Sorry for the unannounced blog hiatus. There wasn't really a reason for it; I was just severely lacking in inspiration there for a while. Now I've got a backup of things I've been meaning to post about, which means it's time for a massive link dump:
- Last weekend's Amazon.com "glitch" (a.k.a. #amazonfail) that resulted in lots and lots of GLBT-related books and books on sexuality being suddenly deranked, thus making them much harder to find, is still rippling through the blogosphere. It seems to have been a combination of human error, screwed-up metadata, and PR people who apparently didn't think it was important to explain what was going on. (The last is the part that irked me the most. It's like a textbook example of How Not to Respond to People's Legitimate Concerns.) I've been bookmarking commentaries from Mary Hodder, Chris Forster, Clay Shirky, and Sarah Warn, among others.
- Neuroscientists think we might someday be able to edit memories. Could we actually wind up living in the world of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? And would we want to?
- Summarize an opera plot in 140 characters or less, win a prize! Here are the guidelines. And here are my entries for Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Bellini's Norma, and Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore.
- A remarkably elegant map of web trends laid out like a subway map. I want this on a poster for my office wall.
- "Listening to College Writers" by Anne-Marie Harvey, an essay I wish I'd read when I was teaching first-year writing.
- Literal poetic feet: iamb and trochee foot tattoos (via Emily Lloyd).
- Tweenbots: an art and technology project featuring small, adorable robots designed to solicit help from passersby. There's something fascinating about the video footage of random New Yorkers steering the robot on its way and guiding it around obstacles.
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