The fandom menace

Web comic The Dork Tower on fanfic. Oh, so true.

One of these reviews of Blue Box contains the comment, "Then again, I guess I shouldn't be criticising a writer based on her past triumphs. That's one big left-handed albatross she has hanging round her neck. " It's the ghastly truth! Skreeeeem!

Don't be put off by the title of junediamanti's splendid essay Supposing the Sorting Hat Wanted to Put Snape in Gryffindor? - it's not some MoPPeT, but a well-thought-out paean to the character's courage.

An article from last month's SMH, Pop culture's need for speed, noted how pop bands are appearing and disappearing like virtual particles, books are on and off the shelves in a flash, and movies open in a jillion cinemas and then race onto DVD. But it's not all fast food, I say happily, reading Austen, listening to Smile, and eagerly awaiting the return of Doctor Who.

Pollie tix

The US of A

As you remember (like the voiceover says in Lost in Space, Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer called for a public registry of HIV positive citizens. He has now, er, adjusted his position. He now claims he said that only someone who intentionally infects someone else should be registered. (If it's illegal in Maryland to knowingly pass on the virus, then their HIV status already would be public.)

Hunter S. Thompson pours kerosene over the election campaign, sets it alight, and lights his cigar with it.

The Orwell administration lets its mask slip, from the Needlenose blog.


Horse Trailer

Gakked from ashamel, a great opinion piece by Carmen Lawrence: Democracy is failing if the majority are alienated from politics.

Australia's first Iraq casualties: Three Australians injured in Baghdad blast.

You know the gag rule - the Bush administration's refusal to provide foreign aid to any women's health organisation which so much as mentions abortion? Australia has one too. That means more poverty, disease, death - and more abortions. More on this as I pull the facts together.