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Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

Parties are already preparing for a possible federal by-election in an Ontario riding after a defeated Liberal MP successfully challenged Elections Canada’s handling of local balloting during last year’s federal vote.

In a rare decision, an Ontario Superior Court judge on Friday threw out the results of the 2011 general election in the Toronto-area riding of Etobicoke-Centre after he found that officials failed to ensure 79 voters were properly registered or cleared to cast a ballot.

Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are comment(s); comment here or there.

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

I'm thrilled and honored to announce that Goodreads and the Association of American Publishers have chosen me as the winner of the Publishing News category of the first annual Independent Book Blogger Awards. I'll be attending the awards ceremony at BookExpo America on June 4th.

The official press release is below.

-------------------------------------


Washington, DC, May 16, 2012 – After hundreds of submissions…nearly 10,000 voters… and 60 finalists…the four winners of the first Independent Book Blogger Awards are being announced today by Goodreads and the Association of American Publishers. All winners were previously contacted and confirmed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA

i was humming along and did too many repeats on the current interesting knitting project and need to undo about eight rows in order to have enough yarn left to finish properly. i am close to changing balls on the current boring knitting project and may run out of yarn before i get home to pick up another ball. (no links because i am behind on taking pictures for Ravelry. i need to figure out where i put my tripod, because no one should have to deal with me micromanaging them until i like the angle and exposure.)

SIFF starts today! (i don't count the galas-since they're not included in my pass they might as well not exist.) this time in May is also when Seattle wakes up and starts having all of the everything happen at the same time. so i'll easily see a dozen movies this weekend, but i won't be doing the LYS tour, or going to any parties, or hopping a bus to the Sounders away game in Vancouver.

i saw The Pitmen Painters at ACT on Wednesday, thanks to e_bourne. (i've seen several shows there but this was my first in the upstairs, with the arena stage. the community theatre of my youth was an arena, and my college mainstage was a thrust, so i have a soft spot for them.) nice play, solid cast and production design, and a really interesting topic. it was good, but it could have been excellent. alas, the experience was marred by directoral sledgehammer at the close of each act. for me any art about art is masturbation; if i have to be a voyeur i want a crack in the closet door, not the donkey show.

On May 18th, 1980, student protesters against martial law were attacked by paratroopers in the South Korean city of Kwangju. This led to a generalized uprising, the repulsion of the troops to beyond the city limits, and several days of radical transformations of urban society—collective meals in the parks, the formation of a people's militia called the Citizen Army, the creation of new newspapers and organs covering both daily life and the establishment of defenses against the military. The new military government responded by sending in Special Forces troops trained to invade North Korea, and the Kwangju Uprising became the Kwangju Massacre. Amazingly, the Wikipedia entry isn't terrible. Also not surprising: the US, of course, had a role in martial law and even the crackdown—the ROK 20th Infantry Division, which had a major role in the massacre, was part of the US-led Combined Forces Command and required US approval for operations.

Over a decade ago now, my friend Kap and I translated and edited a survivor's memoir of the uprising and massacre called Kwangju Diary. It's out of print now, but will soon be available again, thanks in part to the city of Kwangju itself. More news on that soon.



At the risk of tonal whiplash, here is another bit of 5/18 history. Ninety years ago today, Proust and James Joyce met for the first and only time. There are many accounts of the meeting, but here is my favorite:

"I’ve headaches every day," Joyce announced. "My eyes are terrible."

Proust replied, "My poor stomach. What am I going to do? It’s killing me. In fact, I must leave at once."

"I’m in the same situation," Joyce said. "If I can find someone to take me by the arm...Goodbye."

"Charmé," said Proust. "Oh, my stomach, my stomach."

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/_K3HNBpVjGA/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/?p=7000

I keep mentioning that I came to realize while I wrote my latest book, Arctic Rising, that the US Military was one of the largest investors in green technology. Why? They anticipate that having more control over your own ability to *move* gives you an upper hand in war. By helping green tech along to the point where it can become cheaper (and in some cases it already is in certain military applications) they’ve been the leading edge (let us not forget the military’s role in giving us the internet via DARPA).

However, even the military has now fallen into the middle of the culture wars, as conservatives ban it from using/helping develop alternative fuels:

On Monday, the U.S. Navy will officially announce the ships for its demonstration of the “Great Green Fleet” — an entire aircraft carrier strike group powered by biofuels and other eco-friendly energy sources. If a powerful congressional panel has its way, it could be the last time the Navy ever uses biofuels to run its ships and jets.

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying an alternative fuel that costs more than a “traditional fossil fuel.”

Imagine that phrase wrapped around any other technology:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced weaponry that costs more than “traditional weaponry.”

Or:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced armor that costs more than “traditional armor.”

Or:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced fighter planes that cost more than “traditional planes.”

It’s a fairly stunning move.

Mabus and his allies countered that the Republicans were taking an overly-simplistic view of things. Of course relatively small batches of a new fuel are going to be expensive — just like the original, 5GB iPod cost $400 and held fewer songs than today’s $129 model, which holds 8 GB. That’s the nature of research and development. With development time and big enough purchases, the costs of biofuels will come down, they argued; already, the price has dropped in half since 2009.

“It’s a false choice to say that we should concentrate on more ships versus a different kind of fuel. If we don’t get a different kind of fuel, if we don’t have a secure domestic supply of energy at an affordable price… the ships and the planes may not be able to be used because we can’t get the fuel,” Mabus told the Senate Subcommittee on Water and Power in March.

What’s more, Mabus added, there’s a value in a more stable, domestic supply of fuel; every time the price of oil goes up by a dollar per barrel, it costs the Navy $31 million. “We simply buy too much fossil fuels from places that are either actually or potentially volatile, from places that may or may not have our best interests at heart,” he said. “We would never let these places build our ships, our aircraft, our ground vehicles, but we do give them a say on whether those ships steam, aircraft fly, or ground vehicles operate because we buy so much energy from them.”

A fairly stunning step backwards, as the US military was one of the few places really helping the US keep up on the advances needed in alternative fuels.

Can I just say how sick I am of gorgeous actresses "dressing as men" and allegedly passing? Yeah, just put your hair up and wear a tie, and everyone's going to think you're a dude. It's that easy.

....that there's going to be an Annual Booksale when I get back from WisCon, as there are giant boxes of books all over my house again.

You have been forewarned!

Also, I will be doing an r/Fantasy (that's Reddit) Ask Me Anything on June 5th. Questions may be posted all day in the appropriate thread, and I will answer them in the evening.

Because y'all don't get enough of a chance to listen to me babble...

I keep mentioning that I came to realize while I wrote my latest book, Arctic Rising, that the US Military was one of the largest investors in green technology. Why? They anticipate that having more control over your own ability to *move* gives you an upper hand in war. By helping green tech along to the point where it can become cheaper (and in some cases it already is in certain military applications) they’ve been the leading edge (let us not forget the military’s role in giving us the internet via DARPA).

However, even the military has now fallen into the middle of the culture wars, as conservatives ban it from using/helping develop alternative fuels:

On Monday, the U.S. Navy will officially announce the ships for its demonstration of the “Great Green Fleet” — an entire aircraft carrier strike group powered by biofuels and other eco-friendly energy sources. If a powerful congressional panel has its way, it could be the last time the Navy ever uses biofuels to run its ships and jets.

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying an alternative fuel that costs more than a “traditional fossil fuel.”

Imagine that phrase wrapped around any other technology:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced weaponry that costs more than “traditional weaponry.”

Or:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced armor that costs more than “traditional armor.”

Or:

In its report on next year’s Pentagon budget, the House Armed Services Committee banned the Defense Department from making or buying any advanced fighter planes that cost more than “traditional planes.”

It’s a fairly stunning move.

Mabus and his allies countered that the Republicans were taking an overly-simplistic view of things. Of course relatively small batches of a new fuel are going to be expensive — just like the original, 5GB iPod cost $400 and held fewer songs than today’s $129 model, which holds 8 GB. That’s the nature of research and development. With development time and big enough purchases, the costs of biofuels will come down, they argued; already, the price has dropped in half since 2009.

“It’s a false choice to say that we should concentrate on more ships versus a different kind of fuel. If we don’t get a different kind of fuel, if we don’t have a secure domestic supply of energy at an affordable price… the ships and the planes may not be able to be used because we can’t get the fuel,” Mabus told the Senate Subcommittee on Water and Power in March.

What’s more, Mabus added, there’s a value in a more stable, domestic supply of fuel; every time the price of oil goes up by a dollar per barrel, it costs the Navy $31 million. “We simply buy too much fossil fuels from places that are either actually or potentially volatile, from places that may or may not have our best interests at heart,” he said. “We would never let these places build our ships, our aircraft, our ground vehicles, but we do give them a say on whether those ships steam, aircraft fly, or ground vehicles operate because we buy so much energy from them.”

A fairly stunning step backwards, as the US military was one of the few places really helping the US keep up on the advances needed in alternative fuels.

Mirrored from Tobias Buckell Online.

1) Did I mention that I put three stories in the mail on submission last weekend? Well, I did.

2) Perhaps I'm last to the party but I just read that the current issue of 10Flash Quarterly is its last. I'm sad that we're losing such a terrific flash magazine (especially since I was there partly to read and partly to look for upcoming issue themes), but I'm happy for K.C. that she's moving on to other opportunities that excite her.

3) varina8 and I went to the theater last night and saw "The Pitmen Painters," a play about a group of miners in England in the early 1900s who start taking an art appreciation class and end up being a highly lauded group of artists. With its historical basis and setting, and its excellent performances (including, among them, one by my longtime associate Frank Andrew Lawler), it provided a fine evening's entertainment.

4) I've been Jewelry Girl this week, making a new bracelet for myself in celebration of acquiring and wearing the first above-the-knee skirt I've owned in decades. And I bought materials for a new choker necklace which I hope to make either this weekend or this coming Tuesday night at mimerki's place, depending upon my patience and the availability of time for such a project. It won't take long, but leisure time, these days, seems to be at a premium.

5) Research for this autumn's trip continues apace. I really do need to do a proper post about this oncoming expedition--but that's for another time. But...trip planning--yay!

BONUS ITEM: 6) Had a wonderful lunch with kijjohnson at the 5 Spot yesterday. Seattle is just a better place when she's here. She looked fabulous, and it was good to catch up and just bask in her presence. Word has it we'll have more of her a little later this spring--all to the good.