This was posted on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, but I just found it today — and as one who appreciates barbeque in most all its forms, I found the rundown of different styles to be a delightful tribute to one of my favorite foods.
I particularly liked the bit about whether or not Florida is a Southern state* — down to using the outline of California.
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*To most of us who consider ourselves Southern, it isn’t.
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Do you ever have an odd science fictional reference pop into your head while doing something mundane?
The other day I was doing my usual not much and happened to rub my eye: I came away with an eyelash on the pad of my finger and carelessly flicked it away (we have to feed the vacuum cleaner something) before I thought, Wow, I’m glad we don’t have those DNA analyzer-scanners like in GATTACA.
An odd reference, I know, but I’m an odd person. As Mike Yaconelli paraphrased, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”
So, what SF references have you encountered in daily life?
by My friend and brother sent me a link to an essay entitled “On Stupidity” — it included this bit that reminded me of RAH:
Different generations have different ways of knowing — different configurations of multiple intelligences. Pick your era and your subject: How many of us know anything about farming anymore or how to read the changing of the seasons? How many of us know how to repair an automobile or make a cake from scratch?
(Link: Chronicle of Higher Education.)
For those who don’t recognize the initials, RAH would be Robert A. Heinlein, one of the Grand Masters of Science Fiction. The English professor’s quote above made me think of one of my favorite RAH quotes from “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long”:*
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
I’ve always liked that sentiment, and thought at one point about planning a course of study around it. I called it “Sphericity,” as in the title of this post, by which I meant being well-rounded. Some people seem to get there naturally because they take (or make) the opportunities to explore a broad range of interests; other folks may need a little help.
How well-rounded are you? And would you add anything to Heinlein’s list?
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*The “Notebooks” formed part of his novel TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, but many of the aphorisms stand well on their own.
by I look back with fondness at the year I spent at Thule Air Base, Greenland — in fact, today I wore my “Thule Tracking Station” hat* — but it looks as if the path of this morning’s total solar eclipse went very close to Thule. I hope the weather was clear enough for the folks to get a (safe) glimpse of the event.
This Wikipedia link has a neat animation of the eclipse path. The little black spot is the area of totality; the larger grey area would see a partial eclipse.
Ultra cool for Ultima Thule. (And no, if you pronounce it correctly that doesn’t rhyme.)
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*Our tracking station had an awesome logo: a polar bear coming out of a radome. I need to get a new hat and a couple new shirts, because mine are getting worn out.
by Passed the 50,000 word mark in MARE NUBIUM, after finally realizing that I’d started the last chapter in the wrong point of view and going back to re-work it. What I probably should’ve done is just inserted a note to the effect of “rework this” and pressed on, but it seemed too big an issue to leave unresolved.
It’s a wonder I finish anything. According to my 100K goal, I’m halfway through with the novel; who knows if the final version will be 90K or 120K, but it will be a wonder if I finish.
by Read a fascinating essay today that examined the good-vs.-evil theme of THE DARK KNIGHT, and especially the temptation to give up the fight because innocent people have gotten hurt — despite the fact that giving up the fight leaves the evil people free to perpetrate even more evil — and compared the theme to the decisions President Bush has had to make with regard to prosecuting the Terror War.
The essay is here.
There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.
And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.
This was a great question, considering the spate of anti-Terror War movies that tanked at the box office compared to THE DARK KNIGHT’s record-setting draw:
Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3” and now “The Dark Knight”?
And as one who swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” — and whose main regret with respect to my service is that the closest I got to the war zone was the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan — I could really relate to this section:
Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They’re wrong, of course, even on their own terms.
Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don’t always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.
The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them — when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.
It may be true that THE DARK KNIGHT set records in part because of Heath Ledger’s untimely demise, but I think it was destined to do well regardless. And if it reminds us that there are men and women who “stand in the gap” for us every day, protecting our freedom and our way of life, so much the better.
May we have the collective wisdom to elect leaders who are not afraid to answer the call in defense of liberty.
by Today I made it to the last bit of Trinoc*coN, the local Raleigh-Durham SF&F convention.
I caught the tail end of a panel on whether Harry Potter is destined to become a literary classic (the panelists and audience were each about evenly split between “yes” and “maybe”), then was on a panel about the paranormal in fiction and nonfiction. We had an interesting discussion amongst ourselves until a few audience members straggled in … but such is the hazard of Sunday morning panels.
I moderated a panel on SF’s broken technological promises, which was okay … but I’m not a very good moderator. The panel was entitled “Where’s My Flying Car?” and one of the panelists took that rather literally — he brought a nice PowerPoint slideshow about flying cars, which we all enjoyed, but we spent so much time on actual flying cars that we didn’t get to discuss some of the broader promises SF has made.
The highlight was seeing Hank Davis and Laura Haywood-Cory, both from the main office of Baen Books. (Laura got me on the guest list in the first place.) Hank was on the “Flying Car” panel, and as the most widely read of all of us he kept us firmly anchored in the genre. Laura did a great job moderating the very enjoyable panel on Southern Fandom.
This year’s Trinoc*coN was a small affair, a “relaxacon” as it’s known — more laid back and less programming-intense than usual — but very well done and I was pleased to be invited to be a part of it. Kudos and thanks to all the organizers and volunteers!
by Just returned this afternoon, lightly sunburned and heavily fatigued, from a week in Myrtle Beach, and tomorrow I’ll head over to Trinoc*coN, a local SF&F convention. It’s a “relaxacon” this year, with minimal programming, but even so they got a big-name GOH in Catherine Asaro.
I’ll contribute the “minimal” to tomorrow’s programming: I’m on a panel on “The Paranormal in Fiction and Nonfiction” and I’ll moderate “Where’s My Flying Car?”, a panel on the failure of technology to live up to our more fantastic dreams.
For now, though, let’s see if we can add a few more words to the novel-in-progress. Best to any and all!
by The Anti-Candidate didn’t make any speeches this week: not on foreign soil, nor in the U.S., not with foreign leaders, nor with regular folks here locally.
So remember when you’re thinking about voting: here at about 100 days before the election, the Anti-Candidate has not been monopolizing your news or making a spectacle of himself in any way. (Or at least in any way that you’ve seen.)
Happy Friday!
by I had such a good streak going of nearly 5,000 words a week, and then July hit and my writing time dropped to almost nil. First was the weekend in northern Virginia for the wedding, then a few nights of Vacation Bible School prep, then the weekend in Massanutten for the family reunion, and then this last week doing Vacation Bible School nearly every night and most of the day on Saturday.
At least I’m a few words closer to the goal for now. This being “vacation week” (so to speak, it’s a working vacation for me), it remains to be seen how much writing I’ll get done. But at least I’m still moving in the right direction.
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