Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 251

Taking on the Culture of Safetyism by Amanda S. Green

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*Sorry — mostly to Amanda — this is so late.  Have been out of house: cabinets. Making apartment downstairs self-sufficient… stuff. -SAH*

Taking on the Culture of Safetyism by Amanda S. Green

I don’t know about the rest of you, but a very large part of me wishes I’d been hiding under a rock, deep in the back of a cave. The media, which long ago forgot it was supposed to report the news and not frame it, much less try to make it (up), worked overtime to help destroy a man willing to step up a...

Thoughts on Explorers and Pioneers— Past and (Possibly) Future – by Hank Davis

[image error] Thoughts on Explorers and Pioneers—
Past and (Possibly) Future – by Hank Davis

Let’s get Columbus out of the way first. But don’t worry, he’ll be back for a curtain call.
Two things: first, Columbus did not decide, against the prevailing thinking of his day, that the Earth was round and go off in three little ships to find a new route to Asia.
(Speaking of which, is there still anyone who thinks that Columbus set off to discover America, or even a new land? In the seventh grade, I actually h...

Business From The Wrong End

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There is a lot of talk about evil corporations.  But enough about google.

On the other hand, maybe not, because google is part and parcel of what is going on.  Its pattern is disturbingly the pattern of how wheels are coming off American businesses.  And the failure mode is more and more the failure mode I’ve been observing for my own industry, or at least my own industry as it was.

First a clarification: I was born in late 62.  I never considered myself a boomer.  And before you scream that...

The Creature In The Garden

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I am very sorry to be dissing Rodgers and Hammerstein and South Pacific, but they were out of their raving minds when they wrote “You’ve got to be carefully taught.”

I woke up with the son running through my head and my thought superimposed on it “That’s not how this works.  That’s not how any of this works.”

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught

[Verse 2]
You’ve got...

The Myth That Kills – A Blast From The Past from October 2012

*Sorry to do a blast from the past.  There’s stuff going on.  Nothing bad.  Well, mildly bad as apparently minor-surgery-the-saga will have to be repeated in six months.  But mostly stuff I have to get done/finished/written that is getting in the way of even having a blog idea.  And, well, this seems apropos. – SAH*

The Myth That Kills – A Blast From The Past from October 2012

I’m very afraid this is another of those posts that will get me accused of being a “gender traitor.”

That’s just fine...

Outsourced Violence

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Yesterday someone posted a meme with — I suspect she’s an actress, from some of the comments, but you know, I wouldn’t know actors/actresses (honestly, changing it all to the masculine word in a profession where you use your body and appearance is f*cking insane, and I’m done with the corruption of language) if one bit me on the flesh part of the behind — with a woman with a quote from her saying something about how it’s a good thing if the current climate makes every man afraid of every wom...

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

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So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a ne...

Alive, I swear

Or the next best thing.
This week has to end.  Actually the whole month can end already.

Bob Woodward’s “Fire” is more like smoke and fractured mirrors by Amanda S. Green

[image error] Bob Woodward’s “Fire” is more like smoke and fractured mirrors by  Amanda S. Green

This has been a week. Between personal and professional demands on my time, not to mention the circus that’s been happening in D.C, finding a topic to blog about shouldn’t be difficult. The problem is that anything I chose would see my electronics be put in danger. The accusations against Judge Kavanaugh drive me up a wall. I’m tired of trial by innuendo and conviction by media. I’m sick of watching the DNC se...

The All Powerful Machines

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It’s probably as impossible for me to explain to you young’uns what it was like to talk or think about computers in the seventies, as it is to explain what it was like growing up during the cold war “waiting for the hammer to fall.” (Or how convinced everyone was that the communists would win because they were more efficient.)

I grew up reading stuff like Martin Cadin’s God Machine, and RUR’s robots, so of course I knew that machines could achieve full consciousness and rule us all.

It wasn’...