{"id":2261,"date":"2009-03-29T23:29:22","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T07:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ogre.nu\/wp\/?p=2261"},"modified":"2017-12-31T01:17:47","modified_gmt":"2017-12-31T09:17:47","slug":"fun-with-paranoia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=2261","title":{"rendered":"fun with paranoia"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m reading Cory Doctorow’s novel Little Brother<\/i><\/a>, which has been nominated for a Prometheus Award<\/a>. In another tab I’m reading an autobiographical comic-strip<\/a> by a boy of the same age as the novel’s narrator; switching between them is sometimes surreal.<\/p>\n

Though he has lived in San Francisco, Doctorow makes occasional errors.<\/p>\n

Even if you’ve never been to San Francisco, chances are you know what the Golden Gate looks like: it’s that big orange suspension bridge that swoops dramatically from the old military base called the Presidio to Sausalito, where all the cutesy wine-country towns are with their scented candle shops and art galleries. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sausalito is indeed the nearest town north of the bridge, but it is only one of the cutesy towns in Marin County (which isn’t usually called part of “wine country”).<\/p>\n

“He was going to take the BART over.”
\n\t“Don’t you know about the BART?” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Only a tourist says “the BART”.<\/p>\n

“. . . But it used to be impossible to fly or go to the moon or get a hard-drive with more than a few kilobytes of storage. . . .” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hm, given the narrator’s youth I guess I can believe he has the impression that the first HDs were so small.<\/p>\n

… one of her favorite Brazilian tecno-brega bands, Carioca Proibidão — the forbidden guy from Rio. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That ‘ã’ looks out of place. Andre<\/strong>, shouldn’t it be –ido<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Mom’s a freelance relocation specialist who helps British people get settled in in San Francisco. The UK High Commission pays her . . . . <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most of the members of the (British) Commonwealth have the same head of state, so they don’t send each other Ambassadors; they have High Commissioners instead. Doctorow, being Canadian, may have forgotten that the UK has an embassy<\/i> to the US.<\/p>\n

Ocean Beach is way out past Golden Gate park, a stark cliff lined with expensive, doomed houses . . . . <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The clifftop houses are at China Beach, further north. The area of Ocean Beach (where I lived, 1988\u201392) is mostly flat.<\/p>\n

“Mr Governor” sounds alien. I never thought of that before: why do “President” and (usually) “Mayor” get the prefix, but not “Governor” or “Senator”?<\/p>\n

Qaeda<\/i> is misspelled Quaeda<\/i> two times out of five.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m reading Cory Doctorow’s novel Little Brother, which has been nominated for a Prometheus Award. In another tab I’m reading an autobiographical comic-strip by a boy of the same age as the novel’s narrator; switching between them is sometimes surreal. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,22,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartoons","category-prose","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2261"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3842,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261\/revisions\/3842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}