- A Collection of Rejected Titles for Classic Books [via]
- 12 Futuristic Finalists: Zombie Safe House Competition. Because the zombie apocalypse is coming, whether you’re ready for it or not. [via]
- Bulgarian environmentalists ask that Expendables 2 producers please not explode their bats
- Tasha Robinson of the AV Club asks Scott Tobias of same “why didn’t you like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World?” There’s some interesting food for thought, not just on Scott Pilgrim (which I happen to love, at least in its movie form) but on movies in general — particularly what Tobias calls “assemblages of awesome stuff…that are not, in fact, awesome.”
- And finally, abandoned Alan Moore comic would have destroyed the DC Universe. Yeah, hard to believe they didn’t go ahead with “an arc that would paint many of the company’s characters in the worst light possible and then kill them off.”
books
Fire fire
So I probably won’t be buying a Kindle Fire anytime soon:
If you’ve used an iPad, using the Kindle Fire will most likely remind you how much attention Apple does pay to design, user experience, deep detail. Apple thought long and hard not just about the features almost everybody will want all the time, but which some people will want sometimes. The iPad is a pleasure, sometimes even a mystery, to hold, explore and use. The Kindle Fire is a black rectangle with a screen that let’s you basically do seven things.
That said, it’s about to become “the rest” of the tablet market, everything but the iPad. For users who don’t want a sexy category-defying mini computer, this device will be great.
Finally, despite its seeming passion for books, Amazon is not a device company; it’s a company that has irrevocable changed, and innovated retail, and that’s what it’s doing again with the Kindle Fire. Bezos has gotten customers to pay him (although the FIre is a loss leader) for the privilege of owning their own portable comprehensive Amazon shopping experience. What he is probably most excited to sell a lot of are Amazon Prime subscriptions, which come with, of course, the free video content and the lending library, but, most importantly, with free two-day shipping, meaning if you’re feeling two lazy to walk over to the store to buy your toothbrush (or toaster, or boxer shorts or whatever), you’ll just order it from Amazon. This device is all about buying stuff, and lots and lots of people are going to buy it, and the Amazon content and hard goods it sells, this holiday season.
Monday various
- I don’t think I’m actually going to be using this, and not least of all because I almost never use Chrome or its extensions, but this is interesting: Jailbreak the Patriarchy, an extension that gender-swaps all the pronouns. [via]
- The YA Paranormal Drinking Game [via]
- “It has come to our attention that Ayn Rand was in fact a self-serving sociopath. We regret the error.” Copies of the Atlas Shrugged DVD pulled because they (very mistakenly) called it a “timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice” [via]
- Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home will be a musical. That’s…interesting.
- And finally, these Paranormal United States [via]
All the news that fits, we print
Today was an okay day.
We had another of our regular “brown bag” lunches at work, this one with Robin Pogrebin, a journalist with the New York Times, who talked about her own history with the magazine, the general state (and likely future) of print journalism, and answered some of our questions. It wasn’t as interactive as last month’s improv session, but it was interesting.
This evening, after work, I took the subway downtown to the NYU campus to hear novelist (and NYU professor) Zadie Smith talk. She wound up mostly reading from her novel-in-progress, a novel she’s apparently been working on for the past six or seven years — and which is quite good, from the sound of it. Afterward, she took questions from the audience. I stayed for most of that, but sneaked out a little early near the end. Smith’s a funny and engaging presence, but I had me a train to catch. (I also had yet to have dinner, and it was already half past 7.)
All in all, a pretty okay day.
Tuesday various
- “They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan / When they discovered a slave cemetary there” 19th-c. African-American village unearthed in what is now NYC’s Central Park
- Drug Dealers May Have Wiped Out “Uncontacted” Amazon Tribe [via]
- Where’s WALL-E? [via]
- If the Kindle is $0 next August, I’m totally buying one. Otherwise, not so much.
- And finally, A tear jerking story about Animal Crossing [via]
