Andreas Matern’s Weblog

From here.  Now, its time for Happy Hour.

I am a supporter of Barack Obama, and a Star Wars nerd. I approve of this YouTube video.

Thanks, Tcritic.

Can you believe that J.K. Rowling is suing a small publisher because she claims their 10,000-copy edition of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a book about Rowling’s hugely successful novel series, is just a “rearrangement” of her own material.
Rowling “feels like her words were stolen,” said lawyer Dan Shallman.
Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender’s Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling.

Good stuff, article is here.  “Borrowing” ideas and turns of phrase are one thing - but the obvious parallels between Card’s Ender’s Game and Harry Potter (and Star Wars and approximately 1,000,000 other unlikely hero versus the world stories) just go to show that there are countless ways to tell the same basic plot.  The devil’s in the details.

This is basically a post for Andreas to remember to watch this later. Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore’s Dilemma among others, gave a talk at Google the other day (why can’t I work there?). This is from BoingBoing.