An article over at NPR asks whether fiction can change how we think about ideas, framed around a novel by Barbara Kingsolver on global warming, er, climate change.
Month: December 2012 (Page 2 of 3)
Finishing a book started by her noted historian Paul Avrich, Karen Avrich covers the lives of noted anarchist Emma Goldman and her lover/semi-fellow thinker Alexander Berkman.
From the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, a story about Rebecca Dinerstein, a young American poet who spent a year in Norway, learned Norwegian, and published a collection of poems entitled “Lofoten.” She is just 25 years old, and when she received a scholarship to travel abroad, elected to visit the chilly and foreboding northern climes of Lofoten. The collection contains poems in Norwegian and English side by side.
Does it still hold true that women writers enjoy more general success when using a masculine or gender- neutral initials as their byline? This article certainly make the case, though by now when I see a writer with two initials and no first name I’m 90% sure that writer is female. But I do think the quality of the fiction matters more, at least to me.
Writer Harlan Ellison plans a new graphic novel, 7 Against Chaos some time in 2013.
A review over at the Washington Post of the Library of America’s two volume collection of some early science fiction novels. Most were published in the middle of the 20th century, and include authors like Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Stugeon, Alfred Bester, and others. Catch it before the paywall rises.
New company called Golden Spike wants to land people on the moon. Details still forthcoming.
In an episode of the TV show Bewitched, George Washing is transported from the 18th century to the 20th, and runs afoul of the law when he speaks to people in a park, for not having a permit. After the recent Occupy protests, cities are now cracking down on the right to protest in the US.
Across California and the nation, Occupy protests have prompted cities to tighten restrictions on protesters and behavior in public space in ways that opponents say threaten free speech and worsen conditions for homeless people.
Governments now regulate with new vigor where protesters may stand and walk and what they can carry. Protest permits are harder to get and penalties are steeper. Camping is banned from Los Angeles parks by a new, tougher ordinance. Philadelphia and Houston tightened restrictions on feeding people in public.
It seems like the US is becoming more and more like Putin’s Russia, or worse, as police make up their law on the spot. As George Washington said in Bewitched, quoting Thomas Jefferson, “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” A further Jefferson quote appeared in the show as well, from the Declaration of Independence, “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Tragic tale of Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, and his wife; the former resides in prison, the latter isolated under house arrest. The rule of law is often synonymous with liberty, but that is far from the case here. As once Chinese official said, “China is a country under the rule of law. Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to imprisonment by China’s judicial authorities for violating the law.” Law is what people make it.
From the BBC, a report about the systematic and brutal crackdown on any dissent in Putin’s Russia. This isn’t just about the band Pussy Riot, but anyone who protests organizes protests. And Putin’s response? Mockery and further arrests. The people arrested? “Almost all of them appear to be rank-and-file activists or ordinary protesters.” At least the Gulags are gone… Oh, wait, not so fast!
