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John Scalzi (and others, I'm sure) discusses it in his blog, Whatever

I think Scalzi was spot on in addressing this. I thought his second point was the best containing a couple great quotes - "At this point in my life (and, really, for the last quarter century at least), I simply make the assumption that film and television science fiction is going to hump the bunk on the 'plausible extrapolation' aspect of their science, and factor that in before I start watching." and "But, yes, when you admit that Star Trek has as much to do with plausibly extrapolated science as The A-Team has to do with a realistic look at the lives of military veterans, life gets easier. "

I'm sure Scalzi realizes it's a movie. The article is on AMC, after all. Also, he's written a book about sci-fi movies that includes Episodes IV & V on a list of the most significant SF films of all time. "Ripping apart" the bad science in a science fiction film does not take away from the entertainment aspect of it. In fact, I would argue that it actually adds to the entertainment aspect (at least for those of us who don't turn our brains off when we walk into a theater). My favorite SF film of all time is "Aliens" and that's got some scientific whoppers in it as well. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but some of the logical contortions fanboi apologists are making in this thread are just pathetic.

And I'm sure that Rush Limbaugh is a far nicer, more compassionate, more lovable person than the character he portrays on the radio, on TV, in interviews and in every other public speaking appearance. Off-mike, Rush is probably a very down-to-earth and friendly guy, just like Colbert.

So what?

They both say stupid, offensive things, labeling their corrosive vitriol as satire. They and the hardest core of their fans wrap themselves in condescending self-congratulation, and twiddle their fingers at those who "don't get it".

Rush and Colbert are not normal character actors, and they shouldn't be treated as such. These guys have chosen to inhabit their characters completely. Rush IS El-Rushbo. Colbert IS Colbert. It lends a great deal of verisimilitude to the portrayal, but the downside is that there is nothing else for them to be judged by. If either one of them suddenly decided to start portraying a different kind of character, then it would be possible to separate the "real" person from the person he pretends to be all the time.

Scalzi has another post here which goes into more detail about why he regards an audiobook and text-to-speech as completely separate things: in particular, he explains that while text-to-speech may eventually compete with human performances in some respects, the use of any text-specific mark-up to improve the text-to-speech performance would qualify as a derivative work. No mark-up, no derivative work. I find that reasoning persuasive.

"I wonder how the authors -- who are supposed to be served by the Authors Guild -- feel about it."

John Scalzi
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/02/11/hello/

Cory Doctorow
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/25/authors-guild-vs-rea.html

Neil Gaiman
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/02/quick-argument-summary.html

Wil Wheaton
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/02/wil-wheaton-vs-text-2-speech.html

Gabe did a cover for an earlier Scalzi book - "Agent to the Stars" (which you can read on-line for free if you follow the link) and so the PA guys know Scalzi at least professionally. But I think things are tied even tighter with Wil Wheaton just having played D&D with the PA guys - and Wheaton and Scalzi are friends. Talk about word of mouth - it's a veritable geek storm between those 3.

FWIW, my 2c are that the better candidate won. But this is not a landslide by any means -- despite massive turnout, 47% chose McCain. It's great that Obama acknowledged these people and and said he's going to be their president, too. Quite a change from the divisiveness of the past.

Science-fiction writer John Scalzi had an excellent reality check about an Obama administration I urge all Obama supporters to read. If you're realistic about the man, great. If you're hoping for the moon -- well, this might just save you a lot of disappointment later.

Try the Whatever blog then:

http://scalzi.com/whatever

It's by science fiction author whatever and covers a large range of topics from science fiction (obviously) to politics, and also bears the honour of being on of the first ever blogs.

It's also quite prolific most of the time.

On the subject of authors, there is also:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/
Charles Stross, science fiction author

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp
William Gibson - surely you know who this is.

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/
Laurell K Hamilton, most well known of the Paranormal Romance emerging genre

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/
Wil Wheaton, author and famous as "Wesley" from Star Trek: TNG years ago.

There are a lot of other feeds on my list, many of which have already been mentioned. One that hasn't however is The Register.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/

A british news site with a tech slant

and Worse than Failure (The Daily WTF)

http://thedailywtf.com/

A site that highlights the worst of the worst in programming and IT stories. Highly entertaining.

• Dilbert - do I need to describe this?
• Explosm.com - Cyanide and Happiness comic
• Fokke & Sukke - Dutch comic. Popular daily cartoon (yes, I'm dutch and the name is intentional)
• Little Gamers - gaming comic
• Penny Arcade - gaming comic
• FAIL blog - epic fail every day

Finance & Economy

• BusinessWeek Online -- Most Popular Stories
• Calculated Risk - general blog
• The Economist - News analysis and views
• NRC | EconomieDutch newspaper, economy section

Space

• Bad Astronomy - Phil Plait's blog about astronomy and skepticism
• Chris Lintott's Universe - Astronomer, Galaxy Zoo co-founder and co-host of BBC's The Sky at Night
• NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
• New Scientist, Space - Astronomy section of New Scientist
• Space.com - More space news...
• Starts With a Bang! - Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, tries to answer some common but very complex astronomy questions.
• Universe Today - One of the most well known astronomy blogs

Tech

• Engadget - THE gadget blog
• Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - making crazy electronic stuff (and drooling over niche market product catalogues)
• Gametrailers' ScrewAttack - funny gaming videos
• Kotaku - THE games blog
• Reuters Science
• Reuters Technology
• Slashdot
• The Brainy Gamer - in-depth articles about (the history of) games in general
• Tweakers.net - the dutch Slashdot

Misc

• Greggman - American gamedev'er who lived in Japan
• Jort Kelder - Dutch dandy. Ex-editor-in-chief of Quote, a magazine about entrepeneurs and the life of the nouveau rich. Co-host of the dutch Dragons Den.
• Scalzi's Whatever - Sciencefiction author.
• The Sartorialist - Fashion photographer. If you'd like to dress like a man with some class, instead of a fake tan metrosexual...look here for inspiration.

This is how I find out about 90% of the stuff that I've read in the past several years, and the results have been excellent, IMO. You can start with mine (link above) and the sites it links to, and the sites they link to, etc. Googling for booklogs is a pretty good tactic, as well. The key is to find out what the blogger likes, and look for congruence (or useful contrast) with your own tastes.

I also highly recommend searching through the Open Threads of Making Light, as book recommendations are a frequent topic. The blog itself is hosted by Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, senior editors at Tor, and SF luminaries are frequent commenters. The community at Scalzi's Whatever is another good place for hunting down SF recommendations, and he frequently has stuff from or about interesting new authors on their works.

Both libraries and SFBC have the time factor against them: the new, hot stuff won't be there for a while.

To naysayers above who think the quality has declined, you're just stuck in a rut. The recent Hugo noms such as John Scalzi and Charlie Stross are writing a large volume of old-school-friendly SF: if you liked Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov when you were a teen, you'll still like this stuff.

A bit out there on the SF front would be Cemetary Dance -- they publish a couple of limited-edition hardbacks a month, and offer them as a subscription. Mostly horror, but good stuff. Cemetary Dance is an irregularly-published magazine of extremely high editorial quality.

I mentioned John Scalzi above, I'll mention him again because of his "Big Idea" entries in his blog at http://scalzi.com/whatever -- authors are invited to write about where they get their ideas from. Much more illuminating than cover blurbs, it reveals the heart of the story from the authors POV, and I haven't found a loser from that list yet.

Yeah - it was my introduction to Scalzi, and I'm stoked to get an electronic version to go with my dead tree edition. Android's Dream is also awesome. Shows he can write great action/comedy with a definitely dark twist. I've got Last Colony on preorder (waited for the paperback) and he just finished another set in the Old Man's war universe, Zoe's Tale. I'm looking forward to when that becomes available.

He had the guys from Penny Arcade do the artwork for Agent to the Stars - which has been available on-line for quite some time. He just seems like an all-round decent guy on his blog. Yeah- I'm a fanboy I guess, but he's just one of those really talented yet down to earth people that deserves to do well.

Sony BMG spokesperson: We're pleased to announce we are the final major music corporation to release electronic tracks without that pesky DRM! All you have to do is leave your house, go to a selected retail outlet, buy a special card there, go back to your house, scratch off the back of the card to find a code, go to our special MusicPass Web site, enter said code, and download one the 37 titles we have available, from Celine Dion to the Backstreet Boys!

Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.

Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can't trace my IP number.

Kid #1: Also, what's with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?

Noted futurist John Scalzi has an insightful analysis of the idea at http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=280#comments

"Poor, stupid deluded Sony BMG.

"This MusicPass thing: six months at the outside."

He even predicts Sony invoking a variation of the Chewbaca Defense.

I think so as well. Sure there is some crud, but there was real bad writing out there before the internet too. The volume of both has gone up and I guess the reader has some more work to do filtering it, but I don't mind. I'd rather be the one doing the filtering than a handful of big publishing houses.
 
And it's not like it's all bad for the pros. My favorite new author right now (new to me) is John Scalzi. I found about him because Amazon recommended Old Man's War to me. I've found a lot more about him and other authors that he thinks are good through his blogs.

Yeah, that's the face they present to the writers.

Check out the face they present to the publishers: http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/005131.html

Why not your breakfast?

This sounds sci-fi becoming real sci. John Scalzi's recent books, Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades, feature weapons that are uniquely tied to their owners such that no body else can fire them. I'm sure many other sci-fi books have similar types of weapons. Now they just need to come up with the shape-changing nanobot ammunition.

From John Scalzi' Old Man's War (nominated for a Hugo this year) http://www.scalzi.com/books/2005/11/old_mans_war.h tml

A little later in the afternoon, I got pissed off.
"I've been reading your file," said the Colonial, a thin young man who looked like a strong wind would sail him off like a kite.
"Okay," I said.
"It says you were married."
"I was."
"Did you like it? Being married."
"Sure. It beats the alternative."
He smirked. "So what happened? Divorce? Fuck around one time too many?"
Whatever obnoxiously amusing qualities this guy had were fading fast. "She's dead," I said.
"Yeah? How did that happen?"
"She had a stroke."
"Gotta love a stroke," he said. "Bam, your brain's skull pudding, just like that. Good that she didn't survive. She'd be this fat, bedridden turnip, you know. You'd just have to feed her through a straw or something." He made slurping noises.
I didn't say anything. Part of my brain was figuring how quickly I could move to snap his neck, but most of me was just sitting there in blind shock and rage. I simply could not believe what I was hearing.
Down in some deep part of my brain, someone was telling me to start breathing again soon, or I was going to pass out.
The Colonial's PDA suddenly beeped. "Okay," he said, and stood up quickly. "We're done. Mr. Perry, please allow me to apologize for the comments I made regarding your wife's death. My job here is to generate an enraged response from the recruit as quickly as possible. Our psychological models showed that you would respond most negatively to comments like the ones I have just made. Please understand that on a personal level I would never make such comments about your late wife."
I blinked stupidly for a few seconds at the man. Then I roared at him. "What kind of sick, fucked-up test was THAT?!?"
"I agree it is an extremely unpleasant test, and once again I apologize. I am doing my job as ordered, nothing more."
[...]
I headed to the door, then stopped. "I know you were doing your job," I said. "But I still want you to know. My wife was a wonderful person. She deserves better than to be used like this."
"I know she does, Mr. Perry," the man said. "I know she does."
I went through the door.
In the next room, a very nice young lady, who happened to be completely naked, wanted me to tell her anything I could possibly remember about my seventh birthday party.

"In spite of this being an author who is (apparently) pro-ebooks, you can't find much of his published work in that format."

Well, there is that entire novel of mine (Agent to the Stars) that has been freely available on the Web since 1999. And as noted by other folks, Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades are both slated to be part of that Tor/Baen thing. So all the novels I currently have in print either are or will (reasonably) soon be in e-book format. My non-fiction work is not readily available in the format, I will admit, but I'm working on that for my reference books.

In spite of this being an author who is (apparently) pro-ebooks, you can't find much of [Scalzi's] published work in that format.

You will soon. Scalzi's stuff will be included in Tor's move to Webscriptions.

If you haven't gotten the chance, you should also check out John Scalzi's (author of Old Man's War) Agent to the Stars which he originally released as a "shareware" novel online but has freed up in its entirety.

It's an entertaining story about a benign race of aliens that want to befried humanity. However, they look like giant globs of snot and communicate via a complex smell-based language, many of whose smells are thoroughly repulsive, if not completely nauseating to humans. In order to figure out how to introduce themselves to humanity, they hire Hollywood's hot new agent and, well, you'll just have to read the rest.

Actually, they were "shut down" over this. Well, they crumbled under a C&D to pull the strip, anyway.

FYI, see the discussion at http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003093.html for a discussion of the ACLU & Christianity. There are several good points, but in particular, see the comment by Casey Holland, about 1/4 of the way doown the page. It starts "I'm only a lowly 2nd year law student at the University of Kentucky, but I fit the rest of the bill".

Also see the page http://linkfilter.net/?id=68847 which contains several links to stories where the ACLU defended Christian groups.

I realize that it's grossly oversimplistic to imply that Christianity=right wing, but the right does so all the time. In this case, I think that demonstrating that the ACLU defends Christian rights clearly demonstrates that labeling the ACLU as a leftist group is blatant political fearmongering.

Excellent example! You've made your point very well, but you've not won me over, and I highly doubt that I'll win you over.

I think our major stumbling block is this: You are not open to any interpretation other than what the artist ostensibly intends. This is not an uncommon view; indeed, it's often the means by which we judge artistic merit. How close did the artist come to fulfilling his intentions?

On the other hand, I hold the view that the viewer or reader may approach a work of art or text without regard for the artist's intention, and interpret as he or she will. You might argue that this will yield wildly inappropriate interpretations, and this will be so, in some cases. But it will also yield interesting valid interpretations that can be explained to and accepted by a reasonable person. This is a more modern view.

So, even if we assume that the artists' intentions were otherwise, I can interpret the comic as a parody of the wholesome pre-sexual world of Strawberry Shortcake.

See also what John Scalzi wrote about this. His argument is different from mine, and he is not a lawyer either.

http://www.scalzi.com/pass.jpg

Only a mini-version, but you can still read most of it.

Dogs and cats living together? http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/002690.html
North America having more than two presidential candidates? http://www.politics1.com/p2004.htm
Duke Nuken Forever going gold? And GPL'd?
http://www.gamershell.com/news/6581.html
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Ok, got ya there... it's 3D instead of Forever :)

...i.e., you can't use one work to parody something else.

Freelance writer John Scalzi brings up an interesting point that I haven't read here:

American Greeting's argument here could be that Penny Arcade's image is using the Strawberry Shortcake name to parodize American McGee's tendency to appropriate young female literary characters for his dark and bloody video games, not Strawberry Shortcake herself. Therefore, using Strawberry Shortcake for that purpose is not covered under parody. It's an interesting assertion.

However, I wonder if this line of reasoning, if indeed it is the one American Greetings is using, is as strong as it might appear initially. This line of reasoning works only to the extent that Strawberry Shortcake herself does not fit the rubric that the Penny Arcade is parodizing, namely that Strawberry Shortcake is not a young female literary character. In fact she is, the main character in dozens of books: Strawberry Shortcake: Meet Strawberry Shortcake, Strawberry Shortcake at the Beach, Strawberry Shortcake: The Berry Big Storm, and Happy Halloween, Strawberry Shortcake are just some of the titles in her oeuvre. And in an interesting literary note, in several of these titles, Strawberry Shortcake is either planning or having a party of some sort or another, which makes her activity in the parody (planning a party with her friends) not an atypical activity for her. Although to be fair she's not typically whipping her friend Plum Pudding at those parties. But that's part of what makes it a parody.

I don't know if this point holds any water, legally speaking, but it's interesting. You can read the rest of the article here

-Spyder

Freelance writer John Scalzi brings up an interesting point that I haven't read here:

American Greeting's argument here could be that Penny Arcade's image is using the Strawberry Shortcake name to parodize American McGee's tendency to appropriate young female literary characters for his dark and bloody video games, not Strawberry Shortcake herself. Therefore, using Strawberry Shortcake for that purpose is not covered under parody. It's an interesting assertion.

However, I wonder if this line of reasoning, if indeed it is the one American Greetings is using, is as strong as it might appear initially. This line of reasoning works only to the extent that Strawberry Shortcake herself does not fit the rubric that the Penny Arcade is parodizing, namely that Strawberry Shortcake is not a young female literary character. In fact she is, the main character in dozens of books: Strawberry Shortcake: Meet Strawberry Shortcake, Strawberry Shortcake at the Beach, Strawberry Shortcake: The Berry Big Storm, and Happy Halloween, Strawberry Shortcake are just some of the titles in her oeuvre. And in an interesting literary note, in several of these titles, Strawberry Shortcake is either planning or having a party of some sort or another, which makes her activity in the parody (planning a party with her friends) not an atypical activity for her. Although to be fair she's not typically whipping her friend Plum Pudding at those parties. But that's part of what makes it a parody.

I don't know if this point holds any water, legally speaking, but it's interesting. You can read the rest of the article here

-Spyder

Nonetheless, for those who remember the 1970s, the escalation in prices does appear substantial. Figures obtained from R.R. Bowker, the company of record for information about the publishing industry, show that, from 1975 to 2000, the price of the average hardcover book of fiction went up 200 percent to $24.96. Average prices for hardcover poetry and drama books increased 211 percent to $33.57. Nonfiction hardcovers went up 123 percent to $40.29. The largest increase was in the juvenile category, which climbed 227 percent to arrive at the current average of $18.40.

Still, adjust these figures for inflation and you get a different story, says Robert Sahr, an associate professor of political science at Oregon State University who studies media coverage of complex matters such as budgeting and economic policies. He found that the cost of hardcover fiction in real dollars had actually gone down 2 percent, while poetry and drama and juvenile categories had risen only a few percentage points. Nonfiction hardcovers had decreased in real price by 27 percent.

It reminded me quite a bit of Bruce Bethke's "Head Crash", with a bit of John Scalzi's Agent To the Stars mixed in. I didn't find the dropped haxor speak too irritating...obviously these were people who had become too professional in their coding to really be considered true hackers...the dropped language bits were actually signposts to how mainstream they were, not a pretention of understanding.

The UCB course mentioned in the article looks more like it will teach on-line journalism, but they've buzzworded it with 'blogging' as a PR exercise. These guys know PR, you see.

Looks more like they can spot a trend. When real journalists, start blogging (or at least what appears to be similar to blogging, the line keeps getting blurrier), somebody is going to offer a course in how to do it (the technology part, most likely).

Sure, blogging about news does not make one a journalist. But journalists can blog, it ain't that tough to do... although some of them will end up writing columns as opposed to actually blogging. Whatever. It isn't really that important.

The German's did indeed go around the Maginot Line - they went through the Ardennes Forest (in Belgium) which was widely believed to be impassable to large armourd formation. It wasn't.

Paratroopers were used to help capture Belgian fortifications to pave the way for another avenue of assault. Landing on a fortress in a glider isn'y my idea of a fun afternoon, although it would make a great Half Life mod.

The really funny thing about the Maginot Line is that after the Germans isolated it's defenders, they pushed an infantry assault through the Line - albeit only when the battle for France was mostly over anyway.

Thank you very much.

The column is brilliant, and the writer deserves appropriate credit.

Everyone should check out his other columns while we are at it. Reward him with a few hits.

John Scalzi wrote that, it can be found at http://www.scalzi.com/john/best95.htm

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