Friday, October 26, 2012

Professional Left Podcast #151

ProfessionalLeft

"We did not say what we just said and anyone who says we did is a dirty Commie."
-- Every Republican in America



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13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was gonna let it slide until you said (paraphrasing) 'nobody can take me on in science fiction', but it sounds like you conflated 'the cold equations' and Heinlein's short story 'Sky Lift' together.

Love the show.

Anonymous said...

By law, all EDS stowaways are to be jettisoned

Which sounds pretty much like Ross Perot's company EDS. I've never seen an organization more stacked with sociopaths. Two of the shittiest years of my career.

Unknown said...

It's all MY fault, really, blame me. I grew up loving dystopian sci-fi so much that I created a self-fulfilling reality. Sorry, everybody...

daver said...

The graphic on that page might come in handy too, to illustrate a future point - no photoshopping needed.

DeistPaladin said...

I understand your point about the definition of science fiction but Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged doesn't work as a story WITH the technology, so how can we categorize it now?

Maybe just file it under "crap"?

Cliff said...

You guys touched on something I've been thinking about lately:
If I had a choice, I wouldn't know jack shit about housing prices. But because greedy motherfuckers tanked the economy through housing, and then blamed it on poor blacks, I've got to pay attention.

I wouldn't know jack shit about the Senate, except we have Lindsey Graham aw-shucksing his way to Armageddon With Iran, so now I've got to pay attention to that, too.

That and a hundred other boring, stupid things that somehow have the capacity to wreck our whole civilization.

blackdaug said...

Ok scifi-glass, relating to nothing of importance, but perhaps you (or others) can help me out, because I cant even think of a way to look it up.
A zillion years ago, I read a story, not sure even if it was short, novella or whatever...where it turned out that stars were actually sentient life forms that were in communication with each other.
That is all that I can recall of it..but I remember thinking it was an extremely cool concept.
I hope the answer doesn't turn out to be completely obvious.
The thing is, I was such a voracious consumer of Scifi as a youngster (and I am damn near the same age as you... Happy Birthday!! mine was 9/30)..but life has kept me away from it for many years.
The good news is, now that I have a tablet, and books are so easily available and cheap, I intend to revisit all the great stories of my youth.
A problem is that for a long time, I subscribed to a scifi book club, and there were a lot of compilations..and those are going to be hard to track down. There used to be a yearly series that I think was called "The Hugo Award Winners" that may still be available...and that story might be in one of them.
Anyway, if you remember the story off the top of your head, that would be cool...if not...my search continues.
Oh and again..Happy Birthday! Cake for breakfast!!

driftglass said...

blackdaug,

The stars in "A Wrinkle in Time" were sentient and at war with the darkness that was taking over the universe.

blackdaug said...

That sounded familiar..but when I looked it up, I ended up stumbling upon what I think it really was.
A Frank Herbert series that included "The Whipping Star" and "The Dosadi Experiment".
I was really in to those science heavy universe series stuff like Herbert and Niven with Ringworld..which I think I am going to be re-reading soon...
Thanks!

Anonymous said...

blackdawg: I seem to recall a story (analog, asimov's not sure) where the stars have no 'song' until an intelligent race develops around them. This story involved visiting aliens where one of them died during a mountain climbing expedition (here on Earth) and then our star started to sing.

DG has not addressed the 'Sky Lift' issue, BTW.

Unknown said...

I've always loved "Wrinkle", I read it over and over as a kid. The rest of the series was so-so, but still entertaining. Disney made a sorta-cruddy movie of it in 2003, I wish someone would take a more serious approach and make a better one!

Anonymous said...

Is it just my imagination, or did I hear a comment near the end - something like "Radio Free Liberalism" refer to a story by Phillip Dick? Everyone take a drink :)

Anonymous said...

So are you "The Lathe of Heaven" or Neil Young (maybe if we think real hard we can stop this rain)?