Author: Glenn Hauman

Some Gentle Advice for Authors

Unsolicited: Some Gentle Advice for Authors – Gawker:

Don’t:

* suck up to your editor while simultaneously being a dick to her assistant, who’s doing all the real work anyway. They’ll compare notes, and you won’t like the results.
* second-guess or nag, even if you totally know what you’re talking about. Run your issues by your agent. If it’s necessary to bring them up, she will. If it’s not, she’ll protect you from yourself.
* make excuses about missing a deadline.
* make excuses about missing a deadline via a 1000 word blog post about the horrors of writer’s block.
* offer rebuttals to every one of your editor’s suggestions. Either make them, or don’t. Your editor doesn’t really care which, as long as she doesn’t have to hear about it.
* expect your editor or publicist to have an hour to spend on the phone with you every day. Want her to work harder on behalf of your book? Leave her alone, so she can get back to doing so.
* send ten emails with ten different questions in them. Wait until you have ten questions, and then send the email. Or better yet, delete it.
* imagine that your book is the only thing on your editor’s plate.
* call constantly fretting about sales in the weeks just after your book has been published.
* call constantly fretting about your Amazon ranking, which you should KNOW is almost completely meaningless.
* call constantly.
* call.

(Via P&T (or is it T&P? Better make it that, or everyone will think I’m talking about Penn & Teller.).)

Voter Registration Deadlines

Remember, your vote this year could very well determine whether or not Dennis Hastert, a man who concealed information about Mark Foley hitting on underage boys, stays as Speaker of the House.

From MyDD:

Voter Registration Deadlines

by Matt Stoller, Wed Oct 04, 2006 at 05:23:22 PM EST

I had this data on voter registration deadlines lying around, so I figured I’d put it out there. Please note that some of these dates are postmark dates and some of them are dates by which the forms must be in the Secretary of State’s office.

Also, here are two easy voter registration tools. If you use the first link, you will be counted as someone who registered to vote because of the net neutrality issue, and the Save the Internet coalition will be able to brag about how many voters we have on our side to politicians when trying to convince them to support net neutrality. If you use the second link, it’ll just be a regular voter registration.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/=netvoter 3

http://www.govote.org/?t1=120

Alabama         October 27
Alaska          October 8
Arizona         October 9
California      October 23
Colorado        October 10
Connnecticut    October 24
Florida         October 10
Georgia         October 10
Illinois        October 10
Indiana         October 10
Iowa            October 28
Kansas          October 23
Kentucky        October 10
Louisiana       October 9
Maine           October 17
Maryland        October 17
Massachusetts   October 18
Michigan        October 10
Minnesota       pre-reg. October 17
Missouri        October 11
Montana         October 10
Nebraska        October 20
Nevada          October 7
New Jersey      October 17
New Mexico      October 10
New York        October 13
North Carolina  October 13
Ohio            October 10
Oregon          October 17
Pennsylvania    October 10
Rhode Island    October 17
South Carolina  October 7
South Dakota    October 23
Tennessee       October 8
Texas           October 10
Utah            October 10
Vermont         October 28
Virginia        October 10
Washington      October 8
West Virginia   October 17
Wisconsin       October 19

If you’re already registered, ask your friends to register to vote; you’d be surprised how many people aren’t registered.

(Via .)

Shortchanged

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town:

In August, two Princeton economists released a study titled “Stature and Status: Height, Ability, and Labor Market Outcomes.” The aim of the paper, by Anne Case and Christina Paxson, was to attempt to explain why tall people generally earn more than short people. The question is not a new one. More than a hundred years ago, social scientists established the correlation between height and socioeconomic status, and they’ve been trying to solve the enigma of what has been called the “height premium” ever since. In 1915, a study found bishops to be taller than preachers and sales managers to be taller than salesmen. A 1968 paper identified peer perception as a cause of the earning discrepancy. Separate studies in 1993 and 2006 concluded that discrimination is a key factor. Case and Paxson’s work presents another explanation: On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter.

The study was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonpartisan think tank in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the paper’s first week on the N.B.E.R.’s Web site, it was downloaded by a handful of academics and government types. The authors received e-mails from fellow-economists who sent brief accolades such as “This is great” and “Fascinating” and “I didn’t know this” and “WOW”—the resonant pings of quiet kudos in academe.

A week later, Reuters published a story on the paper under the headline “TALLER PEOPLE ARE SMARTER—STUDY.” Within days, Case and Paxson had received dozens and dozens of e-mails from outraged readers. “I have no idea if it was the fact that women had written the study, but half of the ones I got were from short men,” Case said the other day. “Some of them were actually obscene.” Most of the e-mails were hostile: “Shame on you!” scolded one man (4″ 9′). “I find your hypothesis insulting, prejudicial, inflammatory and bigoted,” said another (5″ 6′). “You have loaded a gun and pointed it at the vertically challenged man’s head” (no height given). “I want to thank you and your colleague for perpetuating the crusade against short people” (5″ 6′). “On a personal note it was very nice to be reminded that I really am a loser and will never be held in ‘high’ esteem by society” (5″ 4′). “LEAVE THIS ALONE YOU’RE NOT HELPING ANYBODY,” another read.

Against Entropy

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days–
Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke.
The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

The above was written, completely off the cuff, in a blog comment by John M. Ford, to whom we must now affix the adjective late to go along with the already applied great.

He was the definition of diversity in writing. He wrote the single best poem about September 11th, 110 Stories, which compelled me to take a month and make a multimedia version, and he was touched that I’d done so. He wrote the Star Trek novels that both Trekkies and militant non-trekkies love. He won awards for his RPG sourcebooks. I performed in a live musical revue he wrote, “Another Part Of The Trilogy”, which skewered every fantasy trope with wit and aplomb and almost on-key. I consistently nominated in every web poll I could find that had a “Best Commenter” award.

The best places to find out more about him are this Making Light post and his CafePress store, where you can see some of his brilliance at work/play.

And I’m sad that I never got the chance to ask him to write a Munden’s Bar story, and never find another brilliant gem from him.

One more for the road ahead, also from Mike:

THE FINAL CONNECTION

Why are there so many songs about hearses?
The way to the uttermost side,
Hearses go fast, and traffic parts for them,
But who’s in a hurry to ride?
Wagons and roads are an eloquent metaphor,
Gentling and straightening the way,
Everyone takes that last exit to Brooklyn,
Home at the end of the day

Remember the start of Magnificent Seven?
Steve and Yul drove to Boot Hill,
Just a small fable of folks being equal,
And going to sleep where you will.
Tickets and transfers and waiting for answers
At something so common yet strange,
Someday you’ll ride it, the last train to Clarksville,
All classes, all stations . . . all change.

Look out the window and wave to the strangers
What do they see in the glass?
Up ahead, can you see, we’ve stopped for Emily,
There will be more as we pass.
Savor the journey, however you’re going,
It’s been your whole life to get there,
Someday I’ll travel, without reservations,
I hope I’ve two coins for my fare.

It’s not that bad– but it’s not that good either

Wired News: One Million Ways to Die:

Comparing official mortality data with the number of Americans who have been killed inside the United States by terrorism since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma reveals that scores of threats are far more likely to kill an American than any terrorist — at least, statistically speaking.

In fact, your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is.

With that in mind, here’s a handy ranking of the various dangers confronting America, based on the number of mortalities in each category throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from best available data).

S E V E R E
Driving off the road: 254,419
Falling: 146,542
Accidental poisoning: 140,327
H I G H
Dying from work: 59,730
Walking down the street: 52,000.
Accidentally drowning: 38,302
E L E V A T E D
Killed by the flu: 19,415
Dying from a hernia: 16,742
G U A R D E D
Accidental firing of a gun: 8,536
Electrocution: 5,171
L O W
Being shot by law enforcement: 3,949
Terrorism: 3147
Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554

(Via BoingBoing.)

One note: by selecting the time frame that they did, they added a lot of additional “other threats” that probably don’t belong there. If they did it over 5 years, or one year, etc. we’d get very different numbers.

President Torture

I was going to write something about this, but Jim Macdonald beat me to it:

Making Light: President Torture:

President Bush had a press conference yesterday. The first thing that struck me about it was the angry, hectoring tone that he took. What was Bush so angry about?

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Questioning of suspected terrorists “won’t go forward” unless Congress clarifies a U.S. standard for the treatment and interrogation of detainees, President Bush warned Friday.

The remarks appeared to be an attempt to put Congress on the spot about the future of a program that Bush says has helped thwart terrorism.

Yes, friends, Bush was saying, in almost so many words, “If you don’t make torture legal, I’m going to stop torturing people!”

Personally, I don’t see a down side to that.

I was going to say “That’s a feature, not a bug” myself. And only a bounder would suggest that the President of the United States would just hold his breath until he either turned blue or got his way. Besides, I think GWB has experienced enough oxygen deprivation to his brain for a lifetime, don’t you?