Linkee-poo reminds you war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength

Too much going on, and now I'm reading that Richard Matheson has passed on. We'll always have the gremlin on the wing.

Mer Haskell on externalizing conflicts and developing YA narratives. Notes from her session at the Ann Arbor Book Festival.

When you're critiquing other's stories or your own, you could do worse than using these checklists.

A post on dissecting others writings with some thoughts on what you should be looking for.

Some allegations that publishers are making more profit off of ebooks at the expense of the writers. I'm too tired at this moment to parse all of that and the writers is being a little cheeky (in their outrage I would guess) and it keeps throwing my brain off the track, but pointed out here for those smarter and more in the know than I to work through it.

Just a reminder that the world is still dealing with making everyone equal. That's an article about the movement to ban primogeniture, or the law that mandates inheritance through the male side of the family. And what backward country is finally getting jiggy with the later half of the 20th century? That would be England. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Sometimes people just want to believe in the supernatural explanations. I'm sure the tourist dollars to see the spinning Egyptian statue aren't influencing the decision here. When I looked at the video the answer was obvious to me (vibrations from the foot traffic and an imperfectly carved base). It's easy to solve by placing the statue on a piece of velvet and seeing if it still spins. (Grokked from Tor.com)

In defense of the English Major. I remember this repeated conversation from my time in college, the every present, "Why do I need to know this?" There was also a recent TED talk on the future of education when the person advocating the demolition of the current model in favor of self-exploration. He was railing about the over specification and the making of cogs for a world machine that can be interchanged. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Now we've re-engineered silk worms to produce glow in the dark silk. Next up, worms that spin your silk garments in the color you want eliminating both dying and weaving. (Grokked from Tor.com)

Ten steps toward turning the US into a police state. You'll note only two concern the revelations (not really if you've been paying attention) by Snowden. Also, #4 and 5 are very closely related. If you add in the concept that blacks are four times as likely to be arrested and sentenced for carrying marijuana while the percentages of usage between blacks and whites is roughly equal you begin to see it just as another way to suppress voter turn out. But do you hear those peddlers of both American freedom and decrying government overreach, otherwise known as the Tea Party, protest against any of these actual transgressions against our freedom and liberty? Yeah, I know, it's a cheap shot, but it's not like I haven't made that point before. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Michael Moore and John Fugelsang on humor in political commentary as it relates to documentaries. Lots of good things in there. As I've said before, when you're destroying people's world views and attempting to change their mindset, you need to get them laughing before you stick the knife in. With lines like, "Nobody likes a finger wagging in their face," and "Billy Wilders said, 'Make them laugh while you're telling them the truth or they'll kill you," and "You can't attack down,", "Humor is a very subversive way of going about your politics," you can't go wrong. (Grokked from the Slactivist)

"We live in a society that allocates rights to intellectual property in a way that yields huge rewards to a select few, that taxes top incomes at a historically low rate, and so on. Even if the game is fair, nothing says that the game has to look the way it does." Paul Krugman on a particularly galling act of self-denial of self-priviledge. Greg Mankiw says, "My own children are being raised by parents with both more money and more education. Yet I do not see my children as having significantly better opportunities than I had at their age." Bzzzz, sorry, wrong answer. Seriously dude, for someone with "more education" it's appalling that you can't see the basic logic flaw in those two sentences. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

Tweet of my heart: @tejucole Good thing the USA won the Cold War, otherwise we might be living in a world of mass surveillance and persecution of dissidents.