Here are three developments of interest to fans:

(1) Happy Birthday, Ursula K. LeGuin. A tribute to her at The Writers Almanac offers this insight:

An interviewer once asked her advice for writers, and she replied, “I am going to be rather hard-nosed and say that if you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you’re writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn’t flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.”

(2) Mark Leeper’s latest dissertation about the best Western movies of all time is online. It’s a fascinating list.

(3) Within five months of opening on Memorial Day 2007, the Creation Museum in Kentucky attracted 250,000 visitors and the world’s major media. And the satirical attention of sculptor Stephen Geddes, whose new exhibition includes “Jurassic Ark,” subtitled, “Noah Saves the Dinosaurs.” I hadn’t previously known that the Creation Museum teaches that Noah took dinosaurs on the ark. So from that viewpoint, will Geddes’ image of T-Rex swallowing Noah be any more theologically controversial than questioning how Noah survived every other carnivorous predator aboard the ark?

[Includes links from Chris Barkley, Evelyn Leeper and David Klaus.]