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Lois Lowry’s young adult novel The Giver is a truly amazing book. Winner of the Newberry Award in 1994, The Giver tells the story of a utopian society located somewhere (somewhen?) in the future where lying is forbidden, competition is eliminated, everyone knows exactly where they belong, and death is unknown. Or so it seems. When the main character Jonas is selected to be his community’s Receiver and enters into his apprenticeship with the old [Continue reading] FinanceIsPersonal.com offers up some advice for cutting your grocery bills. The advice is good enough, but I doubt it will help much. One thing I disagree with is that Wal-Mart is cheapest — there’ve been a couple of studies that show very little savings on the overall grocery bill between Wal-Mart and other chains. Where Wal-Mart has an advantage is in loss leaders — they’ll take a huge hit on some items, to get you [Continue reading] As the step-father of a “tween” girl — and as a professor of Women’s Studies — I’m deeply concerned about the way “girly” expectations are not just imposed on girls but crammed down their throats (or, better yet, not crammed down their throats, because eating is totally outré for girls these days). Andrea Learned, the “Learned” behind the excellent marketing blog Learned on Women, shares those concenrs in her discussion of the way books are [Continue reading] I was flipping around on Google today and found a link to my forthcoming book, Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War, on Amazon. And there’s a cover image! This is the first I’ve seen it, so I was pretty excited. The book isn’t due out until February 2008 (Amazon says January, so maybe they know something I don’t), and I haven’t even seen the page proofs yet, but you can sign up at Amazon to be notified when it comes out. [Continue reading] Last weeks posts at lifehack.org [Continue reading] I’m about 2/3 of the way through the September issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction and my feelings are mixed. I’ve been forcing myself to read every story, front to back, which is not at all how I would read the magazine if I had picked it up at the newsstand. Isn’t that interesting? Because F&SF sent me the copy free, I feel obligated to read it more thoroughly than if I’d spent my own hard-earned money on it! [Continue reading] The folks at Fantasy & Science Fiction put word out that they’d send a free copy of their September issue to bloggers who agreed to write about what they’d read. I’ve been reading Fantasy & Science Fiction off and on for probably two decades now, but hadn’t picked up a copy in a while, so I was definitely willing to see what they’re up to these days — especially on their nickel! [Continue reading] Way back at the turn of the century, when the Web was still 1.0 and a ragtag band of ragged IT staffers thought they could make a mint going virtual, I got to repeatedly experience the joys (please note intense sarcasm!) of web conferencing, dot-bomb style. We had the marketing and sales office in NYC (where I worked), the data center in New Jersey, and believe it or not, coders in Bulgaria. And every few days, we got to do web conferencing with jumpy blurry webcam images and scratchy audio and really … [Continue reading] Universities are complex. Needlessly complex. The modern university represents an accretion of over a thousand years of tradition – why else do you think you are expected to dress like a medieval scribe for graduation? [Continue reading] My, my, we do hate the idea of outlining, don’t we? Most people think of an outline as a rigid straightjacket hampering the flow of true creativity. But guess what – the writers you admire most for their creativity almost without fail are outliners (and those that aren’t are lying – they most likely keep an outline in their heads and trust their memories to keep it straight). The reason is simple – an outline takes most of the work of organizing and structuring their writing off their shoulders, which means they are free to actually be creative. [Continue reading] |
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