Tuesday Night Titans

One more wakeup and the oldest monster is done with high school. Which means I'll have to feed him all day, every day, all summer.

• Today on Tuesday Night Titans, we have John "Blindman" Milton versus Will "The Hard Bard" Shakepeare for the Intercontinental superheavyweight title! That, however, begs the real question: Isn't there room for both? Can't we have them tag-team against Dan Brown "The Research Man" and John "Aspiring to Mediocrity" Grisham instead? Is that a dagger I see before me... or just the butter knife at an interminable breakfast that makes one long for all-day staff meetings (which is, of course, the point)?
• This Grauniad blog entry goes wrong at the slugline: "We might not like to admit it, but most of us choose our books on the basis of a quick read of the back cover." Perhaps, if the "us" in question is "people who buy most of their books at airports." However, don't be put off by the blurb about blurbs; the rest of the entry, though, is worth pondering, particularly after the second paragraph.
• Micro$oft is ending its book-scanning project (or, rather, its support for a book-scanning project). This actually makes good business sense, at least for Micro$oft. M$ has always been better at providing computing tools than at providing computing content (Exhibit A: the miserably overpriced and underwritten Encarta). Further, if M$ slides too far into actually providing content, it will become even more vulnerable to antitrust litigation than it already is (or, at least, should be). Which segues nicely into a plea for libraries.
• Just as an all-too-typical non sequitur, I wonder what Colonel Tigh would do if he ever comes across this article on musical hallucinations. Maybe he's not a Cylon after all... he's just schizophrenic. Yeah, that's a big improvement for an officer with nuclear-release authority.
• I feel safest of all among the godless savages at places like Pharyngula. I always find pseudoarguments over conscience versus religion tiresomely amusing; I don't need to anthropomorphize my conscience to pay attention to it.
• On the "unfulfilled cravings" front, porn DVD sales are down at same time as broadcast TV ratings suck. There's an obvious common factor: The craving for "story." Between so-called "reality TV", game shows, and sitcoms, there isn't much on TV. Not being a connoisseur of porn films, I can't speak much for them... but by reputation, there's no story there, either.