Letter Never Sent

1. An interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy. Good discussion of the presence of vast amounts of water on Mars.
2. The University of Texas has digitized their complete copy (in two folios) of the Gutenberg Bible. View it free online. Kudos to the Harry Ransom Center.
3. Iraqi Guerrillas Say They Aren’t Fighting for Saddam

I was watching an interesting documentary I downloaded, The Architecture of Doom, about the relationship of art to Nazism. It went into Hitler’s fascination with German adventure writer, Karl May, who wrote novels of the wild west and other far off, fantastic locations he never travelled to but nevertheless wrote about. I remember a while back that there was something on Weekend Edition about his resurgent following in post-reunification Germany where people play cowboys and indians with the good guys being the indians. Anyway, here are some interesting links on the subject:

1. Deutsche Welle: Cowboys and Indians – Made in Germany: East Germans and West Germans attended different Karl May inspired movies due to the competing political environments.
2. Karl May’s Imaginary America
3. The Strange Life and Legacy of Karl May

On a completely unrelated note, Sunset Boulevard is a scary movie. I actually got freaked out.

Direct connect is this neat file-sharing program I’ve been trying out. It works through a hub system sorta like IRC file-sharing. Basically, you get a list of hubs which you can join. Once in a hub (this is just a group of other file-sharers) you can browse everyone else’s files. Here are some of the things I found in a channel dedicated to classic films:

• All About Eve
• Rebel Without a Cause
• The Thin Man
• The Wild One
• Sunset Boulevard
• Un Chien Andalou

It’s worth checking out if you have a broadband connection. It is ad-ware so there will be an ad banner in the top panel of the program.

On a related note, To block most banner ads from appearing and to even stop many ad banners you can always use a hosts file. Pop-ups will still appear but there will be no ad, only a window that says this page cannot be displayed:

What is a hosts file and how does this work?

A hosts file tells your computer what numerical address, e.g. 209.61.186.253, is associated with what url, e.g. www.everythingisnt.com. This file is a very simple hack which takes ad servers and redirects them to nowhere. In other words we’re fooling the internet. Its pretty simple and it works.

Thursday night, Janice Kelly notified police that her husband had not returned. His body was found Friday morning at the edge of a forest not far from his home. His left wrist was slashed, Southmoor police said. A knife and packet of painkillers lay nearby.

Why would someone walk 5 miles from their house and slash open their wrists with a knife in the middle of the woods? It seems a lot more plausible to me that he was murdered and the murder was made to look like a suicide. Why aren’t the police even suspicious? This only happened a few days ago. A full investigation should be made given the significance of this man.

Bellis has gotten me hooked on these, the Friday Five.

1. What were your favorite childhood stories?

Like many children I always enjoyed any stories with fantastic settings and characters. Jungles, space, the ocean. Anything with sharks, dinosaurs, aliens, or robots. Anything with magic and any story which involved secrets. Any story which took place in the big, scary, and magical world of children.

2. What books from your childhood would you like to share with [your] children?

Trapped in Death Cave by Bill Wallace, The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks, The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell (The awesome cartoon, The Mysterious Cities of Gold, is based on the work of this author), Bridge to Terabithia
by Katherine Paterson, The Sign of the Beaver
by Elizabeth George Speare, Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg, The Yearling
by Marjorie Rawlings, Socks for Supper by Jack Kent

3. Have you re-read any of those childhood stories and been surprised by anything?

I’m sure I have, but I can’t remember right now. I do remember how sincere and honest the books often are, how the feeling of being young and alive seems so simple and clear. I guess later in life things somehow get less clear.

4. How old were you when you first learned to read?

My mother read to my brother and me all the time. She used to take us to the library to pick out all the books we’d be reading for the week. She was always encouraging and patient and helpful. How did she know how to do that? It must be some special magic.

5. Do you remember the first ‘grown-up’ book you read? How old were you?

The first real book I remember reading was Tom Sawyer in first or second grade. I remember discovering it at my after-school daycare, Noah’s Ark in Round Rock, Texas. I think the real reason I remember it is because not only did I steal it and then later
rebind it with duct tape but I also tried at different times in my childhood to emulate Tom Sawyer either by threatening to run away with our doberman, Inga, or by keeping June bugs stabled in matchboxes where they could be unleashed on unsuspecting girls. Muahaha. (I still have the purloined book. See images below: if you look closely at the illustration on the right you’ll see the matchbox beetle prison)