Greg Mortenson’s follow-up to “Three Cups of Tea” further details his efforts to build schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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First against the wall
"Psaní je osamělá záležitost" (Lenka Procházková)
09 December 2009 @ 11:17 pm
09 December 2009 @ 08:52 pm
Every one of the Nook’s vaunted distinctions from Amazon’s Kindle comes fraught with disappointing footnotes.
09 December 2009 @ 10:08 pm
Publishers have been debating the timing of e-books in part as a way to protest the low prices that online retailers are offering on e-book versions of new releases and best sellers.
09 December 2009 @ 09:53 pm
On Tuesday, Oxford announced that it was rewriting the rules for the election of its Professor of Poetry.
09 December 2009 @ 08:04 am
09 December 2009 @ 07:28 pm
09 December 2009 @ 07:28 pm
At moments Clinton rants and rages, at others he becomes tearful, occasionally he gets bored and sometimes he even falls asleep. One memorable exchange, just after he has been trounced in the 1994 midterm elections, begins with Clinton in the White House barber’s chair, exhausted and frequently nodding off mid-sentence, only to rouse himself for a renewed bout of defiance and self-pity before slumping back again. Branch leaves him still talking to himself, and wonders if the president is suffering from narcolepsy, or something worse.
09 December 2009 @ 07:28 pm
The new Mbombela stadium in Nelspruit, on the edge of the Kruger National Park, is cheek-by-jowl with a large settlement of shacks. When the Franco-South African consortium arrived to construct this monstrosity, they said they needed one or two modern buildings (i.e. buildings with electricity and air conditioning, for it gets unpleasantly hot in the lowveld in summer) to house their accounts, architecture and surveying departments. The only two such buildings available were the local schools, so these were taken over and the children booted out.
09 December 2009 @ 07:28 pm
In October 1993, Congress took its final vote to kill funding for the Superconducting Supercollider. A well-meaning young professor advised me to leave graduate school if the vote went the wrong way. A year or so later he jumped ship to Wall Street, along with many other students and colleagues. With that vote to kill the SSC, Congress cut annual funding for high-energy physics in the United States by half. Support for the field continued to erode, losing ground against inflation, for the rest of the decade.
09 December 2009 @ 07:28 pm
09 December 2009 @ 07:28 pm
09 December 2009 @ 02:32 pm
Yes.
Very obvious and self-explanatory question.
If you don't have children you're not a "real woman".
You have to be a "real woman" in order to be a Mother.
If you're single, you're a failure anyway.
Being child-free is a kind of scarlet letter on your social standing - you're refusing to contribute to the human race, refusing to be a responsible adult and all that junk.
*sigh*
The answer to all those questions (thought the holiday part is ambiguous) is "Yes".
current mood: 
bored
bored09 December 2009 @ 10:41 am
"דומה כי אין ז'אנר הומוריסטי הנעדר מן הספר: סאטירה, פארודיה, אירוניה, משחקי מלים, בדיחות, וסצנות כמו-קולנועיות החושפות פואנטה מפתיעה. >>>
09 December 2009 @ 12:00 am
09 December 2009 @ 06:33 am
At The Nation Laila Lalami writes about The Swiss Minaret Ban: What Are Voters Really Trying to Outlaw?, while in The New York Times on Sunday Swiss author Peter Stamm (see, for example, the complete review review of his Agnes
) wrote an op-ed about Switzerland's Invisible Minarets.
) wrote an op-ed about Switzerland's Invisible Minarets.
09 December 2009 @ 06:33 am
At The Millions Anna Clark interviews translators-from-the-Russian Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
Among the exchanges of particular interest:
Among the exchanges of particular interest:
TM: Russian or otherwise, who are the writers you'd most love to see translated into English? What books are U. S. publishers and readers lacking?And:
RP and LV: There are three fine Italian writers of the twentieth century who should be translated into English: Alberto Savinio, Cristina Campo, and Guido Ceronetti. A very few of Savinio's many books have been translated and gone out of print.
TM: What books have you decided not to translate, and why?(As a big Turgenev fan I'm not sure how I feel about that answer .....)
RP and LV: We have decided not to translate Turgenev, because not everyone can be Mrs. [Constance] Garnett.
09 December 2009 @ 06:33 am
At Conversational Reading, Russell Valentino is the latest to take issue with Liesl Schillinger's pretty much now infamous article, American Literature: Words Without Borders, in Literary Parochialism, and Proud of It.
(Note, however, that the piece was not published in the NYTBR but in the also-edited-by-Sam-Tanenhaus Week in Review section (on the first page) -- as I discussed in my own take on this back when. )
(Note, however, that the piece was not published in the NYTBR but in the also-edited-by-Sam-Tanenhaus Week in Review section (on the first page) -- as I discussed in my own take on this back when. )
09 December 2009 @ 07:54 am
A twitter account is now in place. I wouldn't have, but Tori Amos is releasing some stuff for Facebook and Twitter, and that's the better of the two.
So - This is me.
Their server is awful!
Also, I've 23 invites to g-wave... If anyone wants one.
So - This is me.
Their server is awful!
Also, I've 23 invites to g-wave... If anyone wants one.
current mood: 
blah
blahcurrent buzz: "Full Moon" - The black ghosts (Twilight OST)
09 December 2009 @ 05:52 am
A stolid and largely by-the-numbers recitation of communism’s rise and its spread, in various manifestations, across the globe.
08 December 2009 @ 09:12 pm
08 December 2009 @ 08:49 pm
Record company ANTI announces via Tom Waits' Facebook page and via Twitter the limited edition Orphans box is available now. Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk seem to have a few copies in stock, the UK/EU shop of KingsRoadMerch still labels it as "in stock soon". The US KingsRoadMerch shop has no further details.
08 December 2009 @ 08:48 pm
You might have noticed The Eyeball Kid looks a little bit different. Feel free to share your thoughts on the new layout or suggest further improvements in the comments.
08 December 2009 @ 09:32 am
On Ebay now: the 1968 Hilltop High School (Chula Vista, Ca.) yearbook from 1968, the year Tom Waits graduated.
08 December 2009 @ 12:00 am
08 December 2009 @ 09:02 am
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Consent is coercion.
"Knesset passes biometric database bill"
So...
Any body got a couch I can crash on other than![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
tempestbreaker?
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Consent is coercion.
Two-year trial period to test database before it becomes mandatory for all Israeli citizens.
The Knesset on Monday adopted a bill establishing a biometric database in Israel, which will eventually lead to the replacement of regular identification with electronic IDs. Forty Mks supported the bill, 11 opposed it, and three abstained.
In addition to identification cards and passports, the database will also be designed to hold the fingerprints and visual scans of every citizen of Israel.
So...
Any body got a couch I can crash on other than
tempestbreaker?current mood: 
infuriated and mortified
infuriated and mortified08 December 2009 @ 05:04 am
I missed this when they first announced it at the end of October, but the University of California, Riverside now has a press release that Science Fiction, Fantasy Translation Awards Announced -- the awards being the Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards, which sounds like a great (and long overdue) idea.
As noted in the press release:
As noted in the press release:
"The literature of the fantastic is an international phenomenon and has been since Hoffmann, Gogol, and Maupassant in the 19th century. Yet contemporary Anglo-American readers have only a sketchy sense of the global scope of science fiction and fantasy today," Latham said. "This award will take a big step toward the goal of closing that blind spot. UCR is proud to be associated with this initiative given the wide range of materials gathered in the Eaton Collection, which includes works published in well over a dozen languages."