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Tag: rant

Identity politics: or why demographic sticker shock is no excuse.

Identity politics: or why demographic sticker shock is no excuse.

I really wasn’t going to write about the election. It’s been covered quite well elsewhere already. I think Dan Hodges’ piece on the subject in The Telegraph nails it: For years the GOP has been sitting on a ticking demographic time bomb. And this was the election it finally detonated. The Democrats already went into the 2012 campaign with a lock on big electoral vote states like California, Pennsylvania and New York. On current trends they will soon be able…

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Today is a good day for finger-wagging.

Today is a good day for finger-wagging.

In a rare coincidence, two pieces of mine are up at SF Signal and Tor.com, respectively. Thanks to Paul and Bridget, the editors, for allowing me to rant at my leisure. The first is a piece on how to raise stakes for characters in post-Singularity or post-Scarcity novels. Snip: I belong to a genre writing workshop that’s lasted for over twenty years, and its collective wisdom is that the “literature of ideas” excuse is just that — an excuse. Listening…

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Officer punches girl; Internet approves.

Officer punches girl; Internet approves.

On June 14, a bystander shot this video of a Seattle police officer punching a 17-year-old girl in the face during an altercation with her 19-year-old cousin. My pal David Forbes tweeted this bit of news to me this afternoon, and I’ve been trying to wrap my head around both the video and the responses to the video ever since. The response is overwhelmingly in support of the officer. Here are a few choice snippets:

Get your kids their #[email protected]*%&^ shots.

Get your kids their #[email protected]*%&^ shots.

Via BB, we have this article from Wired about the anti-vaccine movement (specifically the movement which blames childhood vaccinations for autism). As a consequence of my time at OCAD, I’ve spent the past few weeks thinking about H1N1 and when I’ll be queuing up for my vaccine. At the same time, I’ve been utterly agog and aghast at the sheer number of people phoning the CBC or other news outlets with questions about the vaccine that are based solely on…

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Why we should teach evolution:

Why we should teach evolution:

“We are evolving every year, every decade. That’s a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment….” —Canadian Science Minister Gary Goodyear, responding to criticism about his refusal to answer whether he believed in evolution It would be easy to criticise Minister Goodyear for not “believing” in evolution despite…

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Science can be lame, too.

Science can be lame, too.

Since writing more SF, I pay more attention to science. Doing so allows me to examine global conflict and development from another angle, one more intimately connected to reason and research than strained appeals ethics that we are all only presumed to share. My interest in and appreciation for the field consequently makes me twice as baffled and frustrated when I hear about utter wastes of time, effort, and resources like the Anti-Mosquito Laser. Now, astrophysicist Jordin Kare from the…

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