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	<title>Homo Sum</title>
	<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog</link>
	<description>As honest as a gambling man can be</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:21:20 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>Scale and Space</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Since I was just talking about scale and space in the comments, I thought I should also pop in this little number I saw today on the site of absolutely-damn-great SF writer Walter Jon Williams.



(If it were me, I would have worked O Fortuna into the soundtrack&#8211;but then, if it were me it wouldn&#8217;t look [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/16/scale-and-space/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>A Thought On News Content</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I smiled cynically at the news this morning that around 55% of the editorial content in newspapers&#8211;actually the results are only for Aussie papers, but I&#8217;m willing to believe they&#8217;re representative of The West in general&#8211;is actually repurposed PR.
I say cynically for two reasons: 1) because the article has a tone of shock, as if [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/15/a-thought-on-news-content/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Home Sweet Blasted Clean Void</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
What you&#8217;re looking at there is something called The Local Cavity&#8211;although in this case &#8220;local&#8221; takes on a meaning somewhat larger than in typical conversation. It&#8217;s essentially a 300-light-year in diameter hole in space. Maybe &#8216;hole&#8217; is stretching it a bit, since it&#8217;s not so much that it&#8217;s empty, as that it&#8217;s WAY less full [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/14/home-sweet-blasted-clean-void/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>A Horror Movie Waiting To Happen</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
That&#8217;s an image from the &#8220;Blood Falls&#8221;, a five-story, blood-red waterfall that pours very slowly&#8211;the falls are frozen, and so flow slowy&#8211;out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica&#8217;s McMurdo Dry Valleys. That multi-coloured bump in the lower left is a tent, if that helps you get an idea of scale
The falls were first observed around [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/13/a-horror-movie-waiting-to-happen/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>A Man And His Pipe</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
I noticed today that I seem to have missed International Pipe Smoking Day a couple of weeks back. I had meant to observe it this year, as an excuse to use the pipe I acquired a few years back, that&#8217;s been sitting unused ever since&#8230; but I guess I&#8217;m just not a pipe type guy [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/12/a-man-and-his-pipe/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Aside: I could find more absurd ones</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If these are really the 10 most absurd scientific papers from last year then published hard science has nothing, absurditywise, on published humanities. (I&#8217;d actually be interested in reading the results of &#8220;Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?&#8221;)

	Tags: academic papers
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/11/aside-i-could-find-more-absurd-ones/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Birthday Present</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, my big birthday present actually materialized today, so I guess I have to finally draw this year&#8217;s festivities to a close&#8211;I managed to stretch it out pretty well, but didn&#8217;t quite make it to a week.
And what was that &#8220;big present&#8221; you may be asking&#8211;well, it&#8217;s the result of a collaboration between Dr. Wife [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/09/birthday-present/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Book wear</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yeah, there are a few shirts at Out Of Print that I would totally wear&#8230; but there&#8217;s only one Immediate Must Buy.

I wish it were black, or at least something dark, but there is no denying the power of Bulgarkov and his book. And hey, good cause.

	Tags: Books, charity, geeks, things to buy
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/08/book-wear/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Aside: Christopher Lee is metal</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yes, I would buy a generic metal album, if the vocals (and narration?) were done by Christopher Lee. I find it quite warming to see yet another affirmation that (and I mean this in the most inclusive and positive sense possible) Lee is just a big ol&#8217; geek.

	Tags: benevolent surrealism, geeks, Music
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/08/aside-christopher-lee-is-metal/</link>
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		<title>Aside: Simulations</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Very busy this week on birthday-related activities. Regular schedule to resume soon. In the meantime, here are a couple of cool simulations to play with, since that seems to be something I&#8217;m interested in this week. First, a physics tool to simulate cloth as a grid of constrained points. Second, a quite cool fire simulation&#8211;I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/06/aside-simulations/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Matters of Gravity</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
What you&#8217;re looking at there is the sad and beautiful story of the death of two stars, and the casting of two other survivors into the darkness.
I&#8217;ve been sitting here playing with the My Solar System gravity simulator since reading about it in Discovery&#8211;it&#8217;s a cool educational toy for modelling interaction of bodies under gravity. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/02/matters-of-gravity/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Aside: Get A Sexy Car</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just as a follow-up to that last post, I noticed this morning some recent research which essentially proves that women find the same man more attractive if they see him sitting in an expensive car, than in a less expensive one. Men don&#8217;t care about what car a woman is in. (Fortunately for the women [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/03/01/aside-get-a-sexy-car/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>I am so glad I&#8217;m out of the dating scene&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[And now for something outside my usual range&#8230;
As I talk to more and more single people who are roughly my age, it becomes apparent to me that the Internet dating scene has become both gigantic and socially acceptable in the time I&#8217;ve been off the market&#8211;whatever stigma there once was to dating services has apparently [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/02/25/i-am-so-glad-im-out-of-the-dating-scene/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>The Unholy Tab Closing</title>
		<description><![CDATA[OK, my open tab situation has got to the point where I was forced to research new Firefox plugins. I might talk about that soon, since that old &#8220;favourite plugins&#8221; post is waaaay out of date, and due for an updating. Right now, though, I want to run through a bunch of these things, attaching [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/02/24/the-unholy-tab-closing/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Better Late Than Never: An Apology For Africville</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Listening to tonight&#8217;s news I see that the city council in my just-recently-not-city have ratified a deal to formally apologize for the pretty shockingly racist destruction of Africville.
If you&#8217;re not from Halifax, the odds are you don&#8217;t know what this is all about. A capsule summary would be that there once was a community, called [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/02/23/better-late-than-never-an-apology-for-africville/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Speaks For Itself</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
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	Tags: bush, republicans are fucking nuts, torture, war crimes
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/02/22/speaks-for-itself/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Yes, I Was Reading That Powers Bibliography Today</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Sphinx And Medusa
Clark Ashton Smith
The old constraint of an essential bond
Hath linkt them in my mind: opposed they stare,
Twin silences, that through Time&#8217;s Otherwhere,
The ruinous past, thus each to each respond,
One with mysterious gaze that sees beyond
The straining suns, calm as the voidness there;
And one with eyes like deserts of despair,
Flameless as granite, clear as [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/02/18/yes-i-was-reading-that-powers-bibliography-today/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Hey, I Haven&#8217;t Done A Meme-y Thing In A While</title>
		<description><![CDATA[And I did like this one when I found it at greybon.
What’s a book you most want to read again for the first time?:
Oh, that&#8217;s a tough one. I&#8217;d probably want to pick something that changed my head in some significant way, which biases the field in favour of things I read earlier in my [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/02/18/hey-i-havent-done-a-meme-y-thing-in-a-while/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Professor Membrane&#8217;s Modern Medicine Sideshow&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[

And the professor is back to lead us through the second in our series of posts looking at real, actual, modern science stories that illustrate the &#8220;we&#8217;re living in science fiction&#8221; notion. Last time we focused primarily on medicine, and specifically on different kinds of regeneration. We&#8217;re still working our way through modern mad medical [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/02/17/professor-membranes-modern-medicine-sideshow/</link>
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		<title>A Singular Discussion</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Having just mentioned that I prefer transcript to video, let me cite another case where I would make an exception.
Here&#8217;s a quote from an IM chat I was having with a Boston pal last week:
(9:15:32 AM) Chris: Friday  7pm
The Singularity: An Appraisal
Alastair Reynolds
Karl Schroeder
Charles  Stross
Vernor Vinge
Arguably the idea of the Singularity &#8212; a period [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2010/02/17/a-singular-discussion/</link>
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