Another quorum sensing idea

For those who read my post about quorum sensing and quorum phenotypes in bacteria, now consider this marvelous idea (I write this while my partner, who sits next to me on the couch, is playing one of those epidemic games on his cell phone, where you are a pathogen and the goal is to infect the world):
What if a pathogen had a mechanism for sensing the quorum of having infected a certain threshold number of  people, after which point a new phenotype would trigger in, such as increased virulence, for example?
Just think about it.
But seriously. As the game of Epidemic progresses next to me on the couch, and the game responds with messages like "American scientists are 25% done on the cure," I ask my partner, "Is there a 'defund the National Institutes of Health' button in the game, that you, as a pathogen, can press to slow the progress of scientists with regard to finding the cure?"
No, there isn't, he says.
Not in the game, that is. But in our reality, there is such a button, sadly. And it is being pressed.

Norwescon 36

I will be attending Norwescon 36 this year. 
Read more for my schedule:

Another sweeping pronouncement by a non-expert

To a biologist, the term quorum sensing in nothing new. Perhaps it is familiar to all, but just in case,  Wikipedia article  on it is very nice and detailed. Let me define it nonetheless: quorum sensing has nothing to do with voter turnout or voting machines, it is a particular phenotype, or behavior, that certain living organisms begin to show when their population reaches a certain density in a certain environment -- such as bacteria in a carton of milk, for example.  This threshold of  "crowdedness" of bacterial individuals in a milk carton is called a quorum. Apparently, they have a way of knowing that they reached a quorum: they sense it (and there is nothing mysterious as to how -- they have ways, and the point of the story is not about those ways).
At any rate, having sensed the quorum, bacteria begin to display a new behavior, or activity.

Confessions of a Once-a-Year Movie-goer

I liked the movie Argo.
I am all for quietly evocative moments and subtle filigree of story-telling.
I wonder if the following is in everybody and their critic's blog post, but I'll write it down nonetheless (spoiler alert applies):

It's a novel!

I am excited to announce that my novel The Age of Ice is scheduled to come out in the summer of 2013. Its listing on the Publisher's site is here Scribner/Simon and Schuster

New story due out in August

A new science fiction short story, Deus Absconditus, will be coming out this August in GigaNotoSaurus
A list of things one can come across in this story includes island living, massage, drug addiction, and creationism.

Clarion West Write-a-thon

I am late to report that I am participating in the Clarion West Write-a-thon, an annual event in which the community of Clarion West alumni, friends, supporters and other speculative fictions enthusiasts rally to practice their writing magic to raise money for Clarion West. My goals are modest: to make steady progress revising my novel, The Age of Ice. If I also manage to revise and finalize one short story (it has been waiting for its turn since almost two years ago, the poor thing), I can call myself superhuman.