“Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.”
— Jim Treacher, getting righter every day...George R. R. Martin’s Tuf Voyaging remains sadly out of print, but some small quantity of a relatively recent small-press edition are available directly from the author, autographed.
I made sure to place my order before mentioning this on my blog, just in case. My two paperback copies of the book are both starting to lose pages, and it’s an old favorite.
"I feel obliged to point out that a rather large carnivorous dinosaur has appeared in the corridor behind you, and is presently attempting to sneak up on us. He is not doing a very good job of it."
-- Haviland Tuf, Ecological Engineer
Magnitude 8.9 off the coast near Sendai, with many significant aftershocks. USGS reports that there was a 7.2 magnitude quake in the same area two days ago, which had three 6+ magnitude aftershocks.
[Update: Brickmuppet has some disturbing details; coastal trains just “missing”, a city of 77,000 wiped off the map, etc. So far the best news I’ve seen is that the nuclear power plant that didn’t have enough coolant for a safe shutdown has been resupplied by air by the US Air Force (no, Hillary was talking out of her ass again).]
[Update: The American Red Cross doesn’t have a targeted donation page up yet for this disaster, but as reported by Reuters and elsewhere, they’ve set up an instant text-message donation system, and of course their standard international donation fund will be used to help out in Japan and elsewhere. I don’t see a way to contribute directly to the Japanese Red Cross on their site, but I’m sure we’ll find something when we arrive in Kyoto in two weeks.]
[Update: Wikipedia, Google Crisis Response pages]
[Update: Amazon is processing Red Cross payments through a prominently-displayed button on their home page. Amazon Japan has a letter on their home page redirecting to the Japan Red Cross donation site, which is currently a bit flaky.]
This is not “what democracy looks like”, this is what a temper tantrum looks like. If you wanted democracy, you should have spent the last three weeks hounding your senators to stop hiding out in hotels and go back to their jobs.
A novel in Japanese, that is, converted into a custom “student edition” at precisely my reading level, as described previously.
Can’t go wrong with a title like “Regarding Ducks and Universes”, even when a quick inspection reveals that it’s a first novel published through Amazon’s vaguely-described Encore program.
I’m not recommending it, mind you, and I’m not even using my affiliate code in that link. I just found it interesting that Amazon is aggressively promoting an SF title by a complete unknown, as opposed to the usual “Kindle vanity press” or POD semi-publishing approaches.
Donna Barr is putting both Stinz and The Desert Peach online.
Stinz is still in issue 1, before the war, but the Peach is all the way up to issue 21.
Lots of good stuff, but watching The Desert Fox hang ten is still one of my favorite bits.
This goes way beyond “not funny”, all the way to “incredibly stupid”. Does someone do even basic quality control on your source images? I’m thinking the answer is a rather firm No.
[Update: Just saw one go by where one word was in cyrillic and the other in hebrew; sadly, I clicked refresh before I could stop to grab the screenshot.]