Current Events

Making Blight at Tor

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So everyone thought that the last of the fallout from the Sad/Rabid Puppies and the expanded field of nominees for the Hugo award and finished falling and now it was safe to come out and gambol happily in the fields of science fiction and fantasy? The much revered semi-retired founder of Tor, Tom Doherty made a handsome and diplomatic statement, stressing the fact that in no way were the opinion of MS Irene Gallo, the creative director at Tor, as posted on her personal Facebook page early in May of this year, to be mistaken for being the opinion of the publishing firm itself. But the stuff is still falling, and it’s not rain.

MS Gallo had opined on said personal Facebook page (but a page which appeared mainly to be for publicizing Tor projects) , when someone asked about what the Sad Puppies were all about: “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, misogynist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.” When massive attention to this unequivocal statement was paid by outraged science fiction and fantasy writers and readers who were in sympathy with the Sad Puppies, many such felt themselves to be slandered and insulted. MS Gallo did post one of those mealy-mouthed “I’m sorry if you were offended” non-apologetic apologies farther down in the original comment thread which together with Tom Doherty’s statement appeared at first to tamp down some of the fury.

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Optics

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I have written about optics before and am going to take another trip down this trail.

The prison escape in New York has my interest. I am sort of rooting for the bad guys. But not for the wrong reasons. The reason I am rooting for the bad guys is that I believe that folks need to understand that they need to be prepared to take care of themselves in emergency situations, rather than relying on “professionals”. In the end I want the murderers caught, of course, but in the meantime, we have some delicious drama brewing.

As I wrote back when the Boston police and others make a Keystone Cops type showing trying to chase down the Tsarnaev brothers, these are some pretty poor optics for the police, but they are doing everything they can to make it look better. I see the same old nonsense on TV – a line of cops saluting and marching down the street, all to make a show to the locals and/or folks watching on TV that they have overwhelming force and are going to catch the bad guys. This was done in Boston and also in Baltimore. Who put this in the official police manual to handle a crisis? I wonder if the manual looks like this:

Step one. We have a crisis. Everyone line up, salute and march down the street.
Step two. ??
Step three. Crisis solved. Praise all and treat everyone like a hero.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I have seen so far from a few days ago:
sniper
What on earth is going on here? Is the sniper actually looking to fire at something? Why aren’t the other guys at all concerned? Why is he laying on top of a van?

I keep hearing that the man hunt is “intensifying”. How much more intense can it get? They have all sorts of Hummers, choppers, sniper gear, and cops from who knows how many districts all looking for a couple of guys who are either laughing their asses off somewhere in Mexico, or very much hurting by now somewhere in the woods. Somewhere in the woods that all of these forces gathered have missed several times now.

I am sure it is super pleasant to be living in these towns right now.

What on earth was Cuomo touring the escape site supposed to prove? He will have zero involvement in the investigation or manhunt.

I know a thing or two about mechanicals, tools and steam pipes – we are not hearing half of what these guys did do get out of the prison – much of what the media has reported doesn’t make sense at all. I understand that the media is on the cops’ tether at this point, but I will be very interested to someday read just exactly what these guys did to escape. I imagine it took them years of planning.

If they get caught, we will hear some Seargeant or whoever claim how heroic everyone was, just like always.

I hope the public gets the sense that just like when the Tsarnaev brothers were keeping thousands of “professionals” at bay, just like these escapees are that they need to prepare to be on their own just a bit. But I won’t get my hopes up. So far, I would say that the cops have some pretty bad optics going as of now.

Private Enterprise, Public Space

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Some time since (Oh, heck was it in 2005, ten years ago? So it was.) I mused on the concept of public space, both in the general sense – of a large city – and the smaller sense, of a neighborhood … that is, the place that we live in, have our gardens and our households, where we have neighbors who know us, where we jog, walk our dogs, take an interest – from the mild to the pain-in-the-neck over-interested and judgmental. If our homes are our castles, then the neighborhood is our demesne.
And unless we are complete hermits, home-owners will take an interest in the demesne. I state that without fear of contradiction, and it does not matter if that demesne is in a strictly-gated upper-middle or upper-class community with real-live 24-hour security, a private and luxurious clubhouse with attached pool and attractively-landscaped park or a simple ungated, strictly crisscrossed-streets and cul-de-sacs development of modestly-priced starter houses without any HOA-managed extras like golf courses, swimming pools, fitness centers, jogging paths – indeed, anything beyond a little landscaping around the sign denoting the entrance to the development. This is where our homes are, and at the lower end of the economic scale of things, likely to have consumed a major portion of disposable income on the part of the householder. A good portion of our material treasure, in other words, is committed to those foundation, walls, roof and yard.

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What’s With the Trade Bill ?

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UPDATE: The reaction is is now coming in.

That the Republican Establishment has lined up in lockstep with President Obama really tells you all you need to know about the minority wing of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Government — ever bigger, ever more secretive, ever more disdainful of American sovereignty and of the voters who put them in office. The measure has already passed in McConnell’s Senate, so its fate is now up to Boehner’s House:

Here we go !

For years we have had trade authority granted to presidents as “fast track” authority so the treaties don’t become bidding wars in Congress. The treaty has to be voted up or down as a single entity. This has been done under Democrat and Republican presidents with Republicans usually more in favor of free trade. Under Bill Clinton, we had The North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA which was controversial on issues like Mexican truck drivers qualifications.

Obama has delayed a trade treaty with Columbia for political reasons for years until the GOP dominated Congress ratified the treaty in 2012, eight years after it was negotiated under Bush.

Colombia’s Congress approved the agreement and a protocol of amendment in 2007. Colombia’s Constitutional Court completed its review in July 2008, and concluded that the Agreement conforms to Colombia’s Constitution. President Obama tasked the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative with seeking a path to address outstanding issues surrounding the Colombia FTA.[2] The United States Congress then took on the agreement and passed it on October 12, 2011. The agreement went into effect on May 15, 2012.

At present President Obama is asking for “fast Track Authority” and may finally get it but the opposition is different this time.

The House will vote Friday on a bill that would give fast-track trade authority to President Barack Obama, a measure likely headed for passage in a close vote after months of lobbying by the White House and business groups.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is majority leader, set out in a memo to lawmakers a two-day vote schedule designed to solidify support of Democrats who will back the bill. The House begins Thursday with a measure to promote trade with poorer countries.

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Theme: The Fully Politicized Society

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Sgt Mom recently posted about the “Sad Puppies” affair:  basically, it seems that the science-fiction publishing industry and its leading association and award structure have become highly politicized in the name of “progressivism”…in reaction, a contrarian movement arose called the “Sad Puppies”  (there are also “Rabid Puppies”)…and these groups have been vitriolically attacked by some prominent members of the SF publishing establishment.

It strikes me that this would be a good time to update and repost my earlier Theme roundup of posts on the general topic of politicization.

A very funny post about a very serious topic.  Sarah Hoyt, herself a science fiction writers, tells of (and illustrates) some of her own experiences with the Science Fiction Writers Association.

What kind of things do you think they talk about at a convention of the National Art Education Association?  Best ways to teach perspective and watercoloring techniques?  How to explain Expressionism and Impressionism? Not these days.

“Political correctness” has become a serious threat to American society

What makes people want to live in a politicized society, and what is day-t0-day life like once the complete politicization has been accomplished?  In this post, I cite some thoughts from Sebastian Haffner, who came of age in Germany when the Nazi movement was casting its spell, and a vivid fictional passage from Ayn Rand, who grew up in the early Soviet Union.

Gleichschaltung.  A word much favored by the Nazis, it means “coordination,” “making the same,” “bringing into line”…especially, in Nazi usage, “forcible coordination.”  The orientation toward Gleichschaltung is very apparent in today’s “progressive” movement and today’s Democratic Party.

Prestigious Physics Professor Protests Politicization. Harold Brown, professor emeritus at the University of California Santa Barbara, explains the reasons for his resignation from the American Physical Society.

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