Matt Ruff's Blog, page 55

This seems... wrong

MSNBC has former DNC chair Howard Dean on as a guest right now to discuss... the Tiger Woods press conference? Whah?

The only things missing are the 3D glasses and the neon color palette

So, Terminator: Salvation:

Following the tragic murder of his brother, Sam Worthington gets a second chance at life, courtesy of the Sky(net) People. He's sent in the form of an avatar to live among the natives of a world Skynet hopes to conquer, but after winning the affection of a tough warrior chick, he switches sides and joins the resistance. In one key scene, Sam jumps onto the back of a big flying thing; in another, he plugs his body into a network and ends up having a chat with the...

Zing!

From a full-page ad in today's New York Times for Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto:

"Available at all booksellers except Amazon."

Dollhouse, fini

So, it's over. Some thoughts:

* During the fall hiatus, Lisa and I rented the last disc from the first season and watched the original pilot and Epitaph One. We both loved the OP and agreed that that Dollhouse would have been an awesome show. Pity the network decided to go a different way. Epitaph One is less stellar, but does give you a good sense of what the alt-universe Dollhouse would have been all about. If I were going to make a recommendation to Joss Whedon fans who'd somehow avoided th...

Exclusive video of last week's meeting between Amazon and Macmillan Publishing

It's off a Berlin TV station feed, dubbed in German with no English subtitles, but even if you don't speak the language you should be able to get the gist of it.

Steve Jobs shares his reaction to the story here.

iPad

I think we want one. Lisa and I are still discussing whether the extra cost of the 3G would be worth it, since 95% of the time we'd be using it in the house, and if we did bring it along on a trip it'd most likely be to use it as a preloaded reading device.

About the name, I've heard the iTampon jokes (my favorite so far is the one about the iPad with wings), but honestly it seems fine to me. Of the two most obvious alternatives, iSlate sounds too much like "Isolate," and iTablet feels clunky,...

I dreamed of a big pile of unpublished manuscripts, burning...

J.D. Salinger is dead at 91.

Also, it's the devil's game

Dungeons & Dragons Prison Ban Upheld:

In an opinion issued on Monday , a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the claims in a lawsuit challenging a ban on the game Dungeons & Dragons by the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.

The suit was brought by a prisoner, Kevin T. Singer, who argued that his First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights were violated by the prison’s decision to ban the game and confiscate his books and other...

This does feel more Ballardian than Dickian

Apropos of some of the comments to my last post, I note the following from today's New York Times:

China, it can be safely said, has a complicated relationship with “Avatar.” Last week it was reported that the 2-D version of the science-fiction epic, directed by James Cameron, was being pulled from many Chinese theaters; now a mountain there is being renamed for a peak seen in the film. In a ceremony on Monday, the Southern Sky Column in Zhangjiajie City, in China’s Hunan province, was...

Um, what?

"These days, [Philip K.:] DIck is widely considered the science-fiction novelist who most accurately foresaw our contemporary world."

-- the Los Angeles Times