Blue Shoes and Happiness

Blue Shoes and Happiness is the 7th in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. I have read all the earler ones:
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
and have enjoyed them all. They are not plot-driven. I love the characters and the setting and the writing style. I can easily picture everything. They have made a tv pilot out of the first book, and it has aired in Britain. I'm looking forward to getting the dvd as soon as it's available here.

from the back of the book:

Life is good for Mma Ramotswe as she sets out with her usual resolve to solve people’s problems, heal their misfortunes, and untangle the mysteries that make life interesting. And life is never dull on Tlokweng Road. A new and rather too brusque advice columnist is appearing in the local paper. The Mokolodi Game Preserve manager feels an infectious fear spreading among his workers, and a local doctor may be falsifying blood pressure readings. To further complicate matters, Grace Makutsi may have scared off her own fiance. Mma Ramotswe, however, is always up to the challenge.

I think the world would be a better place if only folks would listen to Mma Precious Ramotswe:

What's the point of being angry? When we are cross with somebody, what good does that do? Especially if they did not mean to cause harm.

10 Best Science Fiction Stories About Religion

SFGospel has an annotated list of its choices for the 10 best science fiction stories about religion. Here are the 10:

1. Jack McDevitt, "Gus."
2. Robert Silverberg, "The Feast of St. Dionysus."
3. Philip K. Dick, "Faith of Our Fathers."
4. Katharine Kerr, "Asylum."
5. Isaac Asimov, "Reason."
6. Robert Silverberg, The Pope of the Chimps
7. Michael Bishop, "The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis."
8. Rick Moody, "The Albertine Notes."
9. Ray Bradbury, "The Man."
10. Fredric Brown, Answer

It's been so long since I read SF short stories... back in college I guess, or maybe some soon after that, and I don't know which of these are more recent than that.

The 2 stories linked are available online, and I own the book the Bradbury story is in. To read the others I'd have to buy a bunch of short story collections. I'll pass on that, but I am curious about the stories...

1924 Peter Pan

I found a used copy of the Kino edition of the 1924 Adolph Zukor Peter Pan. I love it when I find dvd bargains like that.

It felt a bit odd to be "yanked" out of the British context by hearing talk of the "stars and stripes" and descriptions of how "American gentlemen" should act and seeing the American flag raised to take the place of the jolly roger. Other than that, I liked this silent film. The actors were great, and I was impressed by the special effects.

Here is a page focusing on the actress who played Peter Pan here, and it includes some stills from the film.

*******

9/9/2008: in response to Andrew's comment below... That is fascinating! That possibility had just never occurred to me, but I love knowing about it.

Paladin of Souls

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold doesn't, from the cover art, look like a story that would interest me. That'll teach me to judge a book by its cover, though I still can't bring myself to pick up another book with a picture of a dragon on it. I think all those Pern books just burned me out.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish. It leaves itself open for a sequel but doesn't demand one and can be appreciated as a stand-alone. It turns out to be a sequel itself, but I didn't realize that until I started this post.

I loved having a middle-aged woman as protagonist.

from the dust jacket:

Three years have passed since the widowed Dowager Royina Ista found release from the curse of madness that kept her imprisoned in her family's castle of Valenda. Her newfound freedom is costly, bittersweet with memories, regrets, and guilty secrets - for she knows the truth of what brought her land to the brink of destruction. And now the road - escape - beckons.... A simple pilgrimage, perhaps. Quite fitting for the Dowager Royina of all Chalion.

Yet something else is free, too - something beyond deadly. To the north lies the vital border fortress of Porifors. Memories linger there as well, of wars and invasions and the mighty Golden General of Jokona. And someone, something, watches from across that border - humans, demons, gods.

Ista thinks her little party of pilgrims wanders at will. But whose? When Ista's retinue is unexpectedly set upon not long into its travels, a mysterious ally appears - a warrior nobleman who fights like a berserker. The temporary safety of her enigmatic champion's castle cannot ease Ista's mounting dread, however, when she finds his dark secrets are entangled with hers in a net of the gods' own weaving.

In her dreams the threads are already drawing her to unforeseen chances, fateful meetings, fearsome choices. What the inscrutable gods commanded of her in the past brought her land to the brink of devastation. Now, once again, they have chosen Ista as their instrument. And again, for good or for ill, she must comply.

This book is the 2004 winner of the Locus Award for best fantasy novel, the Hugo Award and the Nebula.

The SFSite review concludes its review with this:

Action, character, humor, terror, moral as well as physical conflict, emotional complexity, religious questing in the realm of the spirit -- and redemption. These are the elements of a wonderful novel, one I highly recommend.

SFReviews.net likes it but compares it unfavorably to its predecessor:

I wish this sequel to The Curse of Chalion had been as strong a book as that one. Paladin of Souls is quite good; from any other writer in the field I might have bumped up the rating a notch. There is much here to enjoy and admire in equal measure, and I'm not in the least displeased it ran off with every award under the sun despite its predecessor's being more deserving. It's just that, considering what Bujold achieved in Curse, in creating an epic fantasy as thought-provoking as it was viscerally entertaining, the fact that Paladin of Souls is so much more traditional in its approach is kind of a shame. Curse was no simple escapist novel; Paladin is more escapist than anything else.

Origami Tulip

Martin's Origami site has clear illustrated instructions for making lots of neat figures, including the tulip pictured above.

Free Recorder Sheet Music Online

Dolmetsch offers free sheet music to download and print. There's something for everybody, well almost everybody, at that site, from music for one recorder without accompaniment to music for recorder orchestra. I do good just to play from the hymnal, but I dream of being able to play period music in a performing SCA ensemble. Am I doing anything to make that dream a reality? No, but it's still a lovely dream.

The Women of Firefly

Oh, how I miss that show!

HT: the Feminist SF blog

Jean Epstein

Yesterday was the anniversary of the death in 1953 of film director Jean Epstein. I watched his hour-long 1928 The Fall of the House of Usher back in October as part of my month-long experience in Horror, and the film can be viewed online here. His 1927 film La Glace a Trois Faces can be viewed at ubuweb, as can his 1947 La Tempestaire.

FilmReference.com has an article here. Senses of Cinema has an article on the Poe-inspired House of Usher here and an article on La Glace a Trois Faces here. (Sorry about the lack of accent marks, but I've never learned how to make my keyboard cooperate.)

The picture at the top of the post came from Wikipedia, where a rationale for fair use (to illustrate this post in the absence of a copy-free alternative) can also be found.

Sarah Vaughan

Today is the anniversary of the death in 1990 of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan. She has a page in the American Masters section at PBS and a page at AllAboutJazz.com. NPR has a short article here.

Broken-Hearted Melody (1959):


"My funny Valentine" and "From this moment on" (1981):


The CD I have is self-titled and is part of the Desert Island Discs series.

Camouflage

Camouflage by Joe Haldeman won the Nebula Award in 2005. This is different from the SF books I've been reading lately, and I enjoyed the difference. It reminds me a bit of one of the Hal Clement books... Which one was it....

from the back of the book:

Unknown to anyone, two creatures have wandered the Earth for generations. The aliens have no knowledge of each other, but share a residual memory of a mysterious, sunken relic -- and an affinity for deep water. One, the changeling, has survived by adaptation, taking the shapes of many different organisms. The other, the chameleon, has survived solely by destroying anything or anyone that threatens it.

Now, finally brought up from the bottom of the sea by marine biologist Russell Sutton, the relic calls to them both... to come home. For all these generations there have been two invincible creatures on Earth. But the chameleon has decided there's only room for one......

There is a Methodist connection -a mention of two stained glass windows in the Samoan Methodist church. There's also a mention of a character having met Arthur C. Clarke in the 70's. It wrapped up with what seemed to me to be undue speed, but nothing's perfect.

SFReviews calls it "high-concept entertainment that makes for the kind of popcorn page-turner" and "diverting beach novel that delivers a good read" while making note of several limitations.

SFSite says:

But beneath all this—the comedy, the sprawl of backstories, the serpentine narrative—serious questions are broached. The problem of evil. How we learn. The foundations of ethics.

John Paul II

Today is the anniversary of the death in 2005 of John Paul II.

Affluenza

Affluenza:

is a one-hour television special that explores the high social and environmental costs of materialism and overconsumption.

There is a teacher's guide here and a sequel.

At the opposite of "affluenza" is voluntary simplicity, and there are varying lifestyles in between. Many people are touchy and defensive about their position on the economic scale, and many are resentful of folks with more, but everything's relative. What's frugal to one family is extravagant to another. Reading blogs on this subject, both from a personal finance perspective and from a moral perspective, has been a real education on how people respond to the issue.

High school personal finance and economics sites such as this one tend to focus on money management, which is part of it, but there are also ethical issues involved. What are they? Do those economics texts even mention them? How will they figure in planning for the future? This sylabus defines "ethics" as

limitations a society imposes upon it members

What limitations does our society impose on our economic lives? I hear capitalism praised without restraint, and I hear "success" equated to economic prosperity, and I hear universal health care condemned as "give-away" Socialism.... Are the limitations our society imposes as few as they seem to me?

Here's a report on Economic Mobility in America.

And while you're thinking about money, take a look at this and think about how intertwined our use of money is with our ethics.

Travel Narratives

Before 400 A.D.:

Luke/Acts as travel narrative
Egeria's Travels

Medieval Period:

Jerusalem
by F.E. Peters

Memoirs of the Crusades (1309)
by Geoffrey of Villehardouin

Memoirs
by Jean De Joinville

Travels
Sir John Mandeville (1322)

Travels
Marco Polo

The Journal of Friar Odoric

Ibn Battuta:
Ibn Battuta's Travels in Asia and Africa
translated and selected by H.A.R. Gibb
A Virtual Ibn Battuta Tour
Ibn Battuta video, part 1, part 2, part 3

Columbus' Log from his first voyage

1700's:

A New Voyage to Carolina
by John Lawson (d. 1711)

The Persian Letters
by Montesquieu

Letters (1716-1718)
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Letters of a Russian Traveler
by N.M. Karamzin

Tour Through the Eastern Counties of England (1722)
by Daniel Defoe

Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755)
by Henry Fielding

Travels Through France and Italy (1766)
by Tobias Smollett

A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
by Laurence Sterne

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)
by Samuel Johnson

Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)
by James Boswell

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796)
by Mary Wollstonecraft

1800's:

The Journals of Lewis and Clark (1804-1806)

Travels in Nubia (1822)
by John Lewis Burckhardt

A Journey through Persia, Armenia and Asia Minor to Constantinople (1808-1809)
A Second Journey through Persia to Constantinople (1810-1816)
by Justinian Morier

The Alhambra (1832)
by Washington Irving

Eothen (1834)
byA.W. Kinglake

The Voyage of the Beagle (1839)
by Charles Darwin

The Bible in Spain (1842)
by George Borrow

American Notes (1842)
Pictures From Italy (1846)
by Charles Dickens

The Logbook of the Captain's Clerk: Adventures in the China Seas
by John S. Sewell (1850)

English Traits (1856)
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Missionary Travels (1857)
Zambesi Expedition (1865)
by David Livingstone

Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey
by Lillian Schlissel (1841-1867)

Innnocents Abroad (1869)
by Mark Twain

An Inland Voyage (1876);
Travels With a Donkey (1878);
The Amateur Emigrant (1879)
by R.L. Stevenson

A Little Tour in France (1882)
by Henry James

Around the World on a Bicycle (1887)
volume 1
volume 2
by Thomas Stevens

Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888)
volume 1, abridged
volume 2, abridged
by Charles M. Doughty

American Notes
by Rudyard Kipling (1891)

Across the Plains (1892);
The Silverado Squatters (1892?)
by R.L. Stevenson

Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon
by Samuel White Baker (d. 1893)

Among the Tibetans (1894)
by Isabella L. Bird

A Tuscan Shrine (1895)
by Edith Wharton

The Country of the Painted Firs (1896)
by Sarah Orne Jewett

Following the Equator (1897)
by Mark Twain

The White Nile (1850-1900)
by Alan Moorehead

Travels in West Africa (1897)
by Mary Kingsley

1900's:

The Sea and the Jungle (1909-1910)
by H.M. Tomlinson

Cruise of the Snark (1911)
by Jack London

Fighting France (1915)
by Edith Wharton

Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1916)
by T.E. Lawrence

The Endurance (1914-1916)
by Caroline Alexander

South From Granada: A Sojourn in Southern Spain (1920-1934)
by Gerald Brenan

The Royal Road to Romance (1925)
by Richard Halliburton


The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and Other East-African Adventures (1925)
by J.H. Patterson

The Glorious Adventure (1927)
by Richard Halliburton (retracing Ulysses' voyage)

When the Going Was Good (1929-1935)
by Evelyn Waugh

In the Steps of the Master (early 1930's)
by H.V. Morton

Journey Without Maps (1936)
by Graham Greene

The Road to Oxiana (1937)
by Robert Byron

Out of Africa (1937)
by Isak Dinesen

The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
by George Orwell

Complete Book of Marvels (1937-1938)
by Richard Halliburton

The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1941)
by John Steinbeck

Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944)
by Jim Corbett

The Road Back to Paris (1944)
by A.J. Liebling

Kon-Tiki,; Across the Pacific by Raft (1950)
by Thor Heyerdahl

Beyond the High Himalayas (1952)
by William O. Douglas

Bitter Lemons (1953-1956)
by Lawrence Durrell

Normandy Revisited (1958)
by A.J. Liebling

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958)
by Eric Newby

Travels With Charley (1961)
by John Steinbeck

Gipsy Moth Circles the World (1967)
by Sir Francis Chichester

Notes From the Century Before: A Journal From British Columbia (1969)
by Edward Hoagland

The Longest Mile: A vivid chronicle of life in an Appalachian hollow (1969)
by Rena Gazaway

The Ra Expeditions (1970)
by Thor Heyerdahl

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975)
by Paul Theroux

Behind the Wall (1976)
by Colin Thubron

In Patagonia (1977)
by Bruce Chatwin

The Brendan Voyage: A Leather Boat Tracks the Discovery of America by the Irish Sailor Saints (1978)
by Tim Severin

The Snow Leopard (1978)
by Peter Matthiessen

Travel writings
by Kathleen Ann Goonan (1980's)

Blue Highways: A Journey Into America (1982)
by William Least Heat Moon

The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around Great Britain (1983)
by Paul Theroux

A Year in Provence (1989)
by Peter Mayle

Down the Volga: A Journey Through Mother Russia in a Time of Troubles (1991)
by Marq de Villiers

PrairyErth (1991)
by William Least Heat Moon

Following the Brush (1993)
by John Elder

Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World (1993)
by Pico Iyer

Ramblings of Wo Gege: a China Travel Narrative (1994)

Notes From a Small Island (1995)
by Bill Bryson

No Mercy: A Journey To the Heart of the Congo (1996)
by Redmond O'Hanlon

Badland (1996)
by Jonathan Raban

Into Thin Air (1996)
by Jon Krakauer

Thomas Cook Travel Book Award (1980-2004)

86 Greatest Travel Books of All Time by Longitude.com (a bookseller, but still)

Penguins Take Flight

HT: World Hum

Obama on Evolution

from the York Daily Record:

Q: York County was recently in the news for a lawsuit involving the teaching of intelligent design. What's your attitude regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools?

A: "I'm a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state.

But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there's a difference between science and faith. That doesn't make faith any less important than science.

It just means they're two different things. And I think it's a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don't hold up to scientific inquiry."

Yet another reason to support Obama.

HT: Bad Astronomy Blog

But it's just a theory

HT: Exploring Our Matrix

It reminds me of this classic warning label:



and the argument in favor of teaching the controversy. I mean, Intelligent Falling has supporters.

I'm keeping an eye on the stories from Florida and from California. The Florida story is similar to the Dover one, but I don't see how it can be as much fun. The California story is likely to cause some curriculum changes, since the textbooks in question are used by lots of private schools and homeschoolers. (The Questionable Authority blog has good commentary.)

The Guardian's Top 10 SF Films

Here's the list:

1. Blade Runner (1982)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
3. Star Wars (1977)/Empire Strikes Back (1980)
4. Alien (1979)
5. Solaris (1972)
6. Terminator (1984)/T2: Judgment day (1991)
7. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
8. War of the Worlds (1953)
9. The Matrix (1999)
10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

I've seen all but Solaris, which I may actually have seen and just not remember. I can only find it in one of those ridiculously expensive Criterion editions. Maybe someday I'll break down and buy it, but in the meantime I'm wishing a copy would show up on the "used" rack.

Hope for Tasmanian Devils

Good news at last! The Telegraph reports:

Cedric is the first of his species found to have displayed immunity from the horrifically disfiguring cancer, known as devil facial tumour disease or DFTD.
...
If Cedric proves the researchers right, and remains resistant to the disease, then he will form the basis of a breeding programme to distribute disease-detecting genes to a new generation of devils.

and ABC.net.au says,

A Tasmanian devil by the name of Cedric may hold the key to future of his species.

He is an extraordinary devil, guinea pig and possible saviour, who is naturally resistant to the contagious facial tumours which have already killed half the devil population in Tasmania.

News.com.au:

The unlikely would-be saviour of the world's largest marsupial carnivore is an unassuming devil named Cedric. In a development described as "the most exciting" in the five-year quest to halt devil facial tumour disease (DFTD), Cedric has shown an immune response to the unique communicable cancer.

The Independent:

Australia's population of Tasmanian devils has been devastated by a mysterious disease that causes disfiguring and usually fatal muzzle tumours. Wildlife experts say the carnivorous marsupials face extinction in the wild within 10 to 20 years unless the spread of the disease can be halted.

Now Cedric has given scientists new hope. When he was injected with dead facial tumour cells he produced antibodies – the first devil to do so. That means other devils with his mix of genes may be resistant to the disease, or capable of responding to a vaccine.

4/1/2008:

BBC

War. What is it good for?

I heard this blast from the past on the radio this afternoon. When I looked for it at youtube I discovered that I'm not the only one to see a current application:

No Cussin' Here

Created by OnePlusYou

Around 0% of the pages on your website contain cussing.
This is 100% LESS than other websites who took this test.

HT: SundaySchoolThoughts