Whoa.

And I'm still trying to wrap my head around PowerPoint.

From Reuters:

The University of California at Berkeley said on Tuesday that it is using Google Video to deliver college courses, including lectures and symposia, free of charge, the first university to have its own featured page on Google Video.

These courses will include ""Physics for Future Presidents," "Integrative Biology," and "Search Engines: Technology, Society and Business," featuring a lecture by Google co-founder Sergey Brin." What, no Victorian Poetry?

To learn exactly what kind of physics future presidents need, check out the site. Based on a perusal of the screen shots and absolutely nothing else, I can safely say I will neither be a physicist nor a future president.

Huzzah!

A's win! A's win! A's win!

Now, please don't choke.

Tidbits.

Huzzah! I finally finished Blue Mars. At last I'm free of the burden of a long and acclaimed science fiction triology tangentially related to my interest areas...at least until I start up The Baroque Cycle. Look, I recognize it's not Proust, but apparently no one's going to be posting on that.

In terms of a review, I think you probably already know whether you're the kind of person who will read a 1000-page trilogy about the terraforming of Mars or not. I liked this book because it handled narrative problems in a fairly interesting way--the "longevity treatment" that extends character's lifespans into the hundreds of years initally seemed like a too-easy end-run around the time span issues involved in colonizing Mars, but ended up being a chance to ask some interesting questions about memory. Also, I liked it because it is clearly the forerunner of other science fiction that I like, (and some that I laughed at); and because I am always a sucker for a novel of ideas, even if it does mean half of the book takes place at a talkfest like a constitutional convention (or a trial, or what have you.) Yet, and this is a big yet, the character development was really something that KSR was apparently only intermittently interested in. Especially in the case of the not one but two enigmatic yet forever silent genius Asian women characters that haunt the margins. (And perhaps we should not even mention the interlude in which the Dalai Lama is reincarnated into a community of tiny Mars men.) This is the kind of book that's more interesting to talk about having read than to actually read, I think, and I don't exactly mean that to be as snarky as it sounds. Obviously Mars' place in the Terran imagination remains powerful. I'm sure I'll read about it again. But for my next book I'd like a little more real in my realism.

Last night's read-alouds: Just Teenie, A Pirate's Alphabet, Bored Bill

Flow

So it seems that lots of people in my building (and in my virtual building) are thinking about writing books too. I think that's somehow gotten me going and I'm happy to say that I've been doing a lot of book-writing lately, which means I haven't been doing too much blog writing unfortunately. But given how much I've read about the importance of maintaining flow (and please don't point out that reading about flow is a way to destroy flow) I am superstitious of anything that might disrupt this rare feeling of being in a groove.

Currently not in a groove: my reading for fun. The following books have been picked up and abandoned by me:
The Botany of Desire. This book has been recommended many times because I write about plant hunters and gardeners and such. And I did enjoy parts of it very much, but a great and growing dislike of Michael Pollan's writing style, plus a feeling that I could see where it was going from a long way off, meant it got returned to the library half-done.
The Long Tail: Ditto, and then some. Why do I persist in reading popular economics? All it inspires is a vast and engulfing sense of rage at the mindless consumption I usually so enjoy.
Among Friends: I was warned on this one, but tried to go ahead anyway, because a) M.F.K. Fisher is really a great writer and b) my mom grew up in the same Los Angeles suburb some years later. But this actually might be the meanest book I've ever read, and yet it's about a community of Quakers.
Home Cooking: This doesn't really count, because I read most of the pages, and I really enjoyed some of the most that I read. (Huh?) Laurie Colwin remains a favorite comfort read, but maybe there's a reason why I only look at her stuff when I have a head cold. It's a little too cozy, even when it's aiming for nasty; maybe M.F.K. Fisher should show up with one of her crazy murderous cook anecdotes.

Currently not being abandoned: Blue Mars. I'll finish this trilogy if it's the last thing I do. But damn, Kim Stanley Robinson--could you have seen your way to a single female character who's not either asexual or an emasculating whore?

Soon enough I'm sure normal order will return and reading will have flow while writing will remain a tortured mess. Until then...go A's!

Let the Anglicisms Roll.

Scene: the kitchen floor.
Players: Mama, OlderKid, YoungerKid

Mama: YoungerKid, do you want to play with your stacking blocks?
OlderKid: Yes, I would like to play! I am rather fond of stacking blocks, Mama.

Argh.

Hello
I'm the guy who sits next to you
And reads the newspaper over your shoulder
Wait
Don't turn the page
I'm not finished
Life is so uncertain

This is how it feels to read Habermas' "Theory of Communicative Action"

I am struggling this morning, and Zil's universally acknowledged truth has driven me to post. Anyway, I can't wait until I, too, am driven to distraction by writing a book. I, however, am in the early stages of graduate school, where I make list of books that I think that I will write in the future, without the actual experience to know that my list is already hopelessly over-full.

Hope all is well at the onset of a new school year: I am simultaneously feeling lethargic, lazy, lively, and hopeful. Above all, I dread the return of the 30,000 or so undergraduates.

Meow.

Some days, it's a bit gray outside. You drop your kid off at preschool and he screams loudly enough to actually rip your heart out of your chest and leave it pulsing on the sand next to the tire swing. You walk to your office and you see the campus Young Republicans have put up a huge 9-11 on the grass using tiny American flags. You decide that it seems like a good day to listen to the great Warren Zevon's album The Wind, recorded as he was in the last stages of cancer. You are nearly crushed by a five-foot stack of Victorian gardening periodicals balanced precariously on your desk. On those days, it's a good idea to stop before things get any worse and look at pictures of cats with stuff on them.

As Warren would say, Enjoy Every Sandwich. Or cheeseburger, as the case may be.

It is a Truth Universally Acknowledged

...that a person trying to write a book, who knows that she has run out of excuses for why she has not yet finished the book, will try to fill the time by coming up with other ideas for other, more popular, books. Of these, 100% will be utterly terrible ideas, and yet, she will feel incredibly compelled to mull over possible plots, character names, crucial scenes, quippy lines of dialogue, etc., at all moments, and most of all when she should be writing the actual book she is actually writing (which sadly contains no quippy dialogue, or plot, for that matter.) She may also write of herself in the third person and spend inordinate amounts of time reading over the archives of Ask Metafilter, looking up random terms in Wikipedia, submitting mix-tape requests, reviewing advice columns, and generally being fascinated by the huge amount of information available on all topics other than the one she is supposedly making a book on. She may, in her darkest moments, contemplate meta-fiction. It is at that moment that she will hear the sweet voice of her child, offering the following pearl of youthful wisdom: "Oh Mama. You're just a fussbucket George."