Evil Seeks Evil – It Just Warms the Heart in an Election Season

The world stands at attention for the upcoming US election and the Evil League of Evil is seeking a new evil – I can’t wait to see what Whedon comes up with next.

So, without turning this into an actual election discussion, what election parodies are amusing you these days? I’m not really after SNL making fun of Palin or a YouTube video with an Obama Girl, but something more. Something like Cthulhu for President – Why Vote for a Lesser Evil? (which will continue to live in the sidebar beyond this election). It’s the slogan that makes me laugh since it really does seem like I’m always voting for the lesser evil – screw that, maybe it is time for a superior evil (insert GWB joke if you wish).

Admittedly, I’m not on top of these sorts of things, so give me what you got. I’m still a bit bummed that Jeff VanderMeer never really got Evil Monkey For President up and running.

And some more links...

I’ve been flirting with the idea of a link round-up all day – well I’ve finally just gotten around to doing one since there are a number of things interesting me at the moment.

• Gabe continues to produce intriguing stuff over at Mysterious Outposts. His Monday Meanderings are quite interesting with a couple of challenges to reviewers and an unrelated rant.

• Everybody else is linking the new Tor website, so I guess I will too (I don’t do cliffs though). What’s even more interesting is the great Scalzi-McCalmont debate in progress (via OF Blog)– I’ll let you decide who is ignorantly digging themselves deep in their own excrement.

• This comic made me laugh.

• This made me laugh even more…and it’s damn impressive.

• And I still love Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Now maybe I’ll get inspired to write a review for Mirrored Heavens.

NPR to Slash Science Friday?

I saw this today and it makes me very sad:

NPR is cutting funding by 60% for the immensely popular Science Friday starting in October, as part of budget problems. SF has 1.3 million listeners per week and 10 million podcast downloads plus science videos, blogs (it has the only full time science reporter based in Beijing), and more. It is one of the successes in engaging the public in science but also talking to scientists ourselves.

An email forwarded from former NSF director Rita Colwell, says the show is short about $500K of the annual $950K budget, which means Science Friday will either go off the air or stay on in a greatly diminished form until or unless new funds are found. What's most surprising to me is that NPR says it will no longer seek foundation underwriting for Science Friday: Rita says if Science Friday is to stay on the air, it is up to the scientific community to raise the money for it.
(source)

I can’t find any verifying information on this yet, but I find this to be very dangerous. At this point in time, this nation needs more, not less science coverage. NPR is the most reputable news sources out there, and this action is disheartening beyond words. Please spread the word, make ruckus and let’s make sure this doesn’t happen – the way I figure it, one less reporter in Iraq could cover the cost.

Miscellany of Links

After a wonderfully relaxing holiday weekend, here are some of the links I’ve followed with interest this week.

• ‘Controversial’ blogger Gabe Chouinard is back on the scene with a new blog Mysterious Outposts.

• Bloggasm has an interesting article about Tor’s free ebook program – with this equally interesting reaction.

• Tobias Buckell writes about a disturbingly racist rejection letter this author received and it has now blown up and turned nasty.

• The Locus Award hoopla blew up in rather interesting ways and then fizzled.

• Richard Morgan is guest blogging at Amazon – some people are not too happy with his language (what the fuck?).

• Lava fountains at Kilauea, global warming grows glaciers at Mt. Shasta, and the USGS declares the Mt. St. Helens eruption over.

• Poll shows Obama* winning in Arizona – first polls can be very wrong and this one stands apart from the others. But, something close to 1/3 of eligible voters in Arizona didn’t live in the state when McCain was last elected to the Senate. I think that Arizona is going to be much closer than many think.

* I think that my Word spell checker is a right-wing blogger since it wants me to replace Obama with Osama.

I Guess I’m It

I usually don’t go for memes, but Larry tagged me and I figure what the hell.

Grab the nearest book and turn to page 123. Write down the fifth sentence, post it, and then tag 5 others to do this.

I’m at work right now, so this one will be real exciting.

“The pulse test is a modification of the slug test whereby a testing interval within a single borehole is instantaneously under- or over-pressured by removing or adding water.”
-Physical and Chemical Hydrogeology: Second Edition by Patrick A. Domenico and Franklin W. Schwartz

So, misery loves company and I need to tag a few:

Lawrence’s new blog at Count Zero

Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews

Fantasy Book News and Reviews

Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review

SciFiChick

Links for Procrastination

Here is another entry of my entirely erratic link roundups. Today I’m in a bit of a good mood because last night I unpacked The Stack and got it in place on a bookshelf (The Stack was contained in about 11 boxes and I’m guess weighs in at close to 300 books). Anyway, on to the links…

• Yay for California on becoming civilized enough to not deny basic rights to the GLBT community. I particularly like Scalzi’s advice for the soon-to-be newlyweds.
  

• This is an interesting discussion on Amazon reviews over at Westeros. I generally consider Amazon reviews to be useless at best – I just won’t take the time to sort between good, the bad, the fraudulent, and the idiot-born.
  

• Pat over at the Hotlist has caused a stir with his post about hype. I really haven’t followed it and don’t care to. It seems to be the result of his not understanding what hype actually is versus buzz and the fact that people simply have differing opinions more than anything nefarious. Simon Spanton of Gollancz doesn’t seem to come off too well through it all – which is unfortunate, because I think he’s pretty right-on through the discussion. There are plenty of other reactions around the web, but I’m too lazy to search them out since I’ve not gotten engaged in this discussion.
  

• Tobias Buckell is happy to announce that he’s now writing in the Halo universe.

• "A brief (and I do mean brief, like 2 seconds brief, so pay attention) clip revealing, for the first time anywhere, the sound a fantasy author makes when the immensely well-travelled beak of an Arctic tern connects with his skull at high velocity:" Via this blog.
  

Link Round Up

Well the miscellany of links this time is rather short and not particularly genre related, but I hope you enjoy them anyway.

• Scott Bakker has been hanging around in the comments thread of my review of Neuropath. He has also been sighted discussing/arguing Jonathan McCalmont’s review of Neuropath.

• Forget high gas prices, the high price of hops is causing a travesty in bars around the US. The Wall Street Journal reports that bars are switching out the normal 16 oz. pint glass for a thick-bottom glass that holds only 14 oz. – the price is staying the same and customers are misled. Beer Advocate seems to be attempting to rally the troops of beer drinkers. The same article discusses a call to regulate the amount of foam head on a beer in England.

• Dave’s Landslide Blog has been following the fascinating fate of a ‘Quake Lake’ that was formed by a large landslide blocking a river in China. A catastrophic failure that would have endangered millions of people appears to have been avoided, though an entire town was destroyed in the process (to be fair, the town was already destroyed by the earthquake itself).

• Edit: A late addition and something that has been around for a while but is new to me - sex advice from a D&D player. Yes, that is correct and it is even more amusing than you think.

Link Soup

It’s been a very busy few weeks with the move and a bit of work travel, but things are seemingly starting to calm down a bit to almost manageable levels. So, here are few things that have caught my eye lately.

• John Scalzi is saying some interesting things about YA fiction – it sounds like I may need to read more of it.

• Cory Doctorow has an interesting article over at Locus – with the main point seemingly being that advance reviews on the internet do little for sales. I’m not sure I entirely agree on the point – for example, I believe that a fair amount of Patrick Rothfuss’ success is due to the effective building of pre-release buzz by Daw’s marketing group. I also get a bit defensive in his bit about blogs, which wasn’t entirely negative, but still felt like a low blow – I know I my technorati ranking is well above 4 (I think its 52 at the moment, though it’s been as high as the mid-90s in the past). Then, I’m not a hug fan of the way technorati does things since it doesn’t account for message boards and other ‘regular’ website links and I’ve found it often doesn’t count international links, but I digress.

• My friend Larry of the OF Blog has taken a step into the freelance world with a for-hire review at Strange Horizons of Joe Abercrombie’s Last Argument of Kings. I hear he’s got something in the works with Jeff VanderMeer and Amazon for a review of the forthcoming Carloz Ruiz Zafón book.

• The Fantasy Book Critic reviews Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Last Wish. He didn’t like it as much as I did (or Larry and Adam), but enjoyed it more than Pat. In my opinion, many ‘Western’ people are not fully appreciating some of the ‘non-Western’ aspects of this book that really made it work well for me.

• Adam Roberts reviews Richard Morgan’s forthcoming The Steel Remains – it is a fun piece of writing in and of itself. A tangential discussion arose at Westeros over the literary value of NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• A major volcanic eruption in Chile – stuff like this always interests me.

• Reno suffers through an earthquake swarm – is a big one yet to come?

• A sinkhole swallows Texas (well a small part of it anyway).

Miscellany

Here is another post of links I’ve found interesting over the past couple of weeks and a bit of general news. First, Neth Space is moving – at least the physical address is. Later this month I’ll be leaving the heat of Phoenix for the cool mountain air of Flagstaff – I can’t wait! So, my mailing address is changing – I’ve contacted most of those who send me books and such through email, but if this is news to you, send me an email (use the link in the sidebar – it’s pretty much spam-proof). Speaking of email, that may have to change too since I’ll be switching providers, but again, contact me and I can get you another email address that won’t be changing.

In another bit of news, Neth Space passed the 50,000 visits according to Site Meter – sure this is small potatoes for many of you out there, but to me, it’s something of milestone. Of course I don’t trust Site Meter all that much since I know it misses some visits and doesn’t account for RSS feeds, but it is a number I can point to. Thanks to all you new and repeat visitors – it does an ego good ;).













So, on to the links…

• I’m getting tired of all the posts about how to write reviews. Thankfully I’ve chosen to ignore most of them, but it seems Larry gets around.


• Another new interview with Scott Bakker – I’m more and more excited to read Neuropath. Hopefully my copy will arrive soon and Scott will get back to me with his Questions Five.


• Tobias Buckell takes a look at how Tor’s free e-book program has influenced his sales.


• John Scalzi lets fans know how to approach him – hint, it’s not from behind in the conservatory with a candlestick.


• Good things happen on (rare) occasion in the Arizona legislature.


• Landslide closes a major highway in Arizona – don’t get me started on the many ways ADOT screwed this one up.


• I wrote a negative pseudo-review and got a lot of attention out of it – see how civil discussion quickly turns into a blatant example for why authors shouldn’t respond to reviews. I gave up on the discussion because it got to the point that the things I want to say about it don’t forward the discussion (yes, this is political-speak and something of a gross understatement).


• I spent April Fool’s Day working in Bagdad – no, the other Bagdad.
  
  

Miscellany of Links

I have loads of work I should be doing, yet I’m bored, so naturally I’ve chosen to distract myself. This is an eclectic group of links that I’ve found interesting in the last few days – not all are SFF-related, and they contain both stuff I found positive and positively enraging. Have fun!

• Larry of the OF Blog of the Fallen started things with this post a couple weeks ago on negative reviews (and has subsequently followed up with this one on positive reviews), Pat of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist addresses some comments about Larry’s piece – then in the comments, the discussion gains new life and inspires more reaction here with Larry once again chiming in. It’s all interesting and I’ve chimed in at various locations – now I’ll bow out until the discussion comes around again.
  
• 2008 Hugo Award Nominations are out. John Scalzi has some interesting commentary and the Westeros discussion will no doubt continue to grow. For me, this just shows that the people nominating and voting for the Hugo don’t represent my tastes and become less and less relevant each year.
  
• I saw this bit at Torque Control – scary. I’ll not be picking up any Niven books.
  
• Arizona seeks to erode the integrity of its educational system even further (though there’s a good argument that such a terrible educational system won’t notice anyway).
  
• Friends of mine discover salt on Mars – some interesting authorial politics went into this one (but I’m not supposed to know about that).

That’s it for now – we’ll see if this becomes a regular feature or not. There are more than enough link round-ups out there, but then this one is a bit more tailored to what I’ve found interesting in the last few days (of course, will anyone besides me care about that…).