Seriously, what’s up with them? Like, if they don’t get it, shouldn’t they be trying to figure out what it is they don’t get and why other people think there’s an “it” there to get?

Instead the first words out of someone’s mouth after “I just don’t get it” usually constitute some unhinged screed full of scare quotes and sarcastic rhetorical questions that makes it clear that in fact, they think they do get it, and what they “get” is that the people who think they get it are idiots, or are acting in bad faith, or both.

You’d think it might occur to the pinheads posting these unhinged screeds that maybe, just for a change, it might be worth considering the possibility that the people who get the thing that they don’t might actually be human beings, with brains, and that it might be possible to learn something from their thinking even if you find you still end up disagreeing with their position on whatever this “it” is that you don’t get.

You’d also think it might occur to them that if the “it” they don’t get has been a standing issue for somewhere between three decades and all of human history, then,

1. maybe it’s going to take more than somebody’s defensive response in your blog comments to explain it to you, and
2. all the information about “it” that you need, including the original and elaborated versions of whatever debate caused you to exclaim that you didn’t get it in the first place, is probably already publicly available, and if you actually cared about the answer you could just, like, look it up, instead of insisting on having a abbreviated version of the debate repeated for you so you can smugly demolish it.

But apparently not. Instead it’s all “I don’t see why” and “I don’t see how” and “what’s up with these people?” Did it ever occur to you that you’re probably not going to see if you don’t look?

Oh, my mistake. That would assume that you were really interested in seeing why and how and what’s up in the first place.

(Case in point.)

You can make your own Sgt. Pepper joke. Meanwhile, I recommend the Guardian’s dual celebration of natural selection’s 150th birthday and Darwin’s upcoming 200th.

Attention conservation notice: Not actually about ice cream. I just had some, and I’m full. But:

“Tonight on Is There…”

SF Signal’s doing another one of its Mind Melds, this one on the question — we’ll be charitable and call it a question — “Is There Gender Imbalance In Science Fiction.”

I particularly recommend Jeff Vandermeer’s bit at the end — not that it’s the only one I agree with, but it has some interesting concrete ideas and jumping-off points for anthology editors to think about, coming from someone who should know from anthology editing.

[Jeff] We tend not to think about our processes and whether they make as much creative / artistic sense as they do marketing / financial sense — and if they’re fair or not with regard to minorities, with the idea that especially in our rapidly evolving internet-centric world, transparency, openness, and clear communication are incredibly important. And that being fair also often does make economic and artistic sense.

I can’t say I recommend John C. Wright’s bit, exactly, but it is full of juicy johncwrightness, for those of you who enjoy such things.

[Mr. Wright] There are readers (ex-readers) who have written me hate-mail telling me that they will not buy my books because I am a Christian, and because I doubt the wisdom of self-centeredness, unchastity, divorce, sterility, death as a way of life. That is their prerogative because they are my customers, which is to say, my real employers. They owe me nothing. I cannot complain if someone who owes me nothing does not give me his money. The money is his: he can buy another book with it, or throw it into the sea. . . .

Wrath distorts judgment. Soon you being to hallucinate minor slights against womanhood at home; soon you begin to ignore real victimization of women abroad: sexual slavery, polygamy, genital mutilation, unwanted girl-babies being exposed to the elements to die. In a world where women are stoned to death for wearing fingernail polish, complaints about lesser offenses sound shallow.

(Is it me, or do the minds coming out of these things look a lot more like Andy and Penny from Set This House In Order than like any sort of unitary “meld”?)

On an indirectly related note, Raph Koster has a perceptive post on the question “Do players know what they want?”

[Mr. Koster] My reaction is generally to feel sorry for this person, because they have never had banana cream pie or fresh berries with whipped cream . .  but my second reaction is “look up from your tiny frame of reference, people!”

But I can’t really blame them. In the end, it isn’t the players’ job to invent new desserts, and you can’t really get upset with them for not knowing what is possible with a blowtorch, sugar, egg whites, and cream.

Despite what Tobold says, homo economicus is increasingly considered a myth in economics. Players do not always do the rational thing, for many reasons. But there’s one thing that I do think people are logical enough to do: if we offer more kinds of desserts people will try them.

I’d love to edit a fiction magazine that was run like a proper academic journal, by which I mean one based on anonymous independent peer review by experts in the field, which is in this case to say by published authors with expertise in the genre or subgenre of the story under submission.

I’m sure this would be totally dysfunctional, but it would be totally dysfunctional in a different way than our current totally dysfunctional short fiction publishing system.

Plus it would let me, as editor, diffuse among the anonymous referees my harsh judgement of nearly all published fiction as — as the Wikipedia article linked above puts it — “not a breakthrough in the field.”

Sadly, even if I promised to make first cut of the slush myself, I don’t think it would be possible to come up with enough willing and qualified reviewers.

(Charging publication fees would probably also be not on.)

“It’s so hot the vodka’s frozen.”

(For serious. First 90-degree day of the year and there’s a half-inch plug of clear ice under the cap of the vodka bottle when I pull it out of the freezer. I know the freezer needs defrosting, but this is just silly.)

Pictures now, captions later.

Figure 1. Altitude: √2 miles

Note to anyone planning to hike around the north end of the Mont Blanc Massif: Your guidebook may not think to mention that, contrary to all common sense, the management of the Chemin de fer du Montenvers thinks it’s a good idea for the trains to stop running a good four hours before sunset. If you don’t want to turn your five-hour hike into a nine-hour hike, I’d suggest an early start.

(Pictures in a bit — though after discovering we’d missed the last train by a country mile I was mostly too exhausted to shoot more than the silliest bits of the descent. On the bright side, I’m sure the experience built all kinds of character.)