thoughts and opinions by author s. andrew swann
S Andrew Swann | September 30, 2010
Make that a boot stomping on a human face — forever. I actually had someone try and pull that on me in a debate, more or less in the sense “BUSH HAZ WORST RECORD ON CIVIL LIBERTIEZ EVAR.” This was true, when he was in office. But Obama has doubled down on the fascist police [...]
S Andrew Swann | September 27, 2010
Among other things, Google decides there are no Bisexuals. Computer virus attacks an Iranian nuclear power plant, along with a hefty chunk of the Iranian energy sector. Trash day at Google? The Feds want to wiretap your Facebook account. UPDATE: Why not set up a bureaucratic infrastructure to block websites on a national level. No [...]
S Andrew Swann | September 23, 2010
Elizabeth Moon upset a lot of people over the week and a half by posting about citizenship, the 9/11 attacks, and the proposed Cordoba cultural center a few blocks from Ground Zero. As she said about building the cultural center, she “should have been able to predict that this would upset a lot of people.” [...]
S Andrew Swann | September 22, 2010
Over at Mighty God-King we have a critique of the new series, The Event. Now, I haven’t seen the show, and from what I’ve been reading about it, I don’t have any desire to, but MGK’s post brings up some very good points that are not just applicable to series television, but to fiction generally. [...]
S Andrew Swann | September 21, 2010
So rarely does the universe provide such an enlightening conflation of shallow facile consensus political wisdom, along with elitist literary snobbery as we have in this column by Maureen Dowd. Dowd has gotten the memo, that Christine O’Donnell is the designated political chew toy for this political cycle. O’Donnell is the acceptable target. After all, [...]
S Andrew Swann | September 18, 2010
Two unrelated things that I came across recently that should have some serious implications to anyone writing near-future SF. The first post is actually kind of obvious, in fact it touches on one of the central themes of the singularity. However, it hits a point that I don’t think is explored often enough: Quantum computing [...]
S Andrew Swann | September 16, 2010
Returning to my occasional bout with politics on this here blog, I thought I’d mention the somewhat wry amusement with which I’m watching the complete misunderstanding of the whole Tea Party thing. Even among allies of the movement, small and large-L Libertarians such as myself, saw the nomination of O’Donnell as a WTF moment since [...]
S Andrew Swann | September 14, 2010
Note: This post may contain spoilers, you’ve been warned. A while ago, I posted some tips on writing “tightly-plotted” fiction. This was in large part due to some reviewers using the term to describe my shaggy-dog space opera Apotheosis. However, after listening to the audiobook American Gods by Neil Gaiman I thought it would behoove [...]
S Andrew Swann | September 13, 2010
(NOTE: I’m going to start posting (some) political stuff on my blog again, the experiment with two blogs didn’t really work, and no one needs another political blog anyway.) Again with the asshats I say. And we have some wonderful hats of assness this time in the person(s) of a company known as Righthaven. What [...]
S Andrew Swann | September 10, 2010
I put these on Facebook, but I figured they also rated a spot on the blog.
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