Author Walter Donway has posted an enthusiastic review of The Magic Battery on the Savvy Street website. I love not just his praise, but his understanding of what I was aiming for.
Full disclosure: I recently posted a favorable review of Donway’s Retaking College Hill, but there was no tit-for-tat agreement between us. He emailed me a draft of the review last week, asking just for factual corrections.
This post may cost me some people whom I mistook for friends. If that happens, it’s painful, but there’s no point in living with an illusion. It’s more important to point out unjust positions within your circles than with those outside, because you have a much better chance of having an effect. The danger when you speak up is that the people in your circles may turn on you, but I expect the number of people who do that to me will be small and won’t include anyone I truly value.
J. K. Rowling has been the target of extreme hostility from quite a number of people, including some within my circles. They don’t give reasons; they just spit. Sometimes they call her “transphobic,” but that’s a three-syllable word and is apt to promote a second of thought while saying it. The word “terf” is much easier just to spew (or should that be S.P.E.W.?).
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Mark Twain talked about “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Lying with statistics isn’t always intentional; sometimes a writer doesn’t understand their meaning or applicability.
Recently I saw a news article on the COVID-19 infection rate in northern New Hampshire. It reported a higher positivity rate than in previous weeks. That doesn’t tell us anything about whether infections are increasing or decreasing, though. If the positivity rate goes up, it could mean one of several things:
Most browsers give you the option of browsing in a private window. The name may vary; Microsoft Edge calls it inPrivate, and Chrome calls it Incognito, Whatever it’s called, it sets up a temporary window or tab and discards your cookies and browsing history when you close it. You’ll see warnings everywhere about its limitations. If you’re an NSA whistleblower, you’ll need much better protection to avoid being caught. But here I want to talk about some benefits that aren’t often discussed. They’re especially handy when doing research.
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You don’t lose reality by communicating at a distance. You don’t become a “virtual” person. I wrote about this a year ago, but the silliness hasn’t abated, so I want to make the point again.
An online gathering of people can appropriately be called a “virtual” gathering. They aren’t really coming together; they get the effect of it through technology. The people participating, though, remain real. You’d think that after over a century of telephones, everyone would grasp that people can be real without being in the same room.
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