Month: May 2009

May’s music

So if you were at all curious what music I’ve been listening to this month…

  1. “Glad Girls” by Guided by Voices
  2. “Book of Love” by Peter Gabriel
  3. “Jesus Was a Crossmaker” by Rachael Yamagata
  4. “A Talk with George” by Jonathan Coulton
  5. “Luisa’s Bones” by Crooked Fingers
  6. “Alice” by Pogo
  7. “You” by Essie Jain
  8. “Come on Petunia” by the Blow
  9. “One Crowded Hour” by Augie March
  10. “Creature Fear”/”Team” by Bon Iver
  11. “Falling Stars” by Sarah Siskind

It’s a few less than last month, but almost by necessity. There was a lot of great music last month, but I actually prefer these shorter and sweeter mixes.

Sunday various

  • The idea of cubicle farms kept awake pharmacologically for 20-hour work days is absolutely terrifying. But this article raises some very interesting questions about the value, consequences, and even future necessity of cognitive-enhancing drugs. [via]
  • Speaking of all things pharmacological, I’m just going to come right out and say it: Grant Morrison is pretty fucked up.
  • “…if the future is about to be rewritten, the big question becomes: How?” Steven Johnson in the WSJ on How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write. [via]
  • Apparently, 3-D animation is the only way to stay true to Charles Dickens’ original intent. So says Robert Zemeckis, anyway:

    “The way he describes the ghosts, the way he describes the environment that these characters move in, has always been unbelievably visual and very descriptive. We’ve actually been saddled with technology that never really allowed us to present the ghosts, if you will, in a way that is put on the page by Mr. Dickens. So that was the main inspiration as to why we wanted to re-envision the movie in a way that I think is really more true to the novel.”

    Having recently read Dickens’ original novel — a pleasant holiday read, no doubt occasionally thrilling when he recited it on-stage, but not necessarily one of his best — and having seen plenty of adaptations of it over the years, I’d say Zemeckis is pretty much full of it. Usually, “true to the novel” is a euphemism. In this case, I think plenty of people have been plenty true to Dickens’ novel. I have serious doubts that Carrey in motion-capture 3-D animation is going to be any improvement.

  • And finally, this almost sounds like a present-day Canticle for Liebowitz [via]:

    A Benedictine monk from Minnesota is scouring libraries in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Georgia for rare, ancient Christian manuscripts that are threatened by wars and black-market looters; so far, more than 16,500 of his finds have been digitized.

Saturday various

  • Geoggrey K. Pullum in The Chronicle of Higher Education on what’s wrong with Strunk & White:

    The book’s toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can’t help it, because they don’t know how to identify what they condemn.

    I’ve never even owned a copy. I’ll refer on occasion to my trusted Chicago Manual — or the APA Manual, which is the style guide we use at work — but mostly I just wing it, grammatically. [via]

  • Meanwhile, a defense of adverbs. I usually don’t have a problem with them, unless they’re overused and don’t actually tell the reader anything, a la J.K Rowling’s favored “darkly.” [via]
  • John Klima on editing and the value thereof. I love the proliferation of small fiction markets, mostly online, but I think some of them do a disservice to the field and writers by accepting everything they get, by not properly editing. If you’re just filling pages (paper or electronic), why even bother?
  • Well this is potentially terrifying [via]:

    Patrick Haggard, a neuroscientist at University College London, says the experiment breaks ground because it pinpoints volition to a specific part of the brain, allowing scientists to experimentally control it.

  • And finally, pick one. Gets harder to decide, doesn’t it? [via]

Friday various

  • I’m all for celebrating the positive in science fiction and fantasy, and on paper the Science Fiction and Fantasy Ethics Group (or SFFE, or whatever they’ve changed their name to) sounds like an interesting idea. But it’s that word “ethics” that I keep coming back to, that keeps bugging me. As many commenters have pointed out, it suggests that anything dystopian or pessimistic is unethical, or that there’s something inherently more ethical in stories with a sunny disposition, and I think that’s a dangerous line of thinking.
  • Meanwhile, Harlan Ellison turns down hometown prize. I don’t think it’s quite the fraud and sham he calls it — Ellison isn’t known for his restraint or tact — but it does sound pretty rinky-dink. I’m not sure I blame him. [via]
  • You had me at “rogue NASA interns.” The untold story of how they stole millions of dollars in moon rocks. [via]
  • Maybe they ought to send them to the moon for clean-up patrol. Apparently that place is filthy. [via]
  • And David Tennant is quitting Doctor Who, right?