How CAN they...

How can legislators attack the teachers? Where would Abe Lincoln have been had he not learned to read? Heck, where would WE be?

I've always loved Lincoln. What would he have thought of his party now??

How can they attack the post office? Yes, the good ol' USPS. Congress forced the post office to pay 75 years worth of pensions -- yes, seventy-five! -- in ten years' time. Thus reducing their finances even further.

Ben Franklin was our first postmaster general. He also [says Wiki] set up our first lending library. I wouldn't be me without the library -- all of them. What about you?

It's all about the money. I bet you can feel where this is all going.

Yep. Shut down every institution that is for the common good -- the education, the postal service, the libraries, the health systems, everything. Because if you cannot pay, say the conservatives, then these should be sold at the highest price to the profit of someone else.

Privatize.


This so feels like a very frightening book instead of real life. I wouldn't read Animal Farm in my teens. I hated Brave New World, but had to read it twice. [Funny, I love apocalyptic fiction, though.] I managed to squeak out of reading 1984.

How can we stop this? Speak out. Don't hide. Spread the word about the laws you can't stand, about the things happening where you live. Tell people all over what you think.

The world is changing, everywhere. I'm advocating speech, so don't be shy.

The greedy bastards doing all this act like they have no shame. Maybe they don't. Doesn't matter. Society has a lot of tools for social change, and shame is not the least of them.

But pressure, now, pressure is a lovely tool.

And for the ones now in office who pretend that it's time to push their personal moral beliefs into law -- time to fire their misbegotten selves. This ain't what they were hired for.

This is my world too. I'm proud of all of the people in it. It doesn't matter if we never meet, if we don't eat the same things or speak the same languages. A lot doesn't matter. But this matters; to make things change, we all have to step up and speak.

I feel no need to return to the pre-industrial era, thanks. What about you?


But if you heard me cuss half the time lately, you'd think I wished I was violent like certain relatives... two of my favorite board games in the 80s were Family Business and Tom Wham's Gangsters.

I was good at those games. :D

2011: Snippets for Oct.

Absence of 9-11 from SF.

Interesting. I hadn't researched it as Andrew Fox does, but I certainly had wondered last month why it was that I didn't see hardly any SF based on 9/11.

I read a lot of dark fiction, since I like gritty urban fantasy, so it made me wonder if perhaps non-Americans might be more prone to writing about the Towers. Perhaps.


Bookmonkey interviews Jo Fletcher on her new imprint.

If you haven't seen BoingBoing's farewell to Steve Jobs -- you should really go look. Perfect.

Last but never least, the artists for Angry Robot create awesome covers! Introducing Chris F. Holm's Collector series - http://angryrobotbooks.com/Ym

I also love the covers for Giant Thief and Debris and Empire State and Edge and...