Pixel Scroll 1/26/17 What Is The Pixel Capacity Of A European Scroll? Laden or Unladen? Aaargh!

(1) END OF PERIOD. As John Hertz said in his report on the dedication of Forrest J Ackerman Square, the city promised to replace the original sign with the erroneous period after the initial “J” – erroneous, because Forry spelled his name without one. And as you can see in this photo by Robert Kerr, the city has installed the corrected sign above the intersection.

Ackerman Square corrected sign

(2) BIG ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION. Greg Ketter’s Minneapolis bookstore is featured in “Wi12: Busman’s Holiday Possibilities” at Shelf Awareness.

DreamHaven Books & Comics

Since opening on April 1, 1977, DreamHaven Books & Comics has moved 10 times and even had multiple locations open at once. Today it’s located in an approximately 3,300-square-foot storefront at 2301 East 38th street, the store’s home for the last eight and a half years, in a neighborhood around five miles southeast of downtown Minneapolis. According to owner Greg Ketter, despite various changes over the years, DreamHaven’s specialization in science fiction, fantasy, horror and comic books has remained constant. The book inventory is a mix of used and new, with a higher proportion of used, rare and collectible books than in years past; Ketter also carries a great deal of movie and comic memorabilia. One of the store’s centerpieces is a towering model of Robby the Robot from the film Forbidden Planet. Throughout the store other models and statues abound.

DreamHaven is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a party on April 1. Ketter has author appearances and a sale planned for the day, and is working in concert with Once Upon a Crime, a mystery bookstore in Minneapolis celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

(3) BROUGHT TEARS TO MY EYES. Randy Byers, co-editor of Chunga, has promising news about the progress of his cancer treatment.

Again, the discussion is too technical for me to follow, but it all sounds pretty hopeful, which I assume is why Dr. Taylor was willing to be so optimistic right to my face. I feel torn between wild optimism on my own part and cautious skepticism. No doubt I’ll need to read and discuss it further, but damn if I didn’t immediately start thinking, “Maybe I *will* get to see Celine grow up!”

(4) INCONSTANT MOON.little birdie told us that Larry Niven’s award-winning story may be filmed — “’Arrival’ Producer Developing ‘Inconstant Moon’ Sci-Fi Movie for Fox”.

Fox 2000 is launching development on a movie based on Larry Niven’s science-fiction story “Inconstant Moon” with Oscar-nominated “Arrival” producer Shawn Levy and his 21 Laps company on board.

“The Specatcular Now” director James Ponsoldt is attached from a script by Daniel Casey. Levy and 21 Laps’ Dan Cohen will produce along with Ponsoldt through his 1978 Pictures company and Vince Gerardis through his Created By company.

“Inconstant Moon,” which first appeared in the 1971 short story collection “All the Myriad Ways,” begins with the moon glowing much brighter than ever before, leading the narrator to presume that the sun has gone nova and that this is the last night of his life. He spends the night with his girlfriend but then discovers that the reality is that the Earth has been hit by massive solar flare that kills most the inhabitants of the Eastern Hemisphere.

Levy received an Oscar nomination Tuesday for producing “Arrival” along with Dan Levine, Aaron Ryder and David Linde. “Arrival” was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Denis Villeneuve.

(5) A REALLY BAD MAN. Atlas Obscura reminds us about a forgotten fictional character who had a major influence on genre fiction over the years: “The Criminal History of Fant?mas, France’s Favorite Fictional Villain”.

As villains go, Fantômas is a nasty one. Created in 1911, he is a gentleman criminal who perpetrates gruesome, elaborate crimes with no clear motivation. He hangs a victim inside a church bell so that when it rings blood rains on the congregation below. He attempts to kill Juve, the detective on his trail, by trapping the man in a room that slowly fills with sand. He skins a victim and makes gloves from the dead man’s hands in order to leave the corpse’s fingerprints all over the scene of a new crime.

His creators called him the “Genius of Evil” and the “Lord of Terror,” but he remained a cipher with so many identities that often only Jove would recognize him. The book that first introduces him begins with a voice asking: Who is Fantômas?

(6) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 26, 1934 — One of America’s best-loved movie projects gets underway as producer Samuel Goldwyn buys the film rights to The Wizard of Oz.

(7) FAUX FACTS FOR SALE. Chuck Tingle’s Buttbart has opened an Alternative Fact Warehouse where you can purchase such alternative facts as “JOM HAMM IS YOUR HANDSOME ONLINE BUD WHO LIKES TO SKYPE” for a few dollars, with the proceeds going to Planned Parenthood.

(8) HE SAID ILK. Milo is scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley on February 1. He was prevented by protestors from speaking at another UC campus a few weeks ago. UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks has issued a statement reminding the university community that theirs is the home of the Free Speech Movement.

Mr. Yiannopoulos is not the first of his ilk to speak at Berkeley and he will not be the last. In our view, Mr. Yiannopoulos is a troll and provocateur who uses odious behavior in part to “entertain,” but also to deflect any serious engagement with ideas. He has been widely and rightly condemned for engaging in hate speech directed at a wide range of groups and individuals, as well as for disparaging and ridiculing individual audience members, particularly members of the LGBTQ community….

Berkeley is the home of the Free Speech Movement, and the commitment to free expression is embedded in our Principles of Community as the commitment “to ensur(e) freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views held by our varied communities.” As a campus administration, we have honored this principle by defending the right of community members who abide by our campus rules to express a wide range of often-conflicting points of view. We have gone so far as to defend in court the constitutional rights of students of all political persuasions to engage in unpopular expression on campus. Moreover, we are defending the right to free expression at an historic moment for our nation, when this right is once again of paramount importance. In this context, we cannot afford to undermine those rights, and feel a need to make a spirited defense of the principle of tolerance, even when it means we tolerate that which may appear to us as intolerant.

As part of the defense of this crucial right, we have treated the [Berkeley College Republicans’] efforts to hold the Yiannopoulos event exactly as we would that of any other student group. Since the event was announced, staff from our Student Affairs office, as well as officers from the University of California Police Department (UCPD), have worked, as per policy and standard practice, with the BCR to ensure the event goes as planned, and to provide for the safety and security of those who attend, as well as those who will choose to protest Yiannopoulos’s appearance in a lawful manner.

(9) EARLY WARNING. Declan Finn, in “Live and Let Bite, Best Horror at the Dragon Awards”, shows a photo of a Dragon Award trophy and declares —

In 2017, I’m going to be getting one of these.

Nice, huh? They look nifty, right? Here, let’s pull back a bit.

Yeah, I’m pretty much going to lay my cards on the table and say this is going to win the second annual Dragon Awards in 2017. This is not actually a boast. It’s just logical. No, seriously. Follow me around the windmills of my mind. Live and Let Bite is everything you loved in Honor at Stake and Murphy’s Law of Vampires, and then doubles down.

(10) THE MAGIC NUMBER. Dan Koboldt gives “5 Reasons to Vote for the Hugo Awards”.

2. Expose Yourself to Other Forms of SF/F

Most of us read enough novels to know how we want to vote in that category. Novels and series are the bread-and-butter of the SF/F genre. Furthermore, after the commercial success of Game of Thrones, Westworld, and other franchises, there are arguably more people reading SF/F novels than ever before. Thousand of people vote for the “best novel” Hugo Award.

I wish we could say the same about short stories, novelettes, and novellas.

Short fiction is a critical form of SF/F literature, and indeed is how many of us learned how to write. There are some wonderful markets that publish it — Clarkesworld, Galaxy’s Edge, and Nature, just to name a few — but the readership is much, much smaller. The Hugo Awards are a great opportunity to discover, read, and reward outstanding works in these briefer formats.

(11) AN ICE TOUR. Val and Ron Ontell are organizing pre- and post-Worldcon tours designed for those heading to Helsinki. Before the con there is a tour of Scandinavia, Talinn and St. Petersburg, and afterwards a tour of Iceland. Itineraries for both are at the site.

(12) FISHING WITH BAIT. John Joseph Adams has posted Hugo-eligible items and from Lightspeed, Nightmare and anthologies, and is offering to e-mail additional material to Hugo nominators with proof of voting eligibility.

If you are planning and eligible to vote for the Hugos this year, if you email me proof of your Worldcon membership (i.e., your name is listed on the Worldcon website as an attending member, or the email confirmation or receipt you received when you purchased your membership, etc.) I would be happy to make some additional 2016 material I edited available to you in digital format.

(13) ANOTHER FISHERMAN. Jameson Quinn wrote in a comment here today —

The paper on E Pluribus Hugo by Bruce Schneier and I had made it through peer review when the journal that had accepted it (Voting Matters) suddenly lost its funding and retroactively folded. We were trying to pressure the editor who had accepted it to help us find another place for it, but it looks as if that’s not happening. We’re still planning to publish it in another journal, but sadly we’ll probably have to repeat the whole peer review process. However, it is our belief that the paper is still eligible to be nominated for Best Related Work.

(14) TICKY. The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists make it out to be two-and-a-half minutes til Midnight — “Doomsday Click Moves Closer to Midnight, Signaling Concern Among Scientists” in the New York Times.

Ms. Bronson, in a post-announcement interview, explained why the board had included the 30-second mark in the measurement. She said that it was an attention-catching signal that was meant to acknowledge “what a dangerous moment we’re in, and how important it is for people to take note.”

“We’re so concerned about the rhetoric, and the lack of respect for expertise, that we moved it 30 seconds,” she said. “Rather than create panic, we’re hoping that this drives action.”

In an op-ed for The New York Times, Dr. Titley and Dr. Krauss elaborated on their concerns, citing the increasing threats of nuclear weapons and climate change, as well as President Trump’s pledges to impede what they see as progress on both fronts, as reasons for moving the clock closer to midnight.

“Never before has the Bulletin decided to advance the clock largely because of the statements of a single person,” they wrote. “But when that person is the new president of the United States, his words matter.”

[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Howard Osler, Van Ontell, David K.M.Klaus, Michael J. Walsh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W and Yours Truly.]

162 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 1/26/17 What Is The Pixel Capacity Of A European Scroll? Laden or Unladen? Aaargh!

  1. As a New Zealander, it seems that I’m quite a ways to the ‘left’ of most USAns*. In the lead-up to the elections, I was amused & bemused by the number of people on Twitter who threatened to move to New Zealand if Clinton won. If they’d done even the most cursory research they’d have known that New Zealand is not compatible to their worldview.

    See for example: ACC. The Accident Compensation Corporation is state-run and covers compensation for accidental injury. What it also means, is that you cannot sue for personal injury in New Zealand.

    *Another sign of my foreignness. I do not automatically equate “American” to be someone from the “United States of America”. (It is the obvious inference, but there are other American countries.)

  2. @Jason

    This always gets me every time. Anywhere I’m on the internet, people are always way to the left of me with the implication that I’m very right.

    Sorry for the late response. Dinner happened, and then unexpected work problem, and now I’m back. Anyway, I want to clarify: I am not saying you’re very right (politically, that is – that phrase reads weird to me now that I typed it) when I say that. I consider myself, objectively (or as objectively as one can consider oneself’s politics) center-left. In the SF Bay Area, I am perceived somewhere between a Nazi sympathizer and a rabid commie, depending on who I’m talking to. In my hometown in the Midwest, I’m a rabid commie. So anyone further right than, say Obama, is going to be significantly to the right of me. The only people I have a very hard time dealing with are people who I would consider far right or left, and I still can get along with them, depending.

    My apologies for, as Lenora Rose correctly surmised, conflating you with Airboy, who in my experience is always condescending and insulting when discussing politics. I say in all honesty that I was intending to go back and take note of who said what and write a thoughtful post, and then I saw the word “Egan,” and “Diaspora,” and I started skimming and speed reading because SOMEONE WAS RIGHT ON THE INTERNET! Which turns out to be just as important to immediately type about as the converse.

  3. @Hampus But you will never hear rightwing protest against [actions against protesters of Israeli occupation of the West Bank].
    FIRE works against it. They have advocated for the American Studies Association when it endorsed an Israel boycott and faced sanction by the New York and Maryland state legislatures, and they have advocated for a Montclair Univ pro-Palestine student group when the Univ fined it.

    @Lenora A Canadian perspective: outright hate speech, harassment, speech inciting criminal acts including violence, are all unprotected forms, for a reason: THE ACTS THEY ENCOURAGE DAMAGE THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS,
    Economic boycotts damage the rights of others – should advocating for them be banned? A veteran can view flag burning as harassment – should it be banned?

    Can a joke be hate speech? Would you fine or jail Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Andrew Dice Clay, Bill Hicks? The cast of The Aristocrats?

    Hate speech has a very specific definition . . . that changes all the time, and varies from person to person. (in other words, it doesn’t)
    I think a number of participants on this board would classify opposition to same-sex marriage as hate speech. Yet it was not only “common sense” not very long ago, it was the law of the land. Not even a decade ago, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were opposed to same-sex marriage.
    Who decides what hate speech is? Because that person will have awesome power if the power of the state can be brought to bear against hate speech.

  4. “Would you fine or jail Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Andrew Dice Clay, Bill Hicks?”

    Their videos are on sale in Sweden – which has laws against hate speech – so no.

  5. @Bill:

    You originally said that a symbol like a burning cross cannot be considered a ‘true threat’ and cited 2 Supreme Court decisions that you said proved it. I reviewed them, found that the later Supreme Court decision said that a burning cross COULD be considered a true threat if done with the intent to intimidate, and I cited Sandra Day O’Conner to prove it. Instead of giving reasons why a Supreme Court Justice appears to be disagreeing with you, you resort to appeal to authority, in this case your years of study on the matter which prove that you’re right and I should just take your word for it.

    Your reaction to Gorilla Boy shaking his looped rope in the face of POC BLM demonstrators is sort of similar – you pronounced it not a true threat because the rope wasn’t knotted, and therefore the police shouldn’t have been called on the poor wee boychik just indulging his free speech. You also appeal to your authority here – in this case your skill at telepathy in divining the feelings of the BLM activists at being confronted with a guy in a gorilla suit waving a looped rope in their faces – saying that they were “more astounded and amazed than threatened.” But someone at that scene DID call the police, you know. I would do the same if some masked person in a Nazi uniform waved a can marked “Zyklon B” in my face – even if the can was quite clearly an empty Pringles can marked with magic marker, harmless in itself. Because the looped rope and the Zyklon can are symbols that are even more threatening than the burning cross. They symbolize murder and only murder. A person willing to wave such murderous symbols in your face to make his point can quite reasonably be considered a potential danger, especially in the land of concealed carry worship, and calling the police was a reasonable response to that. You, OTOH, don’t seem to see any threat in a symbol of murder being waved in a person’s face, and you seem to disagree with Sandra Day O’Connor in the matter despite your legal learning, which is why I suggested a little more introspection on your sensitivity.

    As for MY, I brought up the university’s duty in the matter of maintaining the safety of the students. You seem to think that this applies to only actions against students, like in the actual injuries caused by hazing and the rape, not to speech. But the reason that I brought it up was that the university was found liable for not taking obvious preventive measures to keep these threats from becoming actual criminal actions. Which means that the university has a responsibility to act to protect their students BEFORE the students actually break the law and it becomes a police matter, out of their jurisdiction. And that means the university has to examine threats with a more sensitive ear than your average policeman who will shrug and say “I can’t arrest him for that.” The university is required and expected to act to prevent verbal threatening expressions from predictably turning into violence against students – even when that verbal menacing does not qualify as criminal, the university has an administrative responsibility to act to prevent it from becoming so – even though free speech is constitutional. Public universities can forbid their students from concealed carry despite their states’ laws allowing it, because their responsibility to their students allows them this. (And yes, I know Texas, for example, has passed laws allowing concealed carry on campuses, but that is a law the state passed to impose on the campus, not a determination that the right of schools to forbid guns is unconstitutional.)

    The question is, does MY’s intimidating verbal behavior require the university to act against it in the name of the safety of its students? This is NOT the same as asking whether MY is arrestable for his statements. MY repeatedly dances up to the borders of legality in singling out individual audience members for harassment and ridicule on Breitbart livestream, but he does not cross it. He knows that his followers will do so, that his anonymous horde will rain criminal harassment and death threats on his targets, but he can safely say, “Golly gee, I never told anyone to send death threats, and I have no idea who did.” Your view is, AFAICT, that the university must accept this at face value and has no responsibility to prevent this thoroughly predictable sequence from happening to its students, though it has happened several times already. Again, you appeal to authority, in this case the chancellor, who thinks you’re right, in which case I can point out that professors on his own faculty think he’s wrong on this. It is possible for even the most learned man to be wrong…something it would be well to remember when you vaunt your years of learning as an argument.

  6. Bill: like Hampus, I live in a country with laws about hate speech. You.might be thinking in layman’s terms about hate speech having a varied definition, but in places where it’s law, there is in fact a legal definition which requires legal amendments to change, and if you’re so expert in legalities, a little research should be well within your skillset.

    Incidentally, as well as hate speech laws, Canada also has shock comedians, groups against gay marriage, bigots, TERFS, climate change denialists, Holocaust denialists, anti-vaxxers and any other “edgy” hateful, or fringe right or left wing group you can name. Heck, despite widespread calls to deny him entry into the country and massive condemnation of his speeches, I believe we ultimately let RooshV and his rape advocacy in. (It was his UK and Europe tour he backed out of). The last group I remember being denied entry based on hate law was Westboro Baptist Church.

  7. kathodus: …I am perceived somewhere between a Nazi sympathizer and a rabid commie, depending on who I’m talking to…. The only people I have a very hard time dealing with are people who I would consider far right or left, and I still can get along with them, depending….

    Okay, no problem. Just past experience overly conditioning current experience for me, I guess. Sounds like we’re in kinda the same boat.

    I saw the word “Egan,” and “Diaspora,” and I started skimming and speed reading because SOMEONE WAS RIGHT ON THE INTERNET! Which turns out to be just as important to immediately type about as the converse.

    Indeed. 🙂

    Lenora Rose: Incidentally, as well as hate speech laws, Canada also has shock comedians, groups against gay marriage, bigots, TERFS, climate change denialists, Holocaust denialists, anti-vaxxers and any other “edgy” hateful, or fringe right or left wing group you can name. Heck, despite widespread calls to deny him entry into the country and massive condemnation of his speeches, I believe we ultimately let RooshV and his rape advocacy in. (It was his UK and Europe tour he backed out of). The last group I remember being denied entry based on hate law was Westboro Baptist Church.

    Well, if you’re going to have such a law, it sounds like you’ve got it calibrated just right.

    Kidding, kidding. Sort of. (Even excluding that supposed “church” doesn’t make me change my mind, but it sure makes it tempting.)

    BTW, I’ve only been able to follow out one of the links from an article Hampus pointed out (and this is just giving credit for how I found it, not implying he’d endorse it) but I’d encourage everyone even a little interested in this part of the discussion to check it out.

    France’s censorship demands to Twitter are more dangerous than ‘hate speech’

    Especially the five paragraphs beginning with “Nowhere in Farago’s pro-censorship argument” and ending with “staggering to me.” Also the one a couple pars later starting “Personally, I regard the pro-censorship case…” Not to mention the four paragraphs on “majority rule.” This, again, is a thing the framers of the US Constitution were very concerned about – the protection of the minority from the “tyranny of the majority.” Basically, I’ve read few things on the internet I agree with more and disagree with less. I’m not even sure what interests The Guardian is supposed to represent or what opinions the author of the article may hold and disclaim any connection to any of that – just saying I really, really like this specific article.

  8. Still bizarre to watch people argue that we aren’t being fair enough to fascists/neo-nazis and that we should let them have their say, like they aren’t actively advocating for the murder and enslavement of other people, but like it’s just some abstract difference of opinion, instead of rhetoric that has repeatedly gotten people enslaved and killed. How about no.

    @Dawn Incognito I started and deleted a couple of posts yesterday trying to express my problems with the word “bitch”. I seem to take it more seriously than many, given how accepted it is even on the non-sweary teevee. I know at least part of my flinch reaction is intensely personal; then I wonder how many other women would say the same thing.

    Sorry this is a late response but I wanted to say I know for sure that you are not alone in being bothered by the word, not just because it also bothers me and also for very personal reasons, but that personal negative connection doesn’t exclude the fact that a lot of women including myself have similiar experiences with the word. A lot of us have shared experiences in dealing with misogyny and “bitch” is a pretty common one.

    It’s a word that’s so often directed at women to punish us and explicitly dehumanize us, so even when it’s being aimed at a man, when it’s clearly being use to demean, it’s like being suckerpunched by someone on their way to beat up someone else, no matter how “deserving” the other person may be. I would like if people could find a better way to get their point across without using words that support the oppression of women (or any oppressed group), without even getting into the toxic overlap of the male LGBTQ community and misogyny.

  9. I think Milos is just some mouthy bitch-queen

    I also had a very “uh, no, nope, no way” reaction to this. This may or may not be how gay people would refer to each other in informal conversation with each other, but I agree with Dawn Incognito and Sunhawk about the word having a lot of misogynistic cultural baggage.

    Milo has plenty of things which can legitimately be said about him. This one’s not necessary.

  10. Every now and then I like to quote Karl Popper. It would be nice if George Soros paid me lots of money to do this but for some reason he doesn’t.

    “Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
    The Open Society and Its Enemies [My emphasis]

  11. @Camestros Felapton – excellent quote, thank you for posting it.

    From the article Hampus posted, my first superficial thought was “could that guy look like any more of a narcissistic asshole?” (not as a clinical diagnosis, mind you, but just in the sense of someone so in love with himself that it’s beyond tacky, look at all those wannabe-model headshots of himself as his stage backdrop, what the heck) like thanks buddy for giving people such a clear example of toxic masculinity and poor sartorical sensibilities, ugh.

    Good on any university who decides not to host and thus support his hateful views. The idea that you can provide a platform and thus amplify someone’s bigoted ideas and also remain “neutral” in the overall bigger picture is ridiculous and self-serving. Such an act doesn’t exist in a vaccuum, I would have a serious problem going to a university that hosted Milo Y because I would not feel safe, I would have to be constantly alert wondering what other oppressive events/incidents they are going to permit that is going to come at a cost to me or to others. We already have enough issues with rape culture on campuses (and everywhere else) and a depressing amount of mockery of the idea that people have a right to education without feeling afraid for their life or their mental health.

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