Study has interesting implications for Neanderthal diversity

Maybe not so common after all.

"genetic evidence from the remains of six Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) suggests the population hovered at an average of 1,500 females of reproductive age in Europe between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago,"

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2009/07/analysis-of-five-neandertal-genomes.html

Year's Best reviews

Well, the reviews have started to trickle in on this year's cadre of Year's Best anthologies.

R.J. Carter at The Trades has this to say about my story "N-words":

"In a perfect world, [Kosm*tka's] short story would win every award for which it's eligible."

:-)

I am interviewed, therfore I am.

As part of his new "Keeping an Eye on" series, I'm interviewed by Patrick over at Stomping on Yeti.

The series is designed to follow the writers that were mentioned in last year's Mind Meld discussion about tomorrow's big stars.

The Human Genre Project

Ken Macleod's brainchild, The Human Genre Project, is an idea so good that I wish I'd thought of it. It's an online collection of stories and poems that deal with genes, genomes and all things genetic. The whole thing is built around the structure of a human karyotype. You can check it out here: http://humangenreproject.com/

My 250 word short short "Limited Penetrance, Variable Expression" was just accepted to the project and will apparently represent chromosome 16. This is by far the shortest story I've ever written.

"Just a lil' self-pimpage." Or, alternate blog post title: "It ain't bragging if strangers said it."

A friend of mine stumbled across this random mention of me in the cyber ether and asked if I'd seen it. Uh, nope.

From the post:

"...I'm really envious of [name redacted for purposes of blog semi-pseudonymity]. Most of you probably haven't heard of him. So far, he's had only a few short stories published, but all in excellent sci-fi markets. The first of his stories I "read" (actually listened to on Escape Pod) is called N-Words, and it uses a future where Neanderthals have been cloned and raised alongside modern humans to explore racism. It is probably the most beautiful piece of science fiction writing I've ever read. And the idea is just incredible. It's perfectly executed in every aspect.

I totally envy the brain that can come up with and pull off such a magnificent piece of fiction. My husband and I listened to N-Words on a drive and I just kept saying, "I WISH I'D WRITTEN THIS STORY!"

-- I don't know the person who wrote that, but it made my day. :)

Also, on the writing front, a short bit of news is forthcoming.

UFC 100

Brock Lesner is a freak of nature. When viewed from a distance, the guy looks like one of those really short, stocky wrestler types who are as wide as they are tall. It wouldn't be until you got closer that you'd realize he was six-foot-three, not five-seven.





I now realize that any working theory-of-everything can't be true unless it produces a universe that punishes smack talking with a quickness. String theory? Nope. There's nothing in String Theory which accounts for the fact that opening your mouth and talking trash about your opponent before a fight obviously leads directly, somehow, to your face looking like hamburger.

Also, why on earth would you want to piss this guy off? (By, say, for example, making a funny little video where you mock him as a muscle-bound guy who can't fight.) Bad idea. (Do you see a neck? I don't see a neck. Guys who are six-three usually have necks.)

Various updatery

Yesterday I decided to just bite the bullet and open a new bank account so that I could actually receive money from the foreign translations of my work. Before now, I'd been kind of hesitant to give out my banking info over the net, despite being told by other writers how secure these things tend to be, and how it is the normal way to do business when your work is published in foreign countries. I've had several editors trying to pay me for a while, and I've been kind of dodging their emails. (Which, when you think about it, is kind of the flip-side of how things tend to work.) But no more. I'm going to embrace the modern way.

In other updatery, my 13 year-old son is now 5'8". I used to think he'd be about my height as an adult, but I'm beginning to think I may need to adjust that upward. I was only about 5'6" as a freshman in high school, so as an 8th grader, he's far taller than I was. However, I matured very late, growing about five inches during my Junior year, so there's a chance that his skeleton is simply maturing faster than mine.

Also, in other child news, we knew this day would come. My 9 year-old son is now officially taller than my wife. (Which, I admit, is perhaps not as difficult as it may sound.) But still, he's probably a good three or four inches taller than his older brother was at this age, which I think is a good metric for comparison. I suspect that as an adult he's going to end up somewhere between tall and, well, ... hopefully still south of ducking-through-doorways tall. (His distal limb-proportions are a maternal contribution, and he seems to have inherited a lanky build on top of an overall tendency toward general pituitary excess.) He's also thin as a rail, so I've been trying to get him to eat as many hamburgers as possible during the time I have him this summer.

All is quiet on the Western front. Which is how I prefer it, really.

Girl1 wants to see the hospital where she was born, so today we will drive out to show her.

Another pic without explanation...

Monday weigh-in: 222 pounds.

Research

Last night after work, I swung by the video store and rented four games for my X-box 360. Then I swung by the local pizza place and bought three pizzas. When I got home, I informed my sons that we'd be doing "research" all evening. They were very pleased.

Also, on a side-note, the game PORTAL is awesome. The physics of the game is a bit of a mind-bender, and interestingly, Boy2 actually caught on scary-fast, while Boy1 took a bit longer. In first-person shooters like HALO, my older son always stomps my younger son, (as a function of age, I think) much to my younger son's frustration, so it was interesting to see the roles reversed.

In PORTAL, when you cross through one of the teleportation doorways, your velocity is conserved, even if your direction isn't. In other words, if you put one portal at the bottom of a long drop, and the other portal on, say, a wall, then by jumping the distance down to the first portal you can build acceleration to shoot you out of the second portal at a high velocity. If you've placed the portals just right, you then might shoot across to some platform you're trying to get to.

The game is so simple and challenging that I almost suspect some cognitive metric could be educed from individual game play.

Go west young man, go west...

It looks like I'll be hopping on a plane in the near future. :)