Syaffolee

2008-05-08T19:50:00.001-07:00

Cinderella, the Pumpkins Are Inside the Coach (A Haiku)

Three stout girls in glitz,
One clutching a small chic dog,
Get into a truck.

2008-05-08T10:17:00.001-07:00

Acquisition of the Lab Building (A Haiku)

In the frisky breeze,
A proud goose sits on the roof
Loudly claiming turf.

2008-05-08T07:56:00.001-07:00

Memes

Booking Through Thursday: Manual Labor

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries�if any�do you have in your library?

I read them, occasionally. As for grammar and punctuation, if you've read one, you've read them all. I don't mean that they're the same--the execution is different, of course, so reading any of these for pleasure means you're reading for the author's style--but the rules are the same. And if all the rules are the same, what's the point in owning all these books?

Since I write in my free time, one would think that I would have a bunch of writing guides in my possession. In reality, no. I mean, sure, there are the few writing guides like Stephen King's On Writing or Strunk and White that I would even recommend to non-writers, but on the whole I view most of the offerings in this genre as useless. Writing style is a personal thing, and I'd rather muddle along by myself than follow somebody else's how-to.

As of this moment, I have on hand one dictionary, one thesaurus, one grammar and punctuation book, and three writing guides (the aforementioned King, Strunk and White, and one on Nanowrimo which I just thought would be cool to have since I've been a long-time participant--not that I follow any of Baty's suggestions). And frankly, that's probably all I need to have.

* * *
The Thursday Threesome: Fife and Drum?

Onesome: Fife-- Barney? ...a musical instrument? ...the number after 'four'? What came to mind when you saw this week's title?

Musical instrument. Specifically, what came to mind was a medieval ensemble playing in a Renaissance fair. Or something like that.

Twosome: and--do you recall a painting of a fife and drum set with a flag? No? Maybe one of our American History majors can link it in...

I vaguely remember the painting. I don't remember the artist though.

Threesome: Drum--lines? Do you love them? ...or do you even know they exist? I'm wondering if this is an "Eastern" thing...

Why is drumming an "Eastern" thing? Sure, there are Japanese taiko drummers, but aren't there drums in marching bands too? Marching bands solely consisting of drummers? Oil drummers in the Caribbean? There are drums and percussion instruments in every culture.

I like certain kinds of drumming, but it's not one of those things which I go crazy over or even consider seeking out.

2008-05-07T18:31:00.000-07:00

Yet Another Booklist

...containing many books I have not read. The following are "the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded." (via Dustbury)

Bold = books I've read
Underline = books I've read for school
Italics = books I've started but haven't finished/are in the middle of reading
* (asterisk) = books I own but have not started reading yet

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina*
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion*
Life of Pi: a novel*
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre*
The Tale of Two Cities*
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler�s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex*
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault�s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys*
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons*
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver�s Travels
Les Mis�rables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time*
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon*
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed*
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

2008-05-06T19:49:00.000-07:00

Arg!

I finally get the software working, but now all my bookmarks on Firefox are wiped out after my last restart. And the two programs aren't even related to each other...

Well, at least I have all my most important sites saved on an html file.

2008-05-06T17:18:00.001-07:00

Just Leave the Phone Unplugged

Rejecting the model in 'model minority.' I agree with Angry Asian Man's assessment.

Anyways, on an unrelated note: Sometimes when I leave my landline plugged in (most of the time I don't--people who really want to get a hold of me use e-mail), I get these targeted telemarketing calls in Mandarin. I tell them I don't speak Chinese, they stammer, and then I hang up. And I totally know why I get those phone calls too. It's because of my last name.

Of course, if they knew how the English transliteration of my last name came about (i.e. Vietnamization of the Cantonese pronunciation), the last thing they should be doing would be calling in Mandarin.

2008-05-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

Throwing The Phone Out The Window Is Useless

I hate calling tech support. After calling an 800 number, I get transferred to tech support. I try to state my problem as succinctly as possible. They cut me off and go into a condescending spiel that is of absolutely no help at all. Once there's a break when they're taking a breath to rant some more, I reply "Okay, okay, I'll try that. Thanks." They finish their spiel smugly. I say my thanks yet again even though I feel far from thankful and end the call. On the off chance that their directions do work, I try it. Of course, the suggestions have never worked and I'm completely averse to calling again. I wonder what drives them over the edge--maybe to them I sound as clueless as the kind of person who didn't even check if the computer was plugged in.

2008-05-04T14:00:00.001-07:00

Walking Home on a Sunday (A Haiku)

Both black and yellow,
Two silent wasps wage a war
On noon-hot concrete.

2008-05-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

Brief Book Reviews

The Arcanum by Janet Gleeson - It's eighteenth century Europe, the start of the Age of Reason, and a young apothecary's assistant performs a trick, apparently turning lead into gold. This bit of slight-of-hand eventually lands Johann Bottger into the hands of Augustus the Strong and life-long "imprisonment." But between his efforts in transmuting gold, Bottger eventually hit upon the formula for recreating Chinese porcelain--a different sort of gold that nonetheless fattened Augustus' pockets. Gleeson's account of the development of Meissen porcelain and the secrecy behind its formula or arcanum can be pretty suspenseful at times. As progress in European porcelain crept onward, one can't help wonder which greedy backstabber was going to hit next. I thought this was a fascinating intersection between chemical science and history (and would probably make a kickass film of period drama--I mean, it's got everything--sex, violence, espionage, grudges, greed, you name it). Highly recommended.

Escape from the Antarctic by Ernest Shackleton - I like very few stories which pit man against nature--unless it's something completely unavoidable like man against disease. Unfortunately, the majority of the more famous nature stories which get made into movies feature guys climbing mountains. Completely uninteresting. The whole subliminal "mine is bigger than yours!" thing totally doesn't work for me. Survival stories, however, have held a certain morbid fascination ever since I was introduced to Gary Paulsen's Hatchet when I was ten. I think it's because there are more factors coming into play other than something like falling off a mountain. There's exposure, temperature, weather, starvation, psychological issues, lack of navigation or rescue, and infighting. Escape from the Antarctic has all of these things although the sparse prose only hinted at the psychology and infighting. As the first World War ravaged Europe, Ernest Shackleton led the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition in hopes of crossing the Antarctic. There were two parties, one which laid out supply dumps and the second which would make the crossing. The second party was marooned on Elephant Island after ice crushed their ship the Endurance, 800 miles away from the nearest settlement, at the onset of winter. At this point, Shackleton made the desperate decision to split the group: the less fit men would remain at base camp while Shackleton and five other men would seek help. Shackleton's account is matter-of-fact and a testament to his leadership. But it does not detract from the amazing feat that these men managed to get help across 800 miles in nothing more than a twenty-foot boat.

2008-05-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

Guy Geek vs Four-Year-Old Girl

(A Partially Overheard Conversation)

"Boys don't have babies."

"That's correct. You're well on your way to becoming a biologist."

"Then how come your stomach's so big?"

"That's because I'm fat."

"How come you're fat?"

"I'm fat because I eat too much. I take in more calories than my body needs so [insert long-winded jargon laden explanation] which upsets my metabolic homeostasis."

Pause. "That's weird."

2008-05-02T22:40:00.001-07:00

Belated? Heck, Yeah.

Tangled Bank #104 is up at Dammit Jim! I see there are a fair number of bacteria-related posts--which totally makes my microbe-loving heart swoon. My only excuse for not posting this earlier is that I've been swamped with end of the semester exams, projects, presentations, and all that other insane grad student whatnot.

* * *
Lunch is supposed to be stress-free. This afternoon, I was perusing the student paper intending to be amused by typical undergraduate silliness when I came upon the opinion section. One of the undergraduate journalists wrote an anti-science screed which painted science as godless, evil, and morally corrupt.

To say that I'm livid is an understatement. This is the first time I'm even considering writing a letter to the editor.

It is true that science is godless. Science isn't a religion. But godlessness has nothing to do with evil or morality. Science gives us technology that could be used for bad purposes, but it can also be used for good. In the end, it's a tool--nothing more. It's like a screwdriver. In person A's hands, the screwdriver might be used to build a house for a low income family. In person B's hands, it might be used as a murder weapon. This doesn't make the screwdriver good or evil. If you want to blame something, blame the people wielding the tools and not the tools themselves.

Anyways, the main point of that article was that scientists are going to try to do things simply because they could. And the author implied that this curiosity is morally suspect and that it's a slippery slope towards a future where humanity is enslaving sentient chimeras created from test tubes. Man, it sounds like he's read too many dystopian sci-fi novels. At any rate, it really ticked me off that scientific curiosity was labeled as bad. If that was true, most people today would be longing for the Dark Ages.

2008-05-01T15:40:00.001-07:00

Er, Okay...

I'm sitting in the front of the class, minding my own business, when another student makes a snarky remark and one of the professors in class totally blows his top. I don't know about the other people in that room, but I was cringing downward in my seat, making no eye contact, and mentally plugging my ears to the ranting. More cringing ensued when the student was kicked out of class.

Geez, I'm too old to witness all of this hoopla.

2008-05-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

Memes

Booking Through Thursday: Mayday!

Quick! It�s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you�re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??

And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember�.

Well, if it's an emergency, I probably won't be in any frame of mind to be reading. Most likely, I'd be sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, and tuning out airport music.

But if I did have a yen for reading and my only option would be one of the airport newsstands (disregarding the closest airport which has absolutely nothing at all since it only has ONE gate), I'd probably go to the magazines first. Depending on what's available and what is closest to me, I'll look at some of the science-y mags like National Geographic or Discover and then maybe some of the more high profile news-lit magazines like The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and Harper's. And then I'll browse any cooking magazines. As for novels, airports usually only carry bestsellers and other mainstream books which I tend to avoid. I also avoid newspapers--simply because they're incredibly unwieldy.

* * *
The Thursday Threesome: The Magic Month of May

Onesome: The magic-- of Spring? Has it started yet where you are? ...or if you're 'down under', how is Autumn progressing?

Spring? Sure, although I still half expect it to snow.

Twosome: month of-- transition? Are you looking to be out of school? ...to have the kids out of school? No? Heh. How about just thinking about where you want to go this Summer? ...maybe within walking distance, -no?

After the following week is over, I'll be able to relax--a little. As for the summer, well, it's going to be kind of stress filled since I will still be in school.

Threesome: May-- I ask you if you know which song the title for today's piece was taken from? I'm thinking Laanba has a chance at it, but any fan of Dumbledore's original actor might know it...

I have no idea. Someone with more time on their hands might be able to google it up.

2008-04-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

Zombie Naturalist Has A Blog

Charles Darwin's blog. "Resurrected Victorian scientist and author." We definitely need more dead people blogging.

2008-04-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Reviews

OH JOHN RINGO NO. (via links in the previous post) Wow. Now that is an awesome review of a terrible series.

2008-04-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

Stars? What Stars?

Mmmm...One Star-rific! In response to an author behaving badly trainwreck, a SF author posts his one-starred reviews from Amazon. He also posts a list of authors who took up his one star challenge.

Tangential ramblings: Even as someone who reviews books as a hobby, I don't believe in starring books or rankings. It smacks too much of pretend "objectivity". People have to remember that it has no bearing on whether or not the author is truly good or bad. It's just somebody's opinion.

2008-04-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

Briefly

50 best cult books. I think a definition for cult book should be that it is inherently not a bestseller, well-known, or well-regarded by critics. Cult books should be like cults--inspiring fanatical devotion by the few and derision from the mainstream. Take for instance Star Trek, the works of Joss Whedon, or Neil Gaiman. These nerdy and fannish topics might make them cult, but because so many people know of them, they aren't. Besides, the mere appearance on some list in a major publication immediately renders the listed books un-cult.

I also recently watched two documentaries: Wordplay and Helvetica. Although both of them talk about words, the tone of each is vastly different. Wordplay, a film about The New York Times' crossword puzzle editor and other crossword enthusiasts, reminded me a lot of Word Wars and Spellbound. Geeky and charming, it's easy to get sucked into the crossword mania that famous and non-famous alike indulge in. As for Helvetica, well, the documentary as a whole was very stylish. I thought the history bit on Helvetica's development was interesting. But those interviews with graphic designers--oh geez. Whether they were ranting about Helvetica's conformity and "pro-war" image like streetside preachers or waxing poetical like enraptured lovers about the typeface's simplicity and modernity, I just heard pretentious babble. What about the opinion of the average person on the street? Oh right--I got the impression from those designers that they think that regular people just blindly use the default because they're totally ignorant of art.

2008-04-24T07:10:00.001-07:00

Memes

Booking Through Thursday: Springing

Do your reading habits change in the Spring? Do you read gardening books? Even if you don�t have a garden? More light fiction than during the Winter? Less? Travel books? Light paperbacks you can stick in a knapsack?

Or do you pretty much read the same kinds of things in the Spring as you do the rest of the year?

I don't think my reading tastes change throughout the year, but I do read more during the summer (and during winter break) simply because I have more time to do so.

* * *
The Thursday Threesome: The Convenience of Extra Cash

Onesome: The-- endless onslaught of junk snail mail: how much do you get each week? I'm thinking maybe we could use it as insulation in our houses...

I would say it would probably average to about a piece of junk snail mail every other day. The most annoying piece of junk mail is the weekly "paper" thrown at my door every Tuesday. I never read it because there are only fluff articles and advertisements.

Twosome: Convenience of-- a quick in and out? Do you have a convenience store nearby that is really convenient for you?

There is one, but I have never used it.

Threesome: Extra cash--? When you need some, where do you get it? ...the ATM? ..."write for over" at the store? What is this 'cash' thing you speak of?

Uh, let's just say I'm practical enough to avoid the ATM.

2008-04-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

If I Were a Villain, I Wouldn't Settle for Third

I found Amanda Quick's latest a breezy, amusing read. But for the uninitiated, The Third Circle might be all mystery and maybe even a little campy. The constant references to secret societies, paranormal powers, and a seemingly forward-thinking cast of main characters in a late Victorian setting might make the casual historical reader think she was thrown into a parallel universe. Well, as far as I'm concerned, the setting is a parallel universe. And if you're familiar with Quick's (a.k.a. Jayne Ann Krentz a.k.a. Jayne Castle) oeuvre, there are a lot of little things to pick up. This entry in the Arcane Society series isn't so much as a romance or even a mystery as it is a connection to a larger story arc.

On her way to recover a family heirloom, the powerful aurora stone, from an ambitious antiquities collector, Leona Hewitt stumbles over Thaddeus Ware standing over a dead woman. Ware is also after the stone, on behalf of the Arcane Society which deems it too dangerous to be let loose. Despite having separate agendas, Leona and Ware realize that Delbridge the collector and his association with other villains is more formidable, forcing the two to work together.

I'm not sure I buy Leona and Ware's relationship. One of Krentz/Quick/Castle's major themes in her books is trust. And I think in this case, the characters were a little too, uh, quick to trust each other. From their suspicious first meeting and conflicting purposes to not entirely respectable backgrounds, I don't see how even a little misunderstanding couldn't be present. But that said, that doesn't mean that the characters didn't have their own individual funny quirks. True, the villains were stereotypical (archetypal almost--the author uses a number of handsome, blond-haired men as bad guys)--comically so--but they were smart enough to figure things out fairly early on. Now if only they had displayed some knowledge of the advantages of delayed gratification, they would have been rather formidable opponents for the main characters.

Another Krentz/Quick/Castle trademark character type is the hypnotist--who is usually either villainous or ineffective. However, in this book, the hypnotist is the hero which makes for an interesting reversal. Leona is another one of Quick's optimistic heroines although I think she clings to her "think positive" mantras and her uncle's advice a little too desperately. No, the most intriguing thing about Leona is her ability to work crystals. I don't think the author just picked this out of thin air--instead, I think it's a deliberate reference to the books she writes as Jayne Castle. Many of the characters in those futuristics use crystals or amber to focus their powers and with a reference to the Arcane Society in Silver Master, it is probably not a stretch to consider Leona an ancestor of those characters. Other links: Leona's dog Fog who bears a remarkable resemblance to the dust bunnies in the Castle books. And there are hints, too, that the matchmaking madness in the author's stories taking place in later times probably originated with a secondary character in this installment.

Hm. I probably said too much about this book. But I wouldn't be surprised if the complicated occult network uncovered with The Third Circle is related to the cabal Krentz/Quick is revealing in the parallel story line in White Lies and Sizzle and Burn.

2008-04-23T21:11:00.001-07:00

Feminism and Two Trainwrecks on the Interwebs

The Internets work how they're supposed to. This is a write-up on some movement called "The Open Source Boob Project" at some SF con. Man, that's wrong. If there's anything to perpetuate the stereotype that sci-fi geeks are socially inept men not getting any and still living in their parents' basement, that is it. Somewhat unrelated: This reminds me of this internet money raising thing I've come across before on some blogs--where people put up pictures of their (covered) breasts to raise money for something, a charity I think. And then there's this whole breast cancer awareness thing. Yes, worthy causes, but when random men start championing these kinds of things, I can't help but feel a little skeeved about it all. Do men only sit up and notice if there are breasts involved?

Feminist bloggers and racism. Interesting schism. That's the problem with devoting oneself to a particular cause/movement/whathaveyou. People get tunnel vision. It's not just A vs B. There's also X vs Y vs Z and a kazillion other things. Anyways, I just look at this as evidence of why I'm a little uncomfortable about the major feminist movements--because maybe they espouse white feminism rather than feminism in general.

2008-04-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

Gasp, I Need Air!

This morning, I walked past a bunch of young women. From a couple yards away, I could smell the sickly sweet miasma of their combined perfume power. I don't get it. Along with the clacking of sharp heels (as annoying as dripping water in the middle of the night), are certain females' need to cloud themselves with scent some sort of attention getting gesture? They're liable to asphyxiate any potential suitors before they even get into the same room with them.

2008-04-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

Inverse Snow Globe

For the past three hours, I've been engrossed in work. I finally look out the window, and snow is falling, heavily, thickly--the white bits as wide as dimes.

2008-04-20T18:35:00.000-07:00

Some Guys Buy into the Beauty Myth, Too

Beauty myths. For some reason, this reminds me of all those painful memories of growing up. Sometime in sixth grade, I had asked my mom about shaving and she told me something to the effect that I didn't need it or I was too young. I suppose she probably hoped that I would forget about it after that discussion because I wasn't a girly girl in the first place--I paid little attention to makeup and the like as it was. But it is not a pleasant thing when boys make fun of your legs whenever you're wearing shorts. I don't have to tell you how f'ing annoying it is to have "You didn't shave!!!!" shrilly yapped at you.

Aside: Sixth and seventh grade were particularly hellish for a variety of reasons. I also find it interesting that every guy who had ever bullied me during those years ended up playing football in high school. Fortunately in high school, I was taking the advanced classes where the other nerds left me alone and football players were absent.

Anyways, you know those dreams people have about going out in public in their underwear? I don't have those. Instead, I have occasional nightmares about wearing shorts in public and then belatedly realizing that I have sasquatch legs.

2008-04-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

The Usual Turn of Phrase

Perhaps an expert explicator can glean the genius of the Pulitzer winning Time and Materials by Robert Hass, but this collection of poems--at least to me--reads like the introspective doodlings of an aging baby boomer. I found myself asking, often, why? Some of the poems were amusing or poignant, but none of them rose above the point of slightly better than ordinary. If these words were written by anyone other than Hass, would they have gotten a Pulitzer? (Probably not.) It's an eclectic mix of old codgerism with a bit of get-off-my-lawn-darn-kids! vibe, preoccupation with sex, name dropping, memories of family, and political poems.

The collection starts off with a very short poem, "Iowa, January", with two pseudo-cryptic lines that would probably make Frost turn in his grave. But that doesn't mean that there aren't any clever turns of phrase with lucid imagery. I liked this bit from "Etymology":

Poor language, poor theory
Of language. The shards of skull
In the Egyptian museum looked like maps of the wind-eroded
Canyon labyrinths from which,
Standing on the verge
In the yellow of a dwindling fall, you hear
Echo and re-echo the cries of terns
Fishing the worked silver of a rapids.

And there are times when the simple can be evocative. Example from "Poem with a Cucumber in It"

A hint of salt, something like starch, something
Like an attar of grasses or green leaves
On the tongue is the tongue
And the cucumber
Evolving toward each other

I'd have to say that attar is now my favorite word.

Some of the poems, admittedly, made me giggle because they were permeated by a grumpy old man narrator. In "The Problem of Describing Color" and "The Problem of Describing Trees" I could easily imagine a frustrated artist trying to explain his perceptions to a literal-minded audience more concerned about getting the right hex code to match a photograph to a website layout. The nerd in me positively squealed when I read "State of the Planet"; although commissioned and somewhat clunky at times, it had an entire stanza about GFP (green fluorescent protein) with an intriguing insight: "In the dark the creatures give off greenish light./Their bodies must by very strange to them." On the other hand, when the subjects turn more seriously to Hass's family--such as "The World as Will and Representation" about his alcoholic mother--there's something quite stark and earnest about the allusions.

The weakest part of the collection are the political poems. Unless Hass was aiming to make the reader feel numb and inundated, the run-on prose doesn't work. Maybe politics and poetry inherently don't mix--but I think it's totally possible to turn the music of words into passionate rhetoric. However, Hass's "I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name Is Dimitri", "Bush's War", and "On Visiting the DMZ at Panmunjom: A Haibun" doesn't have this energy. Instead, they're like monotone interruptions in an already snore-inducing lecture.

2008-04-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

Hm, Interesting (Redux)

An update from this post:

I came across SF and Fantasy in the New Millennium: Women Publishing Short Fiction and the addendum to that essay. Finally, some numbers! Apparently, not as many women are being published because they aren't submitting. Linville posits that this could be due to "perceived bias, added household demands, a tendency to write at novel length, or any number of other subtle factors."