Linkety links

I'm drinking a Cuba Libre made with Pepsi Max and making a list of books to read as research for when I get stuck into redrafting Strange Flesh, so I thought I'd share some links with you while I'm at it.

Puppygate, the gaming of the Hugos, has generated a mountain of online material. Here's just a tiny selection of it. (For an introduction, see Jim C. Hines' Puppies in Their Own Words.)

Phil Sandifer and Rabid Puppy Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) discuss John C. Wright's Hugo-nominated One Bright Star to Guide Them and Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory. Like the Monty Python sketch with the discussion of censorship between the Archibishop of Canterbury and a nude man, but longer. (ETA: Interview with Ken MacLeod about Banks.)

Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution. Universally applicable.

Some comments on the Hugos and other SF awards from Eric Flint. Lots of background and analysis of the awards and their history. (See also Marin Wisse's response.)

The Demolished Puppy. If you put words in someone else's mouth, don't be surprised if they bite your hand.

(If you're interested in keeping up with latest developments - which by this point is mostly a cycle of outrage generated by the Pups - File770 is the place to go.)

Links: random bits and pieces

Rather than deluge you with a heartbreaking pile of links about poverty, rape, or bullying just now, I shall provide a pot pourri.

Signal to Noise: this is an insightful explanation of how people who are arguing miss each other's meaning, up until the example of a completely implausible abortion debate.

Free-range eggs: Ministers hatch a plan to develop a binding, national standard / Australian shoppers ripped off on more than 200 million 'free range' eggs, Choice says

Via Memoriae Classicae I: Asterix and Cleopatra. A fun review of the movie version, warts and all, from a Classics grad student at Cambridge.

Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains. "... Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger. 'The general idea is that it's absolutely threatening to admit you're wrong,' says political scientist Brendan Nyhan... The phenomenon — known as 'backfire' — is 'a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.'". But don't despair - the backfire effect can be overcome!

Quoth George R.R. Martin: "Yay for the Tone Argument." For the most part, I second that yay - the Tone Argument has been misused too often, for example to excuse bullying.

The Frozen Calm of Normalcy Bias: "When disaster strikes... most people act as if they've suddenly forgotten the disaster... Fleeing survivors ran past living, uninjured people who sat in seats literally watching for the minute it took for the flames to reach them."

The majority of cancers are not linked to environment or lifestyle. Which is simultaneously reassuring (cancer mostly isn't our own fault) and disturbing (we have less control than we perhaps thought).

The Pope's astronomer on space, the Bible and alien life