Day: April 9, 2008

Su last year

~ FmH
“Sudoku has furrowed the brows of a generation of commuters, but will it be replaced by a new puzzle from Japan? …Like sudoku, the smaller kenken consists of a numbers square where the figures cannot be duplicated within rows and columns.

But with the new puzzle, there’s the added dimension of having to reach certain target numbers inside smaller blocks by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing the numerals in the cells within…” (BBC)

Whisky and Soda Man

~ FmH
Thomas Jones on JG Ballard: “When I was 12, I read a story by J.G. Ballard about a boy who has lived all his life in a vast city. One day, he decides to take a train out of the metropolis, to find a wide open space where he can fly a kite. But after many days on the train, he starts to recognise landmarks from the window that he has seen earlier in the journey: he has travelled all the way around the world without leaving the city. There are no wide open spaces left.” (London Review of Books)

Calling Al Gore

~ FmH
“Any number of top Democrats have attempted to step in and bring some order to this process, but none possess the stature to help the candidates, the superdelegates and the rest of the party structure come together. Former President Bill Clinton is compromised, of course, former nominee John Kerry has been marginalized and most other high-level Democrats have already endorsed a candidate, undermining their credentials as impartial brokers.” — Dan Schnur, who was the national communications director for John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 (New York Times op-ed)

Clinton Praises Gordon Brown for Beijing Boycott

~ FmH
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“Hillary Clinton just reacted to the announcement from London that British prime minister Gordon Brown will not attend the opening of the Beijing Olympics. She said she ‘congratulated’ Brown on what she termed ‘an important decision’ and called on Barack Obama and John McCain to join her in urging President Bush to also boycott the ceremony.” (The New York Observer)

(Emphasis added.) ‘Beijing boycott’, I mouthed excitedly after reading the headline… Kudos to Clinton for getting out in front on this, but skipping the opening ceremony alone is an empty gesture. The call should be for an outright boycott of the entire Olympics. [The piece is accompanied by what has to be one of the most unflattering pictures of the unphotogenic Clinton I have seen in awhile. Zombified, no?]

Cause for alarm

~ FmH
…[T]he most ingenious alarm clocks on the market – from the pleasantly surprising to the downright sadistic: “Finally, perhaps the ultimate in snooze-punishments, the SnuzNLuz is a ridiculously monikered but utterly dastardly way of stopping anyone from getting ‘just ten minutes more’. Press snooze and the clock will connect to your bank account and start making donations to a pre-chosen charity or organisation. In order to spur you on all the more, it is suggested that you make the beneficiary of your generosity a cause – political, ethical, whatever – you do not support in the slightest. If you sleep in, they’ll receive donations of your hard-earned cash. You want to hit them where it hurts? Get out of bed.” (Guardian.UK)

The Federman Collection at Spineless Books

~ FmH

“Federman’s masterful and economical utilization of strange loops, mise-en-abime, and other metafictionalist maneuvers will be received by readers versed in writing of this type with a smile of familiarity and a nod of admiration. Like Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, Federman has internalized this type of writing to the point where the use of innovative and challenging narrative techniques such as metalepsis and hypodiegesis never seems contrived.” –Jeffrey R. di Leo