So I am definitely going to write a futuristic thing in which Foxean Catholics are sparring with Old Roman Catholics, while New Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians compete for ratings online. The idea of a futuristic second Reformation is one that really does fascinate me, as it could articulate the divisions and issues withing Christendom in interesting ways, ways that highlight just how much, or how little, a version of Christianity might either choose to, or resist the urge to, deform itself to fit popular culture and/or any of several available secular/ideological consensus realities. Fox’s observations in A New …
Month: September 2006
25 ways to tokenize or alienate a non-white person around you
UPDATE (1 Feb 2012): Here’s an updated link, since the original post is gone. Also, I kinda get that it might look like I missed the point of the original posting, but I don’t think I did. I just think it’s interesting how much of it applies to how all kinds of societies talk about the people who are outsiders the them… ORIGINAL POST: Reading this list, I’m almost inspired to try get a few people to write one up for the Korean setting, titled, “25 ways to tokenize or alienate a non-Korean person around you.” I may well do …
Toxic waste mystery in Ivory Coast
Got some toxic waste? Too costly to dump in Europe? Hey, why not just dump it in Africa? Toxic waste mystery in Ivory Coast deepens – health – 15 September 2006 – New Scientist reports: Seven people are now reported dead, and 30,000 injured, by toxic waste dumped in August at 11 open tips around Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The Ivorian cabinet has resigned over the incident, and on Friday angry crowds burned the house of the port director. But some dumps are still reported to be unfenced, with children playing in them. Treatment of the victims will depend on what …
Dogfight
I remember a couple of hip guys in my high school discussing this film, Dogfight, all those years back. Now I know why. It’s a good movie, if you can track it down. I got a copy released with two other films, for quite cheap. Well-done, humane, and interesting. Someone on IMDB called it a sleeper. I don’t know how successful it finally was, but I did find this discussion of how books and films become sleeper hits interesting.
Another Example of How Lime Rocks:
“Honey,” she says, “don’t you know there’s no such thing as too many books?”
Another Story Idea, Perhaps?
So, YouTube’s Lonelygirl15 was a fake. Well, I can’t say, “I told you so,” because though I did view a clip and shake my head about how this was not a 16-year-old or a regular blogger, I didn’t post about it. (I don’t remember doing so, anyway.) But you know, the news that it’s fake (here too!) includes all kinds of speculations about whether the makers of this sham project are going to quit or not. After all, if it were me, I’d be turning the project on its head, making a film about this girl who’s hired to make …
Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow
Taking a break from inhaling Cordwainer Smith’s short linked-story collection Lords of Space, I gobbled down Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe. All I can say is, damn! It was a short book — Doctorow’s writing the kind of novel that I like to see, the kind of thing I (a slowish reader) can read in a single day — but it was packed with fun stuff. It had a couple of different timelines, and some cool, believable tech for the time, given a slow-crescendo of technological change. I appreciated that. It was good fun and made no bones about the …
at xkcd
Check out this clever comic on America’s Senatorial IDiot problem.
The Re-ing of Vision
“The Country of the Young” is now, I’d say, about 50% of the way along tobeing completely revised. I spread out all the pages in order, stacking page 1s together, page 2s, page 3s, all the way to page 33s. Then I stacked them and went through each one. That was the line edits. After that, I read over the crits, had dinner, and read the crits again, making a list of points I thought sensible or semi-sensible. There were three kinds of points: Yes, must do. This is something I should at least consider. This is something to think …
Ouch. really?
I’m revising my Clarion story The Country of the Young and the feedback from classmates is great. Not just the line-edits, which I’m halfway through, but also the general comments. I ran across a comment in one of the manuscripts, beside the following text: People always had done so, but at first it had only been a race thing: a Korean girl with any foreign man made people look a little. Beside that sentence, someone wrote, “Ouch. Really?” I think it may have been Tina C, but I’m not sure. (Tina, was it you? Would anyone remember, even?) Well, there’s …