Month: August 2013

Categories
worldcon

[Worldcon] Main WSFS Business Meeting Liveblog

PLEASE NOTE: My profound apologies in advance to anyone whose name I missed or misspelled. If you stumble across this blog and would like me to correct it, please just comment!

People are still filing in and dealing with the sign up sheet, so it’ll be a few more minutes before we get started. I’ll update this post as things happen. If you’re not sure what will be on the agenda today, you can get an idea from yesterday’s liveblog.

Also as a reminder: If you are someone who is interested in the YA Hugo issue, VOLUNTEER TO BE ON THE COMMITTEE. To do this, you need to speak to Donald Eastlake, the chair, before close of business on the Sunday meeting. Just stop by one of the meetings, he’ll be at the front.

And now I will eat my apple while I wait for things to get started…

1009: Meeting is called to order. Donald covers the procedure about speaking, etc.

1012: Kevin Standlee has uploaded the raw video from yesterday. Asking for donations to cover the high speed internet for the upload.

1014: Going over what we’ll be voting on today, quick review of the committees, noted the newly created committee yesterday.

1016: No objections to agenda as stated.

1016: First item: Worldcon Publications constitutional amendment. Five minute debate time. But I think we’re debating the amendment to the motion first.

1017: Lisa Hayes, author of amendment: The idea is to remove the financial burden of the paper publications by telling Worldcons to just charge people who want paper pubs instead of paying for it themselves.

1017: Colin Harris: Publications are not defined in the constitution, not everyone gets sent everything. The practice of publication distribution isn’t very consistent. Thinks it’s best to not put specific details, since it’s not defined in the constitution that Worldcon even has to be five days or in the summer, for example. Wants to just simplify the language even more so that committees can operate on common sense.

1020: Lisa Hayes doesn’t feel that her original language was not overcomplicated.

1021: ???: It’s nuts to try to figure out how much something costs up front.

1022: Amendment passes with simplified language.

1023: Back to the original motion, which is now out of debate time. Moved and seconded to extend the debate time by five minutes. Less than 2/3 in favor, debate time not extended.

1023: Motion is passed.

1024: Now on to No Representation Without Taxation amendment.

1024: Priscilla Olson says that this amendment was not intended to keep poor or young people from voting, but we’re all in this together. Notes that the original name “No Cheap Voting” was unfortunate. [Personally, I don’t think this new name is any better.]

1026: Against, Christopher J Garcia: as a broke American, feels this disallows a minimum of participation. A voting only membership would be the most basic way to spread participation in the Hugos and WSFS as a whole.

1027: Dave McCarty (sp? sorry!) This would dissociate the Hugos from WSFS and the Worldcon if a voting only membership was created. This is heinous to him.

1027: Against, Warren Buff: Agrees in principle that we should keep the membership rights together. Feels the next amendment would do a better job of it. In favor of the next amendment, against this one.

1028: Glen (????): If you can have a Hugo only membership, you can have a site selection only membership. And thinks this is distorting and weird.

1029: Against, Perry (???): This sends the wrong message to fandom at large. Says this is exclusionary and gives the idea that we don’t want them to participate. Does not want to unbundle rights, but is against setting a minimum price.

1031: Rick Kovalick: “I don’t trust Worldcon.” Something to do with the best dramatic presentation category.

1031: Against, Stephen (didn’t catch last name): Why are people trying to circumscribe innovation? This will lock the price in, which is bad. Worldcon should be inclusive.

1033: Mike (???) moves to refer this to committee, since membership is ill-defined in the constitution. Motion is seconded.

1034: Kevin Standlee: Moves to amend the motion to commit by referring the Keep Us Together motion to committee as well. Seconded.

1036: Okay so first we have a motion to commit both items at the same time, then we have to vote on the motion to commit for real. This is complicated shit.

1037: Motion to commit both together passes. Motion to send both to committee passes. Donald Eastlake will now take volunteers and appoint the committee. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS ISSUE, TALK TO DONALD ASAP AND VOLUNTEER.

1039: Now time for the WSFS Accountability Act of 2013. Starting off complicated by proposing to clarify the text. The new text is… not something I’m going to type out for you. But it’s a lot shorter, I’ll tell you that.

1041: New text read a second time by Donald.

1042: Dave McCarty suggests a change to the changed language. Wants to change “person submitting” to “persons certifying and submitting.” No objection to changing that language. No objection to the new language for the amendment.

1043: Issue is called to vote without debate. No objection. Motion passes.

1043: Expansion of Best Fan Artist category.

1044: Joshua Kronengold speaks for: fans work in all sorts of media, he wants to clarify this will be for all media, not just for visual artists and cartoonists. Also wants to clarify the public display of qualifying art must be non-commercial like with fanzines.

1045: Ben Yalow against: Supports the non-commercial in, since that’s a good clarification. But does not like opening it in to performance media. Most performance media is already covered by dramatic presentation. Moves to strike all changes but the “non-professional”. Seconded.

1046: Not all performance art is covered by dramatic presentation, such as musicians. Agrees that things shouldn’t be qualified for more than one category, feels that this would narrow things too much.

1047: Colin Harris for amendment to the motion: we do have ways to recognize things like music, such as best related work. Doesn’t feel we should be shuffling animation and filks into what has always been a visual art category.

1048: Seth Breitbart: This is for an artist, not for a specific work of art.

1049: Kevin Standlee asks to have the modified language read. Asks for unanimous consent for… something, and nope.

1051: Rich (???) feels that other types of art are adequately covered and costuming for example is more a craft than an art (at which point a low murmur sweeps over the crowd because THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS).

1052: Debate time has run out. Motion to extend debate by five minutes is passed.

1053: Colin Harris again, asking unanimous consent to change his amendment language again to add back in that conventions are okay for display so that there’s no ambiguity. Unanimous consent is not given.

1054: Move to suspend rules to allow this amendment without unanimous consent.

1055: The added language passes. And now back to the original amendment to the amendment. Yes it really is getting this convoluted.

1055: Donald reads the new language…

1056: Chris Garcia likes this for retaining the word cartoonist. He feels removing the word would strike a blow against the long history of cartoonists in fandom.

1056: (???) The addition of ‘any medium’ does include cartoonists.

1057: Priscilla (???) Most of us are not qualified to discern between art and crafts, dramatic and not. Thinks opening up this category really starts blurring the lines about what we want to do.

1058: New language for the amendment passes.

1058: Move to extend debate time is seconded but does not pass.

1058: The amendment with the modified language passes. This means that fan artist is still basically defined as a visual category, but the constitution is clarified to note that display of the art is non-professional.

1059: Moving on to candidate elections.

1100: Mark Protection Committee election: no objection, the members are elected for three year terms.

1102: Next, the amendments proposed by the committees.

1103: Two-Thirds Is Good Enough, Part 1. Kevin S in favor, pointing out that everywhere else in the constitution, a supermajority is 2/3 and not 3/4. Consistency.

1104: (???) “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Doesn’t think it’s necessary.

1104: (???) Extensions should be hard to get; should require more than a simple majority. But does not think they should be that much harder to get. Extensions have provided good candidates in the past and will continue to do so.

1105: Merkel (???)

1105: Kate Seacourt: Do we really need to be ANY MORE SURE OF OURSELVES to extend eligibility than we are to amend the constitution that gave us the power to do this in the first place?

1106: (????) We only have one shot at the extension vote, we should get it right.

1107: Howard Rosenblat (????) Agrees with Ben Yalow’s analysis. 2/3 super majority is the standard. 3/4 sends a message, that’s not one we want to send.

1107: Debate is up. Motion passes.

1108: 2/3 is enough part two, move to call to question. And this one passes as well. [This was pretty darn funny, actually. You can’t call to question until someone speaks, so someone said, “I refer you to the points previously made” then it got called to question again. Okay maybe you had to be there.]

1109: We Don’t Need Another HEROW. Basically the HEROW gets passed every year, can’t we just make it permanent? There are currently 3 extended eligibility clauses in the constitution. Anything not originally in English already gets an extension. The critical mass of active nominators remains US members, and that’s likely to continue for a long time. So let’s just permanently extend for the works first published outside the US. Notes several advantages. He exhausts the time in favor.

1114: Mark Merkelson against: argues that markets are converging, for example because of the rising popularity of ebooks. The day will come when this is not necessary. Thinks we should keep it every year and hope for the day we won’t need it.

1116: (???) against: Something not published in the US is not significantly disadvantaged.

1117: A question about the language I am confused sorry.

1118: Ben Yalow against: It used to be hard to get overseas books. A good British author will have his books immediately known in the US. The markets have converged.

1119: Debate exhausted, motion to extend debate fails.

1120: Vote is called. Have to do this one as a serpentine. 49 in favor. 32 against. The motion carries and will appear next year for ratification.

1122: Financial reports.

1123: Ben Yalow proposes new business, removing the parts of the constitution that restrict the regions for the elected members of the Mark Protection committee.

1124: Ben Yalow for: The zone system was originally to move the Worldcon around. We got rid of that in everything but the Mark Protection Committee. No reason to keep it.

1125: Kate Seacourt against (???) Given what the committee does, and since trademark rules vary, it might be valuable to retain people who can speak to local issues when they come up

1126: Mark Merkelson–I kind of missed his points. >.> Sorry.

1127: Kevin S against: Feels there is still some value to having regional diversity, questions if people would be so happy if all nine elected members came from California.

1128: Andrew (???) Feels that the geographical movement of the Worldcons and with members elected at each Worldcon means ensures regional diversity.

1130: Motion to refer this to a committee. Motion fails.

1132: And then the new amendment passes.

1134: Meeting is adjourned.

ETA1: Corrected name spelling of “Collin” to “Colin.”

ETA2: More name corrections thanks to the lovely commenters. :)

Categories
worldcon

[Worldcon] WSFS Preliminary Meeting: Motions, motions everywhere.

1011: Meeting called to order, committee is introduced, ground rules noted.

1014: Going over the agenda for the preliminary business meeting. There are no constitutional amendments up for ratification this year.

1016: No objections to following agenda as stated.

1017: The YA Hugo has been withdrawn. Unanimous consent asked to withdraw that motion. Objection–the YA Hugo motion will remain.

1019: 4.1.1 (Worldcon Publications) Added to main meeting agenda I didn’t catch the debate time [This has to do with if publications will be paper, electronic, etc.]

1022: 4.1.2 (No Representation Without Taxation) debate time considered, set at 10 minutes, added to main meeting [This is the motion that will disallows Hugo voting rights being sold at a cheaper rate than supporting memberships.]

1023: 4.1.3 (Keep Us Together)  debate time considered, set at 6 minutes, added to main meeting [No memberships can be offered that don’t include all the key WSFS rights: Hugo voting, site selection voting, submission of business to the WSFS meeting, receiving publications.]

1023: 4.1.4 (Best Dramatic Presentation, very short form) Objection to consideration raised; 2/3 majority, motion will not be considered. [This would have added a category for films <15 minutes long, splitting that length from the Short Form category)

1024: 4.1.5 (Deleting Best Fanzine, Best Fan Writer, and Best Fan Artist from WSFS Constitution) Objection to consideration raised; HUGE majority votes to not consider motion.

1025: 4.1.6 (WSFS Accountability Act of 2013) debate time at five minutes, added to main meeting. [Adds more requirements/clarifications to financial reports.]

1026: 4.1.7 (YA Hugo) Objection to consideration has been raised on YA Hugo, the motion will not be considered. BOO I AM DISAPPOINTED BY THIS.

1028: 4.1.8 (Expand Best Fan Artist to Include All Types of Fannish Art, Not Just Static and Visual) added to agenda (I didn’t catch the debate time)

So if you think any of those remaining issues are important and you’re at Worldcon, you should really show up to the main business meeting at 10:00 tomorrow (Saturday).

…continuing on to some more amendments, these ones proposed by the committee. Theses ones we vote to adopt (if I’m understanding this right).

1048: We have now moved on to debating motions and amendments proposed by the committees.

1054: Motion to continue extending eligibility for non-American works by an extra year so that non-American works have a fair shake. Debate occurs. The point is raised that no matter where the Worldcon is held, the majority of people eligible to nominate for Hugos will end up being American. The point is raised (WELL RAISED SIR) “The rest of the world is not just one place. It’s a lot of places.”

1059: 99 votes in the serpentine for extending this extra eligibility for another year. There are five votes against. Motion is adopted, extended eligibility is in place for Loncon 3.

Okay since I’m doing this as a liveblog apparently just keep checking back I’ll post more if it’s interesting.

1105: Now we’re talking about extending eligibility for retroactive Hugos and god this is starting to get confusing. For the retros, we pretend to be the 1939 Worldcon and works eligible are those published in 1938. Extending eligibility means non-US works published pre-1938 would be eligible for this. <3/4 in favor (A LOT LESS, only a minority voted for this) this motion fails. I voted against because… yeah. It really did not make any sense to me.

1110: Motion to change the the vote for specific works getting eligibility extension from a 3/4 to a 2/3 majority. This is a constitutional amendment so it will go to the meeting tomorrow with 4 minutes of debate.

1112: Motion to change the blanket eligibility exemption from 3/4 to 2/3 majority.

1114: Motion to consider these two matters together… fails.

1115: Four minutes debate time set for the second 3/4 to 2/3 majority change, it’s added to the agenda for tomorrow.

1116: New motion: to make the eligibility extension for non-US works permanent instead of something voted on every year. Objection to consideration is raised, does not pass. We will consider this motion. This is a minority report proposal–the majority of the committee did not agree to this. 10 minutes debate time is set, this item will be voted on tomorrow.

1119: Kevin does a point of order to note we can set up a committee to consider the issue of the YA Hugo for next year with a 2/3 vote… so I think this is a thing that can happen when new business can be proposed? Apparently people are texting Kevin Standlee. A lot. GOOD WORK PEOPLE!!!

1126: By unanimous consent we endorse the activities of the Worldcon Heritage Organization.

1127: Resolution to tidy up something in the constitution (in regards to the eligibility section which is apparently a hot mess) is passed with unanimous consent.

1128: Motion to extend retro Hugo eligibility of The Hobbit. There was a objection to consideration, which does not pass. It is pointed out that if this were 1939, The Hobbit would have been eligible under current rules. This one is a tough call, I think. <3/4 in favor, motion fails.

1135: Motion to extend retro Hugo eligibility of films released prior to 1937. Objection to consideration, objection stands, we do not consider.

1136: Kevin Standlee is back! He proposes committee to study the YA Hugo issue. Seconded by several people including me. Unanimous consent, the committee will be appointed. Kevin has said he will be willing to be appointed to it.

1139: Question raised: Young Adults themselves can be on this committee because there is no age limit they can be part of it.

1139: People can volunteer by contacting the Chair by the end of the business meeting (the end of the Saturday or Sunday meeting). Kevin Standlee clarifies that the committee chair can appoint new members to the committee with the Chair’s permission; this is apparently SOP. If you want the YA Hugo to happen, this is a big step. Involve yourself in the committee. To volunteer for the committee you need to contact the WSFS Chair, Donald Eastlake, by the end of the business meeting, so no later than Sunday when that the meeting ends.

1146: We have moved on to financial reports and my eyes have kind of glazed over.

1151: There is applauding and cheering when Aussiecon says they have at last gotten all their funds taken care of and they’re done.

1200: The agenda for today is done, at exactly noon.

1201: Kevin Standlee, bless him, asks for a quick summary of what will be at the meeting tomorrow.

Categories
worldcon

[Worldcon] The WSFS Business Meeting: How the F*** Does It Work?

Normally I don’t bother putting my notes online until after the convention because I’d rather be going to more panels and taking more notes, but I wanted to put this up immediately because I consider it important and there weren’t a whole lot of people at the panel. And while I’m sure a lot of vets already know this stuff, I didn’t. Hell, I didn’t even know I could go to the WSFS meeting last year! (If you are at Worldcon, GO TO IT.)

First off, let me explain why you really really should care about the WSFS meeting. This is the place where amendments to the constitution of the WSFS are decided. Which means, in a very practical sense, this is how we decide how the Hugo Awards will work. (Among other things, obviously, but to me the Hugos are what has my attention.) Never forget that the Hugo Awards are ours. They belong to everyone who attends Worldcon or has a supporting membership.

There are a few items I personally consider important this year:

1) The YA Hugo

2) The “No Cheap Voting” motion

3) Trying to kill the fan category Hugos

So yes, I think this thing is important. I think you should consider it important too. And here’s what I learned from just going to this panel. I feel more prepared for the preliminary meeting tomorrow morning. (Hope I’ll see some of you there.)

* * *

THE WSFS BUSINESS MEETING: HOW DOES IT WORK

Martin Easterbrook, Mark L. Olson, Kevin Standlee (K)

The preliminary meeting doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s where the agenda is set and THAT IS HUGE.

One of the items is object and consideration which is special motion. If 2/3 of the people in the room say “this is stupid, we shouldn’t discuss it” then the motion is killed. The person who made the motion isn’t even allowed to explain when this comes up. This means “we don’t even want to discuss this.” This is generally just supposed to be to kill turkeys; people will vote to keep motions even if they disagree with them as long as they seem like they should be debated.

One year they killed four motions in five minutes because someone kept throwing in censures for individuals they didn’t like.

This is not going to be a good meeting for frivolous motions. (There is a lot on the table.) Apparently in a past year there was a motion objecting to Pluto’s demotion.

This is a democracy where there are no elected representatives. If you want something to happen, you need to get out there and convince people to vote. Also need people who know the business meeting process well.

Mark: The single most important thing you can do in submitting new business (after just being substantive) is doing a good write-up of it. Express it in good, clear writing!

Audience: People familiar with the business meeting will help you write your motion often even if they disagree with it.

Audience: Is it required that the person who proposed the motion be there at the meeting?

K: No, but if you aren’t there, others will be able to interpret it as they like. The proposer gets to make the opening argument but that’s it. Once you submit a motion you lose complete control of it.

K: There is no point in debating constitutional issues on motions at the preliminary meeting. But you can propose to fiddle with them at the prelim meeting because that is the place where it can be killed or sent to the next meeting. Motions can be amended at the preliminary meeting and those are given five minutes of debate. (So people can take a proposal and really just rewrite/change/regroove it if they’re good at this.)

The motion is not yours any more. The only way to change a motion once it’s hit the meeting is with these amendments.

Mark: You can get into amendment wars if you think a stupid amendment is proposed. You cannot amend an amendment while it is under discussion.

K: Amendments are a pretty low ranking motion. You can stack up motions of different primacy.

Objection to consideration can only be done IMMEDIATELY. It has to be the first thing that gets done.

You are supposed to stand and be recognized; if you are physically unable you can call out. You can’t get in line by standing and waiting. You have to be recognized by the chair.

You don’t have to know all the rules. The chairman is supposed to know them and will help you. You can make parliamentary inquiries.

Objection to consideration is only for a constitutional amendment. You cannot object to consideration of an amendment. You have to just vote it down.

Things that are not constitutional amendments will be decided at the preliminary meeting.

Martin: “Tabling” a motion means two different things in American vs. British English. American = not going to come back to it, British = take it up immediately.

K: Use of “Table” as a verb is thus discouraged.

Moving on to Saturday. The agenda is set, the frivolous amendments have been killed, all non-amendments have been dealt with.

Mark: Committees are normally for incoherent motions. Happen maybe one out of three years.

K: First person recognized gets to speak. There is set debate time, divided between the two sides. There is a time keeper. Once you have finished giving your statement you sit down. The sides take turns until no one else wants to speak, you run out of time, or the meeting approves by 2/3 to end debate. A 2/3 vote can also extend the time. Normally time extensions are done by unanimous consent.

Don’t object just for the sake of form. It wastes everyone time.

Closing the debate and calling the question are the same thing.

[They use Roberts Rules of Order]

“I move to call the question on the stack” – that means getting them all over with.

Note: Debate does not have to be factual. You cannot interrupt people to correct them.

Mark: WSFS does allow the point of irrelevant interjection.

K: Sometimes amendments/procedure will eat up all the debate time and you have to ask more time to actually debate the motion itself.

Martin: If you have limited time, you really need to get your best speakers lined up and ready to go. Sometimes your supporters can be your worst enemies if they are incoherent ramblers.

Amendments are allowed that day. They are move to amend motions.

K: You can’t bring up amendments that were dealt with on the previous day unless there are weird circumstances.

If the chair rules on any procedural motion and you don’t like it, you move to “appeal the ruling of the chair.” Then the chair has to explain what they did and why, then you say why you didn’t like it, and debate ensues. “Those who wish to sustain the ruling of the chair…” It takes a majority opposed to the ruling of the chair to overrule; a tie means the chair’s ruling remains.

Unanimous consent

Aye and nay are rarely used: people started shouting

A lot is done by uncounted shows of hands rather than counted shows. If the vote is close enough, they do serpentine, where all one side will stand, then count off one by one.

Almost everything requires a majority vote. The chairman only votes if his vote will actually have an effect on the outcome.

If something is voted on this year, it DOES NOT take effect next year. It has to go to the next Worldcon, get approved there as well, THEN it goes into effect the year after.

Sunday is for site selection questions.

Mark: The formality is there so we can find out what people at the meeting actually want, not just what the loudest people want.

K: The WSFS is a LARP with Roberts Rules as the rulebook. There are people who go just for the entertainment.

Mark: I encourage you to come. If you speak, do your best to speak clearly.

Martin: Because of the restricted time, it can look like a cross between a magician and a sumo wrestling match if you don’t understand the rules.

Categories
steampunk writing

Available for Pre-Order: Blood in Elk Creek

Coming 9/6/13: Blood in Elk Creek – This is the longest novella I’ve written to date – 36K words of adventure, mystery, and snark for Captain Ramos, Colonel Douglas, and a horse named Dolly. And if you’ve been wondering about the Infected, they’re coming for you now.

I’m really excited to share this one with you guys and I hope that you like it. Less than two weeks away!

Once called the Great Plains, the Dead Plains are a place in which no sane citizen of the Duchies dares set foot. The Infected roam the lands in starving packs and rare is the man who returns alive from an expedition. But when one of the regiments of the Grand Duchy of Denver disappears into those wilds under false pretenses, Colonel Geoffrey Douglas dares the Dead Plains to investigate. And Captain Marta Ramos, infamous pirate and thorn in his side, is not far behind.

Foul events are afoot in the Black Hills: Lakota hunting camps leveled, and the Infected move as an army in purposeful, terrifying ways. Captain Ramos and Colonel Douglas must form an uneasy truce and venture deep into the hostile terrain of the Black Hills to discover what has prompted this invasion and how to stop it.

If the Infected don’t kill them first.

bloodinelkcreek-500

Marta looked upstream, but the view was occluded by rocks and more pine trees. There was a loud splash, followed a moment later by another surge of clouded water.

She levered herself to her feet, then drew her machete. The heavy blade felt strange and clumsy in her left hand. Feeling a bit drunk on adrenalin, she made her way around the rock with exaggerated care.

The stream took a sharp turn on the other side of the rocks, widening. Two corpses were laid neatly out in the shallow water. A coyote stood over one, worrying at its arm—the source of the splashes and the gouts of old, coagulated blood.

Blood.

Hand still clutching the machete, Marta bent over and retched, forcibly ejecting all of the water she’d just drunk from her stomach. She wiped her mouth with a handful of grass and looked up to find the coyote now staring at her, a profoundly unimpressed look on its face and a forearm and hand dangling from its jaws.

Marta’s stomach cramped again. Stop that, she mentally commanded herself. It was a reaction entirely in her mind, nothing but fear.

Tail at a cocky angle, the coyote trotted off with its prize, though the animal did give her a wide berth.

Marta approached the bodies with more trepidation than she had ever felt when faced with any number of corpses. Neither of the corpses had heads; each simply had a stump blackened with blood and rot. She recognized the look of the cuts, knew them before she’d even pulled her goggles properly on and snapped in one of the surviving magnifying lenses.

They’d each had their head removed with two or three strikes from a machete. She’d had to make similar cuts herself before, more times than she cared to consider. Each corpse wore the tattered remains of leather clothing, just trousers and no shirts, feet yet covered with moccasins. A few decorations partially obscured with muck and blood were made from colored porcupine quills; this was not the clothing of those who resided in the duchies.

All of these small details, building readily into a disturbing picture in Marta’s mind, felt curiously beside the point. Her left hand shook as she raised it to her goggles again, flipping through the loupes until she found those of treated calcite. The delicate lenses had cracked and crazed into a thousand tiny rhombic shapes, but even through that she saw the telltale glow that oozed from the bodies, that swirled through the water that touched them and confirmed her worst terror.

The corpses and stream, the stream she’d so greedily drunk from, were alive with Infection. Bright flecks showed on her left hand, which she’d used to scoop water to her mouth. A horrible sort of laugh squeezed from her throat.

She’d survived the most impressive aeroplane crash of her career just long enough to kill herself.

Preorder now! 

#SFWAPro

Categories
movie

Elysium

Finally, finally saw Elysium. Glad I did.

As scifi movies go, I’m honestly fairly pleased with it. Elysium was directed by Neill Blomkamp, the guy who brought us District 9, and it’s easy to see the thematic similarities between the two: haves and have-nots, segregation, abuse of power. District 9 was very much about Apartheid, however. Elysium goes more toward the increasing distance between rich and poor, down to the distribution of healthcare. And of course, there are quite a few very pointed scenes regarding illegal immigration, well-suited perhaps because those movie was set in Los Angeles rather than Johannesburg.

One thing I found very cool about Elysium was just how much Spanish was used in the movie (note: though I have no idea if the Spanish was any good) and how natural it felt. Blomkamp imagined a future Los Angeles with a heavily Hispanic population, which I think made it feel more realistic. (Also made the talk on the space habitat about illegal immigrants and the threat they pose all the more pointed.) Of the major supporting characters, two were played by Brazilian actors and one by a Mexican actor.

Elysium is decent scifi. It asks “what if” and then explores how humanity might change around that development, embracing it or fighting it or using it. I thought the space habitat for which the movie is named was pretty interesting, particularly that it was set up so the atmosphere was kept inside entirely by the rotational force that created the artificial gravity. (Kind of like a miniature Ring World.) Though occasionally some of the scifi elements were also plainly set up to force the plot in a particular direction to stay on message, which is not so good.

 

To be honest, I think the only reason I’m at all disappointed in Elysium is because I’ve watched and loved District 9 and can’t help but compare the two. That doesn’t seem too unfair with their undeniable similarities. While Elysium benefits from a much larger budget than District 9 (and Matt Damon was more than satisfactorily Matt Damon in it)–the special effects are excellent and I didn’t feel they were overdone–it’s also much more heavy-handed and much clumsier in the way it deals with issues. It’s much more of a big budget scifi/action movie than District 9. Which was honestly to its detriment, I think.

SPOILERS

Continue reading “Elysium”
Categories
movie

The World’s End

The Worlds End is the final installment of the “cornetto” trilogy written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. It’s a satisfying end to a set of fabulously hilarious movies.

I don’t make any secret of the fact that Hot Fuzz is my favorite movie ever. (Or as I like to call it: the greatest movie ever made.) I’ll admit, I didn’t like The Worlds End quite as much. But that’s kind of like complaining about the sex because you only had three orgasms instead of five and are still capable of walking afterwards.

There’s a really different tone to this move than there was to the other two. Shaun of the Dead is very much a zombie apocalypse movie, Hot Fuzz is a buddy cop film, but The Worlds End doesn’t fit so neatly into the apocalyptic move (since honestly, most movies in that slice of the genre are actually post-apocalyptic) nor quite into the alien invasion slot. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, because this movie feels much less like it’s film tropes with a side of feelings. The feelings and relationships are the red meat of The World’s End, with the blue-blooded and easily broken not-robots (robot is a word that means slave, yanno, it’s not accurate) as more of the backdrop.

And there was a lot of meat there. I very much enjoyed that it was Nick Frost’s turn to be the competent guy who has it together, with Simon Pegg as the colossal fuck up. There’s so much in the movie about how you can never go home, how you have to move forward with your life, and it makes a compelling case for an idea I’ve believed in for years: there is something seriously, seriously wrong with anyone who believes high school was the best life ever gets. Or, more accurate, there is something seriously wrong with their adult life.

Because the movie is about a set of adults going back to their old home and interacting with their past, there’s a lot of other great stuff in there that just touches my nerd heart. One of the characters interacts with someone who bullied him, and it just about broke my heart for all it was hilarious.  It’s also the reminder of the wild and crazy free-spirited guy/girl who tends to be presented as an ideal in movies (hello, manic pixie dream girl) isn’t necessarily the kind of person with whom you want to be friends. There’s also a few lovely stabs about the homogenization of local culture.

And it’s funny. It’s laugh out-loud funny. (And sometimes cringe in your seat funny when Simon Pegg’s Gary King is being particularly awful.) About the only complaints I have is that I felt like there was a teeny something missing between where we finally see Gary’s crisis and where he ends up, and that I felt like the arguing at the end (you’ll see what I mean when I get there) went on a tad too long for my tastes. But maybe it needed to for Bill Nighy’s excellent closing line as the king of the nobots.

See it. If you liked the other two movies, definitely see it. I’m hoping to go again this weekend. Hopefully with fewer problems getting there.

Because on the way to the Alamo, I had an adventure with my housemate. The kind of adventure I prefer to never have. We were trying to make it to the theater so we could also see Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz beforehand. But instead, my housemate’s car (an automatic) stopped changing gears, and then white smoke began to pour out from under the hood. So that was fun. We managed to pull off into a commercial/light industrial park that literally had nothing but fenced-in lots and had a nail-biting time trying to find somewhere to park the car before it died entirely. Then I remembered HEY I HAVE AAA, and at least we got a free tow back to the apartment. (So yes, I’ll be renewing AAA, it was worth it for that alone.)

The moral of the story, kids? If you know something is busted in your car, don’t procrastinate about fixing it.

Categories
writing

Biweekly(?) writing update #1

Okay, we’ll see if this is going to be a thing. An awful lot of writing stuff seems to be happening to me these days. This covers a bit more than a week, though–just everything that’s happened in my awesome writing life since the last update on July 31.

  1. I have sold a story to Lakeside Circus for their first issue! This is my new record for fastest acceptance ever, at 16 hours. From their post is sounds like issue #1 will be coming out at the end of NOvember. And that issue #1 is currently only about 1/4 full, so if you’re a writerly type you might want to check that out. They pay $.01/word.
  2. Blood in Elk Creek has a cover! Isn’t it purty? The next adventure of Captain Ramos (aka: Captain Ramos is a giant pain in the ass to someone) will be out on 9/6, so less than a month away.bloodinelkcreek-500
  3. The Ugly Tin Orrery was reviewed by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam of Short Story Review. Spoiler: she liked it. The fact that she enjoyed it when she has previously not liked steampunk fills me with the sort of glee I normally reserve for puppies.
  4. In other Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam love stories, Comes the Huntsman also made it to her list of top 10 fairy tale short stories on SF Signal.

  5. I well be participating in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading at Worldcon! The reading is at 10 AM on Sunday you should come see me.

Also, WANTED:

  1. I’d like to try start getting some guest blogging going. If you’re interested in putting a post of yours in this modest little space, I’d be happy to have you (WITHIN REASON). Just drop me a line on twitter (@katsudonburi) or at katsuhiro at gmail dot com.
  2. My ravenous ego demands more reviews, because the first two have been so awesomesauce. MORE REVIEWS I SAY. If you have a book review blog or column, I will make it rain digital ARCs for you. Or, you know, politely send one to your inbox all while showering you with kisses from across the internet.

#SFWAPro

Categories
rants

I Hate Tipping

I really wish we’d just get rid of tipping in restaurants and go to paying servers an actual, living wage. I haven’t been a fan of the practice ever since I went to other countries where tipping isn’t the norm or isn’t the main source of income and saw that it’s something that actually works. And I just got thinking about it more today because of this article from Slate.

As an aside, I’ve often been informed that our service is superior in America because our servers have to hustle for tips. Having eaten out in Japan (no tipping), Germany, Australia, and England (places where tipping happens but is not the primary source of income), my totally anecdotal experience says: not really. I’ve had both good service and bad service in every country in which I’ve ever had a meal. I’ve had courteous servers and rude ones, dedicated servers and ones who obviously could not give less of a shit. The only true difference I’ve noticed is the pacing of the meal varies quite a bit outside of America. And when I mentioned that, I was informed by my German coworkers that it has nothing to do with servers not hustling. They just think Americans are fucking mental (I’m paraphrasing here) for making our meals as short and fast as we do. So there’s that.

Anyway, I’ve now had a waitress as a housemate for nearly half a year, and that’s only served to increase my complete dislike for the way we deal with tipping in America. Here’s why I don’t like it:

1) It makes budgeting very difficult for the people who have to live on tips. With no set hourly wage (beyond the laughable tipped employee minimum that is generally under or way under $5/hour) servers don’t know exactly how much money they’re going to bring in on a given day, let alone a given week or month. If you bring in enough that any fluctuations are just gravy, that’s probably not so bad. But I get the distinct impression that’s not the case across the board.

1a) As a side note, since servers are paid so little hourly, that makes it relatively low cost for managers to overstaff their servers, which means that each server has fewer tables, gets fewer tips, makes less money. So it may be good for you because you’re the server’s only table so she’s very attentive, but it sucks a lot for your waitress.

2) It punishes servers for things outside their control. Okay, sure, if you see your server ignoring your empty iced tea glasses for twenty minutes while he stands by the kitchen and texts his friends, I suppose that’s fair enough. But I’ve seen servers get shorted on tips because the food came out slowly (generally the kitchen’s fault), because a hamburger/steak/etc wasn’t cooked to the desired degree (also quite possibly the kitchen’s fault), or because the server was slow because she was trying to run the entire floor herself (likely the manager’s fault for not scheduling properly). Which functionally means the server is getting screwed out of money for mistakes made by someone who is paid hourly wages or a salary. That feels profoundly unfair to me.

3) People just don’t tip enough, period. It appalls me that today, in 2013, there are still people who think it’s acceptable to go to a restaurant if they can pay for their meal but not for the tip. There is no excuse for that. But on the other hand, it would be wonderful if all prices just automatically included a decent tip (hm, like a service charge!) so you knew exactly how much you’d be paying before you went into a meal.

4) I don’t buy that it makes service better or motivates servers. If nothing else, if your server has busted their ass and still gotten fucked out of a couple of tips by a misbehaving kitchen or stingy diners, I would be seriously shocked if they felt any motivation to hustle after that. Which will then just perpetuate a viscious cycle of bad service and bad tips and bad service and bad tips.

5) It does something weird to the power dynamic. The server is employed by the restaurant owner. They should be getting paid the majority of their wages by the restaurant owner. By having them work for tips, in a way that puts the server in a position of being more employed by the customers than by the owner. Which puts them in an incredibly bad position, say, if a customer asks them to break the restaurant rules. Maintain the rules and piss off the customer and then get a bad tip? Or break the rules, maybe get a good tip, but risk being fired or causing trouble for your employer? Yikes.

6) Basically, what that article said about tip disparities along lines of gender, race, etc. It’s shitty and unfair to put someone’s livelihood in the hands of people who might be on a power trip or let their personal prejudices determine how far they’ll open their wallets. At least when you decide you’re going to be an artist, unless you’re totally blind you go in under the full knowledge you’ll be depending upon the kindness of strangers. Servers are supposedly people with regular jobs. (And often, hah, they are artists trying to supplement their kindness of strangers income with more kindness of strangers income. Awesome.)

7) Frankly, I think it sucks for consumers as well. While I like the feeling of leaving a big tip and hoping I’ve made someone’s day, you know what I don’t like? Feeling horrible and guilty about all the assholes that tip like shit. Particularly if I’m in a big party. I’ve been forced to make up for what I feel is the stinginess of friends and acquaintances more times than I’d like to recall.

For fuck’s sake, just pay these people a living wage and let me eat my hamburger without wondering if my server is going to make enough money tonight to justify the gas he spent to get to the restaurant.

(Until then, I’m still going to keep tipping 20% minimum. It makes the math easier.)

Categories
geology

So you wanted to know about my research?

Now you can read the whole enchilada for free! It’s a steamy but heart-wrenching story about a river and the course of its life as the world heats up and the mammals become ever tinier and more cute. Sandstones! Siltstones! Mudstones! Who will be swept away next? Will I need dental work from all those rocks I ate in Bremen? Will I overcome the cat vomit yellow sandstone or will it succeed in ruining my life? The answers can be found inside:

Sedimentary and climatic response to the Second Eocene Thermal Maximum in the McCullough Peaks Area, Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, U.S.A.
by Acks, Rachael, M.S., UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER, 2013, 81 pages
Abstract:

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was followed by a lesser hyperthermal event, called ETM2, at ∼53.7 Ma (Zachos et al., 2010). The carbon isotope excursion and global temperature increases for ETM2 were approximately half those of the PETM (Stap et al., 2010). The paleohydrologic response to this event in the continental interior of western North America is less well understood than the response to PETM warming. Although ETM2 is better known from marine than continental strata, the hyperthermal has been identified from outcrops of the alluvial Willwood Formation from the Deer Creek and Gilmore Hill sections of the McCullough Peaks area in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming (Abels et al., 2012). The presence of ETM2 in Willwood Formation strata provides a rare opportunity to examine local continental climactic and sedimentary response to this hyperthermal.

Core drilled at Gilmore Hill was described and analyzed geochemically. The core consists of paleosols formed on mudrocks that are interbedded with siltstones and sandstones. Carbon isotope analysis of carbonate nodules from paleosols in the core shows that the top of the core, below a prominent yellow sandstone, most likely records the very beginning of the carbon isotope excursion that marks ETM2 (Maibauer and Bowen, unpublished data).The rest of the CIE was likely either not recorded due to sandstone deposition or removed by erosion prior to the deposition of the sandstone.

Analysis of bulk oxides in the paleosols using the methods of Sheldon et al. (2002) and Nordt and Driese (2010b) provides quantitative estimates of precipitation through the core section. The estimates reveal drying over the ∼15m leading up to ETM2. Red and brown paleosols, attributed to generally dry conditions, dominate the entire section below the onset of ETM2 and confirm drier conditions. In contrast, thick purple paleosols are associated with ETM2 at the Deer Creek site and suggest wetter conditions during most of the ETM2 interval. The prominent yellow sandstone at the top of the Gilmore Hill core was probably deposited during those wetter climate conditions.

The core displays distinct changes in stratigraphic architecture: the bottom ∼100m is mudrock-dominated and the top ∼100m is sandstone dominated. Several PETM studies have suggested that sediment coarsening in continental basins in the US and Spain developed in response to precipitation changes associated with global warming. Analysis of the Gilmore Hill core’s stratigraphic architecture in conjunction with carbon isotope and precipitation data shows that the prominent sandstone in the position of ETM2 was not caused by climate change. The sandstone is the uppermost part of the sandstone-rich interval whose base underlies ETM2 by more than 50m. This study shows that the shift from mudrock- to sandstone-dominated stratigraphy at Gilmore Hill, and possibly throughout the McCullough Peaks area, was not caused by climactic change associated with ETM2. While studies of PETM sections have suggested that the hyperthermal caused sediment coarsening in several different basins including the Bighorn Basin (e.g., Schmitz and Pujalte, 2007; Smith et al., 2008b; Foreman et al., 2012), this study suggests that the lesser magnitude ETM2 did not cross the necessary threshold to provoke a sedimentological response in the Bighorn Basin.

Categories
movie

Byzantium

“It is still a fact that the day you are born is the day you are most likely to be murdered.“

There is a lot from Byzantium that sticks out in my mind, but that line is perhaps the strongest. I’m not even certain why, but it feels right when you roll it up with the rest of the bloody meat that makes up that movie. Yeah, write this on the calendar. I found a vampire movie I liked.

Visually, it’s a beautiful movie. It goes from period piece to modern day, and both have their beautiful and disturbingly gritty sides. It’s really two stories running in parallel and explaining each other. In one story, we find out how Eleanor, and before her Clara (her mother) became vampires. This in turn explains what they’re running from in modern times, and their fucked-up family dynamic. And on top of that is Eleanor’s story of breaking free from her mother, reconciling her desire to the tell the truth with the necessity of lying, and falling in love.

Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan were both excellent as Clara and Eleanor respectively. I was already impressed by Ronan in Hanna. Honestly, I felt the only shortcoming of the entire movie was Caleb Landry Jones as Frank, Eleanor’s love interest. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything to that character, let alone any chemistry between him and Eleanor. I also honestly had a hard time understand Jones when he spoke sometimes… and I was just never able to grasp Frank as a character. He just didn’t seem consistent in how he acted from scene to scene, sometimes too young and sometimes much too old and… bleh.

But I really liked all the bits that didn’t involve Frank. It was excellent. And now I’m going to get a bit more in to why I’m still thinking about this movie, so you can consider it spoilery. But the following ramble is exactly why I think this was a good movie. I love it when movies keep me thinking and interested. (As opposed to keep me thinking about how much they pissed me off hello Oblivion.)

SPOILERS

Continue reading “Byzantium”