Day: August 29, 2007

Via Gerry Canavan:

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of a 44-year-old man’s brain show a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle taking up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue, in this handout image released by French researchers July 19, 2007. The man with the unusually tiny brain has managed to live an entirely normal life as a married civil servant with two children despite his condition, according to the researchers. [link]

Some may choose to view this as some kind of freak of nature. I choose to see it as the inevitable next step in mankind’s evolution as we prepare for the coming onslaught of brain-eating zombies. Only those of us who are not good eating may stand a chance of survival.

In the AV Club, Noel Murray writes:

The one thing you almost never see on a chick lit cover? A face. These covers are selling a notion that the story inside will be fun and relatable, about “everywoman” (or at least “everyfictionalwoman”). Not all chick lit is generic and unchallenging, but the publishers want to at least feign that they are, which means they can’t alienate the reader by making the covers about anyone in particular.

(In fairness, few novels put faces on their covers, because they don’t want the reader to have a fixed idea of what the characters look like. But with chick lit, the addition of certain common signifiers combined with the absence of a specific personality is particularly insidious.)

He also has an excellent revisiting of Rain Man that’s worth a look.

In his review of Balls of Fury, Roger Ebert writes:

Ping-Pong* is to tennis as foosball is to soccer. I know it’s on cable now, with lots of controversy over slower balls and faster paddles, but it retains for me only memories of rainy days at summer camp. I have never lost all affection for the sport, however, and am careful to play it at least once every decade.

Ping-Pong is on cable now? And it’s controversial? Really?

A.O. Scott of The New York Times, meanwhile, calls the film “must viewing for Christopher Walken completists who have mislaid their pecial collector’s edition DVD of ‘The Country Bears.'” High praise indeed.

At the prompting of first Heather and then Jim, I’m thinking of participating in the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest. I can’t help but think this is…well, insane, even in a week when I haven’t been getting sick, but I’m considering it. Of course, it’s this weekend, and I have been getting sick, and I don’t have anything approaching an outline or, really, even an idea.

And I’m really not interested in paying the $50 entry fee…

Seriously, I love the idea of this contest, or NaNoWriMo, but in practice…? Not so much.

But I’ve got a day or two still to decide, and I’m thinking about it.