The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Opinion

  • More News Story Complaints

    I was reading this story today about droughts in Texas. It caught my eye because the first line said “LUBBOCK, Texas” where I used to live.

    The fun part about this story is that there’s nothing even close to Lubbock in it! Most of the story focuses on the Hill Country and areas west of San Antonio. That’s about 300 miles away from Lubbock. It would be similar to me decrying the fate of the weather in Louisville, Kentucky as it relates to Atlanta. In other words, not at all alike.

    The closest they get to Lubbock is at the very end when they talk about a reservoir near San Angelo which is closer (160 miles) but still not close.

    Is it too much to ask that the byline be geographically consonant with the story? This tells me that when I’m reading about areas I’m not familiar with, I’m being misled as to the context of the story. It does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

  • NPR: Evil Plagiarists

    Uh oh. According to Whil Wheaton, NPR has joined the evil ranks of evil evil plagiarists.

    Bill does not approve.

    Update: Apparently I should read the comments of WW’s post.

  • Anathem

    A few weeks ago I created an homage to Xkcd by evaluating my experience reading Neal Stephenson’s Anathem.

    Well, I’m done.

    Anathem Reading Experience

    Overall, I think Neal Stephenson will be remembered as one of the premier scifi authors of this generation. That doesn’t make his books any easier to read. This one in particular I found to be genuinely amazing in spots and fundamentally boring in others. The concepts he put together in surprising juxtapositions made the story move along and kept me reading but I won’t read the book again.

    If you’re new to Neal Stephenson, read Snow Crash and Diamond Age before you read this book. That will ramp you and let you know what to expect (Cryptonomicon is in it’s own special category, less scifi). If you find it hard to get through either of those, do not read Anathem.

  • Questionable Content

    Last week was stressful. During that time, when I was incapable of doing productive things, I read the entirety of the webcomic “Questionable Content”. I found it to be one of the best soap-opera web comics out there and I highly recommend it to you, loyal reader.

    For full disclosure, this is a risque, homo-friendly, sex-is-out-there, profanity laced, no-holds-barred comic. That is a big part of what makes it so hilarious.

    There are 1339 editions as of today. Here are my five favorite, from oldest to newest:

    #38: Definition of a Term
    #49: Undie-Jitsu. This one made me spit out my coffee
    #396: Faye is sort of Channeling me here. It’s all about the last panel
    #711: I’d Eat One. This one is all about the suffering coffee beans
    #1087: It’s the Thought that Counts. This truly illustrates the best birthday present that it is possible to give.

  • On "Journalism" and "Science Education"

    This is a rant post.

    I “read” the cnn.com article today about the Alaska “Volcano” that might go “kablooie” soon. The second sentence “annoyed” the crap out of me.

    Why? Here’s the “quote”:

    The Alaska Volcano Observatory said in a statement Friday “volcanic tremor” has increased in “amplitude.”

    Why, oh why, do we have to quotate things like “volcanic tremor” and “amplitude”. Especially “volcanic tremor”. Shit, people. Everybody knows what a volcano is and everybody knows what a tremor is, and if they don’t they can bloody well figure it out from context! I’ll give them a bit of leeway for quotating “amplitude” but not much. We’re reading the science section on an internet website. If a person doesn’t know what “amplitude” means, they can google it. This is not 1899 anymore.

    Grrr. Seriously, those quotes say to me, “our readers are too dumb to know what these words mean. We better use quotes because we’re not using the words as a part of the science article, we’re quoting a really smart dude who knows way more than us.”

    If journalists want to write for the lowest common denominator, they need to read this first, and then start writing accordingly.

  • Racism in Children's Stories

    I recently finished recording a story for LibriVox. I rather randomly selected a project to work and had the moderator assign me something to read. I ended up with “The Enchanted Canary” from the Red Fairy Book.

    I recently picked up a copy of The Red Fairy Book while we were in New Orleans. I’ve read about a third of the stories and I am remarkably impressed by the assumed racism inside them.

    For example, in The Enchanted Canary there is this line, with reference to a Prince who doesn’t want to marry any of the girls in the kingdom:

    `My faith!’ cried Tubby; `do you want to marry a negress, and give me grandchildren as ugly as monkeys and as stupid as owls?’

    I was reading the story out loud to my microphone when I got to that line and almost spit out my liver! Holy crap!

    Of course, the rest of the stories have this same sort of thing. What biographers of Darwin have called “gentlemanly superiority”. This is something that emerges from the British Empire and it’s place astride the globe. Unfortunately, if I ever do read these stories to my unborn children, I foresee some judicious editing. And judicious excisions.

    In some cases this will be moot. I won’t be reading The Enchanted Canary to any child simply because I don’t think it’s a very good story. There’s no there there, if you know what I mean. Now, the Twelve Princesses is good, but the Enchanted Canary just doesn’t cut the mustard.

    I’m still reading these stories and I’ll finish up the book soon. I should remember to do some marginal notations as I go along so I don’t have to find out in impressionable circumstances that certain stories are not for today’s kids.

  • Wrong Oath, Right President?

    Chief Justice John Roberts screwed up the Oath of Office for President Obama and Obama flubbed it in return. He did not state the required “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute…” etc. Instead he said “I Barak Hussein Obama do solemnly swear that I will execute the office… faithfully.”

    Does this mean he’s not president?

    No.

    It’s all about what he signs after the fact, and I bet they got that document correct.

    Still, it doesn’t improve John Roberts’ resumé to have screwed up like that in front of the Whole Damn World, although I will also admit that Obama went along with it. It might have been a prickish move to repeat the oath differently from what the Chief Justice was telling you to.

    Edit: Already 43,000 hits on google for “Obama Screws up Oath”

  • President Obama

    Say it with me: “President Obama”

    Dude, that’s like, totally cool.

    We’re still a racist country, but at least we can say that we’re a bit less racist than we were. And, unfortunately, we can state that we’re one of the least racist countries out there, which isn’t a high bar to clear.

    Jenn and I have two friends up in DC today. You can follow their adventures via twitter at Dfunkmale and Sharonopolis.

  • PETA's "Sea Kittens"

    The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has come up with a new campaign that makes me scratch my head:

    Sea Kittens, not to be confused with War Kittens.

    My opinion of PETA is that they are too much of an over-the-top organization. Their goals are laudable, even if you disagree, but their approach is fundamentally strange. This Sea Kitten campaign illustrates this in blinding highlights. They’ve carried it through, though, in their Fishing Hurts website, but replacing all references to “fish” with Sea Kittens, which just reads weirdly.

    Still, in a bid to bring Poe’s Law back to mainstream awareness, the “stories” section of the sea kittens website leaves me agog. It would be so easy to think that they are making fun of themselves with the stories…but they’re not.

    Wow.

  • MacMillan Doesn't Get It

    Peter Hamilton is one of my go-to authors for Space Opera. He writes good stuff, although plenty of people argue that his deux ex machinas get a bit old.

    He’s a brit and his latest book is published by MacMillan in the UK. It isn’t due to be released in the US until March, which I feel is a bit long to wait given that it was published in the UK in October. However, it turns out that MacMillan is also selling an ebook! I’m a big fan of ebooks, as my previous posts about Baen probably tell you.

    I trundle my way over to their website and discover…usury. The price on the hardback is £18.99 and their price for the ebook is £18.58. A grand discount of not-a-whole-lot. What a crock!

    I know there are arguments for not pricing down ebooks because there’s still all of the production that goes into the hardbacks, but I think it’s bullshit. If they’d had priced it a bit more reasonably, I’d probably have purchased the ebook and then bought the hardback, too. Now, they’ve lost a sale, and they won’t even get that money for my book purchase because that’s being handled by Del Rey in the US.

    MacMillan, you lose, but you’ve successfully made me withstand an impulse purchase. Thank you.