So, just for the record, i happen to be a fan of both Scalzi and Baen books. There are also a number of series and books which i have enjoyed very much but which i have not nominated for the Hugos.

David Weber, Jack Campbell/John G Hemry, Elizabeth Moon, Taylor Anderson, Jack McDevitt, Lynn Flewelling, Mercedes Lackey. All write stuff that's great fun. All of them are at least moderately popular and at least some are massively popular. But in my opinion none of them have written anything that i would consider "Best". I feel that a book has to be "impressive" in some way other than just being enjoyable in order to be "Best"

And judging by the Hugo results of this and other years it seems that most of the people who vote on the Hugos agree with me. Even though i said in another post that the Hugos (and all other artistic awards) are a popularity contest, and continue to stand behind that, that doesn't mean people will just vote for whoever takes up the most space on their shelves. (Though looking at 2012 in particular i have to admit that apparently a lot of the voters seem to think that pandering is impressive *cough*)

Are you honestly saying Transformers: Age of Extinction deserves to win the Oscar for Best Film just because it made a billion dollars? I personally quite liked the Underworld movies, they were a lot of fun, but there's not a one of them i would nominate for Best Film (in either the Hugos or the Oscars if i had any say in the matter.)

So yes, i could believe Correia might sell more books than Scalzi (although a quick check of Amazon sales rank does not seem to back that up) but selling a lot of books neither guarantees nor justifies a Hugo. I expect that Weber outsells both Correia and Scalzi put together (though i've admittedly done absolutely zero research on that) but he's never even been nominated, which i don't really think is a scandal.

As far as the people who attend WorldCon, i'm not sure if i confirm your preconceptions by being someone who likes Scalzi and (sometimes) goes to WorldCon, or if i confound them by being someone who like Baen and (sometimes) goes to WorldCon. However i will say that the reason why i started going to WorldCon was because the authors who i follow online kept talking about it. Obviously the fact that Correia promoted WorldCon/the Hugos on his blog had an impact. If all he'd said was "you should go to WorldCon and you should vote for my books in the Hugos" without dragging Vox Day and others into it i don't think anyone would have complained. So perhaps if more of the people who feel excluded did that instead of complaining about biases then the results would be a little more in line with what they think is popular?

As for Toni Weisskopf, i see that he was part of the slate. I didn't actually get around to that category, so i can not personally attest to the quality of work of either him or any of the other contenders. However it is unsurprising to note that about half as many people voted in "Best Editor" as in "Best Novel" (honestly, it surprises me a little that it got even that many) so it was even more susceptible to influence by block voting.

First, 140 people votes for No Award for #1, which seems rather high. Almost 10% of the voters thought _none_ of them deserved a Hugo.

The difference between Ginjer and Toni before the instant run-off was only 25 votes (384 vs 359), or less than 2% of the total vote.

Unsurprisingly that didn't change much after No Award was eliminated, but in the third pass Ginjer picked up about twice as many votes as Toni, and almost three times as many in the fourth pass. (Notably, Liz picked up as many votes in passes 3 & 4 as both Ginjer and Toni combined but wasn't able to overcome the initial deficit. But given that it's not surprising that she came in second.)

So in short there was a minority, the largest of the initial minorities but still a minority that put Toni first. All the other minorities tended to rank Toni fairly low.

Something kind of similar happened with the Wheel of Time for the "Best Novel" category. It wasn't on the Sad Puppy Slate but it was another case where there were accusations of block voting. (Disclaimer: i quite liked Wheel of Time, at least at the start, and i believe i ranked it #3.) It came in second in the run for #1. And then it came in second in the run for #2. And for #3. Despite having the second highest number of #1 votes it ended up coming in 4th in the overall running.

I can't say for sure whether those results were because either Toni Weisskopf or the Wheel of Time was "hated" by anyone (what's a SJW anyways?) but everything looks pretty normal for an instant run-off voting system. I'm not sure why you say it's a "fucked up voting system." The results from instant run-offs aren't always obvious at first glance, and it's well known that no voting system is perfect, but the results are certainly a lot better than the kind of thing that happens with "regular" non-run-off voting.

Yes, they are. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been paying attention. The Nebula awards are a popularity contest as judged by people in the industry (authors and possibly editors and publishers as well, i forget the specifics,) while the Hugo awards are a popularity contest as judged by the public.

In theory in both contests the popularity is supposed to be based on the quality of the work. That rule is probably more closely observed for the Nebulas than the Hugos, but in both cases it is impossible to eliminate all personal biases.

I voted in the Hugos and personally found the Vox Day work to be junk, while the other works from the "Sad Puppy Slate" were decent, though not anything i would have considered worth nominating myself. Obviously i agree with the results, but obviously i am also biased like every other human being.

So yes, the Hugos are a popularity contest, as are the Nebulas, the Oscars, the Grammys, and every other reward for artistic achievement that you can think of.

"Largely unsuccessful" is a bit of an understatement. Those who follow such things have been rejoicing that the "Sad Puppy Slate" ended up last in all the author categories, and that the novella by Vox Day, the guy with very... questionable political and personal views, actually ended up below "No Award". I think it's interesting that despite the outcries and rage and threats about "No Awarding" the entire slate, the only nominee to actually meet such a fate was the one that almost everyone agreed was literarily a piece of garbage.

One does have to wonder how the "Sad Puppy Slate" would have done if it hadn't weighed itself down with a nominee that was simultaneously so objectionable and so poorly written.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...
http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...

No one is claiming that recent unemployment is due to mass robotic replacements. It's something that's about to start happening soon when the stuff that's currently in the research pipeline hits the market.

Restaurants may not have replaced their employees with robots yet, but it's coming: http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/2...

I'm certainly not an epidemiologist, but i'm pretty sure there are fairly strong selective pressures for viruses and bacteria to become less deadly as they spread. In fact there is _some_ evidence that this is already taking place.

As you say, the death rate is normally between 50 and 90%, but obviously that's comparing different outbreaks, not an average of all infections from Ebola ever. Some past outbreaks have been at the 90% rate but current reports seem to indicate that the death rate for this outbreak is around 60%. It doesn't seem to me that that's a coincidence. Killing anyone you infect quickly and bloodily is not a great long term survival strategy. If a disease kills 90% of the people it infects in a week and there's a mutation that only kills 80% of the people and takes two weeks, that mutation is going to spread a lot more effectively.

To speak in an anthropomorphic way, every disease "wants" to become the next common cold or flu. Almost everyone catches it sooner or later, but very few of the hosts die statistically speaking.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever read Michael Flynn's Firestar series? There are so many little bits from there that reminded me of SpaceX at when i reread it recently. Though apparently it's not just SpaceX, but everything Elon Musk is involved with.

You can say a lot of things about the negative side of modern nations becoming so invested in the global economy, but there's a good side to those countries not wanting to disrupt that economy by getting into wars. It's the fact that those countries start less wars. There's pretty good evidence that Russia has been less aggressive in the Ukraine than they were originally planning because after Crimea the sanctions issued by other countries have already had a significant effect on their economy. (Russia's Growth Was Already Slowing - Then Came Crimea, Russian government admits economy in crisis as Ukraine weighs, Sanctions Will Work, All Right. Just Ask the Oligarchs)

If Russia's economy had been better to begin with they probably wouldn't have started this whole mess, and personally i think that would be a good thing, even if it prompted Russian ultra-nationalists to complain about the government selling out to corporate interests.

Yeah, but i'm just talking about myself. I'm pretty lazy and don't do most of those other intensive purposes. Of the intensive stuff i do at least 90% of it is on an exercise machine.

So for all intents and purposes i use an exercise machine for all intensive purposes.

That is untrue! For all intensive purposes i use an exercise machine!

You're correct, i misspoke. I should have said that to a lay-person, such as myself and most of the other people reading the news reports, the distinction between a fighter and a ground attack craft are pretty hazy, especially in relation to determining the difference between the two by sight.

And you may think that you wrote nothing that suggested a helicopter, but you said it was a "ground attack craft" that was "pretty much defenceless against fighters, unless it can keep low enough to evade them by jinking." That made me think of a helicopter hiding behind a hill, popping up to hit some ground targets and then ducking back down again. So you said something that to you clearly indicated a plane that attacks things on the ground, and i heard "helicopter," which just demonstrates the difficulty of explaining these things briefly without going into detail. When the reporters said "fighter" i expect that most readers got a more accurate vision of what the craft actually looks like than i was initially getting from your description.

Sure it would be nice if everyone could be educated about everything, and if the nature of the craft that was shot down was key to what was going on in the area then yes, the reporters should have been more detailed in their descriptions and explanations.

However it doesn't really matter in this context whether it was a fighter or a bomber or a ground attack craft or whatever. I don't believe the reporters were trying to hide anything or that anyone is confused about the nature of its mission. It was a thing that flies and kills people, it was flying over there and killing people (or at least trying to) because there's a war on over there. However it go shot down, demonstrating that the other side has both the ability and the intent to shoot down things that fly. That's what is relevant to this particular story.

The fact that you want to add more details and educate everyone about stuff that was left out or glossed over in the reports is fine. Describing reporters using shorthand when talking about non-essential details as an attempt to cover up the killing of "Ukrainian citizens" just sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory.

Really? Has there been any pretense at all about what it was doing? I'm fairly sure it was always clear it was there to attack the separatist forces. It's unclear whether those forces mostly consist of Ukranian insurgents or under-cover Russians. However even if it is all Ukranians, there's a big difference between slaughtering civilians and attacking what is functionally an army armed with rifles, rockets, missiles and artillery.

And as others have pointed out, the distinction you're making between a "fighter" and a "ground attack craft" are pretty hazy. From your description i thought you meant it was a helicopter, but after looking at a picture i would have called it a fighter myself. Or maybe just a military jet. In any case i think you're making a mountain out of a non-existent molehill.

Looking at pics and descriptions in a couple live blogs, and based on that i've got to say that i didn't like live tiles when Microsoft created them and i don't like them any better now the Google seems to be copying them.

Also, reportedly "Each of your active Chrome tabs shows up individually in the app switcher". If that's true i so do not want. I've got over 90 tabs open in chrome on my phone right now, and about an equal number in Firefox. I do _not_ want to have to sort through all that just to switch apps.

If one has to have a short and specific word (instead of just "photo" or "video" as has already been suggested) then i would go with "SelfPic" or "SelfVid" as appropriate. It may not roll off the tongue quite so easily, but it's only one character longer than "selfie" and, most importantly, it doesn't sound like you're performing some kind of sex act on yourself.

[Citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

I've only looked through the rules for about ten of the states, but so far it seems pretty damn easy to either get an independent on the ballot or get yourself declared as a major party and thus be on the ballot, assuming of course you've actually got enough people supporting you to actually have a chance of winning the election. (Generally it seems to require an indication of support of anywhere between 10,000 people and 20% of the registered voters.)

So what evidence do you have that it's not actually as easy as that page seems to indicate? And please note that despite being a relatively small group, the Libertarians have succeeded in getting a number of their candidates onto the ballot.

Your #1 is patently false, given the premises. If everyone agreed on a choice, they could elect anyone they want. Getting on the ballot is not as hard as you make it out, and in most places write-ins are possible anyways. Again, you're conflating the reality that many people are lazy and easily misled with the idea that the system can't work. The system _can_ work, it just doesn't because many people are lazy and easily misled, so they don't fight to find the best candidate and make sure that person gets on the ballot.

As for #2, you're arguing that it is impossible to find approximately 537 honest people in America. (Or 1074 if you want to have both a liberal and a conservative option.) Or do you believe that getting into office instantaneously makes one irredeemably evil? And also stupid given that they were elected for essentially a single issue and if they don't follow through they have zero chance of getting elected in the next term.

And remember the disagreement we're having is whether the political process gives the public control over the government. You say they have no control, i say they have control but in aggregate they choose not to use that control. I think we both agree we're never going to actually see the results we'd like, but you seem to think it's because there's something wrong with the system, while i think it's because there's something wrong with human nature.