The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by John Chu:

Back around, I think 2002 or so, they confiscated my jeweler's screwdriver. (I.e., what I use to repair my eyeglasses.) If they thought that was lethal, I don't know why they didn't confiscate my mechanical pencil which is about as sturdy and has a sharper point. (I didn't volunteer this information though.)

On the same trip, they also scrutinized my car key. It turns out though that they just wanted to play with it. (I mean this literally. The key to a late '90s VW Jetta is a fob with a button you push that makes the key swing out. I guess it was kind of novel at the time.)

*sigh*

Yes, I know this isn't exactly the worst havoc TSA can wreck. Pre-9/11 when I lived near the Canadian border, getting into the US from Canada was a huge hassle, and I'm a US citizen. One would think a US citizen would be allowed free entry into the US. (Yes, I *always* had my passport with me. When I was a kid, my Dad insisted I get a passport precisely for this situation.) I can't imagine that's gotten easier.

Sometimes, I really want someone to establish Ninja Airlines. Cory Doctorow suggested it in some podcast a few years ago. They break into your bedroom while you're sleeping. You wake up the next morning having already finished your trip. (e.g., You're in your hotel room bed, already checked in, your luggage sitting by your side.)

@7: It's worth noting that she did have a health care proxy and still didn't get to see her spouse until it was too late. Based on this account and others I've read, I think she and her spouse had done all the things a gay couple is supposed to do so that this situation can not happen. That it did anyway exposes as a lie the contention that gay couples don't need marriage because they can get the same (hah!) benefits via a complicated set of legal documents.

(This is not even considering that the issue of why getting those benefits should be so much harder for one group of people than for another. Of course, it's not the same benefits at all. Also, does this sort of thing happen to committed heterosexual couples who aren't married? Or does the social worker do the right thing rather than the legally justified thing?)

Yes, I suppose had the couple been legally married, the hospital could have still denied her access. That, however, would have required those workers to be explicitly homophobic rather than to merely cower behind the shield of procrustean law.

(Oh, and thank you, Patrick, for reminding me. I just donated to Protect Maine Equality.)

BSD@25: This means that you agree that MTA effectively cutting off access to that data by refusing to negotiate in good faith is a problem?

Starting with the link Patrick provides, it's not hard to find at least one case where the MTA refused to negotiate pricing for access then accused developers, perfectly willing to pay for this information, of working in bad faith. In the case of StationStops, the MTA claimed that the disclaimer "Not Affiliated with the MTA" implied "an initial and ongoing relationship with the MTA" and claimed that "There is no such language!" that could actually disclaim such a relationship. (The blog at www.stationstops.com is interesting reading.)

If anything this seems to be a case where a developer is perfectly willing to give the MTA money, but the MTA won't take it. It doesn't seem fair to make the argument that the MTA deserves "a fair share of revenue made directly from its information" without also pointing out how they have approached doing this.

For the curious, Kathryn Cramer lists the table of contents at her web site:

http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2009/04/years-best-fantasy-9-table-of-contents.html

(Haven't found the link that lets me buy it as an ebook though.)

Someone posed smiling next to a hanging in effigy? Eww...

I apparently write a lot of comments that begin with "What I don't understand" so...

As near as I can tell, the main argument waged against the "public option" (can we please get a better name?) is that it will undercut the private medical insurance and provide everyone in the country with cheaper health care. The first time I heard it, I'd wondered if I simply misheard the radio.

Universal coverage. Cheaper coverage. How is this an argument against nationalized health insurance? (Note: Single PAYER, not single provider.)

More importantly, why is this argument working? (Support for some sort of single payer plan has been eroding, IIRC.)

JD Rhodes@25: In order to make your argument, you have to believe that there is no difference between standing with small sign while wearing a button at the side of the road, and engaging in loud, disruptive antics in the midst of a meeting that prevent discourse. Either that, or you have to believe that breathing is also an unsuitable thing to do because, after all, during the his administration, Bush breathed all the time.

Let's disregard the latter because it's silly and undoubtedly not what you mean. However, as to the former, holding a sign that expresses your point of view does not prevent others from expressing theirs. It is an act that engages dialogue. The loud disruptive antics expressly prevent others from expressing their points of view. It is an act that denies dialogue. That's enough to suggest, IMHO, that a response not suitable for one situation may be suitable for the other.

I really don't get it. I see it in all sorts of contexts, the notion that "I'm so right about this that not only am I not going to discuss this with you, I will actively prevent any rational discussion."

I mean, if your position is so unassailable, won't that become clear in the course of a rational discussion?
*sigh*

Patrick, you're absolutely right. This really puts things in perspective for me. I was shocked that Amazon deleted books off people's Kindles. I don't have any outrage over my on-going battles getting data on and off my iPhone except to think it ought to be much easier. I'm tasting the irony right along with you.

Serge@2: It's important to make a distinction between the Kindle model and ebooks in general. Webscription and O'Reilly, for example, both have models of commerce that are not the Kindle model. The problems with the Kindle model aren't always the problems with ebooks in general.

And also, what Charlie Stross said. (I don't own a Kindle, but I didn't even consider the iPhone Kindle app until I was convinced that the DRM wouldn't prevent me from reading the ebook where I wanted to read it.)

I hope all goes well and you make one giant leap towards scalability.

On the flip side, I've tried to point out that markets that have an "electronic-submissions only" policy are cutting out submissions from writers who don't have access to computers or the Internet. If "hardcopy-only" is unfair, isn't "electronic-only" just as unfair?

Isn't this kind of like saying because LeBron James gets millions of dollars a year to play basketball, everyone should get millions of dollars a year to play basketball? The quoted statement posits an unjustified equivalence between postal submission and electronic submission. (I mean, if there really were absolutely nothing that distinguished the two, then it wouldn't be a big deal for the Big 3 to support both.)

The most likely reason for the Big 3 not to take electronic slush submissions is inertia. "But the Big Three have a working system in place, and they already receive far more submissions than they can use" is right on the mark. That doesn't mean things will always stay that way though.

In any case, as someone pointed out at John Scalzi's blog, the upcoming F&SF workshop will, in effect, be a way to submit electronically to F&SF. If the workshop is successful, it could be one way for them to transition to also allowing electronic submissions. (The irony is that F&SF is already one of the faster genre markets.)

I don't think the Log Cabin Republicans can claim credit for Dick Cheney supporting same sex marriage. (I'm not saying they have, BTW. It's just the juxtaposition of clauses in #4 kind of implies they deserve credit. I mean, if the Log Cabin Republicans are utterly ineffectual, then they are baffling regardless of whether Dick Cheney supports same sex marriage or not.) I think Dick Cheney's daughter may have much more to do with his support.

Surely, there must a gay relative somewhere in Obama's family tree?

Hey, comments are back. Congrats.

On one hand, I'm thrilled. Another state allowing everyone the same right to marry the person he or she loves is a great thing.

(I've never been able to figure out why the self-professed "keep the government out of my life" libertarians I know have no qualms with the government deciding for them the gender of their spouses.)

On the other hand, I wonder what the explicit exemption for charitable or educational institutions means. If it just means that churches aren't required to perform same sex marriages, well, duh. They wouldn't have been anyway. If it means that, for example, a Catholic school can legally refuse to provide spousal benefits to married gay couples when they, as a matter of course, provide them to married straight couples, well, that still feels somewhat "separate, but equal."

Even the latter though is a great first step. We were never reaching full equality in one, giant leap, but in a series of smaller steps anyway. At some point, I hope we'll have the momentum to topple the Federal so-called "D"OMA.

(I do wonder if RI is feeling any peer pressure right now. I checked with Wikipedia. I hadn't realized that every state in the union has taken a side on this issue except RI and NM.)

The good guys win. Yay!

I hope this effects a policy that takes local conditions into account better.

Sarah S@44: Well, that answers my question. I left the movie wondering if anyone besides me got a serious leather bar vibe from the Romulans.

189@Niki: Thank you. I try my best. However, no one is ever reading that story. At least not my attempt at it. I'm sure "staring at a tree in the rain" is its own sub-genre. (In my defense, I was in high school at the time. It's now juvenalia. I've become better writer. Honest!)

What would make it stereotypically litfic is if that was all there is to the story. (e.g., the denoument is that he walk the five feet over to the shed.) It would then go on to miss whatever opportunities the image implied. You, of course, would take this image as a starting point and do something much more interesting with it than have him yell at the tree about his lost promise and broken dreams for several thousand words. (Yes, this was awfully precious coming from a teenager. Like I said, I've learned my lesson. I've also destroyed almost everything I'd written before the age of 35. Ok, some of that was by accident.)

In particular, it might be interesting if the rain really did wash away his sins. (i.e., another example of SF making the metaphorical literal.)

194@Micah:
My issue with LitFic is that, in my experience, the genre is specifically defined by being exclusive. If the writing is good AND designed to be something else, it must not be LitFic.

Based on the sentence Patrick quoted in the blog post, it reads more like LitFic will claim all good writing and disavow that it can also be something else. (e.g., the odd notion that 1984 and Brave New World are not SF, in addition to whatever else they might be.) I agree with you though that LitFic doesn't appear to like to share and that's not a good thing.

I do think LitFic is a handy moniker for a certain kind of writing. (With no implied value judgment.) What I object to is the notion that tagging a work as LitFic inherently means that it's good (or bad).

Micah@183: Using "literary" as a derogatory term is not any better than using "science fiction" as a derogatory term. Both cases typify an entire genre with a non-representative example.

It's not right when people limit "science fiction" to exploding spaceships. It's just as wrong to limit "literary" to stories about a middle aged man staring at an oak tree during a gentle rain, failing to decide whether he should seek shelter or let the rain wash away his sins.

Not everything tagged as "literary" is good writing merely for the sake of good writing. (This is not to discount reading good writing as a pleasure unto itself.) The reason books we consider science fiction sometimes get tagged as literary is because they are also examples of, by litfic standards, good writing.

My problem is with the implication that because a novel is tagged as one, it can't also be tagged as another. FWIW though, I see much more disavowal of the SF-ness of a novel than the disavowal of the literariness of one.

anthony@104: So, to be consistent, you ought to object to the disavowal of Brave New World and 1984 as science fiction, right?

Ugh. I hope you both feel better soon.

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