Thursday, December 13, 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
The War on Superman's Underpants
Have they gone UNDER his costume now and forever?
From a piece in io9...
There might not be a real War on Christmas, but I'm pretty sure there's a real War on Superman's Underpants. It might not be sexy enough to get all that sweet Fox News coverage, but the traditional red underpants that the comics Superman has worn outside of his blue tights for most of the last century are now missing in both the upcoming Superman movie Man of Steel and in the comics - as well as the outer-underwear worn by many other heroes and villains . And I, for one, can no longer sit idly by while this venerable tradition is attacked. Let us go back to 1933, when Superman co-creators Joe Siegel and Jerry Shuster decided to put Superman's underwear on the outside in the first place - and why so many superheroes afterwards followed suit. Why did they make this choice? It wasn't because wearing your underwear outside your pants was a hot fashion trend of the ‘30s. Indeed, giving Superman outer-briefs probably looked as weird - if not moreso - as it does today.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Silent Spring, 50 Years On
Widely considered the most important environmental book of the 20th century, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has been reissued after 50 years. Margaret Atwood considers its impact and legacy in the Guardian.
From the piece...
Its subject was the human poisoning of the biosphere through the wholesale deployment of a myriad new 20th-century chemicals aimed at pest and disease control. Carson was already the most respected nature writer in the United States, and a pioneer in that field. She knew how to explain science to ordinary readers in a way that they could understand; she knew also that if you don't love a thing you won't save it, and her love for the natural world shines through everything she wrote. For Silent Spring – which she already knew would be her last tilt at the windmill – she polished all her rhetorical weapons, and synthesised a wide range of research. She was able to combine a simple and dramatic presentation with a formidable array of backup statistics, and to forge a call to specific action. The impact was enormous – many groups, pieces of legislation, and government agencies were inspired by it – and both its main insights remain central today.
The book also met with furious resistance, chiefly from the big chemical companies and the scientists in their employ. Multiple attempts were made to destroy not only Carson's scientific credibility but also her personal reputation: she was a fanatic, she was a "bunny hugger", she was a dangerous reactionary who would drag modern society backwards into a new Middle Ages filled with pests, vermin, crop destruction and lethal diseases. Yet Silent Spring never advocated an outright ban on pesticides: only careful testing and informed use, in contrast to the scorched-earth policies that had been pursued, with many disastrous outcomes.
Monday, December 10, 2012
How Much Do Novelists Make?
John Evison opens his wallet for the Stranger.
From the piece...
$0 The amount that Jonathan Evison made for his first eight books—six novels, one memoir, and one story collection—which he says "were all unpublished, and will mercifully remain unpublished."
$4,500 The advance that Soft Skull Press gave Evison for his ninth book, and first published novel, All About Lulu. The money was "paid out in two payments, half on signing, and half on publication."
$300 Approximately how much Evison made a week at his day job as a landscaper. He worked 25 hours a week—"just enough to get by"—while writing and editing Lulu.
"In Cold Blood" Killers' Bodies to Be Exhumed
Their DNA could help solve a cold case.
From a story on ABC News...
More than 50 years after the Walker family was murdered in the quiet, carefree town of Osprey, Fla., the focus of the cold case investigation has shifted to two notorious killers who were the basis of Truman Capote's true-crime book "In Cold Blood."
Investigators from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office are hoping to travel to Kansas as soon as an order is approved by a judge to exhume the bodies of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. They hope mitochondrial DNA evidence collected from the bones of the killers, who were executed by hanging in 1965, will help close a cold case that rattled Sarasota County.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
Sylvia Plath and Her Fans
Tin House touches on it, here.
From the story...
A month ago, I touched a lock of Sylvia Plath’s hair. I was at a Plath symposium in Bloomington, Indiana, where the university’s Lilly Library holds a vast store of Plath writings and artifacts. There are minute daily planners she filled to the margins with details of her life as a Fulbright scholar at Cambridge: how she’d spent the day with Ted, reminders to buy books on reading tarot, reports of her headaches and sleeplessness. There are files of childhood ephemera, the homemade paper dolls of Hollywood-style vamps with marabou-fringed dresses, the rhyming birthday cards for her grandparents, the Valentine for her father printed with the words “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.” And there is the hair.
I had to visit the library twice before I was able to see it. The first time, the hair was already engaged, someone else having requested their own moment with it. I should have expected this. The library teemed with our flock of “Plath freaks,” as the symposium organizer lovingly called us, or “Plath people,” as I overheard one librarian describe us with more vexation, as in, “Have those Plath people behaved themselves?” When I came back the next day, the hair was checked out again, but I waited, even though as I did so, I returned to earlier feelings that I shouldn’t see the hair at all.
Have a Cool Million?
From a story on Reuters...
The poster, one of four known surviving copies, was illustrated by German Heinz Schulz-Neudamm. One copy is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The "Metropolis" poster is the crown jewel of the collection and was purchased by California collector Kenneth Schachter for a record $690,000 in 2005 private sale.
"We do expect people to overbid," Marcus A. Tompkins, a lawyer for the bankruptcy trustee, told Reuters. "We've been getting a lot of inquiries."
Schachter, a resident of Valencia about 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles, filed for bankruptcy last year after he was unable to repay loans he received to buy film memorabilia.
Saturday, December 08, 2012
McSweeney's Interviews Beck
McSweeney's has a Q&A with Beck about his new book, Song Reader.
From the piece...
McSWEENEY’S: So here we are, late in 2012, and you’ve just put a heck of a lot of effort into crafting a set of songs that you’re only going to release as sheet music. Where’d that idea come from, originally? And what is it about a project like this that seemed exciting to take on?
BECK: The idea has been around since I started releasing music. After one of my first records came out, in the ’90s, a publisher sent me a sheet music version of the album—someone had transcribed it for piano and voice. The album itself was full of noises, beats, bent sounds, feedback—it had a lot of sonic ideas that were meant to be heard, as a recording. Seeing those songs reduced down to piano parts made me feel like they’d become abstractions. At the time, I mentioned to the people I worked with that it might be better to write a group of songs specifically for a songbook, rather than trying to force the songs from my record into written arrangements. But years of touring and making albums didn’t leave time to do the project properly. We finally began the process back in 2004.
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