(h/t SiubhanDunne)
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What’s on the agenda, as everyone gears up for what’s looking to be a busy week?
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Anne Laurie has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2009.
This post is in: Don't Mourn, Organize, Open Threads
(h/t SiubhanDunne)
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What’s on the agenda, as everyone gears up for what’s looking to be a busy week?
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This post is in: Absent Friends
Oh, damn. We say the good die young, because for some people ninety-plus years just isn’t long enough. From io9:
One of the leading lights of the science fiction world, editor and author Frederik Pohl, passed away this weekend after a career that defined the genre for decades…
Pohl was known for his mind-bending, often satirical novels (many co-authored with longtime collaborator C.M. Kornbluth), his editing acumen, his science fiction criticism, and his witty, fascinating blog, which he was updating right up until his death…
Pohl was one of the founders of the influential, progressive group the Futurians in the 1930s. At a time when a lot of scifi was embracing its pulpiest tendencies, the Futurians argued that science fiction could be both literary and politically relevant. With The Space Merchants, he proved his point. And in later novels like Gladiator-at-Law (with Kornbluth) and Gateway, he continued to write dark, satiric tales of futures defined by class conflict and corporate greed….
As an editor, Pohl was known for taking risks on science fiction that broke out of the Golden Age adventure mold. In the 1960s, while working at Bantam, he published Samuel Delany’s classic Dhalgren, and Joanna Russ’ foundational feminist work The Female Man…
He wrote a memoir called The Way the Future Was, which also became the name for his long-running blog, The Way the Future Blogs.
We will miss Pohl, both for championing great works of science fiction and for writing some of the best works of the twentieth century. His career is a reminder that sometimes the greatest contributions to the genre came from collaboration and community-building, as well as the solitary work that’s done at the keyboard….
My gateway into Fred Pohl’s world was Slave Ship, which the 1969 edition Ballentine paperback describes thusly: “… The nature of animals is that they are expendable. When a prolonged ‘cold’ war has created a manpower shortage so acute that Boy Scouts are being drafted, the Navy, characteristically resourceful, turns to other available material. To an Annapolis graduate, veteran of several ‘cold’ strikes himself, a serious-minded man willing to do anything the Navy expects of him, this presents problems in ethics only surmounted by the baffling confusion of the T.O. of his command… “ It is a short book, and probably unreprintable except as a curiosity, but it remains, IMO, a demonstration in miniature of Pohl at his best — a man more interested in “ordinary” people, middle managers, guys doing a job of work, than in Great Thinkers leading the March of History. He expected to be surprised, and delighted, by Tha Future… but he assumed that future would still be peopled by distinct individuals, each more concerned with getting through the daily round than with Very Important Concepts, because it’s the billions of minute decisions in everybeing’s daily round that end up shaping those VICs.
If you’re at all interested in sf/fantasy and you haven’t read The Way the Future Was, it’s not just a useful slice of history, it’s an introduction to the mindset of a man who never outgrew being delighted in the new and different. And it’s been a while since I read it, but IIRC, he was also very good discussing how humans in groups interact, and the hard work involved in keeping even small, intimate groups of humans intact and functional…
Oh, and speaking of these here internets, his Wikipedia entry includes the line:
Pohl’s Law is either “No one is ever ready for anything” or “Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere will not hate it”
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(h/t JeffreyW)
This post is in: Open Threads, Popular Culture, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement
(via the Atlantic)
Anyone else remember why British humorist Alan Coren published a collection titled Golfing for Cats with a swastika on the cover?
NYMag‘s Vulture blog has an anniversary interview with Chris Carter:
On September 10, 1993, a strange series called The X-Files infiltrated Friday nights on Fox, with brooding story lines involving government conspiracies, sewer-dwelling man-monsters, and little green men. No one knew quite what to make of it at first — including the Fox executives who took a gamble on the project. But series creator and first-time showrunner Chris Carter, a former editor of Surfing magazine, continued to carry out his obsessive vision of recapturing the hair-raising urgency and weirdness of Kolchak: The Night Stalker and other quirky programs he’d watched growing up. His efforts paid off, to say the least, and twenty years down the line, it’s hard to overestimate the show’s cultural reach: Besides notching Fox a first-ever Emmy nomination for Most Outstanding Drama in 1995, and making television safe for the countless shows with a skeptic-believer framework and scare-your-pants-off quality that followed, The X-Files also acted as a proving ground for an impressive number of writing phenoms — most notably Breaking Bad‘s Vince Gilligan, and Homeland‘s Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon — who are churning out some of the best stuff on TV today.
After 202 episodes and a pair of feature films, The X-Files’ deeply suspicious worldview feels as relevant as ever. Now, following a much-deserved break and plenty of television binge-watching, Carter’s ginning up a return to the genre with a sci-fi drama for Amazon Studios and a paranoia-fueled AMC project that can only be classified as Top Secret; he’s also helping to plot a tenth season of The X-Files (simmer down, it’s in comic book form). In order to celebrate the show’s big two-oh, Carter dialed in — from a blocked number, of course — to comment on the possibility of a third film, Mulder and Scully’s most virtuous traits, the pressures of following up such a massive success, and how The X-Files’ very, very long tail is even shaking up NBC’s fall schedule…
Also on Vulture, “Every One of This Summer’s Star Wars: Episode VII Rumors and Reports“:
June 11: Schmoes Know leaks a plot description that says the story line for Episode VII will revolve around two 17-year-old twins, one male and one female, who are “trained by their uncle Luke to be the greatest Jedis in the galaxy. Problems arise when the male twin turns to the dark side.”
June 19: Bleeding Cool leaks a casting breakdown for Episode VII that includes descriptions of seven lead characters, including two “late-teen” females and five males ranging from a “young twenty-something” to a “seventy-something male with strong opinions.”
June 26: The Sun reports that Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher “will be supplied with a top nutritionist and fitness trainer” to get into shape for Episode VII…
July 24: Latino Review reports that Leonardo DiCaprio passed on a role in Episode VII in favor of Tobey Maguire’s Robotech movie. Also, it states that Disney is considering Zac Efron for an unknown role and Ryan Gosling for Luke Skywalker’s son…
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Decline and Fall
Missed posting this last week. From the NYTImesDealbook, “Platinum Card & Text Alert Via Pawnshop”:
Linda Ballard, 61, uses the word “love” to describe her banking relationship, lauding the ease of cashing her bimonthly paycheck, the convenience of text alerts about her balance and the features on the platinum card that she was upgraded to in July.
But she is not getting all this from a bank. She is getting this array of services from a pawnshop — part of an industry that has long had a reputation of taking advantage of vulnerable customers handing over prized possessions in exchange for cash.
As banks zero in on more affluent customers who promise twice the revenue of their lower-income counterparts, close branches in poor areas and remain stingy with credit, pawnshops are revamping their image and stepping into the void to offer financial services….
There are, however, plenty of potential drawbacks, consumer advocates say.
Some loans from pawnshops can come with interest rates as high as 25 percent. And fringe financial operations, the consumer advocates say, can imperil lower-income customers’ ability to save for the future. Without a traditional checking or savings account, borrowers often pay more for basic financial transactions like cashing checks, paying bills and wiring money, financial counselors say. And because pawnshops do not seek or report matters affecting credit scores, pawnshop banking makes it hard for customers to build credit history…
The basic business of pawnshops is, of course, a financial service. If a man walks in and hands over, say, a watch, the shop will lend him money based on a percentage of the item’s value. The customer has a set period of time to pay that back, usually one to four months. If he pays it back in time, and pays the interest, he gets the item back. If he does not, the pawnshop sells the item.
Pawn loans are so profitable simply because of the high interest rates pawnshops can charge. Interest rates vary by state and range from 2.5 percent to 25 percent a month, the industry group the National Pawnbrokers Association estimates. So a 30-day loan on a $150 item would give a pawnshop a profit of up to $37.50, while a four-month loan could mean a profit of $150. Pawnshops may also charge fees for things like storage and lost tickets.
Yet for many customers who have been denied credit because of checkered financial histories, an instant loan from a pawnshop can feel like something of a miracle — at least at first — consumer advocates say….
This post is in: Don't Mourn, Organize, Music, Open Threads
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Professor Krugman has a history lesson:
It wasn’t always about the hot dogs. Originally, believe it or not, Labor Day actually had something to do with showing respect for labor.
Here’s how it happened: In 1894 Pullman workers, facing wage cuts in the wake of a financial crisis, went on strike — and Grover Cleveland deployed 12,000 soldiers to break the union. He succeeded, but using armed force to protect the interests of property was so blatant that even the Gilded Age was shocked. So Congress, in a lame attempt at appeasement, unanimously passed legislation symbolically honoring the nation’s workers.
It’s all hard to imagine now. Not the bit about financial crisis and wage cuts — that’s going on all around us. Not the bit about the state serving the interests of the wealthy — look at who got bailed out, and who didn’t, after our latter-day version of the Panic of 1893. No, what’s unimaginable now is that Congress would unanimously offer even an empty gesture of support for workers’ dignity. For the fact is that many of today’s politicians can’t even bring themselves to fake respect for ordinary working Americans….
Early Morning Open Thread: Happy Labor Day!Post + Comments (115)
This post is in: Books, Domestic Politics, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
I’m inherently suspicious of anything written by a Reason contributor, but I might actually have to buy a copy of United States of Paranoia.
Might even suggest it for a Book Chat here, but that would just confirm what you’ve always suspected, right?
Long <del>Read</del> Watch: “We, the Paranoid”Post + Comments (55)
This post is in: Open Threads, Very Serious People
Ah, the inexorable March of History. From John Grey’s TNR review of a Margaret Thatcher biography:
… When, after several unsuccessful attempts elsewhere, she presented herself as a potential parliamentary candidate before Conservative Party members in Finchley in 1958, she expected “that the usual prejudice against women will prevail and that I shall probably come the inevitable ‘close second.’ ” When she was selected to stand for the seat, the outgoing member of Parliament, Sir John Crowder, was reported as complaining that the Conservative Central Office had “[imposed] a choice on the constituency between ‘a bloody Jew and a bloody woman.'” But it was in Finchley that Thatcher benefited from the smile of fortune that would accompany several formative moments in her career. Appearing alone, since Denis (whom she had married in December 1951) was in Africa on business, the thirty-two-year-old Thatcher cut a striking figure. Speaking with force and confidence, she impressed the local party chairman so much that he misreported the final vote on her candidacy. “She didn’t actually win,” he told his son on the night. “The man did, but I thought, ‘He’s got a silver spoon in his mouth. He’ll get another seat.’ So I ‘lost’ two of the votes and gave them to her.” Unknowingly, Thatcher entered the House of Commons as the result of a well-meaning act of electoral fraud….
Open Thread: What Might (Not) Have BeenPost + Comments (102)