Mark A. Rayner's Blog: Mark A. Rayner's Goodreads Blog, page 119

Economics 101

My economics professor told the following joke in class, so you know some of them have a sense of humor and understand theirs is a dismal science:

A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Lets smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Let's build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Lets assume that we have a can-opener…"

Of course, you might want to hang out with them...

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for Robots

I'm not sure that robots need food, but the rest of this seems accurate, particularly the top.

Alltop is a self-actualized chatbot. More of Lunchbreath's latest toons here.

The innevitable toaster uprising

Ah, if only it would be so easy to fix!

Alltop is feeling pluralistic about the Singularity. Cartoon by the talented (and acutely observant) Rob Cunningham, and used under a CC license.

Professor Quippy: Writers beware, those rejection notes have a cost

New research at the University of California, Los Angeles, shows that social rejection may increase your risk of developing arthritis.

This explains all the unpublished (or barely published) writers hobbling around with bad knees, out-of-work actors with permanent back-aches, and painters with gnarled knuckles. The cost of all those rejections has caused arthritis. (And a certain amount of existential crisis.)

Actually, I'm just inferring this — the study only looked at social rejection in...

New column at Grasping for the Wind

I've got a new gig writing monthly for John Ottinger's blog. Up today: A Letter to Town Council: Municipal Investment Strategies for the Technological Singularity.

Your chance at immortality, books, and random crap!

Hell yes, we're going to do this again. This is a contest in which you may be able to win:

a chance to appear in a walk-on role in my next book
a chance to win one of three copies of Marvellous Hairy, a novel in five fractals
a "mystery" item from my desk.

Now, if you've entered, or think you will, this is an excellent time to start thinking about how you would like to appear in my next book. Actually, to say next book is to narrow it down too much. I'm currently at work on two books...

A Venn Diagram for Higher Education Marketers

Another cogent observation by xkcd:

And yes, this has been noticed by others: in my experience people aren't really too interested in your fund-raising efforts or the awesome things your outstanding and brilliant Center in Toenail Studies is doing in fungus-stricken New Jersey (though they should be with the latter).

They do, however, really want to know what the local weather is, or perhaps, if you have an art history program.

Alltop don't take to no book learning.

Refugees from the Zombie Apocalypse

It was their last refuge — the sea.

Having escaped death at the hands of brain-hungry zombies, these poor people have now had to endure days at sea on this makeshift raft. At first, it was kind of fun. They played "I Spy", the geography game, and when the seas were calm enough, charades. But then they ran out of food and good spirits. Of the 150 survivors for the zombie apocalypse who got on the raft, only 15 survived the days of madness, starvation, dehydration and an ironic bit of...

Famous Paintings with SF Titles — The Gallery

Check out the gallery here.

Alltop doesn't know art, but it knows what it likes.

The rush of heaven downward & other short fictions

For those of you who enjoy some of my non-insane work — okay, just partially insane — I've got a new short story posted in the short fiction section. It was originally published in Flash Me, an online flash fiction magazine, in 2003, and I've reprinted it online here: "The rush of heaven downward".

I've also put a listing of all my (free) online fiction here.