News noted
* Sharecropping the Long Tail. A short but interesting observation on the economic system created by web services based on user-provided content.
* The Robert A. Heinlein Centennial conference will be held in Kansas City on July 6-8 of 2007. Anyone interested in going? It may be a very strange gathering, considering all the widely divergent interest groups to which RAH has some significance. Will the armchair anarchists who loved The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress mount a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the pro-military Starship Troopers faction? And what will the Lazarus Long-inspired polyamorists be doing meanwhile? (Do we want to know?)
Sunday, December 24, 2006
No Christmas cards this year
Sorry, folks. There wasn't any time! Best wishes for a merry Christmas and a wonderful new year go out to all.
If you simply must have something to read on Christmas Eve, take a look at this webpage about the Christmas cards that famed early SF editor Hugo Gernsback used to send out each year, complete with scientifictional predictions about the coming years and decades.
Charles de Lint and Aloise Buckley Heath are also famous (at least in certain circles) for their annual Christmas writings to family and friends. Where do they get the time?
Sorry, folks. There wasn't any time! Best wishes for a merry Christmas and a wonderful new year go out to all.
If you simply must have something to read on Christmas Eve, take a look at this webpage about the Christmas cards that famed early SF editor Hugo Gernsback used to send out each year, complete with scientifictional predictions about the coming years and decades.
Charles de Lint and Aloise Buckley Heath are also famous (at least in certain circles) for their annual Christmas writings to family and friends. Where do they get the time?
On Demand Books
It's been the Next Big Thing in the book trade for several years now. Will the print-on-demand kiosks proposed by On Demand Books finally revolutionize the industry?
Right now, it sounds like the inventory of the pricy kiosks is limited to public-domain materials. But I can see this becoming a great boon for scholars, collectors, and readers of authors who works are no longer considered fashionable, even as it decimates the value of secondhand sellers' inventories of previously scarce books.
The dead hand of copyright law, and the ever-lengthening reach of its arm, will be the biggest obstacles to extending this kind of ready accessibility to books published in the last eighty years. Ironically, the books most likely to remain inaccessible are the ones not associated with the giant megapublishers who most vigorously push for ever-lengthening and ever-more-draconian copyright protection. Random House, Knopf, Viking, et al, will no doubt jump on board the print-on-demand train once its fiscal viability is established, either by licensing books to outside vendors like Books On Demand or by setting up similar services of their own. The books whose authors are dead or incommunicado, whose publishers have disappeared or forgotten about their existence, will remain trapped in a legal limbo with no known rightsholder to contact for reprinting rights, and no print-on-demand service whose legal department will allow them to expose themselves to liability should such a rightsholder choose to leap out of the woodwork at some time in the future.
It's been the Next Big Thing in the book trade for several years now. Will the print-on-demand kiosks proposed by On Demand Books finally revolutionize the industry?
Right now, it sounds like the inventory of the pricy kiosks is limited to public-domain materials. But I can see this becoming a great boon for scholars, collectors, and readers of authors who works are no longer considered fashionable, even as it decimates the value of secondhand sellers' inventories of previously scarce books.
The dead hand of copyright law, and the ever-lengthening reach of its arm, will be the biggest obstacles to extending this kind of ready accessibility to books published in the last eighty years. Ironically, the books most likely to remain inaccessible are the ones not associated with the giant megapublishers who most vigorously push for ever-lengthening and ever-more-draconian copyright protection. Random House, Knopf, Viking, et al, will no doubt jump on board the print-on-demand train once its fiscal viability is established, either by licensing books to outside vendors like Books On Demand or by setting up similar services of their own. The books whose authors are dead or incommunicado, whose publishers have disappeared or forgotten about their existence, will remain trapped in a legal limbo with no known rightsholder to contact for reprinting rights, and no print-on-demand service whose legal department will allow them to expose themselves to liability should such a rightsholder choose to leap out of the woodwork at some time in the future.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Poetry Wednesday
The Cool Web
Robert Graves (1895-1985)
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.
But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the roses's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.
There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.
But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad, no doubt, and die that way.
The Cool Web
Robert Graves (1895-1985)
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.
But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the roses's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.
There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.
But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad, no doubt, and die that way.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Recent (partial) reads
Living Walden Two : B.F. Skinner's Behaviorist Utopia and Experimental Communities, by Hilke Kuhlmann.
Skinner is, of course, best known for his advocacy of behaviorism, a theory of psychology which proposes that, given the right combination of rewards and other stimuli, the behavior of humans and other living beings can (and should) be shaped according to predictable patterns. Walden Two, his only work of fiction, proposes a kind of communal utopia which has been carefully organized for the purpose of guiding its inhabitants into socially harmonious and usefully productive patterns of behavior.
Unfortunately, real-world attempts to create such Utopian communities, from the 1960s to the present day, have rarely succeeded. Motivating people to do useful and necessary work has been a recurrent problem. Furthermore, as the book jacket points out, "Among the real-world communities, a recurrent problem in moving past the planning stages was the nearly ubiquitous desire among members to be gentle guides, coupled with strong resistance to being guided."
Kuhlmann in this book briefly surveys a selection of Walden Two-inspired communes which have failed or dissolved, and then focuses on two which have survived to the present day. Twin Oaks, in Virginia, began as a deliberate attempt to follow Skinner's template. It has, according to Kuhlman, slowly but surely morphed away from that initial vision in the succeeding decades. Twin Oaks' relatively open membership requirements and their labor-credit system for requiring/motivating useful work are examined in some detail, but not as much so as in the various books and other writings of Twin Oaks co-founder Kat Kinkaid. The other community studied, Los Horcones in Mexico, seems to be a far more closed system made up primarily of members of two or three closely-related families. Despite its founders' overt insistence that all members be trained behaviorists, Los Horcones seems more akin to a close-knit extended family than to the kind of intellectually-organized community described by Skinner. Unfortunately, Kuhlman apparently had little access to interviews with current members of Los Horcones, and this section of the book is somewhat more sketchy than the discussion of Twin Oaks.
Sadly, Skinner himself seems to have had little interest in attempts to bring his visions to life. His sole contribution to the 1966 Waldenwoods conference, in which people inspired by his book sought to thrash out ideas for intentionally-designed communes based on similar principles, was a taped message. Somehow this seems highly, but unfortunately, appropriate to his intellectually ambitious but emotionally and spiritually cold view of humanity.
Living Walden Two : B.F. Skinner's Behaviorist Utopia and Experimental Communities, by Hilke Kuhlmann.
Skinner is, of course, best known for his advocacy of behaviorism, a theory of psychology which proposes that, given the right combination of rewards and other stimuli, the behavior of humans and other living beings can (and should) be shaped according to predictable patterns. Walden Two, his only work of fiction, proposes a kind of communal utopia which has been carefully organized for the purpose of guiding its inhabitants into socially harmonious and usefully productive patterns of behavior.
Unfortunately, real-world attempts to create such Utopian communities, from the 1960s to the present day, have rarely succeeded. Motivating people to do useful and necessary work has been a recurrent problem. Furthermore, as the book jacket points out, "Among the real-world communities, a recurrent problem in moving past the planning stages was the nearly ubiquitous desire among members to be gentle guides, coupled with strong resistance to being guided."
Kuhlmann in this book briefly surveys a selection of Walden Two-inspired communes which have failed or dissolved, and then focuses on two which have survived to the present day. Twin Oaks, in Virginia, began as a deliberate attempt to follow Skinner's template. It has, according to Kuhlman, slowly but surely morphed away from that initial vision in the succeeding decades. Twin Oaks' relatively open membership requirements and their labor-credit system for requiring/motivating useful work are examined in some detail, but not as much so as in the various books and other writings of Twin Oaks co-founder Kat Kinkaid. The other community studied, Los Horcones in Mexico, seems to be a far more closed system made up primarily of members of two or three closely-related families. Despite its founders' overt insistence that all members be trained behaviorists, Los Horcones seems more akin to a close-knit extended family than to the kind of intellectually-organized community described by Skinner. Unfortunately, Kuhlman apparently had little access to interviews with current members of Los Horcones, and this section of the book is somewhat more sketchy than the discussion of Twin Oaks.
Sadly, Skinner himself seems to have had little interest in attempts to bring his visions to life. His sole contribution to the 1966 Waldenwoods conference, in which people inspired by his book sought to thrash out ideas for intentionally-designed communes based on similar principles, was a taped message. Somehow this seems highly, but unfortunately, appropriate to his intellectually ambitious but emotionally and spiritually cold view of humanity.
Employed people need not apply
The mandatory online job application form used by the Human Resources department of Southern Methodist University requires applicants to state an "end date" for all reported employment, including current employment. N/A, "still employed", etc. are automatically rejected as incorrect entries.
Job seekers who have the misfortune of still being employed in good standing can either make up false information, or not apply for jobs at SMU.
The mandatory online job application form used by the Human Resources department of Southern Methodist University requires applicants to state an "end date" for all reported employment, including current employment. N/A, "still employed", etc. are automatically rejected as incorrect entries.
Job seekers who have the misfortune of still being employed in good standing can either make up false information, or not apply for jobs at SMU.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Eighth level positivist versus sixth level rationalist.... Who Will Win?
The current issue of webcomic Dresden Codak is a lot of fun. Earlier archived issues are interesting, if occasionally incomprehensible.
PS. The October 7th issue is also good.
The current issue of webcomic Dresden Codak is a lot of fun. Earlier archived issues are interesting, if occasionally incomprehensible.
PS. The October 7th issue is also good.
Update
... on the legal proceedings following from US soldiers' rape and murder of civilians in Mahmoudiya in Iraq.
... on the legal proceedings following from US soldiers' rape and murder of civilians in Mahmoudiya in Iraq.
Caught the westbound train
Steamtrain Maury is gone. His 1989 book Tales of the Iron Road: My Life as King of the Hobos provides a glimpse into a vanished subculture... if you can find a copy.
Steamtrain Maury is gone. His 1989 book Tales of the Iron Road: My Life as King of the Hobos provides a glimpse into a vanished subculture... if you can find a copy.
Pass it along to any Mozarteans you know
Scores to all of W.A. Mozart's musical works are now freely available online from the International Mozart Foundation.
Scores to all of W.A. Mozart's musical works are now freely available online from the International Mozart Foundation.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Left Behind, again
Thanks to Fiend for a link to this story.
Christian game sparks call for ban (Reuters, via Toronto Star.)
Thanks to Fiend for a link to this story.
Christian game sparks call for ban (Reuters, via Toronto Star.)
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
News flash
How can The Onion possibly compete with this?
Lohan: I haven't had a drink in a week (from CNN)
How can The Onion possibly compete with this?
Lohan: I haven't had a drink in a week (from CNN)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Lindsay Lohan says she's been going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for a year, but hasn't talked about it because "it's no one's business."
"I just left an AA meeting," the 20-year-old actress tells People magazine in a story posted Tuesday on its Web site.
"I haven't had a drink in seven days. Or anything," she says. "I'm not even legal to, so why would I? I don't drink when I go to clubs. I drink with my friends at home, but there's no need to. I feel better not drinking. It's more fun. I have Red Bull."
"I've been going to AA for a year by the way," Lohan adds. When asked why didn't she say so until recently, she replies: "Well it's no one's business. That's why it's anonymous!...."
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Experimental Poetry Thursday
Stealing an idea from S. over at Apartment Carpet.
I've been somewhat disappointed in the contents of Poetry magazine since I started subscribing a couple of months ago, but a few poems have grabbed my attention favorably. This is one of them:
Primitive Road, by Lucas Howell.
Stealing an idea from S. over at Apartment Carpet.
I've been somewhat disappointed in the contents of Poetry magazine since I started subscribing a couple of months ago, but a few poems have grabbed my attention favorably. This is one of them:
Primitive Road, by Lucas Howell.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Recent Reads
The Temple Dancer, by John Speed. This novel, like Kara Dalkey's Blood of the Goddess series discussed earlier, is set in India in the early 1600s, when the Portuguese colony at Goa, the Muslim Mughal rulers, and the native Hindus co-existed uneasily in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, religious squabbling, Machiavellian politics, and mercantile greed. Speed, a professional historian, provides plenty of historical detail and discussion of the ways in which the various castes of this class-ridden society interact with each other.
The story focuses on two women. Maya, a young Hindu woman, is an extraordinarily talented and beautiful ritual dancer, or "nautch girl". According to Speed, the socially-approved duties of her position include sexually servicing the priests or holy men of the temple, as well as some secular patrons of the temple. (Note: Your correspondent does not know whether this is accurate or not.) As the story begins, she has been sold to a group of Portuguese who have, in turn, traded her to a political ruler in Bijapur as part of a trade pact.
Also in the caravan which is transporting Maya to Bijapur is Lucinda, a young Goanese heiress with an unfortunately complicated family history. Also along for the ride are her wastrel, mercenary cousin; a noble native-born soldier; a sly and secretive eunuch; and an aging Portuguese "settlement man", or debt-collection thug, who has begun to wonder what he will do with the aging years that he never expected to reach. Along the way they will meet people of myriad different cultures: a blind, eccentric Sultana; lowborn Hindus trying to elevate themselves by adopting a foreign religion; pitiable "untouchables"; arrogant Mughal aristocrats; vicious bandits; scheming Portuguege merchants. Some of these will have sinister plans for our innocent young heiress and her not-so-innocent travelling companion.
Can you see where this is going? Well, of course you can. The back cover copy tells you, right off: "A sweeping page-turner filled with sex, violence, and adventure". It's a potboiler, the kind of story that in the 1920s would have been made into a Cecille B. DeMille extravaganza with Rudolf Valentino, or Douglas Fairbanks Jr., or maybe Errol Flynn leaping from tables to tapestries with sword in hand. But its an above-average potboiler with exciting conflicts, sympathetic characters, and more than the usual amount of attention to historical detail. The eunuchs, in particular, are granted more attention here than in most historical fiction. Rather than serving merely as exotic props or convenient go-betweens, they are here portrayed as a kind of sinister secret society, in which conventional sexual and generational longings are twisted into an all-encompassing lust for the kind of political power that comes from knowing secrets and whispering them into receptive ears at opportune moments.
The Temple Dancer is reportedly the first of a trilogy. I don't know whether I will actively seek out the future volumes, but it was a reasonably enjoyable read.
The Temple Dancer, by John Speed. This novel, like Kara Dalkey's Blood of the Goddess series discussed earlier, is set in India in the early 1600s, when the Portuguese colony at Goa, the Muslim Mughal rulers, and the native Hindus co-existed uneasily in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, religious squabbling, Machiavellian politics, and mercantile greed. Speed, a professional historian, provides plenty of historical detail and discussion of the ways in which the various castes of this class-ridden society interact with each other.
The story focuses on two women. Maya, a young Hindu woman, is an extraordinarily talented and beautiful ritual dancer, or "nautch girl". According to Speed, the socially-approved duties of her position include sexually servicing the priests or holy men of the temple, as well as some secular patrons of the temple. (Note: Your correspondent does not know whether this is accurate or not.) As the story begins, she has been sold to a group of Portuguese who have, in turn, traded her to a political ruler in Bijapur as part of a trade pact.
Also in the caravan which is transporting Maya to Bijapur is Lucinda, a young Goanese heiress with an unfortunately complicated family history. Also along for the ride are her wastrel, mercenary cousin; a noble native-born soldier; a sly and secretive eunuch; and an aging Portuguese "settlement man", or debt-collection thug, who has begun to wonder what he will do with the aging years that he never expected to reach. Along the way they will meet people of myriad different cultures: a blind, eccentric Sultana; lowborn Hindus trying to elevate themselves by adopting a foreign religion; pitiable "untouchables"; arrogant Mughal aristocrats; vicious bandits; scheming Portuguege merchants. Some of these will have sinister plans for our innocent young heiress and her not-so-innocent travelling companion.
Can you see where this is going? Well, of course you can. The back cover copy tells you, right off: "A sweeping page-turner filled with sex, violence, and adventure". It's a potboiler, the kind of story that in the 1920s would have been made into a Cecille B. DeMille extravaganza with Rudolf Valentino, or Douglas Fairbanks Jr., or maybe Errol Flynn leaping from tables to tapestries with sword in hand. But its an above-average potboiler with exciting conflicts, sympathetic characters, and more than the usual amount of attention to historical detail. The eunuchs, in particular, are granted more attention here than in most historical fiction. Rather than serving merely as exotic props or convenient go-betweens, they are here portrayed as a kind of sinister secret society, in which conventional sexual and generational longings are twisted into an all-encompassing lust for the kind of political power that comes from knowing secrets and whispering them into receptive ears at opportune moments.
The Temple Dancer is reportedly the first of a trilogy. I don't know whether I will actively seek out the future volumes, but it was a reasonably enjoyable read.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Recent Reads
Eli, by Bill Myers. Myers postulates that in a parallel universe, Jesus comes to earth in the modern era rather than in the time of the Roman empire. His protagonist -- an aging, morally flawed newsman -- encounters "Eli", the Messiah of this alternate-universe, while his body lies in a coma back home in his own universe. The story of the Messiah's ministry proceeds in a fashion directly paralleling the one we know in "our" universe, and this makes the story more than a little predictable to anyone who's familiar with the Gospel story. Myers gets in some amusing and insightful digs at evangelical megachurches and "respectable churchgoing folks" and their all-too-frequent social biases, and he slightly reshapes some of Jesus's parables to apply them to twentieth-century situations. He even manages to show, to some degree, just how fundamentally radical basic Christianity is. But he never does explain how western civilization managed to develop in a nearly identical form without the influence of Christianity, nor does he ever explain exactly what God the hypocritical churchmen in his alternate universe are worshiping. We know it's not the God of Judaism, since Myers hints that Jews are an ethnic and religious minority in this parallel universe., and some of Eli's listeners harbor anti-Jewish prejudices. Nor do the hypocritical megachurches seem to worship Zeus, Jupiter, Mithra, or Mammon.
Well, maybe the latter.
Interesting, but I wish that the author had gone further in developing his alternate universe. A world in which Christianity and all related developments did not occur could have gone in a thousand different directions, and I wish he had been more adventurous in exploring them.
Eli, by Bill Myers. Myers postulates that in a parallel universe, Jesus comes to earth in the modern era rather than in the time of the Roman empire. His protagonist -- an aging, morally flawed newsman -- encounters "Eli", the Messiah of this alternate-universe, while his body lies in a coma back home in his own universe. The story of the Messiah's ministry proceeds in a fashion directly paralleling the one we know in "our" universe, and this makes the story more than a little predictable to anyone who's familiar with the Gospel story. Myers gets in some amusing and insightful digs at evangelical megachurches and "respectable churchgoing folks" and their all-too-frequent social biases, and he slightly reshapes some of Jesus's parables to apply them to twentieth-century situations. He even manages to show, to some degree, just how fundamentally radical basic Christianity is. But he never does explain how western civilization managed to develop in a nearly identical form without the influence of Christianity, nor does he ever explain exactly what God the hypocritical churchmen in his alternate universe are worshiping. We know it's not the God of Judaism, since Myers hints that Jews are an ethnic and religious minority in this parallel universe., and some of Eli's listeners harbor anti-Jewish prejudices. Nor do the hypocritical megachurches seem to worship Zeus, Jupiter, Mithra, or Mammon.
Well, maybe the latter.
Interesting, but I wish that the author had gone further in developing his alternate universe. A world in which Christianity and all related developments did not occur could have gone in a thousand different directions, and I wish he had been more adventurous in exploring them.
It's for your own good
New York City bravely sallies forth into the exciting new world of micromanaging everybody's diets.
NYC health board bans trans fats at restaurants (CNN)
So far, the ban appears to apply only to restaurants; people are free to cook up unhealthy stuff at home. But for how long?
I have a sudden prophetic vision of junk-food addicts furtively ducking into back alleys and abandoned houses to get their fixes. Will Lou Reed's immortal I'm Waitin' for the Man be rewritten as I'm Waitin' for my Fries?
New York City bravely sallies forth into the exciting new world of micromanaging everybody's diets.
NYC health board bans trans fats at restaurants (CNN)
So far, the ban appears to apply only to restaurants; people are free to cook up unhealthy stuff at home. But for how long?
I have a sudden prophetic vision of junk-food addicts furtively ducking into back alleys and abandoned houses to get their fixes. Will Lou Reed's immortal I'm Waitin' for the Man be rewritten as I'm Waitin' for my Fries?
Monday, December 04, 2006
Recent viewings
Blow Dry. A movie that can't quite decide what it wants to be. On the one hand, its setting -- the world championship of hairstyling, which takes place in a small British town -- is eccentric enough for any deadpan, sardonic Christopher Guest mockumentary. The exaggerated theatricality of the stylists, and the bizarre bad taste of their avante-garde creations, are quite amusing. But running parallel to their wackiness are at least four other plot threads of completely different character. On the one hand, we a comic villain in the person of an egomaniac hair stylist who quite transparently schemes to sabotage other contestants using strategems somewhat less convincing than the bad guys' plots on old episodes of Scooby Doo. On the other hand, we have Alan Rickman exuding his trademarked air of slightly annoyed British gravitas as a small-town barber who was once the toast of the hairstyling world before he suddenly gave it all up. (Will he be lured back into competition? Go on, take a guess....) On the third, fourth and fifth hands, if they existed, we would have his estranged ex-wife, who has just learned that her cancer is terminal; her lesbian lover, who used to be his hairstyling model; and his son, who in between practicing hairstyling on cadavers, develops a tentative romance with the cute daughter of the above-mentioned egomaniac.
Got that?
I enjoyed the comic elements of the movie. But terminal cancer tends to silence hilarity, as do very awkward and serious family situations. Still, the satirical take on "high style" is amusing, even if the rest of the movie seems to be doing its best to fly apart in all directions at once.
Blow Dry. A movie that can't quite decide what it wants to be. On the one hand, its setting -- the world championship of hairstyling, which takes place in a small British town -- is eccentric enough for any deadpan, sardonic Christopher Guest mockumentary. The exaggerated theatricality of the stylists, and the bizarre bad taste of their avante-garde creations, are quite amusing. But running parallel to their wackiness are at least four other plot threads of completely different character. On the one hand, we a comic villain in the person of an egomaniac hair stylist who quite transparently schemes to sabotage other contestants using strategems somewhat less convincing than the bad guys' plots on old episodes of Scooby Doo. On the other hand, we have Alan Rickman exuding his trademarked air of slightly annoyed British gravitas as a small-town barber who was once the toast of the hairstyling world before he suddenly gave it all up. (Will he be lured back into competition? Go on, take a guess....) On the third, fourth and fifth hands, if they existed, we would have his estranged ex-wife, who has just learned that her cancer is terminal; her lesbian lover, who used to be his hairstyling model; and his son, who in between practicing hairstyling on cadavers, develops a tentative romance with the cute daughter of the above-mentioned egomaniac.
Got that?
I enjoyed the comic elements of the movie. But terminal cancer tends to silence hilarity, as do very awkward and serious family situations. Still, the satirical take on "high style" is amusing, even if the rest of the movie seems to be doing its best to fly apart in all directions at once.
Missed it by that much
As usual, I found out about the sequel to 2004's The Librarian: Quest for the Spear one day after it aired. Did anyone else happen to catch it? According to Amazon, it will be out on DVD within two weeks.
As usual, I found out about the sequel to 2004's The Librarian: Quest for the Spear one day after it aired. Did anyone else happen to catch it? According to Amazon, it will be out on DVD within two weeks.
News noted
* Democrats in Congress pressure EPA to retain environmental-research libraries.
* The always-entertaining pseudonymous "Thomas H. Benton" opines about diversity in the academic world.
* Democrats in Congress pressure EPA to retain environmental-research libraries.
* The always-entertaining pseudonymous "Thomas H. Benton" opines about diversity in the academic world.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
News noted
* Looks like the Texas State Railroad will stay open through next August. Yet another nail-biting last minute budgetary cliffhanger had newspapers all around the state reporting that its popular, steam-powered trains through the Piney Woods would be mothballed before the end of 2006. I think the state government must have hired the same people to write their budget that used to write the old Perils of Pauline serials.
* It's a commotion of grunts and squeaks!.... It's a boiling cauldron of some seething nameless brew!.... It's... it's.... the Bad Sex Awards!
* Looks like the Texas State Railroad will stay open through next August. Yet another nail-biting last minute budgetary cliffhanger had newspapers all around the state reporting that its popular, steam-powered trains through the Piney Woods would be mothballed before the end of 2006. I think the state government must have hired the same people to write their budget that used to write the old Perils of Pauline serials.
* It's a commotion of grunts and squeaks!.... It's a boiling cauldron of some seething nameless brew!.... It's... it's.... the Bad Sex Awards!
"Because Hollingshead is a first-time writer, we wished to discourage him from further attempts," the judges said in a statement. "Heavyweights like Thomas Pynchon and Will Self are beyond help at this point."I suppose everyone is entitled have *some* ambition.
Hollingshead, 25, who received his award from rock singer Courtney Love at a London ceremony, said he was delighted to become the prize's youngest-ever winner.
"I hope to win it every year," said Hollingshead, who receives a statuette and a bottle of champagne.
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