March 2009
13 posts
I love manifestos
Everyone has a manifesto these days. Gamers,
futurists and cultural theorists (or whatever they call
themselves) all have them, and you can too, if you have a modicum of
passion about something. And I love ‘em. There’s something about the
format and the language that says “what we’re trying to do is
important than the details”. It’s like walking up a mountain...
“He died vomiting blood, followed by stroke, shortly after he received a message...”
– The Egyptian Gazette tries to link a brain hemorrhage to a text message. Next up: Man Sneezes in New York, Earthquake in Paraguay, Scientists Baffled
Man wins a million pounds for saying God might...
Apparently, there’s something out there that we can never know,
except maybe through spiritual means. Or something. I don’t know
what Bernard d’Espagnat is really saying, but it sounds like he just got
paid an awful lot of money for dressing up some hoary old theological
tripe with scientastic words.
I’m sure someone will say something more meaningful about it soon.
Different kinds of (printed book) readers
If you think this story on the Guardian actually answers the question it purports to - i.e., why women read more than men — you’ll be disappointed. What it does do is point to some interesting research into reading habits:
“In the survey of 2,000 people the researchers found different types of readers. Forty-eight per cent of women can be considered to be Page Turners, or avid...
Sword and sorcery coming back
Sword and sorcery, so often found smeared on the soles of the boots of the wider fantasy genre, is getting a new life. Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is accepting submissions for original, straight up, balls-to-the-wall S&S.
From the about page:
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is an ezine dedicated to publishing short works of heroic fantasy. More than that, through both prose and poetry we hope to...
“It ain’t about the ‘principle,’ friend, it’s about the...”
– Harlan Ellison on why he’s suing Paramount regarding payments for his work on classic Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever.
Print versus web content: more than just...
Jakob Nielsen makes a salient point about the differences between writing for print and writing for the web.
“In print, you can spice up linear narrative with anecdotes and individual examples that support a storytelling approach to exposition. On the Web, such content often feels like filler; it slows down users and stands in the way of their getting to the point. … “Web...
“I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as...”
– Kurt Vonnegut: dead, but still awesome.
WatchMedia Cloud tracks and visualises news from (what must be, I presume) a gargantuan data set.
Love, the bestial kind
It’s criminal how infrequently David Badke updates his blog on medieval bestiaries, given that it’s the only blog on medieval bestiaries, and of the few people in the world that are interested in the topic (myself being one of them), we’re starved for content. No matter! I’ll just have to be satisfied with this latest piece.
It’s a sweet discussion of Richard de...
Is the book industry ready to drive?
CNET’s Greg Sandoval says Amazon ‘misread’ the book sector by ‘making optional’ the text-to-speech feature on the Kindle 2.
“Amazon might have avoided the controversy, had the company enlisted the counsel from important constituents in the publishing industry before launch. This way they could have a) learned about the objections quietly; b) done any haggling...