I have an awful lot to write about, but all I have time for at the moment is a link to this extremely long article about writer/director Paul Haggis and his public split with Scientology.
It just confirms my belief that all the easiest ways to become truly wealthy involve hanging around people I want nothing to do with and doing things that would make me physically ill.
1) The Facebook comment decision flowchart.
2) Passive-aggressive notes to your readers are probably not a good idea.
3) Cthonians!
4) Want to read the series bible for the modern BSG?
5) The web sit alignment chart.
6) Backyard fight gets out of hand. Video. Dude should have left his light saber at home.
7) Photos of criminals in Sydney during the 1920s. Amazing photos. Just amazing. Taken from this book.
You can read the original here, but many of the folks reposting it are adding their own thoughts. In fact, I want to add so many thoughts that I’m just going to link to it rather than repost.
Yes, the GOP are being infuriating about health care reform. The Obama plan is, after all, largely drawn from the GOP plan offered as an alternative to ClintonCare and from Mitt Romney’s state plan. The individual mandate, which everyone on the right is so freaked about, was originally suggested by The Heritage Foundation.
Obama expected that offering a conservative health plan would get bi-partisan support, but no. The Republicans are much farther to the right than they were 18 years ago. Also in our system, cooperation and compromise from the minority party won’t get them back into the majority; GOP leaders believe that the only way back to the majority is to oppose and obstruct everything. (Thank you, The Onion) And it’s not like the voters punished them last November.
The post also takes slams at the insurance industry, which is understandable. Their business model is based on only doing business with people who don’t need their services, and finding ways to give the boot to expensively sick people.
Can I also point out this: Americans Do Not Want Repeal?
But there’s an unacknowledged problem in the post which prevents me from reposting it. A huge part of the problem here is that all that health care spending we can’t afford? That’s someone’s paycheck. Not just the doctors and nurses, not just the drug company CEOs, but also the small medical suppliers, the people who build imaging devices, the physical therapists, the lab techs.
All that out-of-control spending that keeps people from going to the doctor? It’s someone’s salary, and that’s what makes it so tough to reign in the spending. Without spending controls, universal coverage won’t work (for the record: yes, the ACA does contain spending controls). Without universal coverage, spending controls won’t work (because if you tell doctors that Medicare will pay them less, they’ll stop seeing those patients).
It won’t be easy or fun, but we need to end the current system, which costs 20,000 lives a year (conservatively estimated), spends much more than we can afford, and suppresses the entrepreneurial instinct of so many people afraid to quit their corporate jobs.
Now I’m going back to my WIP. I’ll be skipping the Super Bowl today, unless my son remembers that he wanted to go out to a sports bar to watch.
— Paul Mason, writing about the revolutionary movements in the Middle East.
Considering how well the previous Twenty Palaces Lego sets (Child of Fire, Game of Cages) have done, the good folks in Denmark have rushed the newest Lego set into production.
Here’s the cover (again):
Here is the early box art for Circle of Enemies.
Hooray!
I’m told the previous sets outsold the Harry Potter Lego sets, but I’m still waiting for the check with my share of the money. ::taps foot:: That Italian villa is waiting!
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In case anyone misses the joke: This image was created with Lego Digital Designer, a CAD program (of sorts) that lets you design a Lego model virtually, then upload it to their site and have the pieces mailed to you. Teh nice thing is that, as soon as he saw the cover art, my son immediately remembered that we make this joke art and started working on it. Smart kid.
1) Detroit, a city in decay. Apparently, the crapsack future will be unevenly distributed. Great source material for art directors planning the next post-apocalyptic novel.
2) Planetary bodies, if they orbited the Earth at the distance of the moon. Video.
3) With these skills, this actor is sure to be a star.
4) Are you ready for marriage? Advice for young women, circa 1971, in comic form.
5) Predator’s teenage son. Video.
6) This is more like Call of Duty than Call of Duty is! Video. This made me laugh and feel pathetic at the same time.
7) Better Book Titles. via James Macdonald on Absolute Write
1) My wife just finished making an animation station for my son, and she’s currently working on a tall, narrow “standing desk” for me to use at home. She rocks.
2) If I owe you an email, please be patient. I’m having issues with it for the moment.
3) There’s fantastic news going on that I can’t really talk about. Not until some things are finalized. ::crosses fingers::
4) There’s some other news I can’t quite talk about yet that is only partially good. Again, I need to clarify some stuff before I’m ready to share, but share I will. Watch this space.
5) As of 2006 in the U.S.A. less than two percent of households earned above $250,000. That’s less than two percent of all households, not individuals. If your home brings in a quarter million dollars a year, you qualify as upper class. You’re wealthy. Embrace this truth.
Enclosed: one cover for Circle of Enemies
I love it!
“What a pity the people of Africa do not have the guts of the people of Egypt.”
— A caller to BBC World, comparing the demonstrations in Egypt to the rule of Laurent Gbagbo in Cote d’Ivoire.
The Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers puts the brakes on expectations for ebook growth. Not to say that ebooks aren’t a growing segment of the market–that’s obvious on its face. But the audiences are so large (even for something as supposedly marginal as books) that each percentage point of change represents a whole lot of people, all of whom seem to rush to the internet to proclaim their love/disdain for their new readers.
But the people still reading in print still make up the bulk of the book buyers and they will be for years yet. As Nelson mentions above, more than 50% of music buyers still buy their music on CD.
I’m one of those people. I don’t buy very much music, but when I do it’s not through iTunes or other download sites, and I don’t put it on an iPod or other mp3 player. My wife has an iPod, but she uses it to listen to TED Talks, Planet Money podcasts and other NPR shows, when she uses it at all. There’s no music on it at all.
But I’m a dinosaur. I admit it. I don’t even have a cell phone. I don’t have anything against Kindles, et al; in fact I love them, because they allow my sister, the person who turned me into a sf/f lover, to read my novels. Her stroke had left her unable to hold a paper book open, but that’s not a problem with her new Kindle.
Paper and electronic books will eventually reach a balance, and no one posting to the internet right now knows when we’ll reach it. They’re only able to guess (and claim prescience if they hit the target) and the final figures will be determined by factors that no one can predict.