Nearly 400,000 people in New York were ordered to leave their homes ahead of Hurricane Sandy.
None of the city’s thousands of taxis are on the streets today one driver told the BBC. “It feels like a science fiction movie,” he said.
(David Klaus, watching the TODAY show at 7 a.m. EDT, said to the contrary, he could see several taxis driving past the Rockefeller Plaza studio window.)
Waves are coming ashore in Battery Park City on the southwest tip of Manhattan.
A Yahoo! writer uses the passing of Rodney King to illustrate a social media phenomenon in “How death, major news events, expose Twitter’s generation gap” –
1. Death is reported
2. News of death spreads
3. Name begins trending on Twitter
4. Name preceded by “Who is” begins trending on Twitter
5. Backlash against ignorant users responsible for “Who is” trend ensues
The latest generation of Twitter users might reasonably wonder who King was, so many not having been born yet when the video of cops beating King originally aired, and riots ensued when the cops were acquitted at trial. That’s perfectly fair. Yet it may not be the real explanation behind steps 4 and 5. One analyst says:
“I think the reason why bigger events exposes the divide is because people just want to participate in the conversation,” [Jen] Chung told Yahoo News. “They want to have a say, even though they might not have anything to say.”
Yes! Now you’re onto something. You can’t go far wrong by always looking first for the attention-getting motivations behind any internet transaction. Rodney King died? “I don’t know who this famous person is – pay attention to me, baby!”
The same phenomenon can be triggered by the appearance of an unrecognized geezer on a program with a young demographic:
Sometimes, you just have to be a former Beatle who shows up at the Grammys.
“Who the f— is Paul McCartney and why is he on this?” Kristen Dewe wrote [tweeted] on Feb. 13 during the Grammys broadcast.
That made me laugh, too, if not for the reason the writer thought it was funny. He inferentially explains why people should recognize McCartney by identifying him as “a former Beatle.” I’m old enough to remember the joke about two teenagers in line for a 1970s Wings concert, the wiser head explaining “The Beatles were the band McCartney was in before Wings.” Wings? Feel free to tweet, “Who the f—?”
[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]
The Library of Congress will soon begin processing 798 boxes of Carl Sagan’s personal papers reports the Washington Post. A donation by Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane enabled the Library to purchase them from his widow, who has preserved Sagan’s papers since his death in 1996.
They include the files he labeled F/C for “fissured ceramics,” a code meaning letters from crackpots. Here are a couple of examples quoted in the Post –
“I have discovered a planet between Venus and the earth… I am in Attica Correctional Facility and am unable to check out this discovery further without your assistance.”
And:
“Behind Jupiter hidden from earth, is a small planet and for the wanbt of a name, let us call it, JUPITENOUS. It is on this planet that these UFO’s come from…”
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster for the story.]
Weekly World News reports that the Seventh Circuit upheld the warden’s order to a Wisconsin inmate – “No Dungeons & Dragons in Jail”!
He was told he could not have the materials because the game “promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling.”
Singer filed a federal lawsuit, saying the prison had violated his free speech and due process rights, but the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld the policy.
The decision read, “After all, punishment is a fundamental aspect of imprisonment, and prisons may choose to punish inmates by preventing them from participating in some of their favorite recreations.”
David Klaus, tongue in cheek, comments: “I guess Lee Gold had better not ever get arrested.” (Lee, of course, is the LASFSian who started a D&D apa, Alarums and Excursions, 35 years ago.)
David says the tabloids are always good for a laugh:
I saw my all-time favorite Weekly World News headline in a 7-Eleven on Duarte Rd. at the Arcadia/Monrovia border back in ’80 or ’81. It said, in all-capitals type big enough to fill the entire tabloid front page:
“AIR FORCE FIGHTER HAS DOGFIGHT WITH ARMED STARSHIP”
I should have bought a couple to pass around, I don’t know why I didn’t.
John Hertz has rewritten a seasonal song and offered me the chance to post it here. It originally appeared in Vanamonde #606. John notes Lee Gold deserves credit for a suggestion incorporated into the final version.
Deck the mind with gosh and golly,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la la la;
Science fiction can be jolly,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la la la.
At its best it’s such a treasure,
Fa-la-la, la-la-la, la la la;
At its worst it’s no one’s pleasure,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la la, la, la.
See the Hugos bright before us,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la la la;
Let us not just speak in chorus,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la la la.
If poor work should be well-rated,
Fa-la-la, la-la-la, la la la,
Think what else was nominated,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la la, la, la.
Fast away the old year passes,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la la la;
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la la la.
Look out for what may be worthy,
Fa-la-la, la-la-la, la la la,
That due praise may not be dearthy,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la la, la, la.
In a 1941 letter Edgar Rice Burroughs told his daughter Joan: “If anyone says a kind word about my work nowadays, as you did, I nearly break down and cry.”
Why? In the typescript posted at Letters of Note Burroughs explained:
I am getting damned sick of hearing people apologize to me for reading my stories, or pretend to grouse because they have had to read them to their children, or say that they used to read them while they were in kindergarden [sic] but have not read any for years and years. It used to amuse me, but I guess I must be losing my sense of humor.
But ERB had already thought of a stunning comeback and confided it to his daughter:
“Well, you homely looking abortion, if you had the brains of a cross-eyed titmouse you’d keep your fool mouth shut instead of knocking inspired literature that has entertained a hundred million people for over a quarter of a century !!!”
He clearly was ahead of his time. In 1941 such vitriolic wit had to be confned to private letters. But transported to the 1970s could have held up his end of an Ellison/Asimov-style faceoff. Or today he would have made a helluva blogger.
[Thanks to David Klaus for the link.]
Mark Leeper writes in the 8/22/08 issue of MT Void:
There is the problem that if you go through life with iPod buds in your ears people tend to assume you are a mentally-deficient anti-social techno-dweeb. It does not help that the Apple ads for the iPod seem to picture silhouettes of what appear to be mentally deficient techno-dweebs dancing like crazy to music only they can hear. And I am glad only they can hear the music. Before the iPod people carried these huge “boom-boxes,” awkward but portable stereo systems and they would inflict their so-called music on all who surround them. The iPod is a whole lot better technology. But the ads give the impression that the listener is engulfed in orgasmic, frenzied musical nirvana. And the person in the ads does not look like the sharpest cheddar in the cheese shop.
I enjoyed this blogger’s take on Denvention 3.
Francis Hamit points out a chance to “see ourselves as others see us” in this post to a bookseller’s blog titled “Building Your Client Base at Fan Conventions.” The sensible advice by Nora of Rainy Day Paperback in
If you make money at the con, that’s great! However, you’re really looking to break even, especially the first time you attend one of these. It’s not about selling books AT the convention. It’s about convincing fans that you are a great source for books about their favorite hobby.
A cherished – and perfectly true! – anecdote about the Golden Age of science fiction is that Cleve Cartmill’s description of an A-bomb in his 1944 story “Deadline” prompted a visit to editor John W. Campbell from a U.S. Army intelligence officer worried about leaks in the Manhattan Project.
Robert Silverberg sifted through the government’s file on the investigation and wrote a highly amusing two-part article that appeared last fall in Asimov’s.
If you’re as far behind in your web reading as I am, this still may be news to you… Here are the links: