H, t's m, Crls. ntc th knw-nthngs r mckng my nm, C..Y, gn. f wr lss fr mn, mght sy thy wr rcst. nstd, 'll jst mply t. [1]
s fr fndm, t's lttl dd hw mny gddm stlkrs nd lntcs -- ppl wh hv wshd m r my lvd ns mrdrd, mmd, n jld, rpd, t ctr -- hv ncntrd wh slf-dntfd s fn. ctlly, n my pnn, t's nt dd t ll.
lv scnc fctn, bt rlly cn't stnd ts nm sbcltr, whch fnd prly sclzd, wlflly gnrnt, sly glld, nd nhlthly fscntd by vlnc.
Cs n pnt: ppl n th prvs thrd smhw cncldd tht pprv f Tm DLy. Th nn-lttr wrd tht cms t mnd s "jcksss". Whch s cnvnntly rdbl vn wtht vwls.
(Plc yr wn, nd thn dvwlz.)
ls, Ptrck, ntc tht whl y ddn't hv ngh tm t ntlly rspnd t Dg, y nw hv ngh tm t pst yr rnt <>bt</> Dg. [2] "n lv wth yr wn ddgn" s cmmn ngh vc n th ntrnt, bt dn't prtnd t gvs y mrl hgh grnd.
nywy. Hppy Nw Yr, flks. My y ll gt lf n 2006!
[1] s fr pns sz -- ntrstng hw ths hs cm p s mttr f fnnsh cntmpltn gn -- hv n cmplnts. f y rlly wntd t gt ndr my skn, fmly sz mght d th trck... bt sspct tht th d f wntng lrg fmly (s ppsd t wntng lrg pns) s ttrly ln t ths "prtctd sttc" gmbh.
[2] Has the Tor forthcoming books site been updated lately?
Three icons, three people. I'm the coffee mug. C.O.Yu.
Why fen? Because so many of you think you're more capable than the average person on the street in terms of understanding the world because you read science fiction, when in reality... well. Not so much.
What's really annoying about this thread is how the complex situation in the NMI -- a place where people I know have lived -- has been turned into the background for a cheap morality play so that people who need their daily dose of indignation can get their subculture-approved fix.
You know how you fen loathe the thirty-second clip on the TV news of the four-hundred-pound guy dressed up as Captain Kirk, and a talking head who knows absolutely nothing about your subculture confidently rattles off inanities about it? And you call up the station to complain, and no one there is interested?
That's how I feel when I read a thread like this.
And if you think "fen have a markedly poorer ability to judge evidence critically than a similar cohort of non-fen," my hypothesis is that you are living in the ivory tower of academia. Certainly you have not lived in the business world, where the ability to judge, or even recognize, evidence is virtually unknown. Fans are BETTER at this than the average person on the street, an entity with whom you are apparently entirely unfamiliar.
Hm. Hilarious hypothesis about me #5271009, with a side of Slandom Roolz. Probably the only thing you have in common with S.M. Stirling, Xopher.
See, I am giving you folks as much respect as you're giving the people of the Northern Marianas. (I had to do the same thing with fen regarding the people of Botswana recently elsewhere.)
It's rather belittling to talk this way about the hard choices a small group of people has to make in a world that doesn't particularly care for them, no? As if they were objects only there to be manipulated, and that some smug bastard who barely knows them knows them better than they do themselves.
[pause to wait for clue-stick to hit]
I also get the sense that people on this thread want an anti-DeLay loyalty oath before they listen to anyone. Screw that.
I don't know, maybe if Ursula LeGuin wrote a story about it? But with copper-colored imperialists and a hermaphrodite lobbyist from Old Hain. The Chuukese could be indigo and the Chamorros blue. The people living in the boxcars can be from Earth. Maybe then it will make sense.
And Robert L, um, you do know your link goes to your LiveJournal?
[shrug] I was wondering where the hits on my blog (which I share with Doug) were coming from.
Lenora, I got plenty of interest in discussing economic issues. Just not with fen. Word games, sure! What's the shortest word in English that has all five vowels?
By the way, Guns, Germs, and Steel is riddled with tendentious arguments. Have you ever tried tracking some of Diamond's sources down? I have. Many of them do not quite say what he says they say.
Aconite, who the hell is praising? Strawmen are in aisle four.
Laura R., from everything I have seen, fen have a markedly poorer ability to judge evidence critically than a similar cohort of non-fen. My guess is, you folks have internalized the reading strategies necessary to make sense of SF and consistently apply them to areas where they don't work. Related to, but not necessarily the same as the Brain Eater. That takes care of the first two.
The DRAMA and the malignity come out of the lower than average socialization of the average fan.
Then there's that slack-witted "fans are slans" balderdash that just won't die. Despite busloads of evidence to the contrary.
Lenora, Doug has some tolerance for y'all left. I have hit my tipping point. To translate it into terms some of you might understand better, fan association is now a -3 modifier for intelligence and reason in my book.
I'm well aware of Making Light's past posts about "you people" and "you folks". Hence the "folksy folksy folks" above.
If I think of most fen as "ill-educated, gullible, overly dramatic, and/or actively malign", it's not because I haven't interacted with them. Hell, recently an SF pro with strong fannish ties decided to use his fan group to cyberstalk me, posting what he thought was my private home information on the Internet, accusing me of posting negative reviews of his books on Amazon, and in one particularly bizarre move, discussing with his fanboy minions putting my name on al-Qaeda websites as a Zionist agent.
So, yeah, I have a low opinion of your people's subculture, yup. This thread ain't raising it.
For me, liking SF and having to deal with fen is a little like liking the Oakland Raiders and having to deal with the Raiders' associated baggage. It's despite, not because.
And I know Brad DeLong posts here, thank you very much. Soon, I will have a DeLong number of three.
Anyway. Doug's comparandum is Chuuk. Look it up. It's not a nice place.
Ugh. I'm arguing economics with fen again. Time to go. Maybe the horse will learn to sing.
Robert L, I'm aware of the difference between "per capita" and "per worker". My rough calculation calls for the former, since it's about the overall benefit to the NMI, which includes children.
Also, as a general note, don't rely on the CIA Factbook as a single source. It's not very good.
Uff da. People -- fen! -- are trying to tell Doug what the point is about the Northern Marianas. You folks. You folksy folksy folks.
Dave Bell, there's a very simple calculation you can make. Doug used Chuuk -- the island formerly known as Truk -- as a comparandum. It's part of the Federated States of Micronesia, which has an average per capita income of about $3000, high-ball estimate. (The currency is US dollars.) Chuuk is probably significantly lower, but as my co-blogger would say, let that bide.
The NMI has an average per capita income of $10000, low-ball estimate.
The difference is $7000 per capita.
There are eighty thousand people in the NMI.
That's 560 million dollars. Per year.
Giacomo, I have a box of hair that makes better historical analogies than you. I have named it Bruce.
Jo, give soc.history.what-if the background -- what parts, even if improbable (or impossible), are set in novelistic stone -- and we'll figure out the rest.
Velveeta + salsa in a jar + microwave = queso, an old Texas delicacy, like Frito Pie.
Now they sell commercial versions. But for the authentic stuff, you have to make it yourself.
What I've found most amusing about this thread is that the Kool Kids who have shown up here are more poorly socialized than the fen, who, um, after extended contact online frankly often make me want to scrub myself raw with pumice soap.
"'Eunoia', which means 'beautiful thinking', is the shortest English word to contain all five vowels."
Anoia or eunoia? ace ekes near to a-vowel (or a-uouuel, as they say in Veii). Lose? Loose? Looooooooose? It is all the same to Tee En Aich. I eye ace & wait. Ha-ha!
And of course 'punk' once had the additional meaning of 'prison catamite'.
I'm kinda proud of 'chickenhawkpunk'. It captures a certain dynamic of that subgenre better than 'carnography' or 'backswing fiction' (where most of the population is killed so the heroes can show off their mighty backswing; either Andrew Wheeler or James Nicoll coined this one, I can't imagine in response to what book).
And 'SF for the 101st Fighting Keyboarders' is just too long.
Charlie, I think that's better known as Brezhnev-era Soviet literature.
Still, better than chickenhawkpunk.
Lucy, they certainly do that. Modern pricing strategies often have little to do with the idealized intersection of supply and demand curves so beloved of undereducated propertarian social engineers.
They're not in introductory textbooks, though. You have to dig through the specialist literature. Neat stuff.
And from the Old Saxon Heliand, ca. 825, translated by G. Ronald Murphy, S.J.:
"The Ruler will then turn to the ones on the left, the wrongdoers, and the Chieftain will tell them that they will have to pay for their deeds, their wicked behavior. 'You will now have to leave Me,' He says, 'and you accursed must go to the eternal fire which was made for God's opponents, the enemy horde, because of your wicked behavior. You did not help Me when I was being tortured terribly by hunger and thirst, or when I had no cloths and went about in a state of misery. I had great need -- but I never received any help -- when I was put in irons, chained and locked up, or when the sickbed held Me captive with serious illness. You never thought it was important to visit me when I was sick. It was of no worth at all to you to think of Me. Because of this you will now suffer from darkness in Hel.'
"Then these people will speak to Him in reply. 'But ruling God,' they say, 'why do you wish to speak like this against these people, talking against so many? When did you ever need human beings or their goods? Why, all the wealth they have in this world You gave them!' Then God the Ruler answers, 'When you have looked down on the poorest of the sons of men, the lowest of warrior-heroes in your feelings, and let them be loathsome to you in your mind, refusing them your respect, you were doing the same to your Chieftain, you were refusing Him your wealth. Because of this, God the Ruler, your Father, does not wish to receive you. You shall go instead to the fire, to the deep death, where you shall serve the devils, the vicious enemies, since you were doing so before.'
"After those words He divides the people in two, the good and the bad. The damned, the warped human beings go off in a state of grief to hot Hel to receive their punishment: unending evil. The high King of Heaven then leads the pure people up from there to the long-lasting light, where there is life forever, God's kingdom, made ready for the people who are good."
There's Clarence Johnson's Cotton Patch version:
"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Get away from me, you fallen skunks, and in the flaming hell reserved for the Confuser and his crowd. For I was hungry and you shared nothing with me; I was thirsty and you gave me no water; I was a stranger and you didn't welcome me, ragged and you didn't clothe me, sick and in jail and you didn't stand by me.' Then these too will ask, 'Sir, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or ragged or sick or in jail, and do nothing about your needs?' Then he'll answer, 'When you failed one of these humblest people you failed me.' These will take an awful beating, while the just ones will have the joy of living."
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