"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
-- James Madison
"There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1000 non-combatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission, on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a costly distortion in the American national consciousness."
Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton, May 1967
"If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.
"The rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.
"Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C."
from http://sighsofmylife.blogspot.com/
"Today, corporatism or neo-corporatism is used as a pejorative term in reference to perceived tendencies in politics for legislators and administrations to be influenced or dominated by the interests of business enterprises. The influence of other types of corporations, such as labor unions, is perceived to be relatively minor. In this view, government decisions are seen as being influenced strongly by which sorts of policies will lead to greater profits for favored companies. In this sense of the word, corporatism is also termed corporatocracy. If there is substantial military-corporate collaboration it is often called militarism or the military-industrial complex.
John Ralston Saul argues that most Western societies are best described as corporatist states, run by a small elite of professional and interest groups, that exclude political participation from the citizenry.
Critics of capitalism often argue that any form of capitalism would eventually devolve into corporatism, due to the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. A permutation of this term is corporate globalism.
from the Wikipedia entry on corporatism.
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do."
--Dale Carnegie
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Red/Blue, my ass!
This is just a quickie. The Red/Blue debate is nothing more than an us-or-them arguement, which, if you're paranoid enough, you could sayis put forth to keep us all Hatfield-and-McCoying so that we dont recognise the true bad guys.
Here is a map of voting results by county, shaded from red to blue depending on the percentage each way. As you can see, much of the country is rather purply. If you go to http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/ you can see a map that is warped to expand or shrink area according to population, and that map is even more startlingly purple.
Today's rant: Multi-Volume Novels!
Hold on a minute, let me adjust my tin-foil hat here...
OK.
I'm going to spend some time complaining about something that I'd imagine no one else has thought much about, or indeed will care about after I've thought about it for them. I'm talking about the current practice in the Science-Fiction/Fantasy publishing industry to produce huge, multi-volume stories that take years to unwind. Yeah, yeah, I know all that market system crap, the public buys it so it must be what it wants, blah, blah, blah. But if you like a certain author, and the only books s/he puts out are 500 pages long each and the whole tale takes 5 volumes to complete (5 volumes which take 10 years to finish and cost an average of $7.95, or more, each), what are you going to do? You're either going to go with their program, or you're going to give up on the author. Because much of what is published these days is Multi-Volume, both in adult and children's sci-fi/fantasy. Just look for yourself; even brand-new authors are releasing things that are "Book 1 of the Whatever Saga".
Now, my feeling, is that while it is very lucrative for both publishers and authors to create a long lasting story-line that people keep coming back to (see Harry Potter), in the long term this strategy may explode in their faces:
Scenario 1: Imagine if you will, someone getting three books into a five book series, then getting hit by a bus (or just plain quitting). Now you've got a bunch of readers who've shelled out 24 bucks (or more if it's an author who rates hardback) to get 60% of a story and who will never see their investment pay off. Oh sure, they'll understand the first time, and probably the second, but after that they'll start to get a bit cranky about it.
Scenario 2: Some people, myself included, get very anxious when their stories dont end. Take Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series: The first three books were seperate entities, each with a story arc that had a beginning, a middle, and, most importantly, an end. Then came book four, the One Tree. It had a beginning, and a middle, but then ended without actually ending! Agony! How many people will respond to this situation the way I did; when Donaldson started his Real Story series, I refused to read it until it was finished. For a writer with the stature of Donaldson, this may not be huge predicament. Even if his sales are halved as people await, he'll still sell a respectable number of books. This may not apply to authors who hover at the lower sales range. If half their readers hold off until completion, they may find themselves dropped (due to low sales) before they finish the series, and we're back to scenario 1 again.
Scenario 3: After experiencing scenario 1 or 2, the reader determines that he's sick of the whole business, and switches genres. I reached this point a couple years ago, and started reading "regular" fiction and, more recently, non-fiction. This is not to say that I no longer read sci-fi/fantasy. I do, lots (Terry Pratchett, anyone?). But I dont read it like I once did. Multiply me by the hundreds, or thousands, as statistically you ought to be able to do, and this cannot be good for the sci-fi/fantasy press, however good it may be for me (Charles Pellegrino, anyone?). Much as I may enjoy the Harry Potter books, I encourage sci-fi/fantasy authors out there everywhere to consider writing things one book at a time. Feel free to use the same characters again and again, 'cause I like that (Terry Pratchett, anyone, again?), but at the end of the book, END THE BOOK!
OK.
I'm going to spend some time complaining about something that I'd imagine no one else has thought much about, or indeed will care about after I've thought about it for them. I'm talking about the current practice in the Science-Fiction/Fantasy publishing industry to produce huge, multi-volume stories that take years to unwind. Yeah, yeah, I know all that market system crap, the public buys it so it must be what it wants, blah, blah, blah. But if you like a certain author, and the only books s/he puts out are 500 pages long each and the whole tale takes 5 volumes to complete (5 volumes which take 10 years to finish and cost an average of $7.95, or more, each), what are you going to do? You're either going to go with their program, or you're going to give up on the author. Because much of what is published these days is Multi-Volume, both in adult and children's sci-fi/fantasy. Just look for yourself; even brand-new authors are releasing things that are "Book 1 of the Whatever Saga".
Now, my feeling, is that while it is very lucrative for both publishers and authors to create a long lasting story-line that people keep coming back to (see Harry Potter), in the long term this strategy may explode in their faces:
Scenario 1: Imagine if you will, someone getting three books into a five book series, then getting hit by a bus (or just plain quitting). Now you've got a bunch of readers who've shelled out 24 bucks (or more if it's an author who rates hardback) to get 60% of a story and who will never see their investment pay off. Oh sure, they'll understand the first time, and probably the second, but after that they'll start to get a bit cranky about it.
Scenario 2: Some people, myself included, get very anxious when their stories dont end. Take Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series: The first three books were seperate entities, each with a story arc that had a beginning, a middle, and, most importantly, an end. Then came book four, the One Tree. It had a beginning, and a middle, but then ended without actually ending! Agony! How many people will respond to this situation the way I did; when Donaldson started his Real Story series, I refused to read it until it was finished. For a writer with the stature of Donaldson, this may not be huge predicament. Even if his sales are halved as people await, he'll still sell a respectable number of books. This may not apply to authors who hover at the lower sales range. If half their readers hold off until completion, they may find themselves dropped (due to low sales) before they finish the series, and we're back to scenario 1 again.
Scenario 3: After experiencing scenario 1 or 2, the reader determines that he's sick of the whole business, and switches genres. I reached this point a couple years ago, and started reading "regular" fiction and, more recently, non-fiction. This is not to say that I no longer read sci-fi/fantasy. I do, lots (Terry Pratchett, anyone?). But I dont read it like I once did. Multiply me by the hundreds, or thousands, as statistically you ought to be able to do, and this cannot be good for the sci-fi/fantasy press, however good it may be for me (Charles Pellegrino, anyone?). Much as I may enjoy the Harry Potter books, I encourage sci-fi/fantasy authors out there everywhere to consider writing things one book at a time. Feel free to use the same characters again and again, 'cause I like that (Terry Pratchett, anyone, again?), but at the end of the book, END THE BOOK!
Thursday, August 18, 2005
it's not plagerising, it's quoting
I just had to reprint this, 'cause it's so damn funny:
The Onion Is a Priceless National Treasure. It has the
latest bulletin from Kansas:
The Onion Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory: Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling. "Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
Burdett added: "Gravity--which is taught to our children as a law--is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force."... The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."
"We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said. Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics... gravity is a theory in crisis.... "Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."
hee, hee.
I got this from here: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/
The Onion Is a Priceless National Treasure. It has the
latest bulletin from Kansas:
The Onion Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory: Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling. "Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.
Burdett added: "Gravity--which is taught to our children as a law--is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force."... The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."
"We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said. Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics... gravity is a theory in crisis.... "Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."
hee, hee.
I got this from here: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Argh
Help!
I've been reading a bunch of political stuff lately. It's not having a good effect on my psyche at all. It's making me angry and depressed. It's making my wife crazy because, as a teacher at the start of the school year, she doesnt want to think about politics right now. But look at this site:
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm
Okay, "fascism" might (might) be a bit strong. So ignore that part. Ignore the 14 different headings. But look at the individual items underneath them. At least one of these things should make you gasp with outrage. A section of a military funding bill which places decisions by the Director of Homeland Security outside of judicial review?! Programmers being asked by Legislators to create programs to subvert electronic voting machines?! Restrictions on who and what can be published IN AMERICA?!!!
Worst of all is the appearance of voting fraud. Now, nothing has been proven. That's certainly what republicans will say, and they would be correct. But, proof or not, if it's possible, someone is going to do it. And if you can arrange a way to take a vote that cannot be subverted electronically (for instance, by not using electronics), then it should be done that way. Voting is too important to do in ANY way that can be subverted. Maybe it'll take longer to count. Maybe it will take longer to tabulate. Maybe it ought to. What's the big hurry anyway? No one will take office for another two months anyway.
Once upon a time, there was this idea that those government officials who served us should avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Nowadays, the Republicans fall back on the very sophistry they condemned their arch-nemisis Bill Clinton for. Carl Rove didnt leak anyone's name, specifically. Of course, he did say that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson was an agent for the CIA, but that's not saying her name. But unlike Clinton, Rove wasnt engaging in a private sexual tryst, he was selling out an agent of the CIA as political payback for disagreement with the administration line. Illegal or not, that kind of thing doesnt just appear improper, it wears a big, red T-shirt that says IMPROPER BEHAVIOR while jumping up and down, waving red flags in both hands, and yelling "Look at Me! Look at Me!" into a stadium-sized concert-quality amplification system.
Now we have what looks a lot like several cases of voting impropriety. Some of them involving two presidential elections. Regardless of what really happened, maybe we need to find a different way of doing it. Or, even better, an old way of doing it. Names next to boxes, X marks the spot, counting by both a Democrat and a Republican, side by side. No scanners; no chads; no silent, invisible, manipulable electronic devices. Just People.
I've been reading a bunch of political stuff lately. It's not having a good effect on my psyche at all. It's making me angry and depressed. It's making my wife crazy because, as a teacher at the start of the school year, she doesnt want to think about politics right now. But look at this site:
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm
Okay, "fascism" might (might) be a bit strong. So ignore that part. Ignore the 14 different headings. But look at the individual items underneath them. At least one of these things should make you gasp with outrage. A section of a military funding bill which places decisions by the Director of Homeland Security outside of judicial review?! Programmers being asked by Legislators to create programs to subvert electronic voting machines?! Restrictions on who and what can be published IN AMERICA?!!!
Worst of all is the appearance of voting fraud. Now, nothing has been proven. That's certainly what republicans will say, and they would be correct. But, proof or not, if it's possible, someone is going to do it. And if you can arrange a way to take a vote that cannot be subverted electronically (for instance, by not using electronics), then it should be done that way. Voting is too important to do in ANY way that can be subverted. Maybe it'll take longer to count. Maybe it will take longer to tabulate. Maybe it ought to. What's the big hurry anyway? No one will take office for another two months anyway.
Once upon a time, there was this idea that those government officials who served us should avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Nowadays, the Republicans fall back on the very sophistry they condemned their arch-nemisis Bill Clinton for. Carl Rove didnt leak anyone's name, specifically. Of course, he did say that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson was an agent for the CIA, but that's not saying her name. But unlike Clinton, Rove wasnt engaging in a private sexual tryst, he was selling out an agent of the CIA as political payback for disagreement with the administration line. Illegal or not, that kind of thing doesnt just appear improper, it wears a big, red T-shirt that says IMPROPER BEHAVIOR while jumping up and down, waving red flags in both hands, and yelling "Look at Me! Look at Me!" into a stadium-sized concert-quality amplification system.
Now we have what looks a lot like several cases of voting impropriety. Some of them involving two presidential elections. Regardless of what really happened, maybe we need to find a different way of doing it. Or, even better, an old way of doing it. Names next to boxes, X marks the spot, counting by both a Democrat and a Republican, side by side. No scanners; no chads; no silent, invisible, manipulable electronic devices. Just People.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Duh!
Well, okay, I feel pretty stupid. Last night I posted a reply on David Brin's (author of Startide Rising and The Postman) blogsite (http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/). It was a response to a comment made by someone about political parties and marginalization of moderates by party extremists. Unfortunately, most of the comments that had been made were centered around a debate about Feudalism (pyramid-shaped socio-economic dispersal) versus what I'll call "Enlightened Society" (diamond-shape socio-economic dispersal). Primary to that debate was an arguement centering on the definitions of Feudal and Tribal which seemed to be as much confusion over terms as it was disagreement over philosphy. (English is a huge, messy language, and the problem with having multiple words that "mean the same thing" is that they never do, not really. There are always shades of meaning: to arouse someones ire is not necessarily to make them mad, just because they're mad doesnt mean they're angry, and they can be angry without being furious.)
Anyway, while my response was to a statement made by another commenter (commenter?), and actually fit fairly well into Dr. Brin's original posting (http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2005/08/emotional-roots-for-hypocricies-of.html#comments) it didnt really fit at all into the main body of the discussion going on there. To make matters worse, I made a suggestion that in retrospect looks a lot like sucking up to Dr. Brin. Why do I care? Why do I care? I dont know, I guess it's because I respect the people posting the responses as much as I respect Brin's site. I have no interest in lowering the tone of the discussion, and, by god, I'd hoped to be able to maybe even join in on a discussion that had nothing to do with printing, sports, potties, or the whoring of myself to satisfy the stupidity of our clients.
So, Do I Let It Get Me Down? 'Course not. I shall Bravely Carry On.
Buuuh.
Anyway, while my response was to a statement made by another commenter (commenter?), and actually fit fairly well into Dr. Brin's original posting (http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2005/08/emotional-roots-for-hypocricies-of.html#comments) it didnt really fit at all into the main body of the discussion going on there. To make matters worse, I made a suggestion that in retrospect looks a lot like sucking up to Dr. Brin. Why do I care? Why do I care? I dont know, I guess it's because I respect the people posting the responses as much as I respect Brin's site. I have no interest in lowering the tone of the discussion, and, by god, I'd hoped to be able to maybe even join in on a discussion that had nothing to do with printing, sports, potties, or the whoring of myself to satisfy the stupidity of our clients.
So, Do I Let It Get Me Down? 'Course not. I shall Bravely Carry On.
Buuuh.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
addendum
I dont normally like to go on about things, but this Intelligent Design thing is really bugging me. When I first heard it on NPR, I had to call my wife, I was so stunned. The "Education President", coming out in favor of, well, let's call a spade a spade, Creationism in the schools! I thought, oh boy, I cant wait to read the articles on this one. But days later, nothing. Granted, I wasnt looking real hard. A quick search (just now) revealed a lot of articles online. But my local paper was silent on the issue. Okay, okay, it is the Dallas Morning News, whose primary interests involve whoring for the local business community and power brokers, but you'ld think it'd rate something. Same with various web homepages. Bill Maher taked about it on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, John Stewart poked at it on the Daily Show, but here in Big D we cant even get one appalled letter to the editor. Sad, really sad. And scary that the man making this suggestion is the same man who WILL BE CHOOSING OUR NEW CHIEF JUSTICE SOME DAY!!!
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Hello! A little common sense, please!
Okay, I first heard about this the other day on NPR. In vain I searched the news for other word of it. George Bush, the leader of our country, made the statement that he'd like to see intelligent design taught in the schools of America. Intelligent Design! In, presumably, SCIENCE class.
There should have been outrage, there should have been letters, there should have at least been a small piece on page 6 under the national news items. But, nothing!
Let me be perfectly clear here: Intelligent Design IS NOT SCIENCE! Philosophy, sure, it's philosophy, and if the President would like to add mandatory philosophy classes to the school curriculum under a revision of NO Child Left Behind, that'd be fine. But it's not science, and here's why - How do you create an experiment that tests for the Intelligence? I mean, science searches for proof or evidence, and despite millenia of theory and arguement, no one has come up for any better proof of a Great Intelligence than FAITH. And while faith is fine for Philosophy, or Religion, or Morality, or Cooking, or Child-Rearing, it is no good for Science.
There should have been outrage, there should have been letters, there should have at least been a small piece on page 6 under the national news items. But, nothing!
Let me be perfectly clear here: Intelligent Design IS NOT SCIENCE! Philosophy, sure, it's philosophy, and if the President would like to add mandatory philosophy classes to the school curriculum under a revision of NO Child Left Behind, that'd be fine. But it's not science, and here's why - How do you create an experiment that tests for the Intelligence? I mean, science searches for proof or evidence, and despite millenia of theory and arguement, no one has come up for any better proof of a Great Intelligence than FAITH. And while faith is fine for Philosophy, or Religion, or Morality, or Cooking, or Child-Rearing, it is no good for Science.
Monday, May 30, 2005
woo woo back to the well
I started this thing, what, a week ago. The first post was a nothing, then a week of silence, and now this, which will be a nothing also. I am, quite frankly, astonished at how little I have to say. I knew my life was pretty dull, but I thought it was more interesting than this. I suppose it could be intimidation; this is kind of out there, anyone could read it (not that anyone will).
No, just dont have anything to say. Sad, really.
No, just dont have anything to say. Sad, really.
Monday, May 23, 2005
My first time
Hello.
Welcome to my blog.
It blog will probably be a combination diary and letter to my friends. When I was young and had lots of time on my hands (not that I was aware of this), I used to write these ungodly huge letters to my friends. They rarely responded in kind, but I didnt really care. They were as much a diary, or a piece of artwork as anything. Then I became busier or something, and stopped writing those huge things, and somehow writing a little one seemed... boring.
I never kept a diary, though. Only letters.
At this point I dont really know what to expect. Venting, perhaps?
We'll see.
Stay tuned
Welcome to my blog.
It blog will probably be a combination diary and letter to my friends. When I was young and had lots of time on my hands (not that I was aware of this), I used to write these ungodly huge letters to my friends. They rarely responded in kind, but I didnt really care. They were as much a diary, or a piece of artwork as anything. Then I became busier or something, and stopped writing those huge things, and somehow writing a little one seemed... boring.
I never kept a diary, though. Only letters.
At this point I dont really know what to expect. Venting, perhaps?
We'll see.
Stay tuned
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
