More world cup

I'll admit I'm not that into soccer myself,
but how can you not be impressed by the enthusiasm of this pair of Paraguayans?

Writing n' junk

"Do We Still Need Libraries?"

What's the purpose of libraries—really? To be a community gathering place? To promote life-long learning? To help users navigate the information flow? To store print documents for the historical record, as Nicholson Baker argues they should (and aren't) in Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper?

Libraries can serve all these functions. But what they mean to us as physical spaces is changing, and the information-science vision has now been enshrined at Cambridge Main.

from Martha Nichols, who also writes at Talking Writing, a literary blog. I didn't even know there were such things, but if there are blogs for immigration rights activists and healthcare administrators and realtors and hockey fans, I guess that shouldn't surprise me terribly much.


and, "Do Novels Still Matter?" also by Nichols, who is apparently some sort of troublemaker.

OK, one last Salon.com related link:

"Are video games the next great art form?"
Developers are pushing the limits of storytelling, interactivity and design. Why aren't they getting any respect?
By Alex Jung

and, not from Salon, Gina Telaroli, "the top 10 film blogs"

BBC News, "What is Secret Cinema?" This video makes me think some people have more free time and disposable income than sense, although I suppose blogging may strike some as being the same sort of thing, at least as far as the time goes.

At least you can afford shoes

Alejandro González Iñárritu, the marketably avante-gardish Mexican film-maker who directed Amores perros, did the commercial above. I hate to admit I liked this when I saw it at Slate, in spite of many of the things it represents-- commercialism, mindlessly hyperkinetic editing, glitzy phoniness, celebrity worship, and probably a bunch of other things which if pointed out would just belabor the obvious and make this long sentence even longer. But it's still pretty gee-whiz, even if you're not a soccer fan. (Do you ever wonder if some American bloggers pretend to be to soccer fans just to burnish their geek cred? )

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Novelist Elif Şafak-Euronews

Euronews — June 06, 2010 — Elif Şafak is Turkey's most popular female writer. She has also gained fame abroad, not only for her literary accomplishments but also because of the lawsuit brought against her in Turkey because, in one of her novels she refers to the mass killings of Armenians in 1915; that is in The Bastard of Istanbul. The suit was dropped. Euronews met up with Şafak in Lyon, France, where she was attending a book festival. We asked her about her impressions of Europe, her writing and culture.

Ella vs outer space