No Nebula for me, alas

By Cory Doctorow at 10:28 pm Saturday, Apr 17 • Comments • Share

Well, thanks to Jack Bell, I just listened in on Connie Willis reading out the winners for the Best Novelette category at the Nebulas. My story, 0wnz0red, didn't win, alas. However, I am here to tell you that standing in a hotel in Linz, phone clamped to ear, listening to someone read out the Nebula winners thousands of miles and nine timezones away, was enough to set my heart racing. Thanks to everyone who nominated me and voted for me. It truly is an honour just to be nominated. Eileen Gunn would have given my acceptance speech, had I won, may as well reproduce it here for alternate historians:

If there's anything worse than a long award-speech, it's a long award-speech by proxy, so this is short. I deeply regret not being there tonight, and I am thrilled down to my boots by this honour. In this age of Neil Gaiman's Hugo speeches, it's a cliche to say, "Holy fuck, I've won a Nebula," but really, after all, holy fuck, I've won a Nebula.

Thanks to everyone, but especially to my editors, co-workers and copyfighters, to my agent Don Maass and the Gibraltar Point workshop, and to all the slashdotters and other netizens who downloaded this from Salon.

And thanks to Eileen for letting me make her say "fuck" twice, er, three times, in front of all of you.

Link

Giant LAN party runs girl geeks off the premises

By Cory Doctorow at 3:07 pm Saturday, Apr 17 • Comments • Share

Katla was one of the few women to attend a 5,000-person LAN party in Norway called The Gathering. Some of the "boys" at the LAN party decided to make a movie consisting of close-ups fo the tits and asses of the women in attendance. Katla's sworn off The Gathering -- her post is heartbreaking.

It was to much to hope for. 5 days running around with fellow geeks, doing geeky stuff. I sdont think i want to go back here, and now i just want to go home, damb brats. now there is not female geeks here anymore. but girls, and doubt not for a secound that they are here for your pleasure only. fucking assholes. and they are still here. they did not get kicked out. and i doubt they will be. Dam shame, it could have been fun beeing a geek here. but i think ill just stay away.

Link (via Misbehaving)

Mickey Mouse's dwindling brand

By Cory Doctorow at 7:03 am Saturday, Apr 17 • Comments • Share

Great NYT feature on the dwindling importance of Mickey Mouse as a character, and the attempts of the Disney organization to reimagine Mickey as a relevant character today.

"I was around 6 when I first saw him," [Maurice Sendak] said. "It filled me with joy. I think it was those primary colors so vivid and pure, taken up with the most incredibly beautiful animation, reminding you of Fred Astaire. Oh! And his character was the kind I wished I'd had as a child: brave and sassy and nasty and crooked and thinking of ways to outdo people." The joy leached from Mr. Sendak's voice. "Not like the lifeless fat pig he is now."

Mr. Sendak is hardly alone in mourning the mouse's decline. "Boring," "embalmed," "neglected," "irrelevant," "deracinated" and, perhaps most damning, "over" are some of the adjectives that cropped up in recent interviews with people in the cartoon, movie and marketing businesses.

Link (Thanks, Warren!)

Retired patent examiner turned Rube Goldberg

By Cory Doctorow at 3:27 am Saturday, Apr 17 • Comments • Share

Arthur Paul Pedrick was a UK patent examiner who retired and filed many patents for whacky, impractical inventions.

A horse-powered car, putting the cart before the horse. To control the speed, the car's accelerator pedal varies the thrust which the horse must exert to reach its feedbox 2. The brake pedal is linked to the horse's halter. The ignition switch can give the horse's posterior a mild electric shock to stimulate it into movement.

Link (via Monochrom)

Anyone with a Sidekick going to the Nebs?

By Cory Doctorow at 1:47 am Saturday, Apr 17 • Comments • Share

If anyone is going to be at tonight's Nebula Award ceremony with a Sidekick or other wireless email appliance, can you send me an email after the novellette category winner is announced, letting me know if I won? I'm in Linz, Austria, and I'm guessing the award will be announced somewhere around 8PM, which is 5AM here -- I'm setting an alarm for 5... Link

Logan Airport deploys snitch-squad

By Cory Doctorow at 1:08 am Saturday, Apr 17 • Comments • Share

Logan Airport is deploying undercover snoops who will keep an eye out for anxious, sweaty, inappropriately dressed air-travellers who are observing security measures. These people will be sent away for secondary cavity-screening. You know, the number of times I've shown up at a warm-weather airport in a cold-weather coat (formy destination), sweating, anxious, and bug-eyed at the National Guard teenagers threatening to blow their zits off with their hulking carbines... Welcome to the future: a boot stamping on a human face -- forever.

[O]fficials watch people as they move through terminals. They look for odd or suspicious behavior: heavy clothes on a hot day, loiterers without luggage, anyone observing security methods.

At the security checkpoints, screening supervisors have a score sheet with a list of behaviors on it. If a passenger hits a certain number, a law enforcement officer will be notified to question the person.

Link (via Fark)