(1) HE’S BAAACK. ScienceFiction.com explains how Dr. Okun’s been down for the count almost as long as Captain America – “Okun’s Razor: New ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ Featurette Explains The Return Of Dr. Okum”.
Of course, the alien attacked the doctor and took over his mind, using him to communicate with the other people outside the laboratory, and the encounter ended with men having to shoot the alien before it hurt the president, all of which left Dr. Okun comatose on the floor.
According to the new featurette released, Dr. Okun did not actually die that day. Apparently he was just left in a vegetative state, a coma, for the past twenty years, leaving him prime to be woken up by contact with new alien minds as the aliens return in the new film.
(2) FUTURE PUPPIES. Paul Weimer’s “Of Dogs and Men: Clifford Simak’s City” is the latest installment of Tor.com’s “Lost Classics” series.
…A suite of stories that merges Simak’s love of dogs, his interest in rural settings and landscapes, use of religion and faith, and his interest in robots all in one package: City.
City is a fixup novel originally consisting of seven stories written between 1944 and 1951, and collected together in 1952. City charts the fall of Humanity’s (or the creature called “Man” in the stories) civilization, starting with his urban environment, and finally, of the fall of Humanity itself. As Humanity falls, so rises the successor to Man, the Dogs. As David Brin would later do to chimps and dolphins in his Uplift stories and novels, the story of the engineered rise of Dogs, and their supplanting of Man, is due to the agency of one family, the Websters. The growth and development of the Dogs is thanks to their agency, and the Dog’s continued growth is due to the help of Jenkins, the robot created as a butler for the Webster family who becomes a mentor to the Dogs and a through line character in the narrative…..
(3) SIMAK AT 1971 WORLDCON. And with lovely timing, the FANAC YouTube channel has just posted Part 2 of a photo-illustrated audio recording of the Noreascon Banquet. It includes the Guest of Honor speeches from Clifford Simak and Harry Warner, Jr. Other speakers: Bob Shaw, Toastmaster Robert Silverberg, Forrest J Ackerman, Gordon Dickson, and TAFF winner Mario Bosnyak.
(4) PATIENCE REWARDED. Ricky L. Brown says go for it, in a review of Joe Zieja’s Mechanical Failure at Amazing Stories.
At first, the book comes off as a plead, as if asking the reader to accept the fact that it supposed to be funny. The dialog feels a little forced and the humor dangerously becomes the focal point over character development and plot. If a literary version of a laugh track was a real thing, letting the reader know that this part is funny and you are supposed to be laughing along with the fabricated audience, it would be running non-stop during the first chapter.
As a reviewer, this is usually the point when one must decide if the work has potential or if it is time to abandon hope before investing the time. The original premise was sound and I truly wanted the book to be good, so I pressed on.
And then it got better….
Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja is a funny story about a funny man in a funny universe. What makes this book work so well is the author’s innate ability to paint a sarcastic hero in a ridiculously irrational setting, and allow the reader to laugh along at the absurdity that could become our future.
(5) AUTOGRAPH SEEKERS. A weekend of signings at the Denver Comic Con inspired Sarah A. Hoyt to write “The Running Of The Fans”. Before you get cranked up – I thought it was pretty funny.
….This is interrupted by a voice from the ceiling, “The fans are coming, the fans are coming.”
The double doors open on a throng at the end of the hall. Some of the fans are in costume. There is a minotaur in an Acme costume, for instance, several ladies in corsets and men wearing uniforms of all epochs, some of them imaginary.
The announcers shriek and run behind the barriers which are formed by booths filled with books. For a while the melee is too confused to focus on, and the announcers are both talking at the same time.
After a while the younger announcer says. “John Ringo is down. I repeat he’s down, and they’ve taken his kilt. But he’s still fighting valiantly.”
“Larry Correia,” says the older announcer, “Is still running, though he is QUITE literally covered in fans demanding his autograph. Look at him move! That’s why they call him The Mountain Who Writes.”
“If mountains moved, of course.”
“We have the first author to escape the melee, ladies and gentlemen. David Drake seems to have evaded the fans by the expedient of pretending to be lost and asking for directions, then fading away.”….
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- June 21, 1940 — Mariette Hartley, remembered by fans for the Star Trek episode “All Our Yesterdays”, though probably best known to the public for her Polaroid commercials with James Garner.
(7) HOW TO HIT BILLIONAIRES IN THE FEELS. Renay at Lady Business outlines a plan for action in “Captain America: Steve Rogers – The Only Power Left to Us is Money”.
Captain America: Steve Rogers #2 drops on June 29. I’m not getting it because I dropped it from my pull list and didn’t buy #1 due to A) my HEIGHTENED EMOTIONS, expressed by this thread on Twitter by readingtheend and B) the behavior of Nick Spencer/Tom Brevoort in the media, which included laughing at upset fans, and generally being dismissive, cruel, and gratuitously smug on Twitter (the failure mode of clever is asshole, etc.). I placed my funds toward other comics instead (Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur is super cute, y’all). But I’m just one fan. I’ve never advocated a boycott before, but there’s a first time for everything!
Boycotts work when they target specific behavior. A wholesale Marvel/Disney boycott is ineffective; they’re diversified (curse them for being smart at business, and also, billionaires). Refusing to buy and removing from your pull or digital subscription list Captain America: Steve Rogers #2 (June 29, 2016) and all subsequent issues will be more effective than swearing off all Marvel comics. Also, it doesn’t punish other creative people at Marvel who had no control over this situation. That sends a message to Marvel, The Company: this comic/plotline is not profitable! That’s easier for them to grasp than nuanced discussions about history and cultural respect that it’s clear they have no interest in listening to at this particular time. Although it doesn’t hurt to tell them, either, by writing emails or letters to outline exactly why you aren’t supporting the comic. This post has a longer list on how to make financial decisions that impact this specific comic that are active rather than reactive.
(8) WESTWORLD TEASER TRAILER. Westworld is coming to HBO in October 2016.
(9) ORDWAY. Universe Today features “Finding ‘The Lost Science’ of 2001: A Space Odyssey”.
The film 2001: A Space Odyssey brought space science to the general masses. Today we may consider it as common place, but in 1968 when the film was released, humankind yet to walk on the Moon. We certainly didn’t have any experience with Jupiter. Yet somehow the producer, Stanley Kubrick, successfully peered into the future and created a believable story. One of his methods was to employ Frederick I. Ordway III as his science consultant. While Ordway has since passed, he left behind a veritable treasure trove of documents detailing his work for Kubrick. Science author and engineer Adam K. Johnson got access to this trove which resulted in the book “2001: The Lost Science – The Scientist, Influences & Designs from the Frederick I. Ordway III Estate Volume 2“. It’s a wonderful summary of Ordway’s contributions and the film’s successes.
Johnson’s book was released this month.
(10) TABLE TALK. Black Gate’s John O’Neill gave his neighbor a lesson in marketing psychology, as he explains in “Total Pulp Victory: A Report on Windy City Pulp & Paper 2016, Part I”.
I learned a great deal about selling at my first Windy City Pulp show. And most of what I learned was the result of one fateful purchase.
When I noticed I was running low on paperbacks, I glanced across the aisle at the seller across from me, who had hundreds in big piles on his table. He was charging 25 cents each for the books he’d stacked on the floor, but wasn’t selling many. I’d rummaged through them and found he had a lot of great stuff, including some rare Ace Doubles in great condition, but no one seemed to be taking the time to dig through the jumbled stacks on the floor.
So I offered him 10 bucks for a box of books, and he was happy to sell it to me. Back at my table, I slipped each book out of the box and into a poly bag, and slapped a $10 price tag on it. The vendor watched me wordlessly as I put them prominently on display at the front of my booth. I’d put out less than half of them when a buyer wandered by, picked one up excitedly, paid me $10, and happily continued on his way.
Over the next few hours, the seller across the way watched furiously as I did a brisk business with his books, selling a good portion of his stock and making a very tidy profit. In the process, I learned two very valuable lessons.
- A 25 cent book in a jumble on the floor is worth precisely 25 cents, and a prominently displayed $10 book in a poly bag is worth $10. Simple as that.
- One the whole, it’s much easier to sell a $10 book than a 25 cent book.
(11) STEVE FOX. Somebody on eBay will happily take $12 for “1986 sci-fi fanzine FILE 770 #60, Challenger disaster”. However, I included this link for the opportunity afforded of showing you a cover by Steve Fox, a Philadelphia fanartist who, quite unreasonably, was voted behind No Award in 1985.
(12) CHARGE REVERSED. Vox Day, at the end of a post otherwise spent extolling the views of John C. Wright, took issue with the popular acclaim given to a massive battle in the latest episode of Game of Thrones.
The battle scenes in the most recent episode of A Game of Thrones were so shockingly inept and historically ignorant that I found myself wondering if Kameron Hurley had been hired as the historical consultant.
As one wag put it on Twitter: A cavalry charge? I’d better put my pikes in reserve!
And while I’m at it, I’ll refrain from ordering my archers to fire at them as they approach. Then I’ll send my infantry in to surround the survivors, so they can’t break and run, thereby preventing my cavalry from riding them down and slaughtering them from behind. And when the totally predictable enemy reinforcements arrive just in the nick of time, because I’ve been busy posturing rather than simply destroying the surrounded enemy, instead of withdrawing my army and retreating to my fortress, I’ll just stand around and watch them get entirely wiped out before fleeing by myself.
It was the second-most retarded battle scene I’ve ever seen, topped only by Faramir leading Gondor’s cavalry against a fortified position manned by archers in The Return of the King. I was always curious about what the cavalry was intended to do if they somehow managed to survive the hail of arrows and reach the walls that no horse could possibly climb.
(13) STOP MOTION DINOSAURS. The Alex Film Society will show The Lost World (1925) on Sunday, July 10th at 2:00 p.m. at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, CA.
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not writing Sherlock Holmes stories, he often wrote history, fantasy, adventure and science-fiction tales. One of his most successful novels was The Lost World, the story of adventurers who find a South American plateau – where time stopped 65 million years ago – inhabited by dinosaurs. In 1912, when the book was published, movies were still in their infancy and technology wasn’t available to do the fantastic story justice, but by 1925, Willis O’Brien had begun to perfect stop motion, a form of animation that would allow him and his small team to bring these long dead creatures to life, blending them convincingly with real actors. It created a sensation when people saw, for the first time, believable prehistoric creatures on the screen, and remains a cinematic milestone today.
Featuring some of the biggest stars of the silent era, including Wallace Beery, Bessie Love and Lewis Stone, as well as no less than a dozen different species of dinosaur, our print of The Lost World is a fully restored version from the George Eastman House collection. Famed composer and pianist Alexander Rannie will accompany the film with the musical score that was written for the original release.
Preservation funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and Hugh Hefner.
(14) NEWS FOR THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER? Yahoo! Movies has a Frozen franchise update: “Olaf Forever! Disney Introduces ‘Frozen Northern Lights’ – Including Brand New Character”.
Think of it as the Frozen sequel before the Frozen sequel. Disney has just unveiled Frozen Northern Lights, a multimedia expansion of its hugely popular princess franchise that will include new books and Lego animated shorts. The adventure revolves around Elsa, Anna, Olaf, Kristoff, and Sven — joined by their new friend, Little Rock — on an mission to fix the Northern Lights in time for a special troll ceremony.
(15) JESSICA F. JONES. Whatever you thought you heard, you apparently didn’t. ScienceFiction.com has the story — “She Don’t Give A @#$%: ‘Jessica Jones’ Executive Producer Reveals Marvel’s Restrictions In Season 1”.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporte, ‘Jessica Jones’ executive producer Melissa Rosenberg spoke candidly about producing the show, and what restrictions were placed on her by either Netflix or Marvel. As suspected, Netflix did not put a lot of restrictions on the show, but it seems Marvel had some very specific Dos and Don’ts that she had to abide by during Season 1 of ‘Jessica Jones.’ In her words:
“The beauty of working at Netflix is that you don’t have those limits. I also work with Marvel, and Marvel has a brand and their brand is generally PG-13. They’ve kind of let us go to PG-16. No F-bombs! And if anyone was going to say ‘fuck,’ it would be Jessica Jones. Sometimes I would be like, ‘Please just let me put one!’ Never. But what’s funny is that people said, ‘Wait — she didn’t say fuck? I could have sworn she did!’ Ritter can deliver ‘fuck’ with her face. Her look says it! She can be saying ‘potato.’”
[Thanks to JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]
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Summer is when the rain is warm
Don’t you just love armchair generals?
I’m reminded of historical clusters like the Charge of the Light Brigade (Battle of Balaclava), or the Battle of Isandlwana, or even Waterloo (where one cause of defeat was simply Napoleon’s late start on the morning of).
Real or fictional, a battle plan is formed either after great planning and analysis, or hastily; then, people, individual human beings, try to execute it to the best of their abilities, presuming they receive their instructions, understand them, etc.. Battles have been lost and won because people did what they were supposed to and because the didn’t do what they were supposed to; because the intel was accurate or not accurate; because the equipment performed beyond its capabilities or broke down because of a sideways glance; because someone was afraid and courageous, or afraid and cowardly, because the weather cooperated or it didn’t.
Do all the analysis you want – I’m pretty sure you can find an historical precedent for all of the “mistakes” made in the show and, whether there were good reasons or not for those mistakes, they still happened because battle is a chaotic cauldron where no plan survives contact with the enemy.
Stoic Cynic: A tour de armed force. Bravo!
The Battle of Waterloo was terrible, really ruined that season of the Napoleonic Wars for me. Especially the contrived ending where the Prussians suddenly appear out of nowhere to save the day!
Bruce Arthurs: While that annoyed you, I would point out Joan Hanke-Woods did the same and she won a Hugo.
Stoic Cynic: A platen-roll and a 21-tab salute!
(12)
The white supremacist who natters on about the logical and scientifically proven inferiority of women sure seems judgmental of other people’s fictions, doesn’t he?
If my understanding (which comes mostly from folk ballads) is correct, every British soldier at Waterloo was named Willie.
Summer is when I optimistically head back to the UK to visit friends and family.
I knew Steven Fox when he attended PSFS in the 1970’s, He was a nice funny guy, black and poor. But he was driven to do his best. His artwork was better than much that was seen in Philcon shows (certainly better than those icky cats with butterfly wing). Which is why I wonder where he went to. And Jason Kheene, around the same time, vanished.
@Bonnie McDaniel: “I clicked through to the Wright post Mr Beale was referring to and stared goggle-eyed as Wright’s Ranty McRantface reached hitherto unscaled heights.”
Egads. That certainly is something, isn’t it? (And don’t you love how he not only can’t be bothered to identify characters by name, but even gets the names of the shows wrong? It’s The Flash and Arrow, not Flash and The Arrow.) And for someone who exudes such hate for the series in question, he surely does seem intimately familiar with every plot detail – well, except the ones he conveniently leaves out, of course. You know, like the “drunk, rich, white frat boy with a yacht” being a worse choice than the “she-assassin” because Oliver was in a relationship with Sara’s sister at the time. One would have thought JCW would rail against such unfaithfulness, but no…
One star, did not finish.
@ Rev Bob. And here I thought “GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXIES” was a comic that I had not hitherto heard of…
Slate video (http://www.slate.com/articles/video.html – can’t find a better link) does a great job explaining the GoT battle, pointing out that the plan was that of Cannae. Just, alas, wars tend not to run to plan.
Aaron: Hey, you have a fan. Vox Day has written a post defending himself against your criticisms of his take on the episode.
@Steve Davidson (re rant on how battles are won and lost): exactly. The case of Antietam is especially strange, but I’ve heard recently that Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg would have succeeded if a certain blond egomaniac cavalryman hadn’t stunningly broken the flanking assault that would have softened the line that Pickett’s men went head-on against.
Hot patootie, bless my scrolls, really love those pixel rolls….
According to the runic calendar, April 14 is the first day of summer and October 14 is the first day of winter.
In a good year, the skiing season starts mid november and lasts to mid june.
Also re (14), Elza’s dress seems amazingly ill suited for a mission. Unless that mission is to dazzle a prince in a ball room. Anna’s dress seems to be at least a little adjusted to a mission into the wilderness.
re (12), I haven’t seen that episode and probably won’t see it until it’s on local TV next year. But in general, I have long since stopped trying to make sense of any battle on the screen. As someone said earlier, the requirements of budget and narrative generally means that battles becomes a series of small setpieces. And if you look closely there’s almost always lots of things that doesn’t makes sense – from things like the hero conveniently always being attacked by just the right number of people to dispatch them easily, to people apparently jumping from a plain to a hilltop and back on the plain.
So Vox Day found “The battle scenes in the most recent episode of A Game of Thrones were so shockingly inept and historically ignorant” ? Like the ones in Lord of the rings? You, know, these two great historic novels “Lord of the rings” and “Song of Ice and fire”?
Oh and wasnt any historical inconsistencies (as in “featuring inventions that hasnt been made yet”) but wrong, because the strategy wasnt good? Hmm, you know, it is kind of hard, to be at a battlefield and see everything (like you do, from a TV-standpoint). And your army generals dont actually listen to you. Or they misinterpret your words. Well, I guess, he doesnt like military Fantasy much – at least not the realistic type.
Mike Glyer wrote: “Bruce Arthurs: While that annoyed you, I would point out Joan Hanke-Woods did the same and she won a Hugo.”
She sent multiple copies of the same artwork to numerous fanzine editors? Somehow that never made a blip on my radar. Checking, I see she won in 1986, the year after Fox came in below No Award. Perhaps it was a matter of degree? (Identical Fox illos appeared in quite a few fanzines. I never noticed that with Joan Hanke-Woods. I suggest that with the caveat that mid-1985 was when we moved to our current home and my active fannish lifestyle became a lot less active, with considerably fewer fanzines being received.)
Bruce Arthurs: I used to be sensitive to multiple submissions too, but at the time File 770 was appearing five or six times year, so I could be first in the field with some of these Fox and Hanke-Woods covers. If I wasn’t first, I made the piece a back cover. But yes, they both did it.
And when you look at 1985 — two fanzines (Mythologies, Holier Than Thou) and a fanwriter (Hlavaty) also finished behind No Award. The Worldcon was in Australia. I think it’s more likely this was a “never heard of ’em” ranking, rather than singling out an artist for sending his work to more than one place.
ETA: Of course, somebody in Australia had heard of the editors of Holier Than Thou — Marty and Robbie Cantor were the DUFF delegates that year.
Aaron: Hey, you have a fan.
And his defense is as stupid as his original post.
Svefg, Obygba pbhyqa’g fvzcyl fvg onpx naq yrvfheryl yrg gur Fgnex sbeprf nggnpx. Ornyr frrzf gb unir sbetbggra gung zvyvgnel npgvbaf ner cbyvgvpny riragf, naq ner qevira ol cbyvgvpny arrqf. Obygba jnf gur onfgneq fba bs n ehyre, naq gung ehyre jnf frra ol znal nf n hfhecre jub unq gnxra gur cynpr evtugshyyl uryq ol gur Fgnexf. Ur unq gb abg bayl jva, ohg jva pbaivapvatyl naq pbzcyrgryl va beqre gb fubj gung qrslvat uvf ehyr jbhyq yrnq gb gur qrnguf bs gubfr jub bccbfrq uvz. Ur unq gb sbepr na ratntrzrag, tbnqvat n fznyyre sbepr vagb nggnpxvat uvf ynetre bar fb ur pbhyq naavuvyngr vg. Fvggvat onpx naq jnvgvat sbe gur Fgnex’f gb znxr gurve zbir prqrf nyy vavgvngvir ba gur onggyrsvryq. Vg yrgf gur Fgnexf qvpgngr gur sybj bs gur onggyr, naq gurl zvtug unir n fgengrtl gung pbhyq qrsrng uvz, be ng yrnfg pnhfr uvz gebhoyr. Vg nyfb znxrf Obygba cbyvgvpnyyl ihyarenoyr – ur’f abg bayl abg n oenir pbzznaqre, ur’f n cnffvir bar. Vs ur unq ratntrq naq jba ohg yrg Fabj be Fnafn trg njnl, ur znl nf jryy unir ybfg gur onggyr gb ortva jvgu. Fvggvat onpx naq jnvgvat sbe gur Fgnexf gb pbzr gb uvz znxrf vg irel yvxryl gurl jbhyq rfpncr fubhyq gur onggyr tb ntnvafg gur Fgnexf.
Frpbaq, ol fraqvat uvf pninyel nsgre Fabj, Obygba jnf znxvat n fgngrzrag – jr jvyy xvyy lbh jvgu birejuryzvat sbepr. Pbagenel gb Ornyr’f pynvz, yrnqvat jvgu gur pninyel jnf dhvgr pbzzba va zrqvriny jne: Gur Serapu ng Ntvapbheg yrq jvgu gurve pninyel, nf gurl nyfb qvq ng gur Onggyrf bs Cbvgvref naq Yhanybatr. Nsgre na varssrpgvir nggnpx ol pebffobjzra (jubfr pebffobjf jrer qnzntrq ol enva) ng gur Onggyr bs Perpl, gur Serapu guerj gurve pninyel va orsber gurve vasnagel. Ng yrnfg sbe gur Serapu, nggnpxvat jvgu bar’f pninyel svefg jnf eryngviryl pbzzba guebhtubhg gur Uhaqerq Lrnef Jne (juvpu vf cnegvnyyl gur vafcvengvba sbe gur Fbat bs Vpr naq Sver frevrf).
Fraqvat gur pninyel gb nggnpx nyfb qbrf zhygvcyr guvatf sbe Obygba gung fvzcyl hfvat nepuref qbrf abg. Vs lbh fraq n pbhcyr bs ibyyrlf bs neebjf lbh jvyy cebonoyl xvyy Fabj, ohg gura lbh whfg unir gur Fgnex nezl vagnpg naq snpvat lbh npebff gur onggyrsvryq. Fraqvat gur pninyel erfhygf va guerr cbffvovyvgvrf: (1) Fabj vf xvyyrq, uvf nezl fgnlf chg, naq lbh vzzrqvngryl unir n sbepr bs pninyel ornevat qbja ba gur abj yrnqreyrff nezl orsber vg unf gvzr gb trg betnavmrq, (2) Fabj vfa’g xvyyrq, ohg engure ergerngf naq lbh unir gur pbzznaqre bs gur nezl neevivat whfg nurnq bs n jnir bs pninyel jvgubhg gvzr gb vffhr nal erny beqref bs jung gb qb, (3) gur Fgnexf pbhagre punetr naq lbh raq hc jvgu n zryrr gung lbh pna crccre jvgu nepuref naq oyrrq gur rarzl sbepr juvgr. Fraqvat lbhe nepuref gb xvyy Fabj nppbzcyvfurf abguvat rkprcg xvyyvat Fabj. Jvgu Fnafn fgvyy nebhaq, gung yrnirf Obygba ihyarenoyr.
Va na vqrny jbeyq, Obygba jbhyq unir unq cvpxrgf, ohg cergraqvat gung gurer unir arire orra fvghngvbaf va juvpu n ervasbepvat sbepr unf neevirq harkcrpgrqyl vf fvzcyl vtabevat uvfgbel – vg unccrarq dhvgr snzbhfyl, sbe rknzcyr, qhevat gur Svefg Pehfnqr. Be pbafvqre Phfgre’f ynpx bs vagryyvtrapr pbapreavat gur zbirzragf bs gur Fvbhk pbnyvgvba neenlrq ntnvafg uvz. Be Wnpxfba’f synaxvat nggnpx ng Punapryybefivyyr. Naq fb ba.
I’m now convinced that Beale hasn’t seen the episode, and doesn’t understand the tactics used or the story at all. I’m also convinced that Beale doesn’t really know his history very well, since everything he said is directly contradicted by actual events from actual battles of the Hundred Years War era.
Also:
Nyfb, srvtarq ergerngf ner terng va jnetnzrf. Va ernyvgl, gurl bsgra jrag dhvgr onqyl. Srvtarq ergerngf ner dhvgr qvssvphyg gb rkrphgr, rira sbe qvfpvcyvarq gebbcf, nf nal ahzore bs guvatf pna tb jebat – gur nggnpxvat sbepr zvtug or noyr gb ernpu gur jvguqenjvat gebbcf orsber gurl pna pbzcyrgr gurve npgvba, naq guhf gurl jbhyq or qvfbetnavmrq naq ihyarenoyr. Gur ergerngvat sbeprf zvtug cnavp naq ghea gur srvtarq ergerng vagb na npghny bar. Bgure gebbcf zvtug frr n havg ergerngvat naq guvax gung gurer jnf na npghny ergerng tbvat ba naq nonaqba gurve cbfvgvba. Naq ba naq ba naq ba. Gur yvfg bs snyfr ergerngf gung ghearq vagb ebhgf vf ynetr naq vzcerffvir. Gur yvfg bs snyfr ergerngf gung jbexrq vf fbzrjung fznyyre. N punetr sbyybjrq ol jurry naq jvguqenjny jbhyq unir erdhverq rkpryyrag pbzzhavpngvbaf (juvpu Obygba qbrfa’g frrz gb unir unq), pninyel zber qvfpvcyvarq guna zbfg (juvpu Obygba znl be znl abg unir unq), naq gung rirelguvat tb evtug. Jul jbhyq Obygba pubbfr n evfxl fgengrtl vaibyivat n snyfr ergerng jura ur pbhyq trg jung ur jnagrq va n zhpu zber fgenvtugsbejneq znaare?
http://www.jimchines.com/2016/06/if-we-wrote-men-like-we-write-women
They are all great, though the Heinlein one resonated most painfully.
Hines is taking requests in the comments.
lauowolf: I’d have laughed at these in the Seventies — they would have been subversive then. Now they’re just heavy.
#10, regarding marketing psychology:
My first introduction to this sort of thing was actually in the pages of Henry Reed, Inc., where ‘Midge’, the young woman Henry goes into business with suggests different prices for the turtles that they’ve painted up and are selling, with the justification that the people paying for the more expensive ones will think they’re getting something better, and the people paying for the cheaper ones will think they’re getting a bargain. Henry didn’t see the point in it at first, but had to admit that it worked later.
Between the Henry Reed books and the Great Brain books, my YA book list gave me an interesting introduction to practical psychology at an early age…
Why are things so heavy in the future? Did something go wrong with the Earth’s gravitational pull?
Here in south central Texas, we still have 4 seasons:
Spring – February 15 – May 1st
Summer – May 1st – July 15
Hell – July 16 – October 15
Fall – October 26 – February 14
If we get winter, it’s in one or two day increments in January. And Hell keeps expanding out on either side.
MG
And demonstrates that he did NOT watch the episode, or failed to comprehend a couple of key lines.
Par for the course from a creationist I guess.
Congratulations 🙂
His reaction as to why he isn’t wrong reminds me of something he wrote elsewhere: “Remember that Gammas can never be wrong and so regardless of what happens he will publicly claim victory and it’s all a lot of fun. Of course the vitriol in his words betrays his emotions and instead he’s furious. Being a Secret King means you never learn from being shown to be wrong. “ OK that is a cheap shot on my part at poor Vox but seriously I wonder how much of the supposed psychology that he writes is a way of discussing his own insecurities.
@ Aaron – you, sir are a true scholar. Brilliantly said.
I was humming Men of Harlech all the way through that. 🙂
I blame McDonald’s french fries.
@Camestros: Well, yes. Beale always seems to be writing about himself. Everything points towards him being a petty narcissist, so that shouldn’t be surprising.
On the substance, he’d do a better job of pronouncing certain things “ahistorical” if he actually studied some history first. Then he wouldn’t find himself claiming things that actually happened in actual battles of the Hundred Years War and War of the Roses to be things that never happened.
A story of relevance to recent discussions: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/23/australias-gun-laws-stopped-mass-shootings-and-reduced-homicides-study-finds
I will note, there is one “historical inaccuracy” in the Battle of the Bastards insofar as it is a tactic that seems to have been never intentionally used in medieval warfare (or at least we have no record of it).
Gurer vf ab erpbeq bs n zrqvriny zvyvgnel pbzznaqre beqrevat uvf nepuref gb ybbfr gurve nggnpxf vagb n zryrr vaibyivat uvf bja fbyqvref. Xavtug naq zra-ng-nezf jrer pbafvqrerq gb or gbb inyhnoyr (naq npghnyyl zber inyhnoyr guna nepuref be pebffobjzra), naq rafhevat gur yblnygl bs bar’f sbyybjref jnf bs cnenzbhag vzcbegnapr – zhpu bs gur cbyvgvpny fgehttyr, rfcrpvnyyl va vagreany fgehttyrf yvxr gur Jne bs gur Ebfrf, pragrerq nebhaq jura bar snpgvba be nabgure qrpvqvat jurgure gb qrsrpg gb gur bgure fvqr. Trggvat n erchgngvba sbe xvyyvat bar’f bja gebbcf qbrf yvggyr gb vafcver yblnygl.
Ba gur bgure unaq, guvf unf orpbzr fbzrguvat bs n Ubyyljbbq gebcr gb fubj ubj ivyynvabhf n punenpgre vf – Ybatfunaxf hfrq gur gnpgvp va Oenirurneg, sbe rknzcyr. Npghny uvfgbevpny rknzcyrf ner abg va gur erpbeq.
This isn’t something Beale really complained about, however.
I find the whole Battle of Agincourt very ahistorical. Clearly no commander of the time would let so many of his knights be slaughtered. They would have flanked around the archers or stood their ground and let the English forces advance towards them. I don’t know what the script writers were thinking. Of course not as stupid as the whole ‘War of the Roses’ plot line in the next season. Yet somehow I keep tuning into ‘British History’ – mind you the more recent ‘modern era’ episodes make even less sense: the whole country decides to disband because they don’t like Belgians regulating the shape of their bananas? Ludicrous – the whole thing has jumped the shark and descended into self-parody.
“A different question on the GoT battle for Aaron and other knowledgeable people: my friends and I have a range of opinions about whether Ramsay’s archery tactics would actually have produced the massive wall of bodies at the limits of their range as happens in the show?”
No.
The body count produced at the beginning of the Battle of Winterfell on the show was ridiculously extreme. Medieval battles typically produced somewhere from a 15-20% casualty rate, with extreme examples of carnage produced in battles, such as Cannae, where Hannibal double enclosed the Roman force and produced 75% casualties because double enclosing them forced him to kill everyone inside the enclosure. Enclosing a force locks both the winning side and the losing side into the fight because there is no avenue for withdrawal for either. That means that the winning side is probably going to suffer greater casualties than they would otherwise.
So normally, 80-85% of both sides would emerge from a mediieval battle without injury. That 15-20% rate includes both injured and dead. And normally that 15-20% rate was produced over a period of hours, not minutes. Basically, the showrunners would have us believe that the actual death rate at Winterfell was so far out of normal proportion that it would produce a massive mount of bodies so large that the Bolton force could use it as a wall for their enclosure maneuver.
Just to put it in perspective, the battle at Falkirk was a route and Edward used almost the exact same tactics as Ramsay here… rain down arrows of both sides in the battle… and the casualty rate hovered near the normal 15%,
Don’t get me wrong. If you lose 15% of your force, your force has still been nearly decimated, but it isn’t anything close to the near 50% fatality rate necessary to produce that wall of bodies.
@AnotherLaura
But what’s going on in TX between October 16 and 25?
I find the whole Battle of Agincourt very ahistorical. Clearly no commander of the time would let so many of his knights be slaughtered. They would have flanked around the archers or stood their ground and let the English forces advance towards them.
It is even worse than that. The English did advance on the French, pulling up their defensive stakes, moving forward a few hundred yards. Any French commander would have obviously launched his attack during the time Henry was moving his army and their archers weren’t protected by stakes. The fact that the French didn’t just shows how dunderheaded the producers of this show are when it comes to military tactics.
Just to put it in perspective, the battle at Falkirk was a route and Edward used almost the exact same tactics as Ramsay here… rain down arrows of both sides in the battle… and the casualty rate hovered near the normal 15%,
I haven’t seen evidence that Edward used arrows on a mixed melee that included his own troops, but rather pulled back his ineffective cavalry and used longbowmen to destroy the tightly packed schiltrons.
I’ll note that the Battle of Falkirk was one of those battles in which the English cavalry attacked first, ahead of any archery or infantry assault.
Indeed, has it not been decimated-and-a-half?
“I haven’t seen evidence that Edward used arrows on a mixed melee that included his own troops, but rather pulled back his ineffective cavalry and used longbowmen to destroy the tightly packed schiltrons.”
My point remains. Whether he was firing on forces from both sides or just forces on Wallace’s side, the casualty rate remained typical for a medieval battle at around 15%. It would not have created a massive wall of bodies that he could subsequently use to pin and enclose Wallace’s forces with if he had been inclined to do that. And it certainly wouldn’t have happened in less than 20 minutes.
“Indeed, has it not been decimated-and-a-half?”
Oops, yes, you are right. It has. 🙂
Maybe the French units didn’t have enough movement points to enter a hex that was part of the enemy’s zone of control? Or maybe the French player just had a series of really bad rolls?
I had to read it twice, but is JCW seriously and with a straight face claiming that women and POC have not suffered discrimination in his adult life? That racism and sexism have been eliminated?
Please tell me I’m reading that wrong.
In other news, discussion from yesterday has caused me to pick up the first book in Campbell’s The Lost Fleet series, and even just a few chapters in I’m already sold. Probably helps that I strongly suspect it’s another retelling of the Anabasis, as I’m a sucker for Greek-history references.
@Techgrrl1972
There’s a certain school of thought in American “conservative” circles that says that the Civil Rights Act did away with all significant racial or gender discrimination, therefore the issue is closed, therefore you’re the real racist or sexist for trying to keep raising it, so there.
It kind of requires a stunning ignorance of both history and how present-day society still work, but some folks will go to enormous lengths to justify a position that they bear no complicity in injustice and therefore have no moral obligation to do anything to rectify it. Can’t say whether this is how JCW is reasoning – I don’t have any time for him in any case – but it’s quite common.
@idontknow: True. The speed at which casualties were inflicted was somewhat ridiculous.
There is also the problem that bodies don’t normally stack up like that. First off, to “stack”, the people would have to be killed while on top of the pile. You might get one or two people falling on top of their comrades, but once the bodies got two or three deep, the usual response for soldiers is to move around the corpses rather than step on them. Plus, bodies don’t stack well in any event. Human bodies are floppy and will slide off of one another when one tries to pile them up unless one does it fairly carefully. The kind of spontaneous “stacking” in the battle probably would not happen. As I said before, we have photographs from U.S. Civil War battlefields and with the exception of times that bodies piled up in ditches, we see the bodies scattered rather than piled. Even, for example, the dead at Bloody Lane from the Battle of Antietam didn’t pile up despite the fact that there were a combined total of about 5,600 casualties on an 800 yard road.
In re Techgrrl1972
” No law and no custom in my whole adult lifetime erected a barrier to women based on sex, nor none to blacks based on race. ”
– John C. Wright
Re: Jessica Jones—does it strike anyone else as ironic that she’s not allowed to say “fuck”*, but is allowed to fuck? They even went with the old breaking-the-bed gag!
It certainly emphasizes how peculiar our taboos can be at times. The funny thing is, I even understand, and think it makes a certain amount of sense. I think the act probably has become slightly less shocking and controversial than the word. Which I find refreshing. It certainly wasn’t that way when I was young. When I was young, TV was still trying to come to terms with the notion that a married couple might not have two separate beds!
* Normally, I would try to pick a genteel euphemism out of respect for OGH, but since he showed no hesitation in quoting the word…
Quindecimated I suppose.