The links have been piling up. Here's a few you might find interesting.
Read an excerpt from Slam Dunks and No-Brainers by Leslie Savan. While it seems like a fun read it also appears that it asks some important questions:Pop speech is a form of entertainment that almost anyone can perform. It connects people instantly. It can keep conversations bobbing with humor and work against our taking ourselves too seriously. It's nothing if not accessible.
But while pop language is fun, useful, and free, it is so in the same way that advertising-supported media is fun, useful, and "free": It requires subtle social and political trade-offs. And so I come not to praise pop, but to ask, What do we lose and gain in the deal?
I'm not quite clear on how pop speech is different than slang. I do know though that when my mom used "bling" in conversation with me a few weeks ago, it felt so wrong.
Google is at it again. Would you be willing to rent a book online? Will people really go for this? If I don't want to buy the book I borrow it from my library. Somehow curling up with my laptop to read a book doesn't sound that appealing.
An interview with Simon Winchester about his new book, A Crack in the Edge of the World and why what happened in San Francisco in 1906 is still relevant for today.
A story looking for a publisher and an interesting attempt to find one. Meanwhile, Paul Rowland is publishing his as a blog and Rebecca East took the iUniverse and a website route.
That aluminum foil hat you've been wearing to keep the aliens from getting into your head? It doesn't work. What about mylar? Does mylar work?
