Finally came up with a decent banner to replace the default Velocity image. The image is a detail from the amazing Chanin Building in New York City. Overshadowed by the more famous Chrysler Building, the Chanin has a decidedly uniconic shape; its structure is perhaps a little more interesting than the usual boxy skyscraper, but [...]
Justice Antonin Scalia, the religious revanchist appointed by George Bush as part of his pandering to the evangelist right, gave a speech to Orthodox Jews earlier this year in which he supported his bigotry with a steady stream of lies. All quotes in italics are from the story in New York Sun.
Lie the First: [...]
Earlier this week I watched The Bedford Incident for the first time. It’s a fantastic cold war suspense movie starring Richard Widmark. And I got to thinking, has Widmark died? So I Googled him and it turns out he has indeed died. Just over a week ago [actually: it was late March, not May as [...]
Theodore Schroeder:
Obscenity is not a quality inherent in a book or picture, but is solely and exclusively a contribution of the reading mind, and hence cannot be defined in terms of the qualities of a book or picture.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec:
A sodomite got very excited looking at a zoology text. Does this make it pornography?
Bertrand Russell:
Lord [...]
Jan Stinson and Bruce Gillespie have announced the eighth issue of Steam Engine Time. My favourite piece is James Doig’s presentation of documents surrounding the 1945 banning of Olaf Stapledon’s novel Sirius in Australia by the Literary Censorship Board. The Minister for Trade and Customs overturned the board’s majority opinion and relied on the objections [...]
Bruce Dorminey reports in COSMOS on a fascinating paper that suggests the early Earth may have had three moons, only for the orbits of the two smaller (~100km or so) moons to become unstable over a billion years or so. The paper by Jack Lissauer and John Chambers is an excellent example of the sort [...]
After consulting the masses, Talking Squid is trying out a new theme, Velocity. Over the next little while we’ll be tweaking the design, so you can expect a new banner, highlighted hyperlinks, and maybe some surprises.
Margo Lanagan will be hosting a writers’ walking tour of the Tarkine wilderness in Tasmania. The tour will stretch over the week of 5-11 January 2009. Fitness levels do not need to be extreme. All the walks are “easy grade” and the emphasis is on observation and reflection rather than on burning up the [...]
In the never-ending circus of lies, misattributions, and ethical lapses surrounding the current so-called Culture War, especially as it relates to evolutionary science versus religious fundamentalism, biological anthropologist Pat Shipman has contributed yet another outright lie to the debate.
Michael Mihalev’s Rusty has served Talking Squid well, but I think it is time for a change. And I need help choosing a new theme. Follow the break and comment to tell me what you think…
