Is non-realism better than realism?

To defeat Al Qaeda we need to end the War on Terror.

Why is McCain comparing Obama to the Messiah? Is it to hint to Bible-thumpers that he is, in fact, the anti-Christ?

Tao Lin IPOs his next novel. Is buying shares in future royalties an idea whose time has come or simply a bewildering and desperate ploy?

The greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism.

Should we stop making link lists like this and just post some content already?

No? Alright then...

Reading Experience tells us why The God of War is "a novel that reinforces the most retrograde notions of what a 'serious' novel should be like, leaves one lamenting not just the persistence of the kind of formulaic 'literary fiction' this novel represents, but also the inability of so many critics to evaluate this fiction in other than the most vapid, critically submissive terms."

This article kind of makes me want to buy a Sony Reader.

I do not, however, want to buy the Readius pocket eReader. Not that it doesn't look cool, but according to an article in the NY Times, "The price is not yet set, but Thomas van der Zijden, vice president for marketing and sales, said the Readius would be more expensive than the Kindle, which now is selling for $359."

I'm sorry, these ebook readers are much too expensive. The first person to get one down to $150 is going to make a bundle. How much can those eInk displays cost to produce, anyway?

How not to run an on-line magazine (or just about anything).

Finally! The truth about literary criticism!

This interview with Alan Moore is worth reading, if only for this anecdote:

I was turning 40 and thinking, Oh dear, I'm probably going to have one of those midlife crisis things which always just bore the hell out of everybody. So it would probably be better if, rather than just having a midlife crisis, I just went completely screaming mad and declared myself to be a magician. That would, at least, be more colorful. So, I announced, on the night of my 40th birthday party — probably after more beers than I should have had — that, ''from this point on, I'm going to become a magician.'' And then the next morning you have to think, Oh, what have I said now? Are we going to have to go through with this? So I had to go about finding out what a magician was and what they did.

Bonus, here's Dave Gibbons talking about Alan Moore, Watchmen and the Watchmen film.

Is Tor's new blog not that big a deal? Scroll down to comments if you want to see a lot of discussion and vitriol.

You know, I wrote "SF" in an email to a friend of mine and he became very confused because he thought I was talking about San Fransisco. Another example of genre labels being annoying. Not a link, just an aside.

But then, "Science fiction and fantasy are particularly derivative genres. It’s very hard to get away with anything original in either without people challenging its right to be included among the ossified pantheon of Heinlein and Robert Jordan.". Is this still true? Is it less true than it used to be? Perhaps more true?

This review has made me want to read Chabon's new collection Maps and Legends, which I was going to pass on. Just goes to show why reviews are a good thing.

On that subject, here's an interview with Chabon about genre.

Scalzi points us to an article (in Spanish) about the state of Science Fiction in Spain.

Speaking of Spanish, ever wondered why México is spelled with an "x" and not "j" like it's pronounced (in Spanish)? This article (in Spanish) explains it all. (Nothing to do with anything, not in English, don't care.)

Why Philip Roth still rules, having a grand time putting on those who take his work too seriously.

ReGenesis is on Hulu! Hooray! Here's an example of a show that was too good for it's own good. It was a little Canadian thing buried on some cable station and then it became popular, so what happens? It gets bought out by an American studio who cancels it so that they can remake it in America, for the networks, with a whole new cast. Which is another in an endless set of examples of how TV and film can eagerly trample all over a good thing.

And lastly, Michael Ross explains exactly why oil wealth is so bad for third world countries.

This is apparently a year old. Don't care.

I've been terribly sick for a couple days, some kind of stomach bug that had me holed up in the bathroom. Today I can once again keep down solid foods, so that is progress.

One of the things that bothers me about nausea is that the over-the-counter drugs to treat it are such utter bullshit. Take, for example, Emetrol which bills itself as "For Nausea Associated with Upset Stomach". Here's the ingredients of Emitrol:

Glucose (sugar)
Fructose (sugar)
Phosphoric acid (a flavoring found in Coca Cola)
FD&C red No. 40 (a carcinogenic dye)
Flavors (artificial? natural? Doesn't say...)
Glycerin (alcohol)
Methylparaben (a preservative)
Purified water

In other words, there's nothing here that I can't find in Coca Cola except for the Glycerin, which is there as a preservative anyway since alcohol isn't actually good for nausea, is it? But Emitrol is much more expensive than Coca Cola, and doesn't even have a nutritional box to tell me how many calories I'm consuming downing this sugar syrup "every 15 minutes" as prescribed. I mean what a load of crap this product is. And the only other thing my pharmacy had for nausea? "Cola syrup" which is literally the same stuff found in Coca Cola but without the carbonation.

My mom used to give me coke when I was sick to my stomach as a kid. She's a doctor. I guess she knew what she was doing.

Apparently this is written by Joss Whedon.

I've been getting really frustrated with Bookshelf's limitations, not the least of which is the fact that if you put your finger down somewhere without holding it long enough it JUMPS to the top or bottom of the paragraph, meaning that if you're trying to scroll down and take your finger off too quickly it jerks you away from whatever you're reading. Also the interface is ugly, the HTML book I'd imported didn't format quite right resulting in the first chunk of it being centered, and did I mention it doesn't read PDFs? This thing cost me $10?

Then along comes Stanza. Stanza has a beautiful interface, a huge library of public domain books easily available, and the book formats it supports? "Stanza contains built-in reading support for Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, PalmDoc, Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, HTML, and PDF." [Emphasis mine.] And even better: It's FREE!

The only catch? The program to transfer books from your computer to your device only works with Macintosh. Apparently, they're working on a Windows version (and maybe even a Linux version, which would make me happy to no end). For now, though, I found the works of HP Lovecraft that I was reading on Bookshelf in Stanza's free library, so I'm good for the time being. Once they get the software working on other platforms, this will be the only eBook reader anyone should even consider using on their device.

It appears Bat Segundo is no more. This is really tragic, since the Bat Segundo show was one of very few places (I can probably count them on the fingers of one hand) where you could find in-depth interviews with authors, and Ed did a very good job over the last four years of covering a lot of different stuff.

I just got off the phone with Ed and he was complaining about the state of entertainment/arts reviews, where the economic downturn has hit especially hard and freelancers are running for the hills. I find this all very dismaying.

If anyone's wondering why J hasn't posted here in a while...

The new iPhone and iPod Touch firmware is officially out, though the iTunes Store is either down or two busy so I can't actually buy it.

One thing I noticed going through the App Store— there's still no proper word processor for the iPhone/iPod Touch. This is something Windows Mobile devices have always had over their Apple counterparts; they run Microsoft Office Mobile, which, as loath as I am to compliment Microsoft products, frankly rocks. Apple Notes is not nearly powerful enough, and as for the online solutions, Google Docs only lets you read documents on the iPod, I couldn't get Zoho Writer to work at all. The only online solution I found that works is Glide Mobile, which is terrible.

i used to write all the time with my Palm Pilot and fold-out keyboard. It was great because it was cheap, had a long battery life and was really light to carry around. Eventually, though, I got tired of only being able to write in plain text and having to convert things to and from the Palm Doc format all the time. However, newer devices have much better word processing solutions. Warren Ellis, for instance, writes on his Linux-based Nokia N810. At nearly $500, I think I'll pass on getting one of those myself (you could get a laptop for that these days), but there's no reason that a word-processor and a full-sized external keyboard couldn't turn my iPod Touch into an extremely useful writing machine. So why don't either of these things exist?