I think I might want to be an American. I don’t say this easily. The acid shit-soup aftertaste of the Cheney administration still burbles at the backs of our throats; deregulated dominoes continue to topple the world over; Rush Limbaugh is yet taken seriously by an alarmingly large army of devotees. And yet, I can’t […]
Archive for rant
Ogling Obama, Defending Dubya
It’s pretty hard to escape a feeling of pervasive optimism today. We have witnessed perhaps the first-ever presidential inaugural address to contain the phrase “data and statistics”. We heard Obama add “nonbelievers” to the usual Christian-Jew-Muslim litany trotted out in deference to the diversity of the melting pot. We heard the most powerful noncorporate person […]
This is the Way the Year Begins
…Not with a Bang but with a Rant. Christmastime in the Watts household has always been a time for impotent fury. It is a time to reconnect with old friends seen only during this special season, career biologists who stuck it out and stayed the course and got good steady jobs at universities and federal […]
For want of a nail.
For decades now, experts from all walks have provided sage wisdom about the need to save for my declining years. We no longer live in a word of services, they’ve told me. We live in a world of ownership. It is not enough to save. You must invest. And this can sometimes be hard to […]
Trudeau Was Wrong
The universe is not unfolding as it should. It is merely unfolding as it always has. It was a nice dream while it lasted: a grass-roots campaign, launched and promoted by the scientific community, supported by Nobel Laureates, endorsed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, pimped on science blogs far and wide: […]
Earth Hour. Because the World Isn’t Worth a Whole Day.
Ninety percent of the world’s charismatic megafauna is gone. Hormone disrupters are turning the fish off Lakeshore into hermaphrodites, if the tumors don’t get them first. The Arctic is heading for ice-free status by 2030, the Wilkins Ice Shelf is a measly six kilometers away from disintegration, air pollution in this miserable dick-ass excuse for […]
And Now, In Keeping With Our Policy of Giving Equal Time To Opposing Viewpoints…
Jena Snyder, another On Spec alumnus, posted a minority opinion following my last rant. This is not the first time she and I have disagreed; there have been sparks and brush fires over the years, and we have not always liked each other. We continue to see eye-to-elbow on some things (certain traits of the […]
"Don’t get the idea that On Spec is a democracy."
Regular visitors to this site may remember that for a number of years now, I’ve been one of the fiction editors at the Canadian SF magazine On Spec. They first approached me back in 1999; I’ve served pretty much continuously since, except for a brief hiatus back in 2001 when I felt that the fear […]
In Defense of Scientology
Yeah, I kind of thought that might get your attention. Don’t worry, it’s not what you’re thinking. Nothing exists in isolation; every object stands in contrast to its background, every thing is relative to everything else. So when I take a stand in defense of an admittedly pernicious, powerful, and downright idiotic cult, you knows […]
"They’re Really More Guidelines than Actual Rules" — or, The None That Got Away.
I know I haven’t mentioned it lately, but the world is still turning to shit. The Bush administration recently gave the US Navy the go-ahead to kill as many whales as they want to in their hunt for tewwowists in diesel-powered submarines, and screw the California Supreme Court. It’s finally been officially admitted that nobody’s […]