A new faculty member faces his demons
Category Archives: rants
It’s Just Too Hard to Learn, I Guess
I have the nicest, most analytic and open-minded set of online friends possible, but there is one topic on which I can always start an argument with someone. All I have to do is post something against demonizing groups of … Continue reading
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Boilerplate-R-Us
I can’t keep up with these new rules, but apparently if you ever expect to denounce/excuse/ignore one guy’s sexual abuse, you must make sure you’re on record as denouncing/excusing/ignoring every other one. I was on a research vessel once where … Continue reading
The Anatomy of a Jack-ass Argument
My students were analyzing a case study and I went over to bother them, the way you do. “Here’s my hypothesis,” one of them said. I recognized my own words coming out of her mouth. I ask students to form … Continue reading
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Against Political Criticism
If I wanted to write political arguments, I could. But I write fiction instead, because I think political arguments are incomplete and one-sided. They’re simplistic answers, and the only way you can get to such answers is by ignoring half … Continue reading
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I Hate What I Just Read
Someone I trust recommended I read … I’m not naming it, because I see no point in tarnishing somebody’s work just because it did everything I absolutely hate. Besides, reading it was valuable because I hadn’t recognized that I hated … Continue reading
Posted in oh so cliched, rants, reading
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You’ve told me how, now show me why
In the last two weeks alone, I saw three articles on blogs I follow about how to write realistic female characters. But how many of those bloggers review books that contain realistic female characters? This seems to be a pattern. … Continue reading
Posted in all right already!, characters, rants, writing
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Shop talk, AARRGGHH!
I spent my entire life not caring about The New Republic, or The National Review, or whatever it was called. But now something or other has happened to it, and that’s upset a lot of journalists, and my feedly has … Continue reading
Posted in all right already!, in the news, my day job rocks, rants, real life
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A Rant About Followers
Someone reposted a few paragraphs from Quinae Moongazer’s very excellent essay on toxicity and abuse in online communities. They just happened to be paragraphs about the backlog of unpublished blog posts she had written: When I mention the icebox of … Continue reading
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Let’s Outsource Breathing While We’re At It
Here’s the most irritating quote I’ve seen this year. “Do not publish any author who does not understand or is disinclined to co-operate with the notion that they are your most important salesperson, no matter how important what they have … Continue reading
Posted in publication, rants, real life, Uncategorized
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But This May All Be Wrong…
I read an award-winning fantasy novel for tonight’s book club meeting. It won one of the many awards given out by the fan community, and that is only right because the book is basically about the fan community. In fact, … Continue reading
