From Dear Author we have something that just amazes me in shear economic WTFry. We all know at the wonderful, and oh so successful, way that major content providers (MPAA, RIAA, Viacom etc.) have tried to impose 19th century “this is my widget” mentality to IP law in the digital Read more…
Sometimes, all you need to be an asshat is a profound arrogance combined with the self-important conviction that you know better than anyone else. Better still to piss on a whole country of authors while declaring the supremacy of your own local literati. Best of all is to spout off Read more…
Child porn is a very serious issue that gets very serious people to make very serious asshats of themselves. In the #7 slot for 2008 I have to grant a tie for two very different flavors of stupidity over the very same issue. In one spot we have New York Read more…
One interpretation of the 2008 presidential election is that the US is way more sexist than racist. If the media coverage (and the result) doesn’t convince you of this, reflect on the fact that last March Charlotte Allen wrote a long rambling apologia for the idea that women are, well, Read more…
Or more precisely, those who identify as conservative suffer from “a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.” At least it is if you’re Jonathan Haidt, who informed us last September, that in essence, Read more…
Welcome to the final ten days of 2008. To ring in the New Year I am bringing to you a countdown of the greatest asshats of the year, roughly in order of increasing stupidity, amusement value, and pernicious effect on the world at large. To begin, to celebrate the end Read more…
The following showed up in the mail on Friday: The bound galleys for Prophets, way cool. Having been writing mass market paperbacks all my career, it’s neat to see the books in this faux trade paperback format.
I’m again taking one of my periodic vacations from the day job to work full bore on the current work in progress. I’ll be busy until after the holidays. But stay tuned, I have a special feature all lined up for the last ten days of 2008, after which we’ll Read more…
To be enshrined along with “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.” “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.” George Bush, announcing that American Capitalism has jumped the shark.