Linkblogging For 23/06/11
First, a little self-promotion – I have a new, low-traffic Twitter account devoted only to my books, and Amazon pages in the US and the UK
Jonathan at Liberal England sparked an interesting debate last week about the differences between Social Liberalism and Social Democracy. His most recent post links to much of the discussion.
Eddie Campbell on Batman artist Lew Schwartz, who died recently
DC cancelled a story where Superman teams up with a Muslim superhero. After Chris Sims brought this to comics fans’ attention (warning, avoid the comments which are full of white American male geeks), DC unofficially told unfunny P. Staines cartoon-writer Rich Johnston that they weren’t avoiding telling the story for fear of offending racist fuckwits who don’t even read the comics, but that the story had Superman rescuing a cat out of a tree, and they didn’t think that was appropriate. David Brothers has the best reaction to this.
In other Protracted-Painful-Suicide-Of-DC-Comics news, they have apparently stated that they’re going to aim all their comics at 18-34 year old males. Ragnell has her thoughts on this.
Charles Stross has three arguments against the Singularity.
Via Tom Peyer, Georgia’s farming industry has been devastated by anti-immigration laws.
That Liberal England guy talks about a Guardianista orthodoxy where “political progress lies, not only in more and more spending on public services, but in more and more areas of our life falling under the stewardship of government.”. Which reminds me of a recent Marginal Revolution Post about political Turing Tests- how well can you put yourself in the shoes of your political opponents.
It strikes me, from looking at this conversation and from previous conversations on the topic, that Social Liberals are just Social Democrats who’ve swallowed such caricatures of what Social Democrats believe. There’s little attempt to point to current issues on which the Social Liberal line deviates from that put out by small-l-liberal socialists, lots of innuendo about how we’re all secretly big fans of identity cards and the Iraq War.
DC didn’t tell me anything, officially or not.