04/08/29 Links, novel progress #42
04/08/22 Links, novel progress #41
04/08/15 RSS feed, links, novel progress #40
04/08/08 Links, novel progress #39
04/08/01 F9/11, links, novel progress #38
04/08/29 Links, novel progress #42
04/08/22 Links, novel progress #41
04/08/15 RSS feed, links, novel progress #40
04/08/08 Links, novel progress #39
04/08/01 F9/11, links, novel progress #38
Quote for today (from Munch's Scream stolen again, linked below):
This fact - that The Scream is forever being stolen - has added a new layer of meaning to the original. The sickly fear, the angst which radiates out from the ghoulish face of the screamer, is now shot through with the uncertainty that at any moment the canvas might be wrenched from the wall and shoved in the boot of an Audi. The scream is as much a cry of help as a cry of anguish. The strange stretched lips twist to form the plaintive words: "Please stop stealing me" - but in the empty eyes you can see the dreadful certainty that the theft will take place.
Obsolete Euro designs.
Admirable design: The Euro banknotes that never were
(Via Metafilter)
Oh, no.
LN Review: Munch's Scream stolen again.
Good people in a bad place.
The Stanford prison experiment
Writing without glamour.
Sliptongue: Scenes from a writer's life
Rewriting the Oxford English Dictionary in limerick form.
OEDILF: The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form
One new episode in the past week, 800 new words, 59,879 words total.
Introduction
Introduction and start of part 3
After the war (88)
I found the following disclaimer in an article on Links and Law (one of the articles linked below):
Status: personal view only. Editing status: not perfect.
I'm not sure why I love this so much, but I do.
Why cities are easy to get lost in.
News@nature.com: The urban maze
Today's news: 302 front pages from 36 countries.
Newseum: Today's front pages
Stupid and otherwise self-defeating linking policies.
Tim Berners-Lee: Links and law - myths
(More on Apothecary's drawer)
A blog as a reason for dismissal.
Metafilter: Getting fired for blogging
Sex on the hill meets blogging. Dismissal ensues.
Metafilter: Blog interrupted
One new episode in the past week, 845 new words, 59,079 words total.
Introduction
Introduction and start of part 3
After the war (87)
I've added an RSS feed to this site, scroll down the page to find it. I'm still very new to the subject, but I'm quite intrigued by the possibilities of this nice, shiny new toy. Below are some links with more information.
Many blogging tools generate RSS feeds. If you hand-code, like me, you'll need to roll your own, for which this beginner's guide comes in handy. It's a bit hazy on the syntactic details, but it does get you started. Also, I like manuals that acknowledge the importance of beer.
Stephen's web: How to create an RSS feed with Notepad, a webserver and a beer
This article won't help you build the RSS feed (the author assumes that you're using some automated process) but it will give you a more in-depth understanding of how it works. It will also fill you in on some of the syntactic details that the previous article missed.
Mark Nottingham: RSS tutorial for content publishers and webmasters
Validating your work is always a good idea, especially when you're mucking around with something that you don't know much about.
Feed validator
"My acquisition of the al-Qaeda computers was unique in the experience of journalists covering radical Islam. In the 1990s the police had seized computers used by al-Qaeda members in Kenya and the Philippines, but journalists and historians learned very little about the contents of those computers; only some information from them was released in U.S. legal proceedings. A much fuller picture would emerge from the computers I obtained in Kabul (especially the IBM desktop), which had been used by al-Qaeda's leadership."
The Atlantic online: Inside al-Qaeda's hard drive, budget squabbles, baby pictures, office rivalries - and the road to 9/11
(Via Signal vs Noise)
An eyewitness artist's report from the Iraqi capital.
Artnet: Baghdad journal
(Via Metafilter)
What's an Indian, anyway? Why does fantasy armour look so silly? Find the answers to these questions, and many others, here.
Dancing badger
(Via Metafilter, with several pointers to good articles)
Very comprehensive collection of early comics.
Dachshund
Being prepared for an emergency is no laughing matter. Well, not if you're British, anyway.
Politechbot: Brit officials irked over "zombie emergency" parody
One new episode in the past week, 796 new words, 58,234 words total.
Introduction
Introduction and start of part 3
After the war (86)
More poetry.
04/08/13 Variations on a theme (journal)
Not much to say. I'm trying to get my writing back on track, but it's just too damn' hot.
"Unfortunately, I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I am aware of, which have been confirmed, and which as a witness to the commission, I made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues that I am not aware of were in the same manner omitted from your report."
The Agonist: Letter to Thomas Kean from Sibel Edmonds
(Via Metafilter
The new classified military documents offer a chilling picture of what happened at Abu Ghraib -- including detailed reports that U.S. troops and translators sodomized and raped Iraqi prisoners. The secret files -- 106 "annexes" that the Defense Department withheld from the Taguba report last spring -- include nearly 6,000 pages of internal Army memos and e-mails, reports on prison riots and escapes, and sworn statements by soldiers, officers, private contractors and detainees. The files depict a prison in complete chaos. Prisoners were fed bug-infested food and forced to live in squalid conditions; detainees and U.S. soldiers alike were killed and wounded in nightly mortar attacks; and loyalists of Saddam Hussein served as guards in the facility, apparently smuggling weapons to prisoners inside.
Rolling Stone: The secret file of Abu Ghraib
The 1500+ pages archived on this site have been written by me over the past eight years. Several more are added virtually every week. Most are about English words and phrases-what they mean, where they came from, how they have evolved, and the ways in which people sometimes misuse them. A few others concern issues of grammar, style and punctuation.
World Wide Words
Quirky and sweet, requires Flash player
The secret garden of Mutabor
Art, stories, comics. One of those sweet, non-commercial things on the web.
Devoted bee
Yes, I know I've been overusing the word "sweet" here. Well, duh. Sweet. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet.
One new episode in the past week, 779 new words, 57,438 words total.
Introduction
Introduction and start of part 3
After the war (85)
Saw Fahrenheit 9/11 on Saturday. I felt that, as far as the criticism on Bush was concerned, I wasn't really in the movie's target audience, as I'm not an American citizen and I honestly feel that who gets to be the next president of the US is for the American citizenry to sort out among themselves.
The picture that the movie painted of the world of high finance, where the reconstruction of Iraq appeared to be viewed as a business opportunity rather than anything else, was chilling.
One opportunity that the movie missed was to point out that at least one member of the Coalition of the Willing, the Netherlands, had actually been unwilling to lend military support to the operation and had decided to provide political support only (what use the latter would be without the former is anyone's guess). Then again, communications from the Dutch government on the subject had been sufficiently unclear to confuse even the Dutch themselves.
What appealed to me about the movie was the way it talks about the common soldiers on duty in Iraq, often men and women from low-income backgrounds who joined the Army to get an education and make something of themselves. When my father was a young man he joined the Dutch Air Force for exactly those reasons, coming from a similar background. Fortunately for him, for anyone in the Dutch armed forces the chances of actually getting killed in combat were already slim when he joined. At moments like these I marvel at the way socio-economic background, even in these enlightened days of equal opportunities and social security, can determine the course of people's lives and can even get them killed before their time.
[The witness accounts] all describe a pattern of systematic and unlawful attacks on civilians in North, West and South Darfur states, by a government-sponsored militia mostly referred to as "Janjawid"(armed men on horses) or "Arab militia" and by the government army, including through bombardments of civilian villages by the Sudanese Air Force. In these attacks, men are killed, women are raped and villagers are forcibly displaced from their homes which are burnt; their crops and cattle, their main means of subsistence, are burnt or looted.
Amnesty International: Sudan - Dafur - rape as a weapon of war, sexual violence and its consequences
(Via Metafilter)
The battle for Iraq's sovereign future is a battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. As things stand, it appears that victory will go to the side most in tune with the reality of the Iraqi society of today: the leaders of the anti-U.S. resistance.
IHT: Scott Ritter - Saddam's people are winning the war
(Via Metafilter)
The goal of LiteratuReview is to promote an appreciation for literary works and to foster the development and evolution of the art form from traditional paper-based publishing to electronic on-line publishing.
LiteratuReview
A poetic labour of love.
Lucid moon poetry magazine
We are a community of writers, readers, and thinkers. Read some things and, if the mood strikes you, write some things.
Voices of unreason
One new episode in the past week, 701 new words, 56,659 words total.
Introduction
Introduction and start of part 3
After the war (84)
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