Science Saturday: Vertical Farming

Hydroponic farming: it's not just for marijuana anymore!

There is a small part of me that is a weirdo futurist, and one of the things I'm really excited for in the future is vertical farming. A shockingly small percentage of the world's land surface is actually arable, so anything to maximize growing potential (whether through GMOs, oh I went there, or better fertilizers, or what have you) is going to be key for humanity's continued existence on the planet.

But even so, much of what little arable land we have is far away from major population centers. Transportation costs play a large role in the final price you end up paying at the store, no matter where you do your food shopping. Vertical farming in urban centers (like this one planned for Newark, NJ) could dramatically cut the financial cost and carbon footprint of your favorite fruits and veggies, and make them more affordable and easier to access for the people who need them most.

Of course, vertical farming isn't a closed system. All of the energy used to manage the light, temperature, and irrigation systems has to come from somewhere, so much of the potential good is undermined if it's still running on coal. But imagine these, all running on solar energy, in every major population center...!

Trek Thursday: The Immunity Syndrome

#11: The Immunity Syndrome

In case you forgot: This week, it's the Enterprise versus a giant, energy-sucking space amoeba. Spock barely survives the ordeal.

 Sometimes it's hard to highlight exactly what it is that makes an episode good. It's like a Monet painting: you can't see anything of the painting in an individual speck, you have to step back and evaluate it as a whole. "The Immunity Syndrome" is one of those episodes. The pace is solid, the threat is very real and very ominous, the monster is actually somewhat plausible, and none of the danger is a result of anyone holding the idiot ball. Spock, in particular, gets to have his stoic moment of bravery by taking the shuttlecraft on a near-suicide mission. Those are all the little pointillist-style dots of the episode, when really all that need be said about it is: it's a top-rate space adventure.

A little bit of weird retconning: Vulcans don't know defeat because they've never been conquered? But what do you call the guy who loses kal-if-fee?

Why I'm Not Reading Your Blog

I've debated posting this for a while, but I finally figured, "Why not?" Even if it seems incredibly presumptuous and the height of hubris for me, the author of a crappy little blog with not a lot of followers, to tell you what you're doing wrong, well, it's my blog and I do what I want.

All of these are legitimate reasons I have either never started following a blog, or why I've eventually removed a blog from my reading list. They can be broken down into two categories.


Category 1: Web Design Issues

In other words: it's the presentation, not the actual content. You might think to yourself: hey, strong writing will shine through no matter what! The truth of the matter, from my lazy and pressed-for-time experience, is that ain't nobody got time for text that is difficult or uncomfortable to read.

1. You're center-aligning your text.

Please don't do this.


2. You're doing fancy font and color stuff with your text.

Please don't do this, either.


3. You're hiding everything behind a cut/jump/etc.

If I read your blog, it's through my RSS reader (which is Inoreader, by the way, if you also lamented the loss of Google Reader). I realize that other readers visiting you via RSS may prefer those truncated introductions, and maybe you do, too, and that's why you do it.

But let me defend verbosity: I don't want to have to click through to another tab. I follow a lot of blogs; I would be opening a lot of new tabs, and my Chromium window is already a mess. It's far easier for me to scroll past your blog post, which unless it's proper novel length won't take long to pass, than it is to open a new tab, find it in my mess of tabs, and remember to close it when I'm done. You wrote those words; own them. Why would you think they're an inconvenience to anyone who has made the conscious decision to add you to their feed?

At the least, if you feel the need to truncate a post, do so after more than just a sentence and a half of text. Give me enough information to decide if I want to click through or not; otherwise, I just won't.

"Oh no, there's more?!" Yes, buddy. Yes there is.

Now on to Category 2: Content Issues. Truth be told, I see far more of these issues than any of the issues in the first group. Some of these are obvious and easily fixed, but others are more insidious.


4. Your work is riddled with errors.

I've seen a blog or two out there that would theoretically be of interest to me, but the writing (from native speakers, mind you) is rife with spelling and homonym errors, incorrect punctuation usage, and other assorted errors. I don't mean a pearl-clutching "one or two per post"; I have very forgiving margins because I fuck up a lot myself (especially if it's a long post that I work on for days and start and stop in weird places, like any of the posts in my geo-shopping or birthstones series). I mean rife.

If you're blogging for yourself, fine. If you want other people to read your work and take you seriously, step up your game. If this is something you know you struggle with, write your entries in Word first, to avail yourself of the spelling and grammar check. It's not perfect, but it's a start. Find a nearby language ninja and ask them to read through your stuff. If you don't know a language ninja, you do now: me. I will gladly do that for you. (If it becomes an ongoing thing, we can discuss my editing rates in private.)


5. Your writing sounds like everyone else's.

I guess it's a good thing that the number of blogs I've seen with technically and grammatically disastrous writing is actually quite low. It's not nearly as great as the number of blogs I've seen with technically correct but incredibly dull writing, without any individual personality at all. I think this is the most important thing on my list. If I were to keep track of the reasons I unfollowed blogs, this one would definitely be the most common.

Bloggers who have decided that a certain niche is for them all start sounding like one person with a bunch of sock puppet accounts. I don't think any of them naturally write in that voice (certainly not all of them), but somehow a certain standard or expectation with respect to "authorial voice" develops within a niche and most writers (especially newbies) bend themselves to it.

I hate that. It makes for boring, repetitive reading. Maybe it's simply the result of a particular niche being, itself, homogeneous and repetitive, but I hope not.

Take some time offline to write about your day and your life for no one but yourself. Ideally you should do this for a while, like a week or a month, to really get practice and time to yourself. (You might need this time to unprogram yourself from "blog writing" style to "personal writing" style, to boot.) If you compare that personal writing to your blog writing there will probably be a difference. Try to bring more of that personal style into your blog. Those are my favorite blogs to read. Those are the ones where I feel like I actually know the blogger.


6. Your writing doesn't give a shit about your readers.

This is kind of the opposite problem as the above, though I guess they can both happen simultaneously. If your blog becomes nothing but "Dear Diary" type entries, focused entirely on people we don't know and relationships we don't understand, that is an express ticket to Nopeville.

That doesn't mean writing about the road trip you took with your BFF Casey is off-limits. But tell us who Casey is, remind us of what happened in the previous post, and explain (or just avoid) the inside jokes.


7. You're (not) a special snowflake.

You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. Whenever you insist on reminding the readers that "I'm the hugest nerd, lol!" or "I'm the biggest tomboy I know" or any other applicable superlatives, I roll my eyes. The truth is, you are a special snowflake, but not because your collection of labels is somehow unique. Labels are the antithesis of interesting. If you think that slapping reductive, oversimplified herd name on yourself is enough to make you stand out from the crowd, you're mistaken.

This can be a bit more insidious than just overuse of "nerd," "geek," or "trekkie," though. I've read a couple blogs where the bloggers constantly reiterate some belief they hold about themselves and their role in a group ("I'm always the life of the party!") but then their writing never reflects that assertion.

If you're the life of the party, it will come across in your writing. (This is related to point number 5.) The only place that kind of language belongs is in your "About Me" section, or maybe in the occasional confessional post. Otherwise, you're either not really the life of the party (but you'd like to be), or that part of your personality isn't relevant to your blogging.

The truth is, you are a special snowflake, but nothing about your inherent snowflake nature is going to come out by trying to sound like what your collective niche has decided is the norm. Nor is it going to come out in regurgitating the voice, jargon, and in-jokes. Just let your writing be you.

Am I a perfect blogger? Um, hell no. I'm prone to all of these errors myself (some more than others). I try to keep them in mind while I write ("What kind of blog would I like to read?") but I know that I don't always hit my mark. But has my blogging gotten better since I started thinking about these while I write? I think so, at any rate!

What about you? What makes you stop reading a blog? I'm dying to know!

Avengers Book Tag!

This week's 5 Fandom Friday is a total bust for me (fanfic is very much Not For Me), but that's okay because Natalie Patalie tagged me in a book meme YAY BOOKS~~~~~

Also, there was a fire in our apartment building yesterday! I'm okay, JV is okay, and our apartment is okay, because the fire was in the storage unit. However, that means that all of the stuff we (that is, JV) had in storage is probably destroyed or damaged beyond repair. It also means that our apartment is going to have the lingering smell of smoke for a few days because we're on the same floor as the storage unit. Gross, but probably not as gross as the apartments right under he storage unit. Those poor bastards.

However, on a note related to books, all of the old pulpy noir detective novels JV has that belonged to his deceased father were spared because a couple of weeks ago we decided to move them out of the storage unit and in with us! Thanks, asshole(s) who broke into our unit to paw through our worthless-but-for-sentimental-value belongings TWICE in less than two years—through paranoia due to your bullshit, you saved a valuable collection!

Anyway, The Avengers Book Meme Tag Whatever!

Image courtesy My Open Sketchbook. You can read her answers too, if you want!

I love doing this but I hate tagging people because I can never keep track of who's been tagged and who hasn't and then there's that awkward moment when you tag someone who doesn't read your blog or even know who you are. (I am bad at commenting and letting people know I exist, so I have a whole bunch of blogs where I'm internally like "OH YES YOU POSTED I LOVE YOU I'M A FAN" at every new post, and then when I finally Tweet or comment or whatever, they're probably like "who are you???")

So if you're reading this, and you'd like to do this meme and no one's tagged you, I just did! Go forth and book blog, young grasshopper.

Anyway, on to the meme itself!

Iron Man (a book that made you laugh out loud): Grejen med verb

I don't read humor too often nowadays, mostly because I'm too busy to read much that isn't either for Swedish class or on my TIME Top 100 (Adjusted) list. Would you believe that neither of these categories have particularly funny books? Go figure!

But, one of my teachers from last year is a proper, published author. In addition to some novels (that I haven't read), she wrote this quick, quirky, humorous little book on Swedish grammar. I'm sure I cracked an out-loud chuckle at some parts here or there. I guess an English equivalent would be Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, which I've also read and enjoyed. So if you don't know any Swedish, pretend that I just talked about that book instead of Grejen med verb!


Captain America (a book that sends a positive message): The Glass Bead Game

I kind of wanted to make this category the "are you for serious?" category, because I am unfairly prejudiced against Captain America, but I'll play by the rules. I had to dig and think a bit, but I think The Glass Bead Game is a pretty good fit. Hesse is kind of incapable of writing stories that aren't existential Aesops, so they all have this feeling of wanting to convey a message. I can get behind Hesse's mystical Buddhist-ish messages, though. In particular I like The Glass Bead Game's philosophy on the arts and education; in a nutshell, everything from literature to music to physics is connected and can be considered another variation on one universal theme.

I just realized I never got around to reviewing The Glass Bead Game here, but ugh I finished it months ago and I gave my copy away and reviewing ~*~the classics~*~ is so useless, so I guess I'll say: everything else was great but the ending was bullshit, as was the fact that women (for no reason) were excluded from higher learning and learning to play the Game. Hesse has this weird Othering thing going on with women and it's kind of a recurring theme in all of his novels.


Thor (a book with a character whose strength you admire): A Tale for the Time Being

There are a lot of books I could have picked for this category, but in the end I had to go with A Tale for the Time Being. There are a lot of fantastic characters in the story who have moments of tragic weakness and triumphant strength alike, but if I had to pick one character to top the list I think I'd pick Haruki #1. We don't meet him for very long, but when we do it leaves an impression.


Black Widow (a book with a kick-ass female protagonist): The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

So the BBC made a TV series based on this and no one's ever mentioned it?! I wonder if that means it's terrible. But wait, there's also a pretty highly-rated one on HBO?!

It's silly mystery fluff, sure, but it's fun. This was a book we had to read for Swedish class, and while I don't understand why we keep reading Swedish translations of not-Swedish literature (we've read one native Swedish novel, one English novel, and two French ones), The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was a welcome relief from the awful and stereotypical romcom we'd had to read prior. A competent, intelligent woman who has an awesome exciting life and doesn't go all man-crazy? Yesssss. Bless you and your holy work, Precious Ramotswe. The rest of the series is on my to-read list, but right now I don't have much time for fluffy vacation reads.


Hulk  (a book that made you incredibly angry): The Martian

I have so many! The Incredible Hulk is my spirit animal, I guess—I have been known to hulk out over a lot of things, bad writing included.

There were a lot of contenders for this one, but after assorted disqualifiers (read it way too long ago, personally know the author and don't want to trash their self-published mess in public except OOP JUST DID, COULDN'T RESIST) I finally settled on The Martian because ugh. So much ugh in this book.

I wouldn't even mind the ugh of the book itself if it hadn't blown up in the way that it did. Like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, I shouldn't believe the hype. Not until the rest of y'all develop better taste in books. BUT HEY YOU GUYS, ISN'T DISCO JUST, LIKE, SO BAD?! MY DEAD HORSE, LET ME SHOW YOU IT.


Hawkeye (an underrated book you think more people should pay attention to): Doctor Glas

Okay, within Sweden this is hardly an underrated book—it's nothing short of a classic—but the main exports of Swedish lit seem to be August Strindberg (okay) and Lisbet Salander (uuuuuuuuggghhh). So I'm going to my part with this meme!

Doctor Glass is a fantastic novel and is possibly one of my all-time favorites. I've read it three? four? times now, and there is always something new and beautiful and heart-breaking. It's a short book, but don't let that fool you: Söderberg packs a lot of heavy stuff into not a lot of pages, and many of them are debates we're still having today, 100 years later.

The English translation by Paul Britten Austin, while over 50 years old now, is lyrical and on-point. I could only aspire to that level of work. If it's at all available near you, pounce on it. It's an underrated little gem in the world of international literature.

 Loki (a book with a twist or surprise that tricked you): If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

It's not the hugest twist in the world—it's not some kind of massive plot reversal OMG!, more like an "Ah hah, I see what you did there."—but I liked what Calvino did at the end of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.

Trek Thursday: This Side of Paradise

#12: This Side of Paradise

In case you forgot: Spores from some plants are keeping colonists alive and immune to the deadly rays bombarding their planet, at the cost of their ~ambition~ or something. Everyone on The Enterprise gets infected and starts zoning out, but Kirk is made of sterner stuff and talks himself and Spock out of it. They save the day and take the newly spore-less colonists back home.

"This Side of Paradise," like so many other great episodes, opens up quickly with a mystery and keeps piling on more clues and insights at a good pace. The colonists who should be dead are all freakishly healthy; there aren't any other animals on the planet; they haven't planted or harvested any more than just what they've needed to eat. What is going on down here? There is some legitimately frightening stuff going on during all of this, too. When Elias and Colomi are talking about Spock and whether he should stay, it's pretty freaking sinister.

Watching Kirk berate Spock is a really great moment, and by great I mean awful, because you know Kirk doesn't want to do it. Not only because Spock would outclass him in a proper fight, but because to save his best friend he has to use every weakness, every sensitive spot he knows about Spock to save him.

Not sure how I feel about giving Spock a love interest, it seems...uncomfortable. It's touching to see him feel bad about abandoning her, I guess, but it seems very out of character. It was great how his initial reaction to the spores was HOLY GOD IT HURTS; I think I would have liked the episode even better if the spores, instead of making him happy and healthy, had made him seriously ill.

The moral of this story is also a mixed bag for me. The colonists seem to have genuinely happy lives, weird plant spores aside. It's not like they've been assimilated into some giant anonymous hivemind. They've all retained their individual personalities, memories, and experiences; they're just incredibly happy. Is that really so awful? Having ambition and purpose and goals is essential to mental well-being in American society, sure, but it seems too specialized a sentiment ("Work hard! Be productive! Accomplish things!") to be a truly universal fact.

My New Band, Volume 3

I know, it's been a while since I've found some new bands. I blame my vacation. But here are some more good band names I've found! If you end up using any of these, musician friends, you can repay me back by letting me backstage at all your concerts. :P

As always, these are actual turns of phrases and collections of abbreviations I stumble across in the course of my editing work. I collect them for my own amusement and periodically share them here, just because.

Original image courtesy unsplash

1. Failure to Thrive

I think this would be a great name for a political (post) punk band with an agenda. There's something edgy and cynical about it.


2. Abnormal Head Sperm

An irreverent indie/pop band would fit this one, well. I'm thinking something like Barenaked Ladies, Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, or The Arrogant Worms.


3. Vegetable Bodies 

This one I'm not so sure about, but whatever it is, it's definitely something mellow. Deep house, trance, space ambient, New Age...take your pick.


4. Embryonic Circuit

This can't be anything other than an electronica band, though of a different flavor than Vegetable Bodies. A bit more toe-tappy and danceable, like Sneaker Pimps or Ladytron.


5. Expert Apple

For some reason, I'm picturing a cutesy indie/folk duo, similar to Pomplamoose. Plastic-rimmed glasses, skinny jeans, and ukuleles galore.

Five Fandom Friday on Saturday: 5 Fictional Pets I'd Love to Own

So as it turns out, I missed more 5 Fandom Fridays in the "staycation" I had scheduled after my actual vacation. I turned out to be pretty busy, I guess—even without having any classes for all of July!

But it wasn't due entirely to schedule madness. I've been to exactly two conventions in my life (Anime Boston and VeriCon), and to be honest they're not really my thing. Besides, I was a broke college student when I went and so I bought exactly zero things. As for vehicles? Meh.

Animals are cute, though! And this question is actually rather apropos, as JV and I have been up to our eyeballs in Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated. Can you guess what my first choice in this 5 Fandom Friday would be? Can you?

1. Scooby-Doo

I need to find more friends who would do a Scooby-Doo group Halloween costume with me. (Dibs on Velma!)

JV and I both have a huge soft spot in our hearts for Scooby-Doo, despite some of the missteps the franchise has taken. (The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, anyone? Flim-Flam and his weirdo snake oil cure-all? Scrappy? Ugh.) He found out about the Mystery Incorporated reboot and we gave it a shot. Holy crap, I haven't laughed that much at a children's cartoon in years. The writers definitely wrote for the parents ("Fred, you're living in a van down by the river!"), even going so far as to get some grade-A voice talents both as recurring characters and as cameos. Lewis Black? Jim Rash? The actual Harlan Ellison as himself??? I hate to admit it but I was addicted to this series. We binge watched both seasons over the course of a week.


2. Mogget (Abhorsen)

Snarky magical being in the form of a white cat. Need I say more?


3. Akka (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils)

This is one is a little obscure for my anglophone readers, but I couldn't write this list and not include Akka. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is a Swedish children's classic that I absolutely adore. The author, Selma Lagerlöf, is as beloved a figure here as Astrid Lindgren, though the Swedish folklore that permeates her writing probably means that it's not as universally appealing as Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking or Ronja the Robber's Daughter.

Nils is about a bratty little piece of crap named Nils Holgersson who talks back to an elf and promptly gets shrunk down to elf size for punishment. While thus enminiatured, he hops on the back of the leader of his family's flock of geese and they travel all up and down Sweden. Along the way, Nils learns not to be a little shit and gets turned back to his human self.

Akka is the flock leader and she is one of the baddest, toughest bitches there ever was. Of course, Nils can only talk to her because his elf enchantment means he understand animal speech, so if Akka were my pet all she could do would be to honk at me. But if we're imagining fictional animals as real pets, I can bend the rules all I like. :P


4. Bubo (Clash of the Titans)

Courtesy Gwangipedia. Of course there's a wiki for Ray Harryhausen's creations.

Can a robot animal count? I say yes.


5. Babelfish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Courtesy the Hitchhiker's Wiki.

Okay, so I wouldn't keep this one as a pet, per se. I would just love to understand every language ever! Wouldn't you?