snarkage

Scientific American decides to break out the Glorious Giant Hammer Of Sarcasm +5, while Gene Lyons takes a sharp object to the Revelation-Porn "Left Behind" series in a review in Harpers.

On the topic of Harpers, I'll just remind people that their magnificent Harpers Index is online, back to 1998. It's amazing just how brutal simple "statistics" can be when presented in this format. For instance, from January 2005:

Number of House members in 1979 who voted against making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday : 133

Number who are still in the House : 9

Number who are Vice President : 1

geek out time

Via Neil Gaiman's blog, we have the opening bit of his new book, Anansi Boys. In addition, there's a video bit (in realplayer format) from the National Book Festival of Gaiman reading bits of this new book. Much fun. Book is not out until September 20th, though. :-(

Also - if you've already seen the *ahem* sneak-preview version of the first of the new Dr Who episodes, don't bother with the "official" version available from your local source of fine BBC television *cough*bittorrent*cough*. There's only a couple of small changes in sound effects that I noticed.