Another day, another blog endorsement. Actually this is a further endorsement from the guys over at Threedonia (specifically Mike and “Floyd”), who posted Amazon links today so that people could order not only West Oversea, but all my novels.
Thanks, guys.
What really impresses me is the insider influence that Floyd obviously wields. He linked to an order site for West Oversea at Amazon, but when I, regular mortal that I am, try to search for it there, they never heard of it. Floyd’s power is obviously that of no earthly being. I’m glad he’s on my side.
Anthony Sacramone, late of Strange Herring, alerts me (in a comment on my dyspeptic post below about his hiatus) to his review, just posted, of my The Year of the Warrior, over at First Things blog.
If he knew how deeply I appreciate such fulsomosity, especially in view of the source, it would inflate his already prodigious ego to a level almost unimaginable to our pure-minded readership.
The more I see this little piece from Roy Jacobsen’s Dispatches From Outland blog, the more it delights me. (The blog is no more.)
Gaspard, B.F. (2009). On the synchronicity of the discharge of ionized sulfur particles from Io’s polar regions and Ms. Astrid Lingonströtter commuting patterns. Journal of Applied Planetary Research and Ironmongery, 257(1), 77-193.
Frank Wilson writes about blogging and creative writing. “If there is any benefit to be derived from blogging it starts with the doing of it. Writers write. Blogging is a good way of finding out if you have what it takes to sit down at regular intervals and write something. For someone like me, who already has deadlines to meet, it’s a good way to start the work day, like practicing scales.”
Still, I feel the need to write fiction or prose more, and blogging pulls me away from that. I want to pray more too. So I need to watch my time use.
The wildly popular blogger S.D. Smith has a list of blogging fears which land close to home. “#7 That I’ll get too big for my britches because I do a weblog which any ten-year old could do.”
S.D., that’s why you need insightful linkage and essaying like what you find here. What is this bit of silliness? Fake book covers? Funny, but what if I decide to read those books? I could be led astray by The Shaq, and would you want that on your conscience? I hear that book has heresy in it.
The Drexel Publishing Group has a new blog in which students will be contributing. Prof Stein has the details.
Today’s post from Jen Fromal is interesting. She talks about Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, and the idea that every city has a word that defines it.
Rome’s word is “sex” and Naples’ word is “fight.” Gilbert’s Swedish friend says that Stockholm’s word is “conform,” and Gilbert concludes that New York City’s word is “achieve” (as opposed to Los Angeles’ word of “succeed.”)
What do you think of this? I wonder if Washington D.C.’s word is “control.”
Have you seen the websites on which you have type out the misshapen letters in a little box before you leave a comment? In that moment, you are doing the work of translation.
In fact, your brain has deciphered words that had baffled the scanning software used for an enormous project to digitize every public domain book in the world.
“We can coordinate literally millions of people on the Internet to work together to do something that computers cannot do,” says Luis von Ahn, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
… Some 200 million of these words, dubbed “Captchas” for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, are typed every day by people around the world.
