Fun Blogging "Chain"

You know those emails that are going around with a list of questions you're supposed to answer and then forward on to a whole bunch of people and send it back to the person who sent it to you? There's a blogging equivalent. Sarah posted her answers and an invitation to keep the fun going. I opted for a stab at the chain. Here are Sarah's questions and my answers.

1. What bad science spouted by people who think they know everything makes you see red?

Excellent question. There are quite a few statements that make me twitch. It's worse when it's in a movie, because then you don't have an opportunity to correct the misunderstanding - shy of standing up in front of the theater, "pausing" the movie, and giving the audience a quick lecture. Which is something I should've done several times during "Mission Impossible 2". But if would-be bioterrorists see the movie and think they can jump into a Biohazard Level IV lab through a central air shaft and that they will be protected from the extremely dangerous agents found therein by a ski mask and a ten second chemical dusting, then hey. Who am I to correct them? They'll be easier to catch that way.

And a non-science person saying anything about DNA is likely to put a nice red haze to my vision. It's amazing what folks think about genetics - or don't think. The general conceptions about cancer are pretty amusing as well. I'm pretty good at explaining science in "layman's" terms, and I enjoy doing it. So I don't hear a lot of bad science that stands uncorrected. That and I'm usually fairly surrounded by science geeks.

2. You're walking in the woods and stumble across a magic pool, which clouds over and clears to reveal an image of your 60th birthday party. Who is there celebrating it with you?

Mark better be there. My future children and possibly some grandchildren. My brother better drag his ass to that party as well. I'd like my parents and in-laws (inluding Mark's brothers) to be there - they should have no problem living that long with the science we've got going. As for non-relatives....I've bumped into quite a few folks throughout my life. Any of them would be welcome to share the day with me, assuming I could track them down and send them an invite. I'd be really bummed if my high school buddy and bridesmaid Matt (you heard me) couldn't make it. And a whole host of others. I'd even be curious to have my assholish ex-boyfriends there, just to see what they had made of their lives and how I saw them through older eyes.

3. What's the best thing you've read in the last year?

Toughie. All of Sheila's (S.L. Viehl and Jessica Hall) books. And her short stories. Everything I've read since the Stardoc series has been held up to my experience of those books. I've been disappointed quite often since then. The other books that have matched or come very close to my enjoyment of Sheila's books have been Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey, Transformation by Carol Berg, and Nevada Barr's mysteries. Oh, and how could I forget Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? Or Kristin Britain's Green Rider? I'm not trying to think of the long list of disappointments.

4. Aliens take over the world, but they're a very practical species, and keep the world running much as it has been (though without a lot of the war and excessive pollution -- they don't like it when people break their things). In exchange for all the help you've given them over the years leading up to the invasion, they offer you the instant-brain-implant-training and the opportunity to have any job you want. What would it be?

First of all, why was I helping the aliens invade Earth? Would I really enjoy being that person? And what series of events led me to be the aliens' go-to gal? And wouldn't that be a fun novel? *scribbles the idea down in her handy idea notebook that never leaves her purse*

So, basically, what would my dream job be? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. My dream job would be to write full-time and be successful at it, giving me the flexibility I want so I can raise a couple of rugrats. My never-in-my-wildest-dreams-would-it-be-possible job is to be a terraforming expert for Moon and Mars bases. I would love to work on the biochemistry such colonies would need, how things would need to be engineered so people could live in space as they would on Earth, etc. I remember reading about Biosphere II in junior high, thinking how cool it was. Then I saw the thing in college, and couldn't stop thinking of all the neat things we could research in such a place (nothing that was being done there at the time, unfortunately - more akin to how would human life impact a small-scale, enclosed environment; how would humanity have to adapt; how would the environment have to adapt; how would disease spread there; etc). And now that I'm writing about terraformed colonies on Mars, I would love to know all the inner-workings of it: how it was first built, how it's maintained, how things break there, how things are fixed, etc. Excuse me while I wander around with my head in the clouds for a few moments.

5. You save the life of a brilliant and influential (and wealthy) inventor by pushing him out of the path of a falling piano. He's so grateful that he gives you access to his time machine and tells you that you can have a casual conversation with anyone in the world, living or dead. Who do you pick, and why?

Forget the chat! I want to race 100 years into the future to see what it's like! Or go back to Ancient Greece and see how it's possible to be seduced by a swan. Sure, they're pretty, but.... Or use the machine to go back and figure out if there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll for sure, etc.

I suppose it would be neat to chat with Marie Curie (assuming the inventor also had a Universal Translator) or Gregor Mendel or Louis Pasteur or anyone who made a radical and new discovery that drastically changed what we knew of science. These big discoveries have been common knowledge my whole life. I want to know what it's like to have the rules of science as you know it turned upside down.

The Obligatory Rules of this Exercise:
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

So who's next on the Hot Seat?