{"id":109,"date":"2008-03-03T19:58:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-04T03:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=109"},"modified":"2011-07-14T05:50:24","modified_gmt":"2011-07-14T13:50:24","slug":"the-appearance-of-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=109","title":{"rendered":"The Appearance of Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rifters.com\/real\/uploaded_images\/LOCUSpw-710087.jpg\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/rifters.com\/real\/uploaded_images\/LOCUSpw-710084.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>I actually like this photo by Amelia Beamer, which runs with the <em>Locus<\/em> interview I mentioned the other day.  It doesn&#8217;t make me look like a goof.  My face actually looks symmetrical for once, and the viewer is not overwhelmed by the magnitude of the nose.  This is perhaps the most flattering photo of myself I have seen all year, which I hope has nothing to do with the fact that it is also the only photo I&#8217;ve seen this year in which a significant part of my face is actually hidden from the viewer.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also quite tickled by the title of the piece, which is&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rifters.com\/real\/uploaded_images\/lesserevils-783413.gif\" onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/rifters.com\/real\/uploaded_images\/lesserevils-783411.gif\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>&#8230;not to mention the actual fonts involved, which suggest, I don&#8217;t know, a certain background Baptisticity.<\/p>\n<p>So while I&#8217;m feeling so good about myself, I might as well mention a couple of upcoming appearances:  July 11-13 I&#8217;ll be one of the author guests at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tcon.ca\/polaris\/modules\/tconguests\/\">Polaris<\/a>, here in Toronto, and while I&#8217;m merely one of the grunts I expect to be reasonably visible because they made me sign a contract committing to a minimum number of panels.  I was happy to be asked, although I would&#8217;ve been happier if they&#8217;d asked me last year when Katee Sackhoff was on the roster.<\/p>\n<p>Closer in, March 15-16 I&#8217;m going to be showing up at something called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scibarcamp.org\/\">SciBarCamp<\/a> (which, I myself would like to pronounce <em>cybercamp<\/em> although I don&#8217;t know if anyone else does).  It&#8217;s officially described as &#8220;a gathering of scientists, artists, and technologists for a weekend of talks and discussions&#8221;.   I&#8217;m told the Perimeter Institute has something to do with it, although my only in was via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kschroeder.com\/\">Karl Schroeder<\/a>, who in addition to being one of the kick-ass sf authors I&#8217;ve mentioned now and then is also one of the organizers.<\/p>\n<p>Less than two weeks away now.  Evidently we&#8217;re all supposed to give presentations or something.  I should probably get started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I actually like this photo by Amelia Beamer, which runs with the Locus interview I mentioned the other day. It doesn&#8217;t make me look like a goof. My face actually looks symmetrical for once, and the viewer is not overwhelmed by the magnitude of the nose. This is perhaps the most flattering photo of myself [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2173,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/2173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}