(1) DEFENDING SELF-DEFENSE. Larry Correia covers a lot of ground in “Self-Defense Is A Human Right” at Monster Hunter Nation. Here’s a representative excerpt.
Orlando is yet another example that Gun Free Zones are vile, stupid ideas. The intent is to prevent people from getting hurt. The reality is the opposite. Your feelings on the matter don’t change the results. The vast majority of mass shootings have taken place in areas where regular citizens are not allowed to carry guns.
I’ve seen a lot of people over the last few days saying that the “random good guy with a gun” is a myth. That is foolish simply because we have plenty of examples where a mass shooter was derailed or stopped by the intervention of a random person who happened to be near. Just in my home state alone, which is relatively peaceful, with low crime, a low population, and above average police response time in our urban areas, I can think of several instances where a killer was interrupted or stopped entirely by somebody other than the responding officers.
Sometimes these were regular citizens with concealed weapons permits (KSL shooting, mass stabbing at Smiths) and others they were off duty police officers in regular clothing going about their daily lives who responded first (Trolley Square, Salt Lake Library hostage situation) or even a parole officer who just happened to be at a hospital (Cache) for unrelated reasons, and ended up saving lives.
The identity of the responder doesn’t matter, just that there is one as soon as possible. The important thing is how much time elapses between the beginning of the massacre and the violent response, because that is time the killer is allowed to work unimpeded. In some cases the attack was in a gun free zone and the responders had to leave, go to their vehicles, retrieve a weapon, and then return (Pearl Mississippi, and if I recall correctly the Appalachian School of Law).
Traditionally the gay community has trended overwhelmingly statistically liberal in their politics, with a correspondingly low number of gun owners. But being unarmed also makes you easier victims for evil people. This has to change.
I don’t care what your personal beliefs are, or what your lifestyle is, self-defense is a human right. Take advantage of it. Please.
(2) EUROCON HITS MEMBERSHIP LIMIT. Eurocon 2016 Barcelona has sold out four months ahead of the event.
The committee is creating a waiting list where members who no longer want their memberships can arrange an exchange with people who wish to join—email [email protected]
Perhaps unexpectedly, the committee is also publicizing on its Facebook page things that people who don’t have memberships can do at and around the con:
Even if you are not lucky, there are several activities you can enjoy without a membership. Our DEALERS ROOM will be awesome! Bring your wallet and cards, we will make sure you keep on using them. You can also enjoy the EXHIBITIONS (three, but allow us our secrets for the moment), and there will be a number of presentations of books in the LIBRARIES of Barcelona.
Also, our friends at GIGAMESH bookstore will have special activities during the days before Eurocon, and CHRONOS bookstore has several surprises in the oven, too.
For a bit of money, if you have some left after the Dealers Room, there will be THREE PANELS open for the general public at CCCB. We are doing this in order to attract people from outside fandom, but that doesn’t mean these events can’t be enjoyed by true fans who, ahem, forgot to buy their memberships in time.
Last but not least, FILMOTECA DE CATALUNYA will project a few movies with panels afterwards featuring some of our celebrities. The tickets will not be expensive, we promise.
(3) CLASS. Showrunner Ness is conflicted — “Doctor Who spin-off will have a gay lead character”: should he take credit, or say that’s how the world should work?
Doctor Who spin-off TV series Class will feature an gay lead character, it has been confirmed.
Celebrated author Patrick Ness is helming upcoming the BBC spin-off series, which features teenagers at a school set in the Whoniverse.
The show has been described as a British take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and Ness revealed this week that like Buffy, one of the main characters will be gay.
After recent events in Orlando, he tweeted: “Been asked if Class will have LGBT representation in it. Will a lead character with a boyfriend who he kisses & sleeps with & loves do?
“We were keeping that secret, but today that secret doesn’t seem very important. #lovewins”
The series stars Mr Selfridge’s Greg Austin, alongside Fady Elsayed, Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah.
Ness added: “Kind of astounded that having a gay lead on Class has been such big news. One day it won’t be, one day soon.
(4) EYE ON SHORT FICTION. At Locus Online, “Rich Horton reviews Short Fiction, May 2016”.
March is science fantasy month at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which I always like. There’s something about mixing SF and fantasy that to my mind brings forth ideas wilder and more colorful than either genre provides alone. The best, which is to say, weirdest example comes from Jason Sanford (not surprisingly). ‘‘Blood Grains Speak Through Memories’’ (3/17) is set in a far future in which the environment is preserved by ‘‘anchors’’, humans enhanced by ‘‘grains’’ on their land. ‘‘Normal’’ humans (called day-fellows) are forced to a nomadic life: if they stay too long anywhere, or interfere with the environment (use too high technology, or cut down a tree), the grains will compel the anchors to kill them. Frere-Jones Roeder is an anchor with doubts, some related to her now dead life-partner, some to an atrocity she committed at the behest of the grains long before, some expressed in her concern for her son, exiled to life among the day-fellows. When a day-fellow girl becomes infected by the grains on her territory, she is finally pushed to take a drastic step. It’s cool and strange stuff, almost gothic at times, thought-provoking and honest.
(5) DROP IN ANYTIME. Jeremy P. Bushnell selects “Five Books Riddled with Holes” for Tor.com.
I have a good friend who suffers from trypophobia, the fear of holes. (If you think you might have this, I don’t recommend Googling it, as right on top of the search results is a rather horrific array of “images for trypophobia.”) When my new novel, The Insides, came out, I had to apologize to this friend—going so far as to offer to personally hand-annotate her copy of the book with trigger warnings—because holes are at the very center of the narrative. The novel features a set of characters who use magic to cut holes into the fabric of time and space, and these holes don’t always behave as they should: sometimes they open or reopen unexpectedly, sometimes weird things come out of them.
(6) THERE’S THAT PESKY TAVERN AGAIN. Guess what shows up in “Juliette Wade takes a ridiculously close look at the worldbuilding of Ancillary Justice” on Ann Leckie’s blog?
Paragraph 1:
The body lay naked and facedown, a deathly gray, spatters of blood staining the snow around it. It was minus fifteen degrees Celcius and a storm had passed just hours before. The snow stretched smooth in the wan sunrise, only a few tracks leading into a nearby ice-block building. A tavern. Or what passed for a tavern in this town.
I’m going to start here with the word “The.” That little article has an important job, which is to tell you that “body” is something that someone already knows about. It’s as if someone just said “Wow, a body,” and then the story picked up an instant later. As readers, we are seeing it for the first time, but we can sense that observing someone outside the boundaries of the page. Thus, “the” implies the presence of a narrator. The first hint of a world comes with “the snow around it.” Our minds produce a snowy scene.
(7) PLANETARY SOCIETY. In the fifth installment of The Planetary Post, Robert Picardo and Bill Nye take a special tour of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to see the amazing new James Webb Space Telescope.
(8) EXTRA CREDIT. The Planetary Post webpage has additional links of interest.
Juno Orbit Insertion: The Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter on July 4-5 (orbit insertion is on the night of July 4 in the Americas, early July 5 in the Eastern Hemisphere). This groundbreaking mission will improve our understanding of the solar system’s beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Watch our CEO Bill Nye demystify the cutting-edge science behind NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter. Follow Emily Lakdawalla to learn when you will be able to see new Jupiter pictures from its camera, JunoCam.
Tanking It To The Streets: After an epic parade through the streets of Los Angeles, the last unflown space shuttle external tank arrived at the California Science Center to be displayed alongside the Space Shuttle Endeavour. The tank, known as ET-94, had quite an eventful journey—including a rescue at sea.
New Space Policy Podcast: Planetary Radio just launched a monthly podcast that looks underneath the hood of how NASA works. Join Space Policy Director Casey Dreier, Policy Advisor Jason Callahan, and Mat Kaplan in this new series exploring the history, politics, and process of how we get to space. A new episode will be released on the first Friday of every month. Subscribe to Planetary Radio on your favorite listening platform.
SpaceX’s Fantastic Four: Elon Musk and his team have done it again and landed a fourth first-stage booster. This makes three landings by sea and one by land. Be sure to watch the spectacular Falcon 9 landing from the side of the booster.
LightSail™ 2 Test Success: Our citizen-funded LightSail 2 spacecraft recently breezed through a major systems test. The CubeSat successfully deployed its antenna and solar panels, communicated with the ground, and unfurled its 32-square-meter solar sails in a lab setting. Read more in our full recap.
(9) JUST LIKE CLOCKWORK. Tor.com has posted the first chapter of David D. Levine’s Arabella of Mars as a free read.
A plantation in a flourishing 18th century British colony on Mars is home to Arabella Ashby, a young woman who is perfectly content growing up in the untamed frontier. But days spent working on complex automata with her father or stalking her brother Michael with her Martian nanny is not the proper behavior of an English lady. That is something her mother plans to remedy with a move to an exotic world Arabella has never seen: London, England.
However, when events transpire that threaten her home on Mars, Arabella decides that sometimes doing the right thing is far more important than behaving as expected. She disguises herself as a boy and joins the crew of the Diana, a ship serving the Mars Trading Company, where she meets a mysterious captain who is intrigued by her knack with clockwork creations. Now Arabella just has to weather the naval war currently raging between Britain and France, learn how to sail, and deal with a mutinous crew…if she hopes to save her family remaining on Mars.
Arabella of Mars, the debut novel by Hugo-winning author David D. Levine offers adventure, romance, political intrigue, and Napoleon in space—available July 12th from Tor Books. Read chapter one below, and come back all this week for additional excerpts!
(10) POWERED BY BELIEF. Kameron Hurley is a trusted interpreter of the career writer’s inner life — “Real Publishing Talk: Author Expectation and Entitlement”.
As I’ve had more interest in my work, and more opportunities have come my way, I’ve also learned how to say no to things that aren’t furthering my ultimate goal of building my work into its own powerhouse. This is another reason I still hold onto the day job, because it means I don’t have to take every deal or every opportunity. Still, it’s hard to say no. You’re always concerned about opportunities drying up. What if this is the best it ever gets? What if I don’t get an opportunity again?
And then I look at my career and I go, “We are just getting started.”
And it is this, this hope, this rally from the depths of doubt and despair, that keeps me going. You must believe in the future. You must believe you can create it. You must believe that endurance, and hard work, and persistence, will carry you through.
(11) YOON HA LEE. Aidan Moher was pleased he found a reason to persist, as he explains in “Stealing the Future: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee”.
I have a confession to make. When I finished the first chapter of Ninefox Gambit, the debut novel from noted short fiction author Yoon Ha Lee, I thought that was all I would read. It wasn’t clicking with me. I found the world confusing, the action gruesome, and the pace difficult to keep up with. I could recognize that novel’s quality, and the originality that Lee is known for, but other books beckoned, and there was an easy, lazy whisper at the back of my head. “It’s just not for you,” it said. I listened, and moved onto another book.
Yet, here I am reviewing it.
(12) SEASON 10 SHOOTING BEGINS. CinemaBlend tells fans “Doctor Who Is Giving Fans Way More Of An Unexpected Character”.
It was announced today that Bridesmaids star Matt Lucas will reprise Nardole for the opening episode of Doctor Who Season 10, which begins filming in Cardiff on June 20. Reuniting with the Twelfth Doctor and meeting his new companion, Bill (played by Pearl Mackie), for the first time, Lucas’ Nardole will have a recurring role throughout the season. The episode is being written by showrunner Steven Moffat, and it was also revealed that Sherlock actor Stephanie Hyam will have a guest cast role this season.
(13) CYBERPUNK WOMEN. Before moving on to the positives, Geoff Willmetts starts with the shortcomings of “Cyberpunk Women, Feminism And Science Fiction by Carlen Lavigne (book review)” at SF Crowsnest.
I had slight misgivings with the preface to Carlen Lavigne’s book, ‘Cyberpunk Women, Feminism And Science Fiction’ when she starts describing the history of cyberpunk without mentioning Bruce Bethke’s 1983 short story but in the proper introduction, she clearly is well read on the subject and covers the history in the following chapter. She describes cyberpunk as belonging to the 4 C’s: corporation, crime, computers and corporeality (read that as corporations) and the changes to our world today as computer technology takes over our reality and taken to extremes. She also includes cyborgs as a near fifth C. Oddly, she misses out the meaning of ‘punk’. Not the original meaning which meant ‘prostitution’ but that of rebellion as given with the UK punk movement of the 1980s. The reason why ‘cyberpunk’ didn’t really last that long was because, unlike William Gibson’s assertion that people would rebel against computers, is because they embraced the technology instead. Many of you people reading here lived through that period and look what you’re reading this review on. Something else Lavigne misses out on is Gibson admitting that he doesn’t like computers and I suspect those who read his novels probably raised their own eyebrows as to how druggies could program computers when you really need all your attention when writing code.
(14) OUTSIDE OF A WALRUS. Camestros Felapton created a parody of Tran Nguyen’s Spectrum-winning art “Traveling To a Distant Day,” as it appeared on the cover of semiprozine Hugo nominee Uncanny.
Then he shared his analysis: “Hugo Choices 8: Best Semiprozine – Sci-Phi beats No Award” — and for a moment I panicked because I thought that meant it was the only nominee he placed above the event horizon. But no, he means all the nominees deserve to be ranked above No Award.
What Sad Puppies (particularly SP4) has inadvertently demonstrated, is that the lack of authentic conservative voices in modern science fiction lies less with sinister conspiracies or SJW gate-keepers but rather a genuine lack of conservatives writing SF/F of any great depth. Sci-Phi journal hasn’t fixed that problem but at least it is attempting to do something constructive about it.
(15) GAIMAN ON STAGE. In the Baltimore Sun Tim Smith reviews a production of Neverwhere, the fantasy novel and BBC television series by Neil Gaiman adapted for stage by Robert Kauzlaric and performed by the Cohesion Theatre of Baltimore. He says “this theatrical version…is well worth visiting.”
Whatever the influences, Gaiman spins a good, fresh yarn. And Kauzlaric’s adaptation does a mostly smooth job of cramming in characters and incidents, while maintaining a coherent thread.
Likewise, director Brad Norris proves adept at keeping the Cohesion production cohesive, drawing nicely delineated portrayals from the actors (accents are respectably achieved), and keeping the pace taut enough to make a long play feel almost speedy.
Some of the dry wit in the script could use brighter delivery; that may emerge as the run continues. But the violent bits — the story gets pretty dark at times — are well in hand, deftly guided by fight choreographer Jon Rubin….
(16) ABOUT FEYNMAN. In a 2011 TEDX talk called “Leonard Susskind: My Friend Richard Feynman”, Stanford physicist Susskind tells Feynman stories. Sidney Coleman is mentioned starting at about 4:06 and continuing for a minute as Feynman, Susskind, and Coleman, take on some clueless philosophers over the nature of artificial intelligence.
Richard Feynman was a very complex man. He was a man of many, many parts. He was, of course, foremost, a very, very, very great scientist. He was an actor. You saw him act. I also had the good fortune to be in those lectures, up in the balcony. They were fantastic. He was a philosopher; he was a drum player; he was a teacher par excellence. Richard Feynman was also a showman, an enormous showman. He was brash, irreverent — he was full of macho, a kind of macho one-upmanship. He loved intellectual battle. He had a gargantuan ego. But the man had somehow a lot of room at the bottom. And what I mean by that is a lot of room, in my case — I can’t speak for anybody else — but in my case, a lot of room for another big ego. Well, not as big as his, but fairly big. I always felt good with Dick Feynman.
[Thanks to JJ, robinareid, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day IanP.]
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I think this is an excellent time to recommend Jeff Ford’s Blood Drive which has been podcasted on Starship Sofa.
@Hampus Eckerman: thank you!
(Even in the bit I read, I kept getting distracted by world-building questions like “if they’re living in these spire things, above an uninhabitable or at least uninhabited planetary surface… where are they getting all the wood and brass and copper for their various Steampunk gadgets?” Perhaps I am tediously obsessed with the logistics of these things… in which case, Seveneves might be right up my street.)
I remember at the time of Neverwhere’s release, Gaiman described the BBC as something of a sausage maker in that no matter what you put in you got Doctor Who out. That seems to take on new and different meanings today.
He also described the novelization as the “Author’s Cut” of the miniseries.
Where do authoritarian-leaning rebellious libertarian chest-beaters get their worldview? Movies. TV. They read books, but their apparent beliefs are pretty well dictated by Hollywood’s product through the golden age. Sure, they hate Hollywood, but they took its views of American history and society to heart. They didn’t live here then, but they’re certain it was real and can be brought back with some clapping and fake movie heroics.
Movie heroes. The exceptional everyman who can’t be beat. Yeah, that’s me, they all say.
Oh, and by the way. Scott “Dilbert” Adams has been having a go at a straw SJW for a day or so. It’s almost as funny as my description of it, though less insightful.
Steve Wright: If the surface is merely uninhabited, could they not go down there to harvest the wood etc.? Indeed, even if it’s uninhabitable, as in no one could live there long-term, could they not still go down in diving-suits or whatever?
Parachutes were tried on some early flights, they didn’t work. The stage basically breaks up at altitude before it gets low enough for the chutes to be deployed. That’s why the first burn in that video takes place, it slows the stage down and the engine plume acts as a heat shield.
The Falcon 9 still has the same launch capability it was originally designed for, the engines perform a lot better than they need to so it has proved possible to stretch the fuel and oxidiser tanks and wind up the wick on the engines.
Dunking in salt water is never good for high tech, and the stage didn’t survive some test water landings that were made before the barge and landing gear were ready. It came down nicely but broke up after toppling.
/r/SpaceX is actually quite good for information, the mods keep everything on track and you land up with people doing things like slowing down that video and going through frame by frame marking the drone ship position.
Hey, Steve Davidson, I once had a chile relleno that tasted like fish. At a guess, the establishment used the same fry oil for the relleno as they used for their fish and chips.
And no, I’ve never been able to forget the experience.
@Andrew M: those are certainly possibilities, but I would have to read the rest of the book to find out if that’s what’s happening. (Maybe. Or Jim Butcher may be uninterested in answering my questions, and all I’d get is another few hundred pages of airship battles and snide aristocrats.)
They must have some sort of functioning economy to support all the Victorian knick-knacks and airship commerce raiding that’s going on… but I don’t know how it works, and having pronounced the Eight Deadly Words as early as page 44, I’m not mad keen to slog through the rest of it in the hope of finding out.
At least this isn’t a problem with Seveneves. I think the Agent that blows up the moon on page 1 might have been one of Stephenson’s info-dumps spinning out of control and breaking free of the main body of the text.
So what I learned today is that Larry Correia has never set foot in an actual nightclub in any major city. Because if he had, there is no way he could conclude that, “Oh yeah, this place would be so much safer if the drunks were armed on the crowded dance floor.” It’s more likely that any club that tried it would go out of business because nobody sane would want to go there.
(1) Drunk people with guns – what could possibly go wrong?
(1) “You can kill a lot more people with a rifle and a smile, than you can with a knife and a smile.” -Paraphrased from Al Capone.
I think at the start of Monster Hunter Legion the narrator is discussing why the chief appeal of Vegas to him is the all you can eat buffets. This suggested to me that the author had a seriously different world view* than I did.
* I can appreciate an all you can eat buffet, but I don’t think I’d put it at the top of my list of reasons why or why not to visit Las Vegas.
@Steve Wright @Hampus Eckerman it doesn’t get better?! I’ve somehow made it to the halfway point and am slogging on through sheer force of sunk cost fallacy, and because I refuse to believe that a book full of talking cats and Plucky Fighting Youth can be this consistently tedious. Then again it was probably asking too much for a puppy pick to live up to the initial “ooooo, is this gonna be like Tamora Pierce” promise…
And yeah, there have been a couple of instances where characters point out how absurdly valuable wood is in this economy, but no indication of how it’s made in quantities large enough to build in the first place. Plus I can’t visualise what he’s going for with the segmented sky city at all – it’s made of stone? But translucent? And the segments are squares all arranged in a circle? And only a couple have docks but you can’t go between them internally? So the rest you have to skydive to or?
Yeeeahhh it might be time to give up.
>>the UK punk movement of the 1980s
>
>The what now when exactly?
Everyone knows the 1980s began in 1975, it just took 1980 for normal folk to notice.
(Actually, punk *was* bigger around 1980 than 1970s…)
> Punk originated in NYC (the Ramones, Television, etc.) circa 1975
Originated is a big claim. Certainly the Ramones were big in many places, absolutely, but quite a few others at the same time were doing similar things… e.g. the Sex Pistols started that same year, so this looks a little more like “idea whose time has come” than “all these other bands all around the world stole our ideas”.
(Possibly my own myopia here, I’d never heard of the Ramones until long after the peak of the punk phenomenon.)
Hope it goes better than the last time they did “a British take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Re: (1): Why is it that when I look at a mass shooting and say, “This might not have happened if it was harder to get a gun,” I’m ‘pushing a political agenda’, but when Larry Correia looks at a mass shooting and says, “This wouldn’t have happened if EVERYONE had guns,” he’s just offering a common-sense solution?
(1) In contrast, Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary has guns and different thoughts. Reportedly some people in the Baen/Correia/MGC/etc. community have cancelled their preorders of the latest Schlock Mercenary collection in response.
Not as bad as City of Ember. Among the movie’s many failings, in the book, what kept people trapped inside the city was fear of the unknown. In the movie, what kept people trapped inside the movie was carnivorous moles the size of houses.
Terrible news in the UK today. So sad.
I’m trying to picture Trump & LC’s scenario:
1. I’m going to a nightclub for drinking & dancing (always good to combine guns and drinking – check NRA guidelines on this)
2. As a responsible gun owner I need to bring the right gun for protection – with the increase in AWS incidents I bring my AK-15, it’s for self-defense after all
3. I decide to dance – what do I do with the AK-15 hanging on my back?
A. Dance with a loaded gun on my back?
B. Hand it to my drinking buddy while I dance?
C. Give it to the bartender?
D. Don’t dance because a responsible gun owner doesn’t drink or do other foolish things while armed?
E. Something I’ve not thought of?
4. Armed terrorist starts shooting in the crowded club – between the terrorist and I are 20-100 people I:
A. Drop to the floor and play dead while figuring out how to stay alive
B. I start spraying the room with bullets aimed towards the terrorist, innocents may get shot and killed, but I will have taken out bad guy which makes me good guy(TM)
C. Drop to floor and crawl confidently towards terrorist because I never leave home without a, it doesn’t look like Kevlar, full Kevlar outfit (head to toes) including hat and take careful aim when I get a good shot – somehow I’ve avoided shooting any innocents and taken out terrorist because I’m a good guy(TM) who never actually goes out drinking and dancing (that was cover) but instead am always on the alert for attack
D. I freeze, panic, or end up shot before I can react, terrorist now has an extra gun
Its very easy to picture what you’d do in a situation when you’ve never been in one. It’s easy to ignore the difference between a gun range, a video game, and basic SWAT training (a number of conceal carry civilians get this level training) and being in a real life and death situation with lots of innocent lives at stake between you and a shooter. There are reasons why cops make so many mistakes when in active shooting situations or where they believe someone has a gun.
(1) Larry is a big snow globe.
In other news, I finished Seveneves and there sure is a lot of exposition. Also, I didn’t know that Arvy qrTenffr Glfba snasvpgvba jnf n guvat.
I liked that British take on Buffy! Although I can’t argue with any of the points raised in the article.
I didn’t buy a region-free DVD player specifically for Hex — I bought it for Charlie Jade — but the British edition of Hex S2 (since S2 never got a US release) was one of my early purchases.
When reading Larry Correia on the subject of guns, keep in mind that in his books, his idea of romantic flirting between two characters is for them to talk about the guns they own in loving detail.
In this scene from Monster Hunter International, his male protagonist is a grown man who stammers and stutters like a teen-age boy when he meets a pretty woman. But then he finds a subject whose mere mention instantly gives him a confident, virile swagger.
Hot hot hot! I don’t know about you, but when I read that my gun went off.
@Arifel:
I read the whole thing. Unfortunately, it was. I recommend getting out now if you’re not enjoying it.
Oh, and for whoever asked, apparently the surface contains Terrifying Beasties.
@Tasha Turner:
Giant OMFG YES to your entire post.
@ steve davidson
I can recall a point in my childhood when I had somehow picked up this association (not the Winnebago, but the railroad car) and I have no idea why or how. All I know is that when I read stories about people eating in diners, I envisioned the place as a converted rail car. This image even withstood the evidence that the places my family ate while on the road were never converted rail cars…I just figured we never ate in real diners.
@Tasha, that was a great post and I totally agree. I bet that if you said that to someone like LC they’d have some type of incoherent reply.
@Kip W
Adams also believes that he’s at the top of the assassination list if Clinton is elected. So reality is no longer his strong suit…
@Chip Hitchcock,
Yes coo is (to my ears) how it sounds in Scots dialect, which makes the Beast of London an even cuter wee beastie.
@Dex:
Reality was never his strong suit, he just used to limit his commentary to the pocket of reality with which he was most familiar and which contained a lot of people who could sympathize. Now he’s convinced himself he’s a super-genius with a solution for everything, and the group of people surrounding him has undergone evaporative cooling, leaving him in his own little self-centred echo chamber.
I concluded that Scott Adams had fallen off the far side of crazy when I got to the last chapter of The Dilbert Future, and nothing of his that I’ve read since has caused me the slightest urge to revisit that conclusion.
Random bit of amusement for the day. Kate Paulk got to the Fanzine section of her Hugo nominee post highlights, but before that wanted to talk about a comment left on her Fan Artist post by Greg Benford, where he praised Steve Stiles and hoped that he wins. I’m not saying that she took offense at this, but – and this is hypothetical, folks – she seems a bit peeved at his words:
I would suggest that people read her full reaction to his post. It’s quite lengthy.
I will say that as I read it, one thing that immediately came to mind was if whether or not Toni Weisskopf had advised anyone what she had edited in 2015.
@John Seavey:
I suspect it’s the same reason that Scalzi’s recently-announced new novel is “ripping off Isaac Asimov” whereas a feeble Heinlein pastiche by “Rod Walker” is “making science fiction great again”.
Its very easy to picture what you’d do in a situation when you’ve never been in one.
Yes it is. People who get all warm and creamy about guns always imagine themselves the action hero when the situation demands it, but adrenaline and panic are powerful drugs.
I had a home run hit at me once in the front row of left field at Arlington Stadium. Suddenly there was a screaming ball and a sellout crowd of 43,000 people all coming my way.
What did I do in that much less stressful situation?
I froze. Somewhere I have the VHS tape of SportsCenter that shows me doing absolutely nothing. The guy next to me sets down his four-year-old child, nudges me aside and makes a bid for the ball. I’m a human mannequin. My friends in college watched the clip over and over.
So I gather people have gotten their Hugo packets. I didn’t get mine yet, so should I 1) wait patiently, or 2) write an irate letter?
The packet should be accessible on the website — http://midamericon2.org/home/hugo-awards-and-wsfs/2016-hugo-ballot/
should have a link; you’ll just need to sign in with your ID & PIN.
@Lisa they put it all on the website for download a couple of weeks ago but didn’t send out email notifications. You can get it all here: http://mac2-hugo01.midamericon2.org/packet.php
(Whoops, too late to be useful!)
Lisa Goldstein: Nobody actually gets a Hugo packet. You can find it on the site. Possibly you are meant to get an email informing you of it (though I haven’t), but even without such a thing you can download it, using the same login details as for voting.
@Chip Hitchcock
First thing to know is that the cost of fuel is only 3% to 5% of the cost of a flight, so even doubling the required fuel for a mission wouldn’t be a big deal. The big cost is throwing away the whole rocket after each mission. So don’t worry about fuel; it’s not an issue by itself.
The second thing is that the stages are very, very thin, so they’re very fragile except along their long axis. When they hit the water or fall over, they fall apart. To preserve one, you have to land it very gently. (And, of course, salt water is hell on equipment.)
I strongly recommend the SpaceX Reusable Rockets Section of the forums on NASA Spacefight.com. Much of the material on Reddit’s /r/SpaceX actually comes from NASASpaceflight.com without attribution.
@k_choll
I asked our friendly troll The Phantom very similar specific questions related to previous mass shootings. I never got an answer to a single question. I’ve been ignored every time I ask one of these good guys(TM) specifics in how them being armed and shooting would help the situation rather than hurt it. We know in at least one situation the good guy(TM) caused additional innocents to be hurt and it was unarmed civilians who brought down the bad guy shooter.
I have my own experiences of stressful situations where I’ve learned I don’t react as anyone who knows me would predict. Unfortunately they aren’t cute or funny like @rcade’s story. Snugs.
Also, see this comment.
How about logging in to the page to download it?
EDIT: Ninja’d by everyone.
My reaction to Larry’s rant is “you can’t get a clear shot with a good backstop in that situation, and anything less is just adding to the problem, not solving it.”
I will think about what Camestros has to say on the subject of Sci Phi Journal but I will bear in mind that Sci Phi Journal is a Puppy promoter, and Beale doesn’t get to slate himself Hugos. Other people will of course make their own decisions.
And don’t forget that if “stay safe and always bring your gun” is really established as the norm, you won’t be the only one with these choices. There will be multiple people whose reaction to the first shot is to pull out their guns and start looking for the shooter. Some of those will open fire at the first person they see holding a gun. Some of those will hit not the terrorist, but another wannabe hero.
See also http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2011/01/friendly_firearms.html
This probably isn’t the place to get into an extended discussion for a couple of reasons. Mostly I don’t have the time to go through all the data again…and again… But also because rising vitriol means that the benefits are low.
I’ll just make the quick point that we know that there are a couple hundred thousand incidents of defensive gun use each year. Here is just one location that aggregates reports of such incidents.
I found Larry’s piece to be pretty spot on. Self defense is a basic human right. IMO it is co-equal with speech, religion, due process, and the rest of the our foundational rights.
@ Paul Weimer
That perspective starts from an inappropriate place, IMHO.
Who has the primary responsibility for feeding a person? That person.
Who has the primary responsibility for housing a person? That person.
Who has the primary responsibility for defending a person from criminals? The same “that person”.
The issue isn’t that government isn’t reliable. The issue is that the government isn’t responsible.
And because that individual is responsible, then they must have the authority….the “right” being the term used by the U.S. Constitution….of self defense. If the individual has the right of self defense, then they must also have the right to the tools needed for self defense.
Visit any gun range in the country and you’ll hear pretty similar sentiments expressed.
The issue gets heated pretty quickly. Other people have other thoughts. But I think it is useful to accurately understand and convey what other folks believe.
—
Regards,
Dann
If the individual has the right of self defense, then they must also have the right to the tools needed for self defense.
There has never been a constitutional right to carry a gun everywhere you go in this country. I know there’s an effort underway to invent that right, but I think most rational people recognize the dangers of making people believe that they can be armed 24/7 and have no obligation to retreat from a dangerous situation when retreat is possible.
I live in a state where my neighbors are so infamous for acts of stupidity that the words “Florida Man” in a headline has become a source of hilarity. 1.3 million people in this state have concealed carry permits and the law asserts that they can all stand their ground if they feel threatened (something that can’t be disproven). What could go wrong?
@Cat
I’m inclined to agree about Sci Phi journal – it doesn’t do a particularly good job by either the Science, or the Philosophy. And I draw the line at Teddy’s water carriers.
@Arifal
You’ve got Aeronaut’s Windless surrounded. In general, it’s the sort of “somethings are scarce, but we’re not going to look at the implications because that might get out of comfort zones.” My first thought looking at that society is that living space would be at a premium. They’d be looking at either having to colonize new spires (If that’s even a thing?), a strict birth control regime, or they are “getting rid of” excess population in a way that would be addressed in a much more interesting novel.
@Dann
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I have a great source for various statistics relating to this issue, and academic analysis, from some place called the “Harvard.” They seem like some sort of reputable university.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/
The bad news is that its says that as much as you may have “heard” about the legions of good solid self-defensive uses of guns that prevent this country sliding into anarchy, the statistics actually say the reverse. You may call this “vitriol”, the rest of us call it math.
Self reporting of defensive gun use is notoriously inaccurate. The reporter remembers a time when they valiantly defended a bar full of people. Everyone else at the bar remembers the drunk asshole who showed they were packing when their words no longer worked.
I have even more bad news: your Constitutional analysis is laughably, utterly wrong in a legal sense. Courts make alls sorts of qualifying ruling about the Bill of Rights on a day to day basis, generally on all of them but the third and ninth amendments. The idea of the Second Amendment’s absolute right to a gun stems form Heller, a decision decided in 2008. Reading comprehension is important, Dann – the Second Amendment discusses well regulated militia. Please cite where it talks about a right to self defense. I’ll wait.
But the idea that the Second Amendment is some Moses-like stone tablet, that simply invites us to contemplate the manly virtue of inaction when faced with the this weeks burnt offering of club goers and 1st graders, due to it’s utter and complete immutability. It’s a new and radical legal doctrine with little support before the the last thirty years.
I agree that self-defense is a basic human right. Gun control is a tool of self-defense. The weight of evidence points to people in countries with strong and effective gun control being better protected from gun violence than without it*. What Larry, the NRA et al are saying is that their wish to own a gun trumps everybody else right to self-defense.
Dann:
Some of these “self defense” that are listed are kind of horrible. I mean, like this one:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/anaheim-718455-police-resident.html
Is this self defense?? I don’t know, but in my country the law says that violence has to be proportional. You are entitled to use only so much violence as to keep a perpetrator from leaving the scene. Death penalty for some one you suspect is not proportional.
And this, from the same page you linked to:
http://wncn.com/2016/06/13/raleigh-nightclub-manager-arrested-after-firing-gun-to-break-up-fight/
Self defense? Really? He was arrested and there were good reasons for that. Starting to shoot when police arrives is not a smart thing to do. There are lots of links like that in what you described as a collection of links about “self defense”.
No, that is actually the police. The state monopoly of violence, the core concept of modern public law. To say that the government is not responsible for protecting its citizens is lacking total awareness of the role of the government.
This scares me, because this is what killed Trayvon Martin. We really have to get the guns away from these people.
@Dann:
Thank you for this clear and succinct statement.
It explains precisely why every gun nut in America is a threat to my daughter’s future.