The talking heads have been bloviating for decades now about the function of government vis a vis a so-called Welfare State. The Right claims that having the government “take care of” people is a violation of the American tradition of independence and self-reliance and will sap our resources, both fiscal and moral. The Left has argued that such government programs are there to protect people who have few resources from the depredations of the wealthy and an economy that fluctuates as a normal element of its functioning and that it is the responsibility of the better-off to aid those who are left without recourse in such a system.…
Category: Life
The Nebs
The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of SFWA. The awards will be announced at the Nebula Awards Banquet (http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-weekend/) on Saturday evening, May 21, 2011 in the Washington Hilton, in Washington, D.C. Other awards to be presented are the Andre Norton Award for Excellence in Science Fiction or Fantasy for Young Adults, the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation and the Solstice Award for outstanding contribution to the field.
Short Story
- ‘‘Arvies’’, Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine 8/10)
- ‘‘How Interesting: A Tiny Man’’, Harlan Ellison® (Realms of Fantasy 2/10)
- ‘‘Ponies’’, Kij Johnson (Tor.com 1/17/10)
- ‘‘I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno’’, Vylar Kaftan (Lightspeed Magazine 6/10)
- ‘‘The Green Book’’, Amal El-Mohtar (Apex Magazine 11/1/10)
- ‘‘Ghosts of New York’’, Jennifer Pelland (Dark Faith)
- ‘‘Conditional Love’’, Felicity Shoulders (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 1/10)
Novelette
- ‘‘Map of Seventeen’’, Christopher Barzak (The Beastly Bride)
- ‘‘The Jaguar House, in Shadow’’, Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 7/10)
- ‘‘The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara’’, Christopher Kastensmidt (Realms of Fantasy 4/10)
- “Plus or Minus’’, James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine12/10)
- ‘‘Pishaach’’, Shweta Narayan (The Beastly Bride)
- ‘‘That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made’’, Eric James Stone (Analog Science Fiction and Fact 9/10)
- ‘‘Stone Wall Truth’’, Caroline M.
Dust Motes
Cleaning my office, which serves double duty as a guest room. We have company coming in this weekend and that’s always a good excuse to clean up.
So while I’m moving things around, listening to very loud music (Deep Purple, Who Do We Think We Are? which I think is one of the great underappreciated rock’n’roll albums of all time), thoughts are buzzing around my head.
Already this morning I posted a response to someone on a group discussing Science vs Religion—a topic fraught with the potential for all kinds of angsty in-your-face defensiveness—wherein I once more found myself in the position of turning an argument around on someone who had decided that I had insulted him by insisting on evidence and common sense and the practice of looking at alternative explanations that might undercut a cherished experience. …
Scene From A Frozen Moment
Winter is not my favorite time of year. When I was a kid it was different. Snow was fun (and we had a lot of it then—global warming deniers notwithstanding, a “normal” St. Louis winter used to begin with snow in mid December, between ten inches and two feet of it on the ground pretty much continually through the end of January, sometimes well into February; the last time we had something approximating a traditional St. Louis winter was maybe 1986) and I built snow forts and had snowball fights with the best of them.
Then I started driving and got a job. …
Because Things Are Forgotten
This is a completely personal anecdote, so take it for what it’s worth. This is about a defining moment for me in my education as an egalitarian.
Equality is something we talk about, we assume to be the case for everyone, and never really question. Here, it’s the air we breathe. It’s not true. We are not all equal. And in spite of our all our lip service to the idea of equality under the law or the equality of opportunity, we all know, if we’re honest, that we’re still trying to get to that level. Probably it’s a function of how well we think our lives are at any given moment. …
Blind Spots
It’s almost sacrilege to admit to disliking certain things. People who regard themselves as culturally aware, artistically sensitive, aesthetically sophisticated must occasionally find themselves faced with work that has such apparent popular appeal among those they consider simpatico which they frankly do not care for or do not understand or both. Uttering their honest opinion can be the equivalent of farting in church.
So they suppress that opinion, perhaps nod politely and even go so far as to find some pseudo-intellectual way of understanding the thing disliked so they can at least be seen as trustworthy within their circles. It really is a case of the Emperor’s new suit.…
Schools
I spotted this over at John Scalzi’s Whatever and it brought back some memories.
A woman in Ohio has received a felony conviction for deceptively sending her kids to a school in a district where she didn’t live. Her father colluded in this. The article linked doesn’t go into the reasons she did what she did, but I can imagine some of them, and it would have entirely to do with quality of school experience.
Fifty years ago, my schooling experience—and I phrase it that way because I’m talking about much more than just what you learn in the classroom; it’s a total package, going to socialization and self-image and the whole magilla that a lot of people condemning American public education, depending on their political slant, don’t want to think about—was in the process of being thoroughly fucked up. …
A Little Bit About Writing
I’ve been nattering on about politics and related matters for a while now. It’s crazy-making because no matter how much sense you might make, or think you’re making, there are a lot of people who basically say “I don’t care, I want it my way!” and ignore everything else.
So I thought I’d talk about writing.
I’ve had a hell of a week in that regard. Let me explain.
Many folks already know that I had a major (I thought) computer issue earlier this week. It happened this way. During the really cold months of winter, rather than turn on the space heater I have in my office, I move my writing upstairs, on a laptop. …
Arrogance
We all use words sometimes in ways not intended. We don’t, after all, have a dictionary to hand in every conversation and memory plays tricks, not to mention there is always some “drift” in common usage that’s culturally-driven. Often it’s just sloppiness that becomes wired into daily use and when we go back to the dictionary it’s occasionally a surprise to find out that what we thought a word meant isn’t really what it means at all.
Sometimes, though, it’s the right word applied to the wrong circumstance or a label correctly remembered but used for the wrong reason.
Arrogance is one of the biggies. …
Words Don’t Matter
The message being put forward, especially by the Right, in the aftermath of the shootings in Arizona, is that it is absurd to blame the rhetoric of violence and hatred for the actions of anyone, let alone Jared Lee Loughner. Words don’t matter. The man is a loon, his actions cannot be laid at the feet of anyone else. Taken far enough, by this reasoning he acted in complete isolation from all influences. Maybe so.
But really—words don’t matter?
In 1774, Goethe published his novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, a seminal work in the so-called Sturm und Drang movement. …