What good are minions, lackeys, and lickspittles if you fail to bring me this ring?
This Sevan Biçakçi ring is made in 24-karat gold and sterling silver with more than 3,000 hand-set multicolored diamonds, 164 hand-set seed pearls, and one South Sea baroque pearl.
Seriously, Horde, if you cannot deliver this entirely appropriate treasure to my hand within the next 24 hours, you will have to consider yourselves total failures in your role as stooges and sycophants.
Maybe they don’t mean to be malicious — the worst of them are just really, really stupid. And the subset of gamers who make youtube comments are a distillation of idiocy.
There is a comic book cover by Milo Manara that has been receiving a lot of criticism lately. The artist resorts to justifying it with biology.
It’s that time again — I have to put on my big boy pants and a clean shirt and stand up in front of a bunch of eager students and pretend to know everything. I’m teaching our introductory course, Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development, and also our core Cell Biology course. So I prepared by going to the movies at the Morris Theater. This week, they were playing Guardians of the Galaxy and Lucy.
Dr Rubidium is raising money for the science program at GeekGirlCon. A lovely idea, I thought, until I discovered what she’s doing as a forfeit to encourage donations.
The 2014 Hugo Award Winners have been announced, and to my astonishment, I have already read all the winners (but not all the nominees). I must be some kind of SF nerd.
Ancillary Justice, the space opera that won best novel, was one of the big surprises of my reading. I’m a fan of space opera (see Iain Banks), but this one, about an AI imbedded in a dead soldier, also did unexpected things with gender assumptions and made me think confusedly quite a bit. But it makes sense — why should we assign a sex to an artificial intelligence? Wouldn’t a gender-free mind not really care that much about the conventions of our language traditions? And wouldn’t interactions with biological beings that care very much about gender cause all kinds of interesting conflicts?
I also read one of the big losers, Vox Day. His pedestrian short story, clearly tailored to avoid the controversies that usually dog his work (there were zero women in it, so there was no opportunity for him to vent his usual bog-ignorant misogyny), was dead last. Worse, “No Award” beat it in the final runoff. I laugh schadenfreudenly.
Scalzi has a few words for the guy with the flaming sword. I agree with him.
Some people think that criticizing atheists is offensive and wrong. Therefore, I have to institute some new policies here.
You are no longer allowed to disagree with me. If you do so, you are being divisive.
This rule applies everywhere. Not only are you not allowed to disagree in my comments, but if you write a single contrary word elsewhere, you are guilty of fomenting a witch hunt. If you disagree in any way, then I will indignantly declare you guilty of making me witch of the week.
If two or more of you disagree with me at the same time, that is indisputable evidence of a conspiracy. Atheists cannot find independent cause to disagree with your Leader — we agree on everything — and besides, you are only allowed to exalt me.
I’m sure you will find all these new rules agreeable, because not doing so is a sign that you are making Drama, which is bad, and failing to support unquestioning loyalty, which is unforgivable.
Hail Me, and the Glorious Leadership.
There will be no questions. Obey.
We do, however, require a formal seminar of our biology undergraduates in their senior year. We must make sure none of them ever see this comic!
I’m learning how to write better headlines from the Daily Show. How am I doing?
