Google, eBooks, and Independent Booksellers

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/business/30books.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1277910326-Fw4UDJlKI9ZqZTaJ/23WGw

Found this on the New York Times the other day.

If Google can overcome the advantage the other online booksellers have, this could be very interesting for the eBook market and very beneficial for the independent and small-town booksellers.

And I'm sure college students, who have to shell out a lot of money for books, will love Google providing textbooks in bulk, even in an electronic form.

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The No-Fly List is Unconstitutional and Un-American

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/no-fly/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

I was aware of the "no-fly list" before, but I never really pondered the constitutionality of it.

However, this article points out very well that people--including many U.S. citizens--are being denied the ability to travel on private aircraft by an un-appealable decree of some security personnel.  No due process involved.  As a result, there are people stranded in foreign countries unable to get home.

The case of Ayman Latif, a disabled Marine veteran who needs to fly to the US from Egypt for medical treatment, strikes me as particularly aggravating.  Repeat after me: Disabled.  Marine.  Veteran.  In other words, I fail to see how he's going to hijack an aircraft, and being a freaking U.S. Marine, is a lot less likely to have sold out to the enemy than John Q. Public.

I am aware there are dangerous people who would do us harm out there, but there are legal mechanisms already in existence for dealing with this kind of thing.  To be arbitrarily denied the use of airplanes by some bureaucratic decree is un-American (the whole purpose of the Bill of Rights is to protect Americans from the kind of arbitrary abuses of power common in almost every other country in the world at the time) and in all likelihood, unconstitutional.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Although this is not a deprival of liberty in the same way that being imprisoned is, it is still a denial of liberty in other ways.  Freedom of travel, for example.  Although there is not an explicitly-enumerated right to freedom of travel, I present to you the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Therefore, if the feds are going to put someone, especially an American citizen, on the no-fly list, they should have to go through the same legal process the government needs to go through to search or arrest someone.  This way, evidence can be weighed, appeals made, that kind of thing.  If we're dealing with people who are abroad, perhaps they could participate via tele-conferencing or some kind of Internet chat-like mechanism.

Methinks if this was not done in the name of defending against terrorism, a lot more conservatives would be opposed to it.

I mean, think about it.  Imagine you're just going around on your daily business and suddenly you're barred from flying.  No reason given, no appeal, and no clear-cut way to get off this list.  This would be a gross abuse of government power, but many people will reflexively defend it in the name of national security.

Let us remember the quote from Ben Franklin:

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

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Tibetans, Chinese, and Evolution

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/science/02tibet.html?_r=1

Now this is very interesting.  I think I'll send this to my old East Asian history professor to see what he's got to say about it.  I'm mostly interested in the "population bottleneck" among the Han Chinese and what events in Chinese history might explain that.

Although I've always been interested in science, I haven't been keeping up to a large degree with the use of genetics to track ancestry.  The most recent news item I recall based on that subject involved the exact timing of the divergence between humans and other primates and since it was posted on my alternate-history forum, the headline (which had to do with when humans and apes stopped mating with each other) provoked a lot of crude humor.

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A Brief Retraction Re: My Birth-Control Article

I posted the NYT link and the link to my blog in the Chat forum of my alternate-history site, in order to drum up discussion and hits for the blog.

The user whose handle is Blairwitch749 works in the health-care industry--and has gotten in some mighty battles with the pro-national health care contigent, which is mostly European--and he didn't think making hormonal birth control over-the-counter was such a good idea.

He went into a great deal of detail about how doctors do extensive blood-testing, calibration for the recipient's weight, etc. to ensure they've got it right when they prescribe hormonal birth control.  If a doctor's involvement is required to that degree, keeping it a prescription drug might be prudent, or at least the matter should be discussed more thoroughly first.

Due to the fact I am not 100% sure BW is correct on the matter (I have not independently verified the process) and the fact that a large thrust of my earlier comments were a defense of secularism in government from a Christian perspective, I will leave the older article up.

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Food and Drug Administration Being Stupid

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/8-year-old-burn-558429.html

The FDA has refused to allow a boy who was recently very badly burned to undergo a procedure in which his own skin cells are cultured and transplanted.  Instead, they will try to fix his burns with skin from his scalp and scrotum.

(Speaking as a male, the latter part doesn't sound healthy.)

I cannot think of any legitimate reason for the FDA to refuse to allow the boy to undergo this experimental treatment, especially since the family wants it.  If they're concerned about the boy's well-being, they can always make the family sign a waiver.

This is so aggravating I rejoined http://www.congress.org/, which enables one to write one's state and federal representatives with just one click, in order to write Obama, both Senators, and my U.S. Representative (Lynn Westmoreland) asking them to put pressure on the FDA to reverse their decision.

If the rest of you can do that as well, we might see the idiocy logjam being broken.  It strikes me as a case of bureaucracy, so sufficient public outrage should be enough to force them to change their minds.

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Revisions and Feminism

Just revised and re-submitted my story "Westernmost Throne" to Daverana Enterprises for inclusion in a possible eBook/print collection.  It's now twice as long (2,181 words vs. 1,004 words) and features a stronger female protagonist.

The story was first titled "He Who Sits on the Westernmost Throne" and told the tale of a campaign secretary who discovers her boss--a senator named Richard Sanchez who is on the verge of being elected president--is really 3,000 years old and has made a covenant with some kind of evil supernatural entity in exchange for immortality and supernatural powers.  The following prophecy is made by the evil power...

“He who wields the Amulet of Fire and sits in the westernmost throne shall rule the wide world forever. I will live in him and he will live in Me."

The story was originally written for a "political horror" contest the Athens alternative paper Flagpole was putting on around the time of the 2004 election.  Therefore, I had a strict word count of 1,000 words.  The original story ended with the senator announcing to the secretary that she would be his queen when he took over the world and leaning in to kiss her.  She screams when she sees his tongue is forked...

Thing is, the stories in my collection are very male-dominated.  There aren't many female characters and a significant number of them are damsel-in-distress types (some English girls abducted by Vikings, a woman attacked by an evil immortal hoping to corrupt her boyfriend, and a teenage noblewoman kidnapped by an oceanic snake-prince who hopes to marry her).  The latter I deliberately wrote as a subversion of that trope (I have her throwing the protagonist a dart when he is being beaten by the villain, enabling him to turn the tables, and then she quizzes him to make sure he's whom he claims he is), but that's one story out of around 10.

(Part of this has to do with the fact I hold men who abuse women in special disdain and writing them as villains enables me to kill them in various creative ways, but this could be interpreted as me thinking women weak and in need of saving, which is both insulting and commercially-unviable.  This isn't the 30s with its brass-brassiered heroines menaced by tentacled beasties anymore.)

In the revised story, protagonist Karen Hutchinson physically resists Sanchez's advances and a brawl breaks out.  She tears away the Amulet of Fire and then smashes it, causing Sanchez to age 3,000 years in a few seconds and die.  She then realizes that if Sanchez is found dead, she will be a suspect in his death and by telling the police that he was 3,000 years old, had made deals with demons, attempted to rape her, and then was going to take over the world would make her look like an insane murderess.

Then the evil power starts to speak to her.  Tempted by her desire to avoid jail (and to be free of the fear of violent men many women have and possibly implement Sanchez's political agenda, which she agreed with), she takes up the ruby from the amulet and becomes the evil power's new agent.

I suspect someone will say that she's not really a strong woman because she gives into temptation rather than doing the right thing, regardless of the consequences, but at the same time, she is much less passive (saving herself rather than waiting for someone else to save her) and becomes much more physically powerful.  Assuming she becomes like Sanchez, this means living for thousands of years, being able to teleport, greatly augmented physical strength, etc.  Female empowerment, literally.

In You Suck: A Love Story, the female protagonist (who was transformed into a vampire in the previous book, Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story) wanders the streets in a bad part of town at night and, when cat-called by some gang members, talks trash right back.  She ponders how before, as a woman, she was always afraid of being robbed, raped, etc., but thanks to her transformation, she doesn't need to worry about that anymore.

(In the prior book, three street criminals attack her at a laundry at 3 AM and she proceeds to tear two of them apart and seriously wound a third.  You go, girl.)

My protagonist undergoes a similar transformation--although not a vampire, she doesn't need to fear odious men anymore.  I pity any D.C. hooligan who tries to bother her on her way home at night.

I also upgraded her job.  Originally, Karen was a secretary of some indeterminate sort, a stereotypically female job.  In the new version, she's Sanchez's press secretary (or at least one of them), a very powerful position.  Furthermore, she is described as having gotten the position rather young, indicating talent on her part.  Hopefully this will make her a stronger female character.

Also, my friend Rob sent me an article about how fantasy is becoming more successful than science fiction because it is more inclusive of women and strong female roles, while SF is becoming increasingly male-dominated and militaristic.  Having a heroine who kills a would-be rapist and takes his place as a powerful supernatural being strikes me as something many women would appreciate more than damsel-in-distress roles and hopefully this will increase my sales.

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In Defense of General McChrystal...

General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has been summoned to the White House after Rolling Stone published an article in which McChrystal's aides mock various federal officials and claim that McChrystal said certain unflattering comments about Obama himself.  The two will be meeting today and it is possible the meeting will endw ith McChrystal's resignation or even his firing.

Here's the article:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236

Many people believe he should be relieved of command, as Douglas MacArthur was when he attempted to go around President Harry Truman in order to attack targets in China during the Korean War.  They say this is essential toward maintaining civilian control of the military.

Thing is, MacArthur's situation and McChrystal's situation are two entirely different things.

For starters, it is indisputable that MacArthur appealed to Congressional leaders after Truman vetoed his plans.  However, from what I've read, the aides are saying McChrystal said these things--McChrystal is not on-record as saying these things himself.  Although healthy whistle-blowing should be encouraged to prevent wrongdoing, we don't want to have a culture of denunciation like existed in Stalin's Russia during the purges.

(This was something I learned in my Modern Russia class in college--the purges weren't just Stalin commanding people be killed or imprisoned, but a full-blown popular hysteria, a witch hunt, against "wreckers" and spies.)

The most damning, insubordinate comments are not even alleged to have come from McChrystal.  They come from his aides.  The aides allege McChrystal said Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" at a meeting with his generals, but it was someone else who went on arant against Joe Biden.

A member of my alternate-history forum whose handle is Skokie cited this regulation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice online yesterday:

Punitive Articles of the UCMJ



Article 88—Contempt toward officials

“Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
 
McChrystal made some unpleasant remarks about an ambassador, but an ambassador does not fall under those rules.  Furthermore, McChrystal's alleged remarks about Obama are not necessarily "contemptuous."  In and of themselves, they aren't insulting, plus, in context, he might not have been criticizing Obama himself.
 
(Perhaps he was criticizing the generals for making Obama uncomfortable?)
 
However, the above regulations definitely nail the aides.  If McChrystal is punished, it should be for allowing his aides to get themselves into trouble (or, if the article accurately describes him as usurping the prerogatives of the State Department, for that), not for alleged insubordination on his part.

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