Little, Brown has canceled Kaavya Viswanathan’s two-book contract, and announced that no revised edition of her first book will be issued. The Harvard Crimson is now also reporting similarities between…

Just when you thought the Kaavya Viswanathan stuff might be about to die down a little, here comes the next wave. Turns out one of the New York Times’s readers…

We are apparently in the longest period since 113 B.C. during which no one has crossed the Rhine with fire and sword.

…of a kind. Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 is falling apart (as it has been since ’95, when its nucleus split in four). Check out this one-minute video, an animation created from…

When out in Athy the other afternoon, we managed to score some plaintain from the local African grocery. This is a good thing, and calls for a brief swerve into…

Must see if I can find somewhere that doesn’t want me to buy them in lots of 100. They’d be fun to have in the kitchen, though. (I also kind…

And an excellent writer. And he just did this wonderful long blog post just now (okay, it was really a couple of days ago) in which he said just about…

The only amusing take (with a few home truths thrown in) that I’ve seen so far on the Kaavya Viswanathan situation: It doesn’t help that publishers feel the need to…

Politicoendomasuchia, n: unease with the concept of politicians in costume. -iast, one suffering from this unease. (chuckle) Looks like the Prime Minister of Canada may be enough of a Trekkie…

I’ve been thinking about the possibility of an Apple laptop for a while. Now, with the whole BootCamp thing going on, the possibility is more like a probability. And now…

How about this, then! SciFi Channel announced the development of Caprica, a spinoff prequel of its hit Battlestar Galactica, in presentations to advertisers in New York on April 26. Caprica…

After a whole lot of antibiotics, some blood tests, and various other craziness…it’s up at last. Thanks to everyone for being so patient. The URL and access information are going…

For those of us who can’t find the Beano: Two strains of bacteria have been found to be the key to making beans flatulence-free. Venezuelan researchers say the bacteria, Lactobacillus…

There has already been a fair amount of noise about debut novelist Kaavya Viswanathan over the past couple of days: about her NYT best-seller, and her big two-book advance ($500K)…

Now here’s something worth watching, in an idle sort of way, to see where it goes… Cartoon Network unveiled an upcoming slate of video games based on its original programming,…

I spent the weekend dealing with not only the flared-up ear infection, but also an incipient eye infection. Fortunately the drugs are now taking hold, and I should be able…

Well, the local craziness continues (the most exciting part of it being that my ear problem is back — half back, anyway: I still have one working ear, and with…

We interrupt this morning’s business (draining the fishpond to give it a much-needed cleaning and tend to the aquatic plants, and repeatedly going out to use the slingshot to scare…

I’m going to be testing an application called BlogJet that lets you post to multiple weblogs while working offline. Let’s see how this goes…

It looks as if the import of messages (though not comments) from Blogger to WordPress has gone OK. So now I can get on with other things, like refilling the…

That is to say, “buckets”. (growl) Tags: Inglewood, Los Angeles, elementary school, lockdown

Somehow, while watching this event on “real” TV the other day, I missed this. OMG! William Shatner sings (for certain values of “sing”) to George Lucas …Worth watching just to…

This collection of questions purportedly sent to the organizers of the Sydney Olympics makes me seriously doubt that old canard of my teachers’ that “there’s no such thing as a…

…my favorite tea mug that said “Caffeine First, Wizardry Later”. I got it ages ago to test the CafePress printing system (which is pretty good). Got a little careless this…