For the moment the world's highest building (880 meters); recently renamed the Burj al-Khalifa, no explanation given, but Khalifa coincidentally happens to be the name of the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi, which emirate recently bailed out defaulting Dubai to the tune of $10bn ( Read more... )

"It's like a lollipop--you keep a covering on it to keep it clean and nice. You don't want anything dirty to stick to it ( Read more... )

Found the xmas 2007 house. The decorations were mostly from Mueller's Chocolates in the Reading Market in Philadelphia. Yes, that tree is solid chocolate (dark, IIRC).


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Yes, I did fall off the edge of the world, which as Michael Swanwick has observed (and contrary to Andy Capp), lies in the middle east. Of which more, later, perhaps. But life goes on even in free fall.


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About my statement here that Quite a few literary traditions admit only true narratives (what is meant by true is a more complex matter than it would be for us, but that's another topic), comrade_cat asks, any recommended reading?The other Toelken, folklorist Barre, repeatedly emphasizes that rather than asking what the myth says about what people believed to ( Read more... )

Have missed several Black Gate blog posts. Here's today's:

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RIP, J.G. Ballard.

His was among the strange New Worlds fiction that I encountered as an unsuspecting kid in my brother's sf collection, higgledy-piggledy among the Clarke, Asimov, and Simak. I didn't know what to make of it then, but it's been sitting in my backbrain all ( Read more... )

Last week's Black Gate post. Behind, as always these days.

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Last week I had no figures at hand regarding children and teen reading rates. A 2007 National Endowment of the Humanities report on the topic is available here in pdf format (number 47). The short version is that the reading rate is not declining for children, but that as ( Read more... )

From a street in Al Satwa:



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The cross-posting of this week's Black Gate screed.

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There's recently been a bit of discussion here about kids reading sf/f. I spent some time this morning looking up sales figures for children's and YA speculative fiction, to discover that the most detailed information is in market reports that you have to pay for. Still, a few ( Read more... )