The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Suela:

I read Uncle Tom's Cabin last year. As Karin and Mary Frances say upthread, Uncle Tom in the novel is a strong slave with a deep Christian faith, who ends up in appalling circumstances, treated terribly by a brutal owner. At the crux of his story, Tom has the opportunity to kill his master and free himself (and the other slaves, one assumes); rather than so violate his religious principles, he holds his hand. He dies not long after, from the abuse he has suffered.

Tom is the hero of the novel, in his religious conviction, which is one reason the novel was so influential. He was a better man than any of the whites in the novel, in a moral sense, and for that he was martyred.

For what it's worth, while the novel is completely melodramatic, the storyline about the escaping couple who flee to Canada is based on a number of real stories. Stowe was connected with the Underground Railroad and knew both many people who'd both worked with escaping slaves and many escaped slaves.

Um, which doesn't have a great deal to do with Ralph Nader, I admit, since the social meaning of the term "Uncle Tom" has changed a great deal.

I'm happy someone pointed out the inappropriateness of Chang's slur in #45.

we shoudl always question our government but before we do that we should base those questions on what our brains tell us not our headss

What my head and my brain tell me is that Palin has given a series of somewhat contradictory reasons for firing Monegan, after (it is alleged) having pressured him to fire her former brother-in-law despite the findings of internal state police officials that his actions didn't justify dismissal.

My head and brain also tell me that this kind of vindictiveness, if proven, is not the sort of behavior I would want someone a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States to exhibit. Presidents should be bigger than that.

now we need someone smarter than me to come up with shorter form for "do not base your self-worth on never being told you've just offended someone."

I've seen this parsed as "there is no Gold Star" or "no, you don't get a cookie" just for not frelling up.

I've learned enough by watching these discussions (mostly online) over the last few years to know that I have a lot to learn, and I try to participate sometimes, but I am also very careful in my phrasing because I don't want to offend, and I also don't want to be seen to have offended. I don't find this a great burden, frankly, and the world is not really suffering because I'm not pontificating on racism and how to combat it.

The single best lesson I can take away from all this is: listen. It's not about YOU. Just listen.

I think it's possible that Obama voted for it, knowing it was Constitutionally flawed but figuring it would give him some political ground in the center--and also assuming that the ACLU and other civil rights groups would file suit almost immediately and have it struck down in the courts. Which is a win-win for him: he gets to look tough on terror, and the law can't be implemented anyway.

I don't of course know this is his reasoning, but it's possible. And of course he can't admit to it, because you're really not supposed to vote for laws you think can't pass Constitutional muster.

Many fine authors have been published in Helix.

And I'm sorry to say that many (or at least several) fine writers will in future have nothing to do with Helix.

They say all publicity is good publicity; I beg leave to doubt it.

Scraps at 95:
It's also no one's business to tell him to shut up, under the circumstances.

Point taken: I am not the Jello Sheriff of the Internets. I am also not the blog-owner here, and if Mr. Watt-Evans wishes to continue digging that hole, I guess he's welcome to.

I just think it's supremely unwise and unhelpful to his apparent goals.

Mr. Watt-Evans:

You do not benefit, and may possibly harm, either your own reputation or Mr. Sanders', by continuing to engage on this.

What Mr. Sanders said was reprehensible and the best way to handle it would have been to apologize immediately and promise not to do it again. And then to shut up about it.

Continuing to engage here and elsewhere is giving you more opportunities to dig yourself into the ground, and is keeping the issue at the front of people's minds.

A number of talented writers have, as a result of this imbroglio, stated publicly their intention to strike Helix from their list of possible markets, and at least one will be asking the magazine to take her work down. The more you talk, the more people will talk, and the more readers and writers you will lose.

Stop talking. You're only making matters worse.

Zander at 120: All official EPA business is done in hard copy, with a room full of lawyers, not by email

Eh. Federal agencies routinely forward draft documents to reviewers by email. Official correspondence is also sent hard copy, but a preliminary draft for review and comment? Almost always sent by email -- unless the BIA is involved, in which case it's hand-delivered on papyrus scrolls (Cobell joke).

The Times article is however deficient in indicating exactly what the forwarded report was supposed to achieve, and how ignoring it advanced the Administration's purposes.

Lightning @ 108:
Long after the fact, but I had to point out that contrary to your assertion, Treasure Island has not been a military base for a long time. When it was a military base, it was a Navy base, not an Army base. But it's been closed as part of the dozens of base closures in California in the last few decades, and has been or is in the process of being handed over to the City of San Francisco.

There is still a Coast Guard facility on Yerba Buena Island, immediately adjacent to Treasure Island, and the USCG is part of DHS, for what it's worth. It's not very large, though.

I had some plot-logic issues with the novel, and stumbled on some of the infodumps and the pacing. But I read the entire thing in about 4 hours, and enjoyed it a great deal. Whether it would mean anything to my non-geeky highly-social nieces is another question altogether. I suspect not: it's a very boy kind of book. By which I mean, it's written to appeal to boys, and if it also appeals to some girls, that's fine. But it does not feel as though they are the target audience.

#40 Samchevre: In both cases, the argument is "I'm right, so to hell with democracy."

Uh, no. In the case of school segregation, the argument is, "The Constitution protects even the rights of those who are in the minority, and we will require you to respect that." Brown v. Board of Education and all the other desegregation actions are predicated on the concept that Equal Protection under the law means everyone, not just the white folks.

And local governments -- democratic as they may have been, for values of democracy that include interfering with black voting in various tawdry ways -- are obligated to comply with the 14th Amendment, the same way the federal government is.

There is, in fact, a nationwide shortage of people who both want to become police officers and are capable of meeting the requirements. Every city in the Bay Area is constantly hiring, but something over 70% of Academy candidates wash out either in the training program or in their first year on duty.

Paul at 9:

1. "Sends a message": If you commit a capital crime, you will die.

Maybe. If you're a black male. Black men are statistically far more likely to be convicted and then put to death for the same crimes as white males.

Also, that premise assumes that it's a working deterrent. Funny thing is: it's not. Especially since the way the system works, it's often decades between the commission of the crime and the execution. Not exactly speedy justice. Murderers don't often keep up on the news, and I bet you dollars to donuts your average killer may not even know if the death penalty is legal in his state. (Well, except for Texas.)

Also, what good does a deterrent do if the rate of false positives is as high as we suspect?

2. "Never kill again": If you commit a capital crime and are put to death, there is no way they will ever commit another crime.

That's true enough. Wouldn't it be better to change things enough that the original capital crime wasn't committed, though? The money saved by not implementing the death penalty (which is not inconsiderable) could be used on social programs, job training, and so forth, for at-risk youth.

Also, see above re: false positives. The prisoner won't be able to go out and repeat the crime he never committed?

3. "Pay for them to live in Jail forever":

I'm pretty sure it costs less to keep someone in jail for the rest of their life than it does to execute them, because of the legal appeals and representation that the government must provide. I do not, however, have citations for this, but I am sure that in some cases this is true, and given that one can't know in advance, one would have to be sure that it was worthwhile to kill them to make the cost effective. See No. 1 above.

Emma (68): I'm getting very fond of Trader Joe's eggplant and pepper sauces. They're not marketed as pasta sauces, but they're really tasty, roasted eggplant and pepper and garlic and olive oil, relatively low-cal, and very flavorful. They work equally well in place of mayonaise on a sandwich, or tossed with pasta.

Wow, I feel bad. I didn't mean to start off a round of "your cholesterol must suck!" I'm just in a "trying to eat healthier" kick, and it spilled over a bit.

I stand by the sauteed onions and white wine for a white sauce, though: yummy. Pity about the mushrooms, Mr. Macdonald; I add them to just about everything I can. I'll just take yours, then. *grin*

Noted for future relevance: one of the google ads on the sidebar is "10 Diet Rules that Work".

This looks tasty and impossibly rich: I suspect if I were to make it, I'd swap out the prefab Alfredo sauce for a homemade white sauce with garlic, sauteed onions, and white wine. I'd also add mushrooms, because spinach, cheese, shrums are teh yum.

But then I live alone, and if I'm going to eat the same dish for a week, it can't be mac-and-cheese...

I suppose the best can't get highlighted because they'll get hassle?

Oh, yeah, that's definitely an issue in some places. Which is why Archives =/ Recs Site.

Okay, backing up a bit. There are a variety of different kinds of fanfiction sites. Archives are where the stories actually live. There are open multi-fandom archives, such as Fanfiction.net (which is often referred to as "the Pit of Voles", although there is good stuff there): this is open to all, unfiltered, within certain constraints. This is by far the largest fanfiction site on the net, and as a result it's very hard to find quality stuff there unless you have a guide.

There are fandom-specific open archives, such as Leviathan in the Farscape fandom, or Gossamer in the X-Files fandom. Again, anyone can load a story there, of any type.

There are genre-specific archives, such as Area 52, which is a slash archive for Stargate: SG-1. Otherwise open to all, so long as the content meets the archive's requirements.

Then there are specialty archives, such as Henneth-Annun in the Tolkein fandom, where the story must be approved for quality by other members before it can be posted. Other specialty archives are less or more stringent. This is where you get some bitching about "elitism", because not everyone uses the same definition of quality.

And then there are recommendations sites like the ones I posted above, where someone other than the writers provide links to stories they enjoyed, usually with some commentary about why they enjoyed them. Delicious is beginning to fill in for recs sites in some form, at least for some of us.

Finally, an awful lot of this is taking place on various journaling sites, particularly Livejournal (although increasingly now Insanejournal, Greatestjournal, and Journalfen as well), so now a story might actually constitute a post to someone's LJ (while also posted to an archive), and some recs sites are actually individual or community journals. Additionally, some fandoms have LJ newsletters which compile lists of stories and recommendations and other newsworthy posts on a daily or weekly basis.

Thus endeth my overview of How Creative Fandom Is Organized. ::wipes brow::

I've also never, ever read fanfic (of the non-professional variety, that is), mainly because of the hugeness of the selection.

Ethan: All you have to do is ask. ::smiles cheerily::

Because the fic world is so large, there are these things called "recs pages". Like this one. Or this one. Both of those links are to sites that recommend stories in a variety of fandoms, including literary, and cover both romance (heterosexual and not) and plotty stories. The labeling isn't that confusing, so long as you know what "het", "slash", and "gen" mean.

Some of the stuff linked to on those pages is of astonishing quality, and all of it will at least meet the test of not making your eyes bleed.

Jennifer Garner is on my list of action goddesses right behind Claudia Black

Which is really kind of funny, because Claudia Black is actually a little thing, and her action sequences at the beginning of Farscape were really unconvincing. On the other hand, she did get better, and so far as I know, she did all her own stunts on the show (dunno about SG-1). I would totally be in favor of a movie that starred Claudia Black as an action lead.

Of course, Warner Brothers wouldn't be making it, apparently...

here assault is about the threat of violence and has to do with causing fear,

Well, here too, but imminent fear. Having someone a continent away say nasty things about you does not justify a claim of assault. And there's nothing quoted in this post that would justify putting poor Mr. Pivar in imminent fear of an offensive touching. (Yes, that's the common-law standard: an offensive touching is battery, and it can be as simple as a tap on the shoulder, if the toucher reasonably knew the touchee would find it offensive.)

(Now I'm having flashbacks to Torts class...)

Any sensible judge would throw the case out on its face, assuming Mr. Myers has a good lawyer; I doubt one could make a prima facie case of libel based on this.

The elements of libel are that the defendant publish (blog review, check) an assertion of fact ("balloon animals," check) which damages the plaintiff (loss of sales/reputation, check) and which is false (oops).

An assault claim is laughable on the face of it.

The pity is that Mr. Myers will have to spend the money to defend against this, and it won't stop Mr. Pivar from doing it again, and again.

I've heard about this happening with regards to a certain Saudi prince, who keeps filing libel suits in the UK to keep publishers from printing books linking him to international terrorism. It's not that he wins the cases, but they can't keep defending them, so they stop publishing.

It is totally a misuse of the legal system, and yeah, bears a lot of similarity to that jackass ALJ in DC who has appealed his dismissal of the dry-cleaning suit. Argh.

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