Carpe Libra

I enjoy a good magazine, but am finding that good magazines are hard to find. I hate buying them from the store for $6 so I subscribe instead, which usually allows you to get a whole year for around $15 or so.

Unfortunately, most magazines start to annoy me after the sixth issue making me wish I’d saved even my $15.

Maghound is a new service being started by Time Inc. where you can pay a monthly fee for magazines and switch your subscriptions whenever you get tired of a magazine.

So, if you subscribed to Runner’s World for 5 months and then your left leg falls off making you hate running for the rest of your life, no problem, you can switch over to Car Audio magazine, until you go deaf anyway, whout losing any money on the deal.

Need to get rid of books? Wouldn’t it be sweet if there was a way to get rid of books and still gain something?

The internet provides you with several options.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a weird book, supposedly looking at life behind the mirror, the reality and the hidden side, or something, I don’t know.

Anyway, Alice shows up as a chess piece so an artist has made a chess set to replicate her experiences.

. . . the chess pieces have an opaque mirror finish, when they touch the surface of the board they magically turn transparent and reveal the identity of the piece contained inside them. When removed from the board they revert to being opaque, hiding the identity of the piece.

This is a comment on how a chess piece has no value unless it is in play on the board. If removed from the board, a pawn and a queen are equal, in that neither have any value.

Slate has a post on some good reading, books and web sites, about the founding of America. Included you will find a site that documents the editorial changes to the Constitution.

“That all Men are created equal and independent; that from that equal Creation they derive Rights inherent and unalienable”—that was reasonably well said. “That they are endowed by their creator with inherent & inalienable rights” is slightly more elegant. “That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”—now that really nails it.

It is my personal and humble opinion that Mark Twain is overrated. He could spin a fine sentence here and there and be clever, but not nearly to the extent to which he was published.

However, I seem to be in a minority in that opinion, which is fine. Some people who disagree with me want to archive everything Twain wrote, including 2,300 personal letters.

The task of archiving all things Twain takes place at the Mark Twain Project.

What’s more fun than mowing your lawn today? Looking up words on Visuwords, of course! Visuwords is an online graphical dictionary and thesaurus. Why the little bubbles are so mesmerizing, I have no idea, but they’re definitely more fun to look at than blades of grass.

Librivox has volunteers record chapters of books which are in the public domain. There are about 1500 currently available. Download and listen for free! Or volunteer your time and read a chapter for their database. Hey, we could do a Carp book and have our members read chapters for posterity!

Spain has a new literary distribution device: vending machines selling novels.

I think the hardest part of this, besides having to go to Spain to use one, is getting a variety of books. They would at least all have to be the same size. But all in all, not a bad idea.

Carp author, Rudyard Kipling, was a studious author. He was made that way by an over-controlling wife (her portrait is above the fireplace) who controlled the ins and outs of Kipling’s writing room. Although his writing room may look pleasant, it became more or less a prison cell.

The chair at his desk was kept on blocks because he was so short. I’m wondering where his computer is. How can you write without a computer?

Dante’s Inferno has taken some pretty tough blows on the Carp 500 rating system. It is pulling a 4.9 out of 10 after ten ratings. We are not the only ones struggling with the book.

In an effort to make the Inferno more accessible to the sad, sad, non-condemning-the-pope-to-hell-world that we live in, several people have gotten creative with it.

Here is an interpretation done by hand-drawn puppets.
Here’s the Inferno done in claymation.
And, one last one, the Inferno in Lego, with light-sabers!