UPDATE: I’ve added an addendum to this article. The link is, appropriately, at the end. ORIGINAL POST: Here’s something on the ongoing theme of gaming, since I’ve been writing about that. A few weeks ago, my friend Marc Laidlaw (who barely blogs, but here you go), who is not only a speculative fiction writer but also a game designer over at Valve, sent me a link reporting the case of a child who starved to death in Korea while its parents were raising a virtual baby in an online game. The article (and most of the others I’ve seen on …
Tag: idiots
Says South Korea’s Minister of National Defense: “In Africa, Only Ig’nunt Negros(*) Are Running Around!”
UPDATE 2: Thanks to the comment by Sonagi, here’s the video of his remarks. He does indeed stumble on what sounds like the first syllable of the word “깜둥이” which, indeed, is the infamous N-word. (Note added: Actually, as Sonagi notes in the comments, it’s 껌둥이, but this is just a variant pronunciation of (as far as either of us know) equivalent meaning.) Also, the video seems not to be loading on my Firefox, but in case it works in IE I;’ve leave it embedded here. Here’s a link for those who cannot view it.) And as per Sonagi’s comment, …
Not to be Draconian, But…
There really should be a death penalty for having a car alarm and not running out to turn it off when it’s set off. I think a deadline of two minutes is probably fair. Soon enough, people would rig the car alarm to call the person’s phone and it could be reset remotely. (Since usually a car with an alarm doesn’t end up getting stolen, right?) Okay, it’s draconian — a death penalty is over the top in this case and should be reserved for things like murder or pedophilia or drunk driving or being a pop star comparable to …
Webster’s Is a Threat to Children Everywhere: Burn Down the Libraries; Ban the Internet; Return to the Dark Ages!
Making the Twitter rounds: Moronic parents demand Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary be banned from schools. Moronic school board complies. (Okay, maybe just temporarily.) (Another link here.) Yup, it seems some parent noticed a definition for “oral sex” in the dictionary, freaked out because their fourth/fifth grader might look up that word and see something “graphically sexual,” and then asked the school to ban the book. The thing about people like this is that banning one book is never enough. If they manage to ban one book, the next thing you know they’re going to be making blacklists and rooting through …
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. …
Nutters in Bloom, and Comments From Today, and a Song
Nutters: Wow, people on the internet are crazy. I’m not going to taunt Happy Fun Freak any more than to say that, despite temptation, except to note that when one knows absolutely nothing about a topic but insists on talking about it and pretending he does know about it, it’s absolutely clear to the people who do know something how little one actually knows. Comments: A few comments from today which need to be preserved, from a meeting on student presentation proposals, a chat with a professor about the Ministry of Education, and a chat with a teacher in another …
RIMPAA Sues Whole Nation of Somalia in a Major New Lawsuit Aimed at Ending Piracy
Reuters (HOLLYWOOD) Jimmy Felching, the official representative of the RIMPAA (the new organization formed by the merger of the RIAA and the MPAA) announced this morning that the new organization has filed a claim against the entire nation of Somalia in their renewed war against “piracy.” Indeed, Felching urged President Obama to “help bring and end to piracy, even if violent means are necessary.” On being informed by a reporter at the press conference that this was “real piracy, not just downloading crappy flicks and tunes,” Felching turned red and left the room amid a chorus of laughter and jeers. …
Válka s Mloky
“Nowadays we simply cannot wait a few hundred years for something good or bad to happen in the world. Take the migration of peoples which used to drag on over several centuries: today, with our present organization of transport, it could be accomplished in three years; otherwise there would be in profit in it. The same is true of the liquidation of the Roman Empire, the colonisation of the continents, the extermination of the Red Indians, and so on. All these things could have been accomplished incomparably more speedily if they had been put in the hands of entrepreneurs with …
The Lone Ranger, and Tonto
So yesterday I was discussing Thomas King’s “How Corporal Colin Sterling Saved Blossom, Alberta, and Most of the Rest of the World” (from King’s collection One Good Story, That One), which is, well, sort of SF. “Sort of” because it’s not taking itself seriously as SF, but plays with SF tropes about aliens and spaceships. (Which, you know, is better than the kind of thing you see a lot of “mainstream” authors do — writing SF, and claiming it isn’t, because it’s not silly or dumb, or whatever. Yes, Margaret Atwood, I’m looking at you. Come over here and say …