Stuff on a cloudy day

[starlady]

First, Dreamwidth stuff! I'm fascinated by the new site stats page and by the multiple accounts model proposals. The latter sounds like it could be pretty cool.

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SF3 has withdrawn Elizabeth Moon's invitation to be a Guest of Honor at WisCon 35. Ugh, finally.

cofax7 has some pertinent comments on the definition of "censorship" for some of the anonymous commenters on the WisCon blog. The post also mentions the case of Juan Williams' recent dismissal from NPR over Islamophobic comments made on FOX News. My reaction is pretty much the same: ugh, finally. Unfortunately, I cherish my doubts as to whether this will have any effect on NPR's de facto policy of general pandering to the right, and I think that WisCon's decision to do the right thing and disinvite Moon is also only a beginning.

Also, Cat Valente's post and N.K. Jemisin's post are both worth reading.

In much happier convention news, I have just registered for the first annual FOGcon (Friends of Genre Convention). It will be held in the fair City by the Bay, San Francisco, this March, and its theme this year is the the City in SF/F, with Jeff Vandermeer and Pat Murphy as GoHs. Its organizers' stated goals are to create a sort of ReaderCon West, and I'm very much looking forward to joining the discussions. Registration is $55 USD until November 1.

You can also register for Sirens 2011 for $150 at this link until November 1.

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And finally, while I'm fairly confident the warning is superfluous, as a reminder: this journal is a private entity, and I will not allow hate speech on it. Comments I consider hate speech will be deleted, and commenters will be banned.

Comments

[seekingferret]

Huh... I liked Juan Williams on NPR, in general. His book on Thurgood Marshall actually was really good at exploring the divisions in the civil rights community that swirled around Marshall. But he did have a funny way of trying to straddle the fence, and yeah, those comments about Muslims aren't just unacceptable, they're headscratchingly unacceptable. He has to know that if you substitute Muslim for black in that sentence, you produce a statement that he'd be first in line to condemn. He's not that dumb. So I don't know how he could make that comment.

[starlady]

Yeah, he is a smart dude and I did generally like what he said in his NPR appearances. But he's been providing commentary on FOX News for like two years now, and a lot of what he said there has been much more questionable.

So I don't know how he could make that comment.

I think we are in the realm of unthinking here, sadly.