Death of the Proto-Geek

http://www.newsarama.com/film/120806-ForrestAckerman-RIP.html

Literally, my hero.

The Ctizen's Power

Here's a good one for speculation,

Vermont towns vote to arrest Bush and Cheney.

From the site:

"State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney, and several towns have also passed resolutions of impeachment. None of them have caught on in Washington."

According to Amazon.ca, impeachment is speculative enough. The site lists The Impeachment Process, one in a series of guide books to US government, under Science Fiction / Fantasy. I acknowledge it doesn’t happen much but it shouldn't be relegated to myth. Democratic governments are making high level commitments without consulting their people, like with the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. Citizens need to know the power they hold in resisting authoritarian decision making like this.

Over at The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy, Harry Turtledove and Bryce Zabel, are posting an ongoing novel about Kennedy's life being worse for not dyeing in Dallas, 1963. The story draws most of its inspiration from the lesser known side of the beloved Kennedy administration. The storyline from inside their alternate universe: "John Kennedy cheated death in Dallas only to face a fate that for him might have been even worse – the public revelation of his private double life. Learning the truth was just as difficult for many Americans. We loved him when we knew him less well. Being forced to face the whole picture – for Kennedy and for the nation – was something no one ultimately was prepared for..."

Changing the status-quo with open insurrection is all too common in stories these days. Do you know of any science or speculative fiction that has impeachments or other non-violent changes to government?

A wiki for you can cite.

"Truth is my best friend", Isaac Newton once said. The website SourceWatch.org is good news for anyone who just wants the facts. Wikipedia is full of information, but its only good for getting familier with a topics - learning some keywords - its unciteable. Now you frustarated academics have a quick and easy way to fill in the gaps of your research projects.

The site is monitored with a light touch, mostly by avaerage contributors but has "active participants monitor the recent changes page and make copyedits and corrections to the content, format and policy problems they see. " (Source Watch - Policy).

Discussions, portals and other tools help contributors discuss and focus their collective efforts. These are just a few of the site's features. The best function is obviously the random button. Hit it enough times and you too may find out who Pisit Charnsnoh is.

SourceWatch's sub-project, Front groups, has already triggered an inquiry of a global warming skeptics groups that ran bipartisan ads durring the 2006 Canadian Election. The group, Friends of Science, was found to be funded in part by a University of Calgary trust account. According to SourceWatch.org the major Canadian Media Company, CanWest News-Wire reported, "facing embarrassing questions raised by the online SourceWatch.org encyclopedia, the university conducted an internal audit over the past year which concluded that its trust account had been used to 'support a partisan viewpoint on climate change.'" While the university closed the trust account, it has refused to make its full audit report public. "

The Arms Trade report I am writing is going to cost me less eye-ball hours infront of academic databases because of this, me thinks. Put any projects of yours this might benefit into the comments.