Stross and Doctorow vindicated: Man Booker prize to put all nominees on-line

Charlie Stross, Cory Doctorow, and the late Jim Baen must be giggling with glee today, and the poor sods over at SFWA are wringing their hands in sheer terror as the bulldozer of history approaches their cardboard clubhouse.

The Man Booker Prize is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland. I've actually never read a Booker prize winner, although I have read books by Banville, Atwood, Ishiguro, and Amis, so I suppose I have some casual interest in who has won. The prize has attracted criticism in recent years for nominating "dark and unreadable" books to the prize.

To counter that charge, the Booker Prize Foundation is now negotiating with the nominees to put all its shortlist nominees online, free for download.

The article says, "The downloads will not impact on sales, it is thought. If readers like a novel tasted on the internet, they may just be inspired to buy the actual book." One publisher poohs the idea, saying that an excerpt would be better and that this is just an experiment along the lines of Radiohead's "any price you want" album release last month.

First, they ignore you... then they make up wacky stuff about you.

Does the name The Bilderberg Group mean anything to you? I remember reading about them in the pages of Illuminatus! many years ago; they were supposedly one of those "groups that runs the world." (The other two popular groups are the Trilateral Commission and the Conference on Foreign Relations.) According to their stated purpose, the group consists of "central bankers, defense experts, mass media press barons, government ministers, prime ministers, royalty, international financiers and political leaders from Europe and North America."

I don't believe these people run the world. I don't believe they would want to. I do believe that they'd like to optimize the various governments and institutions to be in their best interests, one of which is that they not come to too much popular attention, which is why it probably is in our best interests to watch them with some diligence. The Bilderberg Conference is probably very much like any unconference, a chance for cross-networking and to play "I'll show you my rolodex if you show me yours."

A couple of months ago I read a fascinating article about the "return the butler," in which the chief instructor at the Starkey Butler School says, "There are three bet your job categories in this: pets, collections, and germs. These people are very successful and guess what, they want to live forever. These are very germ-oriented people. Get used to it. Germs are huge in this world."

Apparently, some crazy yahoo has put the whole shebang together and realized what's going on: the Bilderbergers are secretly posthumanists who are going to exterminate 80% of the population and enslave the remaining 20% to support and maintain the machines on which they, the Bilderbergers, will live out their indefinitely extended lives and futures.

There is more craziness at WhatIsTheEndgame.com. Alex Jones is your dealer in tinfoil hats. Enjoy!

How I feel about the flu right about now

I hate this bug. It needs to die.

Likes and dislikes: Hentai manga edition.

Y'know what I like about manga? It dares to ask difficult questions. Questions like: "What if the Lone Ranger and Tonto were a pair of highly competent oversexed bubble-breasted nymphomaniac women?"

Y'know what I dislike about manga? Every yaoi artist out there sucks. Every one of them. Couldn't draw a nose that didn't look like a deadly weapon to save his life.