A nice collection, more a comment on the aftermath than the causes themselves. Via Instapundit.

Female Muslim pop singer,Deeyah faces death threats for daring to speak her mind, and also stripping down from burka to bikini in a recent music video, “What Will It Be”. This video also shows several men and women with tape over their mouths, a pointed criticism at some repressive trends in many Islamic countries. Forced to leave Norway, where she was born to immigrant parents and started her musical career, she moved to London. There she now experiences the same death threats that forced her to leave the so-called liberal Norway. This FreeMuse site has some interesting articles on women and music censorship, in particular this one, which also can be downloaded as a PDF. View Deeyah’s video at this page. Not my kind of music, but still a great statement for the right to free speech and free expression.

My long delayed (and brief) response to this story about the apathy of the “download generation” falls on the eve of

Can’t say I was too surprised…

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in?
created with QuizFarm.com

Not quite your World’s Smallest Political Quiz, but rather a satirical quiz to see whether you fall into conservative, liberal, libertarian, or communist camps, with a twist. Don Hagen’s Satirical Political Beliefs Assessment Test pokes fun at all four groups. I found myself mostly in the “Antigovernment Libertine” group, though I wasn’t sure about #2, and disagreed with the premises for question #10, and too many questions dealt about voting (for this avowed non-voter, at least). Aside from those issues, reading most the answers were a blast, though at times the humor wandered away in the libertarian answers, replaced by what seemed like normal libertarian party platform statements. Total number of questions approaches 200, so some patience is required if you want to read them all.

Listened to NPR’s The World while driving home tonight and heard an interesting report about LibriVox . The site is a joint effort of volunteers around the world who record chapters of the books in the public domain. The audio files then are published, and can be downloaded or subscribed to as podcasts via iTunes. I plan on making full use of this site, and may even volunteer to read some chapters. I can’t say I’ve listened to that many audio books, but my listening habits while driving to work change all the time, and I might give this a shot.

February 15 is the deadline to nominate novels for the 2006 Prometheus Award. Eligible books must have been published for the first time in 2005 (or November/December 2004). If there’s such a book should think deserves the Prometheus Award for best novel, please email me at editor AT lfs DOT org.

Cynicism takes a blow to the chin? In a follow up to my last post, I need to remark that Oprah changed her mind at long last, and today railed against James Frey for the lies in book. What took so long? Perhaps some backlash and negative comments from her listeners (but not critics and other commentators) convinced her that truth does matter.

Queen Midas poo-poos the controversy surrounding James Frey’s (fictional) memoir, A Million Little Pieces. The story came to light recently from the Smoking Gun that Frey’s best-selling non-fiction book, propelled to fame from joining Oprah’s book club list, and thus converted to gold, contained a few, well, inaccuracies. Oprah calls a few lies “much ado about nothing,” citing the powerful message of hope in the book. Quite telling is the fact that Frey “originally tried to sell his book as fiction.” When publishers failed to bite, a simple switch to non-fiction was all that it took. Frey’s actions have drawn ire from other non-fiction writers, been parodied in the Foxtrot comics, but with Oprah refusing to back down from endorsing the book, appears to have just as much life as lying politicians forgiven again and again by voters and the media.

So, is this really “much ado about nothing?” Two other recent scandals also have surfaced. Fake Navaho writer, Nasdijj won awards for brutally honest portrayals of Native American hardships. JT Leroy, another media darling, appears to be an entirely made up persona created by two writers, using a relative as a front for media appearance. Could this be the tip of the iceberg? Can readers now really trust non-fiction as truth? Memoirs are tricky, as most of the deal with events happens years in the past, usually with little or no verifiable records. And yet, somehow all these pieces need to fit within the constraints of a story. Even if that that story is supposed to be true, the narrative must flow in order to sell and market the book.

If writers at major publications such as The New York Times and The New Republic can manage to sell lies, why not major publishers? In the end the truth does come out, and just as Nixon shook the faith of the American public, and showed that politicians are in general lying crooks, even among those at the top (especially those at the top), these scandals should act as warnings. Be careful of what’s packaged and sold. Oprah, that purveyor of populist hope, gives not a fig for thr truth. What’s import is the effect of the message, not the content.

As far as this reader goes, truth does matter.

With the January (slipping into February) issue of Prometheus working through its tortuous process at the printer (I drop it off, show up a couple of days later to approve the pages, and pick it up a few days after that), it’s time to think about the next issue of this quarterly newsletter. If you have any reviews, essays, articles dealing with books, movies, music, etc. and liberty, I’m always open to submissions. As an indication of what usually appears, here is a list of the contents of the current issue (each issue runs to about 16 pages):

Reviews of fiction by P. Bagge, Greg Bauder, Scott MacKay, John Meaney, Richard Mgrdechian, Charles Stross, Michael L. Wentz,
and Claire Wolfe & Aaron Zelman;
Review of non-fiction by Ray Kurzweil
Movie review: The Island
Eric S. Raymond on Rudyard Kipling’s SF
Letters; Editorial; Prometheus Award update

Also, if you’d like to subscribe to Prometheus or you’re thinking about joining the Libertarian Futurist Society, send me an email at ” editor ATMARK lfs DOTMARK org ” and I’ll mail you a complimentary copy of the newsletter and point you in the right direction to join.