We read books, out here on the prairie

I always notice these things at the last minute, and I should pay more attention to all the excitement that goes on around Morris. I just learned that the Prairie Gate Literary Festival starts tomorrow.

We hope you will be able to join us for the 5th Annual Prairie Gate Literary Festival this weekend, October 23-24. Events start on Friday night in Briggs Library with a reading by Hugo and Nebula award nominee Emma Bull at 7pm. Saturday morning sign up for a writing workshop with one or two of the writers and then stick around for lunch with them (included in the registration fee). Saturday afternoon starts with a panel discussion/Q&A session with the authors and is followed by a reading from YA writer Eric Smith at 2:30pm, Translator Ebba Segerberg will share her work at 4:15pm. After dinner stop by at 8pm for a reading by Minnesota Book Award nominee John Hildebrand and poet Vandana Khanna. All readings are free and will be held in Briggs Library.

Whoa, Emma Bull is going to be in town? I know where I’ll be on Friday evening.

Captain America, Socialist

captain-americaFox News threw a fit over the fact that Captain America, the comic book character and movie fantasy, was just too darn liberal. In the latest iteration of the character, not only is he black, but his enemies are home-grown American fascists who hate immigrants, which is just cutting a little too close to the Republican bone.

Amanda Marcotte has a good factual rundown of Cap’s genre history, but I have to say my favorite treatment is this work of fiction, told from the point of view of Steve Rogers’ 21st century publicist.

Something else she didn’t see coming: it turned out Captain America was basically a communist.

“More of a socialist, really,” he said, when she tiptoed toward the matter over lunch on Monday. Luckily, there hadn’t been any fallout from his weekend. It wasn’t that the media had suddenly developed a sense of restraint, more that neither protest had been deemed worthy of press coverage in the first place. Of course, if he kept at it, he would become the reason for said coverage.

“Went to meetings sometimes,” he was saying now, “but I worked a lot and I was pretty much always sick so sometimes I couldn’t—” He gestured vaguely with his chopsticks, then indicated the stone bowl in front of him. “This is really good, what is it?”

“Bi bim bop,” she replied, mostly on auto-pilot, still trying to process the way he’d shrugged off the question as if it was about something totally innocuous. Ice cream flavors. Sports teams. Favorite models of car. Steve experimentally added another couple dollops of hot sauce to his rice, and then it hit her: “Oh my god,” she said, “you slept through the fifties.” He looked up from his bowl blankly. She stared at him. “The whole thing. You missed the entire Red Scare—”

It’s a strange historical phenomenon that people came out of the Great Depression appreciating the role of government in providing security, and then went through the 50s and suddenly turned paranoid against the government.

I support #BoycottStarWarsVII

Every time I go on the damn internet there’s this terrible annoying “SQUEEEE!” noise everywhere. Some new movie trailer is playing on half the computers on the network, I think.

I confess, I felt a strange Force tugging at me too when I saw that — I saw the original on opening day in 1977, I enjoyed The Empire Strikes Back, felt the disappointment of Return of the Jedi, although I had a kid then who was totally into it. And then came the horrible, awful, tedious prequels, and now JJ Abrams is in charge? Bleh. I’m not expecting much, which means I might actually enjoy it, thanks to diminished expectations.

But then there is other optimistic news: the racists have announced a boycott, because it features a black character in a leading role. I approve. Just stay home, racists, from everything.

Apparently the two leading characters are a black man and a woman. Can we dare to hope that the MRAs will also announce a boycott? If all the awful people would just withdraw from the world and sit and stew and fume all by themselves in hermitic isolation, the world would be a better place.

“A nasty little theocracy in a shopping mall”

I’ve heard a lot about Dubai, but honestly, it’s one of the few places on the planet I never want to visit. Zero interest. Actively repelled. And I’d like to visit Antarctica someday!

Building giant skyscrapers and “entertainment complexes” has no appeal — it doesn’t make for an interestingly human place. Here’s a wonderfully brutal rant about Dubai.

Dubai, on the other hand, markets itself as fun in the sun, a kind of Las Vegas on the Persian Gulf. Yet it has far more in common with Saudi Arabia than you’d imagine. Before you say, “But Alex, Dubai is the forward looking part of the Middle East that wants to engage with the world,” I invite you to consider the case of Marte Deborah Dalelv.

Dalelv is a Norwegian fashion designer who was on a business trip in Dubai in 2013. During an evening out, she was raped. She later reported her attack to the police. The authorities’ reaction? Ms Dalelv was charged with perjury, having extramarital sex and drinking alcohol. She received a 16-month jail sentence.

It’s full of entertaining bon mots, too.

Bigger, better, higher, glitzier, nastier: it’s like an entire city designed by Donald Trump.

Aaaah! Run away, run away!

OMG, I’d spend all day in bed

So many choices…but I don’t think they’d be to my wife’s less nerdy taste (or in other words, she’s not quite as tasteless as I am). It’s a whole collection of cephalopod themed bedding.

octobedding

And then we’d have to redo the ghastly 1950s-style floral wallpaper in the bedroom…I wonder if they have wallpaper with tentacles somewhere?

It would improve the resale value of the house! Wouldn’t it?

A useful paper for conversations with those obsessed with health trends

Last year, Nature Chemistry published an article by Alexander F. G. Goldberg and CJ Chemjobber titled “A comprehensive overview of chemical-free consumer products“. Everyone should read it. It’s a thorough description of all chemical-free products, and the paper itself is a free download. Here’s the introduction.

Manufacturers of consumer products, in particular edibles and cosmetics, have broadly employed the term ‘Chemical free’ in marketing campaigns and on product labels. Such characterization is often incorrectly used to imply — and interpreted to mean — that the product in question is healthy, derived from natural sources, or otherwise free from synthetic components. We have examined and subjected to rudimentary analysis an exhaustive number of such products, including but not limited to lotions and cosmetics, herbal supplements, household cleaners, food items, and beverages. Herein are described all those consumer products, to our knowledge, that are appropriately labelled as ‘Chemical free’.

It really is complete. But don’t worry, it won’t take you long to read it.