Posts under ‘News’

There was the one where you not only removed the e-book of 1984 from the store, but sucked it off of people’s Kindles without telling them.
There was the one where you classified gay- and lesbian-themed books, including YA and health books, as “Adult”, thus removing them from lists and rankings. (This was later claimed as [...]

Last month a new group, The Outer Alliance, formed to support gender diversity in science fiction and fantasy. The final straw was some idiotic and blatantly prejudiced writing, but there is a lot of more subtle prejudice out there too. For decades, SF particularly has been the province of straight white men, and not necessarily [...]

Science, politics… all the fun all at once.
Among the 30 OEDC countries, the United States is number one in health expenditures, but 28 in infant mortality, and 24 in overall life expectancies. We also work the most hours per week, and are the third richest country. But then, we are obese, and don’t get enough [...]

Catch-up on a few things I’ve collected:
The business of writing essays for other people. For them to learn from, of course: no one would actually turn these in under a false name. Right? Right.
Citizen science: how interested amateurs can contribute to scientific understanding. Think of it as distributed science - a whole bunch of people [...]

Poorly-thought out legislation could lead to unforeseen consequences. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is intended to protect children by mandating the testing of toys and other children’s products for lead. Good idea, right? But the law is vaguely-worded, and as written requires the testing of books for lead as well. This expensive and destructive [...]