At the Annual Dancers' Ball ...

I'm making a second attempt to read The Marriage Plot, a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides about a book-obsessed English major at Brown University in the early '80s. The protagonist, Madeleine Hanna, is given this logic puzzle in a GRE test prep guide:At the annual dancers' ball a number of dancers performed their favorite dance with their favorite partners.Alan danced the tango, while Becky watc

Frederik Pohl Remembers Jack Vance

Frederik Pohl, one of the founders of science fiction, is still writing novels at age 93 and has a blog he updates regularly. The Way the Future Blogs recently noted the death of another legend of the genre, Jack Vance. Pohl recalls being editor of _Galaxy_ magazine in the early '60s when a Vance manuscript came in:... "I've got a new story from Jack Vance that I love. It's called _The Dragon

Marsha Blackburn Writes Mozilla on Do-Not-Track

During last year's trip to D.C. with the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Long Tail Alliance, I met Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and a staffer who assists her on issues related to the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology.At some offices we had to explain basic stuff like cookies, but Blackburn and her staffer were well-versed on the subjects of ad tracking, contextual ads an

Mr. Cadenhead Goes to Washington

I'm in Washington, D.C., to meet with members of Congress on Tuesday to advocate against legislative changes that would affect independent web publishers whose sites are funded by ads. The primary concern over the years has been that Congress would pass legislation to require a do-not-track setting to be turned on by default in all web browsers, a move that would prevent contextual ad services s

Villains & Vigilantes Creators Win Rights to Game

After a 20-month legal battle, the creators of the super-hero roleplaying game Villains & Vigilantes have prevailed in their court fight with the game's longtime publisher. Magistrate Judge Mark E. Aspey of the U.S. District Court for Arizona ruled on January 15 that Jeff Dee and Jack Herman own the rights to the game based on the 1979 contract they reached with publisher Scott Bizar of Fantasy

Memo to Self: Don't Anger Elisabeth Moss

There's an amusingly awkward exchange between _Mad Men_ actor Elisabeth Moss and _New York Times_ interviewer Andrew Goldman in a new Q&A:Q: You were brought up as, and continue to be, a Scientologist. I feel as if everyone who's not a Scientologist sees it as a cult. Does this bother you?Moss: It doesn't bother me, but I don't want to talk about it. For me, you gotta make up your own mind

Predicting the Next Pope's Name

Eight years ago, I registered Pope Benedict XVI's domain name three weeks before he was selected pope. Because of this achievement in pontification, I was invited to be on the Today Show, where Katie Couric called me the popesquatter in front of millions of people.This made me as big a celebrity as the Virgin Mary viaduct stain -- but it only lasted 36 hours. Just when I started getting used

The Pitch for My First Novel

I completed my first novel and entered it in the Amazon Breakthrough contest last month. A few days ago I learned that it advanced to the second round along with 399 other thrillers based on this pitch:No marriage is without its secrets, but Clemson University professor Jessup Clark accidentally uncovers one that threatens more than his happiness.A discovered airplane ticket stub reveals t

Mister Mystery: Why Papers Keep Using Honorifics

This paragraph in a Wall Street Journal story on Lance Armstrong does a nice job of demonstrating why I hate the use of honorifics such as "Mr." on second reference in news stories:Mr. Armstrong's Austin lawyer, Mr. Herman, called Mr. Tygart and offered to dispatch Mr. Armstrong's legal team to Colorado to meet with him. Mr. Tygart said he wanted Mr. Armstrong to come. When Mr. Herman pushed

Christopher Tolkien Hates the Peter Jackson Movies

Christopher Tolkien, the son of J.R.R. Tolkien, gave his first interview to the media last year after being his father's literary executor for four decades. Speaking to the French newspaper _Le Monde_, the 87-year-old expressed great unhappiness with the Peter Jackson movies even though they helped sell 25 million copies of the books in three years, a 1,000 percent increase:Invited to meet Pe

AP Launches News Archive Going Back to '70s

Associated Press has quietly launched a beta of the AP News Archive, a free searchable database of AP news stories that goes back as far as 1974. The archive comprises at least 1.5 million articles at present, based on the approximate number of results returned in a Google search of the domain apnewsarchive.com.The AP touts the archive as being more accurate than that dodgy, not-to-be-trusted

Now Serving: 45,000 Restaurant Menus

I found a cool resource today for writers of fiction set in past decades. The New York Public Library offers a historic restaurant menu database of 45,000 menus dating back to the 1840s. So far, 16,000 of the menus have been transcribed and volunteers are needed to help with the rest.If you were thinking about eating at New York City's Louis Sherry restaurant at 300 Park Avenue in 1947, the s

Media Can't Bury a Mass Shooter's Name

There's a lot of talk about how the media should adopt a self-imposed blackout on the name and life story of mass shooters. This makes a lot of sense because so many of these spree killers are motivated by a desire for notoriety. The media occasionally omits information for the greater good, such as when the names of rape victims and children accused of crimes are not reported.Just this week

Oklahoma City Time Capsule Buried in 1913

While doing some research in Google Books, I found an item in the May 1913 issue of _Santa Fe Employees' Magazine_ that described the burial of a 100-year time capsule:A unique service was held on April 22 at the Lutheran Church in Oklahoma City, Okla., when a copper chast containing phonograph records of speakers and singers, writings, musical compositions, daily newspapers and many other re

Remember Friedrich Franz III No More

Less than two weeks after she became the world's oldest person, Dina Manfredini died Monday at the age of 115 years and 257 days. Manfredini had been living at the Bishop Drumm Retirement Center in Johnston, Iowa.Born in Pievepelago, Italy, on April 4, 1897, Manfredini became the oldest Italian and oldest immigrant who ever lived. She emigrated from Italy to Des Moines, Iowa, in 1920 with her

Review: 'Kiss of the Spider Woman'

I just finished reading Kiss of the Spider Woman, the 1976 Manuel Puig novel that became a terrific 1985 film. William Hurt won an Oscar playing Molina, a gay window dresser sharing a prison cell with Valentin, a straight Marxist revolutionary played by Raul Julia. To pass the time, Molina retells his favorite movies to Valentin.The book held my interest but was difficult to read because of t

Boot Device Not Found, Brain Also Missing

My desktop PC, an HP Pavilion p6000, crashed this morning and won't boot successfully, displaying an ominous "Boot Device Not Found" error instead. This used to be the kind of situation that would send me into a fetal position mumbling "why didn't I make a backup?" over and over to myself.But a few years ago, I burned to CD a free copy of Knoppix, a stripped-down version of Linux, that can be

Times Responds to Roger Cohen's Mistake

I sent _New York Times_ public editor Margaret Sullivan an email yesterday describing how Roger Cohen borrowed quotes in his recent column on oversharing. She got back to me today letting me know that this editor's note was added to the column:In this column, the author suggested that he was moved to talk about over-sharing and anxiety online after he came across two comments on Twitter. In f

Times Columnist Roger Cohen Borrows Quotes

The _New York Times_ columnist Roger Cohen engages in some ethically questionable journalism in his column Thursday about people sharing too much on Facebook and Twitter.In his commentary, Cohen shares this lament:Now I was determined to get through 2012 without doing a peevish column ... but everyone has a tipping point. Mine occurred when I came across this tweet from Claire:"Have suc

No Social Networking in 'The Social Network'

I saw the film _The Social Network_ for the first time last night after letting it sit in a Netflix envelope on a dresser for 10 months. I'm losing the will to watch physical copies of movies. Too much work, like calling somebody on a rotary phone whose number has a lot of eights and nines.The movie's great, but there's an interesting omission: None of the main characters is shown using Faceb

The World Already Has Enough Artists?

I maintain a list on Twitter of all Hugo Award-nominated best novel writers who use the service. A lot of cool stuff comes over the relatively low-traffic list, particularly related to science and creativity. At a Connecticut Forum event for high school students, the comics and science fiction writer Neil Gaiman was questioned by a teen who had been discouraged from being a director because ther

Last Note for Brahms and the Year 1896

The world's oldest person, Besse Cooper, died Tuesday at a nursing home in Monroe, Ga. "She got up this morning, had a big old breakfast and got her hair fixed," said her son Sidney, 77. Cooper lived 116 years and 100 days, which made her the eighth oldest person ever among documented supercentenarians.She was a schoolteacher until 1929, when she left to start a family. All four of her childr

Step Right Up and Win Some Crap

I'm running a presidential prediction contest on the Drudge Retort today:President Obama will win re-election even though Mercury is in retrograde, claims Psychic Nikki. See if you can do better than this observer of the spirit world and enter the Drudge Retort's presidential prediction contest. The winner will receive a $50 Amazon.Com gift certificate and a life-size cardboard Joe Biden. To

Glenn Kessler's Fact Checking is for the Birds

Glenn Kessler, the fact-checking columnist of the _Washington Post_, often employs logic that's more factually dubious than the claim he's covering.Here's his explanation for why he gives President Obama four Pinocchios for saying in ads that Mitt Romney wants to kill Big Bird:Romney may have been off base in suggesting PBS funding has much to do with the deficit, but that's no excuse for

This Week's U.S. War Casualties

The deaths of seven U.S. service members in Afghanistan were announced this past week by the Department of Defense.Four Army soldiers died Sept. 16 in Zabul Province when they were shot by Afghan police after coming to their aid at a security checkpoint that was attacked by insurgents. One of the four killed was Pfc. Genaro Bedoy, 20, of Amarillo, Texas, who had a wife and seven-week-old baby

Attending the Florida Heritage Book Festival

At the Florida Heritage Book Festival in St. Augustine this past weekend I saw speeches by novelists Jeff Lindsay (_Darkly Dreaming Dexter_), Steve Berry (_The Templar Legacy_) and Diana Abu-Jaber (_Arabian Jazz_).I have an unpublished thriller in its second draft that's around 60,000 words long, so I go to these festivals looking for tips on how to become a more gooder writer and also to est

This Week's U.S. War Casualties

The deaths of three U.S. servicemembers in Afghanistan were announced this past week by the Department of Defense.Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jose L. Montenegro Jr., 31, of San Juan, Texas, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Thalia S. Ramirez, 28, of San Antonio died Sept. 5, when their OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter crashed in the Pul-e Alam district of Logar Province. They were assigned to the 1

This Week's U.S. War Casualties

The deaths of five U.S. servicemembers in Afghanistan were announced this past week by the Department of Defense.Army Staff Sgt. Jeremie S. Border, 28, of Mesquite, Texas, and Staff Sgt. Jonathan P. Schmidt, 28, of Petersburg, Va., died Sept. 1, in Batur Village of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their unit with small arms fire.Border (pictured above) was an Eagle Scout who went

Republicans Run Attack Ads on Charlie Crist

The Florida Republican Party recently began running a TV ad here that attacks former Gov. Charlie Crist, the Republican who left the party and became an independent during his unsuccessful 2010 Senate run. The ad shows old clips of Crist praising President George W. Bush and Sarah Palin and declaring he was "about as conservative as you can get."That statement turned out to be as true as Mitt

Email Templates for Dummies

An email I just received:I was just looking at your site, and I have a number of clients within our networkwho are looking for SAMPLE TEXT ONE. I don't work as a lead broker, referral agency or pay-per-click advertising. I'm simply looking to direct my clients to a relevant site when they're looking for SAMPLE TEXT TWO.Your site looks like it may be a good fit.I'm going to work with SAM