DaveKuzminski @ #93 - I'm hoping Someone at Making Light takes a whack at the Harlequin / Author Solutions deal.
Not that industry wide layoffs of talented staff could have anything to do with this sort of thing. Oh no. Not at all.
Anyhow, kudos to the NY Times for getting that review. I'm a proponent of mixed positive and negative reviews, and this proves why we ought to embrace the occasional harshly negative one.
According to oral history and research, many of the women who joined the WAC (Woman's Air Corps) during WWII were lesbians, and served despite a constant fight to keep them out.
If any of them are around, I'm sure they have something to say too.
Candle @ #15 - Having checked your posting history here, I guessed at ignorant goodwill and/or an intent to "see both sides", rather than bad intent. Apology accepted.
@candle #7 - my reading was that the social worker wasn't the one refusing to let her in, but was just telling her that this was how the laws were in Florida and he couldn't do anything about it.
Let's say you're right, and the social worker was just relaying an opinion on the law. Well, that opinion was incorrect. Nowhere in FL law does it say that hospitals are required to ignore durable power of attorney documents for same sex couples.
It may have been the policy of the hospital to ignore them, but that's not a state policy. The state may even allow for it, but it sure as hell doesn't mandate it.
@ # 20 -
Is this a Joke? What has Mr Obama ever done apart from giving great speeches around the world? My answer is NOTHING.
This is because you're uninformed. And frothing at the mouth. Have a hankie. Calm down.
Also, according to the Nobel Committee, they do give the prize in part as an incentive towards future actions in the service of world peace.
He pulled the plug on the missile shield program in Europe, an got Russia to back down, bringing them to the negotiating table with Iran.
I'm annoyed at people who say this is "nothing". It's an important step in anti-proliferation in two countries. Russia has a massive stockpile of nukes and has been increasingly aggressive since Bush kept pissing them off
That said, it is a "you're not Bush" award.
I'd be surprised if 75% of the commenters on either thread have actually had reasonable conversations with Muslims, much less actually visited a Muslim nation.
BB is very lightly moderated. If it were me, I'd restrict commenting to people who actually had a clue about Islam as it's practiced outside of Wahabi enclaves in the howling wilderness.
Islamophobia bugs the heck out of me. I do actually have issues with some Islamic lawmakers, and Sharia policy as it's enacted in some nations, but unlike the BB yammerheads, I actually know enough not to dismiss Islam (or religion in general) wholesale.
Instead, I'm not saying anything about those issues, because anything I do say gets lost in a storm of anti-Muslim bigotry, and I'd rather hold my tongue than give those jackasses ammunition.
As for the clothing issue, if a blog post about Hassidic male fashion restrictions went up, I doubt if the majority of the people posting in outrage over the Burquini would speak up.
I wonder if google ad sense should be informed. I see ads for his scams quite frequently. Google for 'how do i get published' and WritersLiteraryAgency.com shows up as one of the paid ad options.
@ David Dyer-Bennet - All he has to do is fleece some more suckers. It's jail time that would actually do something. Taking away money form someone who swindles away other people's money for a living just encourages him to be a more effective swindler.
counter counterpoint. Well. Sorta. Feel free to pick it apart some more.
Pat Greene - I do not like it, Sam-I-Am.
Wait, I remember how that story ended!
I'm tempted to mail the kids at the school a few copies of Little Brother.
Oh, and the issue here is that the school would probably expel any queer students who're closeted, but are "out" on private social network sites.
Avram @ 110 - Talk show hosts. The editorial departments of major newspapers let F/SF slip through on occasion, as long as no one actually say nice and insightful things about it (slight exaggeration, but you get my point). Lev Grossman himself has to argue with Time Magazine to get his reviews and commentary on F/SF books in. Even PW keeps the numbers of Q&A, signature reviews, etc. of genre authors down.
I'm not going to say that it's an organized conspiracy, or that it's a 100% exclusion effort, but there is pushback against inclusion of F/SF on a regular basis, no matter how "literary".
PNH @ # 50 - I actually do understand reviewing and criticism, and the shades and nuances thereof. I've read a reasonable amount of the stuff. I even know who James Wood is. What I was really asking is, do we really have to wander around apologizing for enjoying plot, just because James Wood and a few dozen other arch-aesthetes sniff at it? It's like being careful not to sing pop songs in the shower because some guy in the local alt-weekly is a music snob. That guy from the alt-weekly isn't lurking outside your bathroom door, and James Wood isn't in this comment thread.
I find it unremarkable that a few people hold an extreme, aestheticized view of literature--odds are, a few people always will. I find it quite remarkable that we should grant this small coterie such power to define the terms of discourse, to the extent that we inevitably have to argue with them before we can get down to just plain talking about what we like about stuff we've read. Even though they're not in the room. I want to say to so many of my friends, particularly in the SF world, "CALM DOWN, THOSE PEOPLE AREN'T HERE, THEY CAN'T HURT YOU ANY MORE."
How does that fit in with the various genre-unfriendly gatekeepers at major media outlets, who let "literature" past, but keep genre fiction from getting mentioned? From my perspective, it's not just the select group of academics that are the only issue people have, it's that the academics are a symptom of a wider lack of respect for genre fiction.
In regards to "utility", expecting literature to have utility to be worth talking about is like expecting painting to have utility to be worth talking about.
Which is (IMO) why a lot of modern art gets dissed, because it's very serious commentary on elements that are important to painters, who think about this shit all the time, whereas Thomas Kinkade gets stores in shopping malls. Certainly people like his art, but there's not much introspection in terms of who the artist is, his relation to the history of art, and so on.
If you think about art history and art theory, Kinkade is pretty boring. Likewise, if you think about writing as an art, and study it, Stephanie Meyers isn't going to hide much in her books to interest you.
I'm not sure, though, if we require the technical competency from our most popular writers as we do our most popular painters. Kinkade is technically brilliant, and I don't think Meyers is. I've always gotten the sense that some authors get away with clumsiness in story arc, poorly crafted dialog, and other crap that other authors don't because they threw in some formulaic pouty vampires who hit the teenage angst button at just the right angle. "Entrancing" is what you call it, yes?
PNH @ #7 - When you talk about how and why people read, do you mean people in specific (I read in bed or on the subway), people in general (The average American reads X books per year, The average Robert Jordan fan buys X other 'genre' books, etc.)
Or both? Regardless, they're nifty things to think about.
Terry @ 24 - It was her "laugh" that was the final straw in convincing me that she was actually some sort of humanform hell spawn. And thanks for saying to C. Wingate what I wanted to say, but was too tired to articulate.
I'm tired of people trying to present a "fair and balanced" reason to hold up a public health care option and looking for rationality among the dissenters. Either they don't like it because it involves taxes paying for someone poor getting health care, or not. Can we *please* stop trying to pretend that Republicans and blue dogs have any other agenda? It's all too much to deal with. I'm tired. I can't take confronting the lies anymore. They just keep piling up. It's like sweeping back the tide.
Anyhow, I'm glad to hear the bike accident recovery is going well.
Damn, Abi, the first article brought me to tears. I never, ever, want to go through what that poor woman at the end of the article went through, or put an family member through that.
There's a deep wrongness to spending one's last days doped up to prevent one from screaming. Pratchett has it right. That is *not* an endgame I will accept.
I watched the nitwit who created the "Death Panel" fear on John Stewart. While he's smart, he didn't address her main lie, which was that encouraging doctors to counsel elderly patients on end life care is in no way sinister. It's a good idea. And her fearmongering that a living will couldn't be overridden by someone who was able to say "y'know, I'd rather not die" was nauseating.
If you've got the stomach, you can watch here.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 60 |
| 2008 | 107 |
| 2007 | 90 |
| 2006 | 126 |
| 2005 | 101 |
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