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March 11th, 2009
 | 11:46 am - two thoughts that nobody but me cares about
1. In Andre Norton's novel Beastmaster, the main character was Navajo. It's spelled out very clearly in the text. When this was made into a movie, he was played by Marc Singer, who is tall and blond. Andre Norton was not credited in the movie as having created the character [or the story, or the book. Or anything. She wasn't mentioned, either as Andre Norton or as Alice Norton. ::headshake and loud muttering::] The movie is an interesting (for some values of interesting) mixture of typecasting for appearance vs. capable acting by good actors. Tanya Roberts is the female lead (she may have learned acting since this movie but she didn't do any of it here); John Amos is doing a creditable job as an ally and Rip Torn is the villain. The animals include a tiger (wearing black food coloring to hide his stripes as he was supposed to be a black jaguar), two ferrets (playing meercats) and a golden eagle (playing an eagle.) They are awesome.
2. There is talk about Wiscon attendance among people discussing racism and SF in the RaceFail links on rydra-wong's LJ. Wiscon, like most other SF cons, is run by fans from local science fiction organizations/clubs/associations/gatherings that meet once or twice a month. (I said nearly to separate it from the pro-run show-related cons that cost much more, where it costs money to get autographs from guests of honor, instead of being places where anyone attending can go talk to a GOA for free.) There are science fiction fan clubs in nearly every major city and many minor cities. If the discussions take place only at the major conventions -- or online -- I doubt much will change overall in SF. If discussions take place within local SF fan communities -- or if more chromatic folk who enjoy SF decide to attend local meetings -- there may be more of a chance for greater change to occur and for it to happen sooner.
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 | 04:25 pm - an answer, maybe not the answer
I've been wondering why Bernard Madoff would so calmly plead guilty to so many counts of securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering and accept the possibility of several consecutive life sentences.
This Vanity Fair article gives me a lot of ideas why he'd want to be somewhere behind a lot of concrete, where the people he defrauded couldn't get to him. He didn't just lose the money of rich people who could afford it -- he looted and lost *all* the money of people who had trusted him enough to invest everything they had. And he defrauded a huge number of charitable foundations that supported hospitals and a lot of other "good works" organizations. The story is incredible. Read it.
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InsaneJournal |