A reader from the UK, James Cownie, was kind enough to send this picture of the “New and Bestselling” shelf at a WH Smiths ” at one of the service stations on the M20.” You might not recognize the cover immediately, but in the #11 spot on that list is occupied by How to Teach… Continue reading This One Goes to 11
Month: January 2011
Recent Fiction Reading
Every genre reviewer in the world seems to be raving about Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, so I picked it up for Hugo nomination consideration. I’m about a third of the way into it, now, and to be honest, it’s kind of bugging me. There are some good bits,… Continue reading Recent Fiction Reading
Links for 2011-01-09
Graphic Stories for your Hugo 2011 Nomination Consideration | Tor.com | Science fiction and fantasy | Blog posts “As I noted the last time around, there seems to be a trend for Hugo nominators to stay comfortably inside their reading boxes–comics by folks already famous in other corners of SFF, like Neil Gaiman or Paul… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-09
Links for 2011-01-08
The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com) “A medium has a niche. A sitcom works better on TV than in a newspaper, but a 10,000 word investigative piece about a civic issue works better in a newspaper. When it arrived the web seemed to fill all of those niches at once. The web was… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-08
Solidarity in Egypt
A story to improve your opinion of humanity: Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held… Continue reading Solidarity in Egypt
Bad Words and Great Books
There’s a new wrinkle in the endless controversy about Huckleberry Finn, with NewSouth Books preparing an expurgated edition replacing “nigger” with “slave” throughout. Sentiment in the parts of the Internet I frequent is mostly against the change, which has been made with the goal of getting it back on high school reading lists, which it… Continue reading Bad Words and Great Books
Presidential Hoops Challenge
Barack Obama will be visiting Schenectady next Tuesday, and local notables are suggesting things he might do. Particularly notable was this: Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, R-Glenville, a basketball enthusiast like Obama, suggested that some hoop should be organized for the occasion. “I’d like to challenge him to a two-on-two game .â.â. at the new YMCA in… Continue reading Presidential Hoops Challenge
Humor Matters
What with one thing and another, I forgot to tag anything for the links dump yesterday, which means no links dump this morning. But that’s all right, because Fred Clark’s post about humorless prigs deserves a more prominent link. The proximate cause is yet another story about a crazy religious group working themselves into a… Continue reading Humor Matters
Thursday Blogging Toddler Blogging
It’s really flattering when your kids start to imitate you: This is SteelyKid playing with the toy laptop she got for Christmas in her basement kitchen. Sadly, not only is she imitating her father’s computer-addict tendencies, she’s also copying my poor laptop-using posture. We’ll have to work on that. For the traditional Appa-for-scale photo, here… Continue reading Thursday Blogging Toddler Blogging
Possibly Stupid Question: Why All These Extra Particles?
I’ve reached a point in the book-in-progress where I find myself needing to talk a little about particle physics. As this is very much not my field, this quickly led to a situation where the dog asked a question I can’t answer. But, hey, that’s why I have a blog with lots of smart readers…… Continue reading Possibly Stupid Question: Why All These Extra Particles?