The Man Booker prize is about to be announced. Check out the short list. I haven’t read any of them. (Here’s a set of condensed versions of each book, apparently with spoilers.) The National Book Foundation presents its 5 under 25 list of five great young writers. I’ve read only one story by one author […]
Author Archive | weeklyrob
Book Banning
I’ve posted before about book bannings. This time, I’ll just link without comment to a list of the most frequently challenged books of 2008.
I Like Dictionaries (but there's a new thesaurus out)
I really do like dictionaries. For example, I’m very happy with my 4th edition of the American Heritage behemoth, with the color illustrations and nicely colored head words. But my favorite is the “Shorter” Oxford English Dictionary (two big, fat volumes). According to their marketing literature, this dictionary contains all the “vocabulary current in general […]
Healthcare for Immigrants
So I guess I’ll weigh in. Or rather, as is my wont, I’ll go on for many paragraphs about how the issue is more complicated than some people would like you to believe. And I’ll do zero research to see if I’m right! An annoying and unproductive conversation I had with another commentor at mindyourowndamnbusinesspolitics.com has […]
Old Post
I wish I’d found this old post back when the Gates drama was happening. I want to try to remember it because sometimes when people say, “would this [bad thing] have happened to a white person,” I think, “well, yeah, probably.” Sometimes; not all the time. This is from Why Oh Why, which isn’t really […]
Next Generation Hand-Wringing
I’ve commented several times about how how wrong-headed some people are about technology (here, and here, and here). In short, Facebook and iPods really really really aren’t ruining society or creating people who can’t communicate. So I guess it’s obvious where I stand. There’s a new book out, A Better Pencil, which explains that the […]
Religious Law
So here in Atlanta, a Hindu temple filed for bankruptcy. This means that creditors are supposed to be allowed to do an inventory of all the temple’s assets. But the Hindus at the temple are in the middle of a “216-day period of ritual cleansing” in which non-Hindus aren’t supposed to enter the temple. So […]
T-Rex Mini Me
Man-sized, but otherwise identical, T-rex found in China. (They’re calling it a raptorex.) And you thought the Japanese were good at miniaturization. This is what the T-rex looked like before it evolved into the massive beast it eventually came to be. Have a look. It apparently changes how we thought that T-rex evolved. The thinking […]
Happy Birthday, Doctor J!
Not the basketball player, but the amazing Dr. Johnson (who has appeared before in these magical pages). Creator of the first modern English dictionary. Today he would be 300 years old and still bitching. Bitching, that is, in the most witty and quotable way. Go read some of his dictionary. Today’s word is pickapack, which […]
The Worst Place for Homosexuals on Earth
Iraq. Technology and social media makes it easier to torture and murder people who aren’t bothering anyone.