My worst literary nightmare has come true. Yes, I do have nightmares involving literature. Anyway, Robert Jordan, author of the gigantic and unfinished Wheel of Time epic fantasy series, has died. I started reading these with the publication of... Hmmm... I think it was book 4 at some point in high school. Book 11 came out a couple of years ago, and was sort of a nice progression from the previous few volumes, where not much seemed to happen. Finally things were moving again, and rumor had it there was only one more to go. I felt the story needed two more, but I figured maybe fan apathy was making him have to finish it off. I mean this series was INCREDIBLE up through book 6 or so, and then got bogged down under it's own weight. Too many characters to deal with, and too many storylines that aren't that exciting. Then I heard about Jordan have some blood disease or heart condition, and that he and his wife were working together to get the last book done before he died, because it was one of those, "You have maybe a year to live" kind of things from the doctors. As I hear it now, the book is not done. It might be a better legacy remaining unfinished. People can always wonder what might have been, and no one will have to be disappointed.

In all this, I should mention that of course my prayers go out to the family of James Oliver Rigney Jr (Jordan's real name). No matter what, he brought me to such utter joy and excitement as I have rarely had in reading. In the fantasy genre, only Tolkien and perhaps Martin stand higher. He was truly a master of his craft, and I guarantee I will remember and reread these books for the rest of my life.

Edit: I should have mentioned that I met the man at two different book signings, and my dear Mother waited in line herself at a signing I couldn't get to myself for an hour and a half. We both found him to be charming in the brief words we shared.

This is very cool. Dr. Young Bae demonstrated a workable photonic laser thruster (PTL). That's a propulsion system that uses a laser. It can theoretically be scaled up to send a spaceship to Mars in a week, or create exact movements so they can string a bunch of satellites together to make a big telescope. Or maybe a big laser that can kill people from space. Ok, don't like the last one, but it's still really cool. Mars in a week. Once we get a space elevator going, Mars is gonna get lots of people.

I'm tired of hearing about the greedy mortgage bankers who shoved sub-prime loans down the throat of the poor. The poor were getting incredible deals considering their credit rating, and, at least in Georgia, they have to have a lawyer present at the closing, which means they had a neutral third party to explain things to them. If they still took on more than they could afford.... I'm sorry, it's their own fault.

Now look at the alternative. Let's say mortgage brokers had not been willing to extend loans to people with bad credit or low incomes during the period of the lowest interest rate, which was in 2003. Then we would have had a million politicians talking about how cruel the financial system is, and how poor people can't get home loans, and suddenly you'd have legislation forcing bankers to give out sub-prime loans, probably with some sort of incentive.

It's a sad testament to this country that the vilified are the ones loaning money to people who need it, and the "victims" are the people who signed contracts and don't want to fulfill their end of the bargain.

Now I will admit, there is something to be said for how this affects everyone who wasn't involved, but that's still not the fault of the people who made these loans. Look up a newspaper from 2003.... Chock full of stories on mortgage brokers and how they are helping poor people afford homes. And when those poor people went back on their word, now the brokers are evil. Something is wrong in that narrative.

Check this out regarding living wages. The most interesting part is the living wage activist group that sued to have their organization exempted from California living wage laws because that way they could hire more workers. I think that's what they call hypocrisy. And their reasoning is very free market.

It's just simply incredible the appeal that The Beatles still have today. I watched a relatively new documentary on their songwriting as the link between classical and pop. The composer who hosted the show made mention of two people who changed all the music that came after them; Bach and Wagner, and said The Beatles will be included. I have absolutely no ear for pitch and such, so music theory is completely opaque to me, but the documentary had a lot of interesting stuff. Howard Goodall's Great Masters or something like that. Anyway, back to The Beatles. I happened to notice that my Facebook feed had a list of the most popular music in the Georgia State network, and this list went 1. rap 2. r&b 3. The Beatles. So 18-22 year olds apparently find The Beatles to be more important than the entire rock genre. For a band that broke up almost 40 years ago.... I don't think you can really call them just a rock band. They transcended that somehow and made truly incredible music, not just rock and roll. Their songs are imprinted in our racial consciousness, at least in the west, and I don't see that going away. I guess I could try to heap more superlatives on them, but what's the point? It's all been said before.

So I wrote an awesome thank you note following an interview I had for a job I really, really want.... Awesome except for the serious typo in the first paragraph. I used the word "were" instead of "we" so the spellcheck didn't catch it, and somehow it slipped past my eyes even after multiple checks. I'm going to be utterly devastated if such a silly, small mistake costs me this job.

I try to avoid borrowing from Instapundit too much, but both of this morning entries hail from there. Next is this link Glenn had, a very scary article. A pregnant woman in Britain (land of socialized health care) has been told by social services that her baby is going to be taken from her upon birth because an "expert" that has never even met her has said she is likely to suffer from Manchusen's Syndrome. That's the one where you "make up illnesses for the child, or hurt it" to draw attention to yourself.

There was another story about a couple that recorded social services workers telling them their baby was going to be taken away, even though there was no immediate sign that the parents were going to cause harm in any way. They put the video up on Youtube, and it was then taken down because social services (this is also in Britain, btw) said it violated the Data Protection Act, or somesuch BS. They may be right, but what's more important, the rights of parents, or the rights of social workers? One theory is that the rise in kidnappings from biological parents by the government is so they can meet adoption quotas. If there's even an iota of truth to that, it is just plain sick. I feel nauseous just contemplating it. And if the U.S. gets socialized health care, things like this will happen. Bureaucrats inflamed with power and disconnected from the people they are hurting will make decisions that the government backs up with guns, and we will have no recourse. No options. No decision making ability of our own. Did you know that Johnathon Edwards is talking about how under his plan people will be required to go to the doctor for regular exams. And that means there will be penalties if you don't. Is that how you want to live your life?

This article is fantastic, covering the side of Vietnam and the professional warriors in the thick of it that you rarely read about in the mainstream media. It's simply fascinating, and something I wish everyone would read, especially anti-war activists.

Big controversy in the science-fiction world this week. One or more websites were making copyrighted works of fiction available for download, so the Science-Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) used a program to scan through the available files and list which were copyrighted and available illegally. With lawsuit threatened, the site took down the offending materials. Turns out there were a lot of false positives, including a work written by Corey Doctorow under the Creative Commons license, which allows anyone to do just about anything with it they want. Doctorow was then up in arms that he had told his fans that his works were given away for free, and now they had cause to doubt his word due to the takedown notice posted at the offending website.

At first I was very in favor of Doctorow on this one, but I think the SFWA has a point. Sure, they definitely made mistakes and took down some of the wrong stuff, but the website did far worse, publishing many a work they did not have permission for, yet Doctorow acts like the SFWA is the bad guy here.

Do I think copyright law should be altered and the terms vastly shortened? Yes. But for the nonce, the law right now is the law. Even in a moral sense I think Doctorow is wrong. He's right to be upset his work was mistakenly taken down, but wrong to ascribe the blame to the SFWA. Instead blame the website that created the situation in the first place.