Can somebody tell me how in the fuck this is any different than warlords in Somalia? Maybe the U.N. should send peacekeeping troops with those oil ships coming from Venezuela.
That makes us the last people on this planet who ought to be excused from having to think about whether there isn’t some resemblance between our own recent actions and those of the other regimes you’ve mentioned.
This is very true. All of what you said is very true. I will have to write something about this kind of thin in my own blog soon. Probably for the 4th of July.
There is something very similar, though not quite as treacherous, that occurs in the writing of the background information of a PhD disertation.
Didn't we have a longwinded discussion here a few weeks ago about how evil checklists are?
The Hobbit was the first "real" book I read. I think I was seven. Maybe eight. It certainly affected the way I've read everything since.
After reading it, I realized there was no reason I couldn't start asking my mom to buy me comics. (She said I couldn't have any until I could read them all by myself.) If I could read an almost 300 page book, there was no reason why I couldn't read books an order of magnitude smaller that had pictures in them. It was a very empowering moment in my life. I still remember the first comic I bought: it had Sasquatch smacking around the Thing with uprooted pine trees for no reason in particular. Unfortunately, I don't have it anymore.
I read Fortress of Solitude almost two years ago, and it just might be the best book I've read in the past two years.
And in reply to what CS said on his blog:
I just don't read or write things I don't like. I know what they are, and if someone asks me, I'll tell. No point in wasting the effort in coming up with a definition for them that I expect everyone else to follow.
ditto on what Charlie Stross said.
There's a time and place for taking all your pretty toys and puting them in a box. That time and place is not while you are playing with them.
I think I read about 7 of the ER Burroughs Martian books altogether, and not necessarily in order.
Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed so meaningful when I was thirteen. Alas...
So we have been assimilated. No worries here, as I'm easy to please. (Either that or I haven't been around long enough to get too picky.)
Marilee, I am sure you are right. People should have at least a rudimentary understanding of physical science to write believable science fiction. But they probably won't know that they fall into this category until somebody tells them.
-I have a hard time understanding why anybody interested in world building would feel it necessary to read a book on how to do it. But that's just me.
-I was flipping through some literary journals the other day, and I wondered to myself if anyone had ever attempted to write a code for randomly producing literary magazine fiction. I bet it could be done.
-My favorite analogy for enzymes is that they are the farmer holding the chickens neck before lopping its head off. I didn't make it up, but I use it in my classes.
He is taking the obvious and convoluting it to make it seem terribly profound. I would not guess this was intentional.
It comes off as a cheerleader saying "OMG, I am so mean to everyone" and the rest of the world is saying "thank you, miss obvious." Typical boomer hubris (no offense to all you boomers). In his rush to make ammends, he does the only thing he knows how_ mixes his metaphors_ which only trips him up and lands him, well, flat on his face.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 16 |
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