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	<title>No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons (Re-reloaded)</title>
	<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl</link>
	<description>In love with the moment. Scared shitless of the future.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sun, 15 Aug 2010 15:04:00 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>Okay, I lied.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This is the last post before oblivion, and I make it only to repeat and highlight old news, buried in past Comment Streams, that

the &#8220;Offensive Squid&#8221; forum does in fact exist now, right over here, and is just dying for pithy posts on anything from the neurology of mantis shrimps to the recurring philosophical themes [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1597</link>
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		<title>Parsec.  Pictures.  Pause.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One last miscellaneous grab-bag before oblivion, folks:

Parsec:
As in, the award.  This is old news (it was announced late last month, I think), but &#8220;The Things&#8221; — or rather, Kate Baker&#8217;s wondrous, melancholy performance of &#8220;The Things&#8221; — has been nominated for the Parsec Award under &#8220;Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form)&#8221;.  Kate squeed [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1549</link>
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		<title>Cheeks</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Dear Neville,
I hope our Lord is keeping you safe in these most trying of times.  I have tried to contact you through more conventional means but the network has been down for some time in Manhattan and now my batteries have died.  I have resorted to the old-fashioned methods our ancient brethren used, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1525</link>
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		<title>Smokin&#8217; in the Girl&#8217;s Room</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This whole writing retreat thing is stranger than I remember it.  This is the approach to my bedroom.  My bedroom door is the pale green thing with the poster taped across it:


For those of you with teensy monitors, here&#8217;s a closeup of the sign outside said approach:

Yes, you read that right.  My bedroom is [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1515</link>
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		<title>The Con of Wrath.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I’ve always had ambivalent feelings about Polaris.  Formerly “Toronto Trek”, one of the huger local cons, it changed its name a few years back and started featuring sf novelists in an attempt to expand into the literary end of the sf pool.   Their media roots have always remained front and center, though. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1488</link>
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		<title>Holy Shit, These Things Are Real?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
I go running in the Don Valley.  And something did kind of sting my face the other day, as I brushed past a low-hanging branch.  Felt like a nettle.  A two-meter-high nettle&#8230;
I thought Genesis was just ripping off Wyndham&#8217;s Triffids.   I thought it was just standard seventies prog-rock science fiction&#8230;

(Yes, this is a cover. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1466</link>
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		<title>Polaris Schedule</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;ve noticed the new &#8220;Coming Attractions&#8221; element on the sidebar (which only renders properly if you insert its code into the middle of the calendar elements, for some reason — some day I really gotta figure out this php stuff from scratch instead of just poking it to see what happens), you may have [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1461</link>
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		<title>CuddleKill:  or, Liz Cheney Explained</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, I warned you all.  A shower of oxytocin, to fill all you bickering hordes with trust and mutual love.
Except, wouldn’t you know it, it’s never quite that simple.
You may remember oxytocin by one of its cutesy pseudonyms (“the cuddle hormone”, “the morality molecule”) if not by its technical handle.  It’s the hormone [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1447</link>
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		<title>Dress Rehearsal</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A dispatch from a place we haven&#8217;t quite got to yet:
A newsfeed running in one corner of his display served up a
fresh riot from Hongcouver. State-of-the-art security systems gave
their lives in defense of glassy spires and luxury enclaves—
defeated not by clever hacks or superior technology, but by the
sheer weight of flesh against their muzzles. The [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1419</link>
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		<title>And So It Begins</title>
		<description><![CDATA[They could have held the whole damn G20 summit in Huntsville, like the G8 immediately before it; the infrastructure was already in place, after all.  But they didn’t.  They decided to stick it in the heart of downtown Toronto, and then build an indoor wading pool with fake plastic trees and wall-sized pictures [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1401</link>
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		<title>A Query and a Caution</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I don&#8217;t suppose any of you know anything about this?:

I found it in my laptop bag the other day.  I have no idea how long it was lurking in there.  It might be there yet if my accursed Dell laptop hadn&#8217;t finally crapped out beyond any hope of redemption, forcing me to clean [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1385</link>
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		<title>The Feel-Good Spill of the Decade</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Dead zones suffocating 20,000 square kilometers of ocean.  Endangered wetlands, disappearing at the rate of over 300 Ha/day.  Clouds of black viscous poison soiling the coastlines of four states.
And then the Deepwater Horizon blew up.
What, you thought those apocalyptic descriptions were of the spill?  You thought the Gulf of Mexico was some [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1372</link>
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		<title>Containing Within It the Seeds of Something that Will Not End Well.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Stray beams of setting sunlight glint off Azrael&#8217;s skin but night has already fallen two thousand meters below.  Moving through that advancing darkness, an unidentified vehicle navigates mountainous terrain a good thirty kilometers from the nearest road.
Azrael pings orbit for the latest update but the link is down,  interference squelching half the spectrum. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1355</link>
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		<title>More About Me.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[To those who&#8217;ve e-mailed me over the past 24 hours to offer congratulations for &#8220;The Island&#8221;&#8217;s Sturgeon Award nomination:  thank you.
Now I gotta go read up on what this Sturgeon Award thing is.
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1352</link>
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		<title>All About Me.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here are a few bits and pieces that have been piling up in the background while I raged impotently against imaginary friends who let me down.

Dr. Mark McCutcheon, of Athabasca University, is presenting a paper called &#8220;The copyfight, science fiction, and social media&#8221; at Congress 2010, a Canadian humanities and social science conference.  I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1341</link>
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		<title>Lost?  Damned Right It Was.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[You know what the creators of epic, multiyear-arc television shows need?  They need a novelist or two on staff.  Or a playwright.  Somebody who understands that an epic tale needs to be planned in advance, that plot is not something you work out after you&#8217;ve already written 90% of the story, that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1331</link>
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		<title>The Revenge of the Lizard Queen</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There are so many little things I could talk about: another doomed award nom, a couple of nifty academic analyses of Blindsight, even an intriguing new finding of a relationship between hand-washing and buyer&#8217;s remorse (no, really — it factors into everything from musical preferences to crucifixions).  And I&#8217;ll post on at least some [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1318</link>
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		<title>It&#8217;s Official.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It took way longer than I was expecting.  It was about as pleasant as a date with Andrew Beaudry.  I wondered on more than one occasion if it was ever going to happen.
But I have just signed a contract with Tor for State of Grace, and the terms are, well, better than they&#8217;ve [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1305</link>
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		<title>Detox.  Recharge.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I have spent the better part of a week lying back and letting the stress hormones leach slowly out of my system.  I have been taking my friends off hold one by one, and avoiding deadlines, and growing plump.  I&#8217;ve been looking at the sky, and marvelling that I&#8217;ll be able to look at [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1298</link>
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		<title>Smoke Monsters</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So by now you&#8217;ve heard, from any of a myriad sources:  suspended sentence.  Jail time but no jail time, just as long as I paid a relatively small fine ($500), and a somewhat larger bolus of assorted court costs ($1128).  And I did pay, promptly if not exactly gladly.  If I&#8217;d [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1292</link>
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