James White’s Sector General series should be required reading for ANYONE assigned to first contact missions. Note in the first paragraph below (from Alien Emergencies), the inclusion of specialists in communications, philosophy, and psychology. Note the exclusion of specialists in any of the hard sciences. And the military. (Note also, the more effective way.) “The …
Category: uncategorized
Jun 20
Everything turned into entertainment
“Look at the world around you, David. What do you see? An endless theme part, with everything turned into entertainment. Science, politics, education–they’re so many fairground rides. Sadly, people are happy to buy their tickets and climb aboard.” The Millennium People, J. G. Ballard
May 17
Mimicry?
Read mention in a Lionel Shriver novel (The Motion of the Body through Space) about “white readers [the main, white, character read for audiobooks] pretending to talk like [members of] marginalized communities is ‘mimicry’ and … cultural appropriation” (p31). But I can’t help thinking that if she were not to use an accent other than …
Apr 09
Invisible Women, Caroline Criado Perez
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men is a must-read. (And although she soft-pedals this, surely the persistent failure to consider women is evidence of what they think of us: we’re unimportant, we’re not worth consideration. Or perhaps it’s simply evidence of their persistent failure to consider anyone but themselves. Either way …
Feb 20
The No. 1 Cause of Climate Change the Media Don’t Mention
The No. 1 Cause of Climate Change the Media Don’t Mention another great piece by Lee Camp here.
Feb 05
Trump’s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes, and No One Is Talking About It
Trump’s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes, and No One Is Talking About It by Lee Camp – read the whole article here.
Oct 23
On advertising (again)
Advertising has gained such phenomenal power, it’s now allowed pretty much everywhere. And because it’s allowed pretty much everywhere, it has gained phenomenal power. In fact, it has almost single-handedly destroyed the concept of public space because of its invasion of said public space with constant and loudly-proclaimed messages intended for private gain (not for …
Oct 21
Trying to figure out people’s actions or thinking — banned on Reddit? WTF.
So in addition to all the radfem censorship on reddit … I posted the following on the AskMen subreddit: Why do men rape? That’s my question. Seriously. Why do men rape? I just wrote a novel answering that question, Impact, but I’d like to hear from men. (And perhaps should’ve posted here BEFORE I wrote …
Sep 26
from The Wine of Violence, James Morrow
“On Earth, where his remotest forebears lived, a person could be indisputably responsible for the deaths of thousands and still go down in the history books as some sort of great hero. … Why, he wanted to know, were the names of Samson, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Ulysses S. Grant, and Julius Caesar not obscenities, …
Sep 07
Elizabeth May, Losing Confidence
“If I were inventing democracy from scratch, I would not have invented political parties” (p17). Yes! “Mindless partisanship insists on a team mentality. My team versus your team …” (p17). “Decisions are made on the basis of public opinion research far more than on the basis of policy analysis by the civil service” (p75). Yeah, …
fiction
