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The Dragonpage‘s Cover to Cover, a really cool SF/F podcast, interviewed Irene Gallo and I about Tor.com in their latest installment. Despite Irene being out in the boonies playing with a bunch of artists, and my getting a bit nervous and lapsing into stuttering marketing-speak for a spell (*hangs head in shame*), we managed to sound pretty all right.

Cover to Cover #333A: Tor.com

My close reading of Watching the Watchmen is up on Tor.com, for those interested. I really enjoyed this book, especially considering that I was very skeptical as to its value, in light of the excellent Absolute edition of this seminal work. Go, take a look-see.

In a move that surprises absolutely no one, the U.S. Government has found a way to escalate one of its ongoing military conflicts right before the election. Funny how I’ve been reading about this since yesterday morning in the international press, but it’s not until today that the American media picks it up. From the NYT:

An explosion on Sunday killed nine construction workers and wounded 19 others near the border of Iraq and Syria, the police in Anbar Province said.

The BBC is a bit less, eh, accommodating to U.S. spin, shall we say:

US military helicopters have carried out a raid inside Syria along the Iraqi border, killing eight people including four children, Syrian officials say.

I’m on record as saying that it’s quite plausible that military action this close to an election could be the excuse Bush (or his minders, rather; Dubya is probably running around the White House with a huge case of Senioritis) needs to call off the election and declare martial law. Let’s hope I’m dead wrong, or that if I’m not, the public won’t stand for it (hoping for the former, because, frankly, the American public is like a brachiosaurus: it takes way too long for the impulse to reach the brain, and for the animal to then process and react).

To top things off, Jon Taplin has another take on the October surprise, this one by way of Al-Qaeda.

Finger on the pulse of the pixel-stained techno-peasant, as always, Randall Munroe’s xkcd seems like a description of my life today:

More xkcd.

Based off of an offhand Tweet during last night’s presidential debate, I wrote up a quick post on Tor.com:

During the presidential debate last night, John McCain came out, to the surprise of absolutely no one (but to the chagrin of many), in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision which gave women the right to abort a fetus, up until the point when the fetus becomes “viable” (insert your own value for “viable”, and, er, have fun with that one around the water cooler). In the course of defending his position, he uttered the phrase “I support the rights of the unborn.” Fair enough, Senator, but this begs the question: what about the rights of the undead?

Go check it out, there are some good and funny comments on there, including a link to this image, which may well be on its way to becoming a new meme.

The ever-insightful Jon Taplin has this image on his site today, along with more interesting analysis of the current financial clusterfuck:

I just about lost my coffee through my nose when I saw this. Yes. Jump. All of you. Right now.