Literal Barrage:archives

…Heavy with links! It’s time, folks, for another massive download of Links Of Interest that I’ve managed to pack-ratsave for your enjoyment, so here goes.
Near-zero-G Mentos & Diet Coke! Yay, science!

I’ve run into some funny automated censorship software in the past (the old America’s Army forums had a particularly aggressive one, so much [...]

Good idea: Defending your intellectual property via every means necessary.
Bad idea: Defending your intellectual property via every means necessary by threatening to sue a competitor whose president is a former lawyer and who has the law on their side.
Good idea: Reading Dave Barry’s Tax Day column.
Bad idea: Reading Dave Barry’s Tax [...]

Wizard Entertainment has a list of the “ultimate fictional weapons”, including Glamdring (Lord of the Rings), Mjolnir (Thor’s hammer), railguns (The Eraser) and He-Man’s Power Sword, among others.
Stunningly missing, however, is Neal Stephenson’s Reason. I hope Wizard are ashamed at their oversight and that they correct it with all due haste.

…For Peasant Pig and the Terrible Dragon, with Lowly Worm as the Jolly Jester, one of my all-time favorite children’s books, is out of print and unless you’re looking to pay at least double on fleaBay, you’re simply not going to get a copy.
Richard Scarry’s publisher needs to get on the stick and get it [...]

On this, the day of the latest Harry Potter film’s release, I stumbled across Cracked.com’ Top 6 Reasons Harry Potter Isn’t For Kids.
For instance, from Reason #3, “Welcome to the Wonderful World of White Supremacy”:

[...]
Rowling, on the other hand, takes the Law & Order approach, lifting the most evil things she could find in history [...]

I recently stumbled across a wonderful thread on the Straight Dope message board posing the following question: What if Lord of the Rings Had Been Written By Someone Else?
Some quick examples, starting with an adaptation that would make Theodor Geisel proud:

“Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring!
I am too small to carry this thing!”
“I can not, will [...]

The original helpdesk employees, apparently, were not brought about by the advent of the computer as previously thought. Instead, a far earlier invention spawned an entire industry:

I bet those Gutenberg rollouts were a real bear at monasteries Europe-wide.

Glenn Reynolds pointed out the following highly interesting story over at SciFi.com today:

Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson’s best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.
When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in [...]

I was extremely surprised to find out that Fox News was readying an interview with O.J. Simpson in advance of his “hypothetical” book’s release. I was even more surprised to find out that they not only backed off the interview but also canceled the book itself. I wouldn’t have pegged Fox to be [...]

Title: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel
Author: Susanna Clarke
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Genre: Fiction
Available From: Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Jonathan Strange is an odd book. Its premise is simple: it’s the early 19th century and the Napoleonic wars are raging in Europe. England, once the proud seat of European magic and magicians, has all but [...]