- Following up on the “there is no Triceratops, only Zuul” story I posted yesterday, here’s Caitlin R. Kiernan’s take on the whole thing:
People are used to looking at species as static entities. But biologists work with species (and all other taxonomic units— the case of Triceratops is a genus-level problem) as hypotheses. And any given hypothesis may be discarded by future discoveries. That is, the name Triceratops is a hypothesis seeking to explain a collection of seemingly related fossils of a Late Cretaceous horned dinosaur. The hypothesis says that all specimens of Triceratops are more closely related to one another than they are they are to any other genus of chasmosaurine dinosaur. But, like all hypotheses, it can be falsified in light of future discoveries. In this case, the discovery of new fossils giving us a more complete picture of Triceratops as a living population of animals, and allowing us to realize that the morph we used to call “Torosaurus” is actually only the very mature form of Triceratops. As an hypothesis, “Torosaurus” appears to have been falsified. Now, it’s possible that Scannella and Horner are wrong, and that future discoveries and/or research of old discoveries will show that Triceratops and “Torosaurus” really are two taxa (though I’ve read the paper, and this seems unlikely). All hypotheses are provisional. Nothing is ever certain. Never. The best argument may be in error. That’s how science works, even if the press seems unable to grasp this.
- Following up on the Gaiman/McFarlane legal battles I also posted about yesterday, Erik Larsen’s defense of McFarlane needs some work [via]:
It’s one thing to start a flame-war, or be a loudmouth, or try to argue that, say, a court ruling was unfair. That, after all, is just another Tuesday on Twitter. It’s a very different thing to blame a judicial ruling you disagree with on sexist caricatures of women as irrational, swooning groupies — especially if you’re starting to make a habit of it.
- FBI wants its seal removed from Wikipedia. Whichever side is right in this, I do like Wikipedia’s official response [via]:
While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version of Section 701 that you forwarded to us…
- Gio Clairval on Lightness: Italo Calvino’s hope for the future of literature. There are some really interesting thoughts here:
Steampunk is often—not always, but often—set during the industrial revolution, a time that revolves around the heaviness of steel. A weighty century, indeed. Too-heavy ships crossed the oceans. Eiffel’s tower represented Man’s victory over iron. The ponderous consciousness of matter—inevitable—dominated until the late eighties. Asimov imagined immense computers. Arthur C. Clarke let enormous steles fall from the sky.
But today, what fascinates us most in Steampunk? Airships pulled upward by light gasses. Impossibly floating cities.
- And finally, for something completely different, a dog mowing the lawn [via]:
writing
A quiet Sunday
A quiet Sunday, mostly, spent hanging around the house with the dog and doing the Times crossword. (He’s more into the jumble, actually.) I joined a couple of friends (and a new member, an acquaintance of a friend) for our weekly free-writing group, and I had a couple of photos accepted for inclusion in Small Beer Press’ A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2011. I quite liked this year’s planner, and Gavin Grant recently put out a call for photos, so… And then finally, Kaleidotrope #9 got its first official review. (An unofficial one came in the other day.) It’s always nice to get feedback on an issue, good or bad, but especially when it’s good.
I went for another short walk, had pizza for dinner with my mother, and tried some homemade ice cream from a new local creamery. And that’s about it as far as Sunday goes.
Oh! But that blood drive that I thought was yesterday but wasn’t? It was actually today. Which I knew, because I’d written in my calendar that it was August 1. But I spent a lot of yesterday morning thinking Saturday was the first. But I was quickly disabused of that notion and was at multiple times reminded throughout the day that Sunday was actually the first. But I never made the connection in my brain between the corrected dates and the blood drive. I just happened to be walking past the church where it was being held earlier this evening. Had I eaten anything recently — I skipped lunch — and had it not been winding down anyway, I might have gone in to donate. Maybe next time.
Thursday various
- So now it’s not “what the founding fathers meant” but “what the mid-nineteeth-century fathers meant”? Look, Iowa GOP, it seems to me that, if the best you can come up with is a version of a constitutional amendment that was never actually ratified, you’re grasping at straws. [via]
- Bloomsbury will e-publish a one-million-page Churchill archive. I’m imagining some lonely archivist shouting, “But it’s one million and one pages!” and being told to quietly get rid of the offending page. But that’s probably just me.
- “Carpe diem” doesn’t mean “seize the day“? Man, Robin Williams was a terrible teacher! [via]
- Man, more rejection letters should be like this. (Conversely, less of them should be like this.)
- And finally, first this, now this. I have got to start riding the subway more often!
Monday various
- Rachel Maddow takes on the “Scare White People” tactics of the right. That this is a tried and tested method for securing votes is only slightly less disheartening than the fact that it seems to be working even today. [via]
- Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, whose story “Mouse and I” appears in the April 2010 issue of Kaleidotrope, writes about finding her voice as a Filipino science fiction writer:
I found myself thinking, yet again, on what kind of science fiction a Filipino would write, and how a writer can break free from being someone who emulates the works of writers he or she has admired to become a person who writes with a voice and with a story that comes from the writer’s own soul.
What things influence the Filipino writer then? What’s our backstory? How can I as a writer coming from a country that has been so colonialized and that is still trapped in a colonial mindset free myself so I can write the fictions that only I can write?
- She also shares a really terrific talk on “The Danger of a Single Story” by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
- Apparently there is no gravity [via] and time is disappearing from the universe. [via] Or at least, those are some theories.
- And finally, I don’t know if this story, about a Bosnian man who claims to have been hit by meteorites six times, is made more or less strange by the possibility that it’s all a hoax.
Thursday various
- I’ve always thought that competitive eating contests were, at best, disgusting and dumb, and, at worst, encouragers of some really awful and unhealthy behavior. Turns out, it’s much worse than I ever imagined. [via]
- Who could have guessed that an H.G. Wells story contest that banned science fiction and required manuscripts be handwritten would get no entries?
- The Searcher has been on something of a zombie kick recently: Zombie Journal: Of Conscience and Appetites and The Tragedy of Zombie Clown.
- Inside the digital preservation process at the Library of Congress. [via]
- And finally, the Real People Behind Famous Fictional Characters. [via]