Headed to AWP
Well, I'm off to the AWP Conference to, as one of my inspirations once said "confer, converse, and otherwise hob-nob with my brother wizards." Goodbye, folks! I can't come back.…
You Probably Missed the Inklings Reading on Saturday. Here’s the Bit I Read.
The reading I did at Inklings Bookstore in Yakima last weekend was six kinds of fun--special thanks to Emily, events goddess--but most of you reading this post were in no…
Game Theory and “Confession”
Among the Italian Supreme Court's reasons for overturning Amanda Knox's acquittal was their belief that her statement to the police, in which she placed herself at the murder scene and…
Nazism and Conspiracy Theory
Our lords and masters became our lords and masters through conspiracy...and the odd murder. The only way they can justify that to themselves, since they don't want to think of…
To Pan Books or Not to Pan Books
It's been a few months since the bookish among us pondered the question of the value of negative book reviews, so Francine Prose and Zoe Heller are reheating the issue…
Scott Whitmore Reviews Summer of Long Knives
I think he kinda liked it. Set in Munich three years after the Nazis assumed power in Germany, The Summer of Long Knives by Jim Snowden (@snowdenlit) is a wonderfully tense murder…
I Adored This: Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz My rating: 5 of 5 stars Think about the last time you were wrong. Can you remember it? I…
Portrait of Denialism: The Magical Thinking of Mike McGrath
Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, which I'll probably praise to the skies once I'm through with it, pointed me to a particularly extreme case of post-hoc…
The Supersnow Conspiracy
Just the other day, I blogged that one of the reasons we should treat a conspiracy theory as suspect is the assertion that the perpetrators have superpowers. Witness the latest…
The Ordeal of Alexander Aan
I've been going on a bit lately about the Knox case and the mistakes that led to her and her former boyfriend's becoming unwilling cast members in the world's longest…