Links for Procrastination

Here is another entry of my entirely erratic link roundups. Today I’m in a bit of a good mood because last night I unpacked The Stack and got it in place on a bookshelf (The Stack was contained in about 11 boxes and I’m guess weighs in at close to 300 books). Anyway, on to the links…

• Yay for California on becoming civilized enough to not deny basic rights to the GLBT community. I particularly like Scalzi’s advice for the soon-to-be newlyweds.
  

• This is an interesting discussion on Amazon reviews over at Westeros. I generally consider Amazon reviews to be useless at best – I just won’t take the time to sort between good, the bad, the fraudulent, and the idiot-born.
  

• Pat over at the Hotlist has caused a stir with his post about hype. I really haven’t followed it and don’t care to. It seems to be the result of his not understanding what hype actually is versus buzz and the fact that people simply have differing opinions more than anything nefarious. Simon Spanton of Gollancz doesn’t seem to come off too well through it all – which is unfortunate, because I think he’s pretty right-on through the discussion. There are plenty of other reactions around the web, but I’m too lazy to search them out since I’ve not gotten engaged in this discussion.
  

• Tobias Buckell is happy to announce that he’s now writing in the Halo universe.

• "A brief (and I do mean brief, like 2 seconds brief, so pay attention) clip revealing, for the first time anywhere, the sound a fantasy author makes when the immensely well-travelled beak of an Arctic tern connects with his skull at high velocity:" Via this blog.