Friday, June 24, 2011

I wish I'd written this ....

I'm sorry if you're really busy doing important things, but you really do have to drop everything immediately and read the following article "An Honest Facebook Political Argument":
http:
//www.collegehumor.com/article/5996384/an-honest-facebook-political-argument

Huge thanks to the original clever author Chase Mitchell, who also has some other pretty good origina
l stuff at the same page.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Organising "Personal" Papers: I've been busy ...

Stage One is almost complete. At the moment, most of the labels have not been permanently fixed; as the archive boxes fill up, there's the usual shuffling about and starting new boxes.

Some of them are filled beyond capacity by single-topic files - gee, bet you can't guess which topics. Not.

Luckily my local stationer had few mark-downs recently. Added to which, of course, it's given me something to do.

Educational Value of Facebook?

The passage below is an excellent definition for the Fantasy genre of fiction - but lacks any attribution, statement of authorship, references ... nor paragraph structure.

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in fictional worlds where magic is common. Fantasy is generally distinguished from science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of (pseudo-)scientific and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three (which are subgenres of speculative fiction).In popular culture, the genre of fantasy is dominated by its medievalist form, especially since the worldwide success of The Lord of the Rings books by J. R. R. Tolkien. In its broadest sense however, fantasy comprises works by many writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians, from ancient myths and legends to many recent works embraced by a wide audience today.Fantasy is a vibrant area of academic study in a number of disciplines (English, cultural studies, comparative literature, history, medieval studies). Work in this area ranges widely, from the structuralist theory of Tzvetan Todorov, which emphasizes the fantastic as a liminal space, to work on the connections (political, historical, literary) between medievalism and popular culture.

We are making progress, but by golly - there's still a long way to go.