We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer. —Hunter S. Thompson Read more →
Year: 2008
One Damned Thing Over And Over
(This entire post pinched from Andrew Wheeler’s always entertaining blog. I don’t normally do that, but it’s too good, and a link won’t do.) A great power sets its sights on a smaller, strange, and faraway land — an easy target, or so it would seem. Led first by a father and then, a decade later, by his son, this… Read more →
There’s not a lot of pop music with this inspiration
That’s the video for the World Party song Is It Like Today?. The reason it’s here: it’s explicitly inspired by, and intended to be a precis of, Bertrand Russell‘s History of Western Philosophy. Lyrics after the jump: Read more →
On Shortages, Mostly Food
I read a lot of news. I read magazines. I follow news blogs. I make a very concerted effort to keep up with what’s going on in the world, and to get the information from several perspectives. And yet somehow I’ve found myself thinking, quite frequently, over the last month that this whole “food shortage” thing somehow “snuck up” on… Read more →
A late thought for May Day
During the heyday of what was billed as the Reagan Revolution, sometimes as the New American Dawn, or the “unfettered free market,” I could discover no common cause among the several degrees of of rightist separation (conservative, neoconservative, libertarian, reactionary, and evangelical) other than the moral lesson invariably found in their one and only cautionary tale: money ennobles rich people,… Read more →
Sentences to meditate on
Jonathan Carroll‘s never-emptying cornucopia of awesome brings us this quote today: I live near the abyss. I hope to stay. —Theodore Roethke Yes, I quite like that. A little bit Nietzsche, a little bit Billy Joel. It, at least to me, says something about an artistic way to live. Actually, and this is probably sharing too much, this brings to… Read more →
Grateful Thursday
I am totally having a Grateful Dead day today, and I feel motivated to share with you all. Annotated Lyrics: Scarlet Begonias, Ripple, Uncle John’s Band, and Tennessee Jed. The other track, Me & My Uncle, is a cover. Read more →
Same As It Ever Was
I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought… Read more →
How I Feel Today
In which I embody the Internet as infinite recursor
So, Jeff VanderMeer, author of many things (including frightfully good stories about mushroom people) linked to my post below about pseudonyms. He’s gone with the “rather laugh than cry” route and has introduced a new Internet meme for book nerds: So, what’s your literary pen name? THIS IS THE OFFICIAL FORMULA (as created by, um, me): (1) Use the first… Read more →
Zing!
This is the bitchy, badly-kept secret of American culture, which everyone knows but we’re supposed to be too polite to mention in public (and anyone who really thinks that obviously doesn’t know much about Americans): wherever there’s money to be made, that’s where “culture” will go. Because there is no culture in America, not really. There is only media, and… Read more →
Ions played instead of notes
This is how things happen: First, author Sarah Monette mentions a LiveJournal that posts a poem every Monday. I follow this link and make a note to come back later and look for poets I am not familiar with. And as I start looking over the list the first thing that grabs me is a post of Thylias Moss’s poem… Read more →
The Next Slum?
The Next Slum? Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of… Read more →
Bookish Bits: A Miscellany
Check out PodCastle, a new podcast of readings from in the F/SF genre. They got my attention with their first reading, of Peter Beagle‘s Come Lady Death. There are several more stories there now, as well. More details on Anathem, the new Neal Stephenson. Looks to be another monster of a book. And, I’m thinking, we’re going to be seeing… Read more →
Bookish Bits: Pseudonyms
OK, I’m comfortable with the idea of pseudonyms for authors. Sure, when I was a kid and first ran into the concept (I think it was when someone told me that the Eric G. Iverson guy whose stories I liked in the digests had novels under another name) I was a little shocked, but I’m used to it now. Some… Read more →
