Links for 2009-12-17

"What I don't get is the kind of deliberate delusion in which a person chooses to pretend the world is more horrifying and filled with more and more-monstrous monsters. Why would anyone prefer such a place to the real world? Why would anyone wish for a world filled with socialist conspiracies, secret Muslim atheists, Satan-worshipping pop stars and bloodthirsty baby-killers?

But the Tea Partiers cling to these nightmares with a desperate ferocity. They get angrily defensive at the suggestion that this world isn't actually as horrific as they're pretending it is. They're very protective of their precious nightmares. They cherish them.

In trying to understand this choice, this weird preference for a world more monstrous than it actually is, I've come around to two explanations. The imaginary monsters are thrilling and they are reassuring."

"Each of these books does something completely different from its peers on the list, and does it superbly, thereby illustrating the vast range of themes, styles and topics at the command of speculative fiction."

"My colleague 'Yoda' leaned forward with a wry smile, as if he were about to spill a secret. "I couldn't reach the Rocket Scientist," he said of our common colleague who was on August vacation, "I hope he's not going to be too upset when he finds out his instrument is about to fly really close to the space shuttle exhaust plume." I mentally wrote this off to some type of space science joke that I clearly wasn't in on, but I was sitting Monday morning in a session at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco and darned if the whole session -- entitled "Active Experiments in the Ionosphere Using Chemical Releases From the Space Shuttle and Rockets" -- didn't mention the exact same incident."

In case you were looking for some way to waste the next six hours.

"After I've saved a reasonable amount -- say 10 or 15 percent for retirement and unexpected expenses -- any additional savings would simply go to amassing wealth. Anyone with a reasonable income who saved 60 percent of it would be quite wealthy in 20 years. What then? Would you spend it all then? If so, why not spend it sooner? Why not enjoy your income for your whole life, rather than deferring it and blowing it all at once?"