==pla|\|ing lakes==

Thursday, July 17, 2003

R.I.P. Carol Shields

7:54 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Lizardhead file:

Demo bill would criminalize file-sharing, making it a felony because it would valuate songs at MusicMobster prices

Nice one, dickheads.

1:36 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

New multi-use cable boxes debuting in fall with Comcast

[They] record programming onto a hard drive, ha[ve] a built-in DVD player and can serve as media center[s] for digital photos and music [mp3s]. The dual-tuner device supports two TVs, allowing users to simultaneously record two different shows, or watch one program in one room while playing another show in another.

The 2 models available have either 40 or 80GB drives, the latter having broadband capabilty and a built-in DVD.

1:32 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Site devoted to letters and diaries of North American women

This is apparently fee-based for libraries, I'll look into how to know if a library allows access.

1:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Long Brit article on bestsellers and commercial fiction [Undernews]

To try to maintain my bearings as I ploughed on I kept little running totals of what seemed like useful statistics in a notebook. The final tallies looked like this. Number of pages: 3,891; murders: 54 (of which, throats cut: 17); orgasms: 24 (of which, simultaneous: 8); books using the word 'raghead' to denote an Arab: 3; good-looking villains: 1; central women characters who did not talk about needing a man: 0; pistol whippings: 5; gasps over unexpected proportions of lover's manhood: 3; uses of the phrase 'all hell broke loose': 2; uses of the phrase 'you do the math': 4; times I went to sleep halfway through a paragraph describing the night sky: 2; times I smiled at an authorial joke: 4; times I laughed out loud (when supposed to): 0. (One of the things we seem to want from our bestselling books is a straight face. One of the things they demand from us, almost without exception, is to be taken seriously.)

1:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Bob Dylan was apparently er deeply influenced by an obscure oral history of a yakuza while writing his Love and Theft album

He's like "some very imaginative sponge," says Christopher Ricks, a professor of humanities at Boston University, who has lectured on Mr. Dylan's works. Usually, says Mr. Ricks, Mr. Dylan's sponging is a healthy part of the creative process. The songwriter takes a few words, twists them, changes their context, and produces an entirely new work of art. But Mr. Ricks says he was surprised by the extent to which Mr. Dylan seems to have borrowed from "Confessions of a Yakuza" on his latest album. "No one of these instances was very telling," he says. "But when you put together the whole string of them, it's quite striking."

I mean, who cares, but it's kind of strange.

6:54 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, July 14, 2003

R.I.P. Benny Carter

2:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, July 13, 2003

Sorry

Server was down for about 12 hours.

6:22 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

NJ ends poet laureate position to defrock Baraka

My State-of-Residence for many years, New Jersey, has once again proven why it's the state you love to leave [STARE]

Stalinist conformity in a toxic wonderland.

2:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Last.fm may be the streaming radio site you've been looking for [Undernews]

Last.fm is a streaming radio station with a built-in collaborative filter that attempts to learn its listeners' likes and dislikes. Based on data gathered, the station delivers a personalized radio stream to each of its listeners.

I'll check it out.

Spinner tried to do the same thing but its library was very weak.

1:57 AM - [Link] - Comments ()