In which there’s just so much stupid shit going on that I can’t keep my mouth shut.

Here’s a list of unrelated items! I am basically bitching, here. YHBW.

1. Republicans Against War? MY ARSE.

Republicans against enforcing the Libyan no-fly zone “because it costs too much” are proof, as if we needed any, that politics are no longer about policy or even a set of beliefs but about absolutely nothing whatsoever. The GOP doesn’t like Obama because he’s a Democrat, and they’re going to block anything he does just to be contrary.

That kind of maturity is really attractive, gentlemen. Not. You rich fucks.

2. Science Fiction Would Have More Women If Not For Patriarchy!

There already are women in sci-fi. There already is science in sci-fi. Yeah, feminism and queer studies are cool, but give it a rest already: not everything is a fucking plot to punish you for having a uterus.

A lot of women don’t like science and just aren’t interested in it, period, and that’s why they drive the market for character-based, sociological science fiction. This is not something men have done! Men are not trying to keep women out of sci-fi, and there’s plenty of hard sci-fi written by women and read by women. Including me. But if I have to read one more hyper-academic, angry, factless article about how science fiction needs more women and more science, and about how those things aren’t there due to some imaginary cultural construct built by the penis people to keep women down, I will seriously go fucking ballistic.

Because none of it is true. Women prefer softer sci-fi in general if they even read it at all, and the current generation of readers was raised after feminism and knows perfectly well that they could have chosen to become scientists. Which they didn’t. And this is not because “the man” kept them down, and it’s not because they’ve been socialized by a patriarchal society to dislike science, and it’s not because they didn’t have support and resources: it’s because they didn’t fucking wanna do science.

Men who like hard sci-fi will happily buy and read it regardless of the gender of the author. I know this because Nancy Kress’ readers are not all female.

3. You Have A Highschool Diploma and You Watch Faux News, So Just Maybe You’re Not An Expert

You, everyone I’ve overheard speaking in public during the last two weeks, have no idea what you’re talking about when you talk about Fukushima Daiichi. None whatsoever. You have no idea what radiation is, nor how it works, nor what’s going on in that plant. Please shut the fuck up. Please. Seriously. Everything you’re saying is incorrect.

And stop stockpiling iodide pills, you idiots. We can’t very well donate them to Japan when they’re all in your medicine cabinet.

4. Greed

The love of money really is the root of all evil. I swear, any atrocity you can think of can trace its roots back to greed.

Borders, which is seeking bankruptcy and closing stores and laying off staff left and right, is giving its executives $8.3 million in bonuses.

I become more and more convinced every single day that greed is the deadliest sin, because from it all other sins depend. A person will not lie, cheat, covet, or steal if she isn’t first consumed by the desire to posses things, more things, beautiful things, more beautiful things, to be seen and admired, to shop in a nicer store, the nicest store, to be like a movie star, to be one of the beautiful ones, one who deserves great wealth and fine things.

The more wealth one has, the easier it is for that person to overlook suffering. The very rich tend to be more like Bush than Gates. (The more of Gates’ philanthropic work I see, the more impressed I am. That guy’s looking at the world’s inequities as a very large engineering problem. Go Bill.)

5. News in the States

The more international news I watch, the more I’m convinced that domestic news isn’t deliberately slanted as much as it is produced by people who honestly don’t know any better.

In other words, there’s no reason to assume malice when incompetence will suffice.

6. War

The word “war,” when used in a political context, has a specific definition. Enforcing the no-fly zone briefly to save the lives of unarmed civilians who are being engaged by mercenary armies hired from sub-Saharan Africa is not “going to war.”

Splitting hairs? Maybe, but in this climate one has to.

7. “You have to hand over your personal privacy to be part of the 21st century.”

If you didn’t know this before, you know it now: any electronic device you carry that connects to anything else at all is tracking your movements.

Why? Because that’s how they work.

Your cell phone service provider probably has a year’s worth of location data at seven-minute intervals, tracking your ass to work and back and on vacation and over at your bootie call’s house.

This is not shocking. If you think about it, it’s the same as the old phones: the phone company knew where you were then, too, because there was a wire from their office to your house. Assume the same kind of oversight and record-keeping with your wireless device and you’ll be just fine.

8. The No-fly Zone

Dear President Obama: You did the right thing. Even though you were probably advised against it, you did the right thing. Thank you.

All this spin, all this crap, all this budget-appropriation, all this bitching: I’m sorry.

If there’s anything the U.S. does have, it’s a big goddamned military budget. Spending $100m a week is hardly a drop in the bucket.