David Erik Nelson's Blog, page 31

Bed Bugs, Statistics, Press-Release Reporting, and You

(Reposted from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog)

I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. This latest installment explores the dangers of bed bugs (SPOILER ALERT: zilch), as well as the dangers of hysterical unverified re-reporting of "information" in press releases (SPOILER ALER: significant). It begins like this:

We met our first bed bug while traveling in the spring of 2011. My wife had plucked the creature from a friend’s bedroom wall. . . .

And ends like this:

. . . If you’re tempted to dismiss such things as “all in your head,” then just remember this: An intelligent man – a man you respect enough to wade through 4,000 words of his thoughts on bed bugs – drove into the vortex, endangering the lives of his toddler and seven-year-old, because he was afraid of the bed bug’s bite.

And has about 4000 words in between, with a whole mess of numbers and attributable statements of fact (with attribution!).

In case you happen to run into bed bugs while traveling, I've written up this handy supplemental guide: Bed Bugs: A Traveler's Response.

Take a Sec to Nominate Dave-o's Fiction for Stuff!

(Yet another lil repost from the Snip, Burn, Solder Blog)

It's nominating time for the various 2013 F/SF awards (Hugo, Nebula, etc.), and I have exactly *one* qualifying story floating around out there:

"The New Guys Always Work Overtime" (first appeared in Asimov's, Feb 2013--that's the cover on the left--and was republished as an audio book in StarShopSofa #312, Nov 2013)

If you like nominating things for stuff, and you liked that story--well, then there you go. If you aren't in a position to nominate "New Guys" for anything, but still liked the story and want to officially register that enjoyment, then you can vote for it here (it's under the "Short Story" category):

Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Reader's Award 2013.

That poll closes FRIDAY so VOTE TODAY! Now! GOOOOO!

Thanks!

Dave-o has a Newsletter--A NEWSLETTER!?! OMFG: NEEEEEEWS LETTTTTTTTER!!! (plz subscribe)

Hey Kids,

David Erik Nelson (me!)--one of the original Poor Mojo's Almanac(k)/Newswire editors and Giant Squid contributors--has finally gotten his ass in gear and set up a newsletter. If you want a not-more-than-weekly update on his latest books, essays, articles, and stories--plus occasional members-only freebies and offers--sign up for the newsletter here.

It's easy to join, easy to leave, and he'll never-ever-ever share or sell your contact info.

Thanks!

All Best,

dave-o! . . .

(for David Erik Nelson)

On Micro-agression and Macro-depression and Xmas/Xanukah (with bonus tracks!!!)

(This is a repost from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog)

Hey All,

I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. This time around it's on math and Jews and *The Holidays* and microagression and Thoth and Ganeesh and Hobby Lobby and so on. Somewhere in the later half I say something like this:

The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In It For The Money: Happy Holidays!

. . .

This is incredibly frustrating – because the equivalence, driven by a well-intentioned desire to be inclusive – is so needless. Xanukah isn’t a “Jewish Xmas.” It’s Xanukah – a relatively minor religious holiday celebrating a military victory. If anything, it’s sort of a Jewish Fourth of July – which is more apt, but just as nonsensical. Similarly, Ramadan isn’t a “Muslim Lent,” Diwali isn’t “Hindu Halloween” – or even a “Hindu Xanukah,” despite the fact that Diwali is also the “Festival of Lights.”

Inclusion is nice, but you do it by including others in the stuff you are doing, not by arguing that their things are sub-functions of yours. We’re not idiots; we haven’t failed to notice that the entirely secular “Holiday Break” from school conveniently centers around Xmas and the Gregorian calendar roll-over date, and that “Spring Break” is aimed to coincide with Easter – not Passover.

One of the principal privileges of being in the Majority is that you get to be, by definition, “normal.” You don’t find yourself constantly contradicted by outsiders – well-meaning television shows and well-wishers and folks planning office parties – as to what your holy days mean. You don’t have to wrestle with autocorrect about the spelling of your holidays and well wishes. You don’t have to disclose a lot of personal details to explain why this or that day is no good for a meeting, because no one schedules a meeting for December 25th.

. . .

BONUS GIFT! Back in the day I used to record Holiday Music of my Own Devising, because it was fun, and because when push comes to shove, from a strumming-and-singing-and-programming-sequencers perspective, there are *a lot* of great Xmas songs. Here are my offerings, in reverse chronological order. Enjoy!

(FUN FACT: I wrote this while hanging out with my infant son all day, and have played it annually ever since; my son believes it is an accepted part of the general Xmas Music Canon. You can grab an MP3 here.)

Dreidel Bells (FUN FACT: The beat here is an original GameBoy running an early German Nanoloop cartridge. Both voices are obviously me, but the filters for the robot voice badly overburdened my iBook, causing significant lag--which is why Mr. Roboto struggles so badly to hit his marks.)

DreidelDreidelDreidel (FUN FACT: The beat here is a vintage analog Boss DR-55 once owned by POE, crammed through a heavy-metal distortion stompbox.)

UPDATE: "Israel Poisoned Arafat with Polonium" Looking Less Likely

Following up, as we were one of many, many, many blogs that posted and re-posted with absolute declarative certainty that Israeli agents had poisoned Yasser Arafat using Polonium.

Also, this is a pretty scientifically interesting situation--and damned if Arafat's widow is not a remarkably classy person, putting her trust in both science and international law despite such extraordinary circumstances.

French expert report: No proof Arafat was poisoned - The Washington Post

French scientists looking into the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have dismissed poisoning by radioactive polonium, his widow announced Tuesday. The results contradict earlier findings by a Swiss lab, and mean it’s still unclear how Arafat died nine years ago.

Teams of scientists from three countries were appointed to determine whether polonium played a role in his death in a French military hospital in 2004. Palestinians have long suspected Israel of poisoning him, which Israel denies.

After a 2012 report that traces of radioactive polonium were found on Arafat’s clothing, Arafat’s widow filed a legal complaint in France seeking an investigation into whether he was murdered.

. . .

The French experts found traces of polonium but came to different conclusions than the Swiss about where they came from, finding that it was “of natural environmental origin,” Suha Arafat said.

. . .

Arafat’s widow and her legal team attributed the difference to the potential role of radioactive radon gas around the burial cloth and body in the tomb. Its presence was detected and measured by both the French and the Swiss. Radon, which is found naturally, transforms into polonium in a naturally occurring process.

Arafat and her lawyers reached the conclusion after consulting private experts to help them understand the French report.

. . .

(thx to Ari Kohen for pointing out this article and this hardly open-and-shut death)

Miss America, the Craft of Showing Up, and Doing THE JOB

(This is yet another repost from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog.)

So, I continue to write a column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle, this month focusing on Miss America 2014, the Miss America Pageant Organization, and local media (the 2014 winner, Nina Davuluri [she's the one on the right], is a U-M alum and was in Ann Arbor on Nov. 1 for a business conference, where I interviewed her).

The column begins by asking why I was the *only* member of the media who showed up to report on this--U-M, who hosted the event, had sent several different branches of its own internal and alumni media to cover the event, but no local paper or blog was there, nor were the Detroit Metro area papers. The column ends with me pointing out that the job of the media is to show up places and tell us what they see so that we can draw reasonable conclusions about the state of the world. In the middle, we have about 16 pages of Miss America history and analyzing Ms. Davuluri's business and marketing tactics, as well as American "diversity."

Anyway, here's a nice two-up of reactions to the column:

[image error]

The upper tweet is, obviously, Miss America. The lower tweet is from someone who writes for the local paper I called out for not showing up.

Man, I don't know where to start with this. First off, what's with using the passive voice, Ace? The column wasn't twisted by some unknown force; I twisted it. I wrote the damn thing. See, that's the second line of the job description at the Ann Arbor Chronicle. The first line is Show the fuck up and the second is tell us what you saw.

Beyond that, this article didn't *twist.* It isn't like I started out *OMFG IM SITTIN WITH A BATHING BEAUTY!!1!* and then in the final graff pulled this wicked 180 and stabbed you in the back. I started out saying "Hey local media: Get off your fucking duffs and come see what's happening!" and then ended up saying "Hey local media: You are violating your contract with the readers by not showing up to report what's happening!"

I the last week I've thought about this a lot, because it's been a good week to reflect on how far new media has drifted from The Job (i.e., "showing up and saying what you see"). 50 years ago a barrier-breaking US president was murdered in Dallas. The reporters who showed up to watch his parade, they could not have expected a story: There was no speech scheduled for the damn parade route; it was just a dude cruising by in a convertible. But they showed up--because that's The Job--and something so terrible happened, something that fundamentally shook this country like nothing would until a clear-skied September morning in 2001.

No one knew that would happen--even Oswald must have had his doubts that he'd pull it off--because none of us know what is going to happen. That's *why* there's a job that consists of showing up and saying what you saw, because who knows what will happen where. Like a Boy Scout (incidentally, JFK was the first Scout elected PotUS), we must Be Prepared.

Likewise, no reporter could expect there to really be a *story* at Oswald's funeral: Assumed murder goes in box, box goes in ground. But they showed up, 'cause that's The Job--and several of them wound up being pall-bearers, because the funeral was so sparsely attended, and the attendees were almost all women and children.

That's a remarkable, weird, gonzo story. And it's a human story. And it is a story that allows us to reflect on what it means to be American and human, and to live in the age in which we live.

That's the result of doing The Job, and it is why The Job is a sacred Job, just like preaching and teaching and standing next to the bed for someone's beginning or end.

And I was the only one who showed up to do The Job--but not because our town and our county and our region lack for people paid to do something very much like The Job. It's just that the media has abandoned The Job, because they think they already know all the stories there are to tell, so why bother showing up? Why bother seeing what you see if you already know what you are going to write about it?

Incidentally, it's worth reading the comments to my column, too, because a Miss America volunteer wrote in with a counter-narrative. See, even though I did The Job, I still fell down--because I'm human, and because I'm living in the same 21st Century as all the other media people, the ones I excoriate for abandoning the Faith, and because I struggle under the same constraints of time and money and energy as every other ink-stained wretch since the dawn of the damned printing press. Just like the rest of the media, I retold a story about Lenora Slaughter--an early Miss America reformer--and racism in the pageant, a story that I'd gotten from *other* media folk. I parroted this line--because it was just *too* good not to repeat--without chasing down primary sources for verification and without digging deep enough into what I had to realize the limitations of what it really said. And so I missed one more really interesting facet to this story, and failed to give you all one more bright shard of what it means to be American then and American now.

But still, I did The Job, and despite the title of my column, I didn't do it for the money; I did it because it's what I owe you for agreeing to take The Job at all. You do The Job because, in the absence of The Job, this shit is just words, words, words, full of sound and fury, but signifying fuckall.

Amen.

Kick In to Support THE MAGAZINE Kickstarter!

(This is reposted from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog--'cause I figured Mojonauts might be down with this project, too.)

The Magazine--a really excellent digital periodical--is doing a Kickstarter to fund an annual print edition. You should *really* consider kicking in $30, like, immediately to get a copy. Barring that, $15 is a great deal--gets you a one-year subscription at about 40 percent off--and even a buck or five helps.

That annual print edition--which is really the brass ring on this one--is gonna be a big, fat hardcover with 130 of the most-notable articles, color glossy pictures, the whole shebang. Here's a layout preview--which happens to feature the first article I wrote for them, about the world's greatest aftermarket "lens" for doing old-school pinhole photography with catching-edge consumer-grade digital cameras. Backers who come in at $30 or more (as of this writing) will get the hardcover, plus DRM-free digital editions of the book. (You can back at a lower level and still get some pretty sweet swag, though. For example, if you come in at $15 you get a one-year subscription, which normally retails for ~$20--and costs, like, $24 if you buy it monthly, like I do, because I'm a damn rube).

If you're one of this "I Give a Damn About the Future of Long-Form Journalism and Think Pieces," then you should be backing this project; The Magazine is basically the only forward looking periodical I've come across. They pay well, and the editors are meticulously ethical, extremely scrupulous, and great to work with--every story becomes the best possible version of itself.

Also, *DISCLOSURE* if this project funds, I'll get a reprint payment of a couple hundred dollars. They don't *have* to do this--not with the contract I signed; they've already paid me for the work. They are *choosing* to do this because it's the right thing to do. Like I said, if there's a future in this non-fiction thing, The Magazine is that future.

Dave-o's story "The New Guys Always Work Overtime" Dominates StarShipSofa Podcast No. 312

My story "The New Guys Always Work Overtime" (which debuted in the Feb 2013 ASIMOV'S) is included in the latest StarShipSofa podcast: StarShipSofa No 312 David Erik Nelson | StarShipSofa

A second story in this series--a novelette titled "There Was No Sound of Thunder"--will run in ASIMOV'S next summer.

Also, I'm speaking about booze at Ignite Ann Arbor on Nov. 17. They've chosen the unconventional tactic of making the most erratic speaker go last, likely in an effort to clear the room prior to going into overtime and incurring additional rental fees. You should come check it out, because when I really totally flop, it is usually pretty exquisite.

Secretive Texas Quajillionaire--Aided by Hyper-Intelligent Baby Horses?--Will Save Detroit by Converting it into a Hydroelectric Dam (UPDATED!)

Packard Plant auction winner sends "the most insane press release ever" - Vacuum

Detroit's Packard Plant recently went up for auction, and the winner is a group led by Texas physician Dr. Jill Van Horn with a bid of just over $6 million. The press release sent on the occasion was described as "the most insane press release ever". . . .

Choice bits from the THREE PAGE press release--which is riddled with bizarre typos and autocorrects (one hopes) are an extended analogy between Detroit and a hydroelectric dam (with its "pin stop, turbaned, generators, transformers, and wires of the hydro-electric energy system, that convert the potential energy of the lake until it is fixed in a accessible form"), a botched Einstein quote that makes it sound like the noted physicist and dorm-room-decoration believed that "any intelligent foal can make things bigger, more complex and more violent," an apparent standing offer to purchase and take possession of *all* abandoned property within the city, and this very cryptic statement:

Prior to placing the bid on the Packard Plant, Dr. Van Horn's prophecy was to resurrect Detroit by providing education, jobs and vocational training to the city's residence, simultaneously unplugging the financial arteries of the city.

"Unplug the financial arteries"? That . . . that sorta sounds like a threat. I'm kinda worried that this "Dr. Van Horn" may be a super-villian in need of some remedial Language Arts classes (as is, tragically, so often the case).

UPDATE: Well, that was short lived: Wayne County cancels Texas doctor's Packard Plant bid, talks with other bidders | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

"How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the RoboRoach"

(FYI: this is a cross-post from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog)

I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. In this latest installment we meditate upon the instantly controversial RoboRoach from Backyard Brains:

The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In it for the Money: Cockroach Thanksgiving

Come November, Ann Arbor’s own Backyard Brains will be shipping their educational RoboRoach kits. In just a few E-Z steps you (yes, you!) will upgrade a standard issue Blaberus discoidalis cockroach into your very own iPhone-controlled insectoid robo-slave – and just in time for the Non-Denominational Gift Giving Holiday Season!

I know, I know, you have questions – and almost certainly some objections – when it comes to icing a live cockroach, mutilating its antennae, drilling a hole in its back, and taking control of its brain – with a goddamn phone.

Readers, I share your moral panic. But I have walked in the Valley of Death, have been prodded with the SpikerBox, have bought coffee and a cookie for the lead roach-roboticisizer, have met their techno-insectoid minions, and here, on the far side of the vale, I want to tell you this:

I am not worried about the kids who unwrap a Backyard Brains RoboRoach kit sometime between Thanksgiving and the end of the year; I’m worried about the kids who don’t.

. . .