Starship Stormtroopers: Interesting essay by Michael Moorcock about some of the more disturbing trends in popular science fiction. He talks quite a bit about John Brunner –in a good way — who is one of my favorites and doesn’t get the credit he deserves. It’s a damn shame.
Punk-loving Robots Pogo For Science: These robots dance to punk and to punk only. Seems useful. It should put the punks out of work. If they worked.
Principles to Guide the Use of Racial Categories in Human Genetics Research: The scientists are reminding each other that there is “no scientific basis for any claim that the pattern of human genetic variation supports hierarchically organized categories of race and ethnicity” and that attempting to create them is “a pernicious reification of historically destructive typologies”. With prose like that, I wonder why these ideas don’t catch on. Could someone maybe hire an ad firm or something?
4 comments
1 ping
Minister Faust
July 24, 2008 at 12:59 pm (UTC -5)
Thanks for the Moorcock essay. Great stuff. Disagreed about Heinlein, though: “bourgeois reactionaries to a man, Christian apologists, crypto-Stalinists”–maybe he wasn’t including Herbert in all of those, but still. Otherwise, a great piece.
Serious question. You had good advice on tipping. What if I order a pizza and go to pick it up. Do I have to tip then?
MF
Ryan Oakley
July 24, 2008 at 1:08 pm (UTC -5)
I don’t think so. I never expect tips on take-out orders. They’re nice to get but always unexpected.
I like Heinlein. But I don’t need to agree with everything I like. I like a book that gives me something to think about, whether I agree with it or not.
Minister Faust
July 29, 2008 at 3:14 am (UTC -5)
My screw-up. I wrote “Heinlein” the first time, and “Herbert” the second… both were supposed to be “Herbert.” Haven’t read any Heinlein since I was about 10–last one was *Stranger in a Strange Land.* Even when I was a kid, I was horrified at the transparency of Jubal Harshaw (brilliant lawyer and MD, and surrounded by crypto-concubines) as the cipher for Heinlein.
Ryan Oakley
July 29, 2008 at 12:59 pm (UTC -5)
What’s weird about this is that I haven’t read Herbert because the cipher for Iraq and oil seems awful. Arrakus? Spice? I just can’t get over it. I guess the taking and leaving of the cipher thing is sf is kinda arbitrary.
I like Stranger in a Strange Land but it’s my is my least favourite Heinlein. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Now that’s some fun.
I like the essay mainly because I HATE Tolkien. Hate it.
And I related to the thing he was talking about where you like SF because, by chance, you stumbled into the right writers earlier on and, as time progresses, you realize these guys are a minority.
Bookmarks about Genetics
September 12, 2008 at 4:31 am (UTC -5)
[...] – bookmarked by 4 members originally found by grantdwalker1 on 2008-08-20 Owl Pellets http://thegrumpyowl.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/owl-pellets-94/ – bookmarked by 5 members originally [...]