Book meme

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

For example, Iraq was half urban, half bedouin.

Packer, George (2005). The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Grioux.

commentary from elsewhere, reposted here for saving

(I posted this elsewhere in response to a question asking about the "We Were Warned" episode of CNN Presents, one focusing on oil issues.)

Personally, I thought it was wretched, a combination of short sound bytes, scary video snips, an overbearing moderator, and inexcusably bad manipulation-music. It presented it as a national-security disruption caused by terrorists and a bad hurricane with good timing, something viewers will automatically see as transient. The few times they touched briefly on other ideas, they were snipped to a level of near-incomprehensibility - Matthew Simmons, for example, was edited down to, what, four words at a time? Maybe? And he was stepped on badly by the interviewer who put words in his mouth because he wasn't offering the pithy soundbites the reporter wanted on tape. I felt that you could pick out some elements of Simmons's research conclusions - but really, only if you already know the topic. Otherwise, it was lost.

The episode's main focus - a drum-beat for ethanol - was really about "how do we change nothing about our lives but drop in an exact replacement for what we have now, preferably cheaper." There wasn't even the briefest hint of the idea of energy return on input, and "conservation" was talked about only in the most general of senses. You can explain concepts like EROI if you want to, and the fact that they didn't even try implies to me that the reporter didn't even have that as a concept.

I mean, honestly, you know a "news" show on this topic has it wrong when one of their Big Scary Things in a month after this combined hurricane/terrorist attack, complete with scare-music and brutally lame spooky video, is the line, "...most Americans will be staying home this Thanksgiving." OH MY GOD Oh My God oh my
goooooooooooooood.

I was also personally offended that they let an oil company PR flak say without any rebuttal that the only reason oil or refinery capacity was limited was because Those Awful Environmentalists wouldn't let the oil companies drill everywhere and build all the refineries they want, particularly since in the latter case, oil company internal memos show that's simply not true, and that the decision to consolidate refinery production was made to raise profit margins in what had been a fairly marginal sector of the industry.

My generous nature is trying to think that they were trying to frame the oil situation as a Scary National Security Issue, which, to be fair, it is. But they botched it by turning it into a temporary crisis rather than an ongoing problem, and they trivialised any solution by offering ethanol (and E85) as a drop-in replacement, no changes needed anywhere by anyone ever and we can grow all the fuel we need forever YAY.

All in all, I think they did the kind of real disservice to the topic I've come to expect out of organisations like CNN.

Today's Cultural Warfare Update

Christianity Today puts together a bunch of out-of-their-ass numbers to "prove" that evolution is impossible, as is the universe, and any inhabitable planet;

Arkansas governor Huckabee: Christianity not represented 'Nearly Enough' in DC; he's running for the Republican nomination for president; is running as a social conservative, with anti-abortion and anti-marriage platform;

Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes: Republicans to push anti-gay, anti-abortion agenda as 2006 election platform;

New Hampshire House unexpectedly slams the state anti-marriage amendment with a resounding defeat - it didn't just fail to gain a supermajority, it failed outright 207-125, which is what you and I might refer to as a spanking;

South Dakota Oglala Sioux: HB1215 (the abortion ban) is vile, we'll start our own Planned Parenthood clinic on tribal reservation land where the state ban can't apply;

Focus on the Family runs a long, supportive article about Operation Rescue and Operation Save America;

FotF on a Michigan attempt to get a waiting-period installed on the idea that women are coerced into getting abortions - they describe it as "coerced" and "forced" in the headlines and summaries, but it magically becomes "pressured" in the article text, a word vague enough to have all sorts of fun meanings. The article also states, "Abortion's aftermath upon American men has been largely ignored, depriving them of much-needed help to forgive everyone involved in their abortion experience, including themselves," apparently asserting that a man's opinion about a woman's reproductive choices matter as much as her opinions do (if not, one suspects, more);

FotF ACTION ITEM in Kentucky over strip clubs - bans nudity, requires six feet distance, etc;

FotF quotes WorldNetDaily article: Bush says Iraq War not a part of prophecy;

Michigan governor to sign bill requiring clinics offer the opportunity to see a foetus in ultrasound before performing an abortion;

FotF runs anti-marriage-rights ad against two state senators in Minnesota; includes ACTION ITEM to demand anti-marriage-rights amendment;

FotF campaigns against Federal bill to instantiate .XXX top-level domain;

Roberts-led court refuses to hear appeal, and thereby lets appeals court ruling saying that a photographer's S&M-themed photography online was illegal stand - note that the Roberts court has let a lot of appeals court level rulings on social-conservative issues stand; that's how a bunch of states are now banning GBLT parents from adoption, after a similar inaction; one now has to wonder what else they'll let stand without a hearing; 2^nd-amendment-rights activists will, of course, be very well familiar with this tactic;

Afghan man facing death penalty for converting to Christianity;

Concerned Women for America condemns CSI for "twisting Biblical truth" by, um, not using scripture the way they would use it;

CWA's Robert Knight quoted in AFA/Agape Press article keeping up the "diseased homosexuals" drumbeat;

CWA links to a Broadcasting and Cable note that Robert McDowell has cleared another nomination hurdle towards the FCC board; I can't find out why they link to this, so I speculate that since he's a Republican, they want a third Republican member on the board so that Kevin Murphy can get more aggressive with anti-"indecency" actions by the FCC - but that's just a guess, this guy has no fundamentalist background of which I'm aware; he's an industry lawyer;

American Family Association/Agape Press promotes "Values Voters" summit to demand more action on anti-gay/anti-abortion/pro-censorship issues;

AFA/Agape Press SHOCK HORROR: people have SEX over t3h INT3RW3B5;

AFA links to anti-marriage petition site, "www.nogaymarriage.com";

AFA campaign to place "In God We Trust" posters in every classroom in America;

AFA links to second anti-marriage petition site, "www.churchcoalition.com" - this one also calls out civil unions on its front page;

Family Research Council finally puts up some numbers from its "values voters" poll of fundamentalist social conservative voters; the apparently fact that social-conservative/fundamentalist "values" voters are only 69% in favour of an anti-marriage amendment stuns me; they consider this poll a call to Congress to do a lot more against gayfolk, etc; I think the results are shockingly low, given the survey subsection of the poll. Barely enough of the people pushing hardest for it want it to pass, even if they're the only ones voting;

Focus on the Family's "Institute for Marriage and Family Canada" has another anti-daycare article out;

Focus on the Family Canada continues pushing anti-birth-control scare articles, linking the BCP to cancer, accusing Canadian Cancer Society of a cover-up; Canadians should be aware this is a long-time tactic in American fundamentalist circles;

Faith and Freedom Network "talking points" against marriage rights for gay and lesbian people.

( Articles and excerpts below )

Oh look

kathrynt has contacted the Oglala Sioux Tribe and spoken with Ms. Fire Thunder herself. Information on where and how to send support are in kathrynt's post. Apparently, she was very surprised to find out that anybody out of South Dakota knew or cared.

thinking out loud

I still haven't come up with any good ideas for the daily Norwescon newsletter. I always build it as a concept project, up from first principles, usually around the convention theme in some way. The Norwescon people would mostly be happy if I repeated Mr.Cranky's Disruptive Newsletter - the only Norwescon daily newsletter ever to have an extra issue because people would not stop sending in contributions - every year, but I hate standard jokes and go so far as to refuse to provide new ones, tho' the gods know they'd be happy to let me.

It's actually rather difficult for me to communicate what makes a good 'zine idea. One of the things I absolutely refuse to do is pre-write articles. It has to be something that can, should, and, really, must be shaped by things that go on at the convention. If it's something consisting of articles you can write up beforehand, you've got it wrong. Those should go, I dunno, in the programme book; things written before the convention should be published before the convention. The at-con newsletter should be a creature of the event, not of the convention committee or pre-con planning.

I've seen newsletters that have gone the other way. They haven't been pretty.

It's kind of similar to coming up with an RPG environment, I guess, instead of coming up with a short-story that's already written and which you plug in as you go. Or, as spazzkat put it, I want to build a platform, not an application.

Using a handy example: at last year's NASFiC, CascadiaCon, I set up a world where the Republic of Cascadia was real; I made up a history and a bunch of laws and customs and maps, and then the convention ran - from a newsletter standpoint anyway - in that context, and news and the like reflected that. (Issues here: http://solarbird.net/FaxCascadia/ if you're curious. Whenever I do a 'zine, the ones 2/3 of the way through tend to be the best, since that's far enough in to the con that I've gotten the hang of the event but haven't gotten too tired yet.)

Hm, now that I think on it, this is probably what has me coming up with more RoC stuff like I posted just recently.

risu has suggested doing something that invokes Heribert Illig, who thinks that the early Middle Ages never happened. He is crazy and that is good, as crazy is generally directly proportional to funny. (Not always. Otherwise the time cube guy would be the aleph1 of funny, when in fact he is not even actually of infinite funny, merely a very, very large but finite set of funny.) She also suggests involving a Rain of Jaguars, which is also generally good.

Meanwhile, spazzkat suggests travelogue entries from terrible, horrible places, in which there's something, but I don't know what yet. The catching point there is the pre-written-article trap, which I avoid at all costs. But there's something in it, given the NWC29 theme of "Journeys, Adventures, and Quests of Fantastic Fiction."

Hm. Hm hm hm hm hm.

Also, if you're going to be at the convention, I function much better with an editorial pit than without one. I can come up with a decent share of the funny on my own, but I'm also pretty good at refining funny that pops up from other people into stronger, more durable funny. This time spent would count as volunteer hours, too, so you could get volunteer credit and get into the volunteer's pit and the gift drawings and all that. Talk to me if you're interested, but not if you can't stand being edited, as you would be. There are a disturbing lot of prima donnas in fandom and I have no time for that. It'd be evening work, usually from 10:30-Midnight(ish) for the morning edition.