Homecoming’s a Finalist!

I wasn’t going to blog today, but I got an e-mail that I think deserves a little bragging on. Homecoming is one of the three science fiction finalists for the Reader Views 2010 Literary Awards!

It’s not about space battles, or space aliens trying to take over the universe. It’s about people. Not all of them are human, but they are people, with hopes and desires and conflicts. Most of them are trying to make the universe a better place, but none of them are quite sure of how to go about it, and their ideas sometimes conflict with each others’.

No, everything does not wrap up neatly. When does it, in real life? But it does come to a point where one phase of a character’s life is over. Will a new phase begin? Tourist Trap should be out this spring.

Terry Pratchett Trivia

The past week’s tweets:

Thursday: Which Pratchett story has vampires, werewolves, and animated shopping carts?

Reaper Man. The Dead Rights association includes a zombie (Reg Shoe) vampires (the Winkings) a boogeyman (Scheppel) a banshee with a speech impediment (Ixolite) a ghoul (Drull) and a werewolf (or rather a wereman—Lupine) as an honorary member. Ludmilla is also a werewolf. The animated shopping carts? They’re an intermediate form of something that resembles a shopping mall in its mature form. Congratulations to Lyn Thorne-Alder, who nailed this one right off.

Friday: “A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that has learned how to read.” – Pratchett. What book?

Guards! Guards! Often the most delightful parts of Pratchett are his footnotes. This one reads: “The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”

Saturday: “Humanity’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.” – Pratchett. What book?

Witches Abroad. The quote refers to Greebo, Nanny Ogg’s cat, who was briefly turned into a human being with Greebo’s nature, as he returns to his usual one-eyed tomcat self.

Sunday: “That was not my fault. I am merely the gonne. Gonnes don’t kill people. People kill people.” Pratchett. Context?

Men at Arms. The Gonne (unlike guns on our world?) keeps whispering into the brain of anyone who touches it. Usually “pull the trigger.”

Monday: “Gold and muck come out of the same shaft.” – Pratchett. Context and book?

The Fifth Elephant. Angua the werewolf to Carrot after Vimes has killed her brother, who tried to attack him:

“That might happen to me. Have you ever thought about that? He was my brother, after all. Being two things at the same time, and never quite being one … we’re not the most stable of creatures …”

“Gold and muck come out of the same shaft,” said Carrot.

“Well …  if it happened … if it did … would you do what Vimes did? Carrot? Would it be you who picked up a weapon and came after me?”

Tuesday: “Paranoids only think someone is out to get them. Wizards know it.” – Pratchett. Context?

Sourcery. In the early Discword books there is, to put it mildly, a great deal of competition among the wizards at Unseen University. In fact, the only way to rise in the hierarchy is to murder those higher up, thus the quote. Once Ridcully takes over, between this book and Reaper Man, this aspect of life at Unseen University seems to disappear.

Wednesday: “For Zhaim, having power and not using it was a form of weakness. And the weak neither survived nor deserved to.” Bowling. Context?

Homecoming. Zhaim is rationalizing, as usual. He’s the villain of Homecoming, but he himself sees his actions as acceptable, even noble. (Not a spoiler, as the first scene shows him as a torturer through the eyes of one of his victims. He thinks he’s a misunderstood artist in human flesh.)

Next week–random books.

Quick Comment on Reading

I went to Dana Stabenow’s reading, talk and book signing Sunday and spent most of yesterday reading Though Not Dead. I’m not finished yet–might put in a review when I am, as it’s been a while since I started a book and found myself reading it when I should have been working on my own writing. I did find myself wondering how Kate got away with a wolf hybrid, since they’re technically illegal here in Alaska as pets.

Fairbanks Weather

Sunrise 9:17 am, sunset 4:54 pm for a day length over 7 hours 37 minutes. The sun at noon is high enough in the sky that the sun visors on my car actually work, and I was driving home in daylight under a clear sky at 5 pm yesterday. We’re now gaining about six and three-quarters minutes a day, as will be the case throughout February. We’ve had a little snow this month (2.1 ” officially) but only enough to make up for settling of the snow pack. The snow stake still shows 14″ on the ground, and only chances are given for the rest of the week.  We’ve had 28.6″ since July 1, compared with a normal of 54.6″.  I think those of you in the lower 48 have all our snow this year.

The snow crystals are locking together as the snow ages, as can be seen by the way the snow piled on the top rail of the fence has gradually slipped, and the way the locked-together snow is pulling the wind spinner over without falling off. I wonder how far that fiberglass pole can bend.

Sabino Spotting in Horses

An update of this post, with more photographs, is available.

For many years two types of “pinto” spotting were recognized—tobiano and overo. Overo has now been broken into a number of distinct spotting genes—frame, splash, sabino-1, other sabinos, polygenic sabino, dominant white, and manchado. Sabino now seems to be as much a grab-bag of genetically different types of white markings as overo once was. Here I will concentrate on Sabino-1, while noting that several other genetic types of sabinos and dominant whites seem to be associated with mutations at nearly the same locus.

The sabino pattern has a wide variety of expressions, and some can be easily confused with other types of spotting, or even with roan. Sabinos not infrequently have areas of roaning as well as white spots, or flecks of color within the white areas. Almost all have white feet and facial markings, and the minimally marked ones can sometimes be detected by narrow extensions of the white up a leg or down the throat. In contrast, tobianos tend to have white legs but relatively plain faces, while frame horses have heavily marked faces with generally dark legs.

The sabino-1 allele is due to a single base-pair change in intron 6 of the KIT locus on equine chromosome 3. This means it is very tightly linked with tobiano and roan, both of which are also associated with the KIT locus. There are actually a number of mutations at the KIT locus that can produce sabino-like patterns.

Sabino-1 is incompletely dominant to the wild-type allele. This means that a horse with one sabino-1 allele and one wild-type allele will be a typical sabino. A horse with two sabino-1 alleles will be mostly white, often with a pattern approximating the “War bonnet” pattern—color in a head bonnet, chest patch, flanks and tail base. Sabinos sometimes come from two parents that appear to be non-spotted, but as with tobianos, one parent is generally a minimally marked sabino.

Some of the other KIT-related sabino alleles may be lethal when the foal inherits them from both parents, but this is still being. investigated. There is also the problem that it may not be possible to determine visually whether a sabino may have more than one spotting gene.

The sabino-1 allele is well known and a genetic test is available.

The photographs are of “Chico,” owned by Charlotte Rowe.

Diabetes and Blood Sugar

Blood glucose.

It’s something I have to worry about, as does every diabetic. Too much glucose in the blood, and the circulatory system is affected. This in turn can lead to problems with eyes, kidneys, feet, and the entire nervous system, not to mention cardiovascular problems. Diabetes is one of the leading causes of blindness, kidney failure, foot and leg amputations, heart attacks, stroke—in short, high blood sugar can kill you. Not rapidly, but the long tem effects of uncontrolled high blood sugar (hyperglycemia) are all too often lethal.

If your body starts breaking down fats and proteins for energy, which can happen if insulin levels in your blood drop too low, death can come in a few days, from ketoacidosis.

Low blood sugar can be just as much of a problem, and can kill you much faster. Your brain runs on glucose, so low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) affects the brain. It can kill you much faster than high blood sugar. Generally you can feel it coming on, but this awareness tends to fade with time—a condition called hypoglycemia unawareness.

A lot of people with diabetes wind up in emergency rooms because they simply pass out from low blood sugar, without warning. Some never wake up.

If you don’t have diabetes, you don’t have to think about this. When your blood sugar rises, your pancreas pumps out a hormone called insulin, which helps the cells of your body to use glucose, either for energy or in storage as fat. When it falls, your liver releases stored glucose to the blood. As a result, your blood sugar fluctuates only slightly, and you don’t really have to think about it.

For those of us with type 1 diabetes, the pancreas no longer manufactures insulin. For some of us, the liver no longer dumps glucose into our system when needed, either. Since we have to inject insulin (or have a pump deliver it) too much insulin, too little food, too much exercise or some unknown effect can make our blood sugar plummet. The treatment is sugar. Straight glucose is fastest, but any carbohydrate will do.

In Homecoming, the R’il’nai and R’il’noids have a similar problem. Esper work means using the brain—hard—and the brain runs on glucose. The liver can only dump a limited amount of sugar into the blood, and then it runs out of stored glucose. Too much esper work without readily available carbohydrates can cause low blood sugar, which they call “esper shock.”

When Roi is leaning to use his esper talents, one of the first things he has to learn is that he must eat while he is using those abilities, whether or not he feels hungry. How he feels in esper shock is based very much on my own experience and that of others with diabetes.

When I was first diagnosed, I had a number of symptoms—sweating, shaking, lips tingling. Others may get very aggressive, fight someone who is trying to get them to eat, or just not act like themselves. Still others quietly pass out. Right now, my most reliable symptom is a kind of flare in my visual field that blurs my vision, along with a feeling of weakness. I’d still have some real problems without a blood glucose meter (which requires a blood sample) and a continuous glucose monitor. I still wonder at how I got through the first years, before meters, let alone continuous monitors, were available

Now if they’d just make the alarm on the CGM loud enough to wake me up at night ….

Tolkien Trivia

I’ve been tweeting a line or two from one of Tolkien’s poems each day this week, asking people to identify the context. Here are the original sources:

Thursday: “I will not say the Day is done, nor bid the Stars farewell.” Tolkien. Speaker and context?

In the The Return of the King Sam is initially unable to find Frodo in the tower of Cirith Ungol, and in despair sinks down, bows his head, and to his surprise starts singing:
“Though here at journey’s end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars forever dwell,
I will not say the Day is done,
nor bid the Stars farewell.”

Frodo hears him, and his attempt to answer, together with the coming of an orc, leads Sam to the trapdoor to Frodo.

At one time (it was lost in the fire) I had this and a number of Tolkien’s other songs set to music both in a book and on vinyl. I just found the book on Amazon and ordered it! Donald Swann’s music is still in my head whenever I read these poems.

Friday: “Ah, the sight and the smell of the Spring in Nan-Tasarion!” Tolkien. Singer and context?

In The Two Towers Treebeard is chanting to the hobbits as he carries them to his home in Fanghorn. In the film this is replaced by Entish that puts the hobbits to sleep. In the deeper context of Tolkien’s universe, Treebeard is singing a song of mourning for the lands drowned at the end of the First Age—the lands “under the wave.” (See The Atlas of Middle-Earth, by Fonstad.) The final verse:
“And now all those lands lie under the wave
And I walk in Ambarona, in Tauremorna, in Aldalome,
In my own land, in the country of Fanghorn,
Where the roots are long,
And the years lie thicker than the leaves
In Tauremornalome.”

Saturday: “Mist and twilight, cloud and shade
Away shall fade!” Tolkien. Singer and context?

In the book, this is part of a walking song (words by Bilbo) sung by Frodo, Pippin and Sam in the Shire, shortly after their first encounter with a Black Rider in The Fellowship of the Ring. The original song is not sad; in fact the next lines are:
“Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
And then to bed! And then to bed!”
For the film it was repurposed as the song Pippin sings at Denethor’s request, as a background to the doomed charge of Faramir and his men against the orcs. The tune is in a minor key and quite different from Swann’s lively march.

Sunday: “what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?” Tolkien. Singer and context?

In The Fellowship of the Ring, this is the ending of the song Galadriel sings as she comes in her swan-boat to say goodbye to the Fellowship. The beginning is:
“I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew;
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.
Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the sea,
And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden tree.”
The scene was retained in the film, but not the song.

Monday: “The Road goes ever on and on, Down from the door where it began.” –Tolkien. When, where and who?

This is a song supposedly written by Bilbo, which is repeated in several places in The Lord of the Rings. The first time it appears, Bilbo is the singer as he leaves Bag End for Rivendell, running away from his birthday party. The same song is sung by Frodo shortly before the first meeting with a Black Rider, and a variant is sung by Bilbo in Rivendell when Frodo is on his way back to the Shire, and yet another by Frodo as he prepares to go to the Grey Havens with Bilbo. I don’t think it is in the film.

Tuesday: “and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.” –Tolkien. Not a poem, but where does it occur?

This was Frodo’s dream the last night the hobbits spent in the house of Tom Bombadil in The Fellowship of the Ring. The whole quote is: “Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.” The last page of The Return of the King repeats this image as Frodo sails to the Undying Lands. In the film, Tom Bombadil does not appear, but the words of Gandalf to Pippin in Minas Tirith repeat Tolkien’s description.

Wednesday: “So we’re going to die, just as I should have died with everyone else, two centuries ago. “ –Bowling. Where?
This is Marna in Homecoming, speaking to one of her tinerals as she realizes that the life-support system of the satellite has failed. Tinerals resemble feathered monkeys with wings, can fly as juveniles but are ground-bound as adults, and after millennia of selective breeding sing in harmony with each other or with other singers.

Next week I’ll focus on Terry Pratchett. If you want to catch the daily questions, follow @sueannbowling on Twitter.

January in Fairbanks

Looks like the Fairbanks temperatures warmed up in January–average monthly temperature of -6.o degrees F was 3.7 degrees above normal. Warmest was 41 (too warm for winter; water on ice is NOT nice) and the coldest was -42 which is cold, but for Fairbanks in winter, nothing unusual. I’ve seen winters where the daily high temperature was 50 below or colder for several days in a row, but this January the coldest high was only 27 below.

My feeling it didn’t snow much here was accurate–3.1 inches of snow for the month. No days with a tenth of an inch or more of water content. Not much wind, either–I’d better figure a way to knock the snow off the wind spinner!