Shouldn’t we send in the Aircraft Carriers?

It worked so well for Vietnam and Iraq. …

My opinion is that we should do everything non-violent to protest the brutality of North Korea. Gandhian resistance.

A new book brings this issue to the attention of the general public:

Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.

North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did.

In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin’s life unlocks the secrets of the world’s most repressive totalitarian state.

Shin knew nothing of civilized existence-he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his own family. Through Harden’s harrowing narrative of Shin’s life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world’s darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival.

“The sad thing is, I like it” – Maurice Sendak

“The perfect gift to give a child or grandchild for their high school or college graduation.

Also Father’s Day.

Also, other times.”

- Stephen Colbert

Tom Hanks narrates the audio. It arrives in stores May 8th.

Amazon

… Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand.

Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories.

There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok.

Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. …

The Windup Girl

Bio-engineered plagues?

Genetically modified, sterile crops?

Here’s a real news story dated April 21st, 2011:

Vietnam says it will ask for international help to find out what is causing a skin infection that has already killed 19 people. …

BBC – Vietnam seeks foreign help to beat mystery skin disease

Bacigalupi was inspired to write this book after living through the SARS scare in Asia.

“The Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association (CSFFA)”

The Auroras – Canada’s Science Fiction & Fantasy Awards since 1980
About Us

2012 Prix Aurora Award Nominations

Best Short Fiction – English

title – “One Horrible Day” by Randy McCharles, The 2nd Circle, The 10th Circle Project

Looks like he’s also nominated in another category:

Best Fan Organizations. He’s the founder and chair of When Words Collide, the Fantasy Fiction convention hosted in Calgary.

And mentioned in yet another category:

Best Fan Publication
BCSFAzine,edited by Felicity Walker

Bourbon and Eggnog by Eileen Bell, Ryan McFadden, Billie Milholland and Randy McCharles, 10th Circle Project

related – My Mom and Dad were wed Friday the 13th, 1956. … 56yrs ago today.

11/22/63 is a novel by Stephen King about a time traveler who attempts to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy which occurred on November 22, 1963 (the date of the novel’s title). …

Although the novel contains science fiction and alternate history elements, the majority of it is historical fiction dealing with real-life events and people between 1958 and 1963. …

King’s a terrific story teller. But I can’t particularly recommend this over other pop fiction. I find his books too long.

Actually, the only other King novel I’ve read was Under the Dome.

I found it too long.

He seems a very cool guy, though.

… the 2010 book 101 Places Not to See Before You Die, by Catherine Price. Price says in her introduction that she wrote this amusing guide as an antidote to all the other advice out there re: primo activities.

Number one on her list of what not to see is Missoula, Montana’s Testicle Festival, where 15,000 people gather every year to munch on the bull calf testicles euphemistically known as “Rocky Mountain oysters.” Apparently the event also features a game called Bull—- Bingo, where somebody wins money every time a bull lays a turd down on a giant bingo card. There must be something wrong with me – this actually sounds like a good time. …

read more – And here’s me without even a bucket

testyfesty.com

Other winning entries include: “A Vomitorium”, or being stuck on “The Top of Mount Washington in A Snowstorm”, or landing on “Jupiter’s Worst Moon”

… In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds …

That costs $1,395. Wikipedia is free.

What’s next?

Britannica will still have an online version:

… “Britannica is going to be smaller. We cannot deal with every single cartoon character, we cannot deal with every love life of every celebrity. But we need to have an alternative where facts really matter. Britannica won’t be able to be as large, but it will always be factually correct.” …

That’s debatable. Most studies find Wikipedia nearly as accurate.

… About half a million households pay a $70 annual fee for the online subscription, which includes access to the full database of articles, videos, original documents and to the company’s mobile applications. …

full article

Congratulations Britannica, on staying alive.

So far as I can see, there are no excellent sites yet. The least bad seems to be Goodreads:

… a privately run “social cataloging” website started in December 2006 …

A July 2011 article in The Louisville Courier Journal noted that GoodReads had 5.2 million members. …

If you want to try it out, start at goodreads.com

tutorial – how it works. Or — if you prefer video tutorials — try this.

They have an iPad / iPhone app, too.

1Q84 (One Q Eighty-Four or ichi-kyu-hachi-yon) is a novel by Haruki Murakami, first published in three volumes in Japan in 2009–10. The novel quickly became a sensation, with its first printing selling out the day it was released, and reaching sales of one million within a month. …

… in Japan during a fictionalized 1984 …

Amazon

1Q84 is Japanese word play on the year 1984, in which the story takes place.

There are few parallels with Orwell’s 1984, actually. One of the translators felt that title was not right for the book.

This epic compares more obviously with the Millennium Trilogy — both favourably and unfavourably.

Like Millennium, there are all sorts of details and characters unnecessary to the plot.

Like Millennium, there are many bizarre sexual acts. And a rape revenge sub-plot.

Those who love the book, find it dreamy.

… personally, I’ve got mixed feelings about 1Q84.

Certainly it’s too long. It would be much stronger weighing in at 500 pages, or less. Supposedly Murakami uses repetition for effect. The effect for me is to wish he had a more demanding editor.

I’d love to read a version rewritten by a more succinct novelist, Paul Theroux, for example.

Theroux reviewed it for Vanity Fair:

… at first glance a large, loose, and baggy monster of a novel, but after a satisfying read a symmetrical and multi-layered yarn, as near to a 19th-century three-decker as it is possible to be (it was issued in three volumes to great acclaim in Japan in 2009–10). The label of fantasy-realism has been stuck to it, but it actually has more of a Dickensian or Trollopian structure. Coincidentally, like Trollope, the reclusive Murakami customarily rises at 4:30 A.M. and writes until midmorning—after that, unlike Trollope, he trains for triathlons. … (and ultra-marathons)

read more

It does have an engaging plot. And fascinating lead characters:

• Aomame (ultra-fit female serial killer)

• Tengo (unpublished novelist)

• Ushikawa (ugly private investigator)

After 47hrs … I was sorry it had ended.

I’ll read more Murakami. And have just downloaded Kafka on the Shore.

We are sharing for good reason—not because we are insane, exhibitionistic, or drunk. We are sharing because, at last, we can, and we find benefit in it. Sharing is a social and generous act: it connects us, it establishes and improves relationships, it builds trust, it disarms strangers and stigmas, it fosters the wisdom of the crowd, it enables collaboration, and it empowers us to find, form and act as publics of our own making.

For individuals, sharing is a choice; that is the essence of privacy.

Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, told me that before the net, we had “privacy through obscurity”. We had little chance to be public because we had little access to the tools of publicness: the press, the stage, the broadcast tower (their proprietors were last century’s 1%). Today, we have the opportunity to create, share and connect, and 845m people choose to do so on Facebook alone. Mr Zuckerberg says he is not changing their nature; he is enabling it. …

read more on Buzz Machine

Jeff Jarvis is defending sharing in an Economist magazine debate with Andrew Keen.

I voted for Jeff.

Online sharing is one of the best things that’s happened in my lifetime. But I’m surprised bloggers have not changed the world MORE.

If you are against empowering idiots to spew hate and misinformation online, your best argument is a blog called “LITERALLY UNBELIEVABLE“:

… examples from Facebook of people who think stories from The Onion are real.

You’d successfully argue that many people shouldn’t be allowed to share online.

(via Kottke)