Hierarchy of disagreement; ignore the singularity and write about now; the decline and fall of nation-statehood; Rhetorics of Fantasy reviewed …

• 1 – How to Disagree
  “Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here’s an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy.”
  (tags: Philosophy thinking semantics rhetoric linguistics hierarchy discourse disagreement communication classification)
• 2 – No time for the singularity – Karl Schroeder
  “… here’s a rare piece of advice for my fellow science fiction writers: forget the singularity. Even if it’s real, it’s irrelevant. The decisive moment in history is now, before it occurs. Seize that, write about that. All else is distraction.”
  (tags: advice writing setting decisive action ideas singularity fiction science sf)
• 3 – Mayors of the World, Unite!
  “… it’s a big mistake to view power in this new world as a competition confined only to large nations. In fact, small states will increasingly find themselves with more influence and more room to manoeuvre.”
  (tags: regionalism competition economics development innovation power nation-state post-national plitics global)
• 4 – Review: Farah Mendlesohn – Rhetorics of Fantasy
  “Rhetorics of Fantasy does an outstanding job of laying out the parameters for future explorations. I found myself not only agreeing with Mendlesohn’s conclusions the majority of the time, but I also began asking questions that this book chose not to cove
  (tags: criticism fiction genre fantasy rhetoric Farah-Mendlesohn review book)
• 5 – Add Spark to Your Writing With These 3 Simple Tweaks
  “… the ideas on modifiers are the ones I’ve most taken to heart, the ones that may have most benefited my writing.” Interesting; these appear a lot in poetry also.
  (tags: language precision poetry clarity copywriting modifiers writing)