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Black Friday Non-Shopping and Leftover Contest Winner (Exclamation point!)

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And the winner is…

(drumroll)
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Randomness for 11/28

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1) Can this be true? It sounds like an urban legend. Peruvian gang spends 30 years murdering people and extracting their fat for use in European cosmetics. Where was *your* makeup made? via lilaschow

2) Now, a palate cleanser: Freelancer funny. Via autopope.

3) Evil kisses? I think I’ve found my first “Nick Biter” title.

4) Ten percent off King Tractor Press comics until Christmas!

5) This link is a serious one: Patrick Stewart describes his personal history growing up with domestic violence. Heart-wrenching stuff. via James Nicoll

Merry Oppressmas!

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SCROOGE WAS RIGHT! Libertarian professor tries to defend Ebenezer Scrooge’s miserlyness.

Scrooge is skeptical that many would prefer death to the workhouse, and he is unmoved by talk of the workhouse’s cheerlessness. He is right to be unmoved, for society’s provisions for the poor must be, well, Dickensian. The more pleasant the alternatives to gainful employment, the greater will be the number of people who seek these alternatives, and the fewer there will be who engage in productive labor. If society expects anyone to work, work had better be a lot more attractive than idleness.

Apparently, the professor thinks that people who lose their jobs and can’t find another should have their children taken away from them, just as they did in the workhouses. Hey, if the poor have children they can’t support, what’s it to him? He never forced anyone “to father children he is having difficulty supporting.”

It’s a pathetic display that gets worse as it goes along. Don’t read it. Seriously.

When he testified before Congress regarding Dr. Wertham’s claims about the supposed harmfulness of comics, William Gaines said: “It would be just as difficult to explain the harmless thrill of a horror story to a Dr. Wertham as it would be to explain the sublimity of love to a frigid old maid.” I strongly suspect that it would be just as difficult the explain the deep satisfaction of charity to that sad, stunted author of that post.

In which I go to a party

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A party of sorts, at least. Tonight after work I’ll be heading to 15th Ave Coffee and Tea for Cherie Priest’s BONESHAKER party. Details! I won’t know anyone there, which is usually a red flag for Socialization Fail, but who knows? Maybe this time my internal (conversation) editor will be a mere whisper.

If you live in the Seattle area and like steampunk/zombie/Seattle-apocalypse books, come buy a book and give me a hello. I look like this.

In other news, progress on Man Bites World continues. I really like this book, but this has to be the most ragged first draft I’ve written since well, my previous book. It has a small(er) cast of characters (which will be a huge relief to my agent and editor, I’m sure) and the story is more personal. All good. I just need to freaking finish it and get it out of my life.

Randomness for 11/12

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1) Detroit: failed city/urban planning petri dish. via James Nicoll

2) New ocean forming in Africa.

3) Superfreakonomics and horseshit. via Paul Krugman

4) Elegant wedding reception breaks down into moving brawl. ‘The fighting ruined the reception and some of the guests and wedding party members headed to their hotel nearby where the fighting erupted all over again in the parking lot of the Marriott Residence Inn which is located at 4312 Boy Scout Boulevard. A woman put the groom’s 74 year old grandmother, Mary Wright in a choke hold.

Wright told 10 Connects that she was trying to calm down the crowd and tell them not to fight on such a special occasion. She says that’s when her attacker said “I’m going to have to choke you out.”‘

5) 50,000 lost soldiers found, 2,500 years after they were lost.

6) Google auto-complete reveals class and education differences. “Someone once told me that there is nowhere we are more honest than the search box.” via Ezra Klein

7) TV cook accidentally does science. Here’s your big surprise for the day: eating decent food improves schooling. I know! Shock!

8) White privilege even extends to virtual environments. Fer Chrissakes.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger…

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I was going to put this link into a “Randomness” link compilation post, like this:

Texting teen falls into open manhole. Oh, how I laughed. via tnh’s Particles

Go ahead and read it. I’ll be waiting here.

Done? Good. Did you laugh? I already admitted that I laughed, too. But I still feel sorry for that kid.

Now, I’ve heard a couple people say what a shame it is that her mom plans to sue over this, but I’m on their side (pending further facts, ‘natch). Leaving aside the fact that Americans aren’t nearly as litigious as our culture seems to think, workers shouldn’t leave an open manhold without warning cones or something around it. I don’t really care if she was texting at the time. What if she’d been distracted by something else? What if she’d been in the middle of an intense conversation with the friend beside her? What if she’d been on her cell, trying to get the latest on her grandmother’s ailing health?

By all reports, texting is incredibly distracting. Almost off-the-scale distracting. But that doesn’t mean the incident was all her fault. Workers have been cordoning off open manholes for longer than text-capable phones have been around, and for good reason. So I hope she gets a settlement that helps cover her doctor visit, at least.

I still laughed at the story, though.

11/11

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Randomness for 11/6

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1) Rear Gear! For the easily offended. via Jay Lake

2) “They must be professional house shooters.”

3) Rush Limbaugh: Victim of Racism.

4) Death by anti-science: Iraqi General to use dowsing rods to detect IEDs. From the article: “He is such a believer that the Iraqi military are abandoning proven methods such as sniffer dogs.” This is my unhappy face. via James Nicoll.

5) Hard sales numbers from a NY Times bestselling author.

Randomness for 11/3

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1) Gore Vidal can go fuck himself.

“So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?”

via bookslut

2) Malcolm Gladwell: Football, dogfighting and brain damage. I don’t think I’m going to be able to watch football in the same way again. Actually, I’m thinking of giving it up entirely.

3) On a slightly lighter note: America pays more for its health care, in convenient chart form. The interesting thing about this is that people say Medicare spending is unsustainable, and also that they don’t pay enough for doctors et al to keep their doors open. Aside from the fact that those two are pretty much contradictory, it’s instructive to see how much more money Medicare spends than foreign payors.

4) Now for something upbeat: Writer Carrie Vaughn: The Best Advice I Ever Got. How perfect the timing of this is for me!

5) And then there’s this: Supernatural collective nouns. via tnh’s particles.

MONK writer meets his readers

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“Is Monk ever going to get any?”

“You mean have sex?”

“Yes,” she said. She’d actually asked me the same question during the question-and-answer session but I guess my answer didn’t satisfy her.

“Well, the show is over, so no, I don’t think so.”

“What about in your books?”

I shook my head. “I just don’t see it.”

“I do,” she said. “Vividly.”