Pixel Scroll 11/4/19 Sandworms On A Plane!

(1) SPINRAD KEEPS ON DIGGING THAT HOLE. Norman Spinrad seems to have decided the solution is to start making up his own facts, judging by his latest Facebook post “Blackballed? Or Worse Still, Not? Revisited and Even Worse”. For one thing — of course people read his review — at Asimov’s website.

…Somehow, fans in the audience, most of whom who could never have even read my review, likewise foaming at the mouth, got it into their ignorant peabrain heads that STATE OF THE ART was defending this evil racist facisist who had polluted the vital bodily fluids of science fiction before I was even born. After all, it is well known that Norman Spinrad is an old white male, needing only to be dead to complete their social fascist hat trick.

It got picked up on Twitter, which is really fake news, as even Donald Trump knows, I got trolled, or rather the magazine did. And it just so happened that Penny Press, which publishes both Analog and Asimov’,s also financially supported the Campbell award, which is now going to be called something else, ala the other Campbell award, and academic award for the year’s best novel.

As William Burroughs put it, enough to make an ambulance attendant puke.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that there were enough people who understood the freedom of the press to get STATE OF THE ART back on the Asimov’s website. And I’m not dead yet, sorry about that, stay tuned, motherfuckers.

Then, in a comment, Spinrad lit into Jeannette Ng and jumped onto the Campbell-couldn’t-have-been-a-fascist train.

(2) THEORY AND PRACTICE. Ann Leckie commented on the recurring effort to place sf and fantasy in opposition. Thread starts here.

Before that, Leckie shared another theory:

(3) A WORD IN THE RIGHT PLACE. In “Africanfuturism Defined”, Nnedi Okorafor advocates for an alternative to Afrofuturism.

I started using the term Africanfuturism (a term I coined) because I felt… 

1. The term Afrofuturism had several definitions and some of the most prominent ones didn’t describe what I was doing.  

2. I was being called this word [an Afrofuturist] whether I agreed or not (no matter how much I publicly resisted it) and because most definitions were off, my work was therefore being read wrongly.  

3. I needed to regain control of how I was being defined…. 

(4) BACK TO WORK. 2019 Hugo-winning editor Navah Wolfe wasn’t on the sidelines for very long – Subterranean Press has hired her.

Subterranean Press announced that Hugo Award-winning editor Navah Wolfe will be acquiring and editing a number of novellas for the publisher to be released in 2021 and beyond.

“I’ve admired the work Subterranean Press has been doing for years, so it’s an honor to get to work with them to publish original fiction,” said Wolfe. “I’m really looking forward to publishing great novellas in Subterranean’s famously gorgeous editions.”

Managing editor and Chief Operating Officer Yanni Kuznia expressed excitement about this new editorial partnership. “Navah is one of the most exciting editors currently active in genre fiction, and I’m thrilled Subterranean has the opportunity to work directly with her.”

Wolfe parted ways with Saga Press a few weeks ago when they eliminated her position.

(5) IN OP-EDS TO COME. “We Shouldn’t Bother the Feral Scooters of Central Park” is the latest in the New York Times Op-Eds From the Future series. Author Dr. Janelle Shane is an optics research scientist and the author of You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place. Contributors to this series Op-Eds that they imagine might be read 10, 50 or even 200 years from now.

We’ve been safely coexisting with the feral self-driving scooters for over a decade. They’re part of the cityscape now, the last remnants of the scooter craze of 2021, sky-blue scooters that cruise the streets in solitude or cluster around their charging stations on the edge of Central Park, rippling their rainbow LEDs and beeping occasionally.

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation recently announced a plan to lease the scooter charging spaces to vendors and is calling the feral scooters a menace. It’s true that the scooters have developed survival strategies that may not always prioritize the safety of their riders. But as a behavioral ecologist, I’m convinced that humans and scooters can adapt to each other and that removing the feral scooters from Central Park would be a mistake.

The feral scooters don’t want to harm humans — they’re not nearly intelligent enough to have such a goal (based on the specs I could find, their raw computing power is somewhere around the level of an earthworm’s). They are just another form of life trying to survive, and yet they aren’t life as we know it — they’re something much weirder and less understood. It would be a shame to let a brand-new form of life go extinct.

(6) STACKPOLE CLASS. Cat Rambo posted highlights of an online class: “21 Days To a Novel with Michael Stackpole”.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • November 4, 1977 — The Incredible Hulk series premiered on CBS. Starring starred Bill Bixby as Dr. David Bruce Banner and  Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk, it would run for five seasons and an additional five tv films. It was followed by The Incredible Hulk Returns filmwhich was intended to lead to a new series but that never happened.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 4, 1912 Wendayne Ackerman. Wife of Forrest J Ackerman in the Forties. After eight years of marriage, she and FJA divorced but remained friends and companions. Later she translated the German language Perry Rhodan books he acquired. In addition, he says that she coined the “sci-fi” term that he’s credited with being responsible for. (Died 1990.)
  • Born November 4, 1918 Art Carney. Yet another performer on The Star Wars Holiday Special, he playedTrader Saun Dann. Genre wise, he’s otherwise fairly light, showing in Ravagers, a post-nuclear holocaust film, Firestarter, The Muppets Take ManhattanThe Night They Saved Christmas and Last Action Hero. (Died 2003.)
  • Born November 4, 1930 Kate Reid. Dr. Ruth Leavitt on The Andromeda Strain.  Several years later, she’d be sort of typecast as Dr. Jessica Morgan, Director McNaughton Labs in Plague. Death Ship in which she plays Sylvia Morgan only sounds like typecasting. And I think her last genre appearance was on Friday the 13th: The Series as Lila Lita in the “Femme Fatale” episode. (Died 1993.)
  • Born November 4, 1950 Markie Post, 69. Her main genre role was voicing June Darby in the Transformers Prime series but she’s had a decent number of genre one-offs including The Incredible HulkBuck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Greatest American Hero, Fantasy Island, VR.5 and Ghost Whisperer
  • Born November 4, 1953 Kara Dalkey, 66. Writer of YA fiction and historical fantasy. She is a member of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship (which if memory serves me right includes both Emma Bull and Stephen Brust) and the Scribblies. Her works include The Sword of SagamoreSteel RoseLittle Sister and The Nightingale. And her Water trilogy blends together Atlantean and Arthurian mythologies. She’s been nominated for the Mythopoeic and Tiptree Awards.
  • Born November 4, 1953 Stephen Jones, 66. Editor, and that is putting quite mildly, as he went well over the century mark in edited anthologies quoted sometime ago. The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror accounts for seventeen volumes by itself and The Mammoth Book of (Pick A Title) runs for at least another for another dozen. He also, no surprise, to me, has authored a number of horror reference works such as The Art of Horror Movies: An Illustrated HistoryBasil Copper: A Life in Books and H. P. Lovecraft in Britain. He also done hundreds of essays, con reports, obituaries and such showing up, well, just about everywhere.
  • Born November 4, 1955 Lani Tupu, 64. He’d be here just for being Crais and the voice of the Pilot on the Farscape series but he’s actually been in several other genre undertakings including the 1989 Punisher as Laccone, and  Gordon Standish in Robotropolis. He also roles in Tales of the South SeasTime Trax and The Lost World. All of which we can guess were filmed in Australia. Lastly, he appears in the Australian remake of the Mission: Impossible series which if you haven’t seen it is quite excellent. I just found it in DVD format sometime in the past year. 
  • Born November 4, 1960 John Vickery, 59. In Babylon 5, he played Neroon which is where I remember him from as he was a Right Bastard there.  His major Trek universe role was as Rusot, a member of Damar’s Cardassian resistance group, appearing in the DS9 episodes “The Changing Face of Evil”, “When It Rains…” and “Tacking Into the Wind”.  He also played a Betazoid in Next Gen’s “Night Terrors” and a Klingon in Enterprise‘s “Judgment” episode. 

(9) MARKED UP. Pirated Thoughts scores the rounds as “DC Comics Battles with Celebrity Chef Over “Super Hero Chefs” Restaurants”.

Darnell “SuperChef” Ferguson finds himself is a trademark cook-off with DC Comics over the name of his new restaurants chain, “Superhero Chefs”.

Darnell “SuperChef” Ferguson is known for winning the “Ultimate Thanksgiving Challenge” hosted  on The Food Network and has also appeared on The “TODAY” Show, “The Rachael Ray Show,” and a whole bunch of other shows. Ferguson opened up three restaurants in Alabama, Georgia, and Kentucky called “Superhero Chefs” and using the above logo. Ferguson filed the trademark in his own name and not a company that owns the restaurants, not a smart move because Superman and company came a knockin’….

(10) WHAT ABOUT THE MIDLIST. Publishers Weekly considers the focus on megasellers in “Is Publishing Too Top-Heavy?”

…Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, during a discussion of the company’s second-quarter results, pointed to generating interest in midlist books as one of the biggest challenges facing all publishers.

Though the hits-driven nature of publishing has not changed in recent years, the nature of those hits has. Due to a number of coalescing factors—including a shrinking physical retail market and an increase in competing entertainment driven by the proliferation of streaming TV platforms—book publishing has watched as a handful of megaselling titles have begun to command an ever-larger share of its sales.

According to NPD BookScan, which tracks an estimated 80% of unit sales of print books, sales of the 100 bestselling adult titles increased 23% in 2018 compared to 2017. All other titles ranked below that top tier either fell or remained flat. On a 52-week rolling basis through Oct. 5, 2019, the sales of the top 100 books rose another 6% over the comparable 52-week period ending in 2018, while, again, all other sales levels either fared worse or stayed flat. Taken together, sales of the 100 bestselling print books rose nearly 30% over a period of about two years, while books that ranked between 101 and 10,000 saw their total print unit sales fall 16%. Books that ranked below 10,000 remained flat in the period.

(11) LOSS LEADER. The Hollywood Reporter says the latest Terminator movie is hemorrhaging red ink: “‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Puts Franchise on Ice, Faces $120M-Plus Loss”.

A storied Hollywood film franchise has been terminated — at least for the foreseeable future.

Terminator: Dark Fate bombed in its global box office debut over the weekend, grossing just $29 million in the U.S., well behind expectations.

Nor was its performance much better overseas, where it has earned $94.6 million to date, including a lackluster China launch of $28 million, for a global total of $123.6 million.

 (12) GIFS THEY LOVE. Entertainment Weekly calls these “The 25 best Star Wars GIFs in the galaxy”. (I won’t run a sample here because I’ve been told GIFs in the Scroll drive people to distraction.)

From Yoda to lightsabers to Force ghosts, the Star Wars films have given us so much pop culture goodness over the years.

The dialogue, the drama, and the unforgettable characters lend themselves quite well to Internet infamy, particularly in the form of GIFs.

(13) ADDING TO MT. TBR. Andrew Liptak’s November book list is now live on Polygon: “17 new science fiction and fantasy books to check out this November”. It includes —

Made Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I fell in love with Adrian Tchaikovsky’s space opera novel Children of Time, a phenomenal story about uplifted spiders deep in space. His next is a novella that’s a return to usual territory for him: fantasy. Made Things is set in Fountains Parish, a rough neighborhood where crime is rampant. Coppelia is a thief who has some extra help: some puppet-like “friends” that she’s made. They don’t entirely trust her, but they have a relationship that works. But a new discovery changes her entire world, and they all must reexamine how they understood the world, and save their city from disaster. Civilian Reader says that it’s an “excellent short fantasy novella, one that introduces us to a new world, with interesting magic and politics.”

(14) LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT STUN. Vanity Fair’s Mark Seal offers his version of an Icelandic saga: “The Big Bitcoin Heist” – a crime where you can’t “follow the money.”

…While he was sleeping, someone had broken into the data center and stolen 550 Bitcoin computers, along with motherboards, graphics cards, and power accessories—a haul worth $500,000 for the hardware alone. It was the fifth cryptocurrency data center in Iceland to be hit in two months. The total take: $2 million in tech gear.

But the true value of the computers was far greater. If the thieves knew how to operate them, the machines could be used to mine Bitcoins—an operation that would churn out a continuous stream of virtual money for the burglars, all of it encrypted and completely untraceable. The criminals weren’t robbing banks, or even Fort Knox. They were stealing the digital presses used to print money in the age of cryptocurrency.

(15) CRISP SALUTE. “Walkers bags Mariah Carey for full-throated Christmas ad” and The Drum listens in.

In the spot by AMV BBDO, Carey is seen belting out the timeless classic amid a stereotypical Christmas setting but things go off script when the star becomes embroiled in a tug of war with a hungry elf for the last bag of Walkers Pigs in Blankets on set.

(16) GALAXY QUEST MEMORIES. Nerdist interviews actor “Rainn Wilson on GALAXY QUEST’s 20th Anniversary”.

What was it like for a young actor in his first movie to be on the set with big stars?

RW: There’s a deleted scene with me and Tony Shalhoub in the engine room, and I knew the lines coming in, but it was my first movie. I had done a couple little things on camera before, but seeing all of those stars—Sigourney Weaver from Alien; Tim Allen, who was huge at the time; Alan Rickman, Sam Rockwell, all of them—they were all standing behind me and I was so intimidated I couldn’t remember my lines. Maybe the first and last time I would do that.

And a really complex line like, “The iron capacitor and the valence protector don’t synchronize when rerouting the surveillance monitors,” or whatever I’m saying, I just couldn’t for the life of me get my lines out. It was humiliating. I kept fumbling. And I really was a theater actor, so I prided myself on knowing my lines and being able to come in and deliver. But I was sweating I was so nervous. And if you see it, if you watch the scene, you can kind of see on my face that I’m pretty intimidated and overwhelmed there. Watch it for the sheer terror on my face. Probably it fit the character.

[Thanks to Xtifr, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Liptak, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

41 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/4/19 Sandworms On A Plane!

  1. (1) headdesk Oh, Great Ghu. What is it with so many old white guys that they can never entertain the possibility they might be–gasp! faint! To the Couch!–wrong about something?

  2. Bonnie McDaniel on November 4, 2019 at 5:20 pm said

    You’d think he’d have a clue when it’s time to stop digging that hole.

  3. 1) Spinrad is blossoming into full curmudgeon.

    3) “Africancentrism” is pretty awkward.

  4. Leckie’s first observation is spot-on. I’m not sure about her second; ISTM that the obvious present case (Spinrad) was always cranky in public, and I suspect that’s true in other cases.

    @15: funny, and topical: the BBC reported a merchant’s claim of a shortage of real pigs-in-blankets this holiday, IIRC due to Brexit uncertainties. (I’ve heard of strange-flavored potato chips in the UK, but that’s a flavor I’ve never heard of.)

  5. (1) Truly unhinged. And the things he feels free to say about other people, for engaging in literary and cultural criticism he disagrees with–amazing.

  6. (5) I can’t help but notice that “feral self-driving scooters” is an exact description of the little wheeled carts (each controlled by a rejected “Lazy Brown Dog” spacecraft control module) in my favorite Philip K. Dick novel, Now Wait for Last Year (1966), engaging in combat with each other in the alleys of future Tijuana in the final pages.

  7. Having read a whole book of Campbell’s letters, and another of various collected Astounding / Analog editorials, I feel I am fairly qualified to say that yes, he really was a racist in terms of white people versus people of color. As was fairly common in the first half of the twentieth century, he imagined that this had a genetic basis. That doesn’t make him not racist.

  8. (1) I didn’t realize, somehow, that Campbell published Anne McCaffrey’s dragonrider stories. In the building of that universe, she did pay a lot of attention to all the, you know, physics of it, and the story was stronger for her having done that, and that’s the kind of thing having a good editor is good for. Interesting.

    Another positive thing I got out of these exchanges was Benford’s recommending Sue Burke’s Semiosis (2018). A new author getting praise from Benford for a generation ship/alien contact novel is no small feat, considering his polite but devastating review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent one. Will be reading sooner rather than later.

  9. (8) Born November 4, 1960 — John Vickery, 69.
    Mr. Vickery and i share a birth month, and although there are times when it feels like the years are indeed piling up, we are only 59.

  10. JeffWarner says (8) Born November 4, 1960 — John Vickery, 69.
    Mr. Vickery and i share a birth month, and although there are times when it feels like the years are indeed piling up, we are only 59.

    You’re right and I’m asked OGH to fix it. There are days, far too many of them, when my brain and numbers just aren’t on speaking terms. I’ll mentions im having difficulty with numbers again to my brain trauma therapists when I see them later this morning. Yes I have two of them. Oh joy. It’s bad, just overwhelming sometimes.

  11. 1) Does Spinrad understand that freedom of the press means that the magazine, not he, is free to control the contents of what they publish? That they, not he, get to decide if his essay stays up? As a result of not understanding this, he’s certainly coming across as dreadfully stupid.

  12. Spinrad demanded people choose a side. His publisher chose one. If he doesn’t like it, that is his problem.

  13. (1) Spinrad gave the impression of a cranky old man when I met him in Copenhagen in 2008. At least he was mostly amusing back then.

    (3) Evidence that science fiction writers aren’t like cats! Great science fiction writers frantically attempt to escape any box they are placed into…

  14. (1) I gotta give it to Spinrad, that was a decent-ish ‘old white dude goes off on unhinged rant’ entry as far as these things go. (But don’t get me wrong, I still say to heck with that dude).

  15. (1) Having read the linked FB post several times, I am unable to understand why Spinrad thinks that Ng’s Cambell speech has anything to do with the reaction to his recent column. I do, however, give him points for going for ‘swinish’ over ‘bitchy’.

  16. Folks, can I get bit of help here on looking for further books to read?
    I recently finished L.X. Beckett’s Gamechanger and I really liked it. Liked it so much I’m looking around for similar post climate catastrophe fiction that’s at least as optimistic. The problem is, I’m not finding a lot. Or it’s hand waved away as solved in the past.
    So, I’m hoping for ideas and suggestions.
    Thanks!

  17. Nancy Sauer comments Having read the linked FB post several times, I am unable to understand why Spinrad thinks that Ng’s Cambell speech has anything to do with the reaction to his recent column. I do, however, give him points for going for ‘swinish’ over ‘bitchy’.

    I think he tied all of the ‘old white guys are being picked on’ into one kvetch. Ng successfully pointed that Campbell was a racist and Spinrad didn’t like that at all. Is Spinrad a racist? Well he’s certainly coming close…

  18. John Campbell told Samuel Delany that he would serialize his novel Nova if Delany made the pilot white instead of black — because, said Campbell, no one would believe in black spaceship pilots. Please explain to me how this isn’t racist.

  19. BravoLimaPoppa on November 5, 2019 at 9:38 am said:
    Folks, can I get bit of help here on looking for further books to read?
    I recently finished L.X. Beckett’s Gamechanger and I really liked it.

    I’ll second the recommendation of Gamechanger. Listened to the audiobook while recovering from eye surgery a couple of weeks ago, and thought it was smart, and engaging.

    Weird aside, I started listening to the book about an hour before the surgery, while walking through West Edmonton Mall, before going to the nearby Misericordia Hospital. And the opening chapter of Gamechanger begins in West Edmonton Mall and continues at the Misericordia. It was a very odd experience. (When I started the book, I didn’t know that any of it was set in my hometown).

  20. @Lis Carey: “And the things he feels free to say about other people, for engaging in literary and cultural criticism he disagrees with–amazing.”

    In this thread, commenting on the author of literary and cultural criticism they disagree with: “hellbent on burying himself”, “coming across as dreadfully stupid”, “cranky old man”, “old white dude goes off on unhinged rant”, “Is Spinrad a racist? Well he’s certainly coming close”.

    That’s all after your comment, Lis.

  21. @Brian —

    Another positive thing I got out of these exchanges was Benford’s recommending Sue Burke’s Semiosis (2018).

    I liked that book very much. And I’m looking forward to book 2, Interference, which came out recently.

  22. @John A Arkansawyer: Spinrad was being less than moderate (to put it politely) about often-moderate arguments; he chose to make matters personal and disregard facts, in a tone not far removed from a Puppy rant. He’s getting back a fraction of what he’s emitted.

  23. (2) strongly disagree and condemn AL’s “theory” that unpleasant personality traits that manifest late in life were always latent or inherent. I’ve known several people to undergo total personality inversions due to brain trauma or accident. Her “theory” (a transparent attempt to draw up a line of defense in case of pushback- hey, I was only speculating!) is ignorant and insensitive to such people and their traumas. It’s also badly written, even for Twitter.

  24. 1)
    What a waste it is to lose one’s mind.
    Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful.
    How true that is.

    –Dan Quayle.

  25. @John A. Arkansawyer–

    In this thread, commenting on the author of literary and cultural criticism they disagree with: “hellbent on burying himself”, “coming across as dreadfully stupid”, “cranky old man”, “old white dude goes off on unhinged rant”, “Is Spinrad a racist? Well he’s certainly coming close”.

    That’s all after your comment, Lis.

    Yes. After.

    After he went into a “Get off my lawn” rant and called Ng’s speech “swinish.” Ng wasn’t personally attacking anyone, though she certainly did criticize his editing. He’s the one who is telling other people what they’re supposed to like, enjoy, admire, not just telling us what he does and doesn’t like, enjoy, admire.

    In other news, I voted in our local election to adopt ranked choice voting for the election of our city council. It’s only advisory, not binding, but it could happen!

  26. Dear John,

    And sometimes those reasons are good ones, and sometimes the context and scope of the audience is sufficiently different that they aren’t comparable sins.

    Life isn’t symmetry; the assumption that it always is is a fallacy of both logic and fact.

    pax / Ctein

  27. Miles Carter: strongly disagree and condemn AL’s “theory” that unpleasant personality traits that manifest late in life were always latent or inherent. I’ve known several people to undergo total personality inversions due to brain trauma or accident.

    Sure, but that’s not what her tweet is talking about. It’s talking about people who were seemingly-decent human beings earlier in life, but who in their 60s and 70s, “suddenly” turn into a$$holes for no apparent reason. She wasn’t referring to people who have suffered brain trauma, accident, or Alzheimer’s — all of which are apparent reasons.

    But then I’m sure you knew that.

  28. Lis Carey says In other news, I voted in our local election to adopt ranked choice voting for the election of our city council. It’s only advisory, not binding, but it could happen!

    We use it for our elected Mayor here in Portland and it’s binding plus our Congressional and Governors race as well. Needless to say most conservatives hate it with a passion.

  29. BravoLimaPoppa: Folks, can I get bit of help here on looking for further books to read?

    I don’t know that I have many climate fiction recommendations, but here are ones I’ve read in the last year that I highly recommend:

    Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds (novella set in food-crisis future)
    Unauthorized Bread by Cory Doctorow (novella set in future with implications of Internet of Things and Big Data)

    Finder by Suzanne Palmer (fantastic worldbuilding, action, great dry humor, vivid characterization)
    Edges by Linda Nagata (set millennia later in her Nanotech Succession universe; I read it without having read the previous books, and it worked great for me)
    The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley (very gritty and dystopic, per Hurley’s usual)
    The Last Astronaut by David Wellington (a very dark version of Rendezvous with Rama, but with actual plot and good character development!)
    Retrograde by Peter Cawdron
    The Stars Uncharted by S.K. Dunstall
    The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
    Swordheart by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)

  30. @Ctein: I pointed out that people behaved here in precisely the same way Lis described. It isn’t amazing to me that people say sharp things during criticism. I’m not making any particular value judgement about who has the right to say mean things. I once wrote a review of a lousy band with an exceptionally talented young musician which I described as “aesthetic child abuse”, which is probably what got me bounced from writing that column. I am pointing out that people on both sides of that discussion did the same thing. I don’t find that remarkable or amazing; I find it human, just as I find the desire to justify meanness from those we like–I like myself, you know–as human.

  31. Dear John,

    Context and scope mean that it is not, in fact, “exactly the same way.” Not the same context, nor position, nor responsibilities.

    There are things I would consider appropriate to say in a private email that I would not say on a public BBS (like this). There are things I will say here, as Random Fan, that I would never put up as my professional face or would put in a published column.

    They are not “exactly the same…”

    pax / Ctein

  32. John A Arkansawyer:

    “I pointed out that people behaved here in precisely the same way Lis described.”

    So using the phrase “burying himself” to indicate that a person is making himself irrelevant by his bad arguments is exactly the same as calling Ng a swinish fascist for calling out the racism of Campbell. It seems like we are back to the “saying someone is a racist is exactly the same as being a racist”-argument.

  33. Lis’ original comment was: “And the things he feels free to say about other people, for engaging in literary and cultural criticism he disagrees with–amazing.””

    I stand by the comparison I made. I’m not equating the two things–what Hampus says just above against such an equation is quite fair–I am comparing them. I, too, find the things people (including myself at times) feel free to say about other people, for engaging in literary and cultural criticism they disagree with, amazing. Maybe even Amazing.

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