Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Obamarama

(Warning: this blog post has nothing to do with sf, and lots to do with politics. I apologize in advance and I promise my future posts will be more on topic.)

Americans made history last November, and elected their first African-American president, Barack Obama. I voted for him too, and on the night he was elected, I actually got a little teary-eyed. Not only had a people who had long been repressed in this country finally had one of their own elected to the highest office in the land, but here was an enlightened, intelligent, strongly principled man taking office who was ready to lead us out of the quagmire the Bush administration had led us into. We finally had someone who could give us hope, or so we thought.

Like many gay people, I supported Obama because he spoke so strongly about gay rights. One of the first times I noticed him, in fact, was way back in 2007, when I saw him on CNN talking about how Don’t-Ask, Don’t-Tell should be repealed and the gay people who had served in the military should be given their due honors. I was very impressed at the time, kept my eye on him, and became more enthusiastic the more I watched him. He didn’t support gay marriage, but did support civil unions with the same rights as marriage. I was more concerned with my rights than semantics, so I decided this was the candidate for me. He was ultimately elected, and I celebrated along with everyone else.

Imagine my surprise then, over the last few weeks, when not only did he not choose a single gay person for any cabinet position, but also chose a rabidly anti-gay minister, Rick Warren, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

Rick Warren is the head of the Saddleback Church in Colorado, and is best known for his best-selling book, The Purpose-Driven Life. Up until a few weeks ago, Saddleback Church officials had posted on their website that “unrepentant” homosexuals would not be accepted at their church. Warren himself publicly endorsed Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages in California, and he has compared homosexuality to incest, polygamy, bestiality, and pedophilia. He continues to state that opposing gay marriage is not anti-gay. He says he is not a homophobe because he has “had dinner in gay households” and because he has an autographed Melissa Etheridge CD. In the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up.

Obama defends his choice by stating that he is trying to bring in a diversity of viewpoints to his administration. All well and good. But there are no gay speakers at Obama’s inauguration. The Obama camp brings up that they have chosen the Reverend Joseph Lowry, a minister that has long supported gay rights, to deliver the benediction. That’s fine too. But I am reminded of the gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk, who long maintained that “our liberal friends,” who claim to support gay rights and actively seek the gay vote, will ultimately look after themselves. Our liberal friends sit around congratulating each other on how enlightened they are, while real gay people are still kept out in the cold, excluded.

Now Obama hasn’t even taken office yet, so it is still too soon to judge his historical effect on the gay rights movement. Yet his decisions have already impacted gay people. Here is a man who wooed us for our votes, but after the election decided to appease the anti-gay faction, rather than provide us the representation that was promised. He states we should “wait” and “be patient” for our rights. How did African-Americans respond, when the conservatives of their time told them they had wait for the rights they deserved? No one should ever have to accept such a thing. I truly hope this will not be indicative of Obama’s administration.

At least the religious right has been honest. They admit they don’t like us. Even that bigotry is preferable to someone who pretends to be our friend, and then, after gaining our trust, kicks us to the curb.

Posted by Robert Williams 2008-12-30 02:44:31

Monday, September 10, 2007
Poll Results

Well, the poll results are in and I'd like to thank both people for voting. :) It was a 50/50 split between the "The Glory Train" and "The Man Upstairs." Here are the actual numbers for my stories, as of today, September 10, 2007:

Prologue to Peculiar, MO: 167 views

The Glory Train: 890 views

The Great Escape: 760 views

The Man Upstairs: 491 views

Of all the stories, "The Great Escape" has been up the longest, since February 2006. "Prologue to Peculiar, MO" is the newest. I posted it just last month. "The Glory Train" was posted in April 2006, and it has been the dark horse winner. Views for it started very slowly, but began to come inmore frequentlyin recent months. I guess word of mouth started to spread. :)

Thanks again for voting guys.

Posted by Robert Williams 2007-09-10 22:23:03

Thursday, August 30, 2007
Taking a Poll

Hi all,

I was going over my short story views like I always do, and I got an idea. You see, my short stories don't always perform the way I think they will. The ones I really love sometimes fall flat with readers. Others that I think are rather mediocre do very well. So I thought it would be fun to set up a poll and ask my readers, Which one of my short stories on sffworld do you think is the most popular?

I've set up a poll here. If you haven't readmy storiesyet, the links are to the left of the screen. You should be able to see the results of the poll as they come in. I'll let the votes accumulate for a couple of weeks, and then I'll post the actual number of page views here on my blog, and you can see how close you got.

While you're at it, I would love to hear which story is your favorite. Go ahead and let me know by posting a comment on this blog. It will be interesting tosee which story gets the most responses as the readers' favoriteand which isthe most popular story.

Okay, ready? VOTE NOW!

I'll putup thenumber of views for each storyaroundthe weekend of September 8-9.

P.S. I am aware that doing this will add to the number of page views. I am operating under the assumption that anyone voting will read all three stories, so theproportions will still accurately reflect each story's relative popularity. Also, it's just for fun, and to promote my new book, Peculiar, MO, which you can buy here. (Shameless book whore that I am.)

Thanks folks!

Posted by Robert Williams 2007-08-30 23:58:10

Thursday, August 23, 2007
Only One Left

I don't mean to brag, but my first shipment of books to Amazon have all sold except for one. Check it out.

Admittedly, for POD books this doesn't amount to very many units sold, but it's a start. So far the sales rank has been highest at aroundthe one hundred thousand mark. As I write this it's dropped back down to the four-hundred thousands level. I've never had a book sell that quickly before. Not bad for a small fry like me.

Movin' on up. :)

Posted by Robert Williams 2007-08-23 22:46:06

Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Eat Your Heart Out, Dr. Frankenstein

I'm going to digress from promoting the new book to blog about a recent article I read online.

Apparently some scientists are now predicting it will be possible to create artificial microscopiclife within the next three to ten years. An Italian company called Protolife is researchinga field they are calling "wet artificial life," where theyare tryingto make artificial germs in a lab.

They state they basically need to create three things to get the job done (you can read the whole article here):

The first step, making a membrane, should be done soon, since this would be the least difficult. There are already molecules called lipids occurring in nature. To me, a lipid molecule looks like a little bobby pin. They're dipolar molecules, with little forked tails athat re repelled by water molecules, so when you dump a bunch of them into water, they naturally cluster together with the tails of the molecules fitting together like the teeth of a comb, making these sheets of membrane. These are what the membranes ofnatural cells are made of.

The scientists trying to create artificial life want to wrap some membrane around some DNA, let natural selection do its work, and hopefully living things will result.In the same sentence they state this could create organisms that will fight disease and stop global warming. Since evolution is by its nature a random process, dependent on the environment, how do they expect to create the kinds of organisms to do the things they want, with no side effects? And if they will grow and evolve in the lab, what makes them think they won't do it in nature? They'll have to do some genetic engineering.

Which brings me to the more frightening aspect of this field. Normal DNA is made up of four basic molecules, adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. A Florida genetic engineer working fora company calledtheFoundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (or FAME, get it?) is trying to create artificial cells with eight basic molecules. Which could create God only knows what.

I'm going to avoid the argument about what exactly is the definition of life, but debating the ethics of this is unavoidable. Assuming this whole thing isn't a hoax, does it really seem like a safe avenue of research to be doing this, when we don't really understand the mechanism of life in even the smallest single-celled organism? Especially when we don't know what the end result could be?

The article states, and I agree, that the first few organisms made this way would be too weak to survive more than a few hours in a test tube.I think the artificial cells will eventually incorporate nano-technology for the parts necessary to make them work, little cyborg cells if you like. Sounds pretty cool. Since Frankenstein, creating life has been a sacred cow for science. (Kind of ironic if you think about it.) Eventually we could have cells more highly engineered than a fine Italian sports car busy cleaning up the planet. Let's hope they won't just be cleaning up the messes all theprevious engineered cells left before them.

Posted by Robert Williams 2007-08-21 01:24:28