Ken MacLeod's comments.
The title comes from two quotes:
“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders
Contact: kenneth dot m dot macleod at gmail dot com Blog-related emails may be quoted unless you ask otherwise.
Emergency Links
British Red Cross
Disasters Emergency Committee
UNICEF
Hurricane Relief
American Friends Service Committee
LINKS
Self-promotion
Buy my books
Buy signed copies!
Follow me on Twitter!
The Human Genre Project
The Human Genre Project
Comrades and friends
Charlie Stross
Martin Wisse
Making Light
Avedon Carol
The Pagan Prattle
Cheryl's Mewsings
Farah Mendlesohn
Bridesmaid
Svein Olav Nyberg's old blog
Svein Olav Nyberg's new blog
Alister Black
Kevin Williamson
Alan Freeman
Kathryn Cramer
MaxSpeak
Jim Henley
John Baker
Nicholas Whyte
The Sharp Side
Barbaric Document
The Woolamaloo Gazette
Kevin Carson
Thomas Knapp
Arthur Silber
Grand Hotel Abyss
Devizes Melting Pot
A Finer World
Austro-Athenian Empire
The Art of the Possible
Cupcake Couture
Brian Micklethwait
Diane Hannover
TJ's Place
Mat Coward
Iain Fraser Grigor
Gail Wendorf
ubiquitous surveillance
Dubious Prospects
Ilorien
Sharon King
Kristine Lowe
Rich Puchalsky
Lamontations
Cory Doctorow
Parallel Futures
Lord Dunderheid
Colleagues
Genomics Forum
Genotype
Forum Tweets
the write reality
Pippa Goldschmidt
My Forum page
Sociology, Genomics and SF
EUSci
The University of Edinburgh
Genomics
What Is Genomics?
What is Synthetic Biology?
SynBioStandards
Genetic Future
Genetic Inference
Action Bioscience
Cardiff sciSCREEN
Genomic Minds
The Fourth Domain
Edinburgh
Guardian Edinburgh blog
The Edinburgh Reporter
City of Literature Trust
Textualities
Writers Bloc
Word Power
Transreal
McShandy's
Forest Publications
The Forest Cafe
Avalanche Records
Scottish Knife Collection
Sea Kist
Joyce Paton
Chris Koujou
Author Portraits
Luath Press
Tychy
Dig-In Bruntsfield
Writers Blog
SF Writers' blogs
Dead by Dawn
Forbidden Planet
Ian McDonald
The Mumpsimus
Dr Ian Hocking
Barbaric Document
Mundane SF
Justina Robson
Neal Asher
Michael Rosen
Warren Ellis
John Scalzi
Sean Williams
Jack Deighton
Rudy Rucker
Glenda Larke
Alan Campbell
Gavin Inglis
Hannu Rajaniemi
Lou Anders
Nick Harkaway
Paul McAuley
Lois McMaster Bujold
LabLit
M. John Harrison
Kelley Swain
Robert J. Sawyer
Will Shetterly
Stefan Pearson
aiko writes: poems
The Lost Book
The Trease Project
Peter Watts
Karla Schmidt
Deborah J Miller
Juliet E McKenna
Mike Cobley
Philip Palmer
Nick Wood
Catherynne M. Valente
Gail Carriger
Liz Williams
Morag Edward
Adam Roberts
Jo Walton
Nicola Griffith
Alastair Reynolds
Kari Sperring
Alan Bissett
My Writing Life
Helen Jackson
Caroline von Schmalensee
N. K. Jemisin
Cici James
Joan Slonczewski
Gwyneth Jones
Michael Rosen
Ryan Van Winkle
C.J. Cherryh
Russell Jones
Georgina Bruce
Katrina Leno
Claire Askew
Steven Brust
Mary Robinette Kowal
Regi Claire
Ron Butlin
Ruth Sabath Rosenthal
Jaine Fenn
Nnedi Okorafor
Editor Blogs
John Jarrold
Publisher Blogs
Tim Holman
Brother Blogs
MacLeod Cartoons
Skiffy
Ansible
Redstone SF
Futurismic
SciFiDimensions
io9
Tor.com
Pyr
Orbit
PS Publishing
Feminist SF
World SF News
Biology in SF
Raritania
Steampunk Fashion
Torque Control
Post-Weird Thoughts
Ivor W. Hartmann
StarShipSofa
Star Wars Modern
The Outer Alliance
Eve's Alexandria
Beyond Victoriana
Strange Horizons
Salon Futura
Afrocyberpunk
pornokitsch
SciFi Ideas
Three, If By Robots
Brits Blog
The Sharpener
The Register
Velvet Glove, Iron Fist
Blood and Treasure
The Gaping Silence
The Yorkshire Ranter
Excuse Me Whilst I Step Outside
' ... a treeless, flowerless land, formed out of the refuse of the Universe, and inhabited by the very bastards of Creation'
Socialism First!
Red Paper
Aye We Can!
Bella Caledonia
Scottish Roundup
Scottish Politics
SSP
Solidarity
Scottish Left Review
Democratic Left Scotland
Between the Hammer and the Anvil
SNP Tactical Voting
A Place to Stand
Freedom and Whisky
Independence
Gerry Hassan
Better Nation
Bright Green Scotland
Caledonian Mercury
Lallands Peat Worrier
Lesley Riddoch
Clyde Space
Spaceport Scotland
Land Matters
Scottish Review
Scottish Review of Books
The Firm
STV Local
Frontiers
Whitehall 1212
Ian Smart
Notes from North Britain
Amazing Things
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Hubble Telescope
Fragile Oasis
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Internet SF DataBase
Arts and Letters Daily
3 Quarks
1911 Britannica
Wikipedia
BBC
Daily Mash
Fortean Times
BoingBoing
Three-Toed Sloth
James P. Hogan
MemeMachineGo!
small WORLD
Derelict London
Good News
Strange Maps
The Simulation Argument
Better Living Through Chemistry
Poems on the Book of Life
The Periodic Table of Science Fiction
RAW Illumination
The Realist Archive
The New Atlantis
Faith
Flat Earth
Fixed Earth
Geocentricity
6 ky Earth
10 ky Earth
4.5 Gy Earth
Creation Wiki
Sacred Texts
The Brick Testament
The LOLcat Bible
Reason
New Humanist
Edinburgh University Humanist Society
WTA
IEET
Cyborg Democracy
Nick Bostrom
Bad Astronomy
WorldChanging
Cosmic Variance
Sean Carrol
Bruce Schneier
i-studies
The Eternal Golden Braid
The Secular Web
NSS
Richard Carrier
Russell Blackford
Conscious Entities
David Chalmers
the Edge
Naturalism.Org
Talk Reason
Stephen Law
Science after sunclipse
The Threat to Reason
Atheists of Silicon Valley
Blag Hag
Rationally Speaking
Bad Science
Enemies of Reason
Tabloid Watch
Daily Mail Watch
Perpetual Motion
Skepticblog
This is What a Scientist Looks Like
Freethought Blogs
Crooked Timber
Kenan Malik
Atheism: Proving the Negative
Stoicism Today
Sense about Science
Evolution
Why Evolution is True
The Panda's Thumb
Pharyngula (SciB)
Pharyngula (FtB)
RichardDawkins.net
The Voyage of HMS Beagle
Evolving Thoughts
The Lancelet
Pleiotropy
The Digital Cuttlefish
Glenn Morton's Pages
Talk.Origins
Creation Science and Earth History
Creation 'Science' Debunked
ASA
The GeoChristian
NCSE
BCSE
Oolon Colluphid's Guide to Creation
Recovering YECs
Beyond the Firmament
Highly Allochthonous
Caught in a Bad Project
Playing Chess with Pigeons
Shit You Didn't Know About Biology
War and Revolution
Antiwar.com
Lenin's Tomb
Empire Burlesque
CounterPunch
World Socialist Web Site
British Army Rumour Service
Circling the Lion's Den
International Crisis Group
Baghdad Burning (Riverbend)
Iraq Today
Left I on the News
Informed Comment
Informed Comment Global
Tom Dispatch
It's No Accident
Empire Notes
the eXile
The Exiled
Inanities
Matt Carr's Infernal Machine
MidEast Shuffle
The Duck of Minerva
In the Mind Field
Mutualist Militants
Free Market Anti-Capitalism
Larry Gambone
Red Lion Press
crispin sartwell
In the Libertarian Labyrinth
Liberty Alone
Rad Geek People's Daily
Propaganda Lalaland
Markets Not Capitalism
Democratic Socialists
Scottish Labour
Tom Harris MP
Bob Piper
LabourList
Socialist Party, USA
Socialist Webzine
Chartist
Appeal to Reason
Labour and Capital
Left Futures
grimmerupnorth
The Bickerstaffe Record
The Socialist International
Labour Lords
Scarlet Standard
Shifting Grounds
Renewal
Impossibilists and Ilk
SLP
SPGB
Socialist Studies
Socialism or Your Money Back
Inveresk Street Ingrate
Vaux Populi
Mission
Timid Maximalist
Class Warfare
Reasons to be Impossible
Mailstrom
Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
Wobbly Times
Viva La Quarta
International Viewpoint
In Defence of Marxism
SWP
Socialist Worker (UK)
Socialist Worker (US)
International Socialism
Socialist Action (US)
CWI
AWL
Anti-SEP-tic
Socialist Action
Communist Parties
CP of Britain
CP of Ireland
CPUSA
CPI(M)
Iraqi CP
CP of Israel
SACP
ML Today
SolidNet
21centurymanifesto
Revolting Europe
L'Humanite in English
Other revolutionaries
CPGB
Worker-communist Party of Iran
the commune
Radical Resources
Housmans Bookshop
Morning Star
Critiques of Libertarianism
Hitler was a Capitalist
Labournet UK
China Labour Review
Marxists Internet Archive
From Marx to Mao
Leninist.biz
Autodidact
Amiel & Melburn Trust
The New Reasoner
Lawrence & Wishart
hegemonics
Marxsite
Marxmail
Marx Myths
Revolutionary History
Monthly Review
What Next?
William Blum
Grover Furr
Bertell Ollman
What's Left
Reality
Paul Cockshott
Critique
The Socialism Web Site
Spectrezine
21st C. Socialism
SolidarityEcon
Left Atomics
Socialist Economic Bulletin
naked capitalism
Thoughts on Economics
Debunking Economics
Research on Money and Finance
Southall Black Sisters
Ancient Communism
Key Trends in Globalisation
Readable Reds
Splintered Sunrise
Soviet Goon Boy
Renegade Eye
Dave's Part
Cedar Lounge
Unrepentant Marxist
Though Cowards Flinch
Mark Steel
Critical Montages
The Curmudgeon
A few words before we go
Stephen Gowans
Liam Mac Uaid
Socialist Unity
Southpaw Punch
Harpy Marx
Madame Miaow
Reading the Maps
Stroppy Blog
A Very Public Sociologist
Tendance Coatsey
Boffy's Blog
Penny Red
Show Biz Red
Stalin's Moustache
Lipstick Socialist
For the sake of the argument
Norman Geras
Sean Gabb
Libertarian Alliance (Official)
Libertarian Alliance (Provisional)
Libertarian Party UK
Spiked Online
Poumista
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Heads-ups
My fellow Genomics Forum writer in residence, Pippa Goldschmidt, has had her short story 'The Competition for Immortality' accepted by LabLit, a website where actual scientists with white coats and everything write fiction (and fact). And, speaking of competitions and immortality, Pippa reminds me to remind you all that the 31 March deadline for her short story competition is fast approaching (aka Tuesday).
Lavie Tidhar writes:
I recently edited The Apex Book of World SF, an anthology of international speculative fiction published by Apex Books. It includes stories from World Fantasy Award winners S.P. Somtow and Zoran Živković, and stories from Malaysia, China, Israel, France, the Philippines and many others (some reprints, some original to this collection). The anthology is now available for pre-orders from Apex.So there you go: three worthwhile projects to check out this weekend. Don't let the missing hour on Saturday night slow you down.
I'm trying to get the word out! In addition to the anthology I recently started the World SF News Blog, dedicated to posting news and links about international science fiction, fantasy, horror and comics.
What I've been doing
Meanwhile, thanks to commitments recklessly undertaken when I thought this book would be well out of the way by now, I've written a story for the next issue of Subterranean Online edited by Gardner Dozois, and another for a forthcoming anthology of alternate-history stories, edited by Ian Whates and Ian Watson. That story contains a secret tribute to a literary pun by John Clute and a smoking break outside Newcon 2, last year, with Ian Watson and Storm Constantine.
In other news: local listings mag The Skinny has published a fine review of the Digital Evolution event which it and my fine employers the Genomics Forum sponsored last month, and I and Paul Cornell, Iain (M) Banks and Ian Watson are cited on the Beeb.
After all this, for my next novel it's back to long lives and strange deaths and spaceships on the cover, I can tell you.
Labels: genomics, self-promotion
The Voice of Moderation
So we should try to establish exactly what caused the crisis, who is responsible, and how. And that does require a certain amount of finger-pointing. Not because it is fun, although it is, but because we can’t afford to be magnanimous to the policy‐makers and opinion‐formers who steered us into this. If we do we’ll leave them in place to manage the crisis as confidently and ineptly as its prelude. They will seek to reconstruct a system on the same disastrous lines, they will fail, and they will, with every appearance of regret, resort to ever more desperate measures. You probably found this article online, so I shall say no more.Dan Hind presents (PDF) the most comprehensive and readable account of the origins of the current crisis, and of a feasible and potentially popular response from the left, that I've seen anywhere. (Via).
Instant update: the man also blogs.
Exactly sixty seconds' worth of distance run
Actually about the WoT, but ...
The bargain myopically forged by the US and Pakistan in training radicalized militias to fight as their proxies spawned a terrible monster that has effectively escaped from the laboratory, set it on fire and then evolved into a multi-headed hydra chasing its own creators.It's quite an apt metaphor, but I can't help but wait for the fascist octopus to sing its swan song.
Labels: WoT
Public understanding of science
Scientists themselves would be the first to agree that portrayals of them on TV and in films are always wildly unrealistic. But then so are most portrayals of musicians, journalists, violinmakers and others whose numbers are so low that most people never meet one. (From a very interesting and amusing (if long-winded) disillusioned account of the whole worthy enterprise of 'public understanding of science'.)
Labels: genomics
See into the quantum world!
Reunite Gondwanaland!
'I'm a geneticist. My job is to make sex boring.' That, said Steve Jones, is how he introduces his lecture course to his students. 'They look a bit puzzled, but after 25 lectures, they get it.'
I doubt that Steve Jones could make anything boring. His lecture 'Lost Worlds and Worlds to Come' was an hour well spent. Here are some scrappy notes.
The Lost World is placed, like More's Utopia, in an isolated New World setting - cue a slide of the actual plateau, Mount Roraima, which had inspired Doyle. (That's typical of how Jones used slides throughout - each one was unexpected and made a point stick.) The utopian genre (Jones said) changed in the 1890s, with biological change replacing social change. Slide of 1950s paperback cover of The Time Machine. Next instance: Star Trek, which Jones said showed a society almost identical to ours in terms of social institutions, but with great variation in human bodily form. (I suppose the absence of money is less visible than the presence of pointy ears.) Even more oddly, this point was illustrated with a slide of one of the Ferengi, which Jones seemed to think was supposed to be a future variant of the human species. But (returning to the serious science) such changes to the human species, Jones argued, are not going to happen. Evolution is 'descent with modification', or in a more modern formulation, 'genetics plus time'. Its drivers are mutation and selection.
Mutation was illustrated by a picture of Boris Johnson, 'British mutant'. The London Mayor's shock of yellow hair is the result of a mutation which has had a selective advantage in Northwest Europe. Light skin colour maps almost exactly to areas where Vitamin D deficiency, due to lack of sunlight, is a problem. (Point-sticking slide: graph showing significant difference in Vitamin D levels in the blood of European-Americans and African-Americans.) Blue-eyed blondes are a further twist in this tale: Northwest Europe, because of the Gulf Stream, is the only region where grain crops can be grown that far north. Grain crops are not only lacking in Vitamin D - eating their food products actually removes Vitamin D from the blood. This confers an advantage on skin types even more light-sensitive and melanin-deficient than the European norm. Natural blondes, sadly enough, are just people who can live on oats in the rain.
Both mutation and selection have dropped radically in the advanced countries. The main mutagen is not radiation but men, specifically older fathers. In developed, and increasingly in developing, countries, few men have children after the age of about 40. Slide of graph showing ages of fatherhood in West Africa, Pakistan, and France: the differences were striking. At the same time, the proportion of babies surviving to adulthood has gone from about half to almost all in a few centuries. Even the disparities in reproductive success between classes has dropped. Hence Jones's surprising claim that human evolution is over, at least for now. Isolation is another factor of evolution that has been drastically reduced. An easy way to track genes is to track surnames: in less than a century the Joneses have spread from being 'behind the electrified fence of the Welsh border' to adjacent areas of England, and can now even be found in London. In Australia, Professor Jones saw a T-shirt slogan that amused him: 'Reunite Gondwanaland'. That, he said, is exactly what we're doing: in terms of gene flow within the human population, we're living on one gigantic supercontinent. 'If you're worrying about what the lost world of the future will actually be like, you shouldn't, because you're already in it.'
In the Q&A afterwards I tried to think of a polite way to set the distinguished geneticist straight about the all-important Ferengi question, and it's just as well that I couldn't. The Ferengi may seem ridiculous as future humans, but it's even more ridiculous that they are aliens.