Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 110

Another Lovely Eruption Photo...

Another Lovely Photo...

Photo of the Current Eruption in Iceland

I have put this in because I like volcanoes, and I like Iceland, and I think this blog needs more images.

A 1918 Image of Leon Trotsky Slaying the Capitalist Dragon

Note the top hat on the dragon.

This is from an essay by Chris Hedges in Alternet:Aleksan...

This is from an essay by Chris Hedges in Alternet:

Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: "We think we are the doctors. We are the disease." All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does...

Paul Krugman on Science Fiction

From the Firedoglake Book Salon

...What drew me to science fiction, more than four decades ago – before I got into economics, and in fact part of the reason I went into economics – was a certain kind of possibility: the creation of fictional worlds, different from our own but not too different, as a way to play with ideas about who we are and where we're going. And I do mean "play" – not being too serious, mixing ideas about society, economics, politics, and so on with derring-do and romance i...

This Is Awesome

At the beginning of October, Renewable Energy Magazine reported that Solar Roadways had been granted €69,000 by the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) to develop a prototype for generating electricity by resurfacing road networks with solar panels. We decided to contact Solar Roadways founder and the investor behind this technology, Scott Brusaw, to find out more.

The Solar Roadway™ is a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon. The idea is to replace all curren...

Manifesto

I just posted the following on facebook. When I was done I realized I had produced a manifesto about writing, pretty good when you consider the system only allows 430 characters per post. Which is the reason for all the short paragraphs...

Eleanor Arnason is up and drinking coffee. My agent (now deceased) told me that Tor refused to buy my Ring of Swords trilogy, because there was too much coffee drinking. They bought the first volume, then turned down the sequel, which will come out from Aqu...

Peter Watts

Via facebook -- the Canadian science fiction writer Peter Watts has been convicted of noncompliance with an order from a US customs guard. He did not lie down on the ground when the guard ordered him to, but kept asking, "What is this about?"

Per Watts, the guard had already hit him in the face, and he was feeling a little dazed.

The crime is a felony. He could be in prison for two years.

He was not coming into the US, for what it's worth, but was leaving.

A disturbing story. These kinds of thin...

Iran

From an article in Counterpunch:

When most Americans think about the recent upheavals in Iran, it is about marches demanding democracy and challenging the June 12 presidential election. The face of those protests is the "Green Movement"—so called because its supporters wear green—that put millions of people into the streets of Teheran and other large cities throughout the country.

Largely unseen, and rarely reported on, however, are thousands of strikes, slow downs and sit-ins by workers...