see world life expectancy and income per person change
1800-2007

deteriorating orbit
I am a tad concerned. My knee extension isn't what it was two weeks ago. Flexion has improved, and so that's good. It's just the extension seems to be regressing to what it was pre-op. That's not so good. I've been doing a lot of stretching and exercises to work on it, but over the past three days it seems to have done next to nothing to improve the situation. When I see my physical therapist tomorrow I'll be mentioning my concern, though I'm pretty sure what the response will be. It'll be along the lines of "Do more exercises" or something, and of course that's what I'll be doing. I don't go see my orthodoc until July 20, but I'll be calling up to his office tomorrow anyway, just to make sure he's current.

The increased PT I've been doing has led to increased knee pain. It's a delicate balancing act since I can't increase the amount of pain meds I take. Timing is everything, and so far it's been manageable.

happy camper boy
Noah heads to camp tomorrow morning. His mom's picking him up at 7.00am. He'll be gone all week, and he's looking forward to going. Noah is very much an outdoorsy boy.

not a lot of news
Nope. Not a lot of news to report otherwise. I'm pretty much housebound still. Maybe later this week I'll have something really interesting to post.

Really cool building-a-new-bridge picture.

About symmetry and beauty in physics.

About using spelling errors to catch plagiarism and genetic errors to trace evolutionary lineages.

The second man to walk on the Moon urges Mars settlement as a way of giving people goals.

Research suggests that coffee may counteract some effects of Alzheier’s.

About autism and vaccines as a manufactured controversy.

About political patterns in the blogosphere.

On what makes people “snap”: According to Siegelman and Conway's theory, snapping is not a psychiatric disorder, it is a communication problem. And any kind of closed situation that isolates people and limits communication and contact — preparing for a NASA mission, for example, or any other high-pressure work situation — contributes to the possibility of snapping.

About how language shapes our thoughts: Unfortunately, learning a new language (especially one not closely related to those you know) is never easy; it seems to require paying attention to a new set of distinctions. … Simply put, speakers of languages like Kuuk Thaayorre are much better than English speakers at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes or inside unfamiliar buildings. What enables them — in fact, forces them — to do this is their language. Having their attention trained in this way equips them to perform navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities.

Shyness, being blue-eyed, binge drinking and a clever way of telling that the Iranian elections were fraudulent. Explaining the statistical analysis establishing that fraud was extremely probable: Why would fraudulent numbers look any different? The reason is that humans are bad at making up numbers. Cognitive psychologists have found that study participants in lab experiments asked to write sequences of random digits will tend to select some digits more frequently than others.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/07/day-2-of-ala-and-reading-things-aloud.html

Yesterday I had a breakfast with many librarians, then signed was interviewed in front of a crowd by Roger Sutton from Hornbook, signed for happy librarian-folk for three hours, then napped and went off to dinner with the Newbery Award Committee, the sort of dinner where you have each different course at a different table, and talk to everyone. Then I signed books for them (and for a few stray Printz Committee judges, who crept in).

This morning was Dim Sum with Jill Thompson for breakfast (Here is Jill. People always want to know where she got that bag, and she made it herself. I told her she should take orders for them for a ridiculous amount of money.) Then with Elyse Marshall, ace HarperChildren's publicist, to a local studio where I was interviewed for Barnes and Noble, then recorded some paragraphs from Kipling's The Jungle Book, Ray Bradbury's story "Homecoming" and James Thurber's The 13 Clocks. I loved doing them -- B&N will pick one sequence and have it animated and put up online.

Was fascinated by how different the voice of the narrator was in each case -- the voice of the book, and that reminded me that I had not yet answered this, and had meant to:

Neil ~ Thank you for many hours of entertainment, whether I'm reading your works, or you are! My daughter is finding that chapter books are a good thing, and wants me to read them to her. I'm glad to do so, but I'm looking for some suggestions from a masterful book reader (you) to a very coarse book reader (me). How do you keep the character voices straight in your head? I suppose it helps that you know the words particularly well since you wrote them, but any tips or suggestions? Any other pointers for engaging the listener? I know my daughter doesn't mind (she still wants me to read, after all!), but I'd like to be better for her and for me. Thanks and keep up the superb work, both here on the blog and in the offline printed universe! BRIAN

Let's see. Character voices are more or less easy: I sort of cast them in my head as I go. What's the person like? Who do they remind me of?

I'm appalling at doing accents, but not bad at doing people. And mostly you're not even doing impressions, just general brush strokes. How does a person sound? Well, you hold them in your head and generally sound like that.

When dealing with a larger than life story I'll sometimes go for a larger than life cast in my head: In (for example) The 13 Clocks, in my head, when I read it aloud, I tend to cast Marty Feldman as the Golux, and Peter Sellers (doing his Laurence Olivier in Richard the Third impression) as the evil Duke.

It's hard though, in a big book with a lot of characters, some of whom may nip off-stage for seven or eight chapters at a time. Do your best, and have a picture in your head. Borrow from your life. Steal voices shamelessly.

Most important, just do the voices (including the voice of the Book, which may not be your voice exactly, but should be close enough to it that it won't be a strain), and do not be shy. Even at your worst, you're doing better than you would if you didn't do the voices, and kids are a mostly uncritical audience, especially if you do it with confidence.

Read it as if you're telling a story. Read it as if you're interested and you care. And, the biggest and most important one, vary the tune.

I heard a young writer reading some of his own work in public a few weeks ago, and every sentence had exactly the same tune, the sime rising and falling cadences. They all ended on the same note. The beat that ran through the whole passage did not change from first to last. It was hypnotically dull.

Listen to people read who are good at it. BBC Radio 7 and BBC Radio 4 (here's the Radio 4 Readings website)are a great source of an ever-changing series of books and stories, fiction and non-fiction, all read aloud and read aloud well. Listen to the tune, where voices go up or down. Listen to what makes a reader speed up or slow down -- listen to what keeps you interested and where you lose interest. And do it as they do -- change the tune, change the pace, keep interested and it will keep interesting.

But mostly my advice is this: just do it. Enthusiasm and willingness to do it counts for most of it, and you learn by doing it and get better from doing it.

I've been reading in front of audiences now for almost 20 years. I've got significantly better in that time, mostly because I've done it so much. You learn as you go. You get better as you go. Practice makes if not perfect then at least pretty decent.

And that's all.


Except to wish Roz Kaveney happy birthday.

superversive posts the rules of attraction:

1. If you’re attracted to someone too old for you, that’s just gross.
2. If you’re attracted to someone too young for you, that’s gross and obscene.
3. If you’re attracted to someone you think isn’t too old or young for you, but they think you’re too young or old for them, that’s gross, obscene, and clueless.
4. If you’re attracted to someone who doesn’t find you attractive, that’s gross, clueless, and rude.
5. If you’re attracted to someone who is dating someone else, that’s gross, clueless, rude, and offensive.
6. If you’re attracted to someone who is single by choice, that’s gross, clueless, rude, offensive, and an invasion of privacy.
7. If you’re attracted to a coworker, that’s gross, rude, offensive, unprofessional, and illegal.
8. If you’re attracted to a customer, that’s gross, clueless, and unprofessional.

Read the rest here: http://superversive.livejournal.com/76693.html

To this list I add: If you're attracted to a member of another race, that's gross, offensive, clueless, and racist.

Perhaps we should start a meme.

. . . as I have been given to understand them. This is not a complete list, but will do to not go on with:

1. If you’re attracted to someone too old for you, that’s just gross.
2. If you’re attracted to someone too young for you, that’s gross and obscene.
3. If you’re attracted to someone you think isn’t too old or young for you, but they think you’re too young or old for them, that’s gross, obscene, and clueless.
4. If you’re attracted to someone who doesn’t find you attractive, that’s gross, clueless, and rude.
5. If you’re attracted to someone who is dating someone else, that’s gross, clueless, rude, and offensive.
6. If you’re attracted to someone who is single by choice, that’s gross, clueless, rude, offensive, and an invasion of privacy.
7. If you’re attracted to a coworker, that’s gross, rude, offensive, unprofessional, and illegal.
8. If you’re attracted to a customer, that’s gross, clueless, and unprofessional.
9. If you’re attracted to someone whose customer you are, that’s gross, clueless, rude, offensive, and tacky.
10. If you’re attracted to someone you’ve previously made friends with, that’s gross, obscene, offensive, and gormless.
11. If you’re attracted to someone you haven’t yet made friends with, that’s gross, obscene, clueless, rude, and tacky.
12. If you’re attracted to a complete stranger met in a public place, that’s gross, obscene, rude, and creepy.
13. If you’re attracted to someone more attractive than you, that’s gross, obscene, rude, creepy, and offensive.
14. If you’re attracted to someone less attractive than you, that’s gross, obscene, creepy, tacky, and gormless.
15. If you’re attracted to someone you think is just about as attractive as you, but who thinks you’re less attractive than they are, that’s gross, obscene, rude, creepy, offensive, clueless, and gormless.
16. If you’re attracted to someone you think is just about as attractive as you, but who thinks you’re more attractive than they are, that’s gross, obscene, creepy, tacky, clueless, and gormless.
17. If you’re attracted to someone who is already attracted to someone else, that’s gross, clueless, rude, creepy, possibly obscene, and an invasion of privacy.
18. If you’re attracted to someone richer than you, that’s gross, obscene, creepy, tacky, rude, and mercenary.
19. If you’re attracted to someone poorer than you, that’s gross, obscene, creepy, tacky, rude, offensive, and exploitive.

And now, the big one:

20. If you’re attracted to someone in any of the above categories and you show it, either

(a) by direct statement,
(b) by body language,
(c) by implication,
(d) in public,
(e) in private,
(f) in a semi-public environment,
(g) online,
(h) offline,
(i) in speech,
(j) in writing,
(k) in a bar,
(l) in a car,
(m) on a train,
(n) on a plane,
(o) in a box,
(p) with a fox,
(q) on your blog,
(r) in the fog,
(s) on the phone,
(t) on your own,
(u) to a friend,
(v) in the end,
(w) at the start,
(x) in your heart,
(y) with green eggs and ham, or
(z) to Sam-I-Am,

that is gross, obscene, clueless, gormless, rude, creepy, tacky, offensive, mercenary, exploitive, unprofessional, a gross invasion of privacy, and probably ought to be illegal, and furthermore betrays a total lack of couth, cool, sensitivity, and/or social skills.

So tell me:

Why isn’t the human race extinct yet?

It says something about Italian's complete lack of self-confidence that the main news in the leading newspapers over the last few days is that the L'Aquila G8 meeting "went well". Even from those who consciously hoped it would fail and discredit Berlusconi, there is a kind of silent sigh of relief; and not coincidentally, Berlusconi Derangement Syndrome has fallen largely silent.

In fact, the summit went rather better than just "well". Some useful work, especially on the financial side, was done. But that is the least of it. By taking the world's leading politicians to a disaster area, rather than shutting them behind luxurious gated compounds, it gave a real sense of the stakes of politicians' work. Its efficient running left Italians with a sense that the issues of L'Aquila itself can be resolved; and last but not least, it allowed all the guests to do something that is second nature to them as professional politicians, and which yet they do too rarely together - meet the public, shake hands, listen to problems and promise help, be photographed with heroic firefighters and dignified victims. I am not being sarcastic; in itself, this pleasure in public contact is an innocent part of a politician's nature, and may from time to time be constructive and useful. It is at any rate something that is bred in them from the beginning of their careers, and that they nearly all enjoy doing. To move the summit from the island of La Maddalena to the L'Aquila disaster area was s stroke of showman genius on Berlusconi's part.

But the thing that most Italians are grateful for - and that is increasing the PM's stature among them - is simply this: "Thank God nothing went wrong". There is an expectation that, in international company, Italy will somehow manage to disgrace herself. Indeed, that is a good part of Berlusconi Derangement Syndrome: a widespread sense that the style, as much as the substance, of the man, reflects negatively on us. In a country where far bella figura, to look good in the eyes of others, is a desperate ambition, and conversely public ridicule is the universal nightmare; a country, too, that lives with the pressure of an overwhelming and ever-present past, to which the average Italian simply does not feel equal; the idea that Italy is represented in the world's eyes by a vulgarian of the deepest dye, whose fashion disasters are legend, whose frothy jocosities are of the kind that embarrass people at family reunions, whose attempts at literacy and culture are if anything even worse - the idea that Italy is represented in the world's eyes by Berlusconi is a genuine nightmare.

Therefore, when the vulgarian in question proves able to arrange an international meeting, in difficult circumstances and to a high standard, to the outspoken satisfaction of all his guests - the country rejoices. To an Englishman, such things may be routine and hardly to be noticed; to an Italian, they are at the heart of his conflicted and painful relationship with his country.

"The mind boggles."

Mine certainly did.

"These people don’t hate Palin because of the lies; the lies exist to justify the hate."

Thoughts about the feminist reaction to Sarah Palin by a Reclusive Leftist.

But don't stop at the article: read the comments. It's fascinating stuff: I'm at the 300 mark and still reading...

The number of cafes in France is way down, partly because consumption of sandwiches is up.

A suggestion to increase transparency in public policy.

Pointing out that massive increase in the subsidising of public transport has seen decreases in its usage.

About what is wrong with the Happy Planet Index.

About restraining health care costs (pdf): In 1960, Americans paid almost half of their health care expenses directly out of pocket; today less than one eighth of health care costs are paid out of pocket. As government and private health insurance programs have taken on increasing shares of health care payments, medical prices relative to general prices have risen precipitously. Putting it all in a single chart. About how government provided health insurance is not administratively cheaper. The problems of indeterminacy in such measurements and why the US adopting a European-style system would make the European systems worse: Our messy, organic, wasteful, unfair, irrational system allows experimentation, and they cherry pick the best results. If we stopped doing this, their system would stop looking so good. Link to paper setting out different ways of allocating health care.

About 6% of Brits do their own dentistry, such as the man who superglued his teeth, or the Iraq veteran who pulled his own teeth out with pliers, both because they could not find a NHS dentist. But PM Brown goes to a private dentist.

That anti-trust action helps consumers lacks much supporting evidence, but gives bureaucrats lots to do: it is now getting in the way of keeping US airlines afloat.

GM emerges from bankruptcy. About that: The main difference in the new GM is that it will have an ownership group whose primary concerns are NOT the financial success of the company. … Both the UAW and the US government can pursue such non-business goals secure in the knowledge that financial success is virtually irrelevant, as the US taxpayer can be counted on to make up any shortfalls.

In the US, layoffs have stabilised but hirings have stagnated: suggesting why. Another report of a climate of fear. As well, raising the minimum wage restricts (would-be) employees too. Saying it in pictures. Working through the weird and wonderful steps by which furloughed academics are banned from working on their day(s) off.

The US federal government’s fiscal performance may be a bit unsustainable.

US federal stimulus money is going far more to counties which voted for Obama. This is likely structural rather than deliberate: The secret to the riddle seems to be that areas that benefit from federal spending formulae tend to support the Democrats. Not as a result of short-term fluctuations in voting patterns or federal spending levels, but as a structural element of American politics.

Congressional report finds US federal government policies responsible for (pdf) housing bubbles. They greatly aggravated the problem by enormously increasing the level of risk in the financial system, but the bubbles required local restrictions on land use to start. Sub-prime loans were not the big problem with foreclosures, no-deposit loans were. Suggesting a link between (pdf) housing bubbles and productivity growth. The model only works once what are now called “smart growth” become widespread, because it is only once land use for housing is subject to major regulatory restrictions that a key premise (The fact that land, a finite resource, is a relatively large component of housing (compared with its “share” in other goods) makes the overall supply of housing relatively unresponsive to demand changes; the supply of houses cannot expand indefinitely to meet increases in demand) applies.

In Washington DC, there is a move to restrict the “blight” of “too many” taxicabs. In Melbourne, a taxi licence costs about the same as a median house, in New York: New York City's medallion system, established in 1937 during the Great Depression in response to a ballooning number of unregulated taxis, artificially capped the number of cabs on the road, to what is now about 13,000. … The May 2009 price for an individual medallion, those held by owner-operators, was $568,000. The cost of a corporate medallion was $744,000.

Paper arguing for reform of (pdf) the Oz budget openness rules.

How to write:  think inside the box!  (It's written about movies, but it applies to other stories too.)

Which is one metaphor for it.  I tend to go by whether an idea smells like it's part of the same story.

And if you want to talk about either one and sound all academic-like, you can talk about the unities.  In particular, the unity on which Aristotle harped:  unity of theme.  Everything in a story has to come together.

Look at the British newspaper market and tell me that it in any way reflects the real taste and desires of the British public. Given a wholly free choice, would sixty million Britons limit themselves to less than a dozen newspapers? I doubt it. Would they flock with great enthusiasm to The Sun and The Daily Mirror as their favoured source of news – or what passes for news? Hardly. Even a considerable amount of their own readers treat these newspapers with contempt, or at least with deserved mistrust and profound irony.

The truth is that the current situation of the newspaper market has been the result of a long evolution in which very little has to do with the public’s demand. If demand were the sole factor in newspaper sales, there would be a great deal more diversity at the national level, and rather smaller press empires. What happened is, roughly speaking, this. The invention of the rotary press allowed people who invested heavily in machinery and specialist labour to produce enormous amounts of newspapers at a low unit price. The low unit price is already a knock on the head of smaller local entities, which do not have the use of huge and expensive printing machinery at discount bulk rates – if they have it at all. Now this, in itself, does not necessarily have any effect on demand. The reader of the Tinytown Plain Dealer is not motivated to move to the Monster London Daily Yammerer only because the Yammerer costs him a farthing or two less. At the very least, one would have to accept that the Yammerer has better writers and more interesting features, which is not necessarily the case. But the distributor is. The distributor finds it much more cost-effective to deliver millions of copies of one Yammerer issue than to have to slave to distribute a few hundred or a few thousand copies each of hundreds of little local versions of the Plain Dealer. The distributor either materially favours the Yammerer - which compounds the price advantage it already has over local competitors – or refuses outright to take small newspapers any more.

Then there is advertising. Newspapers have always carried advertising, indeed, in the English-speaking world, they were born as vehicles for advertising. But the large capitalist who has a large advertising budget and wishes to reach a large part of the nation will naturally ignore the Plain Dealer and favour the Yammerer, or one of its few monster London rivals. And this further separates the results of the newspaper market from anything that can properly be described as public demand. The main source of income for newspapers, let alone other media, are not at all the public they claim to serve, but the advertisers. And the advertisers will spread their cash around according to their needs, obviously – not only for national advertising, but for specific demographics; which means that a newspaper that serves a group more likely to spend where a given advertiser is selling, is more likely to receive a juicy advertising contract from that advertiser, than another newspaper that may actually have more circulation but less access to certain specific groups. That is why newspapers in England divide into two groups: broadsheets (although size is no longer what they are judged by), which sell less but serve the more affluent classes; and tabloids – cheap, not very cheerful, vulgar, selling by the millions, taking ads as vulgar and tacky as they are themselves, and producing colossal streams of revenue.

By this time, the Tinytown Plain Dealer has either given up the ghost or reduced itself to a merely local small-ads-and-a-few-local-news-stories vehicle, usually owned by a press empire led by some London Yammerer. The reader of the Plain Dealer, who has developed a habit of daily throwaway reading, moves on, according to taste, either to the Polite Yammerer or to the Tabloid Yammerer; not, mind you, because that is his choice, but because that is the only source of news the market will allow.

The Murdoch press is the extreme, excremental result of this process. Coming late to the party, they penetrate the market by aggressive selling based on sex and violence, curiously associated with a vulgar right-wing populism wearing the trappings of conservatism even as they normalize a kind of daily discourse that would have been unimaginable two generations ago. The importance of the Murdoch pseudo-conservatism and populism lies in lulling the conscience of the reader asleep, reassuring him that the screeching vulgarity that he purchases every day is in fact in some way not a denial of the solid old virtues that he still wishes to be bound to. The Murdoch press offer their readers a promise to have one’s cake of naked girls and sex stories, and eat it to still feel conservative and grounded. How conservative is in fact a society fed on Murdoch pap may be seen by the British abortion, underage pregnancy, divorce and cohabitation statistics.

It seems to me obvious that such an enterprise could not succeed from scratch, in a society that had not become used to an unnatural pattern of media ownership and distribution over generations – one in which the whole discourse of the nation passes through the medium – exactly! – of a few newssheets owned by a couple of dozen people. In a market responding solely, or even mainly, to reader demand, such a product as The Sun would have its place, as pornography always has; but it would not gain centre stage, because it would not be able to use its brutal methods to occupy a large space already cleared and occupied by earlier Yammerers. If it had to compete with a hundred thousand little local news sources, each with its own affectionate public, it would sell maybe a tenth of what it does. But where the market has already been flattened into a nationwide muchness by previous Yammerers, the lower-end of which had already seriously made use of vulgarity and sex as selling tools, the Murdoch tabloid need do no more than use those same means with greater determination and consistency. In the wholly artificial conditions of the English tabloid market, Murdoch was the right man, at the right time, with the right methods. So, of course, was Attila.

I do not think there is one observer of British things in the last forty years who would not agree that Murdoch has been a thoroughly malignant influence. In a press already vulgarized, he has pushed the level further down than it ever had gone before. He has made people used to vulgarity; he has entered families and been the regular reading of children. The next generation has grown up fed on him. The results are visible.

hi evenryone,

howdy)

Try the best tunes of the week from @tsoy   http://twitter.com/dtsoy  , Sander Van Doorn, Michael Jackson and more)

Dmitry Tsoy pres. VA- iNsight Mix 24 Moonset 月落
genres: progressive house, tech house, electro, uplifting trance, minimal techno.
48: 54 l 226 kb/s l 90 Mb

Tracklist: 
1. Dmitry Tsoy - Moonset (Dub Reverb Remix) - iNsight.
2. Fletcher Desyfer pres. Sundogs - Primary Key (PROFF Remix) - Anjunabeats.
3. Jerome Isma Ae- My Tribute To “The King of Pop”(R.I.P. Michael Jackson Strange In Moscow Progressive Trance Remix) - Armada, David Lewis Production.
4. Mike Candys & Jack Holiday- Insomnia (Chris Crime Infinity Remix) - Wombat Music
5. PROFF - Breathe (Ricky Inch Remix) - Brown Eyed Boyz.
6. Holden feat. Julia Thompson - Nothing (Ad Brown Remix) - Unsigned.
7. The Sargents - The Overflow - Alicia Music.
8. Sean Tyas & Simon Patterson - For The Most Part - Reset Records.
9. Sander Van Doorn Pres. Purple Haze - Bliksem - Doorn Records. A tune of the week.
10. 16 Bit Lolitas - Murder Weapon. Hope Recodings. Classic.
RSS podcast: http://dmitrytsoy.podfm.ru/insightmix/rss/
  iTunes podcast: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=321914740

   Facebook iNsight Mixes Podcasts Group: http://groups.to/insight

TWITTER - How Do You Tweet? @ AA-CHAN

I just wrote a blog post about how and why I use Twitter. Thought some people here might find it interesting.

I'm AA-CHAN on Twitter if you want to add me :)

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/07/how-to-play-with-your-food.html

I'm in Chicago right now, for ALA: the annual meeting of the American Library Association. I've been to a couple of them before and have always had a marvellous time -- once, with people like Art Spiegelman and Scott McCloud and Colleen Doran explaining to curious librarians what graphic novels were and why they should have them in their libraries, another time getting to visit New Orleans for the first time Post-Katrina, when I went to two dinners with Poppy Z Brite, and one of them was the first time Poppy's husband, chef Chris DeBarr, ever cooked for me*.

When I was in Melbourne, five years ago, Poppy was a guest of honour with me, and somewhere back then it was decided that we would be going to Alinea, a Chicago restaurant of remarkable coolness. The years went by and I was never in Chicago for long, and Katrina happened, and once Poppy went back to New Orleans she did not want to leave, but we knew one day it would happen.

And tonight it did. Poppy flew up from Chicago and took me to dinner. It was expensive, and, I only discovered at the end of the meal, Poppy was paying. (This is a big public thank you.)

The service and friendliness and sense of enjoyment from the Alinea staff was remarkable. I've had, on rare occasions, food that was as good, and, rarely, I've had food that was better, but I do not ever recall any meal that was as much fun to eat. 23 Courses (hmm, very illuminati) of things that melted or popped or squrunched in your mouth in astounding ways.

I think my favourite not-actually-putting-something-in-my-mouth moment was when the table was covered with bubbling belching dry-ice smoke, and I asked Poppy very nicely if she wouldn't mind saying, "Tonight, my creature, I shall give you Life!" for me, and, bless her, she did.

If anyone reading this is at ALA, I'm doing two signings at the HarperCollins booth 2011, one at 1.00pm on Saturday, the other on 9.00am on Monday (which should have some amusement value). Also a panel on Monday at 1:30pm on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The rest of the time is filled with interviews, receptions, speeches and such.

I'm actually here to receive the Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. Which will be presented on Sunday night, and for which I have written (and already recorded) a speech. (Which will be played if I forget how to talk on Sunday night. It's possible.)

And I want to thank Harper Collins for indulging me, and keeping up the free version of The Graveyard Book on the mousecircus website all that time. You can still listen to (or watch) me read The Graveyard Book, chapter by chapter, across America, at http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx. You can also buy it.

(And to answer a sharp-eyed questioner, yes, there are a couple of changes in the latest printing of The Graveyard Book; I fixed an error in astronomy I'd made, and a misspelled foreign word, and fixed some paragraphs in the acknowledgments that were truncated in the original US edition.)


(And that reminds me: yes, I will be at San Diego Comic Con briefly on Friday July 24th, to do a panel with Henry Selick about Coraline, and a one hour signing afterwards. I'll be at the Eisner Awards for a bit that night, then will zoom across town to the Benefit concert that Amanda Palmer and Vermillion Lies are doing for the CBLDF.)




*Chris says people have been asking for "The Mezze of Destruction", the code-phrase that tells him they were sent from this blog, at the Green Goddess, and getting special extras -- restaurant Easter Eggs, as it were, and I have been getting happy messages from people who have eaten there who tried it. And, almost needless to say, lived.


Right. Bed.

Every time I try to go there I get redirected to some blog with the same name.