John Crowley's Blog, page 7

ANother Another Earth

What was the previous iteration (1970s?) of the idea behind Michael Cahill's "Another Earth" -- a planet in synchronous orbit with earth, and hidden behind the sun -- so exactly the same size and distance that it (somehow...) cancels out and can't be discovered through Newtonian mechanics?

crowleycrow @ 2014-05-23T17:38:00

Though edX aimed to reach the world, its initial courses were designed for the people professors at MIT and Ivy-caliber partners know best—the ultraqualified students they’re accustomed to teaching in their hallowed halls.

A Lost Letter

Well, not lost but just found onthe computer. likely among the earliest still preserved there -- January 26, 1990, to Lou Aronica, then publisher at Bantam.  The New York Review imentioned s "Of Scence Fiction" not  "Of Books".  Full text:

Dear Lou:Here is the reprint I promised (long ago) of the article in the New York Review.The first part of LOVE & SLEEP which I also promised (long ago) is being delayed due to a really interesting revision-cum-detour that has made, or will make, it a better book.  What's always amazing to me about my own way of working is that consistently the most wondrous--fantastical--magic elements or connections occur to me last rather than first, almost as an afterthought, though a necessary one.When are you going to reprint LITTLE, BIG?  Hundreds of fans (well, more than one) have ben pestering me about how they can get a copy.Did you know that I will be the Guest of Honor at something called "Readercon" in Lowell, Massachusetts, on April Fool's Day this year?I remain--Yours,     John Crowley

Talk guys

From the Sunday Times article by Adam Liptak on party-line divisions in the Supreme Court:

Like the rest of the country, the justices increasingly rely on sources of information that reinforce their views.“We just get The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times,” Justice Scalia told New York magazine in September. He canceled his subscription to The Washington Post, he said, because it was “slanted and often nasty” and “shrilly liberal.” He said he did not read The New York Times either.“I get most of my news, probably, driving back and forth to work, on the radio,” he said. “Talk guys, usually.”

Lem

I believe I asked this befoere and it was answered but it's hard to lacoate in the archives:  WHat is the name of the story by Stanislaw Lem in which characters ponder the possibility that mathematical parameters could be written for a field such that mathematical entities inhabiting that field would take it fdor having properties of time and space, even though it is actually dimensionless?  (Kicker being of course that yes they can and the inhabitants are us.)  Help?

Not a new grammar whiz

Start/finish this clip from a magazine article any way you wish:

"designed for the people professors at MIT"

Clackety clack

Images of typewriters -- ancient black pillared ones, newer ones, Olivetti portables, Selectrics -- now stand as symbols or signs for writers, writing, the writing life. It used to be pens -- quill pens, glass pens, steel pens, then fountain pens of varying splendor. That was when typewriters could only symbolize journalism or screenwriting, up-to-date and not evocative.

It's all better now

How many got this striking announcement in their email today:

This Declaration made on 8th of April 2014 by Alpha Omega Station

Concerns the official enactment of the rights and duties indicated
hereafter and aims to inform all parties involved of the beginning
of the global restructuring process for the benefit of the World and Mankind.
Alpha Omega Station are the historical, technical, formally and
officially confirmed Sovereign and Judicial organization which in
accordance with International Treaties exercises legal Ownership,
authority and lawful power over various Assets,Gold Deposits, and
the International Collateral Combined Accounts, as well as all
Central Bank and Commercial Bank Overbalance Accounts held within
the Institutional Parent Registration Accounts of the Federal
Reserve System/Bank for International Settlements.

Thie message concludes ith "Best regards from the Press Department".

An attached beautifully engrossed document identifies the actual owner of the gold assets and all other moneys of the world as His Excellency Vladiomir Ivanovich Klobzar, as "Beneficialry and Sole Signatory to the External Packages of the former Soviet Union" and in charge of the Russian deposits at Fort Knox and other depositories.  Nothing is asked of me, there is seemingly no intention except to express His Excellency's delight in his acheivement and to announce the readiness of Alpha Omega Station to accept applications for funding from around the world.

Prepositional

I'm seeing more of this in the NY Times.

"The desire by Pierre Karl Péladeau, a media mogul running in provincial elections, for Quebec to secede from Canada appears to have destroyed his party’s hopes for victory."

It's as though the Times editors want to change nouns -- maybe "desire" started out as "push" or something and when an editor changed it, the preposition was left unchanged and became stupid. Who says "the desire by" someone?

crowleycrow @ 2014-03-12T07:38:00

Some of the NYTimes's bad sentences are funny, some disheartening, and a few really verge on the dangerous. Rapid readers (and those who expect to see the sense they already are convinced of) might well be misled by this in today's online edititon:

"Ms. Feinstein has proved to be a bulwark for intelligence agencies in recent years: publicly defending the National Security Agency’s telephone and Internet surveillance activities, the C.I.A.’s authority over drone strikes and the F.B.I.’s actions under the Patriot Act against a growing bipartisan chorus of critics."

Are we not led to ask what actions under the Patriot Act the FBI took against a growing chorus of critics?