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Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA

Here’s one of my pet peeves. This survey was linked from BoingBoing with the explanation that cilantro-haters have a genetic mutation that causes them to perceive the taste differently. The linked article claims, without a reference, that there is a study in identical twins showing that cilantro-hate is genetic. But the study being reported proved no such thing. It only showed that preference for or against cilantro varied by culture, which is no surprise as cilantro is an herb that has been used heavily in some cultural cuisines and not in others.

The study authors called cilantro “the most polarizing” food. I disagree that it’s polarizing. Actually, I think online cilantro-haters are a bunch of whiny assholes. Lots of people have foods they hate, and they can and do hate them passionately. Some people can’t bear the taste of onion. Some people hate the flavor of all vegetables. Some people hate coffee. Etc. Etc.

People who hate cilantro, however, are the only group that seems to think it is somehow special.

Now, it is remotely possible that there’s some chemical in cilantro that can be perceived by some people and not others, but I doubt it’s the case. People who hate cilantro say it tastes like soap or dirt, and I agree. Cilantro does taste like soap – enchantingly delicious soap. There’s is also an earthy, “dirty” taste to it. I like that, as well.

Nothing in the strength of people’s dislike for cilantro, or in the nature of their descriptions, suggests this is any different from not liking onions or garlic or coffee. Different strokes for different folks.

When we are babies, we come programmed for one basic taste: mother’s milk. As our parents introduce new foods to us, we mostly don’t like them at first. Check out a baby trying a new food for the first time. It invariably comes right back out with a highly amusing “ick” face. (Yes, I know that some babies like trying new foods.) Over time, as we’re exposed to foods again and again, the taste is gradually less off-putting until our brains finally figure out it is food and has nutrition in it. Then it crosses over from being something yucky to something delicious.

A lot of people don’t understand the process of developing a taste for a new food, and think if they hate it the first time they try it, they will always hate it. It’s just not true. This is why it’s best not to push vegetables onto little kids. It truly will make them gag and throw up if they go from zero to broccoli in one meal. But if they see it, see their parents eating it, and try it a time or two or fifteen, their brain will eventually stop objecting to the flavor.

I think most of this cilantro hate is just unfamiliarity. I can’t comment on the twin study, but I will note that separating identical twins in adoption went out of style in the 1950′s, so it’s unlikely that the twins in the study grew up in different homes, unless they are about 70. Twins probably tend to share preferences about cilantro, because, duh, same house same family.

None of this is to say that cilantro-haters, or haters of any other particular food, need to get over it. Far from it. We all have a right to our preferences. I don’t like capers! I never understood why those icky little sour things so frequently show up to spoil a perfectly nice sauce or whatever.

I just think people need to get over thinking they’re special if they don’t like cilantro. In fact, since cilantro comes from cuisines of Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, and is gaining popularity rapidly in the U.S., the exceedingly vocal resistance to it strikes me as a little bit racist.

Originally published at So Shiny. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at makeshiftDaisy.. You can comment here or there.

seriously. I am super bummed that my sneaky way to get to Montreal for (more or less) free, to see FCFG820 + Hoicico was thwarted. Thwarted.

And, since I’m doing TILT on thursdays now, I figured Faderhead Friday could also be used for musical things. So I  bring you live Hoicico. Mexican aggrotech at its finest.  First, live, then, recorded in case you want to get better audio quality. AND YOU KNOW YOU DO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNqMA9uOdVM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grl4CsllMWs

I love this song. I love how all ebm/electro frontmen dance the same.  It’s kind of delicious to watch. Delicious! Like crisp fall apple delicious.

and now you know.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/05/trust-me-im-doctor-honorary-of-fine.html

I keep mentioning that I came to realize while I wrote my latest book, Arctic Rising, that the US Military was one of the largest investors in green technology. Why? They anticipate that having more control over your own ability to *move* gives you an upper hand in war. By helping green tech along to the point where it can become cheaper (and in some cases it already is in certain military applications) they’ve been the leading edge (let us not forget the military’s role in giving us the internet via DARPA).

However, even the military has now fallen into the middle of the culture wars, as conservatives ban it from using/helping develop alternative fuels:

On Monday, the U.S. Navy will officially announce the ships for its demonstration of the “Great Green Fleet” — an entire aircraft carrier strike group powered by biofuels and other eco-friendly energy sources. If a powerful congressional panel has its way, it could be the last time the Navy ever uses biofuels to run its ships and jets.

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying an alternative fuel that costs more than a “traditional fossil fuel.”

Imagine that phrase wrapped around any other technology:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced weaponry that costs more than “traditional weaponry.”

Or:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced armor that costs more than “traditional armor.”

Or:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced fighter planes that cost more than “traditional planes.”

It’s a fairly stunning move.

Mabus and his allies countered that the Republicans were taking an overly-simplistic view of things. Of course relatively small batches of a new fuel are going to be expensive — just like the original, 5GB iPod cost $400 and held fewer songs than today’s $129 model, which holds 8 GB. That’s the nature of research and development. With development time and big enough purchases, the costs of biofuels will come down, they argued; already, the price has dropped in half since 2009.

“It’s a false choice to say that we should concentrate on more ships versus a different kind of fuel. If we don’t get a different kind of fuel, if we don’t have a secure domestic supply of energy at an affordable price… the ships and the planes may not be able to be used because we can’t get the fuel,” Mabus told the Senate Subcommittee on Water and Power in March.

What’s more, Mabus added, there’s a value in a more stable, domestic supply of fuel; every time the price of oil goes up by a dollar per barrel, it costs the Navy $31 million. “We simply buy too much fossil fuels from places that are either actually or potentially volatile, from places that may or may not have our best interests at heart,” he said. “We would never let these places build our ships, our aircraft, our ground vehicles, but we do give them a say on whether those ships steam, aircraft fly, or ground vehicles operate because we buy so much energy from them.”

A fairly stunning step backwards, as the US military was one of the few places really helping the US keep up on the advances needed in alternative fuels.

Mirrored from Tobias Buckell Online.

Originally published at Vylar Kaftan. You can comment here or there.

Hey folks! If you’re reading this, I could use a hand. I need to know something for a story.

If you read the following lyrics, which ones do you immediately know the tune for, without thinking about it?

1) I went to California with a washpan on my knee…
2) Yippie-ki-yi yippie-yippie yay, yippie yay!
3) Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight?

Let me know which ones in comments. It’s okay if you know them all, or none of them. I need to know how recognizable these lyrics are. Thanks!

I grew up before the internet. I know, it existed. But it wasn’t a reality for me or most other people. We also had no cell phones, which resulted in a pretty much perpetual farce of missed connections and misunderstandings that we mostly don’t worry about anymore. It was a different time.

One thing we used to do a lot of, back in the 80′s, was writing in regular paper journals. Not blogs. Just paper. Private, handwritten journals are great for all of the things that blogs are not great at. You can write about your actual problems, you can keep your to-do lists, you can dabble in poetry, you can doodle. There are many things worth writing about that could not and should not be shared on the internet. I also find that writing by hand feels like a different activity, and activates a different part of my writing brain.

Lately, I’ve been keeping two journals. In one, at the end of the day, I write down what I’ve done. I started doing this because I was having a lot of days that seemed to get sucked into a vortex, and I would wonder where the time went and feel bad that I had not gotten more done. So now, when I get things done, I celebrate by noting it in my journal. If I cleaned the bathroom, I take credit for it. If I scoop the litterboxes, score! It just makes me feel better. I also try to note something about the day, particularly positive things. It’s just nice. I also write down all of those really cool story ideas that come to me when Writer Brain gets stuck on the novel and doesn’t want to do it anymore. Putting them some place I can find them again is a good compromise with the Writer Brain. I don’t journal in it every single day. I seem to go in spates.

My other journal is a moleskine where I keep writing related notes and doodles. Since reading Steal Like an Artist, I’ve been stealing a little something every day. Every day has something I can save and use later. One day, I wrote out the lyrics to a pop song. Another day, I copied out a descriptive scene from a book I was reading that worked well for me, and wrote some notes on why I liked it. Yet another day, I took plot notes from a book I was reading that I thought I could adapt for a different project, later. I expect I will also find opportunities to steal from life. People-watching at a cafe could give me some good character sketches (particularly in Ann Arbor!). I sometimes overhear conversations that are funny or suprising. Memories, too, can be “stolen” for use in stories. In short, there’s really no excuse not to engage in some kind of creative larceny each and every day in order to build up a dragon’s hoard of material for possible later use.

At the top of each page, I write in large capital letters what it is I’m stealing. DESCRIPTION. CHARACTER. FIGHT SCENE. And so forth. That will help me find my stolen treasure later when I might need it. Obviously, I don’t intend to copy the stolen property directly. But it’s very helpful to have something similar to look at when you’re writing a challenging bit of story. If I can flip through my notebook and review a couple of fight scenes, I can use them to decide how to block out my own fight scene, and remember what works for me and what doesn’t.

I think a lot of writers do this consciously or unconsciously with their memory. My memory doesn’t work that way. I’ve never known if it’s a bug or a feature, but when I read a book or watch a movie, the details go away as soon as it’s over. Very often, upon rewatch, I can’t remember how the story ends. On the one hand, it lets me enjoy my favorites over and over again. On the other hand, I am at a handicap compared to other writers who have easily memorized the stories, scenes, and much of the dialogue from their favorite stuff, and when they write a fight scene, they can easily call up examples. I can’t do it. Instead, most of what I write is reinventing the wheel. No wonder I’m so slow.

This notebook feels like something I’ve been waiting for my whole life. I only wish I’d thought of it sooner.

Considering the fact that I ALSO blog, AND keep a record of all of my food and exercise in my cell phone, my life is extremely well documented. Future Historians, you’re welcome!

Originally published at So Shiny. You can comment here or there.

Here’s my selection of interesting (and sometimes amusing) posts about writing from the last week:

Description:It's more than a visual (Kathryn Craft)

What the heck are queries good for, anyway? (Juliette Wade)

Shutting Down, In a Good Way (Cassie Alexander)

The “Brutal” 2000-Word Day (Kristine Kathryn Rusch)

Editing Clauses in Publishing Contracts (Victoria Strauss)

Expressing Thought-Reactions in Fiction (Jodie Renner)

Virtual Safeguards (Lynn Viehl)

7 Bad Habits of Successful Authors (Rachelle Gardner)

Revise/Resubmit Requests (Jane Lebak)

The Esspresso Book Machine [Not a blog post, but an interesting glimpse of the future]
by way of Bart Palamaro

Amazon's knock-off problem (Stephen Gandel)
by way of Gary Frank 

If you have a particular favorite among these, please let the author know (and me too, if you have time).  Also, if you've a link to a great post that isn't here, feel free to share.

If you found these useful, you may also like my personal selection of the most interesting blog posts from 2011, and last week’s list.

...I just planned to do it all: work the day job during the day, write my fiction at lunchtime, and write my PhD thesis at night. I could finish the thesis within a year, and have that PhD diploma to make me officially a success. Easy-peasy!

Well. Guess how long that plan worked out?

I think it was on the second night of my new schedule that I started crying helplessly when I sat down at my computer, completely overwhelmed. That was when I realized that I’d made a fatal error...

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Okay, okay, so I sound like the call from the Ring…but having your first book come out is pretty huge!

Check out my spiffy new website! We’re (the royal we, because it’s late and I’m tired) still getting settled in, but I loooove it so far. It’s very classy! Unlike me! Ha ;). (Did I mention that it’s late?)

I spent most of today doing edits to Shapeshifted. It’s a pretty good distraction from getting too focused on the perpetual countdown to Nightshifted outness. (I’m not saying I’ll be outside the bookstore the moment it opens on Tues. But I’m also not saying I won’t be.)

I’ve been kind of in a rapid-cycle DABDA each time I flip over a page. I read my editor’s note, I’m all, “But but but…” in denial, then I’m angry — at myself, not her — and then I bargain about the easiest way to fix things instead of the right way, and then I get sad that I have to do it the right way after all, and finally I actually accept that I have to do the edit and do it. Same cycle, each page. (In my small defense, I’ve already done all the easy pages.) It’s becoming a better book though. I don’t know how else I’d manage to tell a decent story. As much as I wish I could write things perfectly the first time through, getting edited, first by Daniel, and then my agent and editor, is a necessary part of the process. At least until such a time as I can just beam my stories into reader’s heads.

Oh, and as alllllways happens when I’m working on something really hard — my brain’s been coughing up skads of notes on everything but Shapeshifted, in a desperate effort to get out of the hard work. I now know the plots for the next three books in the series, and have some ideas for some one off novellas, back stories on current characters. Which is awesome, if not awesomely timed.

I’m gonna be swamped this weekend, so this might be my final post until the big day. If so, trust that I’m still counting down in my mind! :D

• Thu, 13:18: Just viewed my first glimpse of the bitchy side of Twitter. *le sigh* #cantwejustgetalong
• Thu, 13:55: I wonder if my colleagues playing a corporate-logo recognition game realise they're being programmed with brand recognition.
• Thu, 15:10: Is it bad I'm hoping my boyfriend misses his bus so I get takeaway? #guiltysecret
• Fri, 07:56: RT @introvertedwife: I said I was going to make a Cthulhu Barbie and I did. http://t.co/x0QUmAVJ
• Fri, 11:05: RT @camillealexa: Some seriously cool car-part art animals: http://t.co/sj4Fy6Vx #cool ##art #steampunk

• Thu, 16:48: John D. MacDonald's Deadly Welcome is one hell of a good read. Lynchian without the supernatural. Great sense of locale, character & menace.

So below are random links to blogs or news articles about my latest book, Endure.

If you are in Canada, there has been a wee bit of a distribution problem with the book (and some other books not written by me). That is totally fixed now. But it wouldn't have been fixed if Fans of Awesome Pixie Levels of Awesomedom had not told me about it. So, thank you.... You guys truly rock. And I say that in a making weird finger gestures, happy dance kind of way. 

It's a little weird (in a good way) being a writer, and sometimes it's a bit lonely, and when you write a book you kind of get in this weird vacuum of wondering if anyone has noticed the book, and also if anyone has ripped it up and tried to flush it into the toilet, causing thousands in damages to their parents' homes. So, thank you all for noticing it, and for emailing me or messaging or tweeting about it. 

Also, to whoever wrote the fanfic about Devyn? You rock to the infinite degree. You are like a rock star of awesome. xo