Ser/ci vility

When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes “uncivil” to call out liars, lying becomes free.

Rick Perlstein

Thanx to Pandagon.

Supernatural Minnesota

I used to think it would be supernatural for a university press to reprint Thomas M. Disch, but that is what the U. of Minnesota Press has done with his quartet of horror novels set in that quintessentially heartland state. Ron Dixon reviews the first and best of them, The Businessman: A Tale of Terror (love that title).

Thanx to tor.com

Best Mobile App

Let's hear it for black female geeks!

Thanx to Geek Feminism.

Speaking out

Listen to autism.

Thanx to Geek Feminism.

The C Street Band

There was a moderate amount of good news in the recent election, such as the defeat of candidates like Carl Paladino and Christine O'Donnell who would make satirists' job more difficult. Perhaps even more cheering was the major loss of "blue dogs" (conservative Democrats) in Congress, as much of the electorate decided that if it wanted Republican ideas, it could vote for Republicans. One of the few survivors, fetus fan and failed quarterback Heath Shuler, has decided that this means that the remaining blue dogs should lead the party, which is about the sort of thinking one expects from such people.

Thanx to Mercury Rising.

Doomed

MySpace shutdown seems imminent. MySpace never appealed to me, especially after I read that its users find Facebook too literary. My internal jukebox is playing the Who: "The wretched in their millions will overspill our borders," but I imagine Facebook can absorb them without getting even worse.

Link thanx to andrewducker

Spectral

I am not now and never have been an Aspie. When I first read about Asperger's, I thought I might have it (but then I often try on mental illnesses I read about). nellorat, however, pointed out ways in which the label does not apply to me, and now that I am having my head examined on a weekly basis, I am even surer that I am not one.

But I sympathize. I am in favor of neurodiversity for the same reasons I favor sexual diversity: It makes the world more interesting, suppressing it leads to gratuitous pain, and I myself do not have an acceptable niche in the present system.

What I have in common with those labeled with Asperger's is something that is approximated by terms such as introversion and inner direction: I live in my mind and deal with consensus reality from there, rather than directly living in it. I believe that a lot of what is labeled autism, ADD/ADHD, social anxiety disorder, ODD, hypersensitivity, etc. has its roots in that orientation. I hope science will get better at mapping this area, and that I myself will get better at operating from it.

The sf/fannish community has always seemed particularly hospitable to my kind. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency to subsume too much under the Asperger heading. Here is an excellent discussion of what Asperger's is and is not.

Thanx to truepenny

Unsettling thought

The Three Stigmata of Mark Zuckerberg

Thanx to davidwilford