During many political arguments, my proposed solutions to The Big Problems are often extremely long-term solutions, predicated on the notion that education can be the cornerstone of a civilization–if it takes as its goal the production of citizens trained in critical thinking, rather than the production of employable units. I am frequently mocked for my view of education as a… Read more →
Month: January 2005
Locus Recommended Books
Locus has published their list of recommended books for last year. I’m doing pretty well on the novels. Science Fiction Novels The Life of the World to Come, Kage Baker (Tor) (got it, read it) The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks (Orbit)(got it, read it) Exultant, Stephen Baxter (Gollancz; Del Rey) Spondulix, Paul Di Filippo (Cambrian)(planning to get it) Eastern Standard… Read more →
Media Objectivity in the 21st century
If you’ve been paying attention, then you will have noticed that Dan Gillmor recently stopped writing for the old media and has set out to explore the idea of ‘grassroots journalism‘ in this new century. One of the things he’s rethinking is the notion of objectivity in the media, and he has a lot of interesting thoughts. For example: Fairness… Read more →
Cintra Wilson Interview
I generally enjoy Cintra Wilson‘s pop culture columns on Salon–enough that I picked up her essay collection, A Massive Swelling–so I am looking forward to seeing how she does as a novelist. Descriptions I have read of her novel, Colors Insulting To Nature, make it sound like a farce about our culture’s obsession with fame, which sounds like it could… Read more →
Edmund Burke wishes he could have written like this
This post will be a bunch of quotations from a great man. Words that I think are very important in these times when we seem to be suffering from a very dangerous lack of outrage. “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against… Read more →
I am full of bile
Several readers of this blog have asked me why I haven’t said anything about the tsunami. For the record, the answer is that I simply have nothing to say that isn’t obvious to everyone, and that wouldn’t sound incredibly trite. The other answer is that I am full of bile–it is killing me to see Americans so apparently full of… Read more →
Confirmation
I have had to distance myself a little from U.S. politics, just to keep my sanity. Every time I think the administration has reached it’s nadir, they find ways to keep digging. So, now Condi is the Secretary of State, and with almost no real resistance. Sigh. At least Senator Dodd called her out a bit. (You can see the… Read more →
More book news
Two other book pieces caught my eye recently. First was another Guardian piece (I do love their book coverage), this time an extract from the new Haruki Murakami novel Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play… Read more →
Alan Moore
Look, Alan Moore is a genius. Hands down, he is the best writer who has ever worked for comics. Just From Hell, or V for Vendetta (my personal favourite), alone would make that first statement true, without looking at anything else. It’s not just comics though. His novel Voice Of The Fire is challenging, and rewarding. And the series of… Read more →
Not dead yet
I am not dead yet, but it’s been a week of three different blizzards, and a lot of work. Also, my wife turned 30 yesterday, which also took some time. 🙂 Regular posting to resume shortly. Read more →
Old habits die hard
Yanking still more (months old) content from the Guardian, is a piece on Shane McGowan. Shane MacGowan doesn’t remember much about leaving the Pogues, except this: “I was glad to get out alive.” The piece is a nice combination of “tales of excess” and “he’s not really like that”, which paints a bit of a picture. (Actually in the article… Read more →
Institutional Inertia
When Trish pointed out to me that a Spanish Cardinal had made a statement substantially changing the policy on condoms of the Catholic Church in Spain, I was momentarily shocked, and then cynical. Here’s a bit of the USA Today article on it (I don’t have a link handy for a more adult news source, but hit Google yourself if… Read more →
Cool content, bad format
So, I’ve been digging around on the “cult” section of the BBC’s website, and I’ve been finding all kinds of great stuff there. Today’s happy discovery is that they have a bunch of Sherlock Holmes stories up, written by some great British SF (and SF-ish) writers, including Jon Courtenay Grimwood (who I talked about earlier) and Paul Cornell (who wrote… Read more →
An important resource for travellers
So, in the course of confirming today that dans les vignes du Seigneur meant what I thought it meant (it does), I found The Alternative Dictionaries, which describes itself as ‘ a collection of various forms of “bad language” from many languages.’ So, if you ever needed to know how that in Hungarian the colloquial form of ‘go to hell’… Read more →
Emptying the hump of hate, Part II
I wanted to rant a bit about the grotesque spectacle of the Bush’s inauguration celebrations, but Dan Gilmour beat me to it: The spectacle of George W. Bush and his friends celebrating (Reuters) his election so expensively this week is one of those revealing moments in history. The announced spending of $40 million just on the parties is undoubtedly less… Read more →
