Humor, Political Commentary

So Many Questions

7 Comments

Iowahawk has the ones that didn’t make it past the Town Hall Twitter filter:

Subtract Malia’s age from the number of states. Multiply the result by the number of jobs saved or created.

Math wasn’t your strong suit, was it?

I let my Mexican drug lord license expire. Am I still eligible for the free machine gun program?

When you’re visiting his volcano lair, does George Soros let you feed the laser sharks?

The staffer who suggested this Twitter Town Hall is fired, isn’t he?

Are you smart enough to create a problem so big that even you could not solve it?

Why isn’t your cabinet unionized?

If Joe Biden has a massive stroke, (a) do you have a replacement in mind, and (b) how would you tell?

There are a lot more.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Heinlein, Fascist

112 Comments

The LA Times interviews some young idiots in fandom:

As the literary and academic worlds open to science-fiction and genre writing, Heinlein lacks the cachet of J.G. Ballard, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Neal Stephenson, cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson and others. Films based on Dick’s books, good and bad, keep coming. But Heinlein’s film adaptations, in the last half century, since 1950’s “Destination Moon,” culminated in 1997’s “Starship Troopers,” widely disliked by his fan base.

Non-SF writer William Burroughs probably has more influence inside the genre’s literary wing than Heinlein, who won four Hugos (the award voted by the fans), sold millions of copies, and was termed the field’s most significant writer since H.G. Wells.

“His rabid fan base is graying,” said Annalee Newitz, who writes about science fiction for Wired and Gawker. “To literary readers, the books look cheesy, sexist in a hairy-chest, gold-chain kind of way. His stuff hasn’t stood the test of time,” because of characters’ windy speechifying and their frontier optimism.

“Here at the store I actively resist promoting him, because he was a fascist,” said Charles Hauther, the science fiction buyer at Skylight Books. “People don’t seem to talk about him anymore. I haven’t had a conversation about Heinlein in a long time.

And you’ve obviously never had an intelligent one.

Popular Culture

I Did Not Know That

26 Comments

Shari Lewis co-wrote Star Trek episodes? Does Lileks know this?

I watched it last night before going to bed. I didn’t think it was particularly well written.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speak of the devil — he has a fresh review of the first episode of TNG.

It holds up, with some caveats. Still seems odd that Geordi had to wear that thing; surely they’d fixed blindness by then. Picard dismissing WW2 as those stupid days when humans fought over stupid things was an eye-roller, and reflects poorly on his historical knowledge. The limitations of Troi are on display from the get-go: SHE FEELS PAIN. GREAT PAIN. And later, she senses that the creatures are very, very happy. The graphics look cheap, and the bridge is lit wrong, but they’d figure that out. My main problem: it is ridiculous to attempt a saucer-separation at warp speed. Once the saucer exits the warp field it will have a catastrophic deacceleration, and don’t tell me the inertial dampeners can handle it. They’re designed to minimize fluctuations in normal-space speed and compensate for power rerouting when the shields are absorbing energy weapons. I mean please.

Didn’t Picard also have one of his many surrenders of the Enterprise right from the get go?

Well, he was French.

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