Pixel Scroll 12/13/16 I Never Thought I’d Be Playing The Straight Pixel To A Tin Scroll

(1) STORIES TO NAVIGATE BY. WIRED editor Scott Dadich introduces their first all-science-fiction issue: “Science Fiction Helps Make Sense of an Uncertain Future”.

Why fiction? Glad you asked. We live in uncertain times. One of this publication’s most important jobs is to see the big trends, spot important business models, and chronicle landmark innovations that show us where we’re going. But right now, that is hard to do. In this rapidly changing, aggressively agitated moment, it’s very difficult to discern what the future holds.

So we decided to consider things a little more obliquely. Sometimes to get a clearer sense of reality, you have to take some time to dream.

To this end, we reached out to a number of our favorite fiction authors and gave them a simple mission: Pick a plausible innovation or change in the world and spin out a near-term scenario. Don’t stick to the current moment. See where your mind goes. Imagine. Have fun.

That’s not to say the stories themselves are all about fun. Many are quite dystopic. N. K. Jemisin—whose novel The Fifth Season won the 2016 Hugo award—spins a cautionary tale about resource depletion and interplanetary relations. The duo that goes by the pen name James S. A. Corey, creators of The Expanse, imagines a world with a universal basic income—and what we are left wanting. Charles Yu, who writes for HBO’s Westworld, examines what life will be like when machines can read our thoughts. Etgar Keret, the celebrated Israeli fiction author, writes about … well, just read it. And in his refreshing “review,” Glen David Gold, the author of Carter Beats the Devil, shows us what we will have to endure in the movie theater someday in the future.

(2) DOWN WITH FAKE NEWS, Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, has donated $1 million to The Poynter Institute. The gift will support a five-year program at Poynter that focuses on verification, fact-checking and accountability in journalism.

The Craig Newmark Foundation, the charitable organization established by Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark, is giving Poynter $1 million to fund a faculty chair in journalism ethics.

The gift will support a five-year program at Poynter that focuses on verification, fact-checking and accountability in journalism. It’s the largest donation Poynter’s ever received from an individual foundation.

The Newmark Chair will expand on Poynter’s teaching in journalism ethics and develop certification programs for journalists that commit to ethical decision-making practices. The faculty member will also organize an annual conference on ethics issues at Poynter and be a regular contributor to Poynter.org.

Poynter will begin accepting applications for the job in January.

“I want to stand up for trustworthy journalism, and I want to stand against deceptive and fake news,” Newmark, founder of Craigslist and the Craig Newmark Foundation, said in a statement. “And I want to help news organizations stand and work together to protect themselves and the public against deception by the fake media. Poynter’s the right place to do this work because the Institute has long been very serious about trustworthy news and committed to both training journalists and holding media organizations accountable.”

(3) THIS IS, APPARENTLY, REAL NEWS. Blastr’s Cher Martinetti scoffs at the UN stripping Wonder Woman of her honorary title.

Wonder Woman’s role as an honorary ambassador to the UN has come to an abrupt end less than two months after receiving the designation, due to the backlash the appointment received. Some felt that the character’s sexualization was sending the “wrong message” to young girls, and in a move that was every bit the opposite of empowerment, protested and petitioned the character as a symbol for gender equality. Because nothing says women are equal and empowered more than other women slut-shaming them.

The 45,000 signatures that signed the petition against Wonder Woman’s honorary title, and those who protested the event a couple months back, are a sobering reminder of how we, as women, can’t get out of our own way when it comes to equality and progress. We’re taught at a young age to be shameful of our bodies, that our sexuality should be oppressed, and that other women are our competition and, at times, the enemy. We’re trained to look for the flaws in other females first and weaponize them to take them down. For those 45,000-plus people, of course their only focus was the imagined over-sexualization of a character who was so progressive that she graced the cover of the very first issue of Ms. magazine. You know, since Gloria Steinem is wont to praise women who aren’t empowered….

(4) HE BLINDED US WITH SCIENCE. Camestros Felapton has invented the tool we’ve all been waiting for – “The Thermodynamic Model for Distinguishing Fictional Science from Fictional Magic”.

Oh, the age old problem! Any sufficiently fictional technology is indistinguishable from fictional magic. Faster than light drives? Going really fast magic! Psychic powers? Mind magic with a sciency name. Teleportation? Vanishing magic! Robots? Golems! Viral zombies? Actual zombies!

Well a crack team has been working on this problem here at Felapton Towers and we’ve come up with the Thermodynamic Model for Distinguishing Fictional Science from Fictional Magic.

(5) MIND TRICKS FOR THE EYES. The Washington Post has a review by David Betancourt of Pablo Hidalgo’s “Star Wars Propaganda: A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy.” It’s a book of propaganda posters for both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance and is really good commercial art. The publisher is Harper Design.

“Propaganda” takes key incidents from “Star Wars” and politicizes them through art. Turning these pages, you’ll see appeals to creatures of the Dark Side and to disciples of the Force. Every opinion on the battle is represented. Some of these posters want you to believe the Death Star is the worst thing ever; others claim those pesky Jedi are the real menace.

Guided by the words of official Star Wars expert Pablo Hidalgo, “Propaganda” is a galactic history lesson, offering even the most devoted fans a deep dive into corners of the George Lucas films they may not have known.

starwarspropaganda%20hc%20c-wdp

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born December 13, 1925 – Dick Van Dyke, of Mary Poppins and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang fame.

(7) RAVE ABOUT YOUR FAVE. RedStarReviews has named its favorite book of 2016. Don’t be fooled by the graphical structure of the post, Ancillary Justice is not that book. It is —

Jeffrey Alan Love for his book: Notes From The Shadowed City!

This book is AMAZING! It is an illustrated tale of a man who has forgotten who he is while finding himself inside a magical city filled with dark and dangerous wonder. I love the artwork and was completely captivated by the story. This is a book to fire up the imaginations of the readers! A fantasy that introduces you to some of the lessor known magical swords hidden away within the Shadowed City. This beat Passage At Arms, The Incorruptibles, Children Of Fire and all others to carry away the award this year!

(8) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #15. The fifteenth of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions is for an autographed copy of Lyda Morehouse’s Resurrection Code. She’ll be sending a copy to each of the top three bidders, which is pretty cool.

Today’s auction is a little different. Lyda Morehouse will be sending an autographed trade paperback of her book RESURRECTION CODE to the top three bidders! That’s right, we have three copies to give away, which means triple the chances to win!

About the Book:

Where were you the day the Aswan dams broke? It’s the question that defines my generation. Me, I was stuck in British School al-Rehab hundreds of kilometers from the destruction that plunged North Africa into darkness and drowned twenty million people as massive floods reclaimed the ancient Nile valley. We watched the privileged and the sane abandon Egypt to the criminals, prostitutes, and a mysterious murderous cult of Osiris known as the Deadboys. Not much of the capitol remained, and my life really went to hell.

But that’s not where my story really starts.

My story starts the day I, Christian El-Aref, distinguished myself from the thousands of Cairo street rats and became the Mouse. And I had that dead UN soldier whose body that I, quite literally, stumbled over to thank for it all. Now, if only I can keep myself from getting murdered…

Also included: Morehouse’s AngeLINK-related short story, “ishtartu,” from the Lambda Award-nominated collection Periphery.

(9) BEWARE, GOD-SPOILERS! Fletcher Vredenburgh praises P.C Hodgell’s work at Black Gate – “Last of a Series… For Now: The Sea of Time by P.C. Hodgell”

Lastly, all those things I called out Hodgell for including, they’re all good — I wanted more pages, not less stuff. The Kencyrath and Rathilien are two of the most developed creations in any fantasy books I’ve ever read. For over a thousand pages now, Hodgell has been exploring the whys and wherefores of Kencyrath society and beliefs. The same thing goes for Rathilien. Each book has raised new questions and she’s never seen fit to leave them unaddressed. Doing that, she’s made her invented world and its inhabitants come to life, invested with brio and never seeming untrue.

Here are links to his previous reviews — God Stalk, Dark of the Moon, Seeker’s Mask, To Ride a Rathorn, Bound in Blood, and Honor’s Paradox.

(10) SEQUEL STALK! He also reminds us that author Hodgell says Baen will bring out the next book in her series in July 2017.

A couple of readers have asked me about this, and I just realized that I hadn’t generally announced it:  Baen tells me that The Gates of Tagmeth is due out next July.  At that point they will have had the ms in their hands for 14 months.  Why the delay?  I don’t know.  Sorry about that. My agent is working on a contract for the return to Tai-tastigon novel.  I’m a bit nervous about revisiting the city after all of these years.  For one thing, my style has changed a lot since God Stalk.  I think that, technically, I’m a better writer now.  However, I don’t think I still have the youthful bounce that made GS so much fun.  After all, for me it’s been 30+ years.  It will be different for Jame too.  A lot has happened in her life too although it’s only been about 4 years.  That will be an issue:  how much has she changed?  Then too, the city is in a bit of a mess.  So we’ll see.  I’ve carried this extended story in my mind for a long, long time.

(11) GAMERS AND SFWA. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America has posted an update to its game-writing membership qualifications.

After long deliberation, the Board has voted to change the qualifications, and the motion has passed. I welcome feedback on this iteration; I consider these things something that changes and adapts on an ongoing basis as the publishing world changes.

The complaints we heard were about the exclusion of salaried writers, the limit on number of collaborators, since collaboration in games is a different model than stories or novels, and the exclusion of game mechanics.

Here are the new qualifications:

Games in any medium may be used for qualification so long as the game has a narrative element, is in English, and in the science fiction, fantasy, horror or related genres.

Prospective members working on games may qualify by showing a sale or income in one of three ways:

  1. By making at least one paid sale of a minimum of 40,000 words to a qualified market, or three paid sales to qualified markets totaling at least 10,000 words. Game publishers may be designated as qualified markets using the already established process and criteria used to qualify fiction markets.
  2. By showing they have earned a net income of at least $3,000 from a game that includes at least 40,000 words of text over the course of a 12-month period since January 1, 2013. Income can be in the form of advance, royalties, or some combination of the three.
  3. If no word count is possible, such as work done for a video game, prospective members can qualify based on one professionally produced full-length game for which they were paid at least $3,000.

Money from crowd-funding campaigns can be used as part or all of the required income once the game has been delivered to backers, but the amount that can be claimed cannot be more than the net income from the number of games produced and delivered to backers (calculated by the number of backers multiplied by the minimum tier which receives a copy of the game.)

(12) UPROAR OF THE DAY. Yes, there are so many tweetstorms a reader can’t even tell which one triggered this comment:

(13) LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS. Quick, somebody write this. Oh, somebody already has? But Kepler data says it’s happening in real life — “Scientists think they’ve found a planet with weather so hot, its clouds are vaporized jewels”.

But on a planet as hot as HAT-P-7b, clouds are likely made of materials that have a much higher melting and boiling point; at those temperatures, most compounds would be permanently in their gaseous states. “Something that has the right sort properties is called corundum,” says Armstrong. On Earth, where temperatures are much lower, corundum is found in rocks—the mineral, when combined with the right elements, forms rubies and sapphires. On HAT-P-7b, the mineral might be forming clouds. “It’s a very good possibility that these clouds are made of corundum, and we’re seeing essentially big condensed clouds of minerals being blown across the planet,” says Armstrong.

Scientists can’t tell for sure that these are gem-based clouds because they’re making observations from billions of miles away; they’d need a sample to analyze to confirm.

(14) EVIL IS LOVE SPELLED WRONG. David Ayer and Margot Robbie will be working together again on the all-female DC villains movie Gotham City Sirens.

David Ayer is back in the business of DC comics villains.

The filmmaker, who directed Warner Bros.’ all-bad guy comic book movie Suicide Squad, is reuniting with that film’s star, Margot Robbie, for Gotham City Sirens, a feature project that will showcase the top female villains from the DC stable, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Ayer will direct and produce the project with Robbie reprising her role as Harley Quinn, the part-time girlfriend of the Joker who is currently DC’s most popular female character. Robbie is also executive producing.

Sirens was a recent comic series from DC that focused on the popular villainesses from Batman’s rogue gallery. Among them were Quinn, Catwoman, Batman’s sometime love interest, and Poison Ivy, who uses plants and their toxins to get what she wants.

(15) BUGS, MR. POTTER! A newly-discovered spider said to resemble the Sorting Hat has been given a Harry Potter-esque nameeriovixa gryffindori.

There the scientists, along with colleague Sumukha J. N., found their own “fantastic beasts,” including one spider that looked like a lady bug and another tiny arachnid that brought their love for Harry Potter full circle.

It was shaded brown, triangular shaped and, Ahmed and Khalep agreed, looked identical to Rowling’s mischievous Sorting Hat.

The hat is a staple at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where Harry Potter and his pals spend most of their time throughout the seven books. Brown and tattered, it is placed on the head of each first year student and, through a slit in the aged brim folds, shouts out the child’s house assignment after a period of pondering.

As you’ll recall, Godric Gryffindor was the original owner of the Sorting Hat.

(16) MARTIAN BLAME GAME. The Washington Post has an interview by Vicky Hallett of Stephen Petranek, whose 2015 book How We’ll Live Life on Mars is the basis for the National Geographic Channel series Mars.  In “Are we really going to land and live on Mars?”, Petranek talks about how he tried to make the TV miniseries as factually accurate as possible and how we had the capacity to go to Mars for 25 years if we hadn’t burned so much money on the space shuttle.

Q: Why has going to Mars seemed so impossible to the public?

A: Part of it is because we didn’t continue to be a space-exploring species after Apollo. There was no particularly good reason to go to the moon. We proved we could do it. Then we didn’t do anything after that. In the 1970s, scientist Wernher von Braun was running around the halls of Congress saying, “I can get humans on Mars.” For at least 30 years, we’ve had the technology. All we did was fly 135 space shuttle missions with nowhere to go. We built the International Space Station, but we weren’t significantly exploring space. People got bored. The only time people paid attention to the space shuttle is when it killed a whole crew. It was supposed to be cheap and reusable, but it cost $1.4 billion every time it went up. We spent $150 billion. If we had one-fourth of that money, we would have had a viable outpost on Mars, and we would have had it for a while.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Paul Weimer.]

97 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/13/16 I Never Thought I’d Be Playing The Straight Pixel To A Tin Scroll

  1. I recently picked up a collection of classic (Marston/Peters) Wonder Woman tales, and the intro is by Gloria Steinem. Yup, definitely a fan!

    Off any known topic, the Irish Jam group spent more than an hour after officially knocking off last night, playing miscellaneous Christmas tunes, then just plain oldies. It was the long-time members… by which I mean, the ones who stay for a long time each week, finishing out the night and departing at the same time (the last minute). I would like to do that every week. Might have to start an oldies group or something.

    Red Scrolls in the Sunset…

  2. “Pixels? We Don’t Scroll No Stinking Pixels!”

    **

    “Pixels and scrolls, pixels and scrolls
    Mean so much more when I see
    Pixeled and scrolled declarations
    On File Seven Seven, um, Tee”

    **

    I’m not much concerned about whether Wonder Woman is an honorary UN ambassador or not — I kinda don’t think the UN should be promoting corporate-owned properties around the world — but I’m intrigued when people start claiming the criticism of Wonder Woman is “slut-shaming,” as if she’s a real person, and not a fictional creation devised largely by men.

    If Little Annie Fanny or the Femlin were criticized as inappropriate symbols of women worldwide, would that be considered slut-shaming them? Or a criticism of their designers and/or the people who picked them?

    Plus, imagine if the UN created their own fictional symbol of empowered women across the world, and it was a busty white chick who showed a lot of leg. Would it be slut-shaming to suggest a less male-gaze-y design?

    I’d also suggest that anyone who thinks the sexualization of Wonder Woman is “imagined” have missed a lot of Wonder Woman material that’s come since that first issue of MS. MAGAZINE.

    Wonder Woman has had many treatments over the years, from warrior to pacifist to idealist to bondage-play enthusiast to how-does-she-keep-those-things-in-the-bustier. I don’t think there’s one interpretation that the world agrees on, and many people who admire her terrifically may be surprised to discover that there are others who don’t think she’s an unproblematic role model.

    But she’s not busty and leggy and white by accident of birth or even by her own choice. She’s busty and leggy and white because the people who own and publish her think they can sell more copies to an audience that is still largely male that way.

    Criticizing her suitability as a UN spokesfiction on those grounds is a criticism of choices and presentations largely made by and designed for men.

    Me, I like Wonder Woman a lot, but that doesn’t mean that people who think she’s too often presented as a pin-up are criticizing women any more than people who think Frank Frazetta’s women are sexual objects are criticizing women.

  3. Admittedly, it’s been an amazingly, astoundingly, mind-blowingly bad month, so my sense of proportion is definitely off… but the P.C. Hodgell news has made my month. I’m in the midst of “To Ride A Rathorn,” and Hodgell is slowly creeping to Pratchett level, as far as making life (the general concept, not just my own) seem worthwhile goes.

  4. @Kurt Busiek: Thank you for saying everything I felt about the Wonder Woman entry, and for being a hundred times more eloquent about it than I would have been.

  5. (3) THIS IS, APPARENTLY, REAL NEWS – Saw this news on io9 as well. Note that other fictional ambassadors include:

    – Winnie the Pooh became the Ambassador of Friendship in 1998
    – Tinkerbell was named Ambassador of Green in 2009
    – Red from the ‘Angry Birds’ who was appointed Honorary Ambassador for International Day of Happiness JUST THIS YEAR

    But apparently Wonder Woman is a bridge too far. I understand, and sympathise with the argument that it would be great to have some real world people for the role. But this is not a zero-sum game. Having a fictional character – particularly one that is *that* well known around the world – as an ideal doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have named any number of real world women, and actually revoking the status is….just stupid.

    Also stupid is focusing on a narrow interpretation of the character. For gods sakes, I would’ve though that a recognition for women would be more than aware of the pitfalls of demanding a perfect and unassailable representative.

    (4) HE BLINDED US WITH SCIENCE. – But what if my eyes glaze over whenever someone mentions thermodynamics? (in my defense, I either slept through or cut most of my general science classes)

    (11) GAMERS AND SFWA – I wonder if there a distinction made between “salaried” and contract workers (or if it would impact the qualification in any way)? IIRC, a lot of people in video games tend to be hired on a per contract basis rather than as salaried employees.

    (14) EVIL IS LOVE SPELLED WRONG. – Apparently a Deadshot standalone and a Suicide Squad sequel are also in the works. (the Suicide Squad movie, while a hot mess, was quite profitable apparently)

  6. I understand, and sympathise with the argument that it would be great to have some real world people for the role.

    All of the UN’s Honorary Ambassadors are fictional. Real people get called Goodwill Ambassador. Or at least, I suppose that’s the current rule. Laura Bush was an Honorary Ambassador for ten years.

    Or maybe the people saying it’s reserved to fictional characters are misinformed.

    Anyway, these Honorary Ambassadors don’t get a lifetime appointment. The Angry Bird served for a single day. Wonder Woman doing it for two months is a rather longer stretch.

  7. I recently picked up a collection of classic (Marston/Peters) Wonder Woman tales, and the intro is by Gloria Steinem. Yup, definitely a fan!

    Of that era, at least. Steinem wasn’t a fan of the “Emma Peel” run of WW, which was running when she was preparing to launch MS. MAGAZINE. She was apparently responsible for DC scrapping that approach and doing a disastrous run of back-to-the-Golden-Age tales that returned Diana Prince to her old “unattractive woman because glasses” stage.

    DC acceded to her request in order to get WW onto that MS. cover and to get Steinem to do that intro.

    Then again, since the “Emma Peel” era of WONDER WOMAN was terrific only while Mike Sekowsky was writing it, and he’d already left, it wasn’t a huge loss. Though it was a long, long, loooooong time after that before WONDER WOMAN was an excellent book again.

  8. They should have made Pippi Longstocking honorary ambassador. Or Little My. Or The Phantoms wife. Or Miss Marple. Or…

    …well, just anybody. The whole idea was ridiculous from the start. UN is for humans. Not idealized amazon superheroes drawn to be as tiltilating as possible.

    EDIT: Hadn’t seen that they had a tradition of being ridiculous.

  9. @Kurt Busiek –

    I don’t think the distinction (or even definition!) is that straightforward between the Goodwill and Honorary Ambassadors. At the very least, it looks like there were two additional real-person Honorary Ambassador (Ms and Mr Beate et Serge Klarsfeld, Honorary Ambassadors and UNESCO Special Envoys for Education of History of Holocaust and genocide prevention, as well as Dr. Samuel Pisar, Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy for Holocaust Education)

    Was the Emma Peel variant the one one in the white pantsuit type thing? My primary awareness of WW comes from the DCAU and the Lynda Carter series, but I’ve seen that uniform in various retrospectives recently.

  10. Was the Emma Peel variant the one one in the white pantsuit type thing?

    She wore a variety of outfits (including, often pantsuits), and the motif was that they were always white, so yeah, that’s her.

  11. @Snowcrash–re:SFWA and game writers: I don’t know what the percentage of salaried writers is, but I happen to know one. He’s now very happy that his application can get out of limbo. (And I’m burning with envy; I’ve done some game writing but not enough to meet any of the thresholds.)

  12. Kurt Busiek
    Point. Along with the not being a real person, she’s been several different fictional ones.

    Also, posting again to click the tickybox again, even though I made damn sure it was selected the first time, four hours ago. Behold. It is checked already. Yes.

    Click it again, just a little bit slower
    Click it again, just a little bit slower…

  13. We built the International Space Station, but we weren’t significantly exploring space.

    Except for flybys of every planet, plus Pluto and other minor worlds. And orbiters around Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Ceres and Vesta. And landers on the Moon, Mars, Titan (joint effort). And impacters here and there. But none of that and none of the vast amount of information robots have collected counts because the US never landed anyone on a toxic, nearly airless, radiation-soaked hell hole.

  14. (16)
    He really needs to read up on the history of the shuttle, as well as the rest of the program. I seem to recall that there were a lot of design changes mandated by Congress for whatever reason, during development, and then we got Reagan and funding was cut below the point where costs would have come down (ETA: for building more).
    (Has that speaker ever looked at the costs of regular aircraft? Not cheap, either.)

  15. On an unrelated note, C.J. Cherryh’s The Dreaming Tree (omnibus of Dreamstone and Tree of Swords & Jewels) just showed up on Kindle.

    (And separately, she said she’s working on making Finity’s End available electronically, although that might be one that ends up being sold directly from her website.)

  16. @James Davis Nicoll: Well sure, if you’re going to insist on facts
    He is right about one thing, though: the shuttle was an enormous, useless waste of money.

  17. Funny, I thought WW was a terrible choice for a UN Ambassador because for most of her publication history her homeland was a sexual dystopia where one sex was executed for merely existing within its borders. Face it, for most of her history WW has been from a theocratic, intoletant monoculture that makes ISIS or Boko Harem look toletant.

  18. @Kurt Busiek the “Emma Peel” era of WONDER WOMAN was terrific only while Mike Sekowsky was writing it

    I’ve seen one of the issues Samuel Delaney wrote and I thought it showed promise. Maybe not terrific, though.

    @Mars Ultor

    I think your sister Diana would have something to say about that. And you know how she gets with people who disrespect her.

  19. Woohoo! Title Credit! Loving The Black Hole pays off for a day!

    Re: 12. And then I saw a flurry of tweetstorms later in the day pushing back against John’s idea.

    Re 1. I saw Infomocracy author Malka Older’s story yesterday, with a sting in the tail to what should have been a relatively placid tale.

  20. Got this limerick sent to me today:

    A nerd in a cantina in Quito
    drank eight Imperial Mojito
    Saw deep into the screen
    of the cashier machine
    and said “Marry me now, R2D2!”

  21. Call it trolling all you like. The fact is “Paradise Island” is more sexist than any regime than has ever existed anywhere on earth, has no religious freedom, is an absolute monarchy, and the one time in its history there was a philosophical dispute the society fractured.

  22. @Joe H.

    On an unrelated note, C.J. Cherryh’s The Dreaming Tree (omnibus of Dreamstone and Tree of Swords & Jewels) just showed up on Kindle.

    But not in the UK it seems. Bollocks…

  23. Perhaps if I uncheck the box (both boxes, just for luck) and check them again.

    Did you ever scroll with the Devil in the pixel light?

  24. Just saw Rogue One

    If it’s in any way indicative of the rest of the Anthology movies, I’m quite possibly more keen on them than on the main sequence movies (and I loved tFA!)

  25. I got my wife the Barbie WW for Christmas to go with her 1970s costume WW. She likes the current incarnation and there are quite a few good dolls out there.

    Unfortunately, I ordered the Ash Evil Dead doll from Sideshow Collectables for her back in February – but it got backlogged until 2017.

  26. (1)

    N. K. Jemisin – whose novel The Fifth Season won the 2016 Hugo award – spins a cautionary tale about resource depletion and interplanetary relations.

    ¿qué? I didn’t get that at all.

    (2) An interesting idea, but I have a hard time believing that this outfit would have been as vigorous in their opposition to the George W. Bush national guard fake news propagated by Dan Rather as they might be towards Hillary is a space alien stories.

    One of the constant (and frequently valid IMHO) criticism of Snopes, factcheck.org, politifact, and comparable efforts is that they display an obvious bias in how they frame their work. As an example, a left leaning statement frequently gets only two Pinnochios (or somewhat true) rating where an equally problematic right leaning statement will get three Pinnochios (or somewhat false) rating.

    (3) Well this is what you get when you let bullies have their way too frequently. The petition in opposition to WW seems to suggest that women are more appropriately seen when covered from head to toe. Perhaps they would have prefered a Saudi flag motif?

    (7) And the TBR mountain grows…..thanks!

    (12) Pot…kettle…black….

    Regards,
    Dann

  27. The file and the pixel,
    When they are on a roll,
    Of all sites that are on the web,
    The file bears the scroll.

  28. @Kurt
    [Wonder Woman] wore a variety of outfits (including, often pantsuits), and the motif was that they were always white, so yeah, that’s her.

    Generally true, but not always.

  29. The shuttle was used to orbit the Hubble Space Telescope and to conduct two successful servicing missions. There are many more examples. The shuttle was amazingly useful in having both a large crew and cargo capacity (including a huge downmass capacity). It was also complicated, risky, and stunningly expensive. It could have been more useful if it was smaller and simpler. But it was never useless.

  30. Plus, imagine if the UN created their own fictional symbol of empowered women across the world, and it was a busty white chick who showed a lot of leg.

    I won’t speak for the breasts or the thighs (except now I want some KFC) but as for the white, now you are in Greendale Human Being territory.

  31. Also, on the subject of whether we’ve been exploring space, a fascinating post by Phil Plaitt. He’s reporting on new observations of emerging star systems, and contrasts them with the best-resolution Hubble picture of one taken in 2000…by him. 🙂 It’s truly amazing to see how overwhelmingly better the images have gotten in less than twenty years.

  32. @Tom Becker: The shuttle was used to orbit the Hubble Space Telescope and to conduct two successful servicing missions. There are many more examples. The shuttle was amazingly useful in having both a large crew and cargo capacity (including a huge downmass capacity). It was also complicated, risky, and stunningly expensive. It could have been more useful if it was smaller and simpler. But it was never useless.

    Except that by forcibly tying the HST to the shuttle (over the objections of the entire astronomical community), NASA made the HST vastly more expensive (burning through money that could have been used for other projects), forced it to be de-scoped (in order to fit into the shuttle bay), and put it into an orbit that was too low (because that’s as high as the shuttle could get), with the result that no data could be returned during a non-trivial fraction of its orbit because it passed through what is known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, a region of severe electromagnetic interference connected with the van Allen belts. And the servicing missions, like everything else connected with the shuttle, were exorbitantly expensive.

    It would have been far more sensible and productive and enormously more cost-effective to have built four or five copies of the basic telescope assembly and launched one (by rocket) every three or four years, each one outfitted with a new and up-to-date-instrument package. Forcing HST to depend on the manned shuttle did nothing but degrade its capabilities and make it far more expensive.

    The joke in the astronomical community about the shuttle and the ISS was: Why do we have the shuttle? To go to the space station. Why do we have the space station? To give the shuttle something to do.

  33. Yay – The gril in the road. That was a pleasant surprise, I was really into that.

    PIXEL is just LEXIP spelled backwards.

  34. Umm, does the statue of the mythical Roman god know that it’s talking about a fictional setting? It seems rather confused.

    (1) STORIES TO NAVIGATE BY

    I think I need to read all of these.

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