Obsidian Wings

ISIS AUMF

by russell

good idea?

bad idea?

nothingburger?

don't know what i think about it yet, just putting it out there for y'all to discuss.

have at it.

The science fiction awards season

by Doctor Science

I'm eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards (closes March 10) and to vote as a subscriber for the Locus Awards (closes April 15). I generally take the Locus Recommended Reading List as my starting point. The LRRL is notable this year for not including The Martian (it would be under "first novel"), which I expect to be on the Hugo ballot and may well win. Yeah, it's not all that well-written, but it hits a primal Science! Fiction! button that doesn't get punched very much these days.

Under the cut are the LRRL for the novel categories. Books that have been read (or attempted) by members of the Science household are grayed out. Of the others, are there any to which you-all would particularly like to direct our attention? We certainly can't read them all before the Hugo Noms are due ...

I'm particularly interested in recommendations for works published as e-books, because Locus frankly admits that they have no idea how to even find the good stuff in the e-book torrent.

Is there any reality in these two romance tropes?

by Doctor Science

So, I read a lot of fanfiction, a lot of which is romance by amateur and even amateurish writers, many of whom are young (under 25) or very young (under 18). There are two tropes that seem to me have become more popular in the past 5 years or so, and I don't know if it reflects anything about reality or if they're purely fictional conventions.

The tropes are "threatening the new love interest" and "betting on whether your friends are going to get together."

1. If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her aka "The Shovel Speech" is a trope older than TV, but my understanding always was that the threatening party (brother is traditional) is warning the threatenee (fiancé, bridegroom) against adultery, domestic violence, or non-support. In other words, *serious* harms that the law is slow or unable to address.

When I drag my memory back through the decades to the time my group of friends weren't all boring married people, I dimly recall giving "be sure to take of him/her, they're really special" speeches, but they weren't particularly threatening. The closest thing was if a close friend started dating someone I didn't feel was worthy of them, then the speech might be a little more pointed ... in a subtle way? I hope? But definitely no threats, even joking ones, about physical harm.

Yet the Shovel Speeches I see in fanfic almost always involve "joking" physical threats -- and threats for things like "don't break their heart" or "don't make them cry", almost as though the harm the threatenee is being warned to avoid is emotional conflict or breaking up. On the contrary, when my friends went out with The Unworthy I was always *glad* when they broke up.

2. People making a Side Bet about whether their friends are going to get together romantically is something that shows up in fanfic a *lot*, but unlike the Shovel Speech I've never seen anything like it in real life -- at least, not involving actual money: the right to say "Ha! I told you so!" doesn't count.

Does this actually happen in real life? My salad days were in the 70s and early 80s, when state lotteries were just getting off the ground and legal gambling was quite restricted in the US. I remember only a small amount of "side betting", and it was mostly on things like "who starred in that movie" or "who will win the Falklands War" -- nothing with personal significance. So maybe Kids These Days really do gamble on more things than we ever did.

I wonder if these tropes are more popular in RL than they used to be because they're used on TV, where very young people, in particular, are likely to get a lot of their ideas about "romance". My first instinct was to blame "Friends" for both, because the tvtropes articles (shovel speech; side bet) list multiple instances for both. But I see that "Cheers" had "side bets on the wedding" and that was a super-popular show, so I just may be a fogey. And those kids are just on my damn lawn.

The End of Romance, serigraph by Erté. I guess this is supposed to be Pauline, tearing up Paul's old letters while Cupid picks his nose at both of them. Or something.

commenting woes

by liberal japonicus

Two people have written in and said that they are having problems with the captcha system. I'll see what's up and put a ticket in. It would help if folks who could comment could just add one to this post. Pithy one-liners preferred.

 

UPDATE: a number of emails to the kitty looks like it is broken for everyone. Will try and keep you updated

 

UPDATE 2: We have the option of going to Disqus, which I know nothing about.

 

Your Immortality of the Crab Open Thread

by Doctor Science

Today while link-hopping around Wikipedia, as you do, I learned that "thinking about the immortality of the crab" is a Spanish idiom meaning "daydreaming". Actually, I would say that the best English translation is "woolgathering" -- a much less intellectual and sophisticated idiom, though an old one, dating from 1550. But in Spain you're not spacing out, you're doing philosophy.

Here's an open thread, while I wait for the next installment of this Fimbulwinter.

Studies of crabs, by Leonardo da Vinci. How much more immortal can you get?

The Japanese Cheney

by liberal japonicus

In Japan, the idiots are leading the government.

Japan had been secretly negotiating for the return of the prisoners for months after both men were abducted in Syria last year. Then, on January 17, Abe delivered a speech in Cairo. According to insiders at Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Abe went off-script from the speech MOFA had helped prepare, adding two sentences in particular that attracted a great deal of attention: "In order to help reduce the threat ISIL [the Islamic State] poses, we will offer our support to Turkey and Lebanon and also provide aid to the refugees and displaced persons of Iraq and Syria. To those nations battling with ISIL, we pledge a total of $200 million to aid in the development of human resources and infrastructure."

Two days later, the Islamic State released a video featuring Jihadi John standing between the two hostages, who were on their knees and wearing orange jumpsuits. He demanded a ransom from Japan — for, not coincidentally, $200 million. Negotiations broke down, and both men were murdered. Japan's former ambassador to Lebanon, Naoto Amaki, told the Nikkan Gendai newspaper that the speech was "an unprecedented mistake in diplomatic judgment."

The Abe administration has seemingly used the deaths of the men to further his longstanding military agenda, calling for not only the expanded use of Japan's Self Defense Forces to "protect Japanese lives," but to also justify the use of military force against Japan's economic enemies. It's unclear whether the legislation's expansive wording would technically prohibit Japan from attacking South Korea if Samsung were to rip off Sony technology.

and

A high-ranking MOFA official, who declined to give his name for fear of retaliation, likened the Cairo speech to "a diplomatic IED."

"The lines about 'In order to minimize the threat of ISIS' and 'Japan pledges $200 million in support to those countries battling ISIS' — none of that was in the original speech that our ministry had checked," the MOFA official told VICE News. "Even a first-year bureaucrat at MOFA would know those words could constitute a declaration of war to radicals like ISIL."

a diplomatic IED. ouch.

from https://news.vice.com/article/inside-japans-new-war-with-the-islamic-state

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