Month: March 2005

History for Dummies – The troubling popularity of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. By David Greenberg: “Several weeks ago, a history book called The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, by Thomas E. Woods Jr., a hitherto unknown assistant professor at Suffolk County Community College in New York, appeared on the New York Times paperback best-seller chart. User-friendly in its layout, the book is chock-full of pull-quotes, subheads, bulleted lists, short sentences, and two- and three-sentence paragraphs. It presents a brisk tour of U.S. history from Colonial to Clintonian times, filtered through a lens of far-right dogma, circa 1939. It’s History for Dummies meets John T. Flynn. It’s published, naturally, by Regnery.

Lots of other folks have bashed on this book. However, I’m not going to bash on the book, but on Woods. And Suffolk County Community College– or as we called it when I lived out there, the 13th grade.

There are those who said that Suffolk was actually hard to get into. Well, that might have been true once– but not since they put the traffic light on Nicholls in, now you can make that left turn with no problems. As an institute of higher learning, it appeals to those without much cash or ambition, and it leaves quite a bit to be desired.

Woods has his own problems. I refer you all to the works of Professor Eric Muller (particularly on Woods and the League of the South) and Ed Cone. And I’ll bet cash that sooner or later, Bill Maher will have a trademark infringement suit pending.

If you don’t know what you want, it’s probably sleep.

I’ll probably get around to posting on the phun Philly trip tomorrow.

See Continued Contents

Due to obvious insanity, the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society (PSFS) has invited me to speak at their regular meeting tomorrow, 3/11.

They tell me I can choose any topic, so I’m thinking “Viagra and broadsword imagery in contemporary fantasy” or “Alternate Histories: what if Bush won the 2000 election?”, but I’m open to suggestions. Any topic ideas, post them in comments.

I was interviewd in the Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper, about Creative Couplings and the wedding between Esther and Khor.

This wedding, however, marks the first time that a Klingon and a Jew have married– and they have chosen to do so in a predominantly Jewish ceremony.

There are errors in the article, mainly in spelling; and I wish they’d quoted Aaron– but they spell our names right, at least.

I also wih they’d talked a bit about intermarriage– odd point: everybody involved (Aaron, Keith, David, and myself) either has or had a mixed faith marriage. And yes, that includes the rabbi.

Via Metafilter by way of WHAT IS THE WAR?

Tzahal is finally taking steps against a too long ignored threat to Israel, fantasy role-playing gamers.

Does the Israel Defense Force believe incoming recruits and soldiers who play Dungeons and Dragons are unfit for elite units? Ynetnews has learned that 18-year-olds who tell recruiters they play the popular fantasy game are automatically given low security clearance.

“They’re detached from reality and suscepitble to influence,” the army says.

Sure, D & D players are “detached from reality,” as opposed to those who believe that a three thousand year-old tribal religious text should be treated as an enforceable deed of land ownership. I guess there’s good crazy and bad crazy, at least as far as the IDF is concerned.

SFRevu Interview

A few days ago I e-mailed several friends a Salon.com essay by Afghanian-American Tamim Ansary, urging us not to blame the starving people of Afghanistan for the actions of the Taliban that crushes them or the terrorists it shelters among them. One respondent agreed, but said the terrorists themselves and their supporters should be “stamped out like cockroaches.” I emphatically agreed.

Today Jef Raskin, the man who thought up the Macintosh, responded. “Stamp them out like cockroaches? No. Capture suspects and try them like humans. We have had too much treating humans like cockroaches.”