You are currently browsing the daily archive for July 12, 2008.
From the Apple start page:
Need to write a research paper for a summer course? Then you’ll want to pay a visit to the Florida Community College at Jacksonville and sign up for English Composition II. The 24-unit video course provides a comprehensive resource for writing academic essays. And you can also learn about technical writing, writing for business, and literary analysis, as well. It’s another fine course available on iTunes U.
This course loads in iTunes when you click the link. It is a complete set of lectures in video podcast format, so it is very large. I haven’t had time to review it yet as it has only just started downloading but the lecture list looks comprehensive and in-depth.
Don’t click on this unless you have lots of space on your hard-drive and a fast Broadband connection.
From the Apple start page:
Need to write a research paper for a summer course? Then you’ll want to pay a visit to the Florida Community College at Jacksonville and sign up for English Composition II. The 24-unit video course provides a comprehensive resource for writing academic essays. And you can also learn about technical writing, writing for business, and literary analysis, as well. It’s another fine course available on iTunes U.
This course loads in iTunes when you click the link. It is a complete set of lectures in video podcast format, so it is very large. I haven’t had time to review it yet as it has only just started downloading but the lecture list looks comprehensive and in-depth.
Don’t click on this unless you have lots of space on your hard-drive and a fast Broadband connection.
I was thinking about Ken Campbell going on about John Brunner, who he met an SF convention. He talked about his book The Sheep Look Up, a great title by any standards, and by all accounts a great novel too.
I got to wondering how many other SF works have the word ‘ sheep’ in the title.
Here’s my list:
- ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ by Philip K Dick (Do they?)
- ‘The Sheep Look Up’ by John Brunner (“A complex tragic masterpiece. John Brunner is the Rachel Carson of science fiction” Ian Watson; and “[This book] is, in my opinion and for all kinds of reasons, unquestionably the best SF novel ever written” John Grant, Joint Editor, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Wow, that’s some endorsement from a man who knows what he’s talking about!);
- ‘Black Sheep’ by Ben Peek (a bleak Orwellian Dystopia);
- ‘A Wild Sheep Chase’ by Haruki Murakami and Rupert Degas;
- ‘The Strayed Sheep of Charun’ by John Maddox Roberts;
- ‘*OP Sheep’ by Simon Maginn (supernatural and psychological horror in Wales);
- ‘Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story’ by Leonie Swann (technically a detective novel but included here since the ‘detective’ comprises a flock of sheep attempting to solve the mystery of their shepherd’s murder);
- ‘Sheep’s Clothing’ by Josi S. Kilpack (a YA novel that may not qualify as SF but does feature the internet by an LDS – I found out this means ‘Latter Day Saints’ – novelist);
- ‘Dances with Sheep’ by Keith Knight (Not SF, but a comic strip that sounds hilarious).
To my shame I’ve only read the first on the list, but John Brunner is zooming up the horizon now.
Please feel free to send in any suggestions if you think I’ve missed something.
Now I’m remembering about embedding video (Note Last FM embeds don’t seem to work on WordPress). I had this up on my previous, abandoned, blog and I’ve missed it, so it’s a special bed-time, or any-time, treat.
A Benbecula Sampler is available here and has a wondrous remix of this track (the whole album is lovely and very good value – $1.35).
Great interview between Mariella Frostrup and Mo Hayder, one of the few crime genre writers I’ve really enjoyed, though I must admit I am a dyed-in-the-wool SF junkie most of the time (or I read ‘non-fiction’ stuff about history or science).
Tokyo (aka The Devil of Nanking) is just one of the best things I’ve read, at once eye-wateringly horrifying and utterly amazing.
I haven’t got on as well with the others but do intend to give them another shot, especially Pig Island, which I ended up having to take back to the library after starting and not finishing it (a peculiar vice I suffer from) and now I keep thinking about it. Tropical islands are all very well, but lord, how I miss British libraries, and The British Library for that matter. Another reason I need an eBook Reader.
Come to think of it, there is a second-hand copy of Tokyo in The Book Place in Bridgetown right now (at least there was on Monday) and it’s got MY name on it, so hands off! I also have my beady eye on the copy of Little Big by John Crowley, far too long on my must-read list and soon to be devoured greedily, just as soon as I have finished Gravity’s Rainbow (almost there). Please don’t buy it, or if you do and are reading this, email me and we’ll do an exchange.
OK, it’s bed-time.
A friend from Argentina posted a comment on the previous item and a link to a blog he is running with his secondary students there.
Discrimination is a complex issue. It is one of the ugliest aspects of human behaviour, but it is our ability to recognise and transcend it that makes us truly human.
Incidentally, it’s the first proper feedback I’ve had on the blog, except for email replies and support from Matt Staggs (literary blogger extraordinaire) and the artists I’ve contacted about featuring their work.
Entonces, muchas gracias a mis amigos Argentinos! Y buena suerte. Che!
Nautiloid Burblings 