From the Blog of a Bookslut:
Novelist Alice Hoffman, angry about a mediocre review of her new novel by Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe, posted Silman's phone number on her Twitter page, called her a "moron," insulted the entire city of Boston, and encouraged her fans to "tell Roberta Silman off." And somewhere in New York, a midlist writer's publicist weeps softly and begs to be reassigned.
From Slashdot:
In 2005, a college student published a rant on her hometown on her MySpace page, beginning with, "The older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga." Her former high school principal found the rant while browsing her MySpace page (what?), and forwarded it to the town newspaper, which published the "rant" without the girl's permission, signed with her full name, as a letter to the editor (what?). The resulting fallout included death threats against the family and the closure of the 20-year-old business owned by the girl's father. Four years later, a judge ruled that the girl could not sue for "public disclosure of private facts" because the MySpace post was not private. But what about a copyright claim?
Intriguing stuff.
Hello, folks.
A long while back, I made the decision to split this blog in two, sort of. At that point, Sloganeering.Org became the venue for longer, more discursive posts. All the short, more frequently posted stuff was sent over to Snappy Patter, which serves as sort of an annex to Sloganeering. I still feel pretty positive about this division. This might not be a positive reflection upon me, but compartmentalization makes me feel good.
That doesn’t stop the alarm bells going off in my head every time I start getting complacent. So, for this week, I’m going to be mixing it up a little bit. I will be cross-posting the short posts from Snappy Patter to Sloganeering.
Really, it’s not a big deal. Just going to see how things go. I’m not planning any major changes, regardless of the outcome. Like everything to do with my sites, it’s all for fun.
Loses battle to cancer. Network tributes forthcoming. Web tributes already available.
Pity everyone wants to string you up from the nearest WiMax tower, since I’m sure it was all just an honest mistake. Oh, here – you may need this.
Love,
Rasputin
Oops! We’ve internalized some cultural gender stereotypes again!
When participants in an experiment looked at photos of women's and men's faces looking sad, afraid, angry, or disgusted, with a sentence beneath the image purporting to explain the emotion ("buried a family pet" for a sad face, for instance, and "was threatened by an attacker" for a fearful one), they offered starkly different explanations for the emotions: that women in the photos felt sad, angry or afraid because they were "emotional," but the pictured men felt those emotions because they were "having a bad day"—even when the expressions and their explanation was identical.
Grrr, dammit. Of course, I’m only having a bad day so nothing about my angry reaction should be used to claim I have some sort of personality defect.
It’s James W. Harris doing the considering, actually:
The Time Machine is the big bang origin of the science fiction universe. I’ve read The Time Machine a couple times before in my life, but I never noticed that it was the origin of all science fiction before, but then I haven’t spent the last decade rereading the classics of science fiction before either. On this third reading, this time via audio book, it seemed quite obvious that The Time Machine is the first science fiction novel.
From CJR -- Bloomberg Buys the Discredited Realtor Lobby’s Spin:
You’d think that by now the media would be done with the National Association of Realtors, a discredited organization that caused the press so much embarrassment during the housing bubble.
But here’s Bloomberg writing a story that could be an NAR press release, warning that “There may be another culprit scuttling a U.S. housing recovery: low home appraisals.”
To which Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism provides a welcome dose of “yeah, right.”
To which we add: Pshft, yeah!
From A.V. Club:
Not a lot of details yet, but news is coming out that Ed McMahon has died at the age of 86, according to MSNBC. A former carnival barker and bingo caller, McMahon enjoyed a long career in entertainment, hosting game shows, taking the occasional acting role, emceeing the talent competition Star Search, and, most famously, serving as Johnny Carson's announcer and comic foil on The Tonight Show.
He was also the very definition of avuncular. He will be missed.
Denver teen, and Kotaku reader, Elijah Taylor opened his own video game store this week in Denver.
Taylor tells us that the store specializes in rare, old-school collectible video games like Earthbound, Mario RPG and Bubble Bobble 2. The store stocks games for the Genesis, N64, SNES, PS1, Dreamcast, NES, Saturn, Gamecube, PS2, Xbox, PS3, Wii, 360, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advanced, DS, Game Gear and Atari.
When Taylor's single mom passed away about a year ago he dropped out of school, got his GED and landed a job at a local video game store. Last week he and a friend decided to launch the store together.
Given the unbearable shithole that is Gamestop, it would be very, very nice if quality game stores like this fella's took off. If you live in Denver, and you’re a gamer, go on and check this place out.
From JP at SF Signal, in response to the prospect of a fifth Indiana Jones movie:
All I can say is: For the love of all that is holy, stop while you're still ahead! Kingdom may not have ruined Indy's reputation, but it sure didn't do him any favors. And with Harrison Ford being a few years older, good old Indy is just that, old, and won't be able to carry the film anymore. Instead we'll get Shia LeBeouf playing a more prominent role. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, "I know Indian Jones. Shia, you are no Indy, hell, you're no Harrison Ford!"
Absolutely the only way Speilberg/Lucas should be allowed to make another Indiana Jones film is if it’s an act of contrition. By all means, do something new and different – but try to come up with a compelling story whose dialog doesn’t make the audience wince every time the principles open their mouths.
I try as best I can to be as organized in my personal life as I am at work. Try being the operative word – I don’t always manage to pull it off. In an effort to get my online stuff together, I figured I’d go ahead and log into del.icio.us, and maybe get my bookmarks in order. At which point I was shocked to discover that I hadn’t logged into the site in over a year.
So, I’ve deleted all my bookmarks, and am now starting over from the beginning. Part of this new thing involves adding a del.icio.us link-dump on the sidebar of this page. You can find my most recently tagged bookmarks over on the right, there, under the heading, “Links of Interest”.
From Techdirt:
The protest was covered by the LA Times, the San Jose Mercury News and many gaming blogs. That sort of controversy might make the game more appealing to some... except, EA admitted that the protest was entirely staged by the viral marketing firm that they hired (though, it didn't fool everyone).
I’m no expert, but surely a good viral marketing campaign is one that doesn’t piss people off.
Given "Weird Al" Yankovic's musical preoccupation with popular cultural pheonomena and with Americans' weird purchasing habits (see also: "Ebay," "Mr. Popeil," "Buy Me A Condo," and "Hardware Store"), it was probably just a matter of time until he wrote a song about Craiglist. According to the timestamp, his new video was posted to YouTube a couple of days ago, but given that it only had about a hundred views when we checked it out — meaning that his vast legions of fans hadn't found it yet — it apparently just went live.
Not really related, but if you haven’t seen Al live, I’d recommend it. The man gives and gives.
… in the University of California system. From an article at the Nation, by the awesome Laila Lalami:
The proposed cut to the UC budget will have two immediate consequences: larger classes and higher fees for students; and heavier workloads and salary cuts for faculty and staff. As classes become larger, the amount of attention given to each student will decline, as will the quality of education. Once higher fees are implemented, out-of-state students will increasingly choose to enroll in public universities outside California, taking with them precious money they would have spent on tuition, rent, books, meals, computers and other college necessities. With heavier workloads, UC faculty will have less time to devote to their innovative research. Salary cuts to UC staff will mean that more people will be unable to pay their mortgages, which will in turn worsen the housing crisis.
This is not happy news.
Oh, great. Apparently, lack of money can worsen physical pain:
Their pain is not just metaphorical. Psychologists have been studying the connections between social and economic suffering, and an emerging theory suggests that these experiences are intertwined. What's more, the sting of rejection and the pain of poverty may be further linked to the body's physical pain perceptions. Which means we may literally ache for money and just as literally feel the sting of poverty.
Thanks a lot, Newsweek.
Heather Havrilesky has updated:
Twitter is the curse of the modern age. You heard it here first -- or you would've if I had twittered it or tweeted it or whatever the fuck. Look, I just want to warn you that I may be twittering soon, but don't fucking blame me for it because it's not my fucking fault. Personally, I think twitter is the stupidest streak of ass-hattery since hot wings (goddamn it I hate hot wings!).
Uh, no comment!
… wait, wait. Delete that last one. From Ann Kirshner:
Hardcover or paperback?
Until recently those were our reading options. As with everything else, whether it's ice cream or television, things are much more complicated now. We are way beyond vanilla and chocolate, way beyond the corner bookstore and neighborhood library and into a multiplicity of forms and platforms and technologies and interfaces that could be dispiriting if you are inclined to worry about the death of the book.
Totally uninteresting: The English languages alleged “Millionth Word”.
Rather more interesting: The recently added, 112th chemical element on the periodic table.
A comic panel that appears to have been inspired by 30 Rock and Ozymandias in equal measure.
Well, we’ll forgive you if you happen to be George Orwell:
Orwell's novel is consistently acclaimed as one of the finest of the last 100 years – two years ago Guardian readers voted it the 20th century's "definitive" book – and it remains a consistent bestseller. Should it alter our respect for it that Orwell borrowed much of his plot, the outlines of three of his central figures, and the progress of the book's dramatic arc from an earlier work?
Hmm… if you’re a high school student, I suppose this might make you feel less guilty about getting the Cliff’s Notes version.
From the Onion’s A.V. Club Newswire:
According to the Associated Press, actor David Carradine was found dead in a hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand earlier today. Initial reports indicate that Carradine hanged himself, though the 72-year-old actor's agent is claiming that he died of natural causes.
Goddamn it.
From Slashdot:
"25 years ago a Russian (Soviet) researcher thought of one of the world's most popular games. It is now that we celebrate its 25th anniversary.[…]”
My parents (thanks to K-Mart’s layaway service) bought me a Game Boy back in 1990, which came with a copy of Tetris. Some time later, my uncle got us a copy for the NES.
I still see tetrominoes when I close my eyes.
Larry Niven = Ringworld. But also, Larry Niven = original Land of the Lost TV series? Yes, indeed. (Link via SF Signal.)
From the A.V. Club (natch):
Yes, that's a book. Specifically, it's Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined By Saxophone And 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Lists. Regular readers of this site will recognize parts of that title from our Inventory feature. But don't expect nothing but reruns: The book's about 15% greatest hits and 85% new material.
Rejected title? Cracked: The Book.
Naw, I kid, I kid!
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