I've been reading SF/F for a long time now, and of course I had heard about the Hugo Award. (Some of the books I read boasted their nomination, or their win, on the cover, after all.)

Until last year at the LonCon, I had not had much contact or knowledge about it, though. Then I got to vote (yay!) and to see the ceremony, and a friend of mine gave out one of the Hugos, and it was lovely.

This year I was technically allowed to nominate stuff for the Award, but I didn't get around to do it. Why? Well, nominating (and voting) takes time, since you have to read the stuff you want to nominate first. Unless... unless you are a weird person who is trying to piss in the pool.

This year, the nominations have been very slanted because a few people have put up a slate on the Internet, with nominations, and asked such lovely folks such as these at #GamerGate to buy a supporting membership and vote for the slated stuff. They did. The results? See here - Sarah has listed the slated nominees for your convenience.


There's Opinions Galore on this. George R. R. Martin. Kevin Standlee (who also explains how the No Award vote works). John Scalzi. Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

Me? I'm not having voting rights this year. I don't like the idea of having a slate, and I especially don't like the idea of "proving a point" and "show it to someone" using a very prestigious award... so I'll definitely be watching who gets a Hugo this year.

Thank goodness it's Friday! Here are some nice things that turned up overnight on the internet:

Medieval Cookery has a rant about the assumption that medieval spices were really, really expensive.

Christopher Eccleston was the greatest Dr Who, says IO9. I totally agree, and I'm still sad he was there only for one single season. That was way too short!

There is a reason why I try very, very hard not to shop at Amazon, even if it is so damn convenient. They have just confirmed that this is a wise decision.

Finally, and on a much happier note, here's amazing news: actual soft tissues from an actual dinosaur have been found! T-Rex cloning à Jurassic Parc, anyone?

For a change, there's good news from the EU: the seed regulation draft has finally fallen through. (In case you don't know what I am talking about, here's an old article from the Guardian about the regulation.)

Things like this give me hope - if it was possible to get the seed regulation canceled for good, we might still get the same result for TTIP, the weirdness and utter fail that is the Digital Goods VAT,  and other weird ideas that someone cooked up without doing a reality check first.

My tomato seeds have sprouted, by the way. There shall be tomato plants this summer - five different old or old-ish kinds, and three of them grown from seeds that I have harvested myself. I hope this year will be a better one for tomatoes than the last!

I blame a friend of mine.

Several years ago, for my birthday, he gave me as a present the DVD of Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog. That led to many, many interesting and amusing hours of DVD watching, not because we watched that half-hour thing so often (though I have listened to the soundtrack many, many times in the car), but because we branched out afterwards, wanting more from the actors. Neil Patrick Harris. Felicia Day. Nathan Fillion.

So we watched Firefly, and loved it*. We joined the mass of people who all say that it was canceled too soon (damn you, Fox!) and we'd have liked more, much more of it. But some things you don't get no matter how much you (and many others) would like it.

However. Sometimes, other stuff comes along that is also a good thing to have. And we are living in the blissful age of crowdfunding and internet communication and stuff (in short: something very much the future), so when John Scalzi posted a tweet yesterday about Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion trying to fund a tv-ish project on Indigogo, I did what you do in that case.

So @alan_tudyk and @NathanFillion crowdfunding a comedy series about science fiction cons? SEEMS RISKY TO ME https://t.co/BZk0MoeUjw
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) 11. März 2015

I went there. I looked, and I watched, and laughed, and then I waited a few long hours and showed it to the most patient husband of them all, who watched, and laughed, and logged in to indiegogo and threw some money at Nathan and Alan's project while I mumbled to myself "oh come on take our money already WE SO WANT THIS STUFF". You know. As you do.

They started their campaign on March 10. Yesterday night, when we went to bed, they had raised more than 750.000 USD, enough for five episodes. Right now, they are at a bit above a million USD, with more than 14.000 supporters. The campaign is running for a month more... they might have to invent some more stretch goals.

Oh? You want the link? Go here. Enjoy. Spread the word, if you like.


* We watched more than just Firefly, of course, but Firefly is the one relevant for the rest of the post. Just in case you are curious, though: Eureka. Castle. How I Met your Mother. The Guild. Buffy. Fun was being had, in varying degrees, though most of them were rather high.

News from here: The cat is sleeping, hazel pollen are flying prolifically (much to the chagrin of my poor nose), the sun is shining, and I have planted tomato seeds on Sunday.

Probably more interesting to you is the fact that after the mad rush to the finish line for our book project, Gillian and I are now patiently waiting until the book has done its things at the publisher's and we'll get feedback and the edits.

Apart from this, the blogosphere has provided me with links to things that you might also find interesting. Such as this Digventure piece about pioneering women in archaeology, which also fits in very nicely with Women's History Month.

John Scalzi has an opinion on opinions, and is voicing it on his blog.

Finally, a paper about medieval bread:

I just found out that it's World Book Day today. Whee! It's nice to feel like I was able to catch up to a geek holiday in time (seeing that I already missed Pi Day this year), and it's also nice to think that all over the world (hopefully at least), people are celebrating books today.

Only it turns out that World Book Day is not World Book Day everywhere but only in the UK and Ireland. As worldbookday.com kindly tells me in its FAQ,  the rest of the world will celebrate that day some other time, oh, probably in April. The Unesco webpage tells me that the rest of the world is celebrating World Book and Copyright Day on April 23.

Really? Why can't there be one single date for world book day? I really like the idea - it's cool, and I'm all for making books the reason for some celebration. But can we please agree on the fact that a world something day should be on the same date for, say, the world? And not split into two? Even if the area in question has a history of being a special snowflake?

I honestly don't know what to think about this. It's really cool, and really weird that it's on two dates and that the split-off celebration seems to be larger and much more enthusiastic than the official one.
So, if you live in the UK or Ireland, I wish you a happy book day - it seems as if the organisation running the schemes and organising the day is doing a very nice job, and much fun is being had, and books are being promoted, and reading is, which is absolutely awesome. The rest of us will wait, though, until it is our turn in April - when stuff is probably going to be much more subdued.

For these links, for instance - all interesting, all German-only (sorry!), but at least the first one has pictures you might enjoy if you don't understand the text.

The salt mines at Hallstatt have a brand-new webpage: http://www.nhm-wien.ac.at/hallstatt. It's not really picture-heavy, but there is a small slideshow with some impressions right at the frontpage, including a close-up of one of the textiles.

Rainer Schreg has posted the last installation of his blogpost series about "Archäologische Quellenkritik" (source criticism in archaeology), with a very interesting example about how sources might mislead us using chesspiece finds.