Linkee-poo is all right, Daddy is all right, they just seem a little weird

Michelle Sagara asks if there's a "male gaze", is there a corresponding "female gaze."

Monday would have been Douglas Adams' 61st birthday. John Scalzi gives his take on the eternal question, "Who will be the next DNA?" As you can probably tell, I loves me some comedic writing. For the longest time one of my goals was to be the next Mr. Adams and warp inspire a whole new generation the way he inspired mine. But I agree with John that DNA was the tactical nuclear strike at the heart of comedic SF/F, and it's really impossible to think of the opening acts after his performance, and really hard to follow. It was just that masterful of a job. That doesn't mean there aren't pretenders to the throne (hell, the moment I fell in love with Scalzi's writing was when I ran headlong into an Adams allusion in his books). While working on the structure of "Post Rapture Industries" I went back and looked at the humor in the Hitchhiker books as a writer and home grown comedian and I came to the same realization John did, nobody can do what DNA did, again. First of all, even if you knocked it out of the park, you would still be in DNA's shadow. How he constructed his humor is really not reproducible (the fantastical elements, the non-sequiters, the diversions and wild tangents, just not possible). Even DNA couldn't follow himself. So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is structurally different from the first 3 books and the Dirk Gently books were their own brand of fantastic. It took me the longest time to realize that what I really wanted wasn't to write like DNA, it was affecting the reader the way he affected me. And that's a goal I think I can do. Finally, knowing that HHGTTG was the third (IIRC) iteration of the story (radio and TV came before the books) should be sufficient balm to all of us pretenders.

Want a sampling of the genius that was Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide? How about 42 of the "best" lines. Yea, those are good ones. Not all the best ones, though.

Random House listens to the feedback and adjusts their standard contract for the previously mentioned imprints. And there you have proof of the value of professional organizations. So thanks to Writer Beware, agents, the BNAs who got involved, SFWA, HWA, and the real heavy weight in the room, the RWA. Not everything is perfect, but there's good progress.

"The book of my enemy has been remaindered And I am pleased." - Clive James Okay, so that's not a quote from the linked story, but that's a good description and reminder to all published novelists. Everyone gets remaindered in the end.

Spock tells you, it gets better.

Projecting gods and spirits on trees in Cambodia.

Glass sculptures of viruses. (Grokked from Sarah Goslee)

"And because it is not possible for them to disobey this law, there is no way for them to wind up 'paying fines and going to jail.'" Fred Clark pretty well nails Southern Baptist leader Richard Land and NRB board member Janet Parshall for the idiocy of their statements. The more I see things like this, the more I believe our society has an unhealthy relationship with the past. For the Tea Party it's the Revolution Fetish, for socially-conservative evangelicals it's the martyrs.

We have a Higgs. But it might not be "the" Higgs. I didn't know there was more than one.

"Overrepresentation in the Senate is among the reasons why the smallest states (and their local governments) received more federal aid per capita in 2010." (Grokked from Dan)

Cannibals of the Old West. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)

Fred Clark has a wonderful roundup of links regarding guns in society. So, why are you hearing about all these gun incidents now? Really, you've heard about them before. But they weren't big news, so they drifted into the background. Now that we're having a national debate, these smaller incidents are "news" and get bumped up.

Alligator Quotient: When did we start tangoing?