Recently in the literature section:

A great cry of pain escaped through my lips as I read this letter from Terry Pratchett, one of my favourite authors:

Folks,

I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer's, which lay behind this year's phantom "stroke".

We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there's time for at least a few more books yet :o)

-Terry Pratchett

PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as 'I am not dead'. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think - it's too soon to tell. I know it's a very human thing to say "Is there anything I can do", but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

Terry Pratchett is the author of the excellent, satirical, histerical, and witty Discworld series of novels.

The 2007 Merriam-Webster "Word of the Year" is (drum roll please):

w00t.

That's right folks, a l337 speak word has made it into the Word of the Year list. For those that are technology or l337 deficient, I'll let CBS explain:

"W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness.

I never thought "w00t" could sound so sterile.

Guilty admission: I've been known to exclaim "w00t!" out loud in real life when happy. Yes, I know I'm a dork, thank you very much.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007 [Merriam-Webster]

I heard a piece on NPR a little while ago about the a new installation entitled Movable Type at The New York Times headquarters, and finally got around to finding the web site for the installation, which has more pictures.

Moveable Type, by New York artist Ben Rubin and U.C.L.A. associate professor Mark Hansen, is an artwork commissioned for the ground-floor lobby of The New York Times Building in New York City. [It is] a dynamic portrait of The Times. Statistical methods and natural-language processing algorithms [are] used to parse the daily output of the paper (news, features, editorials) and the archives, as well as the activity of visitors to NYTimes.com (browsing, searching, commenting). The resulting refracted view of The Times [is] displayed on 560 vacuum-fluorescent display screens installed in the lobby.

I love the real time display of snippets of stories coupled with the old sounds of a newsroom. In this digital day and age, the newsroom is eerily quiet compared to those noisy, busy news rooms you see in movies. Movable Type brings some of that hectic heyday back into the headquarters of The NYT. The installation continually plays the sounds of old typewriters, printing machines and teletype machines as it displays the random snippets from the stories of the day.

I'll definitely visit next time I'm in NYC.

It's no secret that I love XKCD (and so does my Mother), so Wired has made me happy by doing a feature on Randall Munroe, the writer behind XKCD:

A geek with a paper cut does not bleed CH3, and every nerd has a heart lodged in his chest instead of a TI-85. Behind those thick polycarbonate lenses is a man of flesh and blood, a man who deserves to be loved. Don't believe him? He has the graphs to show it.

"I think the comic that's gotten me the most feedback is actually the one about the stoplights," says Randall Munroe, creator of the hugely popular comic with the unpronounceable title. "Noticing when the stoplights are in sync, or calculating the length of your strides between floor tiles -- normal people notice that kind of stuff, but a certain kind of person will do some calculations." In one comic, the hapless hero charts the size of his dating pool as he ages. "Somewhere at the edge of the bell curve," he declares, "is the girl for me."

I can only hope to reach the levels of insight that Randall has shown through XKCD.

A provocative article that lays out much of my own viewpoints on the dumbing down of the American education system, and how it's churning out a lot of children completely unequipped with an understanding of basic concepts:

He cites studies, reports, hard data, from the appalling effects of television on child brain development (i.e.; any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid's basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life), to the fact that, because of all the insidious mandatory testing teachers are now forced to incorporate into the curriculum, of the 182 school days in a year, there are 110 when such testing is going on somewhere at Oakland High. As one of his colleagues put it, "It's like weighing a calf twice a day, but never feeding it."

But most of all, he simply observes his students, year to year, noting all the obvious evidence of teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words "agriculture," or even "democracy." Not a single student could do it.

I'm amazed every day by how little incoming freshmen at the college I work for know - from basic scientific principles like the behaviour of forces, to how to write an analytical essay. It's ridiculous.

Capitalism has wasted no time in grabbing the opportunity presented by J.K. Rowling's revelation. You can now get Dumbledore pride t-shirts, with part of the proceeds donated to GLAAD.

The world of Harry Potter fan fiction just got a little bit of a treat. J.K Rowling outed character Albus Dumbledore as gay on Friday after a reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."

Rowling goes on to take another jab at the Christian right, which has been vocally critical of her books.

Thank you to everyone that pointed out this story to me.

Doris Lessing, having recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature, had some great choice quotes to say regarding the honour:

Oh Christ! ... I couldn't care less...

I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off...

I'm already thinking about all the people who are going to send me begging letters. I can see them lining up now.

She sounds like exactly the kind of cynical old woman I would love to have a cup of tea with. Via kottke.org.