The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Christopher B. Wright:

#1 Lynn, I actually think of myself as an extremist. :)

I believe Romero is recognizing that the far right has been the group defining Centrism in the US since at least the Clinton administration, and their definition of a Centrist is "Someone who doesn't agree with us in principle but who lets us do whatever we want anyway."

I expect the "Centrist argument against dismantling Guantanimo" would go something like "yes, it's deplorable but it's been going on for 8 years and we need to take a step back and make sure we know what the ramifications are for suddenly reintroducing potential blah blah blah bah blah 9-11."

I'm a Libertarian. I'll be voting Democrat this year. Just like I did 4 years ago...

I vaguely recall Buckley actually flat-out admitting that his stance on the civil rights movement was wrong. However, I don't recall the specifics, and I suppose anything he wrote that appears contrite can be interpreted either way: either he actually did change his mind and feel remorse, or he was just repositioning himself in order to preserve his relevance in modern political discourse.

I don't know which it is. I'm told Governor Wallace eventually repudiated the segregationist stance he took that caused the mobilization of the National Guard, and asked for forgiveness from a few of the civil rights leaders of that time. I don't know if that was genuine either. But it's nice to think so.

#36 Randolph: Those are legitimate concerns, but I suspect there are solutions to most of them:

1. construct a foundation for the unit instead of just setting it on the ground. I suspect you'd have to do that anyway if you're planning to have plumbing, electricity and other such modern conveniences.

2. Insulate the walls, floor and ceiling. Again, if you're planning to add electrical outlets, you're probably not going to be putting in some kind of paneling in front of the container walls anyway, to cover up all those wires, and you'll probably want some kind of flooring anyway.

3. This is something that could be a more pressing concern, but just as steel rusts, wood rots -- and wood has been a staple part of house-building for a long time, and wood houses, if properly cared for, can last. I suspect if you were going to protect these units properly you would need to:

- have a faux roof put up with some kind of slope (or drainage)

- seal containers that are stacked on top of each other

- paint the exterior of the container (which is essentially how you protect the exterior of a wood house from bad weather, and as long as you use good paint and keep the containers covered in it I don't see why this wouldn't also protect them)

4. This is something you have to deal with in any kind of housing complex, I don't know why it would be any more or less of a problem just because of the material it is made of.

5. This I can't really answer with any kind of authority because I'm not an architect, but I suspect that while this is a legitimate concern, it doesn't mean that you can't punch holes in it at all... it just means you need to hire someone who knows what he or she is doing to tell you how to do it safely.

I agree with JamesK -- the Wheel of Time definately qualifies. I started reading it my first year in college, and I'm 36 now. After the fifth or sixth book the actual reading became a chore, with the exception of chapters dealing with one or two select characters, and after that I just kept reading in order to get to the ending... so it's actually felt much longer to me.

On the other hand, my frustration over that series did help me be a little more disciplined in my own writing, and I've actually finished stuff since then.

Wikipedia is a constant source of amusement for me, and provides a seemingly endless source of material to parody.

Patrick @43:

The argument that the public has the right to fair use and that the DMCA somehow locks them out of what is righfully theirs is, well, lame.

In some states there is a right to use the waterfront. This does not *automatically* create the right to travel through private property which stands between you and the waterfront. Such a right of way could be created by law, but it doesn't automatically spring into being once the right to use the waterfront is acknowledged.

But Patrick, this is a little beyond having to cut across private property to get to the waterfront.

This is closer to someone building a wall around the waterfront, then enclosing the waterfront in a dome, then charging people to use the proprietary Access Portal(TM) that was built just outside the waterfront grounds but is now the only way to get there, and limiting access to that PORTAL once per day/week/month.

None of which makes bypassing AACS any less illegal, but I find it very hard to feel any symapthy for them.

I am planning to register a few defensive patents.

Based on the title I thought maybe you were suggesting we get the DMCA sent away for a crime it didn't commit.

When I had my wisdom teeth out, I got the same message -- that it would be days of pain. My dentist (who was, oddly enough, the spitting image of Donald Sutherland, only with perfect teeth) did such a great job that I only felt sore for a few hours afterwards. I still had to stay off solid food for a few days, but there wasn't any real pain.

I took the next day off anyway. :)

Niall McAuley@210, I have to disagree. BRT's posts in the "Evil Overlord Applauds" thread that discussed the use of Monarchy in the Honorverse were pretty well received...

I think based on that discussion he made a few fundamentally incorrect assumptions about this discussion and then got carried away by Internet Madness...

Me, I'd always assumed that it was so that I could avoid finding myself blinking across a café table at someone whose formative literary experience was Atlas Shrugged or any of the Gor novels, trying to find something to say about the relative merits of Armageddon and fervently hoping that my cell phone might ring with an excuse to pay my bill and leave, conveniently forgetting to get the other person's contact info.

Now be fair. Would someone whose formative literary experience was Atlas Shrugged really be inclined to bring up the relative merits of Armageddon? ;)

Perhaps we should simply mail Mr. Romney books.

I have extra copies of All Hallows Eve and The Greater Trumps that I think I'm willing to part with.

#40 BRT:

I'm seeing a a specious argument here:

That somehow admitting you liked a novel which is considered "bad" also indicates a serious flaw in your mentality, ideology, character, etc.

I don't think the objection is to Romney "liking" the novel. I think the alarm is that Romney has declared it the bestest novel ever in the history of all space and time at quantum levels of brilliant.

At least, that's how I describe all my favorite things.

For example: my favorite movie is "A Boy and His Dog" -- which probably puts me in danger of Harlan Ellison tracking me down and gutting me like a fish, among other things, but compare me saying that to me saying that my favorite movie was a snuff film... not that I'm actually comparing Battlefield Earth to a snuff film, I'm just saying that yes, what you hold up as the best example of something in terms of art or entertainment can say something about you.

Hi Patrick,

(#34)

The Turner Diaries is an SF novel;

...

It is?

I've never read it, but everything I heard of it made it sound like it was aiming for the "thriller" genre, sort of a Tom Clancy with white linen outerwear kind of thing. I never thought of Clancy as SF.

Avram #23:

And "Asked about his favorite book, Mr. Romney cited the Bible." Really? The Bible? Not the Book of Mormon, or the Pearl of Great Price? The journalist really flubbed that one.

It's a legitimate answer for a Mormon. As far as I know the Mormons don't believe the Book of Mormon replaces the Bible, it simply extends it.

Adam #25:

SF as a genre is diminished by Battlefield Earth's inclusion in it.

I'll disagree with this. I don't think it's possible for a genre to be diminished by any single work. Author was neither the first nor the last author to tell that kind of story. I don't really see how the book affects the SF genre at all, to be honest -- Heinlein's later books do far more damage, in my opinion, because he was a much better author and his books were genuinely fun to read (up to a point at any rate).

#16 Adam -- er... yes. I actually only read the first book, and given your description of book 5 I don't feel inclined to revisit it.

You know, for a second I was going to say that I remembered reading that book when I was 15 or 16 and I vaguely remember thinking it was entertaining and funny... then I remembered that I wasn't thinking about "Battlefield Earth," I was thinking about "Mission Earth," which was really not the same book at all.

And I have to stress that my memories of "Mission Earth" are about two decades old.

Chris #130:

Am I being excessively touchy to judge fiction this way? I really don't think so. Portraying a system of government as working better than, in fact, it actually does work can actually mislead people who read more fiction than history (and there are many - including me, honestly).

I don't think it's possible to accurately portray ANY system of government while keeping the story interesting -- unless the focus of the story is the government itself. Any story set IN a particular government structure without being ABOUT the government structure is going to have to gloss over a lot...

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