I love this blog. One of the many things that makes it great is that there aren't any king cichlids. In the virtual fishtank of the internet, it's a rare refuge. Civility, WOOT!
Parenting is an evergreen topic with me. New York City playgrounds can be a very confusing place to raise a kid. The different parenting philosophies really rub up against each other. Some parents believe in letting kids settle disputes with little intervention, others get right in there and try to help resolve disputes and instruct the kids about how to play nicely with no snatching of toys or hitting.
The latter are sometimes accused of being 'helicopter parents' for hovering too much, the former are called 'neglectful' and lazy. Most parents just find ways to work it out, but now and then the different camps form like two groups of cichlids.
I'll soon (July 26th) be moving to Japan with my five year old and I'll get to see how dynamics are different with the Japanese, and as a foreigner. I'm looking forward to it.
Anyway, great post! Have a good holiday weekend, everyone.
I don't think you should be embarrassed for thinking that the real thing is actually a parody. That shows you have good faith. I often embarrass myself on the internet when I think a parody is the real thing. Then I get all outraged and upset and forward the thing around, only to discover it was a joke.
In this case, I think we've got internet crazy.
For those of us who still game, I propose calling a natural 20 a Gygax in memory of the man who helped bring us the RPG.
I so envy folks who can talk about these ideas, for a living! Thanks for posting about it. I got lost in links from that schedule.
It's a good time to mention that we have a new public literary position: The National Ambassador of Young People's Literature.
His name is John Scieszka. He wrote The Stinky Cheese Man, which my son loves. He also wrote The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf as told to Jon Scieszka
I've read some interviews and I really like the guy. He was a teacher for ten years, and his mission is let parents and educators that reading can be fun for kids, in fact, it should be.
He encourages parents to let their kids read comics, humor, whatever, and so forth. He also loves SF and seems like a fellow traveler for those of us who love to be entertained by what we read.
Professional writer about writers, Harold Bloom on the award:
"Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable ... fourth-rate science fiction," Bloom told The Associated Press.
I wonder what the professor considers to be first, second, and third rate science fiction to be?
Speaking of "hunh", I have picked up the Japanese habit of responding with "ngg." It basically means, "You spoke." It's an acknowledgment and little else. Not a negation, nor an affirmation. Sometimes when my wife asks me to do something, like put my socks in the dirty laundry instead of on the floor, I'll say "ngg." To which she'll reply, "Ngg janai!" Which means, "Don't nggg me!"
Sorry to bore you with this little detail, but ever since that thread about "whinge" and the various cross pollinations of language, this has been in the back of my mind.
It might be worth considering that maybe that wasn't Mark Mitchell's web page. Sure, it had his name on it, and he is a guy who got caught stealing other people's work as a student. But the blog could have been set up by someone with a grudge. This is the intarwebs, after all. It's something I could imagine Karl Rove might do.
writing whose main purpose is to explain to anxious readers whether it’s socially acceptable to like this stuff or not.
This line really grabbed me. I had an ah-ha moment when I was trying to break into freelance magazine writing and a friend of mine told me that those lists of "What's In" and "What's Out" aren't reports, they are instructions. He said that glossy magazines are instruction manuals for the timid.
It's probably a bit overstated, but there is some truth there. Like a "Do's and Don'ts" column, this bookchat you mentioned tells people what to think, rather than illuminating any ideas or aspects of the work it discusses. People want to be led.
Hersh had another piece in the New Yorker a couple of months ago. We are now fighting ourselves in Iraq. To stem the tide of Shia domination in the region, the US is funding Saudi Sunni extremists who are fighting the Shia government in Iraq. The same government that we're protecting. Another name for Saudi Sunni extremists in Al-Qaeda.
We are now giving money and arms to the very people who attacked us, and still attack us.
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