Matt Ruff's Blog, page 61

Mr. McCourt (1930-2009)

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Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes, has died at the age of 78.

Like thousands of other people, I remember him as Mr. McCourt, the high-school creative-writing teacher who used to entertain me and my classmates with darkly funny stories about his childhood in Ireland. Most of what I learned from him I learned by example, watching him tell, and refine, those tales. I was glad that he eventually wrote them down, and totally unsurprised that he became famous once he di

And here I thought *my* job gave me a great excuse for screwing around online

Via Broken Toys: A Loyola University professor named David Myers says that the thousands of hours he spent playing the online RPG City of Heroes/Villains weren't just for entertainment purposes. He was actually conducting a "breaching experiment," a sociological exercise in which "conventional social norms [are:] breached and the consequences of those breachings [are:] examined in order to better understand the mechanisms by which social order [is:] re-constituted."

In layman's terms, the guy deli

The Syph arrives

Wow, so the SciFi Channel really did change its name. Time to make the T-shirts.

I saw about half of their new Warehouse 13 series before falling asleep on the chaise the other night, which pretty much sums up my feelings about it: it's watchable, but not worth staying awake for. At one point before I drifted off they showed a preview for the new season of Eureka that made it seem like it was set in the same fictional universe and/or loosely based on the same premise. Eureka was on my list of sho

Another potential zombie-movie setting

Also in today's Times, an article about Tokyo's Nagakin Capsule Tower, a modular apartment complex that is the condo equivalent of a coffin hotel:

A rare built example of Japanese Metabolism, a movement whose fantastic urban visions became emblems of the country’s postwar cultural resurgence, the 1972 Capsule Tower is in a decrepit state. Its residents, tired of living in squalid, cramped conditions, voted two years ago to demolish it and are now searching for a developer to replace it with a big

Somehow I don't think this will save them from bankruptcy

Flipping through the New York Times this morning, I saw an ad for a set of granite NYT crossword-puzzle drink coasters that you can get from the Times online store: "You won't find this gift anywhere else but The New York Times Store. The four coasters are made of solid granite and are laser-etched with a puzzle edited by Will Shortz. The 4" x 4" coasters display a blank crossword puzzle, across clues, down clues and a finished puzzle. Coasters have padding underneath to prevent scratching. In s

Another quadruped weighs in

[Via Andrew Sullivan]

Early quadruped reaction to the Palin resignation

SARAH PALIN: Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and "go with the flow".
Nah, only dead fish "go with the flow".
No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing

I dub thee Grumpy Oysterbane

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[Via Zooborns.com]

"Stradavari of stones" is dead at 57

Yesterday's Times had an interesting obituary for Antonio Bianco, one of the world's foremost diamond cutters:

<>For more than 30 years he worked in blissful anonymity in New York’s diamond district, cutting some of the largest, rarest and most valuable stones of his time — stones important enough to have their own names. The diamonds Mr. Bianco cut are owned by some of the world’s most prominent collectors, among them Hollywood film stars and crowned heads of state...

Most master cutters pass their</>

MJ and the Cruisers

Via cherylmmorgan , The Pagan Prattle is tracking developing conspiracy theories that (a) Michael Jackson was murdered, and (b) he's not really dead.

The latter possibility already occurred to me over breakfast this morning, not as serious speculation but as possible story fodder. How hard would it be, do you think, for someone as famous as Michael Jackson to successfully fake his own death? And perhaps a more interesting question, what would the public reaction be if he reappeared ten or twenty