"Finally, for reasons. Next, to heal the driness of the place."

[larryhammer]

kateelliott on why "show don't tell" works:

Humans like to figure out other humans. We evolved to observe, interact, gossip, and create relationships. Creating a relationship between the characters is not all a novelist does. We as writers are also creating a relationship between the character and the reader.

Don't give us the adjectives of your conception of the character, give us the character in (inter)action.

And while I'm linking, I might as well plop in my current collection. A lot of long reading in this batch, for some reason:

• Another entry in the annals of obscure bar signs. Like the commentator, I'm quite taken with the sequence of connectives. Check out the potential source suggested in the comments.
  
  
• What caffeine actually does, neurochemically -- turns out, it's not a stimulant per se as a fatigue-receptor blocker. (via)
  
  
• Two articles on current theories of gender dysphoria (via forgotten) and differences (via).
  
  
• One article on the current research on how language shapes cognition, with sidenotes teasing out cultural influence. (via)
  
  
• On the increasing obsolescence of that technology known as "management", with sidenotes on the insufficiency of profit motives. (via forgotten)
  
  
• Examples of potential Swiss expansionism, with sidenotes on Libyan proposals to instead dismember the Confederation.
  
  
• "Editors ship, dammit." (via)
  
  
• It is possible to take 1000 origami cranes too far.
  
  
• Video of people watching a total solar eclipse.
  
  
• Porcupines make playful, if round, pets. Who knew?
  
  
• A field guide to typographic mustaches. I'm ludicrously fond of Mr. Oxford's 'stache. (via)
  
  
• I may have posted this before, but if so, this is a still pretty good paper airplane (uses A4 paper).
  
  
• Examples of various Japanese bows of apology. Including the one to do if you are a ninja who lost the secret message.

Even if, as I suspect, all of you are secretly ninja and so already know that. That I have no proof that any of you are ninja only goes to show how good you are at it.

---L.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Switzerland is kind of doing that anyway. The rail and transit system is superb, as you know, and at the moment the Swiss are engaged in tunneling into France and Italy to improve it, and the French and Italians are quite happy to have the Swiss come in and manage transit systems around the border areas.

[larryhammer]

I ... can see that. Very much so.

Though, the superb is slipping -- this last trip we were actually on a late train, the commuter leg from Zurich HB to the airport. To be fair, the conductor was also like, WTF with the lateness? But no one seemed shocked, just annoyed, as if it was no longer unheard of.

---L.

[galeni.livejournal.com]

Bows of apology: thank you!

[larryhammer]

*bows at 35°* Sore wa nai.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I honestly can't say whether "broke the Ninja Code by falling in love" or "caught red-handed in an orgy of evil" was my favorite of the bows!

[larryhammer]

The bowing oneself into a hole in the ground was, indeed, a nice touch.

ETA: Oh, wait, that was a different bow. Still ...

---L.