The easily amused, and that would be me, will enjoy this translation (original) of Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book. It is, of course, in blog format. Wait. No, it isn’t, it’s in online journal format. Ah, how the trends change. Via More Like This (original).
The roster of Antarctic blogs continues to grow: sandwichgirl.com (original), Polar Cafe, The Seventh Continent, and Sarah Kaye’s letters. Soon they’ll be writing New York Times articles about the phenomenon.
The New Rosetta Stone — parody or a serious challenge to Dave Sim for the misogyny crown? I honestly can’t tell. My theory is simple and is, essentially, an analogy. By projecting the characteristics of “woman” onto a character which is more straightforward and more readily understood by the general population, I wish to make the behavior of “woman” comprehensible. I offer to you Spider Man as the best model for “woman.” My argument is sixfold: ...
Speaking of God, may I point out that it is just pathetic that the National Parks Service is putting creationist texts on sale in the Grand Canyon park bookstore? Not to mention the rest of the fundamentalist ideology-mongering revealed in this article. Edit: there’s been a bit of backpedalling. Unclear how much.
This story about getting Darth Vader’s autograph is the best autograph story ever. You have to admire an evil that has such excellent attention to detail. Luke was just darned lucky that Vader turned from the dark side; if he’d stayed true to his path the Rebels wouldn’t have had a chance.
Our mashup for the first of December (did you remember to say “rabbit” three times?) is Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. It’s all about man versus nature, with themes of ecological awareness and man competing with man as side dishes. Great book, even if there’s controversy (original) about what exactly happened up there.
Beth Bartel’s iceblog! (original) comes to us straight from Antarctica, and how cool is that? See also Antarctica 2003 (which has wrapped up) and Life on the ice (original) (which has not). Felix Salmon’s sister, Rhian, is still blogging from down there — here’s a quick link to just her entries (original) — and I found 75 Degrees South (original) via Rhian. Plus Shackleton diaries (original). Man, Antarctica is a hotbed of blogging. (Props to Metafilter.)
In honor of that New Zealand flick I’ve been reading about in all the popular newsmagazines, we’ll mashup The Hobbit today. It’ll be kind of a relief to do a story that has something that more or less resembles the typical adventuring party for once. It’s one of those big adventuring parties I remember from massive sprawling college AD&D games, but it’s still an adventuring party.
I try to stay away from entries entitled “ Dave Winer has gone barking mad,” but from time to time I suspect I just won’t be able to avoid it. Background: Dave got miffed (original) because Lawrence Lessig’s big speech included an exhortation to get off your butts and do something about the political arena. Dave, to be perfectly fair, is in fact fairly active in a scattershot kind of a way. He also deserves applause for his rejection of patents, although he couldn’t have actually patented everything he thinks he could. ...
Above the main door of the Cambridge City Hall is a stone bearing these words: God has given Commandments unto Men. From these Commandments Men have framed Laws by which to be governed. It is honorable and praiseworthy to faithfully serve the people by helping to administer these Laws. If the Laws are not enforced, the People are not well governed. The asserted motivation behind Roy Moore’s monument to the 10 Commandments (original) was acknowledgement of the law’s moral foundation: namely, the Commandments inscribed on his monument, which are certainly the Commandments referenced in the inscription above. ...