- Sad to learn that author Kage Baker passed away from cancer over the weekend.
- Not terribly surprised to learn that Sarah Palin’s political action committee spent more money buying her book than on, well, political action.
- Very surprised to learn that packs of wild beagles are terrorizing the east end of Long Island.
- Impressed by James Cameron’s letter to H.R. Giger’s agent about why Cameron didn’t involve Giger in the design and filming of Aliens. Where’s this kind of honest humility gone in the James Cameron of today?
- And finally, very impressed by Chameleon Circuit, who put out some of the best Doctor Who-themed music I’ve ever heard. That might sound like I’m damning them with faint praise, to some of you, but I think these are really neat songs. One of them easily wound up on my January music mix. [via]
news
Thursday various
- I was sad to see that J.D. Salinger had passed away. I think John Hodgman said it best: “I prefer to think JD Salinger has just decided to become extra reclusive.”
- I’m much more sad to hear the terrible news about Kage Baker, who has apparently lost her battle with cancer and has only a few weeks to live. I haven’t read a lot of Baker’s books — just the first two in her Company series — but she’s a real gifted talent taken much too soon.
- Today in banning: first, a Wisconsin jail bans Dungeons & Dragons:
Singer was told by prison officials that he could not keep the materials because Dungeons & Dragons “promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling,” according to the ruling. The prison later developed a more comprehensive policy against all types of fantasy games, the court said. [via]
And a California school district bans the dictionary. [via]
- In much happier news, a story of a Haitian man rescued from beaneath the rubble 11 days after the earthquake — “and hours after the government declared search and rescue operations to be officially over.”
- And finally, Zack Handlen watches the horror movie Orphan so the rest of us don’t have to:
…just playing creepy music and panning over a room isn’t creating mood, it’s giving the production designer a clip reel…
Wednesday various
- A whole lot of talk today has been about Apple’s new iPad. (You shouldn’t have any trouble finding plenty of links on your own.) Almost despite myself, I’m guardedly optimistic about its future and genuinely interested in its application — in a way, I should add, that I generally wasn’t interested in the iPhone. I think I’m going to wait a little before I try to justify buying one for myself, at least until a few more in-depth reviews are in. As Brad Stone notes in the New York Times, “Nothing ages faster than the future when you get it in your hands.”
- Rachel Swirsky: “Genre is a tool. It’s not a prophecy.“
- Here’s a fascinating article on confessions of a book pirate:
TM: Do you have a sense of where these books are coming from and who is putting them online?
[TRC:] I assume they are primarily produced by individuals like me – bibliophiles who want to share their favorite books with others. They likely own hundreds of books, and when asked what their favorite book is look at you like you are crazy before rattling of 10-15 authors, and then emailing you later with several more. The next time you see them, they have a bag of 5-10 books for you to borrow.
I’m sure that there are others – the compulsive collectors who download and re-share without ever reading one, the habitual pirates who want to be the first to upload a new release, and people with some other weird agenda that only they understand. [via]
- Meanwhile, the world’s largest book — it’s five feet tall by six feet wide, and it takes six people to lift it — will be displayed with its pages open for the first time. I like how the Guardian calls it “almost absurdly huge.” How big does a book have to be before they’d drop that “almost”? [via]
- And finally, a movie made by chimpanzees. All the obvious jokes aside, I wonder if this is really as impressive as it may at first sound — since, as the BBC notes:
The apes are unlikely to have actively tried to film any particular subject, or understand that by carrying Chimpcam around, they were making a film.
This seems less like a film from the chimps’ perspective than footage they accidentally shot. Still, the study as a whole does sound intriguing. [via]
Tuesday various
- Boy, when Mark Twain called you an idiot, he didn’t fool around. “…scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link” indeed!
- New York woman falls, rips Picasso painting. Well that’s embarrassing! Gawker [via] has more.
- The Chinese have re-named a mountain “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain,” after the James Cameron movie. Because of course they have.
- S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer Compares Helping Poor to Feeding Stray Animals. They sure do know how to pick ’em in South Carolina, don’t they? [[via]
- And finally, a lovely quote from China Miéville:
The truth is different. Chrononauts litter no less than any other tourists. The past is a dump, each epoch a tip of its futures’ rubbish. There are no police: only overworked binwomen and binmen endlessly shovelling junk into timefills. They slog uninterrupted: the detritus is all over the place, and unnoticed by us natives. We stub our toes every day on things discarded from times to come.
Thursday various
- A whites-only basketball league? That’s actually sort of laughably repugnant, to the point where you just assume it has to be a hoax. “We don’t hate black people. We just wish there wasn’t so many of ’em, and they weren’t such gosh darn awful people.” [via]
- Bloomsbury seems to have a problem with black people, too, at least on their book covers. You’d think they’d have learned, after all the controversy over Justine Larbalestier’s YA novel Liar last year, but apparently not.
As Small Beer Press suggests, “Your task this week: buy a book with a person of color on the cover.”
- Meanwhile, Anderson Cooper Rescues Injured Boy from Haiti Earthquake Riot.
- Push is being made into a TV series? Actually, you know, I think this could maybe actually work. As I noted back when I first saw it, Push had an intriguing world that it didn’t do a whole lot with. (Besides filming it in scenic Hong Kong and giving Dakota Fanning an opportunity to film the least convincing drunk scene ever.) There’s room to do something more interesting here. [via]
- And finally, if you’re not reading Letters of Note, you’re missing out on great finds like this.