(no subject)

Back from ICFA. What did I miss?

Birthdays

Cannot find birthday lists on either dw or lj. I know I missed lavendertook. Apologies to her and anyone else I missed.

Why we pretend all opinions are equal

Evidence that we are herd animals

Thanx to andrewducker

Making gender hurt

rozk takes apart a TERF (unexpurgated version)

Scary words

"It doesn't have to be this way"

Thanx to Geek Feminism.

Politics

There simply has to be a point at which winning an election is not worth it. There simply has to be a point at which the people who make their living in politics get so revolted by the vandals and vampires in their business that they begin to self-police it, not in the pious fashion of Danforth's eulogy, but purely out of pragmatic self-preservation. There has to be a point at which they look at the political salience of running against "government" and realize that they're spitting on themselves in a mirror. They are undermining confidence in the product that they're trying to sell, poisoning the medicine they're peddling. There simply has to be a point to it all besides winning. If there is no longer a point at which that is true, then they are lost, and we are lost, and self-government becomes a psychosis with no solution. There simply has to be that point, or faith is a sucker's game.

--Charles P. Pierce

Omnia Venduntur

The private equity university

Thanx to Chronicle

Top Ten Intellectual Epiphanies at ICFA

I enjoyed the ICFA, but will not do a con report. For one thing, I broke one of my hearing aids the day before and heard even less than usual. So here's a nifty report by Cecilia Tan.

RIP, Peggy Rae Sapienza

A warm and friendly presence as long as I've been in fandom. John Scalzi remembers.

ETA: SFWA remembers, too.

Cruzin' for a Bruisin'

Once again Liberty University shows it was named by the kind of person who calls Yao Ming "Shorty."