A little on the history, economic punditry, and overzealous press releases of Borders, B&N and all the rest with a little on e-readers.
In relation to the link on Neil Gaiman's answer to the advice of rewriting, now comes Chuck Wendig with a little more exposition on how one can accomplish the rewrite.
The Writing Excuses Retreat Scholarship is still open. Get in on the ground floor.
Dr. Doyle with some good tips on handwaving. When I do my handwaving, I prefer the "Queen's Wave" methodology.
John Joseph Adams has updated his article on attending writing workshops. Worth the time to both read and attend. (Grokked from Tor.com)
John Scalzi discusses the idea of "selling out." Sigh. As a professional graphic designer I've always been accused of selling out. As John says, if making money is part of the plan, it isn't selling out. For writing, if you don't think I've had the idea of making money with writing stories and novels, well I must not have talked about it lately, but if I made a metric buttload of money from writing popular novels that I want to write, hey, that's the dream. I do know some writers who have taken the deals and wrote books for packagers. And you know what, it's a job. Most have not made a name for themselves, at least not yet. So it's not like they're trading on their names (actually most of them published under other people's names or pseudonymously). Current popular musicians actually do "commercialized" versions of their songs while still in the studio. I write this blog for the love of it. And I have thought about serializing my novel here, but I'm still hoping to sell it for money. Because money affords me the two luxuries I've come to know and enjoy: eating and sleeping indoors.
Why heckling is still terrible no matter what idiot pundits think it ads to the act. You know what's even better, when a comic losses their train of thought mid act and then has to find they way back to the routine. That's hilarious. Wait, no it's not. That's scrambling, and I didn't pay for that. Saying that heckling ads to comedic acts is like thanking that waitperson for spitting on your hamburger because their weed inflected spittle added to the taste. Nah, I don't think so.
The Davis Happy Meal Project. While the tagline is "nothing has changed" it looks to me like a little dehydration has occurred, but you would expect that. However I will pass on the thoughts of a nutritional scientist who said, "If it doesn't rot, you really don't want to be putting it in your body." Now, if this had been sealed in a hermetic environment, sure I can see it go for a while. In the regular environment, well this will creep you out if you haven't learned it yet, is literally crawling with bacteria including some floating in the air. At the very least you would expect yeast spores to find their way to the surface and grow there. But if microbes won't grow on it, there's a good portion of your digestion that requires microbial reaction. Also, in case you didn't know this, McDonalds' food is highly engineered. This is just an experiment showing how much it has been transformed. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
You know that plan to arm teachers as way of defending schools in case of shooters? Yeah, about that. While it looks like a situation that was defused, note that the call that lead to the teacher's involuntary commitment, a restraining order from the spouse, etc all stemmed from neighbors calling into police when they saw him carry an AR15 to his car, not from the coworkers who felt threatened by his email and Facebook postings (although I'm sure that with the police being notified of those, when a neighbor said, "Hey, I saw him put a rifle in his car" they sent the car out quickly). (Pointed to by Dan)
Fred Clark on the re-rise of the company town, now with Church. I. Just. Wow. Sometime the audacity of people's claims leave me speechless because of their brazenness and stupidity.
Isn't there something about forgiving us our debts? Oh wait, that's right, Catholics say "trespasses." It's only the Protestants that have the whole "money" thing going on. That's an article on the Swiss Court telling the Church that a debt incurred over 600 years ago is null and void after the Swiss had passed new laws regarding lending in the 1800s. There's also something about "unto the 7th generation", which I think is 140 or so years. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
So, a court finally tells a student that no, the RFID school ID badge isn't the Mark of the Beast. This also fails the logic test. Okay, let's say for the moment that the ID is the Mark of the Beast(which it doesn't match the description, but, hey, it's not like the preachers spewing this stuff actually read the Bible either), that makes the Beast either the Northside Independent School District, the State of Texas, the Department of Education, or the USA Federal Government. In that case, by staying in the school system, as a student, you're already a part of the Beast (if you wish to envision it as an organization). You're already tainted and doomed to the fire. So I'm not seeing where just getting out of wearing the ID badge is any improvement on the situation. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
"Yet such a move would almost certainly be widely seen as an audacious display of ingratitude." Gee, ya think? So, AIG shareholders are suing the US Government because as a part of the bailout they feel they got shafted. And since the majority (private) holder is the one bringing the case (in what sounds like sour grapes motivation to me) the AIG Board needs to decide if they're going in too or if they expose themselves to a shareholder suit. Yeah. Okay, well, IANAL, but I really don't see their case here and agree with the top level reasoning of the NY judge who dismissed it. But that doesn't indemnify the Board of AIG. See it wasn't only the "bailout" money to AIG (which then flowed to other companies to settle their credit default swaps), the FED has also been buying up those "Toxic Assets" to get them out of the economy. So, tell me again why we don't need even more oversight on these companies?
Not content to show ignorance on an evolutionary scale with denying evolution, the age of the universe and global climate change, apparently conservatives have a problem with Einstein. Including reason #16, "The action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54, Matthew 15:28, and Matthew 27:51." But in their world, Star Trek is one of the greatest, conservative TV shows. I'm going to paraphrase Mr. Universe here by saying, "Can't stop the stupid, Mal." (Pointed to by John)
To deal with climate change in Australia, they've resorted to opening a new box of crayons. Their colored (colored?) heat maps weren't calibrated for the increase in temperature, so they've had to add new colors to show the new extremes. The good news is that with the decrease in snow coverage in the Arctic we have extra colors we're no longer using. So, maybe it'll balance out, color wise. Temperature wise, we're boned. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
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