Madeline Ashby and I have a history. We’ve known each other for years, attended the same writing workshop, stood by each other in times of personal distress. We bonded over that time, not least over the fact that each of us has experienced misfortune at the hands of border officials: Madeline, a US citizen, at […]
Cops, Control, and KoolAid: some thoughts on Madeline Ashby’s “Loss Prevention”
Category: misc, SquidgateMaybe Bart Simpson was Wrong
Category: UncategorizedMaybe you should have a cow. Or at least, maybe someone else should have one at your expense. Today marks a departure for the ‘crawl: its very first Guest Blogger. You should check out what he has to say; it might just help delay that inevitable moment when the angry underclass rise up to kill […]
You guys have a blast, though…
Category: On the Road, public interfaceSo, the second iteration of SFContario is underway just down the street. A few people asked if I was attending this year. Then they asked why not. It’s a good question. The con is local. A lot of my friends are going. If the inaugural edition is anything to go by, the panels will be […]
Falkon.
Category: On the Road, public interfaceSo. Poland again. Only this time, leaving the Warsaw Arrivals lounge I turned east instead of west to find myself confronted with two guys holding up a sign that reads Giant Squid. Already I like the place. They put me in — well, a monastery, maybe. At least it’s attached to a church of some […]
Pictures, Post-Haste.
Category: art on ink, On the Road, public interfaceMere moments from leaving for Poland again, and too frazzled for pithy commentary. So here, to keep you all occupied, are some miscellaneous pictures. The first is Marek Madej’s cover for Ars Machina‘s translation of Maelstrom, which I believe gets its official launch this weekend. (Google tells me that “Wir” translates as “Vortex”, which is […]
Douchebags in Deutschland
Category: rant, scilitics“Dismay, Confusion Greet Human Stem Cell Patent Ban“, wails Gretchen Vogel’s headline in the October 28th issue of Science. The news item itself begins with a question: “Has the environmental group Greenpeace dealt a major blow to the medical use of human embryonic stem cells in Europe? That’s what biologists, patent specialists, and lawyers are […]
The Point at Which We Start to Lower Our Expectations
Category: Dumbspeech, writing newsI handed in Echopraxia (aka Dumbspeech) yesterday. Hold your applause; I still don’t think it’s ready. I am very happy with parts of it. Other parts are so clunky I’d have to kill you if you saw them. A couple of elements have become gratuitous in light of recent changes to the story; they’re still […]
And Another Thing
Category: ink on artI went to see “The Thing” the other day, and was treated to perhaps the sharpest slice of satire on democratic capitalism I’d seen in years. It’s the tale of three vacuous charismatic twentysomethings who go to a movie. They line up in their chairs with Cokes in hand, and — well, see for yourself: […]
Mystery Meat
Category: neuro, public interface, sentience/cognition…being a term generally applied to the entree at South Residence back at the University of Guelph. This time, though, I’m talking about the mysteries of thinking meat, and a couple of thoughts thereupon which have sprung up elsewhere since I got back. The first is over at ChiZine‘s blog, which is currently running a […]
Pole Dancing
Category: UncategorizedWhen you go 28 hours without remembering to eat, it’s a safe bet that something’s going right. Just got back from Poland last night. From Zielona Góra, specifically: a city of 120,000 embedded in the woodlands near the German border. I was there for Bachanalia Fantastyczne, one of perhaps twenty cons held in that country […]