Mars Has Water
It’s confirmed, everyone. Mars has water. We now have a 100% certainty of it. No skepticism. This is a reality. There is water on Mars. Fantastic discovery! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Book Meme: Which classics have you read?
Discovered this here and thought I aught to do it. The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Well let’s see.1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.2) Italicize those you intend to read.3) Reprint this list on your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them 😉 Here goes: 1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee6 The Bible7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’m bolding this anyway because I’ve read a hell of a lot of his work)15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger20 Middlemarch – George Eliot21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis34 Emma – Jane Austen35 Persuasion – Jane Austen36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (wat, why is this on there twice)37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne (I’ve seen and read enough Pooh stuff that this counts)41 Animal Farm – George Orwell42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding50 Atonement – Ian McEwan51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel52 Dune – Frank Herbert53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens72 Dracula – Bram Stoker73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson75 Ulysses – James Joyce76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome78 Germinal – Emile Zola79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray80 Possession – AS Byatt81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks94 Watership Down – Richard Adams95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare (this is also on there twice; why does this get separated from the Complete Works rather than Romeo & Juliet, or Macbeth, or Othello…)99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo Twenty-two. That’s not bad I suppose. There are a lot of books on here I’m not really interested in though. So be it. Everyone is tagged, by the way!
Book Piracy Won’t Destroy Writers
Why is it that people think so negatively about the Internet? Apparently the Society of Authors, whoever the heck they are, have spouted the doomsday report that the ever popular book group of book pirates will ruin us all: For a while it will be great for readers because they will pay less and less but in the long run it’s going to ruin the information. People will stop writing. There’s a lot of ‘wait and see what the technology brings’ but the trouble is if you wait and see too long then it’s gone. That’s what happened to the music industry. Except, the music industry never stopped. Where the heck do you live where you think people are no longer making music? That’s absolutely absurd. The music industry never died. In fact, it’s doing just fine. Yeah, there’s some lost revenue, but has it stopped people from making music? No. The Internet has actually done the exact opposite: it’s inspired musicians. Remember the old MP3.com? That site was like a haven to musicians everywhere, and quite a few relatively popular groups spawned from the historical incarnation of that site. There are loads of new sites today using similar models for music. They may not be making a whole lot of money, but they are making music.The same thing has happened with writers. The Internet has opened up a whole new avenue for them to express themselves and become better known. Granted, just like in music there are loads of writers who suck, and the Internet has given them the avenue to spew their pointless dribble, but in the end my point still stands. They are writing, and I’d argue that the writing community is more vibrant now than it ever was in the past. There might not be a whole lot of superb writing, but does all writing have to be superb to be respected? A book might suck, but I can at least respect the author and the work that author put into it, can’t I?The stupidity, however, doesn’t end with proclaiming disaster for the writing industry. It moves on to an idea that, quite frankly, makes my skin crawl: In the 19th century and before, other models of paying writers existed, including lump-sum agreements and profit-sharing. She sees no reason why the book industry should not be equally innovative. She suggested four possible sources of income at an industry discussion on copyright law last week: the Government, business, rich patrons and the public. Government funding could take the form of an “academy” of salaried writers. What would this do to the writing industry? You’re suggesting we dispense with the current publishing model, which gives ample opportunity for a variety of new authors, and instead leave it up to the government to make the decision about what is acceptable reading material? Do these folks even realize what including the government in choosing the “pick of the litter” will do to the writing industry? This might have wroked just fine some hundreds of years ago, but let’s face it, this is stupid, elitist tripe. Let’s just let the government get involved in what we’re reading. Great idea. Because that’s not asking for censorship at all.By the way, two examples that were used as examples to support the claim of the Society of Writers were: Stephen King and J. K. Rowling. There is mention that lesser known authors have suffered from piracy, but to claim that these two authors are actually suffering from the piracy of their books is like saying Bill Gates is broke.Book piracy isn’t going to kill the urge to write, just as music piracy isn’t going to kill the urge to make music. This is stupid on too many different levels.
Apologies Readers
For some reason LoudTwitter went schizo on me and started posting my tweets over and over and over, when I didn’t want it to. Not sure what’s up, but it should stop for a while now. I know there is an issue with the Twitter folks in regards to third party feed services. Looks like they’re tweaking things a bit. Anywho, it should stop now and again, I’m sorry about that. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Gay marriage equals the end of democracy?
Orson Scott Card is apparently at it again. To be honest, I’m not even going to touch this. If you want to read some brilliant counter-rants, go here, here (this one is suprisingly not tinged with hateful anti-man language), or here. In short, I think Card has lost his mind and joined the ranks of the very lunatic religious wackjobs who have been attempting to tear down the foundations of science and rationality for decades. His insanity is too obvious. He needs to go on vacation or something. Seriously. Nobody should be this angry about anything (except, perhaps, having one’s entire race of people eradicated). If this is a publicity stunt or something, it’s working, cause he’s getting loads of attention. Anywho, I’m done. His rant is so horrible I don’t even have the time to refute his dribbling nonsense. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)