[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
james_nicoll's LiveJournal:
| Saturday, May 17th, 2008 | |
| 10:50 am | Fair play If I'm going to call the Republicans "Team Evil", I should have a nickname for the Democratic Party as well. Should I use "Team Useless" or "Team Enabler"? |
| 9:14 am | I don't actually expect an answer to this Over in the Fermi Paradox thread, j_larson said "The whole fan community seems to skew sharply right-libertatrian.[1][2]" heron61 then observed "Not just the fans - while there are some very obvious exceptions, there is no shortage of right-libertarian US SF authors as well as a fair number of US authors who seem to be right-wing non-libertarian technocrats, [...]." Presumably this is a reflection of what sells and so is more of a measure of the readers than the gatekeepers but aside from Toni Weisskopf and the late Jim Baen, do US SF editors skew right? I mean, I know of a self-confessed Republican editor but neither pnh nor tnh strike me as likely to vote for John McCain or Bob Barr. Let's restrict this to editors whose publications would qualify contributors for membership in SFWA. 1: Although I don't think the core of Wiscon's supporters can be described as "sharply right-libertatrian," that's just one con. 2: heron61 then says "which is why an increasing percentage of SF I read is written by Canadians and UK residents." It's interestingly difficult to find a Canadian SF author who doesn't have some close tie to another country, either having been born abroad, moved abroad or having qualified for dual citizenship. I don't know why this is. |
| Friday, May 16th, 2008 | |
| 12:09 pm | Since I indirectly referred to it Charlie's Diary discusses recent speculations about the Fermi Paradox, including Milan M. Ćirković's idea that advanced civilizations might be inward-focused city-states (Like Singapore) rather than ruthlessly expansionistic empires (like China). Whatever the Hypotheticals are/were like, it doesn't seem to have involved exploiting Earth in any way that we recognize. This could be because using planets (especially ones with native biology) is a mug's game or because they never got to our stellar system but it could also be because the Earth is an active planet and if the Hypotheticals showed up two or three billion years ago, all of the evidence might have been subducted into oblivion. I wouldn't advocate funding purely SETI-focused planetary science but at the same time it might be an idea to keep an eye out for evidence of ETI on bodies in the solar system that have remained relatively unchanged over long periods of time that are at the same time interesting objects someone or something else might once have looked at. |
| 11:21 am | One benefit of FBoFW Is that I get to read conversations like this. At the risk of being a namby-pamby liberal, I come down somewhere around "Yes, Liz is clueless and self-centered but one of the risks Warren accepted by choosing his strategy is that she'd accept the rides but still have no romantic interest in Warren." Expecting a 100% success rate for any approach is unjustifiably optimistic. Do we really want to let hopeless optimists fly helicopters? The moral that I take from parts of this thread is that the most agonizing thing about being male in the 21st century is the expectation that we will actually pay attention to what woman want rather than relying on simple rituals and unspoken payment schedules. It's like we're expected to put effort into the whole relationship thing. |
| 10:53 am | Discover Institute pundit recapitulates bad SF. Are (white) Americans a super-race bred for risk taking? One film critic thinks so! A godless biologist is less keen on the idea. ObSF: Any one of Heinlein's books where he talks about pioneering versus In the Wet, where we learn that colonials are general second-raters who prosper because of an advantageous set of circumstances (1). Amazingly, Heinlein was a colonial while Shute was British. 1: This is FILTH, isn't it? "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong"? |
| Thursday, May 15th, 2008 | |
| 3:48 pm | Huh Sara Jane Moore, who shot at and missed Gerald Ford on September 22, 1975, was released from prison December 31st last year. She's 78. I wonder what she does with her time? The set of all would-be Presidential assassins who were then paroled can't be very large. |
| 3:32 pm | Today's interminable argument Should new authors be expected to be aware of older works that may bear some superficial similarity to the younger author's novels? The discussion starts about here, when [Gene] takes exception to this statement by Mary Doria Russell: "I get this question all the time, because Blish's 1958 story is about a Spanish Jesuit in space. If I ever read this story, I guess it didn't make much of an impression on me, because I don't remember it. I still haven't come across it, but people have told me that the protagonist is named Ruiz-Sanchez, so they thought I must have named Emilio Sandoz in homage to Blish. In fact, Emilio got his name from the pharmaceutical manufacturer who made my son's cold medicine. Danny got a cold in 1992 when I started the book, and I noticed the name Sandoz on the medicine label and thought it sounded good. No symbolism or homage beyond that, I'm afraid!" |
| 3:16 pm | I'm doing it wrong I appear to have accidentally grated the tip of one finger while cleaning the grater last night. At least it is better to grate oneself after cooking than before, I guess. |
| 3:04 pm | News from Mars and Europa New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought. Europa's surface may have been shaped by true polar wander. Interesting choice of words in that second url... |
| 2:41 pm | Procedural question for the Americans Is it possible to impeach a president who has already left office? |
| 2:29 pm | Is there a convenient source From which I can snag the number of space probes launched by decade? [Added later] What might be more interesting is looking at how much information gets returned from each planet by year. |
| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 | |
| 12:34 pm | Speaking as a member of the patriarchy If you compare a female candidate whose determination you feel is now self-destructive to Glenn Close's psychotic stalker in Fatal Attraction, people are going to assume you're a sexist pig. I'm not sure what would happen if you compared a male candidate to Glenn Close's psychotic stalker in Fatal Attraction because for some reason I've never seen it happen. May I suggest that Napoleon in Russia would work just as well? Or possibly the Recording Industry Association of America reaction to Napster? |
| 12:36 am | Not Even Wrong Seen on Amazon Caliphate (Miles Vorkosigan Adventures) (Hardcover) by Tom Kratman (Author) Seen via the Bujold mailing list |
| Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 | |
| 11:51 pm | Seen on rasfw The only thing lamer than spamming rasfw with a badly written ad for a Publish America published SF novel is spamming rasfw with a badly written ad for a Publish America published SF novel and then misspelling part of the url you are trying to get them to follow. |
| 3:10 pm | Other things I didn't expect to learn when I woke up this morning Wizard's First Rule to be miniseries. There will be an American version of Life on Mars. Both from zarq |
| 3:02 pm | Idle question If you were going to insert a detective into one of Shakespeare's tragedies, would you go for a character like Philip Marlowe [1] or one like Miss Marple [2]? The Chandleresque character strikes me as more likely to live to the end of the story but Marple could be played as a kind of wise fool. 1: I started off with Hammett's Continental Op but Marlowe's speech patterns are more amusing to me. 2: Or Tommy and Tuppance if you want the detectives to have a confederate with which to converse. |
| 1:11 pm | Is there a formal term For future settings where the setting is limited to one small region and only makes sense if one assumes the rest of the planet has been mysteriously depopulated so as not to take advantage of the setting's inherent weaknesses? San Angeles in Demolition Man, for example, seems to be simultaneously incapable of defending itself and yet has not been occupied by Canadian troops pursuing our legitimate territorial claim to that region. |
| 12:43 pm | Something that I did not expect to learn when I woke up this morning J. Neil Schulman has found god. God's Libertarian Prophet? An Interview with I Met God Author J. Neil Schulman |
| Monday, May 12th, 2008 | |
| 11:27 pm | CanCon Julie Couillard is no Gerda Munsinger. I demand a higher quality of security-related scandal from our elected officials. |
| 4:03 pm | A trivia question Something Americans are not very good at is withholding approval for their own elected heads of government. An approval rating close to 30% sounds bad in an American context, down there with the lowest ratings Nixon managed. In a wider context, that rating is practically popular success, at least compared with Brian Mulroney's approval ratings in the early 1990s (11%). The NDP even managed to explore the single-digit approval space, thanks to two simultaneous inept provincial NDP governments. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel appears to have hit lows of about 3% approval. Is that a world record for an elected leader or has someone ever pulled off a 2%, 1% or that Mount Everest of imploding administrations, 0% approval? |