Misogyny on Mars

Even though The Martian was only officially released last year, I felt like it sat in my to-read pile for way too long before I finally got to it this week. And while I really enjoyed the book, I was disappointed by the lonely protagonist’s occasional sexist comments, which were unnecessary, a little cheap, and (one hopes) out of place in an era where humans are making repeat visits to Mars.

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Misinformation works

Three years ago, in the wake of the SOPA blackouts, the RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman penned a strange sour grapes op-ed in the New York Times. He claimed that the overwhelmingly popular position against the proposal was based on lies, that “neutral” sites like Google and Wikipedia were violating their integrity by taking a stance at all, and most tellingly, that “misinformation may be a dirty trick, but it works.”

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Slow Chopin productivity music

When I’m writing, it’s nice to have music that won’t try to distract me. Unfortunately that rules out lyrics and sometimes even melodies. One trick I like is slowing down nice, existing music to the point where it is more of a texture than a song.

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