“Fool’s Gold” by Katie Herzig
Month: January 2011
Wednesday various
- “What killed Mozart?” isn’t the interesting question. The interesting question is: why are there so many wildly different theories about what killed Mozart? [via]
- 10 cool converted bookstores [via]
- Chinese archaeologists unearth 2,400-year-old ‘soup’. Undoubtedly, it tastes like chicken. [via]
- The woman without fear [via]
- And finally, Google’s Zeitgeist 2010. I think the top rank for “chatroulette” reveals just how quickly the zeitgeist can shift. When’s the last time you heard anything about this internet phenomenon? [via]
Just an average Tuesday
Today was the quintessential Tuesday, if such a thing can be said to exist.
It turns out those stock photos I worried hadn’t been downloaded before they became unavailable…hadn’t been downloaded, and are no longer available. But I managed to track down one of them at another stock photo website, where we also have account, and a replacement for the other from the same artist. And, wonder of wonders, the author who needed to approve the replacement pretty quickly replied to my e-mail — almost immediately, in fact — so that headache appears to have been cleared up. I’m still a little annoyed that this was a headache, however temporarily, since it really should not have been, but what’s done is done, and a solution has been found.
Otherwise, just a normal day.
Song of the day
“Whistling in the Dark” by They Might Be Giants
Tuesday various
- Lots of people are pointing out why retroactively censoring Huckleberry Finn is a bad idea, but I think I like what Gerry Canavan says most:
If we’re going to retroactively censor Mark Twain, I’d say “slave†seems significantly more offensive to me than “n*gger†insofar as it accedes to the noxious proposition that some people can be slaves in the first place. People can be enslaved, of course—but no person is a slave. In my own rare writing and teaching on slavery I try to favor “so-called slave†and “enslaved person†in a quiet effort to highlight that slavery is not an essence but a structure of violent domination.
It’s not the fact that we’re still having this conversation that bothers me — we should have continued and open discussions about race — it’s that we’re still faced with people who think not discussing it, pretending the words we don’t like don’t exist, is the right way to go.
- In happier news, Nel Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are married. As Patton Oswalt writes:
Marriage of @amandapalmer and @neilhimself confirmed. Like the Hatfield/Coy War, the Nerd/Goth schism is laid to rest — by love!
- And in other amusing, geeky wedding news, Doctor Who‘s David Tennant is engaged to one-time co-star Georgia Moffett. As Peter David amusingly notes:
The Tenth Doctor is going to be marrying his own daughter who also happens to be the daughter of the Fifth Doctor and Trillian from the TV version of “Hitchhiker.â€
Most meta engagement EV-er.
- Speaking of Doctor Who, these one-of-a-kind nesting dolls may very well be the coolest thing ever. [via]
- And finally, Udo Kier…honestly, in interview, the man comes across like he’s playing an Udo Kier character — erudite, macabre, and often delightfully unhinged:
I cannot answer you, because it’s totally unknown to me what you just asked me, and also very boring.