬🎅🏿🎄✡️🐲🔥🇺🇸⛄️🕎
I’m a Jew—born and raised—but I come from a “mixed” family (they say “interfaith” now). My dad is a Jew, but my mom was raised Christian. Both my maternal grandparents—with whom my sisters and I spent a lot of time—were practicing Christians. Interfaith families are really common now (my wife and I are mixed), but were much less so when I was young. As you’.
October 16, 2015
Book Giveaway: Enter to win a copy of "Junkyard Jam Band: DIY Musical Instruments and Noisemakers"
October 7, 2015
Free Fiction this Thursday! Steampunkery! Squidtastics!
Just a quick heads up that my steampunk short "The Bold Explorer in the Place Beyond" will be free for Kindle tomorrow and Friday. Here's the link:
http://amzn.to/1Q7iPcU
Please feel free to spread the love; thanks!
ADDE BONUS: My celebrated steampunk novella set in the same universe, Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate
, will be steeply marked down next week.Thanks!
January 27, 2015
Annual HumbleBrag Award-Eligibility Post
I had two novelettes published in 2014; you may have read them and enjoyed them--or you may be about to read them an enjoy them. If either is the case, and if you'd like to register that enjoyment on some sort of ballot, it's your lucky day!
* "There Was No Sound of Thunder" (Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2014)
* "The Traveling Salesman Solution" (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014)
These are both eligible for the Nebula and Hugo Awards in the "novelette" category.
Anyone who is/was a voting member at the 2014, 2015, or 2016 Worldcons can nominate works for the Hugo Award. Any Active, Lifetime Active, Associate, or Lifetime Associate member of the SFWA can nominate works for the Nebula Award.
Not a member of anything? Not a problem! "There Was No Sound of Thunder" is also in the running for the 29th Annual Asimov's Readers' Award (FUN FACT: This story is a sequel to "The New Guys Always Work Overtime," which tied for best short story last year.)--*Yikes!* Voting for the Asimov's Readers' Award closes February 1, 2015! Vote NOW!
Still haven't read one of those novelettes? Lost your summer issues of Asimov's and F&SF when your roof leaked? The magazines in question will likely hook you up with copies of my stories if you ask, but I'm also happy to do so myself; just email me and we'll sort it out. Thanks!
November 10, 2014
*UPDATE* HELLA GOOD DEAL ALERT! $7 "Helping Hands" from Maker Shed!--and Even Cheaper at Harbor Freight!?! #diy
UPDATE: My lifelong compadre Adam Stein points out that Harbor Freight has basically the same Helping Hands for $3.50! *Yikes!* BUY NOW!
I don't normally post stuff like this, but Maker Shed has a couple really good deals right now for folks new to soldering.
These helping hands are a *steal* at $6.99, and make life *so much easier.* There is now almost *no* soldering task I do without using my helping hands (although I have pulled off the magnifier, which was never very useful to me). Also, this variable-temp soldering iron also looks promising. The reviews are mixed, but at $25, it's probably worth taking a chance.
HELLA GOOD DEAL ALERT! $7 "Helping Hands" from Maker Shed! #diy
I don't normally post stuff like this, but Maker Shed has a couple really good deals right now for folks new to soldering.
These helping hands are a *steal* at $6.99, and make life *so much easier.* There is now almost *no* soldering task I do without using my helping hands (although I have pulled off the magnifier, which was never very useful to me). Also, this variable-temp soldering iron also looks promising. The reviews are mixed, but at $25, it's probably worth taking a chance.
August 3, 2014
Wanna Understand Gaza? Start with the Tunnels
(This is a cross-post from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog)
Let's face it: You probably know next to nothing about Israel and Gaza right now. You hear a lot of highly partisan screaming, but it's all *so* polemical and contradictory that it's pretty obvious that no one is being straight with you. So, if you want to understand what the hell is going on with Gaza, I strongly urge you to get your head around the tunnels; they are a very informative microcosm of the region's politics.
You've probably heard of the "terror tunnels"--which have only really started to get the press they warrant in the last week or so. If you need a catch-up: Hamas has a tunnel-network of unknown size and complexity that allows soldiers to pop up on remote locations in Israel and launch attacks.
But that's the least of the tunnels--and the easiest to understand (after all, it's not that different from similar tunnel networks that were the nightmare-terrors of U.S. grunts in Vietnam).
It's the *other* tunnels that can tell us so much about politics in Gaza, and Gaza's relations with *all* its neighbors. These are trade tunnels that run into Egypt. Check out this 2012 paper by Nicolas Pelham (" a writer on Arab affairs for The Economist and the New York Review of Books. He is the author of A New Muslim Order ... and coauthor of A History of the Middle East ... , and has reported on Gaza extensively") for the Institute for Palestine Studies ("the oldest independent non-profit, public service, research institute in the Arab world."):
"Gaza's Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel's Siege"
Simple fact: This is as close as I've seen to a non-partisan article about Israel and Gaza. I'm not offering you a tl;dr, because I urge you to read the whole thing and see what you see.
In case you need it, here's an Archive.org link to same. Why would you need this? Because the Institute for Palestine Studies webpage has been going up and down a lot, since pro-Israel bloggers recently went nuts linking to this two-year old study, under headlines like Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Gaza Tunnels – Tablet Magazine. Funny thing is this: Most of these posts are focused exclusively on the following 100-word excerpt from the 8700 word article:
A similarly cavalier approach to child labor and tunnel fatalities damaged the movement’s standing with human-rights groups, despite government assurances dating back to 2008 that it was considering curbs. During a police patrol that the author was permitted to accompany in December 2011, nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies. At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials. Safety controls on imports appear similarly lax, although the TAC insists that a sixteen-man contingent carries out sporadic spot-checks.
The bloggers go on to make much about how Hamas has sacrificed 160 children in the name of facilitating their terrorist siege of Israel (or whatever), even though that claim cannot be supported by this source; I don't know if they're purposefully muddling the waters or simply didn't read the article, but Pelham is talking about the *trade* tunnels in that section, not the *terror* tunnels. Those children were sacrificed in the name of *commerce* not war or freedom or terror or Allah or whatever--which, to my mind, says a helluva lot more about our world, which is, after all, that's why I brought you this nugget to begin with. It's a two-year old econ article about trade taxation and border infrastructure from an obscure think tank--it's practically the *definition* of boring--but right now, today, it is fascinating and it is informative, and it will tell you something of use about the humans who live in a particular place under a particular set of constraints, and how they respond to those constraints.
July 2, 2014
Check out Dave-o's latest short story--"The Traveling Salesman Solution"--in F&SF
(Cross posted from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog.)
My story "The Traveling Salesman Solution" is in the current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (July/August 2014). And it's reviewing pretty well:
Sam Tomaino, SFRevu Review: "Our narrator is a wheelchair-bound ex-serviceman who has just heard a strange story from his brother-in-law. Seems he was beaten in a marathon race by a dentist from North Platte, Nebraska. His brother-in-law says he never even saw the guy but the RFIDs that are used to monitor a runner passing each checkpoint says he was at every one. Our narrator investigates further and finds some anomalies in this. The more he investigates, the stranger things get and he discovers that the son of the dentist has discovered something very dangerous. This was a good solid story with well-drawn characters."
Lois Tilton, Locus Online: "One of those stories where the problem is more interesting than the solution. In fact, even the narrator isn’t happy with his solution, although it comes as quite a plot twist. A good, strong narrative voice actually makes a mathematical problem interesting to this dyscalculia victim."
Pro-tip: If you liked "The New Guys Always Work Overtime" or "There Was No Sound of Thunder," then you'll like this story, too.
The issue is on newsstands now or, if you're a digital baby, available for a dirt-cheap .99 cents(!!!) on Kindle. That's cheaper than I'd price this novelette as a stand-alone download, and you'll get another dozen stories to boot. Good deal!
June 24, 2014
On the Quiet Heroism of Bureaucrats
(This is a cross-post from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog)
I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle, and it just dawned on me--on the eve of the publication of my June column--that I totally neglected to post a link to my May column (which is significantly more upbeat). It begins like this:
The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In it for the Money: Equal Marriage
Back in March, for just shy of 24 hours, Michigan was willing to license, solemnize, and recognize the marriage of any two people without getting all particular about their genitals. [1] The three-judge appellate panel is still out on whether the question of a happily-ever-after for non-bigots and wedding-lovers here in Michigan. But that was still a pretty wonderful day.
In one sense that day resulted from a specific victory in court: A courageous couple embarked on a legal battle in order to protect their adopted children in the case that either parent dies, lawyers argued the case, and based on the merit of those oral arguments and the testimony of experts a federal judge issued a very strongly-worded decision.
By itself, all of that was a wonderful example of our legal system basically working as we’d hope.
But here’s the thing: If that was all that had been done – just plaintiffs and lawyers and experts and a level-headed judge – no one could have gotten married on Saturday, March 22, 2014. No offices would have been open, no staff would have been on hand, and the appropriate forms would not have existed.
So today I want to sing the praises of the quiet heroism of county clerks – who are, for the vast bulk of law-abiding citizens, the daily executors of the Law, which is to say our Will as a People. This column is meant to record in something approaching a permanent way their mettle in helping to bend the Arc of the Moral Universe towards Justice. . . .
And goes on in that manner for a reasonable number of words, then stops. In the middle, we cover the intricacies of marriage applications and the weird contortions that bigoted laws demand.
If for no other reason, please click through to reap the benefits of reading the piece's lone footnote.
February 9, 2014
Deja Vu All Over Again: Anti-LGBTQ Pogroms Brewing in Russia
Pogroms where the Russian solution to the "Jewish Problem." These were generally characterized as "peasant uprising" or "unpredictable mobs." They weren't often officially sanctioned, per se, but they were officially tolerated. No one was prosecuted for murdering, raping, and robbing Jews, because the Russian governments were perfectly satisfied with the results: Jews--many of them orphaned children--left Russia in droves, abandoning their family businesses and property in the process. The pogroms served the government's ends--in that they encouraged Jews to "self deport," as we say nowadays, without the gov'ts having to lift a finger or spend a dime--and the government need never worry about being held to account.
Say what you like about the Nazis, but at least they had the general decency and self-regard to spend money on bullets, boxcars, and Zyklon B.
At any rate, right now there is a slow-boiling anti-queer pogrom in Russia, plain and simple. As a civilized people, we should be offering asylum to Russian LGBTQ folk. As an important trade partner, we should be putting pressure on Russia to prosecute these attackers. As fucked up as *we* are as a nation, we are better than this; as fucked up and vicious as we are as a species, we are too good to quietly let things like this persist.
This video is super unpleasant, but you should watch it, because this is a thing that's happening, and it's going to keep getting worse:
