A Momentary Taste of Being

Risking the possible label of "denialist"  (labeling being the favorite human game for supremely prejudicial distinction), I note this article by a reporter who feels he's been had. Excerpt: Let me back up. Because of manmade global warming, I warned in 1996, that “sea levels could rise as much as three feet by the year 2100 … warming can lead to hotter and more frequent heat waves … stronger and more frequent hurricanes to Hawai‘i … endanger native plants species [and] coral reefs.” These dire predictions came from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia provide much of the IPCC’s analysis and predictions. In November 2009, hackers released thousands of e-mails from the CRU, going back years, and it is these e-mails that reveal the very unscientific, unethical activities I described above. I feel I’ve been had. One thing I could not have known in 1996 wa...

I'm not a fan.  I don't understand the hype.  But I'm certainly going to try to.  Interview with David Foster Wallace.

I'm also an H.P. Lovecraft fan, and this postcard of Downtown Arkham comes from a site that epitomizes the extremes in fandom.  It's nice to see that kind of interest and passion in something that isn't of itself destructive.

And within science fiction, there is something peculiarly attractive to me about certain subgenres: steampunk is one of them.

While not the most precious, who stole our reading time is, indeed, a pressing question for many of us trying to shift the blame for our own failure to engage.

For those as thoroughly unacquainted with a major English-language literature as I am, this list of Favorite Australian Novels comes as a welcome anodyne. I know very little about Australian literature--I'm fond of On the Beach, A Town Like Alice, Picnic at Hanging Rock , and other things that probably do not rise to much more than popular literature.  I've heard both of the authors and some of the books featured here.  My favorite book containing Australian literature is Yorro Yorro by David Mowaljarlai , which contains some of the stories of the original people of the continent along with an explanation of some of their traditions and practices. I also recall a marvelous children's book set in the Dream Time--I'd have to comb my shelves to find it. But my knowledge, considering that all of this should be readily accessible to me, is admittedly dismal--something requiring remediation.  Perhaps starting with Patrick White. Note:  Another list of Australian F...

A question of etiquette in the blog environment. The question of how one goes about expressing opinions on subjects that really matter while at the same time maintaining composure and respect for one's correspondents is a very difficult matter.  Too often we are watching black type appear in white boxes.  Person?  There's no person here!  Let us conduct ourselves as we would in the privacy of our own home, throwing things across the room--and so forth.  But the reality is that we are more public than we ever have been or, perhaps, reasonably should be and it is important to bring to mind that every person is deserving of respect and compassion as far as we are humanly capable of doing.  When we disagree, it can be done respectfully--either in silence as we bypass (in charity) what could be a sharp rebuke of the deplorable taste exhibited or we post a comment that demurs from the central thesis of our blog-host.  It is always important to remember tha...

I've had Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned now from the library on an on and off basis for some time.  I've dipped into it, sampled a couple of stories and then retreated--not because the book was bad or poorly written or had any defect other than that it failed to sufficiently capture me with the huge pile of books that I have awaiting me. One intirepid reviewer sees Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned in quite a different, more intriguing light.  I may get through the book yet.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Chinua Achebe. An excerpt: When, in 1958, the London publishers William Heinemann received a manuscript of Chinua Achebe’s "Things Fall Apart," they were unsure whether to publish it. The central question, according to editor Alan Hill, was this: "Would anyone possibly buy a novel by an African?" Not only were there a mere handful of examples of African writing in English at the time – such as Amos Tutuola’s surreal "The Palm-Wine Drinkard" and Cyprian Ekwensi’s novel of contemporary Lagos, "People of the City" – but none of them had the ambition, the subtlety, or the confidence of "Things Fall Apart."

Surfing and Physics

Yes, we'll be talking about the matter for a while--at least until it's decided--but I point out that the iPod has not destroyed the music industry nor even the CD manufacturing sector. e-books, Piracy, and Stockpiling One of the points often left out of the debate is that fact that present draconian copyright laws encourage outright piracy because a great many books are held in shackles by the laws which would have greater audiences and greater influence if they had broader distribution.  When was the last time you saw a book by James Gould Cozzens on anything other than a library bookshelf?  Oh, and did you manage to find the two volume Rider Haggard Biography sitting next to it?  The continuous extension of copyright protection to works whose creators no longer can profit from them is detrimental to the continuation of the art.  How many lawsuits must we have over The Wind Done Gone before this becomes clear to us?

Mr. Joyce celebrates (let us hope) another with the whole communion of Saints , that he hadn't much patience with while living.  That said--didn't much care for the protestant view of things either.

I must admit I struggled with Rhyming Life and Death and never made it through.  However, I'll readily admit that I am prone to such failures and this reviewer found Amos Oz's book profoundly intresting and worthwhile.

Read all about Anna Karenina's Disappointing Denouement Interesting insights into Tolstoy-land.

From about half-way through the book from Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi Geoff Dyer When he was seventeen he'd read The French Lieutenant's Woman and had been much impressed by John Fowles's distinction between the Victorian point of view--I can't have this forever, therefore I am miserable--and the modern existentialist outlook: I have this for the moment, therefore I'm happy. It had stayed with him ever since but it seemed absurd, now, to have any pretensions to existential contentment. In 2003, in his mind-forties, he had got in touch with his inner Victorian. In Venice he discovered that he was the last Victorian. And so it goes.  I'm left somewhat at odds about what I think about this book because though I've given it nearly a week and a half after finishing, I'm not completely certain I've made sense of it yet.  So, for your entertainment and my public embarrassment, I shall ramble for you. The title of the book succinctly typifies ...

Sunday--a half hour in the library after arriving from Dublin the previous day.  Casting about trying to remember all of the things I read that I would like to read.  Last minute I look for Jerry Gabriel--and Wonder of Wonders, it's there on the Shelf-- Drowned Boy . from "Atlas" in Drowned Boy Jerry Gabriel Uncle Donald's mind was a unique land populated by all manner of improbably scenarios about the world. ******** Uncle Donald had an axe to grind with Catholicism, which as a nonpracticing but still-believing Catholic made my Dad uncomfortable. Like other aspects of Uncle Donald's character, this one just didn't make much sense; as far as I knew, he himself espoused no particular brand of religion, Christianity or otherwise. So any source of origin for the antipathy was possible---neo-Nazi propaganda at the bolt factory, anti-Kennedy sentiment from twenty years back; it was impossible to say. My suspicion was that it had to do with Notre Dame foot...

A challenge for an alliterative ode. As a technique goes, I find alliteration a natural home.  The related sounds of the words create a web of connections that is otherwise impossible.

Dedicated to giving rationalism, empiricism, and the atheistic scientific mind the worst possible public image. I have no problem with atheists so long as they are not fundamentalist, evangelical atheists like Dawkings,  Hitchens, and their ilk.  Fundamentalism, in any of its forms, can be off-putting.

At Mookse this cool coverage of the Lost Man Booker Prize. The Hand Reared Boy --really?  It should be most interesting to see how something fares after forty years!

This lovely passage extracted from an entry at Edward Feser: Admiring pursuit of the external is a confession of inferiority; and nothing thus holding itself inferior to things that rise and perish, nothing counting itself less honourable and less enduring than all else it admires could ever form any notion of either the nature or the power of God.