The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Greta Christina:

I'd think the Clintons would be more graceful about this one. After all, Bill Clinton was an unstoppable force of nature in much the same way Barack Obama is.

The Gorey Tribble thing is the best thing ever!

“They’re only thinking of that now?!â€

You know what this reminds me of? When Fidel Castro fell seriously ill last year. Here's an excerpt from the AP report:

(AP) -- The White House and Congress, caught unaware by Fidel Castro's illness, prepared Wednesday for a possible showdown in Cuba as lawmakers drafted legislation that would pay millions of dollars to dissidents who fight for democratic change.

The handover was a surprise to the White House and Congress, one senator said.

The president's comment was that everybody was caught by surprise, and we'll have to wait and see" what U.S. action is necessary, said Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, who discussed the developments with President Bush on Tuesday.

And my reaction: They didn't have a plan for what to do if Castro got sick? It caught them by surprise? The guy is 80 years old! It didn't occur to them that he might get sick and die soon? And besides... shouldn't they have a plan for what to do in case ANY MAJOR LEADER IN THE FREAKIN' WORLD gets sick or assassinated or has an anvil fall on his head or whatever?

We are so very, very fucked.

Oh, for the love of...

I love it when people who don't read SF try to write about it. "It's science fiction -- but it doesn't have rocketships! Wacky!"

(Translation: "I have an ignorant misconception about the genre, based not on my reading in the genre -- which I haven't bothered to do -- but on broad stereotypes of the genre in popular culture. But in this one particular instance, my misconceptions were incorrect! Who'da thunk it?")

You know what this reminds me of? The recent avalanche of writing in the mainstream press about comics and graphic novels. It's become a kind of game for me: who's writing their "Hey, everybody, comics are a serious literary form!" article this week? Is it the New York Times? Harper's? Atlantic Monthly? Place your bets, folks!

"Fatherland"?

Can I just say: ew.

And I'm devastated that the jelly donut thing is an urban legend. I don't know how I'll find the strength to carry on.

Excellent, excellent list. Way better than dumb old Oxford's. I was especially struck by how many of the words on your list have double letters, with easy mistakes to make about how many pairs of double letters there should be. I'm generally a good speller, but that's absolutely my nemesis. I used to joke about how it was a sign of my crappy relationship skills that I couldn't spell "commitment"... until I realized that I couldn't spell "professor" either.

There's just one more I'd add to the list -- "cemetery." Everyone wants to put in an "a."

Weird.

Based on a few semi-random samplings (two samples from each of their three categories), my fiction is decidedly female, my non-fiction is decidedly female... and my blog entries are decidedly male.

But then, the BBC told me I have a male brain.

My conclusion? Pop culture pseudo-science about gender is, for the most part, entertaining bullshit.

P.S. I also don't understand why "blog entry" is a different category. But when I re-submitted my blog entries as non-fiction, they still came up as male.

Re the Moebius knitting: If you haven't already, y'all absolutely must check out the crocheted hyperbolic planes:

http://www.theiff.org/oexhibits/05b.html

Cabinet magazine has a great article about it:

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/16/crocheting.php

And I'm not even going to get into origami Klein bottles...

Steve Buchheit asks: "Is the consensus that a 15 year-old can consent to have sex. Do you all feel that a 15 year has the ability, the stength of personality, cognative awareness, and life experience to make the choice?"

No, I'm not going to flame you. I think this is a reasonable question. But I think the question really is, "Does a 15-year-old have the ability etc. to sexually experiment *with one of her peers,* with someone roughly her age?"

And I think the answer, in many cases, is yes. Definitely. I was. Hell, I was sexually experimenting with other kids when I was 10.

I get that age of consent laws are a tough nut. I get that you have to draw a line somewhere, and that the line will never be perfect -- there will always be people not ready for sex who are over the line, and/or people who are ready for sex who are under it. But I do think that fooling around with people roughly your own age should get a pass. Age of consent laws should be written to protect kids and teenagers from predatory adults -- not from consenting sex with other kids and teenagers.

"But I do somewhat resent the implication that those of us who have stuck with the industry deserve whatever we get after this paradigm shift and that nobody really needed us anyhow, so good riddance."

Is anybody really saying that? Or even implying it? I don't think so. I think there's a big difference between callous indifference/mockery of people whose jobs are being made obsolete... and the recognition of the sometimes harsh realities of the marketplace, with the parallel recognition that griping about it isn't going to change anything.

Do I think something good would be lost if physical newspapers disappeared? Do I think it'd be sad? Yes, of course. But... well, maybe I'm being a cockeyed optimist, but it seems as if, once the upheaval has shaken out and settled down a bit, the human need for reliable, trustworthy information will be getting met somehow or other.

Oh, and FYI: I'm a freelance writer myself, who's finding it increasingly difficult to sell what people are getting for free. And my day job is in the (snort, giggle, snicker) book industry. So I'm on the wrong end of this paradigm shift, too.

"I do not believe that such a basic personality flaw could be corrected simply by administering retributive cruelty. As to what could correct such a flaw, I haven't the slightest idea."

It kills me to think this, much less say it... but I think we need to remember the Stanford prison experiment, and the Milgram experiment. Given the right circumstances, ordinary people will do appalling, repugnant things, things they could never imagine doing. What these soldiers did was unforgivable... but before they got to Iraq, they may not have been any more sadistic than anyone else.

So what can be done? Justice is a start, if for no other reason to make it clear that we do not tolerate this behavior.

But more importantly, what can be done? Not putting people in these situations in the first place. That's what.

Philip Zimbardo, who conducted the Stanford prison experiment (and got caught up in it himself), has talked about this at some length, specifically in regards to Abu Ghraib. He's said that it was a disaster waiting to happen... and that while the individual torturers certainly have to bear responsibility for their actions, the higher-ups bear greater responsibility. They knew, or should have known, that they were creating conditions for a human rights disaster.

He had a wonderful quote: I can't remember the exact words now, but the essence of it was that Abu Ghraib wasn't a case of a few bad apples -- what was bad was the barrel. And the barrel was designed by the U.S. government.

We need to re-design the barrel. Pronto.

"Imagine the soldiers gunning down the kids for a start - then take it from there. How would a grenade or two look, for example? Or maybe testing out some new equipment - how does a hyperbaric warhead work in a crowd?" (etc.)

Is there worse in war than taunting poor children in a hot, war-devastated country by dangling water in front of them? Yes, of course.

But that's not the point. There's something extra-despicable going on here. After all, the violence and horror of war are, at least, theoretically defensible as the lesser of two evils. (World War II, etc.) To be perfectly clear, I think it's absolutely indefensible in Iraq -- but the mindset that thinks "We have to do violence in order to defend ourselves/protect others" is at least comprehensible.

But the mindset that thinks "It's a good idea to taunt poverty-stricken, probably orphaned children in a war-torn desert in a country you're occupying by dangling water in front of them and making them chase you and fight each other for it -- for no reason other than that you think it's funny"... that's not defensible, or comprehensible, or anything other than flat-out sadistic, and a sign that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

I'd write more, but I have to go be sick now.

Stefan had it right. Fucking bastards.

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