Diane

“…new children’s books by big-name celebrities will at least initially sell well (and be foisted on defenceless kids).”

Is it possible (as my mail suggests) that the kids aren’t quite as defenseless as they may seem to many poor deluded adults? That the kids know the dross from the gold? But how would you convince adults of this? (sigh) Most of whom, frankly, don’t remember their own childhoods particularly well…and therefore don’t have a hope of understanding what a twenty-first century childhood might seem like?

Yesterday Peter and I went up to Dublin to do some food shopping at Asia Market, the grocery that supplies most of the Asian restaurants in town. As usual I picked up a lot of Japanese stuff —
I like the “robata” style of Japanese grilling, as well as much other Japanese food — and, as usual, I picked up some things that looked interesting, though in some cases I wasn’t quite sure what they were.

This one is, as you might guess, chopped dried seaweed to be used as a garnish. Well, fine, I needed some of that. But what made me pick the package up was the chicken. She’s singing. Does it have anything to do with the seaweed? With her chicks? I have no idea. But I just love the look of some of this packaging.

And a moment from it:

“3. Heraclitus sez: “Fire will come to all things, to judge and to seize.” Parmenides sez: “Nor was it at any time, nor will it be; for it is now, all together, one and continuous.” I say, let’s get them each a bottle of Old Nick and a crowbar, and have them hash this thing out once and for all.]”

From Variety this morning: The Flash is being retooled (without “tights” and with added time travel. Ick…)

“As with ‘Smallville,’ the new ‘Flash’ will have a ‘no tights, no flights’ philosophy, which means the character won’t be clad in the classic red suit. He’ll also have a cool 21st-century mantra that will guide his life.

“Once our hero gets his calling, he’s given the advice, ‘Live fast so others don’t die young,’ ” Komarnicki said.”

Urg.

… and Christian Bale has been cast as the next Batman. (See also this link in case the Variety link is premium content.)

From Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses:

�Where are we heading, exactly?� Lee said.

�East, and a little farther downtown,� the Elf-king said. �There�s another potential �rogue� worldgate nearby; we can use it to get out of here, and slow down the pursuit a little more.�

He waited until they came to the next corner, gazed up at the sign. �This is it,� Laurin said. �East from here.�

They crossed Sixth Avenue. �It�s weird,� Lee said absently, while her mind was turning over the awful things the Elf-king had told them. �Except for the vehicles, the place looks normal.� She glanced down Sixth Avenue. �But where�s the World Trade Center gone?�

Gelert glanced down the way she was looking, shrugged his ears, winced. �Other side of the island, maybe? This is an alternate universe…”

They went on down Sixth Street, past the brownstones, mostly ignored by passersby who saw nothing but a man, a woman and a very big white dog, possibly some kind of wolfhound. Lee, for her own part, was finding it increasingly difficult just to be in this space; it itched, burning on her skin, and she wondered how the people here bore it. This was not a world that was kind to life. Her lungs were burning, too, not just with smog. The air here was full of something unfriendlier still, the presence of a universe that didn�t care anymore, if it ever had. How do you make a universe stop paying attention to what happens in it? How badly do you have to hurt it that it turns its back on what�s living in it, just lies there, passive, unwilling to get involved? For she couldn�t shake the feeling that this place hadn�t always been this way; its ethical constant hadn�t always been this low, couldn�t have been. Something had to have happened.

Or you hope it did, the colder side of her mind answered her back. What if it was always this way? What if this is a perfectly normal way for some universes to be? And what if, when our sheaf rotates again someday, more universes are created like this�or worse?

That was a thought too awful to entertain. It has to be possible to heal such places, Lee thought, or to keep them from happening. If there was any way, any way in the worlds…

(and in Wizard’s Holiday:)

Nita went quietly down the stairs. The living room was empty, but from the dining room she heard a voice, Tom�s voice. Nita froze only a few steps from the stairs.

�It�s something we just have to deal with,� Tom was saying. �Sometimes you hit � When we speak of them in English, we call them �cardinal events,� which is a vague equivalent to a word in the Speech that�s derived from the Speech�s root word for �hinge.� There are moments in the lives of people, of nations, of cultures, of worlds, on which everything to come afterward hangs, or turns � like the hinge of a door. If intervention comes at one moment, the door swings one way. If it comes a moment early, a moment late, the hinge swings another. And sometimes no intervention, regardless of its size, is enough to change the way the door swings. There are some changes that simply have so much impetus behind them, driven by the force of earlier events � the way in which other �hinges� have swung � that there�s no stopping them, no matter what you do. As a result, a life changes, or ends… or a thousand lives do, or three thousand… and whole avalanches of change come tumbling down through the opening left by the way that door swung. All a wizard can do, in the face of one of these avalanches of chance and change, is pick a spot to intervene in the consequences and try to clean up afterward.� And Tom sighed. �No matter what we do,� he said, �entropy is still running.�

There was a long silence. �I�m so sorry,� Nita heard her dad say.

�Not half as sorry as we were,� Tom said, �that we couldn�t stop it.� Another painful breath. �But day by day, in the aftermath, we do what we can, and try to be ready for the next �hinge�…try to recognize it when it comes. It�s all we can do. And we have to keep reminding ourselves, because we know it�s true, that what comes of what we do will eventually make a difference; and the Powers That Be will find a way through even our species� worst cruelties to something better, if we just don�t give up.�

You go, Dave!

Barry for President! And Lileks for VP. He won’t be in some “undisclosed location,” no sirree!

Thank you, YACCS.

From the Irish Times:

“Human trials are to begin next year on the vaccine, which uses part of a common bacteria to halt the effects of these debilitating diseases. It acts by helping to re-educate the body’s immune system.

“…Auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis occur when tissues are damaged by the body’s own immune system, explained Dr Neil Williams of the University of Bristol.

“‘The immune system can go wrong and attack our own tissues,’ he said. His approach involves ‘re-educating the immune system and putting the controls back in place’.

“He has already succeeded in doing this in animal models by using a single protein from a common and harmless form of the bacterium E.coli.

“The results were quite startling, with the majority of test mice that naturally developed arthritis avoiding the disease altogether. The risk of developing arthritis fell from 80 per cent of test mice to just 15 per cent after treatment, he said.

“The bacterial protein stimulates an immune system regulator which dampens down the body’s immune response. “It seems that its function is to suppress chronic inflammatory disease,” said Dr Williams. The regulator was able to shut down the arthritic inflammation being produced by the immune system.”

Also mentioned: a vaccine against prostate cancer, presently in effectiveness trials, and a report of progress in vaccines against cocaine and nicotine addiction.

A couple of takes on the Presidential address: from the Rocky Mountain Press, and from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

“The chocolate-making nations,” huh. (wry look) I wonder how the Swiss feel about the cognomen…

…because some of the leaves on the tips of the branches of the beech trees surrounding the house are beginning to go golden. (sigh) Autumn arrives…though slowly. Maybe I’ll put a picture up later. I’m not sure if the camera is finished charging up yet (it just got pluggged back in last night: it dumped its charge on the way to Worldcon…something in the carry-on luggage hit its “on” button and drained its battery before we ever got to Toronto. Very annoying…).

By the way, thanks to those of you who’ve e-mailed me to tell me the comments are down. It seems that YACCS is having some kind of server problem, which (the site says) will be fixed on the 9th.