I've reread a whole lot of Fruits Basket lately and have been pondering the story and its characters again. I remember the first time I read it I was expecting a comedy-romance with a bit of drama thrown in, and I was surprised by how angsty it got, although I liked the extra depth that the darker elements added to the storyline.
( spoilers for the entire series and more rambling )

I started reading the books a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to read them before the movie came out. I raced through the first one and it just stuck in my head, so I went out and bought the second and devoured it in an afternoon. The third took me a bit longer because I was finding it a bit too grim, but I finished it the day I saw the movie and the ending made me cry in a good way.
( spoilery )

I spent a week out in the Wairarapa mapping sedimentary sequences a little while ago. Had some good fun, collected some cool fossils, and pondered the differences between archaeology and geology as presented in fiction. The Adventurer Archaeologist is a very common character in many storytelling media. On the other hand, Adventurer Geologists are rare to nonexistent (the only character I can think of is Nasreen from those two Doctor Who episodes, although Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan probably had at least some basic geology training). And yet field geology is an adventure! I've only done a few fairly tame undergrad field trips, but I've seen some spectacular scenery, waded through rivers (you do A LOT of this in geology, as rivers tend to have the best outcrops), collected fossils, mapped faults, fallen in love, had my boots fall apart, drunk lots of beer (geologists are great beer drinkers!) and all sorts of other things. Now consider the geologists who climb active volcanoes, or spend months in Antarctica's Dry Valleys, or the geologists who accompanied Scott on his ill-fated trip to the South Pole. How about some scifi - geologists exploring and mapping other planets and moons? Actually, I may write some of that myself...
A search for "Fictional geologists" on Wikipedia led me to this article, so Sarah Andrews's books are now on my to-read list. She also has an intriguing essay on the geologist as detective.

I recently downloaded Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series and am thoroughly enjoying it. It's quite old but most of the science still stands up. The second episode has some really fascinating speculation of the sorts of lifeforms that could survive in the atmosphere of a gas giant (GIANT FLOATING JELLYFISH THE SIZE OF CITIES!) and there's also some cool stuff on the history of various scientific ideas. Highly recommended.

I now have an account on Archive of Our Own. I've posted a couple of old fics there, and it may motivate me to start writing new stuff. You can find me here. If you want an invite, comment on this post or pm me.

Well, not quite. But I'm getting pretty pissed off at New Zealand at the moment, and the rest of the English-speaking world doesn't look much better. And it seems like Iceland is doing some pretty cool things at the moment. And they have awesome geology.

But this isn't about Iceland. This is a rant about the upcoming New Zealand election.
( On the plus side, the Greens are polling comfortably around 10%. On the minus side, pretty much everything else )

I seem to be turning into more and more of a lurker, but I thought I should post something to justify my continued use of this site. So here are some cool things I found around the internet recently.
How to Rebuild the Wizarding World, according to Foreign Policy magazine. This is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in politics, Harry Potter, or both.
A Complete History of the Soviet Union, Arranged to the Melody of Tetris (scroll down for the video). Be warned, this will get stuck in your head for some time.
Calm Blue Oceans, a fun webcomic.
Knite, an absolutely beautiful flash comic that I can't recommend enough. Go and read it.
Some of those Viking warriors were actually women.
Rainbow cupcakes!
And a non-internet-related rec: the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. I'm about halfway through this series now after shadowsinfire persuaded me to read it and it's lots of fun. It's military sci-fi with a disabled hero who survives on his wits, a left-leaning, progressive political viewpoint, a good sense of humour, and some really interesting ideas. It also crosses into other genres: whodunnit, political intrigue, and, I kid you not, Regency romance. Highly recommended.

So this journal is fairly dormant. I'm still checking my friends page regularly and I still post from time to time, but that's about it.
Anyway, I thought this was worth posting about.
There have been attempts in certain parts of the USA to cut off funding from Planned Parenthood. This seems to be mainly as part of an agenda that views all abortions as bad (regardless of circumstance) and PP as some kind of satanic abortion factory. This is patently false: Planned Parenthood is primarily a provider of contraception, STI testing, pap smears and other vital sexual and reprouctive health services. It is especially vital for low-income people where it may be the only health provider they have access to.
Melissa at Shakesville and Tami at What Tami Said have put together a blog carnival in response to recent attempts at defunding PP. A whole lot of people, men as well as women, have posted stories of their experiences with PP and what it means to them, in an attempt to raise awareness of the variety of work that PP does and how essential it has been (and continues to be) for many of them. I recommend that you go and have a look. It's well worth reading.

Taken from dropsofviolet

Book Meme
* Bold those you've read
* Italicize those you have started but never finished
* Add three of your own.
* Post to your Livejournal.

( Book meme with occasional commentary and recommendations )

PROP 8 HAS BEEN OVERTURNED!!
More here, with links to the full text of the ruling in comments.
My faith in humanity is partially reaffirmed.

And here is my other news: I AM GOING TO BEIJING THIS NOVEMBER! It's for a political science paper on Chinese politics. We spend three weeks in Beijing attending lectures (in English) at a Chinese university and visiting various important sites around the city, then we come back home and have all summer to write an essay on some aspect of Chinese politics and government. It's a limited-entry course that I applied for a few weeks ago and I just found out I got accepted.