Month: November 2005
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More Animosity about Animus
Apparently, according to Lydon B. LaRouche supporter Wesley Irwin, Rich Shapero’s book Wild Animus attracts multipartisan wrath: Four months ago, while organizing politically on the streets of Seattle, I noticed people distributing, free of charge, without any “catch,” a massive number of novels with the title “Wild Animus.” “Just take the book home with you…
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Coloring Outside the Lines
Fran Upton: Is it a Novel or is it Memorex?: …van Gogh is a good example of a visual artist who colored outside the lines but also recognized that lines were still there in front of him. He didn’t try to pass off nonpaintings as paintings, or at least nonpaintings as ART, nonart as art,…
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Phishing Test
Take this phishing test. Read comments by DIGGers.
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Links and Insomnia
3 Articles on Reading vs. Websurfing: Kevin Drum, Naomi Baron and Wordmunger Robert boyton on academic blogging: Whether online or off, the kind of accessible and widely read work that brings an academic public recognition is likely to draw the scorn and suspicion of his colleagues. Furthermore, so-called public-intellectual work won’t count for much when…
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Moby On Radio
Mobylives goes to radio.
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Clever Titles and Medical Narratives
Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman. Now there’s a clever title! From a light-hearted but informative piece by Stephanie Saul on drug reps I actually did temp work at the local medical center for about a year. I don’t remember drug reps as always being gorgeous women, but then again, I don’t remember…
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Local Solutions, Local News
Some local stuff: Green Houston Connection, an advocacy group for environmental solutions (Run by storyteller Brian Herod). They organize a greendrinks social hour monthly and hope to compile a list of green businesses in Houston. Update: Brian is an active storyteller in the Houston area (and participant in the Frayday event I organized a few…
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The Networked Novel: Gestation Periods, Birth Weights and the Literary Heartbeat (Part 1)
(This essay originally appeared on teleread) In his essay on the Problem of Length and the Novel Michael Allen writes: We must always remember, however, the effects of survivorship bias. When we look back at the past, and see big thick books which became famous, we are seeing the survivors. A select band indeed. We…
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Godward book
Online book: J.W. Godward: the Eclipse of Classicism, by Vern Grosvenor Swanson. Great painter too. Other essays about art in 19th century Victorian England.
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Date at MacDonalds
Stayfree deconstructs old MacDonald’s commercials EXT. HOUSE–NIGHT A woman answers her door and meets her blind date, Larry. WOMAN: Hi, you must be– LARRY: Look, before you develop a whole big list of expectations from me, let me just spell out how it is. This is what I wear, nothing imported, that’s fine! Because I’m…
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Letter to GeekRadio about File Sharing
Hi, Jay (of GeekRadio), I was a little appalled at the general recommendation you gave to listeners to “just not file share” because “it’s wrong.” (or something like that). Perhaps a radio show really isn’t an adequate forum to go into the intricacies of file sharing on copyright, but here are a few things wrong…
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Sam and Jim and Creativity (and me)
I’ve been listening to Sam and Jim go to Hollywood, a terrific account of TV writers trying to produce to produce a series (and sell it to the networks). Here are two sites they recommend: Drew’s Scriptorama provides actual example scripts to many famous films. Wordplayer provides lots of columns on the screenplay writing process.…
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Justifying the Obvious
Deborah points out the obvious: why court oversight of Gitmo is good for the USA Only through the Supreme Court’s intervention has an apparently innocent U.S. citizen held in solitary detention been set free. Only through the court’s intervention have Guantanamo prisoners been afforded any process at all by which to challenge the legality of…
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Tough to be Superstars
DVD Savant on Decalogue The world of Dekalog is Warsaw, where people seem to be getting along just as many do here, living in simple apartments, dealing with their lives in less than lavish surroundings. It is refreshing to see stories with characters not completely bound up by typical American problems – ambition, money, success.…
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Bob Woodward, Court Historian
A damning book review by Robert Kuttner of one of Bob Woodward’s political books: You can just imagine how Watergate might have turned out if Woodward had applied his current formula to the events of the early 1970s. He would have based his account on intimate dinners with Nixon, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and John…
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Conferences: Technical and Nontechnical
I am always half-envious at people who are giving presentations at conferences. I often feel as though I should be presenting something somewhere. Two helpful things: How to Speak at a Technical Conference and Conference Presentation Judo. Of course, it all depends on whether you intend the talk as a lecture, a demo or a…