Science & writing links

Science

above APOD includes constellations mapped

Doctors will be replaced?:

"[A] pair of predictive modeling techniques can make significantly better decisions about patients’ treatments than can doctors acting alone. How much better? They claim a better than 50 percent reduction in costs and more than 40 percent better patient outcomes."

Funny until the end when he decides to preach on love:  How to Woo a Scientist

Dogs understand human perspective, maybe

3D map of brain's wiring

Mystery of Easter Island

Writing

Short stories make a comeback in the digital reading age.

Choose your own decision, purported to be Russian-translated and confiscated by the CIA


Battle of the books

Robert Reed's "Eight Episodes" at Lightspeed (originally appeared in Asimov's, one of his better short stories)

Orbit has monthly deals on ebooks

Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle is being filmed

New online video lectures from Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Free ebook from Kim Vandervoort

Increasing productivity from David Farland

Why SF poetry is bad (Mike Allen responds)

Lisa with Child, by Alex Black

Writers of the Future XXVI

Black goes for as many controversial jugulars as possible. Karin, sixty-five-year-old woman, fresh out of wars with her AI military pal, has just been informed by said pal that she will be having Karin’s child. Karin has to come to grips with this.

Tour-de-force of controversy: Lesbians, check; lesbians with children, check; abortion, check; woman loving machine, check; older woman raising children, check; machine raising children, check; breaking military rules, check. I’m sure there are others I’m missing. With only one story beat here, however, it has to flashback to their war days. It should be interesting to follow Black’s career.