The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin Before I say anything about this novel, two disclosures and a warning: First: N.K. Jemisin is a friend; we met at the Launch Pad workshop last summer, and we went to and hung out at WorldCon last summer too. I don’t think that baises me too much: I know a number of people who are excellent and wonderful like Jemisin, but I wouldn’t say nice things about their books just on account of that; but anyway, in the interests of honesty and disclosure, I figured it’s best to throw that out there… Second: …
Category: GENERAL
Want!
I so want this poster for my office.
Fever, What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Trip to the Local Immigration Office, and a Final Positive Turn
I’ve been quite ill this week — not quite just food poisoning, but something a little more vindictive and involved, though not in a sentient sense. The same intestinal upset as last time, but with an added element: a burning fever on Thursday night, and fever (slightly less severe, but much sweatier) again on Friday evening. It was the kind of fever where you say things you don’t recall saying the next day, and dream of Japanese Solutionatronic devices shaped like giant wok lids except that they aren’t physical objects but rather abstract mathematical structures which, given any question, can …
China and Google: “Obey the Country’s Laws and Traditions”
So, I presume everyone’s heard of the row between Google and China, over the (obviously state-sponsored) hacking of Google accounts in the hopes of nabbing those pesky Chinese democracy activists? If not, this article might catch you up. It contains at least one howler: The California-based company, which launched in China in 2006, said it would quit the country unless the government relaxed censorship. On Tuesday, the Chinese government said Google and other foreign companies had to obey the country’s laws and traditions. The howler being that if you know even just a little about China’s traditions and history, you …
Attention Bloomsbury: The World Is (Mostly) Not White
UPDATE (25 Jan 2010): Well, they’re changing the cover. But since the point of this post wasn’t just Magic Under Glass, but also about the problem of how it happened, I’m leaving the post as-is. The problem is not really isolated, just as the solution is already known — this World SF Blog post has a bigger discussion on covers and poor cover choices (as well as some good ones). ****** Dear Bloomsbury, You know what I’m emailing about, right? Yup. The cover of Jaclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass. I’m white. I’m a reader. I love books. I buy books. …
Teacher Competence & Textbook Design
The interesting thing about textbook publishers in Korea is that they need to consider the competence of the people who will be using their books. As anyone who lives in Korea can guess, thisis most crucial for the TEFL industry; despite the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of native English speakers teaching English in Korea, there are also hundreds of thousands of non-native speakers teaching English. And since the method for selecting people for teaching jobs doesn’t seem to prioritize skill or ability in the subject they’ll be teaching — at least not when it’s English — and …
Readings 2009
UPDATE: Ooops! I forgot the Rilke I read. Not sure how that happened, but I’ve added it to the end of my list of works.UPDATE 2: Ooops, and Lisa Randall. How could I forget that? ORIGINAL POST: Among my frustrations with 2009 was the fact I got to read way fiction less than usual. WAY less. I was very busy with many things, including health concerns that prompted spome very intensive exercise, new academic writing responsibilities, travel, and also a lot of time spent intensively working on dealing with some personal issues, as well as doing the basic research on …
Random Observations
While I really would prefer to be blogging something a touch more substantial, I’m overloaded with The Freelance Project That Refused to F*cking Die. So, while I’m a little tied up with that — and unable to dive into the fiction-writing project I thought I’d be well into by now — all I have time to post for today are a couple of random observations about stuff in Indonesia, in the vein of my earlier mention of rock star styles here.
Metal Softies
Indonesian rock bands have a seriously weird aesthetic for self-representation, from the point of view of a Westerner, that is. You see these guys who look for all the world like a death-metal band — weird hair-tattoos (like, where they shave intricate patterns into their hair), leather and spikes, braids in their beards, and tough-guy expressions — but then you hear the music and they’re singing soft-rock, ballads, lovesong-sounding stuff. By the way, I’m not ignoring the comments that are being made here… but after half an hour at the Starbucks, discovering that everything (including Gmail) except my website was …
When ATMs Attack, or, How Things are Going in Depok/Jakarta
I’ll be going back to Jakarta tomorrow because a certain ATM has decided to swallow my Samsung Card (a credit card) and not spit it out again. Put the card in the machine, watch it crash, watching Windows reboot (with the Diebold brand name proudly displayed, of course!)… quite a sad sight. The first time it happened was a week ago, and I thought it was a freak accident. Turns out, no, not at all. Samsung Cards crash BNC ATM machines in Jakarta, it seems. Or at least, at the mall I was at. Other than that, things are going …