Aimless and wandering

I have grander plans for this blog than I have motivation, apparently. I keep saying that I'm going to do this thing or that thing, and then...never deliver. Terribly lame of me. The post on my most recent reading list is still going to happen, eventually - I have the list drafted and some notes, but I just have to make the time to write it all down. I also have no less than three short stories currently in some form or another, progressing slowly through tinkering with dialogue and attempts at character development, and I'm constantly kicking around ideas. I've gotten in the habit of carrying around a journal so that when I need to write something down I have the means to do so. By Halloween I think I'll have narrowed it down to the two strongest, and get them fleshed out. I'll be looking for people willing to critique and offer an editorial eye, since these will ultimately be used as the basis for a writing portfolio and the best may be submitted for publication (if I get brave enough to face the inevitable rejection...). Anyone willing to help out with that can send me a message or just let me know in the comments.

Since I didn't take a class this semester, I decided to read a little less fiction this fall. Right now I'm working my way through 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann. It's an investigation into the pre-Columbian Americas demographics and culture, and addresses - and sometimes questions - some of the long-held academic theories that are commonly presented as fact every day in classrooms across the country. I'm currently at a section about the Yanomami and the work of Chagnon and Neel in the Amazon, which was a topic discussed in the Cultural Anthropology class I took in the spring (additionally, the novel Amazonia, by James Rollins, partly takes place in a Yanomami village). I get excited when things I've learned about show up in things I'm reading, so I went online to get a little background on the author and discovered that Charles C. Mann had at one time been participating in a discussion of his book (and related topics) on the Amazon.com forum. Although I've only browsed through it, it's pretty interesting reading.

And finally, here's a story about the Vatican going high-tech to curtail theft of their library's nearly priceless collection:

Each one of the library's 70,000 books, which are stored in a bombproof bunker, has been fitted with a computer chip capable of emitting radio signals in order to prevent loss and theft.

The undertaking was in part motivated by an attempted theft by an American art history professor, who smuggled pages torn from a 14th century manuscript that once belonged to Petrarch.

The electronic chips are also designed to ensure that each priceless document remains in its proper place in the vast repository beneath the Vatican.

"In this kind of library, if a book is misplaced, it is as good as lost," said Ambrogio Piazzoni, the library's vice-prefect.



(Read the rest)