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They (and especially their lawyers) may have felt it was so explosive that it would have jeapordized the trial. Can you imagine how much more flak they would have taken if they aired it, and this was at the heart of a successful appeal? And frankly how much more trial by media do we need?

I keep hearing this -- that the source is mp3. I just wonder how definitive this really is, esp. when there wasn't a clear source (as JSngry says). If it was a needle-drop, why on earth would they convert it to mp3? And even beyond this, there is a world of difference between a 192, 256 and 320 bit rate mp3s. I'd definitely need to know more before I dismiss these sets completely out of hand (not that I am presuming at all that they are quality products, I'd just like to know more).

Well, the primary excuse is that it would taint the deliberations and preclude Sandusky from a fair trial. It could then be aired later. Granted, the US is very different from the UK and Europe in terms of what can be published prior to a trial. (In at least some countries, notably Germany, privacy laws might preclude much from being published after the trial -- I don't hold much truck with Germany's privacy laws, but that's a different topic.) Given that the interview is out there floating around, if Sandusky takes the stand, one would certainly hope that the prosecutor would ask him to explain those quotes, so they do become part of the trial record. As it is now, they might be considered hearsay (in a legal sense).

Molloy is possibly my favorite novel, and relatively accessible, then they get progressively more difficult. IIRC, The Unnameable may be one long paragraph. Sounds a bit like Garcia Marquez's Autumn of the Patriach. Starts out fairly simple, but by the end, an entire chapter is made up of a single sentence! Actually I did like this quite a bit and do hope to reread one of these days...

I think I read Portrait (the first time) and Dubliners at the "right time" in life, i.e. as a precocious teenager. At that time, I was more willing to dig in a bit deeper and work at the novel (as the modernists intended) and that leaves me more willing to go back to those works. In contrast, I have been trying without success to read Nicholas Mosley's Hopeful Monsters. I suspect I would have gotten through it when I was younger, but I just find its modernist leanings/trappings are too much for me now (with my vastly reduced leisure time), and I can't be bothered. It's also very possible the payoff is not as high as for T.S. Eliot or Joyce. Similarly, I wonder how I would react to Djuna Barnes' Nightwood if I read it now (must have read it in college). It's short enough that I could certainly tackle it again. However, I never did get around to reading Anais Nin's Cities of the Interior and the window may have closed on when I would have appreciated that work the most. Again, hard to say... However, I do like Beckett quite a bit and have seen most of his plays (live, not only on those BBC DVDs). Oddly, I have never gotten around to reading his trilogy, but I surely intend to...

Looks like these "cheapos" are coming directly from the manufacturer. Probably over-produced them and are liquidating the box themselves.

Now that might (just possibly) be worth the pixels. Not that I'd ever find out...

Sounds gripping! Now if only someone would buy the film rights... Sorry -- just thinking about how Hollywood is so convinced that there are no new decent ideas out there that it seems like 80% of the films out now are either remakes (of much better movies) or sequels.

I know that one! Actually never ate there, though I did eat at Golden Pancake or something over on Halsted. My go-to late night food in that neighborhood is Late Night Thai, which opens up around 9 pm and then is open until 5 or 6 am! (I'm sure it wasn't open back then, however.)

Closing in on the halfway mark with Headhunter. I like how the pace doesn't flag, even as Findley layers more and more improbable events on top of each other. I don't really know what genre it fits -- perhaps the fantastic writ large. Happened to pick this up at the library: John Barth's The Book of Ten Nights and A Night. It is so absurdly & ridiculously post-modern that I can't find even the semblance of a plot threaded through any of these stories (it's almost all about what name the narrator wants to go by etc. etc. etc.). I might have had more tolerance for this back in the day (and I do think earlier Barth is worth reading), but this is not worth my time. I feel complete antipathy to the book, and it's going right back to the library on my next trip.

I can't find the Slate article to link to it, but the columnist claimed that everyone could be sorted into a chaos Muppet/puppet (Cookie Monster) or an order Muppet/puppet (Bert). Same things play themselves out everywhere (Wiki moderators going around closing down stubs and claiming some articles aren't worth the pixels it takes to put on your screen). One of the built-in asymmetries is that only Order Muppets would even dream of taking on the role of moderator in the first place. The Chaos Muppets (and in this context I am definitely one) don't see the big deal in a few extra socks (or threads) laying around and do get a bit tired of the nagging. I don't expect this dynamic to ever change. I guess it is up to you how personally you take it. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough that neither side is "right" or "wrong"* -- and neither can fully understand the reason the other side is so driven to tidy things up or be slobby. * You can point to forum "rules" to try to win an argument about threads or whatnot, but that isn't really the point that people have vastly different perspectives on such things. And that's why they keep coming back to the surface over and over.

Me too! Heard bits of that BBC version last night, drifting in and out of sleep. Sounded intriguing but I can't imagine I'd be any more successful reading it now - I like a narrative! It's not the easiest thing in the world for sure. In general, I find that the extreme snobbery and exclusiveness of the high modernists hasn't served them well. 'Oh, you mean I have to have a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature and even read a bit of Greek in order to understand your work? Pass.' And Joyce is by no means the worst. I keep looking at my copy of Pound's Cantos, saying why did I order this? I will never read through the whole thing. My goal for this year is to skim it once and take it to a bookshop. As it happens, I was reading (probably in the Guardian) that some editors have spent 20 years revamping Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. It's just coming out on Penguin. I even had it in my Amazon basket, and I said to myself -- what are you doing -- you will never in your life finish this book. And I came to my senses just in time.

In the midst of Findley's Headhunter. Definitely an interesting read (or rather re-read). Findley imagines Toronto if Kurtz (from Heart of Darkness) was released from his book and ended up in charge of a mental hospital. Not sure how that came together in his imagination, but interesting. Just completed Carol Shields Various Miracles, which is a collection of short stories. Most of them didn't grab me. Still, I decided to pick up her earlier short story collection The Orange Fish when I saw it at the library. Happy Bloom Day everyone! There may be a thread devoted to it, but here is as good as anywhere. I've actually read Ulysses twice and may tackle it once again (in 5+ years). BBC Radio 4 has done a reading/dramatization of much of it (not the entire thing) and the podcasts can be downloaded for approx. 2 weeks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ulysses

I've basically given up on watching NBA (the last sport I did watch). But I really cannot stand JVG's commentary (even heard from the other room). Even he admitted that LeBron totally mugged Durant on the final play, but with 15 seconds was cheering him on for being such a force in the game. Yeah, quite a force when given virtually all the breaks by the refs... If Miami does win it all, it really isn't deserved in my book. The good thing about not caring about sports is that within 6 months of the hype dying down, I literally could not tell you who won any of the various national championships.

I'll send a contribution tonight. Thanks for the "space"!

Yeah, pretty terrible way to end a game when the refs blew quite a number of calls and ended up essentially deciding the game. Maybe it is selective memory that they all seemed to go against OKC (the goal tending call that wasn't etc.) but it sure left a bad taste in my wife's mouth. I don't quite understand why she keeps watching when she has such low regard for the refs, but I guess that's her business.

That's a pretty insanely low price. I have much of the repetoire already (though by different artists -- with exception of Tokyo String Quartet doing Beethoven quartets) but there are certainly quite a number of composers that would be new to me (Kuhnau, Sammartini, Stamitz, Tartini, Pergolesi), so it seems worth the 18 or so pounds to ship it cross the pond.

Cracked would on occasion run Howard the Duck in a 2 or 3 page story. Don't know how it was linked to the Marvel comic (same artists/writers?) and that didn't seem to be a parody. That was pretty cool, and I wish someone would collect those, but other than that I didn't really get into Cracked. Of course, I almost never bought either magazine. I do remember in the glory days you could find Mad and Cracked near grocery check-out counters.

One of those guys I can appreciate but have trouble reading. Too grand & maximalist for my taste. He was teaching in the writing program at Columbia my first semester in 1978, but being a rookie I didn't get my first choice of workshop instructor and was stuck with a total mediocrity named Hilma Wolitzer (whose daughter Meg has subsequently eclipsed her). I've not read all that much Fuentes, but I did like Christopher Unborn (wonder if I'd still like it).

Obviously, your experience may vary, but most of Auster's work is more like the New York Trilogy than Brooklyn Follies. Still, you might like The Invention of Solitude, or at least the first half which is about Auster's father.

That was such a tragedy. They left school because of greed envy and they wound up with no championships and still made plenty of money. There is still some value in staying in school especially when your team in on the brink of true greatness. The money will always be there. Too bad, now Howard is hooked up with Lebron, Wade and Bosh, and he still might not get a ring. Well, my understanding is that even if they had stayed in school, the NCAA would have wiped out those achievements because of UM recruiting violations (pretty much everything from 1992-99 was vacated). Fortunately, they left 1989 alone! But supposedly had UM prevailed in 1993, this would have been overturned. I personally think NCAA is fooling itself that they can make a pronouncement about forfeiting a national title and have the alumni just accept this (like excising the memories a la Men in Black).

I suppose people can do whatever they want with their money or to help them through grieving, but this seems seriously out-of-whack: Amy Winehouse statue planned for the Roundhouse in Camden "to recognise her contribution to music." Story here

Upon which all have now been built. Not. You can sidestep the rule sometimes -- "all of which have now been developed." As a rule, I don't get too hung up on such rules, but if it is nagging at me, I do try a rewrite. (In all these examples, the phrase is passive, which is also to be avoided... )

it's ok. just like everything else, language evolves. the article was no revelation. but this quote is, to me, suspect: 'Scholars recently analyzed more than five million digitized books, about 4 percent of all the books ever printed. Publishing their findings in "Science," the researchers discovered that, by their estimation, “52 percent of the English lexicon – the majority of the words used in English books – consists of lexical ‘dark matter’ undocumented in standard references.' am i reading that right? more than half of the words we read are "lexical dark matter," or neologisms? really? that seems a bit high to say the least. Was the reference not to ALL books, just to the 4% digitalized? Maybe they are the most-easily available for analysis, most recently-composed, and therefore are indeed "lexical dark matter" and neologisms. If even 10-15% of the scanned books are books for MBAs (Who Moved My Cheese, Good to Great, etc.) then this is plausible.

Agreed. I got the CD/DVD for $20 including shipping, and I thought that was very reasonable. $80 for either one more concert DVD or one more concert CD seems highway robbery.