Thursday, May 19, 2005

Sheckley Revisited

A group in Gijon, Spain, a once radical and working class city in the northern part of country, has ponied-up $2000 for Robert Sheckley, sort of. They organize something called “the black week” which obviously has something to do with science fiction. They’re running off 2,000 issues of a Sheckley short story and selling them for one dollar a piece during their annual event with proceeds to be spat

The director of the festival, a Mexican by the name of Paco Ignacio Taibo, said the group has already been in contact with the Kiev clinic where Sheckley is slowly recovering so that they can get him some money. He’s stuck inside there because he can’t pay his bill.

And...

A University of California San Diego political science professor wrote a piece on the filibuster and just who it’s protecting these days. Matthew Soberg Shugart says all this stuff about “minority rights” is a bunch of bunk; that if you look at the numbers, the 44 Democrats in the Senate represent 48.4 percent of the U.S. population, while the 55 (r)epublicans represent 46.8 percent.

So the Democrats represent more Americans the (r)epublicans do.

“Reforming the Senate to empower the majority is a fine debate,” he writes in Wednesday’s ‘San Diego Union-Tribune.’ “But so far the debate has been narrowly cast as a question of the majority of senators, and the voters have been neglected. In the meantime, the filibuster may be imperfect. It may even from time to time obstruct the business of legislating and approving the president’s nominations. But it is the best tool we have for ensuring that the majority of voters is not ignored by an unrepresentative majority of senators.”

Here, here!

the scribe predicts that Bill Frist wins his sop to the far right in yet another “close vote.”

And speaking of the Red state/Blue state divide, how about that season finale on UPN’s “Kevin Hill.”

Looks like the scribe had it wrong (Things You Don’t Know Much About,” May 17.) “Biology trumped all” and the judge gave Sarah back to her mother and shattered Kev’s life just like that. Wow, those Hollywood screenwriters are certainly pushing the envelope. And it’s true, we blue staters lose in court all the time. Great stuff. Somebody over there better be careful they don’t lose their job.

Now we have to wait to until September. Talk about an endless summer.

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