Banned in China: Your Assurance of Quality Content

The title of this post is a throwaway comment Bruce Sterling made in his lecture, “The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole” (mp3, video with terrible audio), in the course of mentioning that most scientists who are able to do the scary stuff that frightens Bill Joy are unlikely to be willing to take up residence in the caves of Afghanistan or up in North Korea just to get the freedom to research things that have been banned by everyone else.

It reminded me of a funny thing an ex-student in Beijing told me — this blog is blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Not sure exactly which post, though there are probably a few. But it is a compliment, really.

Busy writing my paper, so here’s some other quality content for ya:

  • Tony Smith, of the excellent podcast Starship Sofa, has put together an anthology of stories from the first 100 episodes of the podcast. The anthology includes stories by people like Michael Moorcock, Peter Watts, Michael Bishop, Ruth Nestvold, Jeffrey Ford, Alastair Reynolds, Elizabeth Bear… and me! You can buy the anthology in a number of POD (print on demand) formats, and/or download a free PDF, and/or view it online for free and donate if you feel thus moved. I got a kick out of all that retro art in it, and I just feel badly posting about it so late! (And discussion here by the folks who put it together!)
  • Zombieland trailer. I’m kinda tired of the hyperpopularity of the zombie these days, but this film looks fun just the same.
  • Paul Jessup with some good advice for newbie writers (via a twitter from Shawn Scarber).
  • Darwin blogging The Voyage of the Beagle. (via Ken MacLeod)
  • More Americans believe in UFOs than oppose the kind of health care reforms sought by the Democrats. No, really. As Chris Harris notes, “[i]t speaks volumes about the status of the health care debate among the public when it is more mainstream to believe aliens are flying around in spaceships than to oppose the public option.” Indeed.
  • Gogo Star (a Korean indie group):

    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/SSHo2hgB1_A" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

  • 로빈이 토끼란 사실을 알고 있었나 (Did You Know That [a] Robin is [a] Rabbit?):

    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/T_kSz4N495U" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *