Well, lots of things going on… in a personal sense, too, though I’m not ready to blog my recent news.
Instead:
- There’s some great fiction online that I need to link to. For now, just one story: the wonderfully nastyglee party that is Tina Connolly’s “A Day Out, with Stereoscopes” is up at Birkensnake. I’ve a copy of the zine, actually, and it’s lovely. You could do worse than to subscribe. Tina has a talent for mixing the cute with the horrifying.
- Ever heard of Drapetomania? It’s this disease that can be summed up as “longing to be free and a slave no more.” Yeah, they diagnosed runaway slaves with an illness, meant to explain their desire to run away. Which ought to make you think about, say, for example, ADD and the education system a little more.
- Courtesy of NPR, this is kind of depressing.
Maybe I should tell my students to memorize everything beforehand after all, in debate class?
- Here’s the RSS feed for new SF books at Manybooks.net. Come on, you know you want it.
- MrChiCity3 on the advantages of a well-stocked kitchen. Hint, these advantages involve women’s nether parts, and suburban chicks fawning over Snapple.
- The purposeful miseducation of America as political strategy backfires: yes, the infection has spread to the political head. Long ago, but this is just, well…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQkSwifTAMA
Crack a goddamned book, lady. I sure hope whoever’s elected make book-cracking part of a balanced life.
- Speaking of book-cracking: maybe fundamentalists ought to read the Bible sometime?
American Idol, indeed. Two words for you: Bad Precedent. Yes, for you viewers at home, that is a golden calf bull (thanks, Charles), with people praying to it. To save the American Economy. More here. You’d think they might have actually read the Bible, sometime before trying to shove it down everyone else’s throat. What can an educated (or even just an intelligent) person do but snicker? (Via plenty of places, but especially Oltheros, who has a rockin’ LJ.)
- You’re young. That makes you suspicious. How could young people support the Republican party? Get out! That’s how to ensure your party is supported in the future, guys…
- James Van Pelt on how to scare a reader, Mike Brotherton on writing as a career vs. writing as a hobby (another reason I’m considering going back to grad school in the medium run), mlawski on the artificiality of “strong female characters” (as opposed to interesting ones — for interesting, read: flawed, human female characters written the way we write any interesting male characters). Also, on io9, several authors give advice about writing good characters.
- Saw some good talks on TED lately, including this one wherein Steven Pinker argues what I’ve been saying for a while: yeah, humans are still a**holes, but we’re actually getting better… quantifiably so:
More good stuff over at TED. I’m not really sold on Susan Blackmore’s notion of temes, discussed here, but it’s an interesting idea. And while I don’t think Ken Robinson is a truly great public speaker — he meanders so much I start to wonder whether he’s gotten lost — I agree with his argument wholeheartedly. And this 3 minute fairytale of emoticons was fun.
Lots more to post about, but no time, so end off the post, a little happy, cutesy Korean indie-pop by Taru:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgnuH7-jJVo
Maybe I’d hate it if I were listening closely enough to understand the words, but I’m not, so I don’t. Though watching it I wonder if, being in Korea so long, I have just stopped being revolted by cutesiness? Hmm.