- Libraries paying hardball with overdue fines (at ours, it’s a dime a day and you can’t check out anything else if you hit $5 without paying it off).
- The NYT also has a very interesting piece on a growing controversy in anthropological circles over the uber-popular work of Jared Diamond: But the anthropologists had a point. As Einstein put it, explanations should be as simple as possible — but no simpler. Is it realistic to hope, as Dr. Diamond did at the end of “Guns, Germs and Steel,” that “historical studies of human societies can be pursued as scientifically as studies of dinosaurs”?
- Eric Ripert helps a housewife throw a dinner party.
- Freemasons: Can’t believe people think they’re weird.
- The fabulous Literaticat dishes out her picks for best YA of the year.
- Greg Frost offers some insight on a way to break through the "dark night of despair" phase of novel writing.
- Terri Windling on wild children, aka feral tykes.
- Maureen on cooking roast potatoes with duck fat, as yummy as her food writing always is.
- Some alums and current students in the MFA program I’m in have started a new craft-oriented group blog called Through the Tollbooth. I’m sure it will be full of immensely good stuff.
- And, in a time-saving experiment, here’s my current shared items on Google Reader:
Update: And the experiment is a failure, cause the links update automatically when you share new stuff. Now if they figure out how to keep permalinks to what was in your shared items at the particular time of posting, we’d be in business.
I’m just so pleased that the Jared Diamond article starts with a reference to The Thing.