Synova

ASHC Can Mitt win against Obama? The thing is… just about any of them could maybe win against Hillary. Or lose against Hillary. But winning against Obama is more problematic. People *like* Obama. And is Mitt really that much better than Obama? Would it *matter* who won? Giuliani or Thompson, as different as they are, could probably win against Obama. Huckabee? Not so much. Not because he’s a former pastor but because he’d be running against Obama’s strong points. Personality and likableness. Giuliani or Thompson would be running against Obama’s weakness, which is his lack of experience and lack of grown-up solutions to real world problems. Talk policy and Rudy or Fred can get into details and application (like them or not) and Obama really *can’t*. McCain? Maybe he could pull the center away from Obama. Maybe he’d be the best to win against Hillary. Or maybe not. Every little internet quiz I take comes up Mitt. But I’ll say this. I try to *not* pay attention and… well, it...

I've been invited, and accepted the invitation, to blog at A Second Hand Conjecture. I'll probably post copies to this blog of anything I post there, but you should go check out the other authors at ASHC.

“Your sister thinks Huckabee is great.” “Mom,” I told the phone, exasperated, “He’s not even Republican!” My first participation in politics was a proudly worn “I (heart) DRNBGR” button that some son-of-a-Democrat defaced at a high school speech competition. (What gave him the right to wreck my property?) I went with my Mom as an alternate delegate to our local Republican party convention when I was 17. Later that fall I volunteered to work phones to get the vote out. But even then I recognized that I got my party affiliation from my parents. I recognized that I didn’t know enough to decide between parties. And I couldn’t get answers to simple questions such as, “What’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans?” The fact that there wasn’t an answer to that question was disturbing to my teenaged understanding of the world. There had to be a difference. So why was it so hard to get an answer to that question? Even with the harsh rhetoric and hot emotion in politics today tha...

Posted here: "People?" "Maybe we're in denial, too." Jesse smiled and ran a hand through his hair. "On the way back, though, we decided that "people" was the best word to use." Angela thought about it. "I think you're right." People. She could deal with people, no problem.

_Illegal Beings: Human Clones and the Law_ is a book by Kerry Lynn Macintosh. It arrived in the mail today. My daughter is doing a major presentation at school on the issue of cloning and the library didn't have this book available so I bought it since the premise is explicitly that human reproductive cloning should be legal. I'm probably the only person in the country who believes that the therapeutic cloning of human embryos should be illegal while it should be legal to do reproductive cloning. It seems like most people are convinced any cloning of humans should be illegal, or else that only therapeutic cloning should be legal, and some few that think both therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning should both be legal. I haven't started to read the book yet. The title, however, is fascinating to me. To explain why I should explain that my experience in bio-ethics is primarily based on reading science fiction. Yes, there is a good amount of fundamental Christia...

"Politics is less hollywood for ugly people than it is high school for middle-aged narcissists." By Pogo in response to the video in this post by Ann Althouse.

I've spent the last week not writing. I think I've figured out the main problem. (There were non-main problems such as lack of sleep and brain death, but that's normal stuff.) I had gone ahead with the action (such as it is) and not taken the time, now that the single alien had turned out to have four other survivors in her company, of taking the time to name them. The convoluted referring to individuals with descriptions was... prohibitive. It's just that things happened before they had a chance to point at things and repeat names until everyone figured out who everyone was... but too bad. I went back and *made* them have time. So I added stuff to scenes or between scenes and messed up continuity. I'll have to do an editing pass eventually. But I think I still need to do a... plumping... pass of what I added and of the last couple of scenes before going forward again. I still need to work on developing conflict, however. Now that I've...

Leaving aside the fact that "Miss America - Reality" is an Oxymoron... I wanted to watch even though I don't care for reality TV because Miss Utah has been mentioned on the milblogs. So I recorded... I think it was the second episode... and watched it last night. I don't know how she does it at all, frankly. The need to tell the "advisers" they were full of it would overwhelm me. Miss Utah got "bottom three" because she didn't treat the advice she was given the episode before to glam it up with proper gravitas. Miss Alaska got "bottom three" because she'd made Indian war... ah... noises when they cut 12 inches off her hair. Oh the horror! Only they didn't tell her that. They just said that she wasn't considerate enough of others. I wonder if it ever occurred to the "advisers" that she may very well *be* Native American. I don't know she's not. Do they know that she's not? One of ...

My daughter at breakfast this morning imagining what she'd someday tell her grandkids.

... in Baen's Universe Slush. For those who know what that is and how to find it. (If you don't and you want to very badly, ask.) The title is "Wurm."

The next installment of the work in progress.

How short our memories… Nov 15, 2001… two months after 9-11. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011203/cortright Directly connecting 9-11 to Iraq… (remember that next time “the right” is accused of falsely doing so) “The grim question of how many people have died in Iraq has sparked heated debate over the years. The controversy dates from 1995, when researchers with a Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) study in Iraq wrote to The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Society, asserting that sanctions were responsible for the deaths of 567,000 Iraqi children.” This, before the war… 567,000 children killed by the United States. It’s bogus and for a variety of reasons. It’s also the main reason for Food for Oil which was immediately diverted to palaces and bank accounts by those who claimed all those children were dying. Children died of starvation and children died for lack of weapons grade chlorine to purify their water. Oil wealth meant that regional leaders did not have...

...ROCKED.

How much do I wish this movie didn't suck, let me count the ways.... This movie was bad. Not just bad but I'm talking *major* suckage. I can't blame Li. I can't blame Statham. I love them both. It was even a good concept, which I will now SPOIL because it makes no difference at all because the movie sucked so badly. The neat concept is that a hitman is sent after an FBI agent and his family. The hit man kills the wife and child before making sure that the FBI agent is dead. The FBI agent kills the hitman (who was a notorious assassin of the FBI agent's knowledge) and takes the hitman's identity in order to destroy the person who ordered the hit. (Leaving the hitman's body to be mistaken for his own, after he burns the house down.) But we don't know that. The dead FBI agent's partner is distraught and goes on a rampage to find the person he knows carried out the hit. Years later his life is rather bleak, his wife left him, and he... find...

1238 tonight. Plus I backed up my stuff off my computer. And I have passed the point of having 100 manuscript pages of a single project. This is more than I've ever done on one thing before. Whoo Hoo! Also, if anyone should happen by and anyone should happen to go to the Livejournal page and read the first scene... even if it sucks and you don't want to say so, post a comment there or here to let me know you looked. (Preferably there, so I can find out if the comments go to my e-mail.) Thanks. :)

Essentially, I've sat in front of my computer all day intending to write and have been doing everything but writing. What a waste. Perhaps what I ought to do is anything else all day and *plan* on starting to write at 9pm or so. This is so stupid.

829 But not a whole scene, maybe less than half of one. It's the first one from my alien's POV that I've done. I think it went all right.

It's not the solution I was hoping for but I put the first scene of my WIP up on a livejournal page. Comments welcome. It's probably the slowest beginning I've done but I tend to rush things. My theory is that I do this because writing is so very much slower than reading. So... read here if you want to. I might adjust permissions later.