Orlion Blight

Soon... I will at last be able to sleep... Well, that's a lie... I own a talkative, athletic cat, sleep will be impossible.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-10-15

Yeah, between book tours, editing upcoming books, the Holiday shopping season; things are probably pretty insane at DragonSteel Inc.!

I think the "cupcakes with shavings of atium" was in one of the broadsheets. I would say it wasn't actual atium, just part of the fantasy of bakery. Much like adding coarse sugar to muffins and claiming they're diamonds.

The thing about cover letters and resumes is whatever worked for your parents is so out-of-date now, their advice would actually get your resume rejected (I even read somewhere that doing cover letters is becoming a huge no-no). What you need to look at is first: your resume is advertising yourself for a specific job. This means that you may find yourself sending out different resumes to different job applications. This is because you aren't applying to be a librarian, but you are applying to be THAT librarian there. You want to be to the point. You want to include just enough information to interest your perspective employer. That's what seemed to work best for me... and having a "man on the inside".... networking is incredible, so take my advice how you want and remember: you have gotten call backs, your resume is actually probably not an issue... which means I just wasted your time! Mwahaha!

Whelp, since my conversation with Kobold is on hold (for the best, it's giving me time to do some cursory research ) I'll jump into this! A key difference between Australia and the US is access. It's a lot harder to smuggle items in Australia then it would be to the United States by virtue of it being surrounded by ocean. This allows Australia much better control over firearms then pretty much anywhere else in the world. The only comparable large country is Japan. The US, on the other hand, has land borders that can be crossed. Though it is by no means easy, guns can be smuggled much more readily through miles of land than miles of ocean. This is not really the main problem yet for the US, because restriction on firearm ownership and use varies from state to state (and even from town to town). There is no real homogeneous gun law in the US (the only one I can think of is the hotly debated 2nd Amendment). This means that the make-up of background checks may vary (though I could be wrong on this point) and also if one has trouble getting a gun in one state, they might be able to procure one in another. This sort of "cross-state gun trafficking" is often brought up when you hear something like, "Chicago has the strictest gun laws but the highest gun violence!" (Orlion-note: when you hear an apparent 'slam-dunk' "fact" like I just mentioned, you should be automatically skeptical. Something has been left out, and in the case of arguing with gun statistics the only honest interpretation that takes everything into account tends to be a scientific-shrug)

Bowing out before I could get back to your response? Laaaaaaaame In either event, you might be interested in checking out Revolt 2100 by Robert Heinlein or The Many Colored Land by Julian May. They explore some of the ideas you expressed (and are sympathetic to them, so I'm not suggesting "conversion literature") One of the short stories (there are three) in Revolt 2100 is about a guy who chooses to leave living under the government. The premise is similar in The Many Colored Land, except the individuals choose exile in the far distant past over being "mind-tuned" so they can fit in with a Galactic Government.

It was actually a lot better than I thought it would be, and focused more on the cultural origins of monsters than on cryptozoologists trying to prove their existence. I could give the show at least one more episode before abandoning it.

Don't worry about sounding rude, I can take it On the first point, that is a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. I'll explain why I feel justified in making the analogy, for I too was young once and believed as you did (wow, that's a bit patronizing, but I'll keep in for humor sake and apologize ), so I'm also probably mostly having a conversation with younger Orlion who advocated "rational anarchy" and the like. So, let's take your tribe example: how is that relevant to the Western man? How does that take into account the myriad blending of cultures and services and industry that we live with in the US? It's a different world and what works for tribal South African society will doubtful work for us (on the flip-side, we ought not to apply our societal standards whole sale on other cultures. Though I doubt an anarchist system will work in Western society to secure as much rights as possible, that does not mean it does not work for those tribes. It's much like the Amish, I don't envy or want their life, but if it works with them and they don't attack me, I'm not going to compel a change). So that's where we stand: I believe that if we want to see where anarchy takes us in Western society, there are two groups to consider: those anarchists which were, essentially, communist revolutionaries or libertarians. Essentially, this is anarchy with a left bent and anarchy with a right bent. Judging by your comments on taxes and law enforcement, I would judge you to be more on the libertarian side. Nothing wrong with that, I use to be libertarian myself... then I started reading Ayn Rand and was her brand of libertarianism, but I only tell you that so you won't make the same mistake I did. Libertarianism is a philosophy of expansion. When you had America expanding Westward, libertarianism was the way of life: you had to rely on your hard work and community to establish yourself in the frontier and survive because government help was minimal and far away. Once expansion and settlement turned to community growth and statehood, however, a lot of the tenants of libertarianism become outdated. With a much larger population to sustain, you can no longer rely on techniques tailored to sustain a small population. And never mind the issue of infrastructure (such as power lines and plumbing!) Now, as far as violence in either system... that is a whole topic onto itself. It would seem most people want to avoid violence but agree there are cases when it is necessary. Time is short, so I'll have to return to this topic later, I will only point out that violent crime is at a low in this nation and continuing a downward trend.

Oh boy, politics! It's a shame I'm so far behind, but I'll just leave pithy quotes from others to catch up! On anarchy: -Hugh Thomas -WB Yeats These are in reference to events of the later 19th and early 20th century when we had actual anarchists trying to foment social and revolutionary change, often through destruction. Nowadays, being far removed from those tumultuous times, we view anarchy through a more "idealized" lens. It is forgotten that anarchy, at its best, did not do much but destroy property and lives. At its worse, it paved the way for the tyrannical rule of people like Franco and Stalin. On the subject of governance: "With bad people, hating, uncooperative, selfish people, no social system will work. With good people, loving, cooperative, unselfish people, any social system will work." -William Golding Not much that has not been said before, I will only add my thoughts on the whole Future Utopia/Theocracy/God Rule thing. The idea that we are moving towards an end goal is, in my most humble (and therefore, most correct) opinion dangerous. This is because the needs and issues of today are ignored and sacrifice for the sake of the indeterminate future. If the End of HistoryTM ever were to occur, fine, deal with it then. But a future Messianic Rule or Proletariat Paradise does nothing to relieve the suffering going on now.

I just assume my cat is singing the song of his people... though most of the time, he just wants to pounce on something... like my leg...

Oh, I still feel that way... I'm somewhat grateful that he'll let us know sooner then later that the writing we'll take longer, but ugh...especially since the sooner we get Stormlight, the sooner we'll get Elantris sequels!

That, and he was looking for TenSoon's spikes. I imagine if you aren't concentrating, the kandra's spikes would be unobserved.

Nah, the bookstore can get fined you could just claim ignorance! Mwahaha! The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas

I'd advise against it. You may think they're cut now... but they grow up.

You get a cat.

So far, it's better than Ancient Aliens because I'm not pounding my head into concrete five minutes in. Second post: We first see Sanderson talking about Krampus. THIRD: heh, he's on the same show as a high priest of the Church of Satan and Patrick Ruffus Fourth: About halfway through, and we've only seen Sanderson briefly. Bah. Fifth: Once we talk about Satan, we get a couple more clips of Sanderson. The first is nothing special and expected. The second would make for good conversation at cocktail parties: "it's interesting that we find eternal torment more comforting than not knowing or possibly not existing after we die" Conclusion: the show is fine enough, just don't expect too much Sanderson in this.

It was at a midnight signing in Chaos' book, I believe.

I'm thinking something from another world (probably Roshar) has come to Scadrial and is able to use whatever native magics it brought from its own world. Captured by the Set, it is now being used to blend its magic with that of Scadrial to get these new metal spikes. So, unfortunately, it's not necessarily another Shard targeting Harmony... could be just an off-worlder having a really bad day.

My understanding is that the spikes she used were made of this "new metal" because "that would account for her being able to use abilities that kandra aren't suppose to be able to use". We also know there were multiple spikes because they're the same ones used in the Hemalurgic Constructs that attacked TenSoon and Wax in the Homeland. Could be that they were experiments, could also be that they are just spiked to prevent excessive leak of power from the spike (doesn't the spike lose efficiency when it's not impaled in a body?)

Appreciative that the Oregonians accept him when his own society rejects him, he knows in his True Heart of a Hero (trademark pending) that he mustn't rest until the malignant Company Inc. is put out of business! For who knows what evil clogs the Heart of American Commerce? The Trucker knows....Mwahahahahaha! (Nice touch with the biscuits and gravy, btw!)

The truck is property of Company Inc., and being the soulless business that it is, they are angry that it was damaged and do not want to pay for it themselves. They are also upset that the shipment was late and have had it with the trucker's moral actions cutting into their bottom line. The trucker is on thin ice, which cracks and breaks, causing him to sink into a pool of toxic ooze. But instead of killing him as Company Inc. planned, it gave him truck-themed super powers and now he fights injustice as The Trucker... working on the side to bring down the Company Inc. that betrayed him and gave him a hideously scarred face that not even those leathery skinned waitresses could love! I'm not sure what I'm talking about anymore.

But who will fix the dent in the front of the semi? The trucker? Not with his low wages! He needs that money for pieces of pecan pie and coffee! How else is he suppose to have an excuse to flirt with leathery skinned waitresses across the US?

Bands of Mourning ending: