Me and Sylvia on the canal in Qibao (April 2011)

`READIN`

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

— John Stuart Mill (view other epigraphs)

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READIN started out as a place for me to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly) how to design a web site.

There has been some mission drift here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of the main things I write about here are reading books, listening to (and playing) music, and watching the movies. Also I write about the work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.

The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.

See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.

READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.

🦋 The Subtle Knife

Sylvia and I are wrapped up in The Subtle Knife. Liking it! I am having a little trouble getting as completely into the world of the novel as I got into The Golden Compass, I think primarily because of the introduction of "dark matter", the attempt to tie the fantasy physics of the first book's world into our world's real physics. It's a nice idea but a significant piece of my mind is refusing to suspend disbelief. OTOH Dr. Malone seems like she's going to be a really nice addition to the cast of characters.

Lyra's character has changed in subtle ways -- she is no longer in any sense an ingenue, she knows exactly what's going on and what she needs to do. This is a quality that I disliked about the rendering of Lyra in the movie of The Golden Compass; here it is much more plausible and sensible.

posted evening of Monday, January 5th, 2009
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What's of interest:

➪	Sunday's Zaman publishes A beginner's guide to Ergenekon, the trial of the century. (Something I did not know, and I'm not sure how significant it is: the organization's name comes from a myth about the origins of the Turkish people.)
➪	Dr. Ladysounds finishes up the top-20 list she started last week. Top honors go to of Montreal for peculiar lyrical content and catchy tunes.

(Other links of interest at my Google+ page. It's recommend ed!)

`READIN`

Jeremy's journal

`READIN`

🦋 The Subtle Knife

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