Month: June 2014

Hobby Lobby and SCOTUS Thread

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by Ugh The glorious U.S. Supreme Court will issue its decision in the Hobby Lobby case this morning around 10am.  SCOTUSblog will have live coverage. Hard to call this one.  I can see 5-4 for the Hobby Lobby, or 5-4, maybe even 6-3 for the other side.  More likely, given the various issues, it will … Read more

Hugo Awards voting: Novelette

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by Doctor Science

I’ve already reviewed the short story nominees, so here are the novelettes (between 7,500 and 17,500 words). They are listed in the order in which I read them, so you can more easily play along at home.

My opinions and detailed spoilers after the cut.

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Vietnam, the Cold War and the US disaster in Iraq

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by Doctor Science

So I think it’s now clear to everybody except Dick Cheney that the Iraq War was a mistake, and the US effectively lost. It was all for nothing, or at least nothing good.

I protested the war when it was being launched, for reasons both moral (it’s wrong!) and realistic (never get involved in a land war in Asia!). For all my realism, I didn’t expect the war to go as poorly as it actually did — because I assumed the US military would go in with, ya know, a plan for the post-war period.

I’m now starting to think that the lack of post-war planning wasn’t specific to Iraq or the Bush Administration, but reflects pervasive problems in US military culture coming out of Vietnam and the Cold War.

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Your Cochran-McDaniel thread

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by liberal japonicus As a former son of the Magnolia state, the fight between Cochran and McDaniel has been filling up my facebook news feed. If you've not heard, Democratic African-American voters basically pulled Thad's bacon out of the fire. The evidence is in the maps and numbers. Turnout was up statewide compared with the … Read more

What Teen Wolf has taught me about the TV industry

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by Doctor Science

As I’ve confessed before, I’m a fan of the MTV series Teen Wolf. Perhaps I should say I’m a fan of the Teen Wolf fandom, because the show itself has not improved since my last despairing post about it here.

Season 4 began last night, and I’ll mostly be following it only by proxy, via recaps and gifsets, not by actually watching (spoilers are OK in comments). This highly unscientific poll at hollywoodlife.com suggests I am not alone:

Teen-wolf-poll

Besides fanfic, discussing and thinking about various problems with Teen Wolf has taught me some things about the TV industry in general. Especially how little (ad-financed) TV actually care about telling a *story*, compared to having a series of not-necessarily-connected emotional scenes. Kind of like ads, in fact.

Edited: to give credit to specific fans for quoted material, with their permission.

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Hugo Awards voting: Short Story

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by Doctor Science

The shenanigans surrounding the Hugo Awards Nominations this year inspired me to buy a voting membership, which includes ebook versions of most of the nominees. Here’s the Short Story list in the order I read them, with links to online versions so you can play along at home:

Until I did this, I hadn’t consciously realized how little pro short fiction I’ve read in the last 20 years, while I’ve been reading not just buckets but oceans of fan fiction. So I automatically read these short stories as though they’re recommended fics from a fandom where I don’t know the source.

Thorough spoilers below the cut.

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Japanese news story open thread

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by liberal japonicus This story is kind of big here. Senior Japanese politicians have urged the Tokyo city government to "clean up its act" after an assemblywoman was subjected to sexist abuse during a debate on support for childrearing. The incident drew criticism from across the political spectrum after unidentified male assembly members, all thought … Read more

My Dad and the superhero

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by Doctor Science

Captain America (Steve Rogers) is a comic-book and now -movie superhero and my father isn’t. But it turns out that they have a lot in common:

Steve Rogers My Dad
father killed in WWI father injured in WWI
mother Irish immigrant mother Irish immigrant
born 1918 born 1927
grew up in Brooklyn grew up in Brooklyn
Catholic, duh Catholic, duh
mom worked while alive mom always worked, sometimes as sole breadwinner
lived in poverty (orphanage in some versions) lived in poverty
exceptionally small for his age exceptionally small for his age
rejected by military as unfit initially rejected by military as unfit
got in via super-serum got in via eating 5 lbs bananas to make weight requirement

Many of my e-friends have been writing fanfiction set back in Steve Rogers’ pre-super-serum period, and they’re always looking for details of daily life back then — especially about the daily life of poor people, which is rarely recorded from their own POV.

I realized I have a special resource: I can still ask my Dad! So I made a tumblr, A Hero Grows in Brooklyn, and have started to put up posts with his replies to people’s questions.

I’m not going to re-post all the entries here because some of them are rather long, but here are links and excerpts:

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Geopolitical thoughts

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by liberal japonicus Hate to pull you all away from something as world shattering as the IRS and their backup policies, but as I wrote last year, I went to Bishkek to do some teacher training and I'm headed back this year. Amazing country, and this article explains some of the fascinating undercurrents involved. One … Read more

and the wheels come off….

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by russell In Iraq, that is. A Sunni militia has taken a very large chunk of northern Iraq, and is currently (as in now) approaching Baghdad.  The Iraqi army apparently ran away. The Sunnis appear to want to establish an Islamic state, and appear to be aligned with similar militias in Syria.  This makes nobody … Read more