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Dan Goodman's journal
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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Dan Goodman" journal:[<< Previous 25 entries]
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04:25 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, ursulav!
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12:57 am
[Link] |
BBC News - Canada prepares for an Asian future
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-18149316 (via shareaholic)
Canada prepares for an Asian future
By Ayesha Bhatty Vancouver
View of Vancouver Nearly one in five of Vancouver's population is Chinese
Chinese immigrants have flocked to Canada's west coast and transformed Vancouver into Canada's very own Asian metropolis. The days of concern over the city being turned into 'Hongcouver' have gone. What does the future hold for Canada's Asian population?
Shoppers stroll casually past a Lamborghini store in Richmond's Aberdeen Centre - a major Asian mall in this once sleepy Vancouver suburb known for its farmland and fishing village.
Outside the shopping centre, people are queuing at the many Chinese restaurants. In the local supermarkets, butchers are picking live seafood out of fish tanks, chopping off the heads, then gutting and packaging them up under the watchful eye of customers, almost exclusively Chinese-Canadian.
Richmond is North America's most Asian city - 50% of residents here identify themselves as Chinese. But it's not just here that the Chinese community in British Columbia (BC) - some 407,000 strong - has left its mark. All across Vancouver, Chinese-Canadians have helped shape the local landscape.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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01:25 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, ellenmillion!
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11:55 pm
[Link] | A fair amount of sf set in the future is by authors whose intent is to write about the present.
I want a term for science fiction about the future.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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12:50 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, blythe025!
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06:48 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, careswen and queenoftheskies!
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07:47 pm
[Link] | How would you use the Casimir Effect to cook food?
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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03:24 pm
[Link] | Monday May 14, 2012. From Twitter:
Camille Alexa @camillealexa
"Heads expected to roll at JPMorgan over $2B loss" & "49 headless bodies found dumped along Mexican highway" side by side in news feed #oops
Retweeted by Catherine Shaffer
***Writing annoyance: I'd come up with these 23rd century bar names: Paper Dollar Saloon and Silver Nickel Saloon.
Turns out both are in present-day use in the US.
Replacements: Credit Card Saloon and Silver Loonie Saloon. (Canada's loonies have never been made of silver. I'm assuming people 200 years in the future will be weak on such historical details.)
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
Tags: writing future
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02:01 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, javacat!
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10:54 am
[Link] |
holagordita: babstheartist: sciencetodo: No,...
http://midori-fairy.tumblr.com/post/23536839007/holagordita-babstheartist-sciencetodo-no (via shareaholic)
When a living corpse climbs out of her during an awkward night of sex, Stacy learns that her vagina is actually a doorway to another world.
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08:30 pm
[Link] | What do sf writers get wrong about people like you?
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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10:11 pm
[Link] |
Maximum Strength Placebo For Sale «
http://popperfont.net/2012/05/16/maximum-strength-placebo-for-sale/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter (via shareaholic)
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09:05 pm
[Link] | Sunday May 13, 2012. The Mayday Parade is usually held first Sunday in May; but this year it was postponed on account of sogginess.
I keep meaning to attend, and keep missing it. This year, I went.
There were marching bands. People costumed as dragons, horses, unicorns, bees, wood ticks (a group concerned with Lyme Disease prevention), vegetables. Political groups ranging from pro-Obama to ones which consider Karl Marx a rightwing extremist. Hare Krishnas and at least one other Hindu group. Skateboards, kick scooters, bicycles, one dekacycle. Atheists.
When I'd seen the end of the parade, I walked to the festival at Powderhorn Park.
There were food trucks and food booths. Available food included Amish chicken al pastor tacos.
At a place selling pasties, one employee's tshirt said "Stop staring at my pasties."
And one spectator's tshirt said "Hail Seitan."
Various organizations and businesses had booths. Including the Minneapolis Republican Party; the man at that booth looked lonely.
I didn't see more than glimpses of the official entertainment.
I did watch a belly dancer who was busking. I didn't find her particularly interesting. However, her drummer looked hot.
It was fun; and I walked enough that I got a fair amount of exercise.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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07:48 pm
[Link] | Saturday May 12, 2012 Advance news about the 2112 Hugo winners (chosen by members of the World Science Fiction Convention):
Best Mindcast, Long Form: The Demolished Man
Best Mindcast, Short Form: Planet of the Hairless Apes
***T shirt: "Come for the sheep, stay for the maps http://www.floatingsheep.org"
I looked it up. "...Five geographers mapping the geographies of user-generated online content" is what they say about themselves on Twitter.
Top 10 Floating Sheep Maps
The Beer Belly of America
The Price of Weed
The Great American Pizza Map
Mapping Christianity
Visualizing the Abortion Debate
Church, bowling, guns and strip clubs
Google's Geographies of Religion
Allah, Buddha, Hindu and Jesus
Baptists, bibliophiles and bibles
Mapping Escorts
***From Twitter: VicNickDaily @VicNickDaily
So let's say you are a sheep or think you are a sheep and you can't fall asleep
Dan Goodman Dan Goodman @dsgood
@VicNickDaily Then you count humans.
VicNickDaily VicNickDaily @VicNickDaily
@dsgood @VicNickDaily The fluffy white ones?
***"Unlike most nursing mothers, the government hadn't covered herself and child with a shawl."
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
Tags: maps writing sheep
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11:16 am
[Link] | Happy Birthday, cakmpls!
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10:19 pm
[Link] | Friday May 11, 2012. Woke up hours earlier than usual, feeling better than I had for a while.
***Downtown Minneapolis currently has a number of food trucks. All have foods which would have been too exotic for office worker lunches a few decades ago.
***At Metro Transit's store, I picked up schedules. Four times a year, a bunch of bus schedules change; and May 12th was this quarter's date from such changes.
Stopped in at Office Depot.
On to Central Library. On one door, "smoke free facility" has been altered to "mole tree facility."
Back south to the Southwest Senior Center, where I had two cups of tea. And then home.
***The Paris Review @parisreview
The people who invented pagers never imagined that they would change the shape of urban drug dealing.-William Gibson http://bit.ly/J4oymn
***Read: A Star Above It: Selected stories of Chad Oliver, Volume 1; NESFA Press, 2003. Most of these sf stories were published in the 1950s (14 of 18); as one would expect, they got the future a bit wrong. "All around him in the great building he felt the gigantic mechanical brain with its millions of circles and flashing lights."
Fewer characters smoke cigarettes than in most 1950s future-set stories -- but more of them smoke pipes. (The jacket copy says Oliver was a pipe collector.)
I rated the book three stars out of five on Goodreads. Oliver was a competent writer; and he used what he knew.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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07:01 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, dhole!
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06:58 pm
[Link] |
One Ordinary Future Day
Exercise: Write about an ordinary person, fifty years from now, going through an ordinary day.
I'll use an adult male American living in Minneapolis. If you are (for example) a teenaged female Singaporean, use someone more like yourself.
He begins the day with his usual breakfast; similar to what someone of today would eat, but not identical. It's likely to include one or two items which few Americans now eat.
And the familiar foods might not be quite the same. Lower in salt, perhaps; flavored differently; slightly different in texture.
The same goes for lunch, supper, and snacks.
How does he cook it? Wood stove, microwave oven, a device which uses the Casimir Effect? (That last one is unlikely.)
He wants to know this morning's news. Does he read a holographic display of a newspaper, listen to his wrist radio, watch a replica of a 2005 TV set?
What IS the news? It might include: Quebec's government expressing indignation over the Newfoundland secession movement. A US city banning all cars which aren't self-driving.
It's time to go to work. There will probably be many more people who work at home; but let's say he works where his employer can keep an eye on him. Is his job one which exists today? What equipment does he use? What is considered appropriate clothing for his workplace?
How does he travel to work?
After work, he goes to a convenience store. Buys a state lottery ticket -- or does he? Perhaps they've been outlawed. Perhaps paper lottery tickets are no longer issued.
When he gets home, he relaxes by consuming __? Let's restrict it to legal stuff. Tobacco is probably still legal; but almost certainly less common than now. Marijuana might or might not have been legalized.
If he chooses alcohol, it might be something no one drinks today. In 1971, Larry Niven took for granted that vodka would continue to be unflavored (see "The Fourth Profession.") Nor did anyone else predict bacon vodka or marshmallow vodka.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
Tags: writing sf
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08:01 am
[Link] | Writing exercise: Fifty years in the future, an ordinary person going through an ordinary day.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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08:00 pm
[Link] | May 9 Wednesday Business names (fictional, 22nd century): Paper Dollar Saloon, Silver Nickel Saloon, Caffeinated Clio.
***Waite House has moved into Phillips Community Center. So I took a new route to pick up NAPS (Nutritional Assistance Program for Seniors)food.
Phillips is a low-income neighborhood. Walking from Chicago Avenue, I passed through a concentration of Somali businesses and Somali pedestrians. The groceries sold goat meat, among other foods most Americans aren't likely to eat.
Near the Center is the Indian Board of Health (American Indian, not Asian Indian.)
Before picking up NAPS food, I went through the produce distribution line. It was mostly outside today, since the weather was good.
***Back home, learned from Twitter that President Obama had come out publicly in favor of same sex marriage.
In 1996, Paul Wellstone (one of the most liberal US Senators) voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. Bill Clinton signed it into law.
In the 1950s, "Homosexuality is a mental illness" was a liberal position.
"This law will solve the problem forever" doesn't always work. In 1909, Nevada's legislature voted to ban gambling. During the Depression, the decision was made to legalize gambling temporarily.
Current Location: Minneapolis, Baja Manitoba
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09:14 pm
[Link] | Belated Happy Birthday to those whose birthdays I missed!
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09:14 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, leahbobet!
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01:00 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, nwhyte!
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11:24 pm
[Link] |
BBC News - Prospect of 'autism drug' raised after early tests
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17839104 (via shareaholic)
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03:54 pm
[Link] | Happy Birthday, gillpolack!
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