There are some people urging me to weigh in on John Scalzi’s recent posts about a new magazine that will be paying authors poorly. In the course of that discussion, there were a few things said about semiprozines that some people assumed would set me off. It appears that my efforts to save the Best Semiprozine Hugo have put me in some sort of unofficial role as the crazy poster child for semiprozine rights. Some people forget, however, that there is a difference between what writers and their organizations call semi-professional and what the Hugos do. The Hugos don’t care what authors are paid. Some Hugo semiprozines, like my own, are paying professional rates and seen by SFWA as qualifying and by Ralan.com as professional. Many others aren’t.
The thing is, John is on the right track. Authors should be paid for their work. Running a magazine might be a fine hobby or small business for you to have, but that doesn’t absolve you from some responsibility to do right by your authors. Yes, of course, there are some publications that have author-benefiting prestige to them, but they are the exception and not the norm. You can’t hold up Interzone, Lady Churchill’s or Electric Velocipede and use them as the example that unravels John’s argument, nor can you just assume that you’re new magazine will join their ranks. It’s good to have goals and aspirations, but don’t sell your authors statistically-unlikely promises.
That said, I’m not as hard-line about the SFWA’s suggested professional pay rate as John appears to be. I posted about this issue quite some time ago and my position is relatively unchanged. I still discourage no-pay markets (I’ve done so twice in the last week and used John’s posts to help illustrate my point) and believe that there are legitimate semiprofessional-paying magazines that benefit writers.
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Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter. How awesome is that?
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| User: |  shortpacked |
| Date: | 2009-12-04 00:05 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
Shortpacked!: Your move, asshole!
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Shortpacked!: Dopplegangers have opened a west coast branch.
Man, so Livejournal is like fucking up or something and won't show images. I had an image of Batman punching Catwoman. Oh, and the awesome Captain America art that I sent the dude for sending me the Catwoman. But fuck you, Livejournal!
My roommates are all like "why can't you host the images temporarily on your own server?" Because I'm a jerk, that's why.
A jerk.
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Well, I certainly believe you.
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I tol' ya I'd be addin' stuff.
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(This was a con sketch)
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I always feel a little weird when I see "having a baby" highlighted as the ultimate thing that a woman can do with her life. You know the deal: you may have a Pulitzer Prize, a fine job, wealth beyond measure, but unless you've pumped out a kid you're hollow inside.
I mean, not to bag on babies, but it's the end result of a biological function that most people are drawn to regardless. Not that having a child isn't an ordeal, but barring the barren, bearing a child is something that requires no native talent aside from a fair amount of endurance and a functioning womb.
And yet that's what's fetishized in this culture - HAVE A KID. All your other accomplishments, all that stuff you actually worked to bring about, sure sure - but when you getting knocked up?
If it was "being a mother" that was hammered home on, maybe I could get behind that, but the emphasis isn't generally on the considerable effort that goes into being a kind and loving mom. I know lots of terrible mothers who have done nothing with their lives, but people nod approvingly because they squeezed one out. And thus, the sum function of their lives has been reduced to something their bodies were designed to do anyway.
I envision a world where, for strange and Darwinian reasons, society would reward me greatly for growing a beard. People would stop me on subways to stroke it. Whole movies would be devoted to men's adolescent longing for beards, and the struggle they had because they loved their job, but what really would satisfy them was a beard. Soap operas would revolve around frail men struggling with petitioning beautiful doctors to bring their chin-hairs to luscious fruition, photographing in fine detail each shade of that five o'clock growth.
"That Bill Gates," people would say. "Sure, he's made billions, then given billions to charity. He's smart as a whip, has a beautiful wife and several intelligent children. But - " And at this point, they would lower their voice conspiratorially - " - no beard."
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| User: | ampersand |
| Date: | 2009-12-03 12:19 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
Missing sock located on bottom shelf of fridge. Note to self: remember to latch fridge from now on.
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Salutations, people of great technological prowress. Observe our world in our time period, a place where the lack of a direct mention of any godly being in a holiday speech by a President is apparently big enough to warrant writing (for those who wish to comb the original, The White House Provides, at least until the administration changes.), although I can’t tell whether the article is “Yay” or “Boo!” on such a speech.
In the world today, a report recently released accused the police force of Ireland of knowing about and helping to cover up Catholic priest abuse scandals for decades.
United States President Barack Obama delivered his decision for Afghanistan yesterday - 30,000 additional troops to be sent, on a swift timetable, with promises that the troops would begin coming home around July 2011. Whther that will also mean the possibility that all the troops there will also start coming home after taht point is yet to be determined. Their task may be hindered simply by a lack of confidence that their Afghan counterparts will be effective enough to take over when they do go. Now that there is a decision done, one may begin queuing the "soldiers died while Obama dithered" angle of attack.
The independence of Kosovo and Serbian unwillingness to let go of the province continues its warguments before a panel of judges of the Inernational Court of Justice, which will make a nonbdinging advisory opinion on the matter sometime next year.
Domestically, if you wanted a sign that things have clearly gone pear-shaped in the way we handled bacnk bailouts and the like, go no further than that bank execs and workers are obtaining firearms in case the people decide the banks must die, and the general increase in spending on security services by several firms's CEOs.
On the matters of The Gay, a humorous protest against a sign-carrying homosexuality-is-a-sin proclaimer turned into a more significant coutner-protest, as another group took up the opposition more seriously. As one sees bell-ringers ouside and around, an AmericaBlog writer requests that you remember the Salvation Army discriminates against homosexuals.
Elsewhere, as par of the VEWPRF festivities, some Huston-area charities, including the Salvation Army check immigration legality before distributing their largesse. For both of these items, the General suggests despositing a slip indicating how you would enjoy donating to the Salvation Army, but won't because of their discriminatory practices.
On the recent scandal regarding the East Anglia CRU and climate data, one of the central figures in the leaked e-mails has resigned his position, as well he should, considering the evidence pointing at him that he tried to get others to manipulate their data. Still, the opinions come, including ones that claim being afraid of climate change hurts children, by instilling in them the “brainwashing” of the environmentalists and the left that beleive in responsible planetary stewardship, and shortchanging them the actual knowledge needed to test and be skeptical of hypotheses. While I agree that we need more real science in the classrooms and our lives, I still beleive that one entity acting does not a conspiracy make. Mr. Crovitz has the right idea - this entity's actions damage the case for climate change and make it harder for anyone to trust the next report that comes out, regardless of whether you choose to make a big deal out of it or not based on the popular consensus.
Local News, conservative-style? While the AlterNet piece says it may be something to worry about, as someone who has been in places where the locals are conservative, sometimes to the Fox News degree, I don’t think the threat is as big as Alternet is making it out to be. Perhaps because in a lot of places in the world, it would only be confirming what the people there belive anyway. More potentially threatening is Mr. Murdoch's desires to allow one media company to own multiple format outlets, mixing broadcast and print, although he wants you to be afraid of the government trying to help journalists through subsidization or nonprofit-in-exchange-for-nonendorsement statuses.
In the opinions, The Agitator takes umbrage at the idea that all blogs steal their content from true news sources, pointing out several occasions where the reverse has happened, and that it took partisan media outlets, sometimes, to break an important story that the news ignored.
Rather than praise the Swiss decision to ban minarets, the WSJ complains that the ban didn't actually do what really needed to happen, while setting themselves up for being painted as intolerant. Their suggestion was to continue fearing their Muslim neighbors while trying to make them assimilate, and trying to make sure the Europeans outbreed the Muslims. This sounds familiar... where I have heard it before?
The WSJ complains about an eminent domain case that went all the wrong ways, and we agree - New York state’s ability to declare a property blighted and then hand it over to a developer, and then having judges agree that that was the only thing that really mattered, means the people and residents about to be squished by the developer get a bootprint on their faces.
Ms. O'Grady does not resist crowing that Hondurans had an election without incident, painting it as a refutation of colonial ambitions by strong men like Hugo Chavez, with asubtle jab at the Obama administration that they should have been on this side all along, fighting the obvious socialist plot to destablize Honduras and install a dictator. Had that actually been what happened, I’m pretty sure the administration would have said something.
the WSJ continues to sound the drums of sanctions or war against Iran, characterizing those actions as the only ones with any chance of making Iran divert from its nuclear course.
Ms. Kurokawa returns to an almost Palin-esque "Drill, Baby, Drill", by complaining about new possible ways of accounting that take make transportation of energy also part of its climate footprint. She says this will raise the price of doing more domestic mining and drilling, so that Americans don’t have cheaper energy through the exploration of their harder-to-reach reserves. In the current economic situation, and because corporations always pass their additional costs onto consumers, this is bad, she says. I still have no idea whether the country has any real plans to general significant amounts of energy from cleaner sources, so I’d say that reserves drilling and cheap energy should wait, if it can, until it can be exploited as the stepping-stool into a more clean and renewable power grid.
Last out, Mr. Ajami attests to the long-standing nature of many conflicts across the Middle East and further east, claiming that the Obama novelty was never sufficient to achieve change, and now that it has worn off, Mr. Obama will find himself in a worse position than before, because of how Mr. Ajami characterizes his foreign policy to this point.
And finally, Comedian David Limbaugh on the "largest socialistic transformation we’ve yet seen in this nation" - health care reform. Lost in his continued bloviation about the Socialist-in-Chief, his belief that liberals are a group trying to destroy America, and his insistence that the plans will de facto nationalize health care, even if the de jure part never arrives, is a possibly decent argument that the President has not been keeping his promises about a debt-neutral, defecit-friendly health care reform plan. But, that depends on whose numbers you read as to defecit-neutrality and long-term shrinking of costs, as well as how you choose to do the accounting for those costs.
In the sciences, the genetics that make men may also be part of the reason why men don't live so long, although for those looking for the eventual Outbreeding of the Male, there was cause of interest in that mice were created with no male genetic material at all, suggesting a process that eventually might expand into Humes, female longevity appears to be improved if women keep their ovaries, new pressure sensors that would help robots be a bit more human in their touch, and a small machine that can test your DNA to see whether you're going to be affected by certain medications more, less, or not at all.
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Whenever I write about the plight of the poor and how it might be possible to improve it, I invariably get two types of polarized reactions:
One side informs me that the system is utterly broken. The odds are stacked so high against the downtrodden that there is nothing to be done. The poor are no more able to affect their fate than a stick floating in a river, and the only action they need take is to wave their arms and hope that someone in power comes and helps them.
The other side peppily chirps about how the poor are just durned lazy! If they had the gumption that their betters did, they could all break the laws of physics and escape the gravity well of the Earth via willpower alone.
And I find myself wishing both types of commentors understood more about incremental advantage, and how it can be used as a force for good. Because really, life is like a game of Magic: the Gathering.
Bear with me. I am fully aware that is one of the nerdiest statements I have ever made... Yet it is true. And let me explain why, without getting too much into the details of Magic, how a stupid game about dragons and big-boobed angels tussling in the sky applies to - well, to a lot of dealing with life.
See, when you sit down to play a game in Magic, each player brings a deck that they built themselves. Some of these decks are massively overpowered; you'll have times when you face a deck that's engineered specifically to destroy your deck, or a deck that has a lot of expensive cards that are hard to beat, or a deck that's flat-out better than yours.
Your chances of beating these decks? Not good. The odds are against you from the start.
Yet hand a novice player a killer deck and have him play a master with a weak deck, and the master actually has a decent chance of winning. Why? Because Magic is a game of incremental advantage.
Let's say you have only a 25% chance of winning against this particular deck. But if you know when to send back an opening hand that's weak against this deck, well, you might gain a couple of percentage points. Laying your lands in the proper order and tapping them correctly might improve your chances by another percentage point. Playing your threats at the right time? Another percentage point.
Magic's a complex game, and there are a lot of places to make mistakes. But if you're really rigorous about how you learn, strengthening every weak spot you can, then you can turn an guaranteed loser of a deck into - well, something better, if not spectacular. Sometimes you can get that 40% win chance to a 60% win chance - but more often, you've upped that 25% win chance to a dreary 40%. Despite your doing everything you can, thanks to a situation you had little control over, your outlook still isn't good.
But sometimes, the uber-deck stumbles. It doesn't draw the cards it needs, or your opponent doesn't know how to play it, or you get the right series of cards to pull it out - and if you know how to take advantage of that, then you can pull wins out of nowhere.
There are a lot of things you can, and should do, to prepare - yet none of those things guarantee a win. The best players routinely go to gigantic tournaments, and don't get the right draws, and bomb out. There's a lot of luck in Magic, good and bad, and all you can do is hone those percentages so that everything that's under your control will go your way, will.
The rest? Who knows?
Which is why I get irritated by both sides of the "It's hopeless/it's ALL HOPE!" debate.
Because yes: poor in a given system have a system that is largely stacked against them. It's never going to be easy to beat that shit, and there are a lot of very smart people in ghettos who did everything right and never got the damn breaks. Like Magic, sometimes you can make every correct move and still get the crap beaten out of you by a better deck. That's life.
But that also doesn't mean that poor people should just sit around passively and wait for rescue from an outside source. There are things you can do to up your percentages - smart moves that can be taught (and often are not taught because any given group of poor people doesn't get a whole lot of education on beating their system), and should be. Yeah, it's stacked against you, but you still retain some power to affect your life - and if that system ever stumbles, if there's ever an opening, then you should be as fully educated as you can to drive a goddamned truck through it.
And that's not blaming. Saying, "Hey, there's more you can do" doesn't magically negate the fact that yeah, most of the things in a poor person's environment are dedicated to ignoring, humiliating, or stopping them. It doesn't ignore the fact that doing the right thing in those circumstances is a fucking behemoth of an accomplishment, one that sometimes involves swimming upstream with both your arms tied behind your back. If someone can't do it, well, hey, lots of people can't.
But not doing it, understandable though it may be, robs them of those incremental percentage points. It can hand them a defeat when, with another decision or preparation, they might have had a triumph. Those percentage points do not guarantee a win, nothing does, but by God it gets them a lot closer to a chance at victory.
I want them to win.
We can all debate what a given downtrodden segment needs to do in order to triumph, of course: that's a long-standing debate, with a lot of legitimate space between understanding the realities on the ground without making excuses for those realities. I just wish that both the pollyannas who think that the human spirit is infinite and the Debbie downers who think that circumstances define you irrevocably would look at reality and understand that no, the odds aren't good. But while you're working to make the odds more even from the outside (which, as part of any balanced fix, you absolutely should), the principle should be clear:
It's a noble goal to help the people under the gun understand how to make their own odds better.
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Recent comic pages from Wapsi square up on Ebay! Stop by and check them out, best of luck to all bidding and thanks so much for your continued support! ^_^
By Your Side
Glorious
How Trivial
Into the Sunset
Tight Rein
You Must Know
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| User: | johnforster |
| Date: | 2009-12-02 23:10 |
| Subject: | |
| Security: | Public |
Today my Geography teacher lectured us on black holes and particle physics. The purpose being to draw some parallels between this idea of a "singularity" (not the technological one) and some of the philosopher Heidegger's ideas. Which makes me think this professor typifies what happens when you have too much schooling and not enough education. He has a tenancy to drone on for an hour about postmodernist techno-babble and play for us a "really cool song" from his iTunes library.
I have serious problems with postmodernism. It's so often abused. A favorite tool of the below average to sound smarter than they actually are. I'm all for considering the nature of being and all that, but if you can't form a testable hypothesis, then it has no place in the real world. It's just metaphysics and metaphilosophy.
Furthermore, the professor is a bad teacher. This class is supposed to be about politics and societies, and we haven't learned much of either. Instead he makes tremendous stretches of logic to fit his own material into the curriculum. Our term paper was (and this is true) watch the movie The Matrix and explain how it relates to epistemology, power and modernity. Then last lecture we watch an episode of South Park for... I don't know why.
Anyway, the professor wrapped up today's lecture by saying: "...[referring to the Large Hadron Collider] scientists will never find the 'God Particle', because our universe is not particle-based. Reality can't be defined by a tangible object."
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Shortpacked!: No, his last name wasn't Galan. Though, hm.
 Yikes! I was too busy drawing comics (and watching TBS The Office repeats on Tivo) when I realized it was suddenly 10pm! I needed to put together my blog! So I ran upstairs and got on IRC for another 40 minutes.
Grargh.
Anyway, I threw some toys together and called it a day. Laziness? NO. Well, sort of. But there's a reason, I assure you!
A few days ago when I was waxing about Leo Prime, I mentioned how I fanonized him into the abandoned Universe conflict area of the multiverse. Grab any group of dudes, place them on any planet in any universe in any time period, and have them fight another random bunch of dudes! And I thought, a long long while ago, that it was sort of partially fortunate that the ongoing Universe storyline kind of went away.
We have a beginning, and we have an end. But we don't have a middle! But that's awesome. That makes it mythical. Expandable. You don't have to get from point A to point C. It's the many many many many unconnected point Bs in the middle that are interesting. Basically, I'd love a Universe series that's like Star Wars: Clone Wars. You know how it began and how it ends, but there's just all these stand-alone stories just stuck there right in the middle.
Maybe someday when I get some free time I'll write some.
Anyway, it's 11:02 now, and I'm 2 minutes late. Close enough to on time! Enjoy my rushed blog.
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 (marker & digital stuff)
For one thing or another I forgot to post this illo until now.It's was drawn for the Ilustrando Que Es Gerundio blog,and the theme was Little Details.
I don't have much else to say but I guess that actually the image does say a lot by itself 
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Nothing on this page is true.
Also, as an advancement in customer service, Tracy and I present to you, the reader, The Big List of Historical Webcomics. Do you know of one that we missed? Let us know and we shall endeavour to rectify the oversight post-haste!
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Oglaf - started as a porn project and went downhill into awesome funny in no time. If you like D&D or fantasy you'll especially enjoy it.
Don't look at it at work unless your workplace is okay with nudity, explicit sex and ejaculate.
Just saying.
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Sorry - gotta pimp myself a little so I can pay bills and all.
Until Dec. 15th, if you enter the code "twitmas" at purchase in my store, you'll get 15% off your purchase (before shipping).
That being said, I'll be trying to add stuff to the store every day for the next week. A lot of it will be pre-order (like the re-order of Super Stupor 1 and 2), so it won't be guaranteed for Christmas - but some of it I have plenty of in stock (like the Super Stupor and S*P Art Grabbags and some special original art pieces done on printmaking paper).
And we still have plenty of cards for sale for this year's holidays, and they're all in stock. And they're larger than last years by almost an inch on each side.
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From a spam mail:
"My company makes the computer memory USB flash drives that allow you to store and carry information, pictures, and presentations from your computer."
Oh my GOD! So YOU'RE the one! I'd been wandering around, trying to find the manufacturer who makes those rare and unique items - and by some crazy random happenstance, it turns out the one company who has a stranglehold on USB memory drives has contacted ME! Oh, thank God! Now we can proceed with our customized marketing schemes involving flash drives!
You wouldn't happen to know who makes these "pen" things, would you? I can't figure out who's in charge of manufacturing those, either, and I need some ones with my business name on it. I'll pay! I'll pay lots!
Yours truly,
Lost in the 18th Goddamned Century
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cold
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