Sad to say, but Mr. Le Fou (an obvious penname) has a point. What’s sadder is that every criticism leveled by a foreigner is met with either: You’re generalizing. Well, yeah. It’s possible to generalize in useful ways. When you have TV ads showing black people as cannibals showing on air and people think it’s cute instead of offensive; when you repeatedly experience people saying black people say “Oooh-oooh ahhh-ahh-aaahhh” like monkeys — not just once, but over and over — then you can usefully generalize. You can generalize that a certain degree of overt racism is not just tolerated …
Month: August 2006
Infinite monkey theorem?
You know that Infinite monkey theorem? The idea that an infinite amount of time at a keyboard would somehow eventually get a monkey producing Shakespeare’s complete works? Yeah, probably not. Why? This article in Wired News, linked at the Wikipedia entry above, has a good answer for it, but it basically boils down to a misunderstanding about the nature of animal mentality: Phillips said the experiment showed that monkeys “are not random generators. They’re more complex than that.
Just Like Paper, But Not
It’s too bad that all the toys I like are expensive. It’s nice to know they’ll be half the current price, or less, and much better, in a year or two.
If You’re In Korea and Have This Book…
… please let me know. This book, I mean: Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military by Sangmie Choi Schellstede (Editor) and Soon Mi Yu (Photographer). I’m looking for it not only so I know more about the issue (and yes, it’s not the only book I’m looking for, but the others look more gettable), but also for research for a Clarion Workshop story I’m planning to revise. If you have this book, and don’t mind loaning it to me — or if you can get it from a library and would be willing to do …
RevolutionSF’s Clarion, Schmarion Contest
My Clarion Workshopmate Shawn posted about RevolutionSF’s Clarion, Schmarion: A Fiction Contest. Heh.