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…).
3 comments:
Well, I certainly wouldn't elect Niven to any office other than the Minister of Ignorance or something.
To the Arizona educational system, best of luck. My first thought about this bill was that any student could answer a question with "It's against my religion to answer this question...." and get away with it. Oh well. Glad I don't live there!
And salt on Mars. Does this mean there are no space slugs there?
The scariest thing about Niven comment is that he seems to think it's a good idea - I could see mentioning it some abusrd/extreme sort of way, but not in any seriouslness.
Well, if I were a student in a system like that with all the resources available these days (the internet), I'd have a lot of fun starting a religion and messing with teachers. And that's aside from all of the serious (and scary) aspects of such a proposal.
Space slugs remain to be seen, but it does seem to be hostile to them. I have heard that Mars as space herpes though (how many out there get that pop reference? - I show my age).
This is fascinating. Thanks for posting these links. Some very interesting things here, especially the table salt on Mars. Thanks for sharing!
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