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Posts Tagged ‘linkage’

there’s a bad joke to be made here

There’s something appallingly Orwellian about the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and the abuses it is used to cover. But if you’ve ever wondered how our intelligence agencies can get useful information out of detainees without torturing them, here’s how.

Critics of J.K. Rowling may be tempted to joke that the Harry Potter books are torture, but the real point is down in that last block quote. All it takes to “break” some people is kindness. And the intelligence you get in return is more reliable, not less — while also creating allies instead of enemies, bettering your national image, and generally behaving like a moral human being.

***

As long as I’m talking politics, I might as well also link to this set of asinine arguments against early voting. Seriously, most of this boils down to: 1) it’s better to be seen voting by your fellow citizens, 2) you might make an impulsive decision based on personal preference, 3) omg what if in the last week it turns out the guy you voted for kicks puppies but you’ve already cast your vote, 4) early-voting polls might influence people who vote later, and 5) if you can’t take some time on Election Day to go vote, screw you.

Cause, y’know, all those people working three jobs to make ends meet ought to be able to spare a couple of hours to stand in line.

The closest he comes to a legitimate argument is when he talks about the possibilities of voter fraud and non-secret ballots. But voter fraud is far from the imminent danger threatening to devour our sacred democracy that some make it out to be, and there are ways of handling those problems. Oregon votes 100% by mail-in ballot, and I haven’t noticed that state collapsing in a wave of corruption. Early voting, whether by mail or at polling places, increases voter turnout; I have trouble seeing that as a bad thing.

three links for my fandom friends

Okay, so the truth is I just stole these wholesale from toft_froggy. But I know I’ve got people on my flist who think thinky thoughts about fanfic, and I suspect these links will provoke much thinky thoughtness for them.

What Started It All: thingswithwings posting about Merlin fandom and the ways in which fandom migrations occur. (Can I just say I love the phrase “fandom migrations”? The mental images are great.)

In Which the Comments Blew Up: various people pick apart reasons for participating in a fandom and what it means to say it’s “just for fun/pleasure.” (Okay, I didn’t read the whole thread, because there’s a bit where it explodes and I didn’t feel like following it. But I read the stuff I didn’t have to hit “expand” for.)

A Typological (Not Typical) Response: miriam_heddy sorts out patterns in the comments to the previous post — so you don’t have to! (Haven’t read the comments here, though. I only have so much time in my life.)

My take? I think there is a degree of social responsibility in choosing one’s fandom, because if giant flocks of ficcers descend upon a show, then it’s a form of positive feedback to the people who write and produce that show. And if they can attract massive fan interest despite being racist and sexist and what-have-you, then I do think it encourages more writing in that vein. (Or at the very least, it doesn’t encourage them to improve.) So I sympathize with thingswithwings‘s reaction, in the vein of, dude, what if we poured all this love and creative effort into stuff that doesn’t have those flaws? And I do not — sorry, folks — sympathize much with the “but life is hard and I watch this stuff for brainless fun” response, because if your brainless fun involves consuming intellectual poison (“women with power are eeeevil!,” frex), then yes, I’m going to judge you for that. Things can be fun and good. What a novel idea!

Huh. I must be getting over the ~~Respiratory Bug of Suck~~ Unidentified Viral Infection, if I have the energy to engage with this.

Edited to add: An excellent comment by cryptoxin, which very tidily (though with heavy use of academispeak) sums up the aspect I latched onto in the original post. Rather than making tempests in teacups about whether thingswithwings is just upset that everybody’s leaving her fandom for a new one, I wish more people would engage with this part of the question.

interesting linkies

For gollumgollum and all you others in the health-care field: an article on unlaundered scrubs and the transmission of bacteria. What I liked? Seeing Monroe Hospital in Bloomington held up as an example of how to prevent this problem.

For, well, anybody with a weird sense of humour and/or an appreciation for Edward Gorey: The Recently Deflowered Girl. (Some pages are funnier than others.)

For anybody pissed off at M. Night Shyamalan’s casting of lily-white actors for the live-action Avatar movie: addresses to complain at. The usefulness of complaining is, of course, very uncertain; but at least you can try.

For completing the schizophrenia of this link post: Change.org‘s ideas competition. Again, the usefulness is uncertain, but this is more than just a random web poll, and there are some very interesting ideas there. Also some that really don’t strike me as major priorities (do we really need to be worrying about dog breed-specific laws when there’s the Patriot Act going on?), and a bit of redundancy (spot how many candidate ideas have to do with the environment or marijuana!), but I got pointed at the competition because of the “End corporate personhood” idea, which is one of those random things that gets me all frothy at the mouth. So vote if you want to — you need to make a profile, but that’s quickly done — and while you’re there, if you want to click on the thingy for ending corporate personhood, know that it’ll put a smile on my face.

London, after the apocalypse

Words cannot express the weirdness of this photo set.

Some of the places in it, I’ve never been. Others I’ve passed through — like Oxford Circus — but they’re not very familiar to me. But New Bridge Street? Fleet Street? I can point out the corner bookshop, tell you where the post office is, and how many blocks it is to Wasabi, where they have really cheap yakisoba. Which I traditionally eat on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’ve gotten lunch in the crypt of this church, and walked through this underpass more times than I can count. This is the London I know — but not.

Words cannot express how bizarre it is to see those places utterly devoid of people. I’ve been there on a Sunday morning, when the City is mostly closed for business and so very few people are in sight, but “very few” and “none” are not the same thing. It’s as if the apocalypse happened, and this is London in the moments before nature begins to reclaim it.

I’d love to see similar photos of Boston, New York, other heavily populated areas — but I’m not sure you could ever catch them quite that deserted, even on a Christmas morning.

links to close out the year

Brief interview up at Reality Bypass, with me answering some questions and Lune answering a few more, a la Cat and Muse. Midnight Never Come has also ended up on a few people’s lists of their favorite books this year, which warms the cockles of my heart.

Also, since I have a few tabs that have been hanging around forever: another brief bit from me, more like a micro-guest blog than an interview, on the topic of crazy-ass research; and Darrin Turpin’s follow-up to my earlier post on monarchy in fantasy.

Happy New Year, all!

Oh god, I haven’t laughed this hard in I don’t know how long.*

7 Images Too Badass to Be Real (That Totally Are)

The images are awesome; the text is what had me just about crying with laughter. Hint: when you get to #2 (the one with the lion), scroll down carefully. When you reach the bottom of the paragraph about the seat, page down to the last item, so that you see its headline and image and caption all at once. It’s worth it for the effect.

*This is hyperbole. Lately kniedzw has been making me crack up so bad I’m left in pieces on the floor. But hyperbole has its place.

Richard Dawkins goes off in the deep end

Dawkins has always been a little bit strident for my taste. Now he’s gone after something near and dear to my heart, which means whatever patience I had for him is pretty much gone.

Namely, he’s going to write a book about whether fantasy is bad for children because it “has an insidious effect on rationality.”

Now, let me attempt to be fair. The Telegraph article contains some quotes that make Dawkins sound like an idiot. Example:

“I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s something for research.”

In other words, he read fantastical stories as a kid, and CLEARLY it damaged his ability to think scientifically, so . . . so maybe the Telegraph is contextualizing what Dawkins said in a manner that is less than fair to him. Reading between the lines, it sounds a bit more like he’s poking around to discover whether there’s a there there, rather than already embarking on a crusade against an effect he believes in. Me, I don’t think any such “there” exists; I think it’s valuable for children both to experiment imaginatively and to learn how to distinguish reality from fiction. Then again, I also don’t agree with Dawkins on the invariably terrible horrible no-good very bad effects of non-scientific thinking, so take my opinion for what it’s worth.

And take his for the same. Like later on in the article, where no amount of reading between the lines can help me put a better spin on his declaration that it’s “child abuse” to call a kid Christian or Muslim. I’m all for letting kids form their own opinions on spirituality, but child abuse? I think not.

Ah, Richard Dawkins. I’m never quite sure whether to tak you seriously or not.

monthly linkage

Even the Death Bug cannot keep me from posting to SF Novelists!

(Mostly because I wrote the post a couple of weeks in advance. Very glad I did.)

This month, riffing off a recent series at Deep Genre, I tackle the question of monarchy, and why it’s so common in fantasy. Comments disabled here; go talk about it over there. You don’t need an account to post.

auction redux

I’ve had three of the MNC gift packages go already at the Buy It Now price, so I’ve reposted the auction, this time accepting bids only, but with extra goodies promised if the bids go high enough. Details here.

heads up!

I’m sure you all have your Christmas shopping done already, right? But in case you’re looking for a gift for that one last special person, head on over to the auctions. Not only are there many wonderful goodies for sale there, you can also buy a Midnight Never Come gift package, with a signed hardcover copy of the book and many other fun bits to go along. The auction ends at noon (Pacific time) on Thursday.

A recent exchange with eclectician has produced my first post in a while, on how we get to know cities. Anyone can comment over there, so I’ve closed the comments here; if you’ve got something to say, feel free to come on over.

’tis the season for charity

The news is filled with one bleak story after another, but sometimes it hits closer to home.

Vera Nazarian, the woman behind Norilana Books (which publishes, among other things, Clockwork Phoenix), is on the verge of losing her house. The story behind this crisis makes it abundantly clear that she has not ended up in this situation through foolishness or mismanagement, but rather from a streak of appalling luck, any one component of which would be bad enough on its own. Taken all together, they’re devastating.

Fortunately, sf/f fandom turns out to be really really good at mobilizing its social networks for a good cause. The community is taking donations, and also organizing an auction along the lines of . If you can’t spare the money for straight charity, look through the auctions and see if there’s something that can double as a holiday gift for someone else, or offer some item or service of your own for auction.

Vera needs a little over $11K by the 20th to keep her home; as of last night, the comm has already raised nearly $3800. The goal is too much for one person, but for fandom as a whole, it’s very much within reach. Every little bit helps.

My connection, of course, is through Clockwork Phoenix; Mike Allen, the editor, has posted about Vera here, speaking in praise of her as a wonderfully professional publisher. It’s worth keeping people like that on their feet. If you can spare even a little, head on over to the community and pitch in.

Catching up with a few more book recommendations:

To Say Nothing of the Dog, with which I have begun to mend my ignorance of Connie Willis’ novels, and

Uglies, in which Scott Westerfeld has fun with semi-dystopic near future SF YA.

If you have read either book, feel free to discuss in the comments.

Dell Award

I have no idea how many current or recent undergraduates read this journal, but if you were enrolled full-time in college for any semester since fall 2007, check out the Dell Magazines Award, a short story competition aimed specifically at undergrads. I won in 2003 (back when it was the Isaac Asimov Award), so I’m speaking from first-hand experience when I say they’re a great group of people, and the conference is especially fabulous to attend if you live in a place that’s cold and dreary come March.

linky

Three totally unrelated links make a post, right?

THE SELF-CENTERED LINK: a mini-essay about my story “A Heretic by Degrees.” Me musing about Driftwood and how I created it.

THE INTERNETS ARE FULL OF WEIRD LINK: since this is only photos, not video, it might be rigged, but the “action shots” make it look pretty real. Paintings created by an elephant. And here I thought creating art was the last bastion of “things humans do that other animals don’t” . . . .

THE ARMING FOR INTERNET SLAPFIGHTS LINK: might be of particular interest to jaylake. Pursuant to a discussion elsewhere, regarding whether the Mumbai attacks would have been stopped faster if India had an armed civilian populace, the abstract for an article on American gun ownership. Money quote: “For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.” That’s twenty-two injuries or deaths for every one incident of defense. Mind you, that doesn’t factor in possible cases where the gun acted as a successful deterrent without anyone being hurt, but I rather doubt there are twenty instances of that for every one of the other. I wouldn’t say I want to see guns completely outlawed in the U.S., but these numbers make a good counter-argument to the “but I need to defend my home from burglars!” justification, as well as the “an armed society is a civil society” idiocy you get from some corners.

silver bullets

Okay, this is just fascinating.

It seems that one of Patricia Briggs’ readers has embarked upon a quest for silver bullets. I came at that series by way of the third chapter, “Lone Ranger, Go Away,” which is a reprint of a 1964 Gun World article detailing previous efforts to produce and test-fire such rounds. That part (which I found via Making Light) is funny enough, but the rest of the series is chock-full of ballistic geekery, of a sort that every werewolf-novel-writing author should read.

And not just them, either. I have no intention of writing about lycanthropes, but I learned from the introduction that three hundred years ago, silver didn’t generally tarnish like it does today. Why? Because the Industrial Revolution hadn’t yet pumped large amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere. If you left a silver object sitting on a shelf for ten years, it would still be shiny when you came back — which made it just about as magical-seeming as gold. And if you’ve come across references to silver cups or knives being used to detect poison, it’s because organic poisons often contain enough sulfur to tarnish the dishware, creating a seemingly supernatural ability to detect their presence.

Of course, if I wrote a story with a silver object that didn’t tarnish over time, readers would think I was doing it wrong. The perils of too much research . . . .

Anyway, if you’ve ever thought about writing a werewolf book, or you like reading them, check the articles out. Turns out the “silver bullet” thing is a lot more difficult than advertised — but out of such obstacles are more interesting stories made.

SF Novelists time again

My November post, “How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?,” tackles the notion of “practice” in the context of writing. (With bonus reference to role-playing games!)

As usual, comments are preferred over there, instead of here. You don’t need an account to comment.

So true.

And it makes my academic brain glee over the way fanfiction has given us an entirely new vocabulary with which to describe the world.

I thought I was the only one!

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