Culture

The prelim Nebula ballot is up, with links to many of the nominees in full. Three out of the four novelettes were published on-line first.

And the nominees are… (original) Biggies (i.e., the ones I care about): Best Actor Johnny Depp — Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl Ben Kingsley — House Of Sand And Fog Jude Law — Cold Mountain Bill Murray — Lost In Translation Sean Penn — Mystic River Depp is the surprise nomination here. I still think he was better in Once Upon A Time In Mexico, but what do I know? Bill Murray would be my pick for the Oscar. ...

That was a long week. Productive, but lengthy. Instead of talking about business, which I can’t talk about, I’ll talk about the one non-business thing I did this week: Dixie’s BBQ. Dixie’s is pretty decent BBQ with a great gimmick. You get your food, you go sit down at your table, and the owner of the place wanders over with a pot of his hot sauce: “The Man.” He makes a big production about giving you some, especially if it’s your first time. I was there with a couple of co-workers, and since they were native Bostonians I figured my experience with hot sauces went a little beyond theirs. I believed them when they said The Man was hotter than hot, but I was pretty sure I could handle it anyhow. So I let Gene (the aforementioned owner) plop a big spoonful onto my brisket. ...

Horked from Metafilter, but high on the cool factor: MagicGallery.com (original), a collection of vintage magician posters from 1890 to 1930. Those who enjoyed a certain novel should make sure to view this poster (original).

Hey, look over there. The Population: Too proofreading team has done 729 pages, which is like two and a half books or something insane like that. 186 pages on January 15th alone. And when I say proofreading team, I mean Diony and Liralen, who are on fire. Thank you guys for helping to increase the amount of free information on the Internet. You rock.

The rules of The Apprentice got a little clearer this week; the project manager has to choose two people each week to go into the final stage with him, and one of the three gets fired. So, OK, Troy didn’t totally blow it last week. On the other hand, now the team is saddled with a total malcontent in Sam for at least a little while longer; I still think you gotta do a better job of balancing the strategy of picking the bad performers and the management difficulty of staying on everyone’s good side. ...

Bob Mould blogs. All hail Bob Mould. Hello, better late than never, or maybe not - you decide. A lot of my friends have been blogging for a while, and I figured it might be about time for me to join the party.

“Dog! Swine! Come back here with my ray weapon!” (original) From here, via BoingBoing.

Daniel Keys Moran has another story up on his web site. It’s not really all that; it’s just social and technological extrapolation without any plot. It’s firmly in Greg Egan territory without breaking new ground. But, you know, if you still hold out hope that A.I. War will show up at some point this is your bi-yearly fix.

John Clute’s review of the new Heinlein novel is great reading. It makes me want to read the book, which was somewhat unlikely given that I’m not so fond of posthumous literary exhumations. It also takes down Spider Robinson about as nicely as you’ll ever see it done.