* shwetha_narayan's wonderful poem " Apsara" is now up at Goblin Fruit for the summer. First link should be permanent, second is where you can read the poem right now (ETA: may also be permanent, and better formatted, if it goes in the archive).

* Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," with audio--perhaps the most famous English-language ( Read more... )

* Eunoia, a constrained-writing experiment by Christian Bök.

* Via yhlee, the constrained-writing group Oulipo: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle.

* Also via yhlee, 25 subliminal-messaging logos.

* Via mrissa: swan_tower aka Marie Brennan is offering a free novella, Deeds of Men, online.

* Just a call-out to the Secular Coalition for America.

* Helping those with ( Read more... )

* H.E.R.B.--Had Enough Religious Bullshit--amuses me.

* As does this humorous dialogue between an atheist and an agnostic.

* I heard on the radio that Justice Souter is retiring? Here's an article on one possible Obama pick to replace him. Look, he's Asian! Wouldn't that be nice, to have the country's first Asian ever (I think) on the Supreme ( Read more... )

The Little Book of Atheist Spiritualityby André Comte-Sponville ( Read more... )

* From Language Log, an interesting analysis of Zhonglish (the specific Chinese-English creole of China, I presume, as opposed to Chinglish of the West).

* Via yhlee, an article on e-publishing in China.

* Tibetans refuse to celebrate the New Year.

* On the atheist community befriending the ex-Muslim. Definitely worth reading from an intersectional ( Read more... )

* A facetious guide written by an engineer on how to deconstruct almost anything.

* mrissa declares a new holiday, February 13: One Year Closer to Balance. And there's a homework assignment! Do something to bring balance to your life, then drop her a line about it. Go on, you know you want to! I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet; it may or may ( Read more... )

I didn't expect to see the inauguration live, but I did--a lucky coincidence of class scheduling. I was struck by Barack Obama's inclusion of "non-believers" in his list of American faiths; it was an ironic moment in a ceremony of barely veiled religious pageantry. The "invocation" (aka prayer) by Rick Warren, "So help me God" in both Congressional ( Read more... )

* I have not a lot to say about the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM, as oyceter so aptly named it. rilina has a nice links round-up, to which I will add truepenny's excellent post. I'm truly on the fence about this one, as I can see both sides--I think Bear failed to take her character beyond token, but I also respect her inclusion of the character ( Read more... )

* Strange Horizons has a wonderful column on genre boundaries.

* varkat on 10 epic fantasy themes we don't see enough [of].

* A cool cheatsheet on the major publishing imprints.

* SF Signal presents various contributors' favorite F/SF subgenres.

* I'm finally reading xkcd, and the fiction rule of thumb is beautiful.

* A moving article on ( Read more... )

So I went to the local Chinese church youth group tonight. Yeah, the conservative evangelical one; a Quaker-atheist friend had asked me, and I was interested in seeing what it was like. Verdict: I wouldn't mind going again, but I would definitely bring a notebook to take notes rather than trying to record in Events on my cell phone. Although today ( Read more... )