Bulletin Board
I contributed to an ObamaRama — a review of Obama’s first 100 days — at the newly redesigned Blogcritics Magazine. My piece appears in Part 2 but there’s no reason not to start with Part 1. And I kept my vow about the political — my contribution is on Obama and books.
But on a somewhat political note, I find it absolutely fascinating that evangelical Christians (62%) and weekly church-goers (54%) are the largest percentage of Americans who believe torturing terrorist suspects is often or sometimes justified. And while weekly church-goers who believe torture is never justified matches that of the overall population (25%), only 16% of evangelicals think it is never justified. Must have something to do with that vengeful God idea.
Achievement Awards
Oh, oh. Death-related competition for blog post headline of the week: Amazon decides not to kill everyone who doesn’t submit vs. Attention: Your Insurance Doesn’t Cover Damage From Corpse Fluid.
Legal cartoon of the week (a/k/a Courtoon).
Kissing Pork Butt Award
I see the local daily is among those members of the media who now refer to the flu that’s percolating everywhere as the “winesay uflay.” Haven’t watched any local news to see if any of the broadcast outlets are doing the same.
Bookish Linkage
As a follow-up to my ObamaRama contribution, it looks like Netherland is the latest entry in the Obama Book Club. Personally, I found it okay but nothing exceptional.
This will teach any author to be critical of the U.S. Even though the plane they’re on includes plenty of other people and is not going to land in the U.S., refuse it access to U.S. airspace entirely.
SF Awards news: Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin won the 2009 Nebula Award for best novel. Ian MacLeod’s Song of Time won this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award. And the finalists for the Locus Awards have been announced.
Anyone who doesn’t go to the Small Beer Press warehouse clearance sale to buy Elizabeth Hand’s excellent Generation Loss for a buck is missing a helluva deal.
Nonbookish Linkage
I’ve actually seen all but one of the films on this list of the top 15 greatest epic history movies. For whatever reason, I just haven’t gotten around to Hotel Rwanda.
Unfortunately, I’ve found myself asking this question too often when I’ve seen some people and their children.
Space porn: Fall into a black hole.
Speaking of space porn, I was thrilled this week to learn of a repository of NASA images operated by the wonderful folks at the Internet Archive and all of which are in the public domain.
Coming full circle, leave it to John Scalzi to give the real reasons Obama’s first 100 days were a complete and utter failure.
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
President John F’ Kennedy’s Inaugural Address
