Well, the most interesting book world story right now is surely the whole hardball face-off between Amazon and Macmillan. I expect the most interesting discussion at Making Light. It’s been a pretty depressing week in the book world: too many stories of authors dying. I guess there will only be more and more stories about the passing of authors who… Read more →
Month: January 2010
I’m not curt, I’m efficient
I always find Joel Spolsky’s essays interesting reads. Often I agree with him, and sometimes they make me want to argue with him over a beer, but I never feel like my time is wasted. His recent short piece on the problem of over-communication, though, is a one that hits a place near-and-dear to my heart. Recommended read for anyone… Read more →
More music from the archives…
It’s been a couple of months now since I finished the pre-move project of ripping all the CDs that hadn’t yet made it into digital form. I’ve been slowly cleaning up the metadata on them and moving them into the main collection, and then doing a lot of listening to things I haven’t listened to in ages. In celebration of… Read more →
The mind literally boggles…
So, um… A Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, 10 percentage points more than any other network. …I believe the appropriate response here is: “WTF??!!?” Seriously? Fox News is not only considered news–shocking enough–by a significant number of Yanks, but it’s actually the most trusted network… Read more →
What’s a “bricht chaulmer”?
Since moving to Ontario, I’ve been buying my comics at The Beguiling. This, obviously, means that from time to time I have to take a run into Toronto to actually, you know, pick up the comics. So far I’ve managed to work these trips either into other shopping outings I’m taking to the city, or to pick up a beer… Read more →
Teach The Controversy
I believe I would happily wear any of the Teach The Controversy shirts at WearScience, but for obvious reasons, I would especially like this one: Read more →
A flurry of quick things
Am I the only one uncomfortable with “too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release” apparently being a legit category? Doesn’t that pretty much read as “we can’t prove you did shit, but we’re going to keep you in jail anyway”? I officially call bullshit on that. Of course it should come as no surprise given that the current… Read more →
Aside
So, did you read about Hugo Chavez accusing the US of causing the Haiti earthquakes with HAARP weaponry? I saw some discussion of that story, and thought it was a sign that Chavez had gone off the reservation… but it appears that it’s that the story is the result of some shoddy journalism and the Internet echo-amplification, not anything factual. Now the paranoid part of my brain is wondering if someone could cook up something like this on purpose specifically to reduce Chavez’s international credibility.
Aside
If you are at all interested in how the business of publishing may change in response to some current disruptive technology shifts–and particularly if you’re interested in looking at the question from an author’s point of view–you should really pop over to Charlie Stross’ blog and read his post there outlining some thoughts on the question and asking for reader comments. This is one of those cases where the “don’t read the comments” rule does not apply: there are a couple of hundred comments there now with a pretty high signal-to-noise ratio, and lots of interesting (and some very scary) ideas are being kicked around.
Rambling about passwords
What you’re looking at there is a list of the 32 most common passwords from among the set of more than 32 million users of RockYou. The top item, ‘123456’ was used by more than 300,000 users. We don’t normally get to look at actual user data in sets this large, but one benefit of the recent privacy breach at… Read more →
Aside
Looking at politics here, and in our neighbour to the south, I am starting to think that there’s maybe something to the depressive realism proposition. I am too rage-fatigued to post about today’s particular stories, but as usual Ferocious J has it covered, saying what I would probably say if I had the energy left to rant.
More on Youtube, Russell, whackjobs
Following up on that earlier Russell finding on Youtube, I see that there’s a veritable treasure trove of Russell stuff on there. For instance, I quite like the little TVO presentation on the Three Passions Of Bertrand Russell, or getting to listen to Russell debate the existence of God with a Jesuit philosophy scholarI actually went on to read the… Read more →
Her Eyes Alone Are A 500 Page Novel
“The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” If I am recalling correctly, that’s a Proust line. I’ve always liked that formulation–it ties into both what I think one of the main points of travel isto help you see home properly, and into that Zen-ish notion of trying to always come… Read more →
Russell Video Clip
Look what I found while trolling YouTube–an ancient CBC clip where Russell is being interviewed on the question of faith in a god. (I wonder if I have the only 5-year old in town who can identify Bertrand Russell when she sees him in a YouTube clip.) Read more →
Mayhap El Knaverino
Ummm… [He stains the rug] THE KNAVE Sir, prithee nay! BLANCHE Now thou seest what happens, Lebowski, when the agreements of honourable business stand compromised. If thou wouldst treat money as water, flowing as the gentle rain from heaven, why, then thou knowest water begets water; it will be a watery grave your rug, drowned in the weeping brook. Pray… Read more →
