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Sneaking in today at the bottom of the AD main page in the short story section is another excellent story by Cole Parker: The Farm Boy

The fine story Love on the Rocks has completed and is being moved to Roamin Reader

The final chapter of Love on the Rocks has posted. An enjoyable two stories. http://crvboy.org/stories/mm/s002/p00.html

Chapter 10 is now posted: http://www.gayauthors.org/story/diogenes/aboutcarl/10

Let's see. The Koch brothers support medical research (particularly cancer research) and the genetically modified medicines that are produced. Where is the outcry against GM medicines? Let's see. Every hybrid plant is genetically modified. Why not an outcry against hybrid seed? Let's see. There are 500,000 cases a year of blindness due to Vitamin A deficiency and 2,000,000 deaths. The genetically modified Golden Rice could offset much of that, but it is currently banned. The Koch brothers support this type of genetically modified research. They definitely should be stopped from their efforts. Yes?

Chapter 9 has just been posted. http://www.gayauthors.org/story/diogenes/aboutcarl/9

With the author joining AD and the story completed, this topic has been moved from First Alert to Readers Rule. A nicely done story either place. http://www.awesomedude.com/kid-boise/mikey-and-the-chickadee/index.htm

A new chapter of Joe College has just been published: http://www.nifty.org//nifty/gay/college/joe-college/joe-college-31

And amusing.

I seriously doubt that we can devise laws that will stop either 1) the mentally disturbed person who walks into a school and starts shooting or 2) gun violence in inner cities, where the vast majority of shooting deaths occur. Chicago has some of the most strict gun-control laws on the books and it has one of the highest shooting-death rates in the country. The mentally disturbed usually can pass a background check because there is no effective way to identify them as mentally disturbed and a danger to others, as witnessed by the Connecticut and Roseburg shootings, unless they have been committed somehow, which is a long, involved process fraught with serious civil-rights issues. Of, say, 3 million people, who can find the dozen or so that are really a danger. As far as background checks are concerned, no felon or convicted person is even going to go to a gun retailer or gun show; he'll simply buy the gun on the street or privately -- or steal one. Even stricter background checks (that likely won't be enforced) aren't going to stop the inner-city violence, even if they were enforced. I don't think a bunch of feel-good laws will have any major impact. It is the culture that needs to be changed.

When you sort things out, there are really two categories of gun violence in the U.S. The first, and most publicized, is the random violence done by a disturbed (usually) boy or man in a school or other public place -- for example, Columbine, Newtown, Roseburg. The other, much larger, and much less publicized violence is in the inner, large cities -- 30-plus victims a month, for example, in one city alone: Baltimore -- by criminals and criminal gangs. The politicians and public rail about the former, which they can do little about, and ignore the larger problem. The reason that we can do little about the violence of the disturbed person is because of two aspects of American society. First, of course, is the Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. The chances of changing the Second Amendment are nil. Second, is civil liberty. According to Charles Krauthammer, who was a practicing psychiatrist, approximately 1 percent of the population -- over 3 million people -- has schizophrenia. As a society, we have elected not to incarcerate the mentally disturbed in almost all instances, something I support on civil-liberties grounds. The Frances Farmer case against involuntary commitment changed society's ability to lock people up. We cannot incarcerate 3 million people on the chance that a few of them will go over the edge into a killing spree. Furthermore, we have no sure way of identifying those who will go on such sprees, except after the fact. We don't know how to sort the truly dangerous people from those who simply make dangerous-sounding statements. Between the Second Amendment and the civil liberties of persons, I think we are forced to accept the occasional Roseburg or Columbine. What we need to work on is the, probably, 95 percent of the shootings that occur in inner cities. Although gun violence has gone down substantially in the past few decades, there is still too much. And, I submit that we seem on the cusp of going the wrong direction in the future: the $15 minimum wage's effect is anti-black and will lead to higher unemployment among young African Americans; the attacks on the police are inhibiting them from doing a very necessary job; the resistance to school reform -- particularly charter schools and vouchers -- and the perpetration of costly, sclerotic inner-city schools -- Washington, D.C., spends nearly $30,000 per year per student -- gives the poor little chance to escape; the assignment of blame to Asian and White privilege is not constructive (oops, I didn't mean to say 'Asian', except I did); and, finally, the African-American population in the long-term Democratic cities should look closely at how well they are being served by the party that has watched over them for, in some cases, up to 50 years.

I may be partial because I'm editing this story or because some of it takes place on Vancouver Island, but this story over at Gay Authors by a Canadian author is quite good. http://www.gayauthors.org/story/diogenes/aboutcarl

A Little Life has been nominated for a National Book Award.

I found this review on Goodreads: Maxwell rated it 5 of 5 stars I can't, with a clear conscience, give this book anything less than 5 stars. It's a book that kept me reading long into the night, made me turn each page with vigor and curiosity, gave me chills and shivers over the joys and sorrows of each character, and ultimately left me feeling a bit older and tortured and yet at peace with the deeply complicated nature of humanity. What Hanya Yanagihara does with A Little Life is nothing nearly as pretentious as that paragraph above. Somehow in 720 pages, she manages to adequately--better yet, excellently--show and make the reader experiences the lives of these young men. The novel follows four boys who meet at college: Malcolm, JB, Willem, and the central and mysterious figure, Jude. It's truly Jude's tale, but Yanagihara ends up telling each and every one of the boys' stories with ease and genuineness that makes them real. Her prose is clean and honest and revealing of the many emotions that humans experience. It's never explicitly beautiful, not flowery or overwrought with adjectives or descriptors. But it has its own beauty that comes from its ability to convey these feelings, making you feel every pain or happiness that Malcolm and JB and Willem and Jude feel. It's some of the best prose I've read in a while (or ever read), and I wanted it to keep going on forever. There's so much more I could say about this book. About how it hurt me to read at times--because yes, there is very graphic material (i.e. self-harm, physical, sexual and psychological abuse, drug use) that makes the reading cringeworthy in parts--about how I fell in love with so many wonderful people in this story, about how I learned empathy and sorrow and frustration and anger for and with each of them, and how if I were to write a book I would want it to have the essence of this one. The truth is, though, I can't recommend this book to people, not without knowing them very well. Because it's a difficult journey that I can't suggest everyone take. Don't take this book lightly. But if you do choose to read it, if you choose to flip to that first page, be prepared for something inexplicable and jarring, but resilient and beautiful and ultimately worthwhile.

A Little Life is a splendid, wrenching, rich novel about four college classmates over about 30 years of their lives. It is much more than a novel about gay men as their lives unfold; rather, it is a novel about people who happen to be gay facing their changing lives, one of whom has been deeply damaged in his early years. It is a romance novel in a way, but it is not a gay-romance novel in the sense of most of the stories at this and other quality gay sites. When I started reading it, I told myself that at 100 pages along that I would reconsider whether it was worth it to finish all 700 pages. There was no question about continuing. The writing is exemplary, the characters are well-drawn and memorable, and the story absolutely engrossing. In my view, this is a national-book-award-level work. A Little Life will not be for everyone. It is long (and absorbingly so), its characters are intensely drawn, the situations are deeply emotional, and the "gay" part exists but not as part of a cause. The gay part is simply there. A Little Life is far better than A Map of the Harbor Islands, which is a very fine novel that does not approach the level of intensity of Hanya Yanagihar's work. I got if from my local library, but I see there is a Kindle edition.

I found a nice summary of punctuation rules at http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp. I suspect the grammar rules would be as thorough

An article that explains a lot about privacy on various programs/platforms: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2986988/privacy/the-price-of-free-how-apple-facebook-microsoft-and-google-sell-you-to-advertisers.html#tk.nl_pcwbest

I don't think a girl would be so treated. A boy would more likely be. Certainly, the shootings in Colorado, Connecticut, etc., by white boys would argue for similar treatment. We've had unconstitutional treatment of minors for carrying a pop tart shaped like a gun, strip searches for ibuprofen, etc. In this instance, failure to have the parents there and failure to respect the need for counsel and the frog-march to the police station were over the top. The school administration did not stand up for the student; I'm not sure they would have for another ethnicity. If the school administration was not brave enough to inspect the device to see that it was a clock, it should have called the police, sat the student down in the office, let the bomb squad do their work, apologize for not believing the student and resume the school day.

On seeing the photo, I can see why a reaction might be warranted. But Cole is right, an overreaction seems to be the flavor of the day. The problem, I suppose, is that simply checking to see if the device is a bomb probably requires a bomb squad as a prudent measure irrespective of the ethnic origin of the maker.

And this: https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/how-to-win-the-battle-and-lose-the-war/

From authorearnings.com: When we first started analyzing Kindle sales in February 2014, traditionally-published authors were taking home nearly 60% of the ebook royalties earned in the largest bookstore in the world. Not anymore. Today, traditionally-published authors are barely earning 40% of all Kindle ebook royalties paid, while self-published indie authors and those published by Amazon’s imprints are taking home almost 60%. From an author-earnings perspective, in 18 short months, the US ebook market has flipped upside down. But change in publishing isn’t limited to the ebook market. Last month, a self-published indie PRINT children’s book — a trade paperback — was one of the Top five print bestsellers in the US for over two weeks, selling over 29,000 print copies in its first week and hitting #6 on USA Today’s combined Best Seller List. (An oddly-timed rule change that same week by the New York Times Best Seller List kept it from appearing on the NYT List.) But the exciting news for indie print books doesn’t end there. Walmart will very shortly be carrying a self-published book on its store shelves: Jamie McGuire’s Beautiful Redemption. Both pieces of news disprove the outdated notion that a traditional publishing contract is necessary if an author wants to achieve chart-topping PRINT sales, or to see their print book sold on Walmart shelves. Old print distribution barriers are starting to crumble, just as they already have for digital. We can’t help but wonder what the next 18 months will bring. The only thing that we’re certain of is that the publishing industry is far from stabilizing. From here forward, the rapid pace of change will only accelerate.

PC World has a piece on the privacy issues. In short, go to Settings/Privacy and remove Microsoft's access to your information. Then go to Speech, Inking and Typing to remove similar access. Whether or not these steps take care of everything, I don't know.

This: https://www.forewordreviews.com/blog/posts/i-will-not-join-in-the-snooty-trashing-of-self-published-books-heres-why/

It's usually sufficient for a public official (or a private person, for that matter) who has a religious objection to something -- like a Muslim refusing to serve alcohol or serve pork -- to find someone in the same department or establishment to do what that person objects to. Courts are sympathetic to reasonable accommodations to religious objections. Kim Davis has the problem that she won't let her staff issue certificates for gay marriage because, as she says, her name is printed on the bottom of the certificate.

The Pitts article makes one glaring error. He talks of the 'political right', but Kim Davis was an elected Democrat. As such, she is not a paid employee of her county. Her 'supporters' are the voters of that county, presumably mostly Democrats. These facts do not condone what she did, but they clearly show the poor reporting/commentary of Leonard Pitts. She is entitled to her convictions, but she is not entitled to force them upon the public in violation of a court order.