Yet another variant of the "Geek Quiz", this one focusing on "nerdiness". I got fifty percent, which I gather is a decent score. This one's actually kind of fun, because the questions don't identify the subject matter -- you're just supposed to know.

La Befana, the Christmas witch. This is a really fine piece of writing, and a lovely fable.

This is in breathtakingly poor taste, but that's probably to be expected, given the source. I'm an animal lover, but I think PETA is just plain nuts. Anyone else?

(Although I must confess that given my particularly dark sense of humor, I found the picture of the psychotic knife-wielding June Cleaver-esque mommy rather amusing.)

Of all the crap I ever had to endure in grade school, I am firmly convinced that the diagramming of sentences was the most spectacularly useless. But it evidently occurred to someone that, since the Preamble to the United States Constitution is a single sentence, well by golly, it should be diagrammed!

Oy.

(via TNH's Particles)

So, did anyone else despise diagramming sentences the way I did?

OK, that last post obviously didn't take. Let's try another Wired article (though I'm dubious about y'all's love for Wired):

Memo
To: The next head of the Motion Picture Association of America (to be opened upon arrival)
Subject: How Hollywood can avoid the fate of the music industry

Do you dream of movies on demand over broadband?

From the latest issue of Wired (this was a good one): 101 ways to save the Internet.

Do you agree that the Internet is in danger? What are your favorite suggestions for saving it? Discuss.

FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers
I thought that this was a joke when I saw it in my in box. I guess not.

Hey amigos, it's been a long time, but I finally returned to blogging, maybe for good this time.

Since I know how much folks like the maps, I thought I would share this:



With the 2004 Presidential Election fast approaching, we might ~look forward~ to the onslaught of maps that paint the U.S. red and blue, illustrating which states lend their political support to Bush, and which states will back the Democratic Challenger To Be Announced. CommonWealth Magazine takes a more nuanced view of the American Electorate, and has divided the country into ten regions that spread beyond state boundaries, using counties as their unit of analysis. Although it will take quite a while to truly absorb the methods CommonWealth used, much less understand the ramifications for the candidates vis-a-vis campaign strategy, I highly recommend taking the time to read about our fractured electorate.

(via Sennoma's newly-created, terribly promising Malice Aforethought)

I'll probably have more to say about this on my own blog, but I thought I'd send up a trial balloon here. In the course of the Lord of the Rings films over the last two years, I've seen the sentiment often expressed that the movies aren't merely excellent tellings of Tolkien's story, but superior tellings of Tolkien's story. For example, here's a representative quote from John Scalzi:

The filmed version of the tale is a better film than the book version is a book, because the storyteller in the film tells the story better. Middle-Earth is undoubtedly Tolkien's world. But Jackson is the better teller of this particular tale.

Part of Scalzi's argument is that the books are not great literature, an idea which I reject utterly, and in fact I've been holding off on responding to this because I don't want to foam at the mouth. Anyone else want to say anything on this? Are the books great literature? I, for one, think that they indisputably are, and as much as I love the films, I don't think for one second that they tell the story better than the books.

"Why I Hate The Lord of the Rings", by some hack Hollywood writer. How much of a hack is he? He uses two different spellings of "Isildur" within three sentences of each other, and neither is correct. And more hackery on display, too!

And to think, this guy got paid for this piece.

Yeah, I'm pretty geeked for Wednesday

Some links in the meantime: What not to do during Return of the King, A Peter Jackson version of the Hobbit?, and Fellowship of the Nitpickers. Anyone else already got their tickets? I got mine this morning for an 8:30 showing Wednesday night at a Digital theater.

I won't pretend to understand everything about it, but frozen light seems awfully cool to me.

I've been enjoying quite a bit of historical fiction lately. I just read 'Gates of Fire' by Stephen Pressfield about the stand of 300 Spartans against thousands of Persians at Thermopylae. It was excellent. One of my favorites is 'Shogun'. I recently read 'Horatio Hornblower' and enjoyed them.

Do you read historical fiction? What are your favorites?

The FDNY's "Dirty Little Secret": At least a dozen of New York's Bravest - some of them assigned to look after Sept. 11 widows - have left their wives for the spouses of their comrades killed in the terror attacks, sources told The Post.

"It's disgusting, heartbreaking what they've done," said Mary Koenig, whose husband, Gerry Koenig of Staten Island's Rescue 5 squad, ditched her and their two kids for Madeline Bergin, the widow of his friend and firehouse mate, John Bergin, after the World Trade Center attacks.

An insider who has worked with firefighter families and a counselor who worked for one of the FDNY services told The Post there are about a dozen cases similar to the Koenigs.

I can kind of see how this would happen, but it's pretty sad. I'm not sure that better counseling for surviving firefighters and widows would have a great impact, but I don't know what else could possibly work.

(via anil)

Hmmmm....here's a brief movie called iPod's Dirty Secret. Interesting....for iPod users, is the "Dirty Secret" true, and if so, isn't this the kind of thing that usually draws accusations of Evil Incarnate if Microsoft happens to do them?

(via The Punning Pundit.)

OK, as long as I'm dusting the cobwebs out of here, I should direct any readers with connections to small liberal arts colleges located in Northeastern Iowa to check out Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, which is now hosted at NFL.com. Scroll down to "Obscure College Football Score of the Week #2".

1. CBS makes a movie about Ronald Reagan.

2. Said movie isn't sufficiently fawning about Reagan for conservative tastes.

3. Said conservatives scream bloody murder about the "liberal media".

4. CBS caves; moves movie to Showtime.

So, is this the liberal media run amok, trampling the memory of a great leader? Or is this thin-skinned conservatives unable to stand the slightest criticism of their sacred cows?

Time for the ever-popular "Where are you on the political spectrum?" quiz, which has me being pretty liberal and pretty libertarian. My results, and link to the quiz, here. (It takes five to ten minutes.)

Timothy Noah on Amazon's new "search inside the book" feature. Is this feature useful? I'm really not sure that it is, and I definitely think that it needs an off-switch. For instance, if I just want to get a Stephen King book, should I be forced to wade through every book that somewhere in its pages includes the words "Stephen" or "King"? This thing strikes me as an example of rolling something out before it's ready. Thoughts?

Kevin Drum posts a couple of excerpts from the President's news conference yesterday.

It's probably a given that George W. Bush is not the best speaker out there -- he's adequate with a prepared text, but in my ears he's dreadful off the cuff. Is this important? What should be our reaction to a President of the United States who uses words like "unsticker"? Should we be amused, mortified, ambivalent? Does this indicate anything?