204 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/21/17 Pass The Pixel On The Left Hand Side”

1. @Paul Weimer

   There are a couple of versions for the London Underground. One is to visit all stations by tube, bus, walking etc, which stands at about 15hrs, and another is to visit all stations by tube, which is 18hrs ish IIRC. There isn’t yet a version to travel all the track, because the tube isn’t 24hrs and you couldn’t finish the route before it closed for the night.
   (The tube is becoming 24hrs in parts though, so maybe it will become feasible…)

2. @Mark. Do you have to start or end at Mornington Crescent? 🙂

   This also reminds me of the video of the guy who managed to get off a tube train and beat it to the next station by running.

3. Something interesting from Nicholas Whyte that feeds into the discussion of novella word counts we’ve had a few times

   I got it mainly because it was Bujold but also because it was close to the Hugo novel/novella boundary – in fact it is just over 45,000 words which is the current upper limit for novellas, though it was marketed as a novella by the publishers and mainly nominated as a novella by voters. I hereby give notice that, if I can find a seconder, I am going to propose that the novel/novella boundary for Hugo purposes set in paragraph 3.2.8 of the WSFS constitution should have a flexibility of 20% (ie 8,000 words rather than 5,000 as at present) like all other such boundaries.

   I think it’s a suggestion that hasn’t previously come up, and has some merit as a more flexible solution than moving the actual boundary.

4. Now I want to read a story using the concept of Chekov’s Adjectives. Maybe take an existing book and remove all description unless it directly affects the plot

   You mean something like “Snow White and an unspecific number of dwarves”?
   (Hey, Wait – Does its affect the plot that they are dwarves? Wouldnt normal-sized miners work as well? Is this virtue signaling from the Grimms?)

5. Why don’t the researchers just get consent? Even if it is not legally required, it seems like the obvious right thing to do.

   The tissue sample in question was from a biopsy of a tumor taken to help in her diagnosis. It was only after the fact that the biopsy sample was found to be remarkably long-living. Don’t want a biopsy taken? Fine, go home and die, don’t let the hospital doors hit you in the ass on the way out.

   Remember, this was a poor woman with no means of payment and no insurance receiving free treatment for her cancer. If her descendants want to get paid for clinical use of her tissue, then they should be given a bill for all of her treatments, with compound interest accruing over 60 years. After all, it cuts both ways.

6. Paul Weimer: 7.5 Hey I’m an item again!

   You deserve a whole number (this is not an intentional Fellini reference) — I just seem to have been the first to discover I hadn’t numbered the item when I posted the Scroll. I appertained myself a cup of coffee….

7. Arwel Parry: Naturally I voted for the nearest next Worldcon site and I’d never been to Holland at that time….

   The Netherlands committee was full of great people and they put on an excellent Worldcon. I was always sorry that the fanpolitics surrounding the whole thing put me in the position of competing against one of the people I’d most want to support, Kees Van Toorn, who actually was well connected to LA fandom. (These are all long stories, but that will suffice.)

8. @Mike Given yesterday being Rome’s birthday, my mentioning it here, and posting pics of my 2015 trip on twitter…an intentional Fellini tie to me with the numbering would not have been out of bounds…

9. @JJ: Cheers for the heads-up re Ruin of Angels – I checked on the UK Amazon and it is an excellent £1.66 to pre-order (as of the timing of this post)

10. Pet Seminaries would probaby be full of monkfish.

11. Not only is that episode of The Skiffy and Fanty Show not suitable for children, but it includes the first instance of a Paul Weimer double f-bomb in history. We have broken Paul many times, but never have we broken him to the point of pure nerdly rage.

12. @Paul Weimar

    You must always end at Mornington Crescent, but filer rules require you to scroll the full length of the Northern Line first.

13. I am British and don’t really know if he is well regarded in America, or is he just seen as a marginal literary figure ignored by mainstream fans?

    Bishop’s highly regarded in my SFnal circles, particularly by short story writers, and makes frequent appearances on the Nebula ballot. Brittle Innings is brilliant.

14. Let’s not forget Jonathan Carroll’s Outside the Dog Mausoleum

15. @Allan Lloyd – I’m surprised that their has been no comment on the new Michael Bishop collection. To me this is a massive cause for celebration. I see Bishop as one of the major figures in American Science Fiction. His short stories especially repay many readings, and his “Frankenstein plays baseball” book, “Brittle Innings” was brilliant even to someone who wouldn’t know which end of a baseball bat to hold!

    I can’t work out if I’ve ever read any of his short fiction and the description of his new collection does not entice me, but I’ve just ordered Brittle Innings, because it sounds wonderful and I have a lifelong love for baseball novels. Thank you!

16. @Mart: shouldn’t that be “Let us sit upon the ground and Scroll sad Pixels on the death of Files.”?

    @Anthony M: perhaps you overestimate the opposition to quiet homosexuality 4 centuries ago? Worse, you say “a secret that in 1602 could potentially be enough to get him ostracized or blackballed from his new community” — as if the 1602 X-Men had not already dealt with enough prejudice to have learned to be more tolerant than the general populace. (Gaiman had an earlier aside on mundane small-mindedness: [Beast] “What’s the matter? Have you never seen an Orkneyman?”) And as for “handl[ing] it in such an incredibly poor, ham-fisted way” — how would you have handled it? This was the point in the story where (Jean being dead) the rivals could sort out their differences with less cost.
    BTW: flouncing out tends to weaken any arguments you make.

    @OGH: LA-in-1990’s annihilation was hardly unexpected (at least outside LA).

    @Darren Garrison: that’s not just cold-blooded; it’s playing loose with the facts. The people who made money off HeLa were not the people (probably taxpayers in general) who paid for the treatment.

    @Nigel: you win the lotte-ry.

17. “The time has come,” the Pixel said, “to scroll of many things…”

18. There is a scroll in the affairs of fans
    Which taken at the file, leads on to pixels.
    Omitted, all the fanac of their life is bound in schemes and in resentments.

19. Nigel on April 22, 2017 at 7:19 am said:

    Pet Seminaries would probaby be full of monkfish.

    And capuchins.

20. I’ll just point out the hypocrisy of JJ calling anyone out on homophobia. Last year she posted a link to a song with homophobic lyrics and, when I called her on it, “explained” to me why it wasn’t offensive. There’s nothing like explaining to a gay man why your homophobic crap isn’t really offensive to show what you really are.

    I love seeing gay characters in stories, but I cringe when they’re not realistic. Back in the 1500s and 1600s in most of Europe homosexual behavior wasn’t exactly approved of, but it tended to be treated “like any other vice,” such as getting drunk, and it turns up in literature from time to time in a fairly neutral way. (E.g. the Decameron.) It wasn’t until a century or two later that it became so unspeakable.

    I didn’t read the comic in question, but, based on my own understanding of the era, it doesn’t sound all that unrealistic. As for revealing the truth to someone he’d been at odds with, my impression was that they were united in mourning the death of someone they loved.

21. that $12 Kindle special
    Kobo has five of the six in a $12 bundle, or all of them individually for $2.99 each.

22. @Darren Garrison: that’s not just cold-blooded; it’s playing loose with the facts. The people who made money off HeLa were not the people (probably taxpayers in general) who paid for the treatment.

    Labs trade cell cultures back and forth, and many of them charge nominal fees to cover shipping and production costs. There aren’t many people “making money” off HeLa cells. And while HeLa was the first immortal cell line, there are many more today–and no donators or families get paid residuals on their use. My suggestion wasn’t meant to be a practical thing, but a demonstration of the depth of my contempt for her money-grubbing descendants, who I think should go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. (Her family came off as very unlikable in the book, and they continue to come off as unlikable.)

23. You either didn’t read or didn’t understand what I wrote.

    We read it, and understand it. We just think it is profoundly stupid.

24. Remember, this was a poor woman with no means of payment and no insurance receiving free treatment for her cancer.

    Sure. Taking advantage of a desperate poor woman is always justified. Sure. You keep thinking that.

25. @JJ – Glad to see you were able to exercise your bully reflex!

26. So, I’ve never read Ben Aaronovitch and with the whole Best Series thing, I figured I’d better pick up the first book at least. I went to the online card catalog for my local library, and it has Rivers of London… shelved in graphic novels. Is this a different book? An illustrated adaptation? The original novel?

    If I’m going to work on Hugo reading I’d like to be reading the right thing….

    (edit to add: on further inspection, it says Rivers of London: Body Work)

27. Cassy: That’s an illustrated adaptation.

    Note that the first book was also published as “Midnight Riot” in the US, you should try looking for that as well.

    ETA: Actually Rivers of London: Body Work seems to be a graphic novel of a story set someplace in between the novels, not an adaptation of the first novel.

28. @Chip,

    Thank you! I was wondering how to finish that sentence myself, hence just leaving the last bit out. You made it perfect.

29. @CassyB, @JohanP,

    The series proper starts at Rivers of London, aka Midnight Riot in the US. There are 3 graphic novels set in the same universe, written by Aaronovich, which take place in between the novels.

    The graphic novels are not necessary to follow the series, just like the novellas aren’t. They just fill out little corners of the universe.

30. Chip Hitchcock: What you apparently mean is that you think LA’s annihlation was deserved. Thanks for that reminder of what it means to be a timebinder…

31. Johan P, thanks! My library doesn’t have Midnight Riot, but a library two towns away does. Thank heaven for reciprocal borrowing privileges! And for informed Filers. Should I borrow the graphic novel too, do you think? Does it add to the book? Or should I just dive into the text version?

    (Edit to add) and now I see that the graphic novels are extras, not adaptations; thanks all for the clarification. So I’ll skip them for now to have time to read the actual novels.

32. I’ve read Body Work in the Rivers of London sequence, and although it’s an interesting addition it’s in no way essential to following the main sequence.

33. Sure. Taking advantage of a desperate poor woman is always justified. Sure. You keep thinking that.

    It was a bog-fucking standard biopsy procedure that happened hundreds of times per day in hospitals all across the country. The only thing unusual about it was that the sample AFTER THE FACT happened to be capable of surviving long-term in a culture medium. Which was an incidental discovery, not the purpose for the sample. It wasn’t fucking “taking advantage” of anyone. Why don’t you (for once) actually learn some of the details before engaging your mouth?

34. @Mark (Kitteh): You reminded me of something else I liked. There’s a good reason why he’s not only a total naif, but also really can’t have everything plotsplained (heh, thanks for that neologism) because of the circumstances and history of the magic-users in London (which I look forward to learning more about, presumably in “Soho” or subsequent books). Versus, say, being surrounded by a Dumbledore, McGonnagal (sp?), Snape, etc. who just choose to tell him nothing. (Apologies to Rowling for using her books as a counterpoint, but that’s one of the more eye-rolling aspects of her novels for me, much as I love them. Everyone knows stuff, but No One Tells Harry, Over And Over Again.)

    And yeah, same here I like his scientific approach. He’s clearly following in the footsteps of the Folly’s founder (on purpose or not), whether intentionally or not.

    @Mart: Well, I’m pretty early on in Moon Over Soho. 😉 But thanks for mentioning it’s weaker – good to set my expectations. I can move past a weaker book if it keeps my interest.

    @Peer Sylvester: Talk about box-checking, why does Snow White’s very name have to focus on her race? I mean, really, why go out of their way to focus on it. 😉 And don’t get me started on Rose Red.

35. Which was an incidental discovery, not the purpose for the sample.

    And that’s the problem. Taking something for one purpose and then using it for another is, in fact, taking advantage of someone. But you keep screaming about how it was completely justified by the donor’s poverty and desperation. It doesn’t make you look like an amoral slimeball at all.

36. @Greg Hullender: I remember that thread – not your finest hour (e.g., when you claimed @JJ posted that specifically to target you). Neither is this sniping – and quite hypocritical sounding to me, given how often you’ve been called out in the past for ‘splaining to folks how/why they react to stories, speaking for the group in this regard, etc.

    I vehemently disagree with calling @JJ homophobic! It’s an easy term to throw out, but inapplicable here, IMNSHO.

    Anyway, look, I get it – I suspect most regulars do, by now – you and @JJ are like oil and water. Ignore each other if you can’t be civil. Use technology to do so if needed. I doubt I’m the only one who’s weary of the periodic sniping back and forth.

37. IIRC (Ive read the books 2 years ago) its wrong to assume they took the cells because Lacks was poor. They just took them because of a procedure and there wasnt (and to my knowledge still isnt) any obligation for consent for whatever doctors do with “discarded” cells. It could have happend to rich people as well.
    If this is right, is a different matter, one which Skloot discusses in her book (and in a convincing way imho).

    The book is very good and I was quite dismayed on the state of health care for poor people in the States.

38. @Jack Lint: Inside the Dog Mausoleum, it’s too dark to read.

39. They just took them because of a procedure and there wasnt (and to my knowledge still isnt) any obligation for consent for whatever doctors do with “discarded” cells.

    Which is a problem. The fact that it is accepted practice doesn’t make it right. Essentially, the entire medical establishment has condoned an amoral practice because it is convenient.

40. Which is a problem. The fact that it is accepted practice doesn’t make it right.

    I believe that is what I wrote 😉

    Essentially, the entire medical establishment has condoned an amoral practice because it is convenient.

    Like I said, its discussed (for both sides) at length at the book. Some of the arguments on the contra side I still remember:
    – It slows down the medical science consideratly
    – By the time you get the cells, you wouldnt know everything what you eventuelly would or could do with them. Especially you dont know what you would be able to do in the future with them, so you couldnt get consent for it, when the patient is at hand. You would either let the patent give consent for everything (which wouldnt change much to the current practice) or you would have the problem of tracking down the patient, everytime there is a scientific breakthrough. You cant just use other cells, because they might not work. As I said earlier: This would hinder scientific process a lot.
    – If you consent cells, what about hair? Fingernails? Saliva? Where do you draw the line? Right now its drawn -TMK – at blood. But if you move it to cells, just because of one case, their will be strange cases (haircutter etc.) which makes the legal processes more muddled.

    Im not saying youre wrong. Im just saying its a somewhat complex issue. And I think the real problem is the state of health care for the poorer population of the US (Or make that “General care of the poor population), of which this issue is merely a symptom.

41. @ Anthony M

    I said it was stupid for a gay character in the year 1602 to out himself to somebody he already knows has a reason to dislike him

    (Yes, I know I may have missed the discussion window on this.)

    I’d be hesitant to attribute a deeply nuanced understanding of the history of sexuality to a comic book plot, but the judgment that this was a historically implausible plot point has not been demonstrated. The early 17th century was far from a socially enlightened era, but it was an era when ideas about gender and sexuality were undergoing a lot of upheaval and public discussion. I don’t know the context or exact text of the incident in the comic, but this was an era when men were quite comfortable expressing deep emotional relationships with each other in romantic and even sexualized terms, even though society disapproved of the sexual relationships alluded to. (One of the most bizarre examples I’ve stumbled across is a 1633 poem addressed by a man known as T. W. to poet John Donne that describes the two men’s poetic muses as engaging in lesbian sex as a symbol of the men’s literary relationship.)

    My obscure and long-winded point is not so much about modern literature but about depictions of historic persons and events: many many things that would strike a modern person as “stupid” or illogical may make sense within their own historic context. And, in fact, making a story with a historical setting conform to the expectations and assumptions of a modern reader may strip it of all authenticity entirely.

42. As someone who works in (for-profit) biotech I recognize the complexity of the ethical issues around the HeLa cell line. But to expand a little of what Peer Sylvester points out, biological research typically involves screening through massive numbers of samples — not just in the thousands but up into the millions — to identify specimens of further use. At the time of obtaining a sample, that sample has a minuscule likelihood of being of any scientific value. And 99.99% of what gives it value is the screening process.

    Yes, there should be a release process for samples that are going to be used for research. And such permission/release processes have improved greatly over the years. But the HeLa cell situation was not a matter of exploitation or fraud. It doesn’t even shade over into the ethical situation of, for example, using transplantable organs from a dead body without explicit permission. Should the researchers using the HeLa cells have given name-credit to the (dead) woman who made their work possible? Perhaps, but that would be even more of an ethical shit-storm if Lacks and/or her family had not given explicit permission to do so. The right to medical privacy strikes me as more important than the right to a legal interest in a piece of diseased tissue that you have consented to have removed from your body.

    It’s not simple, and it’s not straightforward, and the aspects that reflect social power imbalances can make it difficult to discuss dispassionately. But to me the position that there was something ethically horrific about making use of a piece of medical waste misunderstands the nature and dynamics of biological research.

43. @Heather Rose Jones – The early 17th century was far from a socially enlightened era, but it was an era when ideas about gender and sexuality were undergoing a lot of upheaval and public discussion. I don’t know the context or exact text of the incident in the comic, but this was an era when men were quite comfortable expressing deep emotional relationships with each other in romantic and even sexualized terms, even though society disapproved of the sexual relationships alluded to.

    There is no point in addressing a flouncer, so I didn’t bother, but it occurred to me that supposing the past is like the present represented a fairly grave error of logic and everything that follows that error is necessarily flawed (or at least only correct in stopped clock fashion).

    The other thought I had was that indulgences were fairly readily available in the 17th century. Growing up Catholic, I tried to avoid sin, but knowing there was an alternative that offered absolution governed some of my choices. I’m guessing there was an equivalent societal impact from the availability of both absolution and indulgences.

44. (7) NEIL GAIMAN, BOX CHECKER. I haven’t been reading comic books regularly in a long time, and particularly not superhero books, but I have read a lot of Gaiman, comics and prose, and I can say with some confidence that Gaiman’s LGBTQ-friendly stance comes through even in the Sandman series of (oh mercyful fate) a generation ago. I don’t see why he would have felt the need to let people know he’s down with The Gays in 2012. I can’t help but think this is more of a case of someone who gets a little squicked and thrown out of a story when gayness is revealed, and rationalizes that via political paranoia.

    It’s rude to assume someone’s motivations, but I’m not so polite as to care, if the person in question is doing the same.

    @Heather Rose Jones – Your comment reminded me that the terms homosexual and heterosexual weren’t even invented until the 1800s. I don’t know enough about the social climate of the early 17th Century to comment on what that would mean in the context of this discussion, but it’s an interesting point.

    The social unacceptability of male-male affection is just gross. I suspect it is also a strong contributing factor to the concept of the “friend zone,” because men just can’t actually have emotional relationships with anyone other than close family without it being romantic/sexual.

    @Chip – Oh man, I learned years ago, back in the days of phpBB, to _never_ flounce from an argument on the internet, because then everyone you’re arguing with does their best to pull you back in and make you look silly. The only way (for me, at least) to successfully flounce is to never re-visit that thread and turn off all notifications.

    @Steve Wright – Behold, a LoL! Titling his rant Pet Seminary would have at least quadrupled the quality of Wright’s Parliament of Beasts and Birds.

    @Kendall et al., re Hugo reading… Your discussion of Aaronovich is getting me excited to start book two. I also just realized I hadn’t grabbed the first McGuire, yet, so I did that ($1.99 for Kindle). Oh, her book covers! So bad. Almost Baenian.

    Still on the first Temeraire, myself, and still digging it. I’m enjoying the protagonist’s growth, and Temeraire’s voice and character are excellent. He’s kind of like a cat scientist.

45. Do we have a medical researcher in the house? IIRC medical researchers do not know the actual source of the tissue sample that they are using as that’s removed before they receive the sample. Beyond getting general descriptors (age, race and gender being obvious ones), they know nothing about who the tissue sample came from.

    Most medical research does not generate a profit, so adding a fee for using a given tissue sample will invariably make such research more costly.

46. Thanks to Greg and Heather for vocalizing what I was thinking about same-sexing before gayness was invented. (Probably about the worst way I could put it.) I wish someone had said that earlier–I couldn’t come up with a way to–because it’s vaguely possible Andrew M. was simply ignorant on that point. Heck, I’m relatively well read in sexuality, and I was going to phrase it as a question because I wasn’t certain I understood it correctly myself. It would have been interesting to see if he was amenable to discussion on that point. I’ll let that be a lesson to me to go ahead and expose my possible ignorance a little more enthusiastically from now on.

    As to use of tissue samples in research, I guess I’m a terrible person, because I’d be just as happy forcibly taking such samples from everyone (or no one–anything in-between would be unfair) for that purpose as I would forcibly giving everyone (or no one) vaccinations for polio, so long as no one made money off of doing it.

47. @Art: 1602 came out in 2003. Iceman being established as gay happened more than a decade later. It seems a bit unfair to crime Neil for not being precognitive.

48. @ kathodus

    Your comment reminded me that the terms homosexual and heterosexual weren’t even invented until the 1800s. I don’t know enough about the social climate of the early 17th Century to comment on what that would mean in the context of this discussion, but it’s an interesting point.

    Anyone interested in exploring historic views on sexuality and gender (though very much within a woman-centered framework) might be interested in my blog The Lesbian Historic Motif Project. (It’s more of an annotated bibliography that a blog, per se.)

    A lot of researchers in the field of gender/sexuality research struggle with the question of how/whether/to-what-extent we can or should make connections between contemporary understandings or categories of gender and sexuality and those in historic cultures. The whole thing about “nobody was homosexual until the term was invented in the 19th century…but nobody was heterosexual either” can get complicated and fraught, not only because people have genuine philosophical differences on the nature/culture question, but because that position ignores the immense weight of modern cultural defaults. It may be the case that there was no historic concept that maps exactly to our idea of heterosexuality, but generally only those looking for non-het/cis/default mappings get told their search for equivalence is invalid.

    Oh, I could go on and on about this for years. I’ll just leave it that there are far queerer things in history than a modern fiction writer could invent on their own. Not everything was possible, but different things were possible than we tend to assume.

49. @Heather Rose Jones – Thanks for the link. It does look interesting.

50. 7 – The term virtue signaling is mostly a form of asshole signaling, in that the person using is seriously has signaled that they are an asshole. I find it a useful indicator.

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