You may have heard of the non-profit initiative called “One Laptop Per Child.” It is essentially an attempt to bridge the technology divide between the technological west and the developing world. OLPC was founded by Nicholas Negroponte with the goal of producing a laptop as cheaply as possible and provide Read more…
Christians can be stupid too. The minister with the stuffed pig is really on the same moral level as the idiots in Sudan who were demonstrating to have that teacher executed over a teddy bear. I have the really sad feeling that the ultimate apocalypse will be waged over something Read more…
You may have read my earlier post on how not to query agents. Here’s a follow up, using another spam message I got recently. I am genuinely mystified at the thought processes that produce things like this. Spam in general is only effective because it only requires .01% of the Read more…
Sudan doesn’t like your teddy bears. Britain’s foreign secretary said he was “very concerned” about the case of a UK teacher who was in court Thursday, facing charges of offending religion by allowing a teddy bear to be named “Mohammed.” Not only is is an appalling case of “let’s persecute Read more…
(Scalzi @ Whatever alerted me to this.) Note to aspiring writers: Don’t submit stuff to Dragon Magazine, just don’t. They are paying a whopping 3-6 cents a word for all rights. ALL RIGHTS. ALL!!!! This means you can’t re-sell it, you can’t put it on your website, podcast or whatever. Read more…
Wo hoo! I won Scalzi’s LOLCreation contest with the following entry: If you’ve read my earlier post on Science Religion you probably know why, though I’m respectful of people’s belief systems, I find the concept behind the Creation Museum eminently mockable. Here’s the point: Faith = The belief in a Read more…
L. E. Modesitt, Jr. wrote a long post on his blog on why he believes the singularity won’t happen. [via SF Signal] According to Modesitt, it won’t happen because such visions are based on technology, not on humanity and they’re based on a western European/North American cultural chauvinism. He goes Read more…
What the hell is going on here? J. K. Rowling makes an aside about the backstory of one of her characters– something that’s not mentioned, or even evident in the text of the book– and people start freaking out. Right now there are like 40+ comments on two separate posts Read more…
Sometimes you come across news that so twisted in recursive levels of self-parody that you cannot even express an opinion on it, you just have to sit back and say, “gee that’s f__ked up.” Case in point, this series of events, the latest of which I found thanks to a Read more…
According to The Guardian, ye olde brick-and-mortar bookstore is not long for this world. According to a survey at the Frankfurt Book fair [from SF Signal]: Almost a quarter of the 1,324 industry professionals who took part in the survey predicted that the high street bookseller would no longer exist Read more…