Month: May 2015

Family rituals

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by liberal japonicus When my brother and I were growing up, every New Year's morning, we would be given a book by my mom. As happens, as I got older, it was harder to keep up with my tastes, but there were a couple of times where the book I got was spot on. I … Read more

start your weekend with a laugh…

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by russell Among the things for which I regularly give thanks is the Gloucester Clam, a humorous and irreverent online rag, published just up the coast by our friends across the bridge. Today's slightly NSFW offering brings the musings of Ken M, king of the comment section trolls. It made me laugh until green tea … Read more

Problems with the Hugo Nominations for Pro and Fan Artist

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by Doctor Science

I gave up trying to read the Rabid Puppy[1] nominations in the Hugo Awards story and (hawk, spit) Related Works categories, and went over to look at the two art categories: Best Professional Artist, and Best Fan Artist.

We Hugo voters get a packet of representative works from each artist, supposedly. The Worldcon Constitution states that:

In the Best Professional Artist category, the acceptance should include citations of at least three (3) works first published in the eligible year

— and images or links are normally part of the packet.

As I used Windows Explorer to scan through the Artist packets, I noticed that a number of the images had surprising time-stamps:

Windows-info-marked

This is “Neverborn”, in Nick Greenwood‘s packet — but the “Date taken” (because Windows assumes you’re managing photos) is 2008. Greenwood is a Sad/Rabid Puppy nominee.

I’m cutting here for Hugo Awards Inside-Baseball, and many images.

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Is there ‘bottomless buckets’ for popcorn?

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by liberal japonicus Cause if there are, you definitely want to have one for this: Swiss authorities conducted an extraordinary early-morning operation here Wednesday to arrest several top soccer officials and extradite them to the United States on federal corruption charges. As leaders of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, gathered for their annual meeting, more … Read more

What does “one person, one vote” mean anyway?

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by Ugh Today teh SCOTUS granted cert in a case that may address the question of how to measure when the Constitutional standard of "one person, one vote" for drawing Congressional districts is satisfied.  (some SCOTUSblog coverage here) The "one person, one vote" standard stems from Reynolds v. Sims, striking down unequally populated Congressional districts … Read more

Pure invention

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by liberal japonicus The title is a shout out to Oscar Wilde, who wrote “The whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.” This article “Is Japan becoming extinct?” may prove him right. Two grafs: After years of paying limited attention to academic and media warnings … Read more

Appliancing myself

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by Doctor Science Ugh, we’re at the point in the kitchen-design process where we have to pick appliances. We need a new fridge, probably a bottom-freezer, a dual-fuel range (stove-top+oven), and a dishwasher. Our kitchen designer doesn’t do appliances much, she hands you off to an agent she works with at one of the two … Read more

The Demolished Puppy

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by Doctor Science

Last week, before I went on my road trip, the ongoing Hugo Awards wank led to the single most surreal conversation of my internet career — which goes back to about 1990, years before the World Wide Web even existed, so that’s a *lot* of surreality.

The setting: An Account of Juliette Wade’s Withdrawal from Sad Puppies 3, at File770.

Background: Juliette Wade‘s story “Mind Locker” was on the Sad Puppies 3 slate when Brad Torgersen first announced it, but she quickly asked for her story to be removed, and it was. There’ve been all kinds of rumors about how she got on the slate and why she wanted off.

Summary: Wade recounted how she was asked to be on the slate and why she withdrew. Torgersen commented that she did so because she was afraid of SJWs, and explained that this was a widespread problem. Wade said he was putting words in her mouth, and never to do so again. She reiterated that she withdrew because she was angry with him. Torgersen said he was sad and hurt by her reaction. Even when asked repeatedly, neither Torgersen nor his supporters in the conversation ever acknowledged that he’d put words in Wade’s mouth, much less apologized for it.

The surreality was seeing Torgersen re-write someone’s motives to their face, while people were watching. It’s always difficult to get a real sense of social atmosphere over the internet, but it seemed to me that I was watching Torgersen’s reputation sink before my eyes, in real time. It certainly happened for me.

Details, and spoilers for Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, under the cut.

DemolishedManCover

This is the cover of the Signet edition, published in 1959. Notice how it promotes the book as “prize-winning” — even though the Hugos had no track record at all when The Demolished Man won the very first Best Novel award.

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Synergy

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by wj Synergy can be defined as the interaction of two inputs to produce a greater impact than either alone. Or, to put it another way, as two phenomena which reinforce each other. Earlier this week, there was a Conversation on Poverty panel discussion at Georgetown University. It included religious leaders, who seem to be … Read more