Links - Jan 2 2011

Reflections on 2010: humans as biological machines and "love" (whatever!) - A touching post by Hannah on how her love for her brother with Fragile X syndrome has affected how we as humans fit into her worldview. It was particularly poignant for me because her post mirrors a lot of my experiences growing up with an autistic brother. Even if you don't have a special needs person in your life, it is a great read.

New From Google: The Body Browser - A sort of 3D browser-based dissection emulator, which sounds very cool but I haven't had the chance to try it out yet because you need Chrome Beta instead of regular Chrome (wtf, Google?).

Brown Pundits - A new blog by blogfriend Razib and his blogfriend Zachary that I'm watching closely out of personal interest but not interacting with much due to lack of personal experience being brown. Looks promising.

I read a lot of new-to-me blogs from reviewing Open Lab 2010 posts that I would love to link to here but I can't because I don't want to reveal who I reviewed! You'll have to take my word that there were some really great posts this year that will hopefully make it into the anthology. It was tough to narrow down!

I'm halfway through Salman Rushdie's new book Luka and the Fire of Life, which is very adorable and oddly political for a children's book, although from what I've heard that isn't unusual from this author. K's father (who loaned the book to us) spent a good part of Christmas dinner explaining to me about his other works and the fatwa against him.

The new quarter starts tomorrow. Wish me luck. I've been waking up past 10am every day for the last two weeks, it is going to be painful to go back to 6:30am mornings.