There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Weekend Linkee-poo takes a little trip, takes a little trip with me

If you're ever wondering why agents and publishers have guidelines, Mer Haskell has a good answer for you. It's all about the process. When I was doing programing, one of the things we used to do was vet the data. That meant before processing, you would check to see if the data was actually good and in the format you needed it. If it wasn't, Bad Things™, Dude. So you toss that bad data out and go get another piece of data. If you don't follow the guidelines you're relying on one of two things, the reader is feeling exceptionally generous that day, or your first line is a killer and stops the hand dumping your manuscript in the waste bin.

Star Trek Into Darkness voted as worst ST film, evar. Well, keep in mind these are also the people who dissed Next Generation and all the other iterations. I didn't think it was a great film, and it subverted expectations by not making Khan the villain. (Grokked from Tor.com)

Elizabeth Bear cuts to the heart of the "fake fangirl" controversy.

An art exhibit of tensioned suspension. Or to quote Douglas Adams, "They hung in the air exactly the way bricks don't." (Grokked from Jay Lake)

One of our earliest mammalian ancestors is found. And just as you suspected, it's rat like. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

"May be difficult to continue to portray an energy approach as “job killing” when the jobs are right down the road." A great article on some green energy projects (one here in Ohio) and how they contribute to the local economy, produce actual jobs that pay well, and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Also a little on the entrenched interests in fossil fuels fighting these projects tooth and nail. (Grokked from the Slactivist)

"Rick Santorum says the term 'middle class' is 'Marxism talk' since America doesn’t have any classes. 'Since when in America do we have classes?' Santorum asked a Republican gathering in Lyon County, Iowa, 'There’s no class in America.' He added that the GOP, unlike Democrats,'values the dignity of every human life,' and therefore shouldn’t use the term—which he has actually used repeatedly." We'll ignore the ready-made joke in "There's no class in America" (the Europeans will have to do their own heavy lifting on that one). I guess Ricky's history book doesn't cover… like everything since colonists landed on these shores. But then he spring form the party that also birthed (no jokes) Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA). "(A) constituent asked McClintock for his 'stance on Wall Street criminal practices.' The congressman responded, 'Well first of all, for a criminal practice there has to be a gun. It’s pretty simple.'" It's just as simple as Rep. Tom is. So I wonder if I held him up at knife point or at the end of a bat if he would report it to police? But then ,conservatives always hate it when their own ideologies come hiome to roost. Yep, after voting no for Sandy relief, Sen. Flake and McCain are upset that FEMA won't declare that 134 destroyed homes is a federal case. Of course, after yelling that relief should be offset by cuts in other areas, both didn't offer any cuts to balance their requests. The whackaloon quotient continues to rise. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

With "two thirds of the highest food-stamp receiving counties represented by Republicans, the Bloomberg study should make the GOP 'rethink that whole food stamp moocher thing.' It’s nice to think that Republican voters might notice that their party’s policies are causing pain in their own communities, but that strikes us as a tad optimistic. After all, when a Republican voter gets food stamps, it’s a temporary necessity that is only fair because they’ve paid their taxes. It’s always those other people that are lazy moochers." Not to mention "Among the 254 counties where food stamp recipients doubled between 2007 and 2011, Republican Mitt Romney won 213 of them in last year’s presidential election…" (Grokked from the Slactivist)

When it comes to climate change, we're boned. (Grokked from Jay Lake)

"That joke about rising sea levels at the Republican National Convention last year looks even less funny as time goes on."

Tweet of my heart: @jessicafreely yurstrulyceleste: on a scale of one to invade russia in the winter how bad is your idea

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