Meanwhile, the House passes a bill that creates a cabinet-level position to address the terrible threat of piracy and increases the RIAAs blackmail demands. Yeah, this is exactly what our federal government needs to do. Not. And LA has decided homes of pirates are kinda like crack houses.
This is a very, very strange moment in our history….
Did you know it’s World Press Freedom Day? Neither did I, not until Threat Level pointed it out. They also pointed out that people are translating a poem by jailed journalist Shi Tao into various languages (over 90 as of today), carrying the poem across the globe with the plan to arrive in Beijing in August. (Shi Tao sent to a pro-democracy group a copy of a directive to the Chinese press to ignore the marking of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Yahoo ratted him out to authorities because … hey, it’s business.)
This is a different kind of torch relay, lit by PEN and its charter:
LITERATURE knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals.
IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, and particularly in time of war, works of art and libraries, the heritage of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political passion.
MEMBERS OF PEN should at all times use what influence they have in favor of good understanding and mutual respect among nations; they pledge themselves to do their utmost to dispel race, class, and national hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace in the world.
PEN STANDS FOR the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and among all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in their country or their community.
PEN DECLARES for a free press and opposes arbitrary censorship in time of peace. It believes that the necessary advance of the world toward a more highly organized political and economic order renders free criticism of governments, administrations, and institutions imperative. And since freedom implies voluntary restraint, members pledge themselves to oppose such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood, and distortion of facts for political and personal ends.
Tagged again! Karen, via Peter, has asked me to reveal six random facts about me. Since I have never kept chooks nor flooded six floors of a hotel in China, this would be a really good time for you to catch up on your sleep. Here goes:
My daughter’s dog Sadie will be staying with us for a few weeks while Rosemary travels to Italy. This would be fine, except the cats took a vote and have passed a unanimous resolution against dogs. Negotiations continue.
I live in a building that used to be the town firehouse (and town hall and police station; it’s a very small town). There has never been a pole; the firemen used the stairs. There is no bell, because the firemen took it with them when they moved to a new building. There is also no bell tower, because a tornado knocked it down ten years ago.
I will be teaching a new course on international crime fiction next year, as well as a new course on books and culture, as well as a course I’ve taught for several years, Information Fluency. I clearly need to see a professional about my bad habit of filling out course proposal forms impulsively.
I have a large pile of books to read. This should come as no surprise to anyone.
I’m pretty good at handling new technology, but telephones scare me.
There. I hope you enjoyed a refreshing nap. Though I’m supposed to tag others, I think I’ll let this one go since, so far as I can tell, I was the last resident of the planet who had not yet played.
Bill Ott, who writes brilliantly about crime fiction for Booklist, has chosen his picks for the top ten mysteries of 2008, just beating out tonight’s announcement of the Edgars, which will be debated hotly until the next nominations are named. (Curiously, many of the books were published in 2007, so it’s really a sort of “best of the academic year” list.) Along with best all around, he includes best entries in long-running series and best debuts. As he notes, it’s getting darker around here, and for a good reason:
As crime fiction continues to attract more and more writers of a distinctly literary bent who want to use the genre to build multifaceted characters and to explore sensitive social issues and address questions of profound moral ambiguity, it is almost inevitable that darker worldviews and less formulaic plots will come to dominate “best” lists. Our annual top 10 list is not a roundup of subgenres; it’s one magazine’s opinion as to the richest crime fiction of the year, and given who’s writing crime novels today and what they’re writing about, it’s a simple fact that the dice are loaded, for the moment at least, in the direction of darker, more complex fare.
I’ll drink to that, and so will reviewer Kier Graff who adds something new to Booklist - fiction. His short story, “Reading is My Business,” is a an affectionate spoof of the genre. “There are 10,000 galleys in the naked city, and all our hung-over reviewer has to do is find one of them . . .”
Interestingly, 8 of the 10 in Ott’s lists have settings outside the US, and authors are from South Africa and Norway as well as the UK and US. We’re not only going darker, we’re going further from home, and it’s a good thing, too.
Sandra Ruttan, Tom Piccirilli and I all have books being released on the same day - today! - so we’re triplets, though we are in a) Canada b) Colorado and c) Minnesota. With her usual incredible energy (I actually think she’s actually quintuplets herself; how else could anyone get all that writing done?), Sandra has put together interviews of the two of us at her blog, On Life and Other Inconveniences. I suspect Tom of being quintuplets, too: just look at the incredible number of books he’s written.
The Cold Spot sounds pretty hot to me. Saturday Boy hates it. He advises that we all don’t buy it right now. )
For an excellent interview of Sandra, see January Magazine’ssnapshot, and for some discussion of her new book, What Burns Within, in her own words, see how she passes the Page 69 Test.
A US Marshall has some practical advice in the Arizona Republic for local law enforcement: concentrate your limited resources on criminals who commit crimes that hurt people, not on undocumented immigrants.
Local law enforcement should work closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in sharing intelligence and investigating illegal aliens who are committing crimes. Local law enforcement simply does not have the time and resources to take on the additional duties of an immigration officer who is trained for 18 weeks on immigration law.
I ask you, as a citizen who pays our salaries and expect police leaders to make critical decisions on your safety, would you want your police departments chasing down illegal aliens or would you rather they spend their time cuffing fugitives, gangsters, burglars, thieves, armed robbers and child molesters?
The illegal-immigration problem cannot be fixed by putting every illegal alien in jail.
Predictably, a commenter says “Illegal aliens are criminals, one and all. The need to be ferreted out, rounded up, and deported immediately” - totally ignoring the author’s argument that it’s irresponsible to act as if priorities are irrelevant and that millions of people can be deported without cost.
We had a great “teach-in” on immigration at my college where faculty from history, political science, sociology, geography, education, and religion spoke, along with students who work with immigrants in Minnesota. I just wish some people were willing to listen.
Sooner or later I have to get serious about planning my next First Term Seminar, a new course focused on international crime fiction.
Meanwhile, I’m delighted to learn from The Rap Sheet that the LA Times book prize for mystery/thriller has gone to Norwegian author Karin Fossum for The Indian Bride. What’s even more cheering is that the runners-up also celebrate the international flavor of crime fiction these days: two from Ireland (Tana French’s In the Woods and Benjamin Black’s Christine Falls), one from Sweden (Frozen Tracks, by Åke Edwardson) and a German novel set in Finland (Jan Costin Wagner’s Ice Moon).
No wonder my problem isn’t finding books for the reading list, it’s cutting it down to a semester’s size.
FGI points out a wonderful take on the New York Times story that made my head explode, the one about defense contractors who also work as news analysts, generally not disclosing their conflict of interest - or that their talking points come from the Pentagon (where those defense contracts come from, so long as you deliver the right message - we’re winning.) I called them “shills.” The Pentagon calls them “message force multipliers.” Jon Stewart pictures them as machine guns spewing post-it notes.
The old-school in-depth investigative journalism in the Times gives us a lot to think about. Jon Stewart pulls out the good bits and makes them funny: for example, embedded journalism is actually an exchange program, with the military embedded in journalism.
Sadly, I can’t embed the piece here because WordPress doesn’t allow the kind of flash that Comedy Central uses, and the content from Comedy Central that used to be on the more user-friendly YouTube was removed so that we’d have to go to the Comedy Central site and watch their ads. So go to FGI to watch it while I mumble to myself about copyright law.
It’s beautiful to see how a little sarcasm can take ideas from a long and complex news story and distill it to . . . what do you call them? Laughing points? No wonder so many people get their news from Jon Stewart.
I’ve been tagged again! This time by Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise. It’s a simple meme, meant to spread the word about books. The task, should you decide to accept it, is this:
Pick up the nearest book, open to page 123, find the fifth sentence, then post the next three sentences. You’re also meant to tag five more people, but so far as I can tell everyone I know has already caught the bug. So I’ll skip that step and instead do the other steps twice for penance.
“Lucien’s grip was legendary, and if you were ever unfortunate enough to have him lay hands on you, you suddenly paid very close attention. It was fun to watch the mechanisms start up, to see Lucien’s eyes start flying over Absakora County, sweeping down from the mountains, through the gullies, over the foothills, and into every attic, cedar chest, closet, and gun case in a hundred square miles. He added five more names to the list, none of which were Indians.” This is from Craig Johnson’s The Cold Dish.
“When he returned to the locker room, he noticed the handkerchief on the bench. It was Chinese silk, embroidered in red with the monogram AL. He picked it up and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, not really caring whether or not she’d return for it.” This one from Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang.
Both books are in a rather tall TBR pile, one from the book room at LCC Denver, the other from my last foray to Once Upon a Crime. Speaking of which, if you’re in the Minneapolis/St. Paul neighborhood, come keep me company on Tuesday, April 29th, at 7pm there, where Pat and Gary are kindly hosting the launch of In the Wind.
People do not seem to be taking Ben Stein’s movie, Expelled, very seriously - the Chicago Tribune gives it a one-star “poor” rating, which is a sign of intelligent life on the planet. Then again, when you read comments (over 1,000 as I write) that include things like “Just what I expected from the liberal left media,” or “this is poor journalism” (actually, it’s not journalism, it’s a movie review, you moron!) you wonder why the idea we’re descended from apes is so upsetting to such a large percentage of . . . er, descendants. We’re neck and neck with Turkey on our skepticism about evolution, as a study in Science demonstrated. Though it’s unfortunately not available in free full text (shame on you, AAAS!) here’s how the article concludes:
The politicization of science in the name of religion and political partisanship is not new to the United States, but transformation of traditional geographically and economically based political parties into religiously oriented ideological coalitions marks the beginning of a new era for science policy. The broad public acceptance of the benefits of science and technology in the second half of the 20th century allowed science to develop a nonpartisan identification that largely protected it from overt partisanship. That era appears to have closed.
Perhaps one reason we’re so skeptical of and/or ignorant of the scientific method is that we’re so often exposed to science with a spin - as if it really is a matter of belief, not evidence. And here’s an example: the Union of Concerned Scientists conducted a study of the Environmental Protection Agency (famous for closing its libraries because they have, you know, information in them) and found that scientists have been muzzled, had their results questioned, and have had findings suppressed or distorted when they don’t fit administration goals. This isn’t the only federal agency that has been leaned on to make the evidence fit the agenda.
For more commentary on this film, visit Expelled Exposed. For a thorough rundown of what’s going on with science during this administration from a Democratic party perspective, visit Politics & Science. And to cheer you up afterward, here’s a nicely silly parody of the controversy.
Sandra Ruttan
