April 1, 2010
Blast from the past: “Panorama” looks at spaghetti farming
Charles Stross announces new book series
It’s a busy day for Mr. Stross. In addition to his work with Cory Doctorow in the Atlas Shrugged sequel, he’s announced a new book series:
My agent issued a proposal package and deadline for auction among the most likely-to-be-interested New York publishing houses. One thing led to another, by way of one of those whirlwind romances for which the publishing industry is famous, and we’re now engaged: I’m pleased to announce my new five book deal, for a very strong six-digit sum, with one of the largest publishers in the United States!
Harlequin Romance will publish my first paranormal romance, “Unicorn School™: The Sparkling”, in Q1/2012. US:TS is the first book of the projected series, and introduces Avril Poisson, who moves with her family from Phoenix, Arizona, to Forks, Washington with her divorced father, and finds her life in danger when she falls in love with a Sparkly Unicorn™ called Bob. Stalked by and in fear of a mysterious horse-mutilator, Avril must practice her dressage skills with Bob and qualify her steed for a scholarship to the elite Unicorn School™, where he will be safe to grow (and sparkle) without fear of the vampires who infest the senior’s common room. In the second book, “Unicorn School™: The Exsanguination” Bob and Avril must stalk a Vampire Unicorn™ who is draining her fellow pupils of the will to live back to the rocky outcrop where he lives. In book three, “Unicorn School™: The Deflowering”, Bob and Avril confront their most ghastly foe yet, a moustache-twirling villain who is intent on seducing all the pupils (as we all know, unicorn/human relationships are only possible if the human party is a virgin) in order to sell their heart-broken steeds to evil French multinational meat conglomerate Hachette. In book four, “Unicorn School™: The Big Chill” the swindle that is global warming is exposed and, as glaciers pounce on the Louisiana Bayou, Avril and Bob are hunted by monstrous black-and-white swimming birds. And in book five, “Unicorn School™ Forever”, our young lovers are going to get married — but not if the evil, bigoted anti-unicorn Sheriff Osama gets his anti-unicorn-marriage by-law passed first!
March 24, 2010
QotD: The rules of Canadian politics
We now introduce Wells’s Rules of Politics. I have been working on them for years. So far I have only come up with two. If your goal is to understand Canadian politics, there is no obvious need for more than two rules. Here they are:
Rule 1: For any given situation, Canadian politics will tend toward the least exciting possible outcome.
Rule 2: If everyone in Ottawa knows something, it’s not true.
The rules are closely related. Usually when Everyone Knows what’s about to happen, they’re really only hoping it will happen so their boring lives (see Rule 1) will become more interesting.
Paul Wells, “My Rules of Politics”, Macleans, 2003-07-28
March 23, 2010
Comparing congress to prostitutes is unfair to prostitutes
Scott Stein upbraids Glenn Reynolds (aka the Instapundit) for his sloppy and insulting comparison:
[P]rostitutes sell themselves for money — the most intimate part of themselves, even their souls, some opponents of legalized prostitution might say. So looked at this way, Congress is full of prostitutes. Members of Congress sell their souls (if any in Congress have such things). Principles, values, the interests of the nation, the Constitution — all of it — are up for sale to the highest bidder, and that bidder need not be offering money directly. Votes or influence in a political party will often do just fine. Of course, these lead to money and power, which is what the whores in Congress want.
But in many ways Congress is nothing like a prostitute. A prostitute only wants cash that customers actually have, and usually tells them the real price of the services being purchased. A prostitute doesn’t impose hidden fees through inflation (we don’t generally give prostitutes the power to print money, but somehow we let Congress approve stimulus packages and spend money that doesn’t exist). A prostitute doesn’t increase the national debt (in fact, it is government, by keeping prostitution illegal, that increases the deficit in yet another way, by making income from prostitution outside of the system and not taxable).
[. . .]
Yet I’ve never heard of a prostitute that had to convince constituents that they wanted to get laid. I don’t recall prostitutes having to give speeches to persuade their constituents that the sex would be good for them and worth the price. Prostitutes have willing and eager constituents. Prostitutes might proposition men, advertise their wares, but they don’t have to force themselves on johns. Prostitutes don’t have to rape anyone.
Can the same be said of Congress?
Glenn, comparing prostitutes to Congress is insulting — to the prostitutes. Perhaps you owe them an apology.
March 18, 2010
You can’t say that . . . except in a wine column
Michael Pinkus collects a few choice things which can only be said on a wine tour, or in a wine column:
Top Ten Things That Sound Dirty In Winespeak, But Aren’t
Courtesy of fellow wine writer Dean Tudor (www.deantudor.com):
1. “Spit or swallow?”
2. “Stick your nose all the way in”
3. “She’s needs to open up a bit”
4. “I’ve had a ’69 with my sister”
5. “My God! Check out the legs on that Blue Nun!”
6. “I keep Sherry on the rack in my cellar”
7. “I find the Italians flacid and the French hard”
8. “There are too many whites in this room”
9. “You have to pull it out slowly, otherwise it’ll shoot all over the place!”
10. “Wow that really swelled up, can you stick it back in?”Here are two more, just to make it an even dozen:
11. “Me and the guys did a 10 year old Tawny, it was sweet”
12. “I’m sorry Madame but your Pouilly-Fuisse is awfully dry”
March 13, 2010
QotD: Walking the dog
The ancient struggle between dog-lovers and cat-lovers traditionally has favoured the canines, at least in the English-speaking world. Dogs were the manly animals, guarded the hearth, herded the sheep, helped at the hunt and shoot, retrieved the newspaper and were usually gentle with children.
Cats cannot really be put to any domestic use, except apprehension of mice and rats. They are often affectionate, but are not very demonstrative companions. But they require almost no attention, don’t need help or advice going to the bathroom, rarely mind being left outside, because even pampered housecats can usually catch their own dinner, and they are magnificent physical machines. The feline faction has gained ground in recent years, because of the profusion of working couples who could not leave a dog indoors all day.
My purpose here is to de-escalate, even slightly, the friction between the vast opposing armies of feline and canine admirers. This reflects my own circumstances, as my wife Barbara has become, in my brief and untoward absence, a caricature of a dog-lover, setting out from our homes in Toronto and Palm Beach kitted out like a British girls’ public school games-mistress with a variety of leashes, whistles, timepieces, enticements and fecal-disposal apparatus. She defiantly sends me, a traditional cat-fancier, photographs portraying her as an apparent fugitive from an Agatha Christie movie who has turned walking the dogs into exotic simulations of an all-weather, open-ended, search and rescue mission.
Conrad Black, “The truth about cats and dogs”, National Post, 2010-03-13
March 12, 2010
Does this movie trailer remind you of every other movie?
It does for movie trailers what the Generic News Report did for TV news. H/T to Virginia Postrel for the link.
March 11, 2010
QotD: Green jobs
[G]reen jobs have become the ginseng of progressive politics: a sort of broad-spectrum snake oil that cures whatever happens to ail you. They are the antidote to economic malaise, an underskilled labor force, the inherent unwillingness of the public to suffer any significant economic and personal dislocation in order to save the environment. They enhance nationalistic vigor. (If we don’t act now, the Chinese will steal all of our green jobs!) They stave off aging of stale political platforms. And I’m pretty sure they’re good for bunions, too.
Megan McArdle, “The Jobs Are Always Greener…”, The Atlantic, 2010-03-11
March 10, 2010
Some things never change
I was looking though some old postings and found this little gem, which is as true as ever:
It is a sad real-world fact that most legislators, when presented with something they do not understand, almost always attempt to ban it. This probably started with the first neolithic fire-tamer . . . who was probably beaten to death with sticks when the tribal shaman saw it. Senator Hatch is showing all the finely nuanced reactions of Ug the caveman here.
This was in reaction to Senator Orrin Hatch introducing a bill to make peer-to-peer file sharing illegal back in 2004.
March 7, 2010
March 2, 2010
QotD: The true nature of school
If you objected to high school students getting spied on in their homes by school district-issued webcams, maybe junior high students under nonstop cam surveillance on school grounds by a tubby administrator with a chinbeard (but no chin) will be the charm [. . .] I’m creeped out by the obvious glee with which Beardy McBeardsworth describes his prey at a Bronx junior high school in almost exactly the same tones you hear from Air Force flacks narrating thermal footage of hits on insurgents. But I must acknowledge that the concept of school as a place where the rights of students are severely curtailed dates back at least to my own schooling during King Philip’s War, was recently upheld by the Supreme Court in the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case, and seems to enjoy broad popular support. For the majority of Americans alive today, the function of school has always been to break you for a workplace where you will meet obstruction and indignity every day, be subject to every type of invasive surveillance, and generally, as even that greatest of working stiffs Jerry Langford put it, “have idiots plaguing your life.”
Tim Cavanaugh, “Junior High Lives of Others”, Hit and Run, 2010-03-01
February 24, 2010
Tweet of the day
colbycosh:
Remind me how this clownish, feeble US team beat us? Oh, right, our goalie in that game was 52 years old and tripping balls on peyote.
February 22, 2010
Tweet of the day
damianpenny
I don’t want to say Canadians are angry, but I just saw a billboard demanding that Martin Brodeur produce his birth certificate.
