Linkee-poo came out even at the slots, called it a day

Still in California. Still way behind on studying. Only having as minute amount of fun.

Chuck Wendig talks about self publishing and reality assessments. Lots of good concepts in there, including a list of what not to do. Well, okay, more of, "these are not the droids you're looking for" kinds of tests. Not a 25 items list.  

Alma Alexander talks about how to treat your audience and what you can expect back. And I like to echo those thoughts, although not everybody feels the same. As is obvious from a lot of TV, some people like being spoon-fed their entertainment. It's been my experience that the more successful works of communications are the ones that trust the viewer to keep up. 

Jim Hines follows up on his earlier post with a post on those comments that you most often hear in response to being confronted with abusers of others. I lost another link that explained this a little more, but words have meaning. Jim gives you what the real meaning behind the script.

Vince gives some historical texts on how our "true Christian founders" of this country felt about Christmas. News to current conservatives, they started the War on Christmas, and they were very successful (for their time). And as an opposite side, I'll just remind us all that one of the reasons Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol was that businesses were demanding their employees work on Christmas, and that the observance of the holiday were diminishing. 

Tobias Buckell has a post on Denver voting to go green for energy. His thoughts pretty well nail the difference between green and carbon based forms of energy production, localized (community to point source) versus distance production. When the costs of producing electricity were enormous, it made more sense to have distance generation (it placed the generative capability  near their sources, and away from population centers). Now that the cost of energy is being reduced (and green sources are coming down), and generation is having a lighter footprint (see green), it makes more sense to localize energy production. And this is why "big" coal is fighting like hell. They can't make money that way.

Jim Wright nails the mental space Bachmann and her like dwell. This is one of the major things about the social conservative movement that drives me batty. BEcause to do what they really want, they require a much more invasive and controlling government. Of course for them, it won't seem like it because they were already going to behave a certain way. But for the rest of us, it would be like having to pass aTSA screening every thirty minutes. And that's on a good day.

On the fallacies of standardized testing. As someone who is going through consultant hell right at the moment, hey, education, welcome to the world we've been living in for two decades. Yes, it's bs. But it's MBA bs, which has its own shine on the shinola.  (Grokked from Jay Lake)