Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Idiotic Myths: the Antichrist and Armageddon
Journal Entry: Thu Sep 29, 2011, 6:51 AM
The end of the world and the Antichrist: pure baloney fueled from that acid trip that's the Apocalypse. There will be an end of Earth when, Billions of years from now, the Sun'll become a red giant; there will be eventually, billions of billions of years from now, and end to the present cycle of the Universe (Big Crunch or otherwise): but they're not our concern, nor is the concern of the apocalyptic crackpots. They forget that at the end of that acid trip of Apocalypse, "Jesus" promise to come SOON., that is, before the generation alive in the Thirties BC would pass away, Well that generation had passed, two thousand years ago, with no comng. The second coming and the apocalypse was a lie, an illusion at best. And a very grim illusion at that. Imagine the "Saved Ones" staying in the clouds gleefully observing the bloody massacre that's the apocalypse schmapocalypse is about!Let's put it in the wastebasket of absurdities along with Adam and Eve and talking serpents, and the so-called "original Sin".
But the "christian right" it's precisely looking forward to that, and in its wholly UN-christian folly has the gall to call President Obama "The antichrist". Now, lets see..if there were an "Antichrist" who would that be? Someone who does and preach the opposite of what Christ did and teached, logically.
Jesus Christ said "Help the sick, needy and the poor" The religious right wants to cut social security and medical aid. Some also said of a cancer patient that couldn't afford to pay medicines "Let him die!"
Jesus Christ said "Love your Neighbor", the hearts of the religious right are filled with hate towerd gays, immigrants, liberals
Jesus Christ said that the greedy and the selfish rich won't inherit the Earth. The Religious right worship the rich, and are against taxing them
Jesus Christ valued Charity above all. The religious right's evil sons chant of a theen gay boy driven to suicide by bullies "we're glad you're dead"!
If there'd be an Antichrist who would that be?
Take your own conclusions!
The end of the world and the Antichrist: pure baloney fueled from that acid trip that's the Apocalypse. There will be an end of Earth when, Billions of years from now, the Sun'll become a red giant; there will be eventually, billions of billions of years from now, and end to the present cycle of the Universe (Big Crunch or otherwise): but they're not our concern, nor is the concern of the apocalyptic crackpots. They forget that at the end of that acid trip of Apocalypse, "Jesus" promise to come SOON., that is, before the generation alive in the Thirties BC would pass away, Well that generation had passed, two thousand years ago, with no comng. The second coming and the apocalypse was a lie, an illusion at best. And a very grim illusion at that. Imagine the "Saved Ones" staying in the clouds gleefully observing the bloody massacre that's the apocalypse schmapocalypse is about!Let's put it in the wastebasket of absurdities along with Adam and Eve and talking serpents, and the so-called "original Sin".
But the "christian right" it's precisely looking forward to that, and in its wholly UN-christian folly has the gall to call President Obama "The antichrist". Now, lets see..if there were an "Antichrist" who would that be? Someone who does and preach the opposite of what Christ did and teached, logically.
Jesus Christ said "Help the sick, needy and the poor" The religious right wants to cut social security and medical aid. Some also said of a cancer patient that couldn't afford to pay medicines "Let him die!"
Jesus Christ said "Love your Neighbor", the hearts of the religious right are filled with hate towerd gays, immigrants, liberals
Jesus Christ said that the greedy and the selfish rich won't inherit the Earth. The Religious right worship the rich, and are against taxing them
Jesus Christ valued Charity above all. The religious right's evil sons chant of a theen gay boy driven to suicide by bullies "we're glad you're dead"!
If there'd be an Antichrist who would that be?
Take your own conclusions!
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Methods and excuses to avoid a work meeting:
- Fake a strong cold with sneezes, coughs and tremors
- Say with a fanatical glint in your eye "my religion forbids me to attend work meetings on Tuesdays" (or any given day of the week)
- Say "My doctor says attending meetings in closed rooms may trigger my lychantropic bouts"
- Say"My son came from school with lices yesterday", then scratch furiously your head
- I've a very jealous stalker who's menaced to do a massacre on my workplace if I don't marry him/her.Police's ambushing him.
- Say "The CEO just asked me a personal favor", then run
- Fake a strong cold with sneezes, coughs and tremors
- Say with a fanatical glint in your eye "my religion forbids me to attend work meetings on Tuesdays" (or any given day of the week)
- Say "My doctor says attending meetings in closed rooms may trigger my lychantropic bouts"
- Say"My son came from school with lices yesterday", then scratch furiously your head
- I've a very jealous stalker who's menaced to do a massacre on my workplace if I don't marry him/her.Police's ambushing him.
- Say "The CEO just asked me a personal favor", then run
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Anti-gay hatemongers talk of religious "freedom" is a lie
The so called "defenders of marriage" and religious hatemongers talk of their religious freedom whining that such freedom is treathened by gay marriage, anti-discriminaton laws, anti bullying programs. Pure bloody lies!They brazenly want everyone to conform to their archaic prejudices and their bibliolatry (the bible says so! SO WHAT?). They have no right to that, and "religious freedom" means you're free to practise your religion RESPECTING OTHER PEOPLE'S FREEDOM! when will they realize that?
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Particles Found to Travel Faster than Speed of Light
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=particles-found-to-travel
Neutrino results challenge a cornerstone of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which itself forms the foundation of modern physics.
An Italian experiment has unveiled evidence that fundamental particles known as neutrinos can travel faster than light. Other researchers are cautious about the result, but if it stands further scrutiny, the finding would overturn the most fundamental rule of modern physics—that nothing travels faster than 299,792,458 meters per second.
The experiment is called OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus), and lies 1,400 meters underground in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. It is designed to study a beam of neutrinos coming from CERN, Europe's premier high-energy physics laboratory located 730 kilometers away near Geneva, Switzerland. Neutrinos are fundamental particles that are electrically neutral, rarely interact with other matter, and have a vanishingly small mass. But they are all around us—the sun produces so many neutrinos as a by-product of nuclear reactions that many billions pass through your eye every second. [Click here to read more about CERN's Large Hadron Collider]
The 1,800-tonne OPERA detector is a complex array of electronics and photographic emulsion plates, but the new result is simple—the neutrinos are arriving 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light allows. "We are shocked," says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland and OPERA's spokesman.
Breaking the law
The idea that nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum is the cornerstone of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which itself forms the foundation of modern physics. If neutrinos are traveling faster than light speed, then one of the most fundamental assumptions of science—that the rules of physics are the same for all observers—would be invalidated. "If it's true, then it's truly extraordinary," says John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN.
Ereditato says that he is confident enough in the new result to make it public. The researchers claim to have measured the 730-kilometer trip between CERN and its detector to within 20 centimeters. They can measure the time of the trip to within 10 nanoseconds, and they have seen the effect in more than 16,000 events measured over the past two years. Given all this, they believe the result has a significance of six-sigma—the physicists' way of saying it is certainly correct. The group will present their results September 23 at CERN, and a preprint of their results will be posted on the physics website ArXiv.org.
At least one other experiment has seen a similar effect before, albeit with a much lower confidence level. In 2007, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment in Minnesota saw neutrinos from the particle-physics facility Fermilab in Illinois arriving slightly ahead of schedule. At the time, the MINOS team downplayed the result, in part because there was too much uncertainty in the detector's exact position to be sure of its significance, says Jenny Thomas, a spokeswoman for the experiment. Thomas says that MINOS was already planning more accurate follow-up experiments before the latest OPERA result. "I'm hoping that we could get that going and make a measurement in a year or two," she says.
Reasonable doubt
If MINOS were to confirm OPERA's find, the consequences would be enormous. "If you give up the speed of light, then the construction of special relativity falls down," says Antonino Zichichi, a theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, Italy. Zichichi speculates that the "superluminal" neutrinos detected by OPERA could be slipping through extra dimensions in space, as predicted by theories such as string theory.
Neutrino results challenge a cornerstone of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which itself forms the foundation of modern physics.
An Italian experiment has unveiled evidence that fundamental particles known as neutrinos can travel faster than light. Other researchers are cautious about the result, but if it stands further scrutiny, the finding would overturn the most fundamental rule of modern physics—that nothing travels faster than 299,792,458 meters per second.
The experiment is called OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus), and lies 1,400 meters underground in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. It is designed to study a beam of neutrinos coming from CERN, Europe's premier high-energy physics laboratory located 730 kilometers away near Geneva, Switzerland. Neutrinos are fundamental particles that are electrically neutral, rarely interact with other matter, and have a vanishingly small mass. But they are all around us—the sun produces so many neutrinos as a by-product of nuclear reactions that many billions pass through your eye every second. [Click here to read more about CERN's Large Hadron Collider]
The 1,800-tonne OPERA detector is a complex array of electronics and photographic emulsion plates, but the new result is simple—the neutrinos are arriving 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light allows. "We are shocked," says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland and OPERA's spokesman.
Breaking the law
The idea that nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum is the cornerstone of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which itself forms the foundation of modern physics. If neutrinos are traveling faster than light speed, then one of the most fundamental assumptions of science—that the rules of physics are the same for all observers—would be invalidated. "If it's true, then it's truly extraordinary," says John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN.
Ereditato says that he is confident enough in the new result to make it public. The researchers claim to have measured the 730-kilometer trip between CERN and its detector to within 20 centimeters. They can measure the time of the trip to within 10 nanoseconds, and they have seen the effect in more than 16,000 events measured over the past two years. Given all this, they believe the result has a significance of six-sigma—the physicists' way of saying it is certainly correct. The group will present their results September 23 at CERN, and a preprint of their results will be posted on the physics website ArXiv.org.
At least one other experiment has seen a similar effect before, albeit with a much lower confidence level. In 2007, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment in Minnesota saw neutrinos from the particle-physics facility Fermilab in Illinois arriving slightly ahead of schedule. At the time, the MINOS team downplayed the result, in part because there was too much uncertainty in the detector's exact position to be sure of its significance, says Jenny Thomas, a spokeswoman for the experiment. Thomas says that MINOS was already planning more accurate follow-up experiments before the latest OPERA result. "I'm hoping that we could get that going and make a measurement in a year or two," she says.
Reasonable doubt
If MINOS were to confirm OPERA's find, the consequences would be enormous. "If you give up the speed of light, then the construction of special relativity falls down," says Antonino Zichichi, a theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, Italy. Zichichi speculates that the "superluminal" neutrinos detected by OPERA could be slipping through extra dimensions in space, as predicted by theories such as string theory.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Authors Say Agents Try to “Straighten” Gay Characters in YA
Rose Fox -- September 12th, 2011
Editor’s note: The text of this post was written by Rachel Manija Brown, author of All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, and Sherwood Smith, author of Crown Duel and a great many other novels for adults and young adults. I am posting it in order to provide a pseudonymity-friendly space for comments from authors who have had similar experiences to the ones that Rachel and Sherwood describe. I strongly encourage all authors, agents, editors, publishers, and readers to contribute to a serious and honest conversation on the value and drawbacks of gatekeeping with regard to minority characters, authors, and readers, and to continue that conversation in all areas of the industry. –Rose
Say Yes To Gay YA
By Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith
We are published authors who co-wrote a post-apocalyptic young adult novel. When we set out to find an agent for it, we expected to get some rejections. But we never expected to be offered representation… on the condition that we make a gay character straight, or cut him out altogether.
Our novel, Stranger, has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki’s romance, like the heterosexual ones in the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.
An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.
The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.
Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.”
The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series.
We knew this was a pie-in-the-sky offer—who knew if there would even be sequels?—and didn’t solve the moral issue. When you refuse to allow major characters in YA novels to be gay, you are telling gay teenagers that they are so utterly horrible that people like them can’t even be allowed to exist in fiction.
LGBTQ teenagers already get told this. They are four times more likely than straight teenagers to attempt suicide. We’re not saying that the absence of LGBTQ teens in YA sf and fantasy novels is the reason for that. But it’s part of the overall social prejudice that does cause that killing despair.
We wrote this novel so that the teenagers we know—some of whom are gay, and many of whom are not white—would be able, for once, to read a fun post-apocalyptic adventure in which they are the heroes. And we were told that such a thing could not be allowed.
After we thanked the agent for their time, declined the offer, and hung up, Sherwood broke the silence. “Do you think the agent missed that Becky and Brisa [supporting characters] are a couple, too? Do they ever actually kiss on-page? No? I’M ADDING A LESBIAN KISS NOW!”
This Is Not About One Bad Apple
This isn’t about that specific agent; we’d gotten other rewrite requests before this one. Previous agents had also offered to take a second look if we did rewrites… including cutting the viewpoint of Yuki, the gay character. We wondered if that was because of his sexual orientation, but since the agents didn’t say it out loud, we could only wonder. (We were also told that it is absolutely unacceptable in YA for a boy to consensually date two girls, but that it would be okay if he was cheating and lying. And we wonder if some agents were put off because none of our POV characters are white.)
We absolutely do not believe that all our rejections were due to prejudice. We know for a fact that some of them weren’t. (An agent did offer us representation, but we ended up passing due to creative differences that had nothing to do with the identities of the characters.)
This isn’t about one agent’s personal feelings about gay people. We don’t know their feelings; they may well be sympathetic in their private life, but regard the removal of gay characters as a marketing issue. The conversation made it clear that the agent thought our book would be an easy sale if we just made that change. But it doesn’t matter if the agent rejected the character because of personal feelings or because of assumptions about the market. What matters is that a gay character would be quite literally written out of his own story.
We are avoiding names because we don’t want this story to be about one agent who spoke more bluntly than others whose objections were more indirectly expressed. Naming names can make it too easy to target a lone “villain,” who can be blamed and scolded until everyone feels that the matter has been satisfactorily dealt with.
Forcing all major characters in YA novels into a straight white mold is a widespread, systemic problem which requires long-term, consistent action.
When we privately discussed our encounter with the agent, we heard from other writers whose prospective agents made altering a character’s minority identity—sexual orientation, race, disability—a condition of representation. But other than Jessica Verday, who refused to change a character’s gender in a short story on an editor’s request, few writers have come forward for fear of being blacklisted.
We sympathize with that fear. But we believe that silence, however well-motivated and reasonable from a marketing point of view, allows the problem to flourish. We hope that others will speak up as well, in whatever manner is safe and comfortable for them.
The overwhelming white straightness of the YA sf and fantasy sections may have little to do with what authors are writing, or even with what editors accept. Perhaps solid manuscripts with LGBTQ protagonists rarely get into mainstream editors’ hands at all, because they are been rejected by agents before the editors see them. How many published novels with a straight white heroine and a lesbian or black or disabled best friend once had those roles reversed, before an agent demanded a change?
This does not make for better novels. Nor does it make for a better world.
Let’s make a better world.
What You Can Do
If You’re An Editor: Some agents are turning down manuscripts or requesting rewrites because they think that the identities of the characters will make the book unsalable. That means that you, who might love those characters, never even get to see them.
If you are open to novels featuring LGBTQ protagonists or major characters, you can help by saying so explicitly. When agents realize that LGBTQ content does not lead to a lost sale, they will be less likely to demand that it be removed.
The same goes for other identity issues. If you are interested in YA fantasy/sf with protagonists who are disabled, or aren’t white, or otherwise don’t fit the usual mold, please explicitly say so. General statements of being pro-diversity don’t seem to get the point across. We ask you to issue a clear, unmistakable statement that you would like to see books with protagonists or major characters who are LGBTQ, people of color, disabled, or any combination of the above.
If You’re An Agent: If you are open to manuscripts with major or main LGBTQ characters, please explicitly say so in your listings and websites. Just as with editors, simply saying “we appreciate diversity” could mean anything. (In fact, the agent who asked us to make our gay character straight had made such mentions.) You can throw the gates open by making a clear and unmistakable statement with details. For instance: “I would love to see books whose characters are diverse in all or any respects, including but not limited to gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, and national origin.”
If You’re A Reader: Please vote with your pocketbooks and blogs by buying, reading, reviewing, and asking libraries to buy existing YA fantasy/sf with LGBTQ protagonists or major characters. If those books succeed financially, more like them will be written, represented, and sold. Your reviews don’t have to be positive; any publicity is good publicity. Review on blogs, Amazon, Goodreads, anywhere you yourself read reviews.
An annotated list of YA sf/fantasy with main or major LGBTQ characters is available here, with links to Amazon. Please bookmark this list for reference. It will continue to be updated as new books are released.
Characters of color/non-white characters are often also relegated to the status of sidekicks in YA sff, and are depicted as white on the covers of the few books in which they do star. Please vote with your pocketbooks and blogs to support novels in which they are protagonists.
An annotated list of YA sf/fantasy with protagonists of color is available here, with links to Amazon. Part I: Author surnames from A – L. Part II: Author surnames from M – Z. Please bookmark these lists for reference. They will continue to be updated as new books are released.
The usual protagonist of a YA sf/fantasy novel is a heterosexual white girl or boy with no disabilities or mental/neurological issues, no stated religion, and no specific ethnicity. Reading and reviewing novels whose characters break that mold in other ways would also be a step forward.
If You’re A Writer: If you have had a manuscript rejected because of the identity of the characters, or had an agent or editor request that you alter the identity of a character, please tell your story. Comment here, or leave a link to your own blog post. If you would prefer to use a pseudonym, feel free to do so; see this post for more information on Genreville’s pseudonymous comments policy and credibility verification option.
If You’re Anyone At All: Please link to this article. (If you link on Twitter, please use the #YesGayYA hashtag.) If enough people read it and take the suggestions, enormous and wonderful changes could take place.
Who We Are
This article was written by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith. Rachel Manija Brown is a TV writer, poet, and author of the memoir All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India. Sherwood Smith has published more than thirty fantasy and science fiction novels, including the adult fantasies Inda and Coronets and Steel, and the YA fantasy Crown Duel. Together, we created an animated TV series, Game World, which we sold to the Jim Henson Company.
Our YA post-apocalyptic novel, Stranger, remains unagented and unsold.
—–
Editor’s note: The text of this post was written by Rachel Manija Brown, author of All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, and Sherwood Smith, author of Crown Duel and a great many other novels for adults and young adults. I am posting it in order to provide a pseudonymity-friendly space for comments from authors who have had similar experiences to the ones that Rachel and Sherwood describe. I strongly encourage all authors, agents, editors, publishers, and readers to contribute to a serious and honest conversation on the value and drawbacks of gatekeeping with regard to minority characters, authors, and readers, and to continue that conversation in all areas of the industry. –Rose
Say Yes To Gay YA
By Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith
We are published authors who co-wrote a post-apocalyptic young adult novel. When we set out to find an agent for it, we expected to get some rejections. But we never expected to be offered representation… on the condition that we make a gay character straight, or cut him out altogether.
Our novel, Stranger, has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki’s romance, like the heterosexual ones in the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.
An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.
The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.
Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.”
The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series.
We knew this was a pie-in-the-sky offer—who knew if there would even be sequels?—and didn’t solve the moral issue. When you refuse to allow major characters in YA novels to be gay, you are telling gay teenagers that they are so utterly horrible that people like them can’t even be allowed to exist in fiction.
LGBTQ teenagers already get told this. They are four times more likely than straight teenagers to attempt suicide. We’re not saying that the absence of LGBTQ teens in YA sf and fantasy novels is the reason for that. But it’s part of the overall social prejudice that does cause that killing despair.
We wrote this novel so that the teenagers we know—some of whom are gay, and many of whom are not white—would be able, for once, to read a fun post-apocalyptic adventure in which they are the heroes. And we were told that such a thing could not be allowed.
After we thanked the agent for their time, declined the offer, and hung up, Sherwood broke the silence. “Do you think the agent missed that Becky and Brisa [supporting characters] are a couple, too? Do they ever actually kiss on-page? No? I’M ADDING A LESBIAN KISS NOW!”
This Is Not About One Bad Apple
This isn’t about that specific agent; we’d gotten other rewrite requests before this one. Previous agents had also offered to take a second look if we did rewrites… including cutting the viewpoint of Yuki, the gay character. We wondered if that was because of his sexual orientation, but since the agents didn’t say it out loud, we could only wonder. (We were also told that it is absolutely unacceptable in YA for a boy to consensually date two girls, but that it would be okay if he was cheating and lying. And we wonder if some agents were put off because none of our POV characters are white.)
We absolutely do not believe that all our rejections were due to prejudice. We know for a fact that some of them weren’t. (An agent did offer us representation, but we ended up passing due to creative differences that had nothing to do with the identities of the characters.)
This isn’t about one agent’s personal feelings about gay people. We don’t know their feelings; they may well be sympathetic in their private life, but regard the removal of gay characters as a marketing issue. The conversation made it clear that the agent thought our book would be an easy sale if we just made that change. But it doesn’t matter if the agent rejected the character because of personal feelings or because of assumptions about the market. What matters is that a gay character would be quite literally written out of his own story.
We are avoiding names because we don’t want this story to be about one agent who spoke more bluntly than others whose objections were more indirectly expressed. Naming names can make it too easy to target a lone “villain,” who can be blamed and scolded until everyone feels that the matter has been satisfactorily dealt with.
Forcing all major characters in YA novels into a straight white mold is a widespread, systemic problem which requires long-term, consistent action.
When we privately discussed our encounter with the agent, we heard from other writers whose prospective agents made altering a character’s minority identity—sexual orientation, race, disability—a condition of representation. But other than Jessica Verday, who refused to change a character’s gender in a short story on an editor’s request, few writers have come forward for fear of being blacklisted.
We sympathize with that fear. But we believe that silence, however well-motivated and reasonable from a marketing point of view, allows the problem to flourish. We hope that others will speak up as well, in whatever manner is safe and comfortable for them.
The overwhelming white straightness of the YA sf and fantasy sections may have little to do with what authors are writing, or even with what editors accept. Perhaps solid manuscripts with LGBTQ protagonists rarely get into mainstream editors’ hands at all, because they are been rejected by agents before the editors see them. How many published novels with a straight white heroine and a lesbian or black or disabled best friend once had those roles reversed, before an agent demanded a change?
This does not make for better novels. Nor does it make for a better world.
Let’s make a better world.
What You Can Do
If You’re An Editor: Some agents are turning down manuscripts or requesting rewrites because they think that the identities of the characters will make the book unsalable. That means that you, who might love those characters, never even get to see them.
If you are open to novels featuring LGBTQ protagonists or major characters, you can help by saying so explicitly. When agents realize that LGBTQ content does not lead to a lost sale, they will be less likely to demand that it be removed.
The same goes for other identity issues. If you are interested in YA fantasy/sf with protagonists who are disabled, or aren’t white, or otherwise don’t fit the usual mold, please explicitly say so. General statements of being pro-diversity don’t seem to get the point across. We ask you to issue a clear, unmistakable statement that you would like to see books with protagonists or major characters who are LGBTQ, people of color, disabled, or any combination of the above.
If You’re An Agent: If you are open to manuscripts with major or main LGBTQ characters, please explicitly say so in your listings and websites. Just as with editors, simply saying “we appreciate diversity” could mean anything. (In fact, the agent who asked us to make our gay character straight had made such mentions.) You can throw the gates open by making a clear and unmistakable statement with details. For instance: “I would love to see books whose characters are diverse in all or any respects, including but not limited to gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, and national origin.”
If You’re A Reader: Please vote with your pocketbooks and blogs by buying, reading, reviewing, and asking libraries to buy existing YA fantasy/sf with LGBTQ protagonists or major characters. If those books succeed financially, more like them will be written, represented, and sold. Your reviews don’t have to be positive; any publicity is good publicity. Review on blogs, Amazon, Goodreads, anywhere you yourself read reviews.
An annotated list of YA sf/fantasy with main or major LGBTQ characters is available here, with links to Amazon. Please bookmark this list for reference. It will continue to be updated as new books are released.
Characters of color/non-white characters are often also relegated to the status of sidekicks in YA sff, and are depicted as white on the covers of the few books in which they do star. Please vote with your pocketbooks and blogs to support novels in which they are protagonists.
An annotated list of YA sf/fantasy with protagonists of color is available here, with links to Amazon. Part I: Author surnames from A – L. Part II: Author surnames from M – Z. Please bookmark these lists for reference. They will continue to be updated as new books are released.
The usual protagonist of a YA sf/fantasy novel is a heterosexual white girl or boy with no disabilities or mental/neurological issues, no stated religion, and no specific ethnicity. Reading and reviewing novels whose characters break that mold in other ways would also be a step forward.
If You’re A Writer: If you have had a manuscript rejected because of the identity of the characters, or had an agent or editor request that you alter the identity of a character, please tell your story. Comment here, or leave a link to your own blog post. If you would prefer to use a pseudonym, feel free to do so; see this post for more information on Genreville’s pseudonymous comments policy and credibility verification option.
If You’re Anyone At All: Please link to this article. (If you link on Twitter, please use the #YesGayYA hashtag.) If enough people read it and take the suggestions, enormous and wonderful changes could take place.
Who We Are
This article was written by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith. Rachel Manija Brown is a TV writer, poet, and author of the memoir All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India. Sherwood Smith has published more than thirty fantasy and science fiction novels, including the adult fantasies Inda and Coronets and Steel, and the YA fantasy Crown Duel. Together, we created an animated TV series, Game World, which we sold to the Jim Henson Company.
Our YA post-apocalyptic novel, Stranger, remains unagented and unsold.
—–
Monday, September 19, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Crisis in Cameroon: Stand with Alice
http://www.allout.org/en/actions/cameroon?akid=231.611349.oTF5_U&rd=1&t=3&utm_campaign=cameroon&utm_content
"I've heard countless recent stories of homophobic violence throughout the country. I'm 66, and in ten years of defending LGBT people in Cameroon, it has never been this bad." - Alice N'Kom
15,032
GOAL: 25,000
15,032 people support this campaign. Help us get to 25,000.
Posted: 15 September 2011
Alice N'Kom is one of the only attorneys in Cameroon who defends people who've been jailed for the "crime" of being gay.
In the last 2 weeks, gay men have been snatched from their homes and public places and thrown in jail just for being gay. The situation is approaching a crisis and Alice told us she and her colleagues are ready to confront the President to demand the release of those arrested and an end to laws that make being gay a crime. But she needs the support of people around the world:
"I need to show the president of Cameroon that the world is behind me".
Please sign the urgent letter, then ask your friends and family to do the same. Alice and her colleagues are brave enough speak out, and it only takes a minute to add your voice and to make theirs even stronger.
Dear friends,
My name is Alice N'Kom, and here in Cameroon I am one of the only attorneys who defends people who've been jailed because they are gay.
In the last two weeks violence against gay people in Cameroon has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels: the situation is quickly becoming a crisis. The president of Cameroon can put a stop to this, and if he feels enough pressure he will do so.
I'm watching police in Cameroon conduct an anti-gay crackdown - over 10 people have been arrested on charges of "homosexuality" in the last months. One of them, Jean-Claude, has been sentenced to 3 years in prison merely for sending a text message to another man. I've heard countless recent stories of homophobic violence throughout the country. I'm 66, and in ten years of defending lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) people in Cameroon, it has never been this bad.
Only one person can put an end to this gay bashing - President Paul Biya. He can stop the escalating crisis of homophobic roundups and attacks, and he can immediately release those arrested and call for the end of Cameroon's laws against homosexuality.
Time is running out. I'm headed to Cameroon's capital, Yaoundé, to confront the President with these demands. He will not be able to ignore a powerful outcry from every corner of the globe. I am counting on your help.
Alice N'Kom, Cameroonian attorney
Founder of the Association for the Defense of LGBT Rights in Cameroon (ADEFHO)
in partnership with Alternatives-Cameroun
"I've heard countless recent stories of homophobic violence throughout the country. I'm 66, and in ten years of defending LGBT people in Cameroon, it has never been this bad." - Alice N'Kom
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GOAL: 25,000
15,032 people support this campaign. Help us get to 25,000.
Posted: 15 September 2011
Alice N'Kom is one of the only attorneys in Cameroon who defends people who've been jailed for the "crime" of being gay.
In the last 2 weeks, gay men have been snatched from their homes and public places and thrown in jail just for being gay. The situation is approaching a crisis and Alice told us she and her colleagues are ready to confront the President to demand the release of those arrested and an end to laws that make being gay a crime. But she needs the support of people around the world:
"I need to show the president of Cameroon that the world is behind me".
Please sign the urgent letter, then ask your friends and family to do the same. Alice and her colleagues are brave enough speak out, and it only takes a minute to add your voice and to make theirs even stronger.
Dear friends,
My name is Alice N'Kom, and here in Cameroon I am one of the only attorneys who defends people who've been jailed because they are gay.
In the last two weeks violence against gay people in Cameroon has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels: the situation is quickly becoming a crisis. The president of Cameroon can put a stop to this, and if he feels enough pressure he will do so.
I'm watching police in Cameroon conduct an anti-gay crackdown - over 10 people have been arrested on charges of "homosexuality" in the last months. One of them, Jean-Claude, has been sentenced to 3 years in prison merely for sending a text message to another man. I've heard countless recent stories of homophobic violence throughout the country. I'm 66, and in ten years of defending lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) people in Cameroon, it has never been this bad.
Only one person can put an end to this gay bashing - President Paul Biya. He can stop the escalating crisis of homophobic roundups and attacks, and he can immediately release those arrested and call for the end of Cameroon's laws against homosexuality.
Time is running out. I'm headed to Cameroon's capital, Yaoundé, to confront the President with these demands. He will not be able to ignore a powerful outcry from every corner of the globe. I am counting on your help.
Alice N'Kom, Cameroonian attorney
Founder of the Association for the Defense of LGBT Rights in Cameroon (ADEFHO)
in partnership with Alternatives-Cameroun
Rocky, "Earth-Twin" Exo Planets May have been Born as Gas Giants
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/09/rocky-earth-twin-exo-planets-may-have-been-born-as-gas-giants.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond+%28The+Daily+Galaxy%3A+News+from+Planet+Earth+%26+Beyond%29
Almost a quarter of Kepler's new found 1300 exo planets are thought to be Super-Earths. New research by Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom proposes a new theory for planetary formation known as "tidal downsizing." The new study concludes that these massive rocky planets may be the result of the failed creation of Jupiter-sized gas giants.
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Image above is a Hubble Space Telescope photo of a small portion of the Orion Nebula reveals five young stars. Four are surrounded by gas and dust trapped as the stars formed, but which were left in orbit about the star. These protoplanetary disks may evolve on to agglomerate planets
Most astronomers currently believe planets are created by a method known as core accretion. Giant disks of gas circle newborn stars. Grains in these disks bond together to form larger objects known as planetesimals, which collide, creating larger and larger clumps of material. When the clumps reach a critical mass, their gravity pulls in gas from the disk around them.
In tidal downsizing, a gas disk first forms massive gas clumps farther out in space than where most of the planets discovered so far reside in their solar systems. Left to their own devices, these clumps would cool and contract into very massive (~10 Jupiter mass) planets. Nayakshin showed that during this contraction dust grains grow to large sizes and then fall to the center of the gas clump, forming a massive solid core there – the proto-rocky planet within the much more massive gas cocoon.
"Once you have a core, it may build up an atmosphere around it," Nayakshin explained. "The atmosphere is dominated by hydrogen, but it is much more chemically-rich than the primordial dust material."
The more massive the rocky core, the more massive the atmosphere around it, and it grows with time. Given time, such a mix would result in a giant gas planet with a solid core inside, for example, a super-Jupiter.
However, the surrounding disk pushes the planet in, closer to the star, and there the outer layers of the gas envelope start to be disrupted and actually consumed by the star.
Building on this theory, Nayakshin determined that Super-Earths and other terrestrial planets could, in fact, be the cores of more massive proto-planets that did not have time to mature and were instead robbed of most of their gas by their parent stars. Rocky cores and close atmospheres could survive this disruption process because they are much denser. His paper describing this mechanism appeared in the August edition of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"The remaining core is pretty much a rocky planet, with a mass anywhere from almost zero to ten or so Earth masses," Nayakshin said.
This means the resulting planet could wind up close to their parent star - or farther away, in the area known to astronomers as the habitable zone.
Differing from star to star, the "habitable zone" is the area where water can exist as a liquid on the surface of a rocky world. Planets orbiting within this range are considered the most likely to host life.
Aaron Boley of the University of Florida says that if planets do form as described by the tidal disruption theory, then planets may be able to form in systems that are unfavorable to the core accretion mechanism, such as in disks with little dust. Although he did not work with Nayakshin, he explored a similar theory early last year.
"I like to think of the mechanisms as opposites," he said. "One is bottom up - core accretion - and the other is top down - tidal disruption."
Boley, who has done extensive research on the formation of gas giant planets and the evolution of planet-forming disks, believes that tidal disruption makes it more likely for life to evolve in a wider variety of stellar systems.
"It is another way Nature can make planets," Boley said.
As a new theory, Nayakshin admits that there are many detailed calculations left to perform. He expressed hope that other scientists would help him put his theory to the test.
In his paper, Nayakshin expressed the idea that tidal downsizing capitalized on the best of the core accretion model and competing model of gravitational instability, while neutralizing the problems in both.
Gravitational instability allows for the rapid creation of planetesimals at a distance from the star, but it doesn't allow them to migrate inward. As such, it can't account for many of the closer planets seen today.
"Tidal downsizing and core accretion are both mechanisms that can form a wide range of planets," Boley said. "They occur during different stages of a proto-planetary disk's lifetime, and are not mutually exclusive."
Core accretion has a difficult time forming planets in more distant orbits over a long period of time. Gravitational instability quickly forms them farther out, where they remain unless they can migrate inward. Tidal downsizing requires that they migrate inward fast enough to have their envelopes removed by tides from their star.
Nayakshin noted that the models contain similar physical steps, but in different proportions.
"In this sense, the final model is likely to be a composite."
Boley expressed interest in watching the new theory develop, and seeing how well it stood against up to the more popular model of core accretion.
“Progress is made in science by taking testable ideas and trying to use them until they are proved wrong,” he said.
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