In 1964, the Supreme Court of the United States decided the appeal of New York Times v. Sullivan, a defamation suit involving a public official. No matter what I think about Sullivan ('cuz I hate parts of the decision), it markedly changed the law of civil defamation and the likelihood that a public official would be able to recover in a libel suit.

The reasoning of the Court in Sullivan was that public officials, who owed their position to the public and who actively sought the approval of the public, were going to be subjected to lots of news coverage they didn't necessarily like. Sullivan shifted the traditional burden of proof for those who were public officials, and it used a specific standard called "actual malice." For actual malice to be shown -- and it must be, if a public official is going to be successful in suing for libel -- the person/organization communicating the defamation must publish it either knowing it was false, or with a reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the material so published.

It won't surprise anyone that this post regards Alaska soon-to-be-ex Governor Sarah Palin. Palin announced that she will quit her term of office with 17 months ago. She announced this in a long, rambly, doofy speech that boiled down to "people were being mean to me" and "this is best for Alaska." (Given how much her approval ratings have slipped since her election in 2006, many Alaskans agree with the latter.)

Several news sources have said there were rumors around about other possible reasons for the resignation, including the possibility of a major scandal about to break regarding influence peddling (and federal law enforcement officers).

Palin's attorney has says he's going to look into suing bloggers and traditional media alike, since they have spread these nasty rumors about Palin.

Palin's attorney might wish to look into the deicsion in New York Times v. Sullivan, as well as all of the other trials which it spawned. Oh, and just for Palin's attorney: I think your client is a freaky, crazy, mean, vindictive, and warped person, and I'm sorry she's a member of my gender. And none of that is actionable as defamation in this country -- particularly not for a public official.

Many drink and food manufacturers are adding sugar substitutes to all sorts of things, some of which are not labeled as "diet" or "reduced-calorie" foods. This is inconvenient, because I used to be able to use the diet/lo-cal labels as handy warning labels -- most sugar substitutes make me ill. (I have Crohn's disease and a few other things. Trust me, when I say that they make me ill, I mean that if I am visiting you and you give me a piece of the lovely pie you baked with Splenda without warning me first, the smallest room in your house is going to belong to me all day.)

I like sugar. How about they just make stuff with sugar, and not boobytrap it, OK?

(And do not start with the stevia being natural, OK? Just don't. DO NOT WANT.)

AM NOT LOOKING FOR SUGAR SUBSTITUTE! AM LOOKING TO AVOID SUGAR SUBSTITUTES. Please to read for content, yah?

*sigh*

Here's an incomplete list of stuff I avoid:

7UP Plus - contains sucralose
Coke C2 - contains acesulfame potassium and aspartame and sucralose
Pepsi EDGE - contains sucralose
Pepsi ONE - contains acesulfame potassium and aspartame
Propel - contains acesulfame potassium and sucralose
Pure Life flavoured water - contains sucralose
Sobe Lifewater - contains stevia-derived sweetener
Sprite Green - contains stevia-derived sweetener
Trop 50 orange juice - contains stevia-derived sweetener along with sugar


Here's an incomplete list of sugar substitutes that I steer clear of:
acesulfame potassium
aspartame
cyclamates
glycerol
mannitol
neotame
Reb-A
PureVia
sorbitol
Splenda
stevia
sucralose
xylitol

...and propylene glycol, while not a sweetener, also seems to mess my guts up. Alas. It also goes by the name of E1520.

The jury's still out on erythritol, but I'm not conducting tests until I can walk easily again.

(yep, I know, some are listed twice, as there are chemical names and trade names)

That's right, it's the first Sunday of the month. That means there'll be a new episode of Shadow Unit airing this evening!

Tonight it's Elizabeth Bear's "Wind-Up Boogeyman." And don't forget to check for those DVD extras...

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(Our story so far: Shadow Unit is a reader-supported series. So if you can, please donate via the link on the Shadow Unit page, join in the discussions on the Shadow Unit BBS, or just tell us, here or in person, that you enjoy what we do. That's support!)

We're not used to sunshine. This is the second day of sunshine here in the Bay State. After having a cigarette on the back deck this morning, I came in and announced that I was going blind, since it was not possible to see benveniste and gerisullivan. My pupils had actually *dilated*! Amazing!

Now there are white things in the sky with the yellow thing.

As I told Geri, "We're not used to seeing clouds. We've mostly been seeing a giant cloud with no discernible edge."

This is freakin' *wonderful*!

kenscholes has suggested that he and I mud-wrestle for the Endeavour Award, and I've been giving the idea some thought. Not that I'm actually thinking about doing it, mind, but I have been applying my writer brain to the question of how such a battle might be won if it were to actually take place. (Ill Met in the Arena, indeed.)

I'm quick and agile and pretty strong for my size, but Ken has a big advantage in reach and mass. We're both really smart, but neither of us (so far as I know) knows squat about fighting.

My guess is that I could dodge just about anything Ken could throw at me, but in order to win I would have to move in and engage, and once I did he would eventually get his hands on me and then it would be all over. In mud wrestling there are no weapons to level the playing field, and with Ken's brains I can't expect to outsmart him. I honestly can't think of any way I could beat him.

How do you think such a battle would go? What would you do to win if you were in my position? Play fair, now.

(Mind you... I won the Great Pool Noodle Battle but lost the Campbell Award to Jay. Maybe losing the mud wrestle to Ken is my best strategy to win the Endeavour.)

A monorail train at Disney World crashed into another at speed at 2 a.m. today, killing the driver of the rear train. This looks surprisingly like the D.C. commuter rail crash done by Disney Studios:

baron_elric has started to put some of his graded comics collection up for sale, to try to raise some money to pay for things like his recent cancer surgery (even with insurance, we had a bill that was in the thousands -- yeah, love US healthcare, we do).

Currently we have up for bidding:

Avengers #31 -- Good+ condition:
Story by Stan Lee, art by Don Heck. Condition is Good Plus, with wear along spine and slight damage on outside of cover. Colors are good, gloss is still high, and interior pages are light ivory to white in color.

Avengers #30 -- Good+ condition:
Story by Stan Lee, art by Don Heck.
Condition is Good Plus, with wear along spine, slight damage on outside of cover, slight crease marks and smudge on front cover. Colors are good, gloss is still high, and interior pages are very light ivory and evenly colored.

Photos are on the eBay pages -- we'd be happy to scan interior pages for you, if you'd like.

Elric will be putting more up soon, including more like this of general interest. Then, in a few weeks we will be offering the first ten numbers of The Avengers, the first ten of The X-Men, and X-Men #94 with Giant Size X-Men #1. We have quite a few to list, in all -- feel free to ask to see if we have something you might be interested in, in particular.

Please do let people know about this, and let them know the cause, if you'd be so kind. We need to be able to keep paying our health insurance, for obvious reasons, as well as, well, the mortgage. It's tough times out there, folks!

Added: DAMMIT! This was actually a post about the Fallen Princesses Project & also Lev Grossman (who pointed it out to me)'s new book The Magicians. Bad, bad, stupid cut-and-paste has failed me. Gone, gone, never to be re-undone. The links alone must suffice.

Here's what got pasted in instead (a comment I made to yesterday's Urban Fantasy post, but you should probably see it here, too):

* This 2008 Library Journal article by Nanette Wargo Donohue - footnoted in the Wiki "Urban Fantasy" listing - is spot on. Poor L. Miller's got no excuse!( Read more... )

I like them. I like setting them off more than watching them. I prefer watching them to just hearing them (that can be unpleasant actually).

Tonight we (my father, sister, a friend of hers) went to watch the show on the river.

It was nice. It was a year ago that CG and I first met. It was at a party, and there were fireworks. Tonight I had the next best thing to her being here (well, no, second best. I would, perforce have preferred to have commodorified present, if CG couldn't be here, and vice versa).

I had CG singing on my iPod while I watched. The last bits of the show I was listenig to Fernando, while the mist of the river drifted like smoke over the hillside I was sitting on, and the crescendo of lights was being blanketed by the powder of the bursting charges.

Not as much fun as loading the tubes, and running the wire, but I didn't have to strike the frames either.

On balance.. a pretty good evening.

...but the evening is beautiful, the temperature is great, the Massachusetts Air National Guard 114th Fighter Wing flew over our house three times, we're replete with steak goodness, and we're watching the Pops play the 1812 Overture. Cannons very soon. :-)

Hope yours is as wonderful!

Anybody going from (or through) South Minneapolis, Powderhorn Park area, who would have room for an Elise? I have a panel in the mid-afternoon...and should have planned ahead and arranged rides, but I am a space cadet, even more than usual just now.

So... anybody?

A clumsy word, a thoughtless phrase
and he's waiting for the axe to fall.
it probably won't rise to that
but the mind is a muddy place
and the heart is in hopless thrall

The lover is a foolish slave:
living by looks and dying by glances,
with so much at stake, and so much to lose
it amazing that anyone chances

So he sits by the phone,
and starts at the post
Looking for the reprieve
and dreading the warrant:

waiting for the axe to fall

Wanted to let everyone know how much I'm enjoying the discussion following yesterday's post. Terri Windling turns out to have a strong thread about this going on her Facebook Wall, as well. She also told me that Mercedes Lackey wrote her series as a direct response to Bordertown, which I hadn't known.

As I keep saying to anyone who will listen: "This is not hard to research! It only happened 20 years ago! We're not dead! Just ASK!"

I'm now particularly interested, in an OED geeky way, in the first recorded use of the term "urban fantasy", which jongibbs asked about yesterday. From TW's Facebook thread comes this note from
Russell Blackford at 5:37am June 23
I co-edited an anthology called Urban Fantasies back in 1985. The expression "urban fantasy" was in use well before then. I picked it up from Lee Harding, and it was applied during the early 80s to books such as Harding's _Displaced Person_ (known as _Misplaced Persons_ in the US), which was published in 1979. I'd be confident that it goes back even further. Mind you, what is now known as "urban fantasy" may be rather different, but still ...

	Braaaaaaiiins From Zombie Walk 2009
	Zombies can use technology! Myself and DJ Eternal Darkness, tech-using zombies.

As you can see, my hair did NOT stay as enormous as I had originally made it. Dammit, I knew I should have bought a can of AquaNet.

The Zombie Walk was a huge amount of fun. I was ruefully amused that apparently even when I try to make myself look like the menacing and shambling undead, the typical comment said to me is "Awww, cute!" Oh well, I have accepted my cartoon-like nature.

Word count: 6753 | Since last entry: 6753

Fourth of July already!?

Went to the Iron Springs Writers Retreat on the Washington coast, where I was "writer guru" along with jaylake. Very strange for me to be Big Name Writer Guy. In addition to leading two critique sessions I also gave two informal talks, one on plotting and one on using sets and props to build character and display emotion. And of course there was much eating and chatting and walking on the beach (though my it was windy on that beach). Jay and I will be doing it again next year, though at a different location.

I also used the retreat to force myself to stop researching and start writing on my Wild Cards story. It worked. I wrote an outline and 1400 words of prose, and have continued to write 500-900 words per day since for a total of 6753 words so far. This is supposed to be a 10,000-word story and at this rate I expect the first draft to come in at about 12,000 words, but I can already see some places to make cuts.

Came home from Iron Springs to find a rejection in my email box from Catastrophia for the story I read at Wiscon. Darn it. Very encouraging rejection, though, and it's already back in the mail. On the plus side, Space Magic is a finalist for the Endeavour Award and "Firewall" and "Sun Magic, Earth Magic" both got honorable mentions from Gardner Dozois in his Year's Best SF. (Hmm... never noticed before that the titles of the latter story and my collection form an implied trilogy.)

Way too many of my friends have been in the hospital lately. M's having a heart valve replaced, P shattered his humerus and collarbone while ice skating, D's having a quadruple bypass, B was in a very serious car wreck, J's got cancer, R has had two surgeries for a duodenal ulcer, E was hospitalized for exhaustion... It's not even the usual "we're all getting older" thing; every one of those people but R is younger than me. Stop it, y'all.

Yesterday, at kateyule's instigation, was a rock climbing party. camillealexa, tinaconnolly, fshoulders, and Camille's and Tina's partners joined us at a local rock gym for a laid-back "rock climbing for novices" evening. None of us had ever climbed before. Much fun and very impressed by everyone, especially Tina's spider monkey clamber and Felicity's patented "Falcon Girl" descents. I didn't reach the top myself, but I did manage to go higher on each ascent. Afterwards: drinks and snacks at Doug Fir.

lrcutter is using the halfway point of the year to review her progress on her goals, which strikes me as a fine thing to do. My New Year's Resolution was to celebrate the holidays with friends; I don't think we did anything for the Vernal Equinox but we'll be attending a potluck tonight for the Fourth of July. Other goals for the year are to write every day, exercise three times a week, watch what I eat, and keep the house clean and decluttered, and I've been doing quite well on those (except for the exercise, but I have been managing at least two sessions most weeks except when traveling). I've also sold two stories, which puts me on track for my usual four sales a year.

Looking into the future, I'll be in Seattle July 9-11, visiting with scarlettina and markbourne and e_bourne and attending matociquala's Clarion West party at marykaykare's. See some of you there!

Since New York originally abstained from ratifying the Declaration of Independence, I do not believe they should get to celebrate Independence Day when the rest of us do.

They don't get fireworks until July 15.

I wasn't home to monitor the time, but as of now our website is up and running again: www.foolscap.org or www.foolscapcon.org. Take a look!

Via Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy, who notes:

I can rant and rail against homeopathy, how it's useless, how it's nothing more than water, how there is no real methodology or mechanics behind it, how it’s been shown over and over not to have any efficacy over the placebo effect...

...but sometimes simple mockery is the best way to sway people’s hearts.