I'm putting this up to remind me of some posts I want to do today, when I get around to it/have more coffee in me:
A subject near and dear to my coal-black heart has been brought up by Steven Chapman (at 12:46 GMT on Sunday May 18) and Brian Micklethwait over at Libertarian Samizdata: High-Brow Littrichoor vs. what people actually want to read.
Speaking of Tolkien (heh), I've been wanting to post for some time on some things he brought up in an essay in The Tolkien Reader called "Ofermod." (That's an Anglo-Saxon word that means something like "hubris" did to the Greeks, only not really.) Maybe if I put this reminder note here I will get to it.
I was going to blog about China Miéville's scifi-fantasy-grotesque novels but I have yet to read Perdido Street and The Scar all the way through. So that will have to wait.
I can't resist rattling the bars of the cage: A.C. Douglas tossed a brand onto the fire a few days ago when he asserted here that there are more quality female-written blogs than male-written blogs.1 Naturally I have something to say about that. (Muahahaha... rubs hands together in wicked anticipation.) (1. Update: must... concentrate... must... learn to count/read/see/type... But I still have much to say about gender superiority in writing. Or, well, something, anyway.)
In the comments to this post, my assertion that college isn't necessary for everyone ruffled some feathers. I'll be expanding on my reply there. (Maybe I should add that permalinking feature for individual comments to my blog. We'll see.)
Boycott Hollywood links to this interview with Janeane Garofalo. My opinions on what she has to say are forthcoming. (Side note: "forthcoming" -- now there's an Anglo-Saxon word-formation.)
I can't remember anything else I want to do a post on right now, but I'm sure I'll think of more later. But I think this is enough for now.
Posted by Andrea Harris at May 18, 2003 12:03 PMI'm about halfway through "Perdido Street Station" and it is pretty cool-- Mieville's setting reminds me of a sort of dark, horror-flavored version of Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, which is just to say it's a fantasy pseudo-London with quasi-Interregnum politics, I suppose.
I saw some criticism a while back on Usenet from people complaining that the whole book was odious socialist propaganda (based on the vodyanoi dockworkers' strike and one use of the word "profiteer"), but I think they were being pretty thin-skinned. Other criticisms-- that the plot was not very tightly constructed and rife with dei ex machina-- were more to the point, but the setting and characters are cool enough that it doesn't bother me much.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin at May 18, 2003 at 01:26 PMAndrea, I'm looking forward to your comments on Janeane's ranting interview. I read it too, and couldn't bring myself to write about it...Too much to say, too little of it rational at the moment, so I'm hoping I'll just be able to post to your insights and call it a day :-)
Let me know when you get something down...
Posted by: Deb at May 18, 2003 at 08:16 PMFor the gender thing, it would interesting to have some idea of the total gender distribution. For instance, if twice as many blogs are written by women then absent any other evidence one would expect there to be twice as many good blogs written by women. However, I suspect that it's just personal taste. I checked my blog roll and I have 25% women (excluding group blogs like Samizdata. On the other hand, I hadn't thought to count until your post here.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at May 18, 2003 at 11:17 PM"...because I painfully felt that the anti-war movement was being ignored."
That paragraph is as far as I got. Chick's on some serious mind-altering substances.
I note she also repeated her statement about the media making a mockery of the anti-war movement by letting them speak.
Posted by: Ken Summers at May 19, 2003 at 09:13 AMHeh, while you are boycotting Hollywood you could always watch a short indy film. (The director is Japanese, the producer Italian and it was made in the UK.)
The Fallen: a short film staring me.
http://www.reaperinteractive.co.uk/video/fallen.html
Oh yeah and its free!
Posted by: Andrew Ian Castel-Dodge at May 19, 2003 at 02:24 PM