There’s a bit of a fuss, today, in Left Blogovia about Ann Coulter saying what seem to me to be perfectly straightforward things about her theological beliefs. She is a religious exceptionalist; she believes that things would be much better…
Your Humble Blogger happened to pick up a book called A Guidebook to Learning: for a lifelong pursuit of wisdom, by Mortimer Adler, in which he complains about alphabetiasis, that is, the overreliance on alphabetical rather than conceptual organization. There…
One thing that occurs to me about this S-CHIP business is the extent to which the Republican leadership appears to be mean-spirited. This isn’t anything new; it certainly goes back to Ronald Wilson Reagan and his attitudes towards welfare. The…
OK, one of y’all who knows something about the Hugos can tell me—is Patricia Piccinini, for an example, eligible for a Hugo of any kind? It appears to me that the Best Artist award is for, excuse me whilst I…
Congratulations are due to Gentle Reader Wayman for his correct prediction that the research on Sword Swallowing and its side effects would win an Ig Nobel. In fact, is presumably winning it as we speak. Well done, Wayman. Well done,…
A meme from Gentle Reader Matt Hulan. Somebody looked in LibraryThing for the tag “unread” and took the top 106 books (there was an eight-way tie for 99th place. Then they started the apparently standard meme business of bolding names…
Your Humble Blogger’s previous experience with Michael Chabon’s books was not entirely positive. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay didn’t live up to its wonderful first third, and The Final Solution did nothing for me whatsoever. So when I…
So. I finished rereading the Dalemark quartet with The Crown of Dalemark. Again, mostly enjoyable, but not really great. The odd thing I noticed when reading Crown was the time factor. In this one, there’s a more-or-less modern girl who…
Your Humble Blogger worked his way to The Spellcoats, the third of the four Dalemark books, except I think there are more, now. It wouldn’t surprise me, anyway. Unlike the previous two, this Dalemark is a world with magic fairly…
The baseball year is over (well, for some of us), and according to Chris Haft, who writes for Major League Baseball, the Giants have made a decision about top priority for this offseason. The Giants, by the way, enter the…