Random linkyness

StarTrek and Simpsons musical mashup on YouTube. (From the Stilyagi list.)

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed, the ever-interesting Writer Formerly Known as Thomas H. Benton pulls back the curtain on the eternally-recurring propaganda that this, that, or another profession is expecting an imminent "labor shortage".

Am I wrong to think the annual labor shortage claims do the work of business in creating a surplus army of the unemployed who can drive down wages in fields in which they might otherwise be rising? It seems that during a labor shortage rising wages result in downsizing, offshoring, and other forms of restructuring. As the newly trained workers arrive in droves a few years later, most of the high-wage workers can be dismissed, and the newcomers can be made part-timers with no benefits until the cycle begins again....

Also from the Chronicle, a discussion of the ethics of selling those review copies and "complimentary desk copies" with which publishers deluge academics in the hopes that the latter will assign their books as textbooks, thus forcing dozens or hundreds of impoverished students to buy them at the publisher's exorbitant retail prices.

Fantasy and sf writer Jeff Vandermeer opines about Margaret Atwood's remote book-signing device. I'm tempted to say that any writer who, like Ms. Atwood, is capable of creating, using and popularizing such a device clearly has an aptitude for science fiction. But of course Ms. Atwood's novels about future societies, genetic engineering, etc., are famously Not Science Fiction.

Speaking of genre fiction and its enemies, Ursula K. Leguin's short essay On Serious Literature (aka Return of the Genre-Zombie) should be required reading for anyone involved in writing, editing, buying or selling fiction in any form. (Tagline : "It rose from its shallow grave to haunt the critics!")