Month: December 2014

In the Mail: ‘The Compleat Ankh-Morpork City Guide.’

It is a testimony to Terry Pratchett that The Compleat Ankh-Morpork: City Guide – which is, after all, a guide to a city that does not actually exist – can still come across as being a guide (complete with ads) to a city that could exist. Provided, of course, that a city that included dwarves, trolls, vampires, wizards, thieves, assassins, imps, and barbarian heroes among its citizenry could exist, whether sitting on a flat Disc on four elephants on a turtle swimming through space, or not.  Probably not.  Although we may be just not looking with a big enough telescope.

Anyway, if you like the Discworld this would be a handsome addition to your library. Including the map! – Which I don’t know what to do with, honestly: I already have a map of Ankh-Morpork framed, and on the wall. Continue reading In the Mail: ‘The Compleat Ankh-Morpork City Guide.’

My only comment on the ‘Obama’s golf game trumps military couple’s wedding’ thing.

At some point in 2017, the newly former President Barack Obama will be off doing something in public.  His Secret Service detail will, naturally enough, be attempting to secure whatever venue it is that the former President is visiting… and they will be told, in a very loud voice, to go start f*cking off now.  It may be by the owner of the site. It may be by a proprietor or shop-owner. It may just simply be a citizen or citizens; the point is, somebody is going to tell Barack Obama to go wait his goram turn like anybody else.  Because he’s never learned how to do that, and he’s certainly hasn’t been encouraged to over the last six years.

I don’t expect that incident to make the news, but I do hope that someone will have the mother-wit to have a camera running.

Book of the Week: ‘The Sky People.’

The Sky People is the first book of a two-book series (plus novella) that asks the question, Hey! Wouldn’t it have been great if Mars and Venus was actually as inhabitable as the Golden Age of SF assumed that they were? – only it’s hard science fiction.  It more or less assumes no change to our timeline until the 1940s or so, but after that the changes start to accumulate. In the meantime you get giant Venusian dinosaurs in this one (and Martian rapier fights in the sequel), which is really the important thing here.  Extra points for a universe where Edgar Rice Burroughs is the unchallenged greatest literary figure of the Twentieth Century…

And so, adieu to Blood Maidens.

Uh-oh: running out of Atomic Robo compilations.

Just got Atomic Robo Volume 8: The Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur in the mail, and – to my sudden horror – realized that Volume 9 has not yet been published.  Sure, it will be at the end of next month… but after that?  I will have been… caught up.  Which means that I will have to wait like everybody else for Volumes 10 and up.  This is slightly disconcerting: I’ve kind of gotten used to having a monthly Atomic Robo fix.

And yeah, I know about the Real Science Adventures.  In a moment of weakness I already ordered both of them.  The odds of me not reading them five minutes after I get them are… low.

Tweet of the Day, The 114th Congress Must Strive For First edition.

Ever get the feeling that these people don’t live in the same world as the rest of us? This is apparently… bad?

Yeah, that was the idea. The top one was the 112th Congress, by the way; so, hey, two good years running. I figure that in the 114th we can really get into taking away the Democrats’ toys…

Via

…whose response pretty much covers everything else I’d say on the subject.

National Journal: Dang, but those Democrats are incredibly in lockstep!

Not that the National Journal would put it in such a fashion. And, fair warning: this is from ten months ago.  But it’s still pretty funny.

So The National Journal did a list of the 15 most liberal Senators, the 15 most conservative Senators, the 15 most liberal Representatives, and the 15 most conservative Representatives.  All of this based on 2013 rankings (remember, this is from February of 2014): as to who they were… well, I don’t really care, and maybe neither should you.  The inadvertent thing here is the funny thing.

Basically, if you look at the lists you’ll discover a godawful number of ties among liberal Democrats.  As in, there was a seven-way tie for “Most liberal Representative.” Followed by a six-way tie for 8th place, and a two-way tie for 14th. Liberal Senators were almost as bad: three-way tie for 1st, seven-way tie for 5th, three-way tie for 13th, the rest singletons. Meanwhile, over on the GOP side… one tie for 8th place on the House list, fifteen singletons on the Senate one.  Feel free to bring this up the next time somebody complains about how much the GOP hates dissent; at least our legislators can be distinguished from each other by their voting records… Continue reading National Journal: Dang, but those Democrats are incredibly in lockstep!

On trying to shoehorn populism into the modern Left. Somehow. Somewhere.

I’m gonna push back a little on Salena Zito’s argument here on populism, although I certainly agree with her assessment of  Elizabeth Warren:

We are in the midst of a record wealth gap between America’s rich and middle class, according to the Pew Research Centers. That has fueled the populist opposition to Washington among Main Street Americans on both sides of the political line — and [Senator Elizabeth] Warren is trying to cash in on it.

That’s fine; that’s what we do in America. But it isn’t populism, as will be seen when people do not rise up. Populism is an ideology extolling the virtues of the people against the depravities of elites — such as Harvard Law professors like Warren, according to Baylor University political science professor Curt Nichols.

Continue reading On trying to shoehorn populism into the modern Left. Somehow. Somewhere.

The TRUE Great Failure of Barack Obama.

There has been quite a bit of commentary – not to say, ‘gloating’ – about the Democrats’ rather problematical 2016 prospects*.  To wit: their front-runners are all old (late sixties to early seventies), all have baggage, and all distinctly lacking in any sort of executive experience whatsoever**.  Worse, their front-runners are also their bench, as the surviving Democratic governors aren’t exactly anything to write home about, either.  And that’s what I want to write about. Consider this list:

  • Florida: Alex Sink (66)
  • Iowa: Chet Culver (48)
  • Michigan: Virgil Bernero (50)
  • Ohio: Ted Strickland (73)
  • New Mexico: Diane Denish (65)
  • Pennslyvania: Donald Onorato (53)
  • Wisconsin: Tom Barrett (61)

All seven people on that list (data via here) were Democrats who lost a governor’s race in 2010, but kept their opponent down below 60% of the vote (we’ll skip Maine, because those races are always weird). They’re also races where the GOP thus picked up the seat (Florida is a special case, because Charlie Crist, but it’s such an important seat we’re keeping it on the list). In other words, these were almost all Democratic-held governorships that were lost to the GOP. Continue reading The TRUE Great Failure of Barack Obama.