The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by tobias s buckell:

Andrew T: when the person is a 'public servant' and things like this are revealed, I think the people are right to demand that person be accountable to the job, as they have a right to be suspicious that this attitude has a solid chance of effecting public policy, freedoms, and sends a message to other politicians about how the polity feels about politicians (who work for the polity, after all).

If an employee physicall attacks their boss and calls them a racial epithet, I imagine no one would be surprised if they were fired. In this case, a part of the body of the polity who is the boss of this person was attacked, literally. The boss is responding. The boss wants this person fired.

The fact that middle management (Bay Buchanan) is pushing back against the boss now tells the polity something else.

Thanks Paul. The not going insane link is a fave, because even allies or people conducting anti-racism or anti-sexist work will either unintentionally slip up or will occasionally get misunderstood. I've gotten hit with the racist brush because I look white and write about people who speak with Caribbean dialects, and I use that guide myself. Apologies or just swallowing and realizing it's not about me has been a good life lesson, and made me a lot of friends to boot. John Strahan has become one of my biggest heros of late because of his actions, the apology post. What a class act.

So again, yeah, thanks.

Albatross #208: not using hate-oriented language is a good first step to avoiding 'misunderstandings.'

Next up, it's amazing how quick something like this evaporates when the accused, instead of going bats**t crazy and defending themselves at-all-costs, they just say 'I'm sorry' and move on.

I talk about the 'cost' of just changing the behavior that leads to such misunderstandings here , as I've been called out for dumb stuff.

But if people don't want to give up that behavior and language... well then... something is going on there. Not sure what, always, but something.

This is why Jonathan Strahan is a gentleman who everyone is curious to see what he'll bring to the table in his next anthology after it was pointed out he had almost no women in his latest. He wrote a blog apologizing after thinking about the points brought up in arguments, and he sounded genuine.

And this is why the people going crazy and trying to defend the use of sheet head are dedicated to holding the line.

There's a blog post I like called how not go insane when accused of racism. It's an awesome blog post, and it's totally right on about how to recover from this.

Well... I'm going to have to be getting more smores to toast by the heat of the flaming mess that'll come out of *that.* And here I'd put away my lawnchair for the summer too...

They not only make their point, but it's almost a piece of art in and of itself. I've had a snap from this up on my desktop background for a while now, it brings out the 'oh cool' kid side of me :-)

They also have the 'making of' video there, which is just as cool.

Spacedaily's main page has an article about the president announcing the space station was going to get dismantled and put on eBay that I blogged up at Futurismic :-)

Xopher, Brad's comment, which was awesome, btw, got lost when I deleted a duplicate entry. I was typing this up on my laptop right before leaving the lab, in a hurry to pick up my wife's car from the mechanics (starter motor failure), and between my natural state up befuddledness and the luck I usually get, did not choose to, oh say, save the post as a draft, or come back and do it later, I had to get *things accomplished.* I usually have a couple minutes to realize my mistake and issue mea culpas, but by the time I looked over the post, tried to put up a fixed one, doubled the entries, tried to undouble the entry and the two trackbacks, I was up that special creek I seem to have a motorboat for... and Brad's post came in and I laughed...

Here is what he said (like 10 seconds after I posted/double posted and panicked trying to fix my mistake):

Genesis 2:24 does say: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." But it is possible that you will live longer if you distinguish between PNH--Patrick Nielsen Hayden--and his wife TNH--Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

Ah well, another drink in honor of my technical incompetence should do the trick. Just don't tell my employers who *pay* me to advise them on tech, then the gig might be up :-)

-Tobias S. buckell

I'm sorry Teresa, if it makes things better you just misspelled my name. But I'm sorry, I was grabbing your post off of my RSS reader and got things really switched up, and then it double posted and things got weird, I was blogging on my way out of the door at work and I shouldn't do that.

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