(1) QUINN FEATURES IN MAINSTREAM NEWS. Jameson Quinn is quoted several times in “Your ballot has matrix algebra lurking in the background” at the Concord Monitor.
Mathematically speaking, “one man, one vote” sounds about as exciting as “1 = 1.” Yet it turns out that something so simple can produce a Nobel Prize in economics, not to mention a slew of graduate school statistics homework.
“Our class spent three weeks just on Arrow’s Theorem, looking at it from different angles,” said Jameson Quinn, a Ph.D. candidate in statistics from Harvard who showed up in Concord last week to testify before the House Elections Committee in favor of a bill allowing something called approval voting.
Arrow’s Theorem, key to the aforementioned Nobel prize, is to social choice theory what E=MC2 is to physics. It is usually described as saying that all voting systems are imperfect, a synopsis which misses lots of nuance and isn’t all that helpful to laymen, because most of us don’t even known that other systems exist.
(2) EDELMAN’S NEW PODCAST. Scott Edelman has started an SF-related podcast, Eating the Fantastic.
Are you ready to have lunch with me and writer/musician Sarah Pinsker? Because the first episode of Eating the Fantastic is now live!
Scott Edelman and Sarah Pinsker
Food, friends, and clanking dishes in the background reproduce the atmosphere where so many great fan conversations take place. Edelman writes:
I’ve found that while the con which takes place within the walls of a hotel or convention center is always fun, the con away from the con—which takes place when I wander off-site with friends for a meal—can often be more fun. In fact, my love of tracking down good food while traveling the world attending conventions has apparently become so well known that Jamie Todd Rubin once dubbed me “science fiction’s Anthony Bourdain.”
…During each semi-regular episode (I’ve yet to determine a frequency), I’ll share a meal with someone whose opinions I think you’ll want to hear, and we’ll talk about science fiction, fantasy, horror, writing, comics, movies, fandom … whatever happens to come to mind. (There’ll also be food talk, of course.)
One thing to note—this will not be a pristine studio-recorded podcast, but one which will always occur in a restaurant setting, meaning that mixed in with our conversation will be the sounds of eating and drinking and reviewing of menus and slurping and background chatter … in other words … life.
(3) PKD AWARD. The five Philip K. Dick Award judges for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original format in the United States in the 2016 award year are Michael Armstrong, Brenda Clough, Meg Elison, Lee Konstantinou, and Ben Winters.
(4) CASSANDRA CLARE SUED. “Copyright Clash Over Demon-Fighting Stories” at Courthouse News Service has the scoop.
Sherrilyn Kenyon says she started the “Dark-Hunter” series in 1998. The story “follows an immortal cadre of warriors who fight to protect mankind from creatures and demons who prey on humans,” according to court records.
On Friday, Kenyon sued Cassandra Clare aka Judith Rumelt aka Judith Lewis, claiming her “Shadowhunter” series initially used Kenyon’s trademark “darkhunter.”
After Kenyon demanded that Clare remove the word “darkhunter” from her work, Clare used the term “shadowhunter” for her protagonists instead, according to the lawsuit. The word “hunter” was also removed from the book title.
Clare’s book, “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,” was published in 2007. Since then, Clare has expanded her use of the term “shadowhunter” despite assurances that she would not, according to Kenyon.
Clare’s 2007 book was made into a movie and released in 2013, the lawsuit states. In 2014, it was reportedly announced that “Mortal Instruments: City of Bones” would be adapted into a television series called “Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments.”
Kenyon says ABC Family picked up Clare’s TV pilot in March 2015. The first episode of the “Shadowhunters” TV show premiered on Jan. 12 of this year, according to IMDB.
The “Dark-Hunter” author also claims Clare has used symbols and merchandise that are confusingly similar to Kenyon’s.
“Comparing the Dark-Hunter series to Clare’s work or works, the literary components are fictional and, in many respects, the elements are virtually identical,” Kenyon’s Feb. 5 lawsuit states. “These substantially similar elements, coupled with defendant’s access to the Dark-Hunter series, which were widely disseminated, leave little doubt that numerous substantive original elements of the Dark-Hunter series have been copied by defendant.”
(5) AB INITIO. Sarah A. Hoyt begins a column for Mad Genius Club about the preceding news story, “There Is Nothing New Under The Sun”, with these words —
So, this morning (yes, I crashed early yesterday) I was sent this article NEWS: Sherrilyn Kenyon sues Cassandra Clare over infringement claims by Amanda S. Green. It’s amazing. And by that I mean, I was amazed anyone is giving this so called “plagearism” any credence.
Now, I haven’t read the complaint, so perhaps there is more to it, and the complaint is more substantial. …
We’ll stop here and wait til she reads the complaint…
(6) GRRM’S EDITOR RATIONALE. George R.R. Martin had some feedback for File 770 commenters about the Best Editor (Long Form) category, but he also queried some of the editors he recommended about “What They Edited” in 2015.
My observations about the Best Editor (Long Form) Hugo, which you can read in full several posts down, have drawn some comments here and on FILE 770 from fans who object to my suggestion that this category has become a de facto lifetime achievement award, at least since David G. Hartwell set an example by withdrawing from future consideration after his third win.
The objections seem to take the form of stating emphatically that Best Editor (Long Form) is NOT a lifetime achievement award, it’s not, it’s not, it’s just NOT.
And quite right they are. According to the rules, that is. According to the rules, the award is only supposed to be for the previous year’s editing.
Which is great in theory, and completely wrong in fact. Maybe those who are objecting vote on that basis, but if so, they are a very tiny minority….
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- February 10, 1957 – Roger Corman’s Not Of This Earth premiered.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born February 10, 1906 – Lon Chaney, Jr.
(9) A PEEK AT PIXAR. “Pixar and Khan Academy Release Free Online Course for Aspiring Animators”, from Makezine [via Chaos Manor.]
Up there with being an astronaut, comic book artist, or the President, there’s one job that your average kid would probably love to snag: Working at Pixar. Animation and Pixar enthusiasts of all ages, take note! Pixar in A Box (or PIAB) is a collaboration between Khan Academy and Pixar Animation Studios that focuses on real-Pixar-world applications of concepts you might usually encounter in the classroom. The latest batch of Pixar in a Box, released today, gives Makers a rare peek under the hood so that you can get a whiff of the warm engine that keeps those Pixar pistons pumping. There’s no need to register for the course, nor a requirement to watch the lessons in order — just head to their site and start exploring!
(10) BRING HIM HOME. Here’s a review of an app game — “The Martian: Communicate with Astronaut Mark Watney in real time while helping him return to Earth”.
In The Martian, you’ll experience the plight of astronaut Mark Watney, only in this strategy game you’re his only hope for survival. You play one of a NASA communications specialist that is communicating with Mark in real time via text-based messages. You’re his only contact on Earth, and all that stands between him and a return to our world, or certain death.
(11) MAD TEA. Links to all kinds of interesting Alice In Wonderland-themed merchandise in this post at The Snug.
(12) BEST OF A YEAR LONG AGO. Black Gate’s John ONeill revisits “Thomas M. Disch on the Best Science Fiction of 1979”.
He has particular praise for Connie Willis’s first published story, “Daisy in the Sun,” originally published in issue #15 of Galileo (see right):
My own favorite among the also-rans is Connie Willis’s first published story, “Daisy in the Sun” (in the Wollheim/Saha annual). With lyric ellipses Willis describes a world in the grip of epidemic schizophrenia precipitated by news that the sun is going nova. The heroine is a sexually disturbed adolescent girl in a condition of fugal amnesia. All the way through I thought, “This won’t work,” but it did. What a great way to begin a career.
Of course, you could dismiss all this as sour grapes, as Disch’s own Hugo-nominee, the novel On Wings of Song, came in last in the voting that year.
(13) A CURIOUS ARTIFACT.
https://twitter.com/LoopdiLou/status/697262017569095681
(14) RULES OF THE ROAD. After reading a few thousand selected words in the Amazon Web Service’s Service Terms, the account holder arrives here —
57.10 Acceptable Use; Safety-Critical Systems. Your use of the Lumberyard Materials must comply with the AWS Acceptable Use Policy. The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live combat. However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Will R., and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day J-Grizz.]
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@Tasha Turner, your link goes not where planned. Here is the Kickstarter page.
(6) GRRM’S EDITOR RATIONALE – It’s not uncommon, when paths or sidewalks are put into place with no regard to where people actually need to walk, to see impromptu paths. I think that’s what’s happening here, in GRRM’s mind at least. The rules are very clear, but the category of BELF is not, largely because the information is not generally available and the job itself is highly variable, so the path of least resistance might logically be to make an unintended pathway.
I am fine with BESF, because even if you don’t know what the magazine and anthology editors are doing with particular stories, it’s easy to discern a quality publication. I dislike Kevin Standlee’s option of Best Publisher, which is not an improvement on BELF, but I do like his other categories, because anthology work and magazines aren’t quite the same thing and it would be lovely to have two chances to vote for editors of short fiction.
@Cheryl S
Thanks for fixing my link. If only there were an editing box where I could go back in time to fix the link.
Ah–worth noting, I’ve got one of those pins that was delivered right after Sasquan, so I rather suspect they were commissioned before the convention and subsequent asterisk outrage.
Alas though, Cheryl’s link is missing a colon and doesn’t work either
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1881107045/pangaea-ii?ref=nav_search
should
Crap. You’d think copy/paste would be invincible, but it isn’t. Thank you @NickPheas. I think I was distracted by MAD TEA as one of my children is a huge Alice fan and I like getting my holiday shopping done by Halloween.
@Mark
Unfortunately the “faux offense bullies” are most likely to attack someone who is doing something new, so I don’t think this is a helpful guideline.
Except they weren’t targeted at the Puppy people at all. They were a response to the claim made by some puppy supporters that “all the awards this year will have an asterisk.” Gerrold turned that upside down by making physical asterisks and handing them out with the awards. Kind of weak as far as gestures go, but inoffensive by any rational interpretation.
The faux indignation from the puppies is really just them trying to show that liberals are unable to tell the difference between legitimate offense and pretended offense. So when we take offense at workplace harassment or bullying of gay teens they can brush that off too.
Actually taking their “concerns” about the asterisks seriously is, in my view, a big mistake.
(1)
IRV does allow people to distribute their support amongst several parties/candidates to tamp out extremists (we’ve all seen that). Problem in real life is that there have to be parties to choose amongst for that effect to be seen. Organizing a party is a lot like organizing a con – with less of a payoff, even more eccentrics, and giving up even more evenings and weekends. Just because IRV exists doesn’t mean the parties it will benefit will spring into existence to utilize it.
While everyone likes the idea of a third party, there’s the fact that there are as many envisioned third parties as there are people who want them. Once you start organizing one, all the problems of people not thinking it’s quite right you have with the two existing parties come back in force. Minneapolis has done IRV for several election now, with people having three votes. No third parties have materialized, though the last mayoral election had 32 candidates.
That 32 composed a full range of perennial candidates, joke candidates, an actually guy cosplaying a pirate, various Crunchy of Intentionalness parties, and the two Democrats who’d deadlocked at the city convention. The two candidates with an shot at it were… the two Democrats who’d deadlocked at the city convention. The only race that was any challenge to Democratic dominance (Minneapolis is a one party town, because we think LGBT are people here) was a race for City Council with two candidates that was waged the old fashioned way – grueling, pain-staking organization, and not relying on a magic voting system.
Long story short, In the mayoral race, IRV allowed a lot of people to vote for the Shibboleth of Being Intentional candidate, then the pirate dude – and third vote one of the two Democrats, so they could be all paradigm-breaking without burning their vote once the first two dropped off the bottom. IRV may one day change Minneapolis politics, but for now it’s a way for people to be clever.
(13)
As I’ve been assured that the lodestar of the culturally libertarian Puppies is personal responsibility, they will presumably be okay with all of us who did not send out pins having a good old chuckle at them.
Now to check this thing for crudités. 🙂
EEEE!!! I just, you know, nominated things. For a Hugo. For the first time, ever.
It’s not a very complete ballot, I grant you. It’s, um, pathetically thin, compared to the many mighty Filers who have been so wise and brave. But it’s my first, ever. And there’s time to extend and adjust.
I feel very, very weird. (I have not been reading very much, of late. And I really miss it. Real life has pressed hard against me, and I’m even less well-read this year than most years. But there are still a few things I feel passionately about. I nominated those.)
PRL is being hammered right now, but the LIGO results are in: gravity waves have been detected. A black hole collision 1.3B LY away…
Sometimes this grim meathook dystopia turns out to have a bright spot or two.
@Lydy
You’ve taken your first step into a larger world…
😉
::tickbox::
Glad to hear it, Lydy.
> “EEEE!!! I just, you know, nominated things. For a Hugo. For the first time, ever.”
Same here! Just today!
*high five*
Lydy, Kyra, it’s a giddy feeling, isn’t it? And strangely satisfying.
@TheYoungPretender: Cases vary — e.g., Boston mayoral elections don’t use party labels — but IRV definitely has uses. There have been cases of Republicans supporting liberal 3rd-party candidates as a way of splitting the vote against their candidate, who wins with <50% due to a combination of FPTP and limits on (or utter absence of) runoffs, immediate or otherwise. I suspect it would be even more interesting in primaries; consider what might have happened in New Hampshire two days ago if they had had IRV — would Trump have gotten any 2nd-place votes or would elimination have produced a winner who thinks before they speak? And organizing a real 3rd party, or at least a ticket, is possible on the national level; consider Anderson in 1980 (who didn’t tip the election as a whole but did give Massachusetts to Reagan) or Nader in 2000.
So — Gravity waves are a thing!
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html?_r=0
Have people already mentioned this? This is Big Science News.
ETA: @Simon Bisson mentioned it. This is so cool! Does it belong in tomorrow’s Pixel Scroll?
I just saw the cover of Booklist featuring a certain someone’s Hamster Princess
@RedWombat
Yes, the pins being old does make a big difference. My only concern was the appearance of carrying on the asterisk thing long after the fact, and if that’s not the case then I’ll withdraw my groaning!
@Greg
As it seems Red Wombat has deflated me, I’m not particularly minded to carry on debating a dead rubber (down that road lies xkcd references). Was there anything you were desperate for me to address? You do make some good points.
@Mark – I feel vaguely guilty for having deflated anyone, but glad to help set the record straight!
@K8 – Isn’t that wild? I had no idea that was happening until Twitter told me! Apparently it was all done in stealth with the school library people at my publisher. I was gobsmacked!
So gravity’s waving. Pretend you don’t see it or it’ll come over here and start getting you down.
@Simon Bisson, @Peace Is My Middle Name, thank you both for the heads up. I would probably have seen it sooner or later, but this morning was the exact best time to be charmed by another iteration of Einstein Was Right. Also, that NYT article is positively giddy in tone.
I still have no PIN (I told the lovely person who contacted me that they should feel free to take their time straightening things out), but when I do, I will also be a first time nominator. It’s an oddly exciting feeling.
Greg Hullender wrote: “If I double down and insist I’m still offended, no one should take my side, much less call for all people to stop eating (or at least talking about) Fruit Loops.”
All other considerations aside, people should have more respect for their tastebuds, and their bodies, and stop eating (or at least talking about) Fruit Loops.
I shudder at their name, as though they might be the fodder of some unspeakable horror dripping mind itch-inducing ichor and exuding a corrosive miasma, and mentioning them might call forth the beast from its dread-festooned dimensional grotto, come to feed on their false-gaiety dyed sere vacuity.
@Chip Hitchcock
It can definitely be a workable thing. It’s just something that needs a great deal of the pitch and shovel work of politics to really do anything, and the way it has been advocated for in Minnesota has tended to argue that it would be effective without the need for any of that pesky shovel work. In addition, there was an argument/belief that in Minneapolis, it was initially an attempt to curb the political heft the unions. (This failed in the end. Unintended consequences trump all.)
@Robert Brown
I was afraid for a moment you were going to tell me that Fruit Loops ceased to exist thirty years ago and that no one under 40 has a clue what I’m talking about. 🙂
@Mark
Should I take offense at being called a “dead rubber?” 🙂 No, I think we’ve beaten this horse to death. By the way, I really am mindful of the importance of not giving needless offense, and that it would behoove us all to find ways to reconcile with at least some of the puppies. I just think this particular approach is ill-starred. (Okay, I’ll really stop now.)
@Lydy Nickerson and Kyra
Congrats. Well done. I hope to join your giddy ranks soon. I’m waiting for the initial rush to be over before I contact them about pin the problem. They got the pin to me so quickly when I emailed the first time
@Simon Bisson the LIGO results are in: gravity waves have been detected. A black hole collision 1.3B LY away
Wow. We live in amazing times.
@RedWombat
Cool, that’s exciting.
Happy gravitational wave day, everyone! I recommend this article for background info:
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gravitational-waves-exist-heres-how-scientists-finally-found-them?currentPage=all
(12) BEST OF… Some day I’ll get over Disch’s death, but I guess today is not that day because reading this still makes me a little weepy. As maddening and obtuse as he could be on the subject of things and people he disliked, it was always a joy to read him writing about what made him happy. (I first became aware* of him in his oddly snotty afterword to a Philip K. Dick novel, which made me wonder “who is this guy and why would anyone want him to write this afterword?” Then I randomly found a used copy of 334 and I understood why.) On Wings of Song is very important to me and I hope it at least gets a 2029 Retro Hugo.
Also, I would totally play a Sandkings board game. But probably only once, as I assume the ending would always be “You die horribly. What did you expect?”
(* At least, consciously aware. I later realized I must have read him in an anthology as a kid, since the short story I was so proud of having written in high school turned out to be very obviously a close pastiche of “The Roaches.”)
@RedWombat – As I was otherwise trudging through my email folder for promotional stuff, that one made me smile.
This is a truly historic day; never before has a Hamster Princess rippled the fabric of space-time by retrospectively arranging for a couple of black holes to merge, thus enabling the Universe to wave back at her. And, I suppose, the rest of us as well, though I, for one, would be grateful if Her Highness didn’t explain the Mexican Wave; I’m not sure that the Universe would survive the first rehearsal.
@Greg
Gah, that sentence needed more words! I think there was supposed to be an “in” in there somewhere.
For someone who spent a lot of time arguing last year that “both sides” need to dial back the insults, GRRM sure comes across like portraying anyone disagreeing with him here as no more than a tantrum-throwing toddler.
I’m not sure why it shouldn’t be equally accurate, if equally inflammatory, to represent his argument as “It is, it IS, it really really IS.”
[ticky]
Re: Fruit Loops possibly not have existed for 30 years. Actually, they’ve never existed. The breakfast cereal is spelled “Froot Loops”. Probably for the same reason that inspired this bit from Dave Barry’s “Mr. Language Person” column way back in ’85;
“Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, “Part of this complete breakfast.” The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they’ll show a commercial for a children’s compressed breakfast compound such as “Froot Loops” or “Lucky Charms, ” and they always show it sitting on a table next to a some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always says: “Part of this complete breakfast.” Don’t they really mean, “Adjacent to this complete breakfast, ” or “On the same table as this complete breakfast”? And couldn’t they make essentially the same claim if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a dead bat?”
“A. Yes.”
Silly Mr. Language Person. Everyone knows bats are brunch fare.
So apparently, having Neanderthal DNA may have some effects on your health – though it may not be as fanfic like as Certain Persons would tell you.
Synopsis is at link, as well as link to the abstract and download of the paper Science that had the research.
http://gizmodo.com/having-neanderthal-dna-linked-to-depression-and-nicotin-1758529779
Robert Brown: All other considerations aside, people should have more respect for their tastebuds, and their bodies, and stop eating (or at least talking about) Fruit Loops.
I can’t speak to how they taste now, but in the 1970s, Froot Loops were the food of the gods. And with only three colors! Truly, it was the best of times.
Speaking of gods, Toucan Sam was one suave bird in “Breakfast of the Gods.”
(2) EDELMAN’S NEW PODCAST. Alas, I can’t seem to find a way to download the podcast episode for offline listening. Can anyone more HTML5-savvy than I point out what I’m missing, or confirm the impossibility?
Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little: Thanks for asking about downloading Edelman’s podcast. I wondered about that when I was using his site, and should have asked.
@Lydy & Kyra (and all nominating for the first time),
I’m happy for you. I remember the excitement of my first time.
” I’m participating! In. The. Hugo. Awards!!!”
@Simon Bisson
Subsequent investigation has shown that the driver of the larger claims “I never saw the other one coming”…
I feel the need to run out and buy Froot Loops. And Cap’n Crunch. And maybe some Apple Jacks. As a child, I disliked most breakfast foods (eggs, pancakes, waffles, whatever) so my mother indulged me with awful cereals because then at least I would eat something before I caught the school bus. Haven’t had ’em in years but now I want ’em again. Maybe the tiny “fun pack.”
Early on, Toucan Sam wasn’t as suave and spoke with an American accent provided by Mel Blanc. (You can find at least one of the ads on YouTube where he speaks in pig latin.) He only picked up his posh accent, provided by Paul Frees, in a later incarnation.
@Eli: On Wings of Song is very important to me and I hope it at least gets a 2029 Retro Hugo.
Retro Hugos are only for years when there was a Worldcon and no Hugos, not for changing the results of awarded Hugos. (If the latter were true I’d have pushed for 2005 to re-award the 1955 novel Hugo, which went to what’s widely considered the worst winner (possibly even the worst legitimate nominee) ever.
@Rev Bob – a perfect brunch would be some bananas followed by dessert.
Nana nana nana nana BATFLAN.
I’ll get me cloak.
Hmm. They emailed me my Hugo PIN, again. Maybe they’re re-sending them because of the earlier problems?
I haven’t started filling out the ballot, but I did go to the site just to be sure my PIN worked (it let me in, so I guess it did).
*responding the HTML5-savvy signal*
Here’s the URL for downloading: http://traffic.libsyn.com/force-cdn/highwinds/eatingthefantastic/Episode_1__Sarah_Pinsker.mp3
Probably the easiest way to find that URL (not the one I used; I only think of the easy ways after having succeeded with the hard ways) is the following: Go to the page with the player. Open your browser’s “developer tools” (hit F12). Switch to the “Network” tab. Click the “Play” button in the audio player. Observe new URLs coming in, and recognize at least one of them as an audio file. Right-click, copy URL.
*waves hi to all and sundry* Been a while since posting here, though I’ve been reading along irregularly.
Oh, and after posting, I saw this – http://www.scottedelman.com/2016/02/11/how-to-listen-to-my-new-podcast-on-your-iphone-even-though-its-not-yet-in-the-itunes-store/ – pointing out an even easier way – there’s a direct link to that file in this feed: http://eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com/rss
My pin has not, alas, arrived, but there doesn’t seem any point in reminding them too frequently because it just slows things down still further…
I feel vaguely guilty that my (not requested because already emailed) PIN came again, because it might be slowing down the PINs for people that still need them. Am I the only one who has gotten my PIN more than once?
My PIN came four times, so you are not alone.
My PIN arrived and doesn’t work. Apparently there’s some kind of issue with “duplicates”; further information was not forthcoming.