S.C. Butler's Blog, page 4

Sam-Who-Likes-Som-Things - Zombieland

Definitely one of the better zombie pics out there. For a while, during the Bill Murray scenes in the middle, I thought the flick might transcend the genre completely. But it didn't. Still. a fun movie.

One Down, One to Go

My father's 80th birthday was three weeks ago. My mother's will be in two weeks. So of course we celebrate the landmark events in between the two - today. My sisters are in charge of everything else, but I'm in charge of the birthday cakes. Homemade, old-fashioned, birthday cakes. My mother is the easy one - angel food with lemon buttercream frosting. Made that yesterday evening. But my father gets the chocolate cake with fudge frosting. It's the frosting that's the hard part, boiled ...

Sam-Who-Likes-Some-Things - The City and the City

Another book that could have fallen on either side of the ledger. I am not a Mieville fan, and the only reason I read this was because a lot of fellow travelers said it wasn't a typical Mieville book. They're right. It isn't. It's far more disciplined. By Mieville standards, there's very little showing off.

Except for the premise, I really enjoyed it. A good detective story, well told. The ending surprised me, but only because it was the very pat ending that I'd already guessed...

Waterloo For The Right

A reasonable Republican's take on last night's vote.

My Lunacon Schedule

No, No, Really; That's TMI

Friday 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM

How much is too much when it comes to a story? Some authors have tens or even hundreds of pages of notes, but is that all really necessary? What do authors need to know that their readers don't? How much do they actually need to know and how much can be faked?

Sam Butler, Leigh Grossman, Daniel Grotta, Glenn Hauman, Jane T. Sibley, Ian Randal Strock [M:]

Creating Your Own Sandbox
Saturday 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
World-building in your...

Currency War With China?

Krugman gets it right. Money quote:

"It's true that if China dumped its U.S. assets the value of the dollar would fall against other major currencies, such as the euro. But that would be a good thing for the United States, since it would make our goods more competitive and reduce our trade deficit. On the other hand, it would be a bad thing for China, which would suffer large losses on its dollar holdings. In short, right now America has China over a barrel, not the other way around."

They'd f...

Write What You Don't Know

Latest post is up at SFNovelists.

Fascinating Post About Gondor and Byzantium

Check it out.

http://superversive.livejournal.com/8....

Movement Conservatives Are Classic Marxists

I've been thinking this for a while. Freddy deBoer says it very well:

Whatever its valuable insights, Marxism has this elementary failing; it is a corrosion of human life to relegate all behavior to the battle for resources and the wages of political war. Yet this is a seduction that movement conservatism has fallen prey to almost entirely.

Any Progressives in Congress Who Don't Vote For THe Health Care Bill…

…are going to end up in Republican Hell when they die, because that's what they're vote will effectively be.

Let them play with the 2000 Naderites.