Month: December 2008
Neil Gaiman interviewed by Henry Jenkins for the Julius Schwartz Memorial Lecture series at MIT. He talks about his happiness in being placed in the gutter of genre fiction by the literati and about the dark qualities of his children’s fiction.
How Karen Lodrick tracked down and caught the woman who’d stolen her identity.
President George W. Bush spoke with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz Sunday following an incident in which an Iraqi reporter threw two shoes at the president.
Bush told Raddatz he wasn’t insulted by the shoe-throwing, and that stranger things have happened to him.
Is it still an insult if the person being insulted doesn’t consider it to be an insult?
UK ignores logic, backs 20-year music copyright extension
Ignoring the findings of the Government funded Gowers Report which concluded that copyright extension would yield little benefit Culture Minister Andy Burnham wishes to press ahead with extending copyright for musical recordings by 20 years arguing that there is a moral case.
Only having 50 years to exploit their copyright will leave artists destitute in their twilight years apparently even though evidence suggests that the hypothetical musician that is still popular enough to still be selling records over five decades after they’ve been released but not popular enough that they’ve not made a ton of money over those 50 years doesn’t exist.
A film with a very curious premise that is made sublime by the performances of Peter O’Toole and Sam Neill. Also the performances of Jeremy Northam and Bryan Brown are extremely good too.
I was expecting it to be just a bit of fluff but it is in fact a very moving and uplifting tale of how people deal with grief and embrace life.
Oliver Postgate the creator of Bagpuss and Ivor the Engine has died at the age of 83.
I grew up watching the work of Oliver Postgate and one of my very favourite TV programmes as a small child was Bagpuss.
And when Bagpuss was asleep,
All his friends were asleep.
The mice were ornaments on the mouse organ.
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls.
Professor Yaffle was just an old wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.
Even Bagpuss himself, once he was asleep, was just an old, saggy cloth cat,
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams,
But Emily loved him
He was like a very sweet gentle Grandfather who would sit me down and tell me magical tales. He will be remembered fondly by generations of children who have now grown up to have children of their own. [via]
The world’s most super-designed data center is described as being fit for a James Bond villain. [via]
Located in an old nuclear bunker deep below the bedrock of Stockholm city, sealed off from the world by entrance doors 40 cm thick, it can withstand a hydrogen bomb and has German submarine engines for backup power.
It reminds me however of the data haven that Epiphyte gets involved in building on the island of Kinakuta in Neal Stephenson’s novel Cryptonomicon.