Archive for February 11th, 2012
Obit watch: special “Crack is whack” edition.
Saturday, February 11th, 2012Bad signs.
Saturday, February 11th, 2012I picked up a copy of Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages
Now, this may be a fine book; I haven’t finished it yet. But I am a little put off by her opening sentence:
Klingon speakers, those who have devoted themselves to the study of a language invented for the Star Trek franchise, inhabit the lowest possible rung on the geek ladder.
Bzzzzz! Wrong! As we all know, the lowest possible rung on the geek ladder is occupied by “People Who Write Erotic Versions of Star Trek Where All the Characters Are Furries, Like Kirk is an Ocelot or Something, and They Put a Furry Version of Themselves as the Star of the Story.”
(Seriously, as much as I hate Trek, I have a lot of respect for people who can speak Klingon, or any other invented language. I don’t know anybody who looks down on the Klingon speakers.)
Obit watch: February 11, 2012.
Saturday, February 11th, 2012Jeffrey Zaslow, prominent author. (Link goes to the WSJ, but I don’t believe they’ve put this behind a paywall.)
The first time I heard of Zaslow, it was in the context of the legendary contest to replace Ann Landers (after she left the Sun-Times for the Tribune). Zaslow was assigned by the WSJ to cover the contest, entered it on a lark (and to get an angle for his story)…and won, writing an advice column for the paper for the next 14 years.
After that, it seems like he went on to books, mostly as a collaborator with other folks. The best known, and I think the most successful (also the only one I’ve read) was his book with the late Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Also: Jill Kinmont Boothe, the skier who “The Other Side of the Mountain” was based on.