Steampunk Quiz (via noire)

This is a gorgeous quiz, and it definitely nailed me:

Your result for The Steampunk Style Test...

The Gadgeteer

32% Elegant, 80% Technological, 33% Historical, 24% Adventurous and 21% Playful!

You are the Gadgeteer, the embodiment of steampunk technology. Ironically, many of the things that most define your style are probably too large to easily carry about, but given the opportunity you would prefer to be seen surrounded by boiler engines, gear-driven calculators, and incredible automata. Of all the steampunk fashion styles, you place the greatest emphasis on technological accessories, and you are the most likely to create elaborate gadgets that are as much a part of your outfit as your clothes. You probably have goggles, but unlike most people you consider them to be for more than decoration. Whereas most people might look odd carrying a satchel of tools around, for you they may well be essential. Above all, you remind everyone that what sets the genre apart from Victoriana is simply the level of technology.

Try our other Steampunk test here.

Take The Steampunk Style Test at HelloQuizzy

Retire "Yankees Suck"? Not Yet.

Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe wrote an excellent editorial claiming that we should retire the "Yankees Suck" cheer/jeer. He makes many excellent points, so go read.

Now, he's probably doomed, because he's calling for more gentility than Red Sox or Yankees fans are willing to put forward at this time. But the need is real, as too many Red Sox and Yankees fans are going way overboard again. There was a lull after 9/11, when the attitude "they are not my enemy; they are only my rival" held sway. That attitude should return.

Quick. Recently, some Red Sox fans rolled a car with Yankee paraphernalia and a pinstripe paint-job, with the driver inside it. This is obviously not acceptable. And worse, in New Hampshire, a drunk Yankee fan plowed her car into a group of Red Sox fans, claiming "I thought they'd get out of the way", but forensics showed that she never hit her brakes before hitting the group. Two Red Sox fans died.

This has long been a problem. Boston knows to put out extra security for Yankee games at Fenway, and Yankee Stadium saw an almost complete drop in fan violence during Red Sox games in Yankee Stadium when they stopped selling beer in the stands. (You can still get a beer at Yankee Stadium; you just have to get out of your seat to go get it.)

But Cullen oversteps himself. He is correct to defend Derek Jeter as a class act, and I remind belligerent Red Sox fans that Joe Torre required his team to stand outside the dugout and watch the 2004 Red Sox receive their World Series rings at the first Fenway game of 2005. Torre was always a class act, and deserves Red Sox fans' begrudging respect.

But the Yankees organization still sucks. It sucks star players out of small markets just before the trading deadline, dooming those teams to lesser gate receipts for the remainder of the season. Big moves like that should take place in the off-season, so that season-ticket buyers in small markets can know what they're buying. When a newly-purchased superstar first takes the field or comes to the plate in a Yankee uniform, it is wholly appropriate to shout "Yankees Suck!". Then shut up and let him take his at-bat.

The other situation where it is appropriate to chant "Yankees Suck" is at Camden Yards, the Rogers Centre, or the Tropicana Dome. Red Sox fans travel a lot, and they sometimes outnumber the home team's fans at "away" Red Sox games. The "Yankees Suck" cheer is a way of building camaraderie with the host fans.

Cullen is correct that it is rat-stupid to chant "Yankees Suck" at basketball games. There's no call for that.

I don't believe we should yet retire that particular jeer, but we should certainly be more discriminating about when we use it.

Pick Five

If you had to pick five science fiction and/or fantasy short stories which you would deem "required reading" (i.e., someone who hadn't read one would be considered to have a major gap in their brain), which five would you pick?

Compiled list, in order of contribution:

1. "The Marching Morons", C.M. Kornbluth
   
2. "Nightfall", Isaac Asimov
   
3. "All You Zombies", Robert Heinlein
   
4. "The Last Question", Isaac Asimov
   
5. "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", Harlan Ellison
   
6. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", Ursula K. LeGuin
   
7. "The Nine Billion Names of God", Arthur C. Clarke
   
8. "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", Roger Zelazny
   
9. "The Cold Equations", Tom Godwin
   
10. "The Gernsback Continuum", William Gibson
    

The first five were just off the top of my head; I'm certain you good folks would choose others.