Steven Lloyd Wilson

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• Posted Burning Violin #30 - Letters from the Wasteland to Burning Violin
  I've got a beautiful stack of scanned letters that passed from one person to another all the way from the nineteenth century down to my mother. They're handwritten, in a variety of scrawls. Text meanders tightly down and around the...
• Commented on A Fire in Their Eyes #106
  Thanks Noodling. Nice catch....
• Posted War to Burning Violin
  "Wars usually begin when two nations disagree on their relative strength, and wars usually cease when the fighting nations agree on their relative strength. Agreement or disagreement emerges from the shuffling of the same set of factors. Thus each factor...
• Posted Burning Violin #29 - A Bit of News to Burning Violin
  Well, it's been a light few weeks on posting in these parts, and I figured it was time to try to get something up here, before the legions raise up and feast on my entrails or more probably, disappear into...
• Posted Burning Violin #28 - Speaker for the Dead to Burning Violin
  "The concept of a 'speaker for the dead' arose from my experiences with death and funerals. I have written of this at greater length elsewhere; suffice it to say that I grew dissatisfied with the way that we use our...
• Posted Burning Violin #27 - Look On My Works to Burning Violin
  We like to think that we're immortal, that even if our bones turn to dust, something of us will live on. It's the demiurge, the spark of divinity that burns in each soul, the consuming desire to create. In Christian...
• Posted Burning Violin #26 - Helix to Burning Violin
  Ah, well so here we are, a day late and a post short it seems. I had grand plans for the 26th <i>Burning Violin</i>. It's the sixth month mark, which means we're getting serious, no chance of breaking up now...
• Posted Burning Violin #25 - Katorga Redux to Burning Violin
  Next week marks the six month mark of writing Burning Violin, so I'm working on something a bit bigger than normal, you know, to make it special and such. So this week I'm being both lazy and shameless by posting...
• Posted Burning Violin #24 - The Dream to Burning Violin
  Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} "I woke up in between a...
• Posted Burning Violin #23 - Micro Horror to Burning Violin
  Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Micro-stories are tiny tid bits of...
• Posted Burning Violin #22 - Tripwire Laws to Burning Violin
  What you have to understand about laws is that they were never intended to protect anyone. Laws provide order, a structure that organizes how people interact. They are a set of guidelines and instructions intended to program human behavior. The...
• Commented on Burning Violin #21 - Smooth Criminals
  Peter G: By all means, please explain the real arguments defending what seems to many to be a completely incoherent approach to copyrights. But don't resort to name calling, it's just tacky....
• Commented on Burning Violin #21 - Smooth Criminals
  perfectjargon: That's an interesting point you bring up. It looks like most of the songs used were owned by ATV (and thus yes, Michael Jackson's estate gets paid for that). However, Apple Corp (the sort of holding company owned by...
• Posted Burning Violin #21 - Smooth Criminals to Burning Violin
  I'm a little too young to have been much affected by Michael Jackson's music. To my fourth grade ears, Weird Al's renditions of Fat and Eat It were immensely more entertaining than the source of their parody. Of course, for...
• Posted Singed Couplet #2 - Generations to Burning Violin
  They say that every generation is the same. Fathers and mothers alike are disappointed in their sons and daughters, these weird amalgamations of the previous generation. Faces so familiar yet so utterly alien. We respond increasingly well to animation as...
• Posted Burning Violin #20 - Markets and Ethics to Burning Violin
  "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.  What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not...
• Posted Burning Violin #19 - Paradigm Shift to Burning Violin
  "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." -SocratesThe nineteenth century and early twentieth century saw the culmination of a certain old way of thinking, the sort of thinking that led each and every intellectual of any repute...
• Posted Singed Couplet #1 - Wild Horses to Burning Violin
  There's a phenomenon in certain circles known as the discovery of population. We're used to the idea of people being a national resource, familiar with the perception by both the extreme right and extreme left during the 20th century of...
• Posted Burning Violin #18 - The Significance of Statistical Insignificance to Burning Violin
  Cities are unique from rural areas because they concentrate vast numbers of people into relatively small areas. The density of the population itself can be a factor in democratic development. Density is the concentration of power; it is why corporations...
• Commented on Burning Violin #17 - Empathy and Metaphor
  Thanks for the kind words, replica. Just reading my posts actually imbues you with a glow of intelligence for the rest of the day. I could make it longer, but then you wouldn't come back the next day to read....
• Posted Burning Violin #17 - Empathy and Metaphor to Burning Violin
  A QuestionA cat chases a model train as it loops a figure-eight around a Christmas tree, darting amongst wrapped presents and glittering electric lights. The situation is testament to the flexibility of the animal mind. There are neither model trains...
• Posted Burning Violin #16 - Some Might Say to Burning Violin
  Some might say that sunshine follows thunderGo and tell it to the man who cannot shineWith Tiller's murder, the various Fox News pundits who reviled him for years as a baby killing death mill Nazi ripped into a higher gear...
• Posted Burning Violin #15 - The Uncanny Valley to Burning Violin
  A month after Susannah left, Garet realized that he missed the companionship more than he missed the sex, so he stopped saving up for the escort service and went down to the pound to get a dog. He had never...
• Posted Burning Violin #14 - Sons of Loki to Burning Violin
  "There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit." -Indira GandhiThe core argument for capitalism is that competition breeds success. Success at what? Success at playing whatever game happens to be at...
• Posted Burning Violin #13 - The Singularity to Burning Violin
  "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." -Vernor VingeTechnology has increased exponentially. It is leading to something, a change, something that will seem so obvious in...
• Posted Burning Violin #12 - Katorga to Burning Violin
  I decided to post something a bit different this week for Burning Violin. As you may have noticed due to the addition to the right side of the page, my first novel is in print and for sale on Amazon...
• Commented on Burning Violin #11 - The Lie
  Thanks for the kind words, Chris. I think there is a combination of things going on with social violence as distinct from ideological violence. First, I would posit that the majority of social violence is at least partially influenced by...
• Posted Burning Violin #11 - The Lie to Burning Violin
  "Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle." -Aleksandr SolzhenitsynMy step...
• Posted Burning Violin #10 - Hope to Burning Violin
  It was a time of peace, it was a time of war. Everyone wanted heaven but dealt in hell's prizes. Soldiers fought in the deserts, civilians fought in the streets. The politicians bickered on television, the reporters begged for exclusives....
• Posted Burning Violin #9 - Booth to Burning Violin
  The damned Yankees took everything I ever had in my life. My family, my friends... they were all killed in the war of Northern Aggression, slaughtered in the battles, torched by Sherman when he burned Atlanta and Georgia, or starved...