Bulletin Board
- As much as I hate winter, there’s just something about a good old fashioned blizzard — if you’re safe at home and need not go anywhere. (Fireplace and plenty of reading material assumed.)
- For some reason, my RSS feed suddenly started generating 404 errors Friday. Hopefully, that has been fixed but, if not, let me know. (Of course, the people who are experiencing the problem may not be able to read this.)
Worthwhile Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa’s Nobel Lecture (“Literature creates a fraternity within human diversity and eclipses the frontiers erected among men and women by ignorance, ideologies, religions, languages, and stupidity.”) (via)
Bookish Linkage
- The NYT does its annual piece on literary translation.
- Why do we think the butler did it?
Nonbookish Linkage
- We are politically powerless because of an alien life form.
- Between quality and awesomeness, The Big Picture probably deserves a link every week. But this week it takes us inside a sulfur mine — inside a volcano.
- I am inspired that Scott H. has adopted a holiday greeting much like the one I use with family and friends.
We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist.
Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize lecture
