5 things because bigotry isn't cool

1. My fellow Americans, please stop with the logical fallacy inherent in blaming all Muslims for 9/11, or saying all Muslims are potential terrorists, or any of the other horrid bigoted things non-Muslim Americans have been saying for the past ten years. It's like blaming all mathematicians for the Unabomber--or all right-of-center Americans for the Oklahoma City bombings, for that matter. It's ignorant and ugly and I'm really damn tired of it.

2. The First Amendment means no one has the right to make you shut up, no matter how much they hate what you're saying. It doesn't mean you get a free pass to say whatever you want without any responsibility for the consequences. It doesn't mean people have to agree with you, and it doesn't mean they have to suck it up and let you have the last word on the subject, either.

3. I heard a white man, a self-described Alaskan "constitutionalist" (the scare-quotes are mine, not his), explaining his politics yesterday. His answer to everything, of which he seemed very proud, was "Kill the liberals." He was not noticeably joking.

4. Glenn Greenwald on the firing of Juan Williams (link via Saladin Ahmed).

5. Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things.

5 fiction-related things

Four of them are the novels I have successfully read in the last week:

1.) matociquala, Range of Ghosts (in draft): Rocked my socks.

2.) maryrobinette, Shades of Milk and Honey: you probably need to like Jane Austen, or Austenesque novels, to fully appreciate this one, but the magic system is just awesomely clever. It dovetails seamlessly into the social history in a way that reminds me of papersky's Tooth and Claw (no, there are no dragons).

3.) cmpriest, Boneshaker and (4.) cmpriest, Dreadnought: I love her crazy alternate America with zombies and dirigibles and all the rest of it. And three cheers for competent women as protagonists!

5.) This week I have also given to someone else to read complete drafts of (a.) the windship story that still doesn't have a title, (b.) "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek," and (c.) "Hollywood and Vine," along with sending out "Impostors" (Embarrassingly, with the title misspelled because I've only just now figured out it's -or rather than -er. Damn you, English language!), "Hôtel Image", and "Coyote Gets His Own back." Next up would seem to be "(Un)fallen." I have no idea how to fix it, but maybe rereading it will help.

It's a theory.