Copyright replaced by Creative Commons License (CC)

I have added a Creative Commons license to the blog template under Creative Commons 3.0. This open source and nonprofit licensing collaboration has provided what our respective governments typically have not- a rational approach to licensing. For a great explanation, see Cory Doctorow's article. I'd like to thank my friend George Lenard, employment law blogger extraordinaire, for first alerting me to Creative Commons, its importance and relevance. My photographs have been under Creative Commons for some time now. I'll update the blog to replace or remove all of the traditional copyright symbols and claims.

This change is in part due to the tremendous response to my blog, for which I am grateful, to my feeling the need to share things appropriately, and to my growing appreciation of the Open Source and Publishing movement in its various forms.

JKB

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Evil on the loose in Boston, Southie, Dorchester, Charlestown

Well, I just finished my first book in a while and it isn't one of those I said I was reading. I was reading them, and still am. I've mainly been writing and reading for my environmental blog. I just took a detour into crime fiction as a breather. Boy, was that relaxing.

So, I read Gone Baby Gone (GBG) by Dennis Lehane. Why I spelled Mr. Lehane's name wrong at first, I have no idea, but my apologies for the extra "n". I guess this is one of the dangers of blogging/proofreading late at night. On the other hand, I know I have corrected the spelling of "the" (from "teh") at least four times in the same spot on this page, and the typo keeps coming back! I probably need to collaborate with a professional. See Peter and Frances for examples of how a blog should be written.

Back to the book, Gone, Baby, Gone (Harper Fiction): yes, I'm the guy who typically can't handle books about kids as victims. So, maybe this wasn't a great choice. It starts with the disappearance of a child, and several more children disappear in the course of the story.

I had already read Mystic River, which I thought was excellent, though emotionally draining to the point where I had no desire to see the movie and go through it all over again. I was impressed with the writing then and still was with GBG.

Still, I can't say that GBG really worked for me as a complete book. It was like a rock song or classical music piece with many false endings that picked up again with a new theme just when I thought it was time for intermission (cheese cake and coffee in St. Louis at the symphony, beer at the rock concerts). I can be completely engrossed by conspiracies (take my loyalty and fascination with the TV show Damages, or the million or so espionage books I've read), but here, in GBG, the confluence of events and a profusion of parallel but largely unrelated plots, ones that linked up only from time to time, required too much of a stretch for me to be comfortable. I enjoyed the characters and the language very much, though I didn't find the ending "in character", the ending where Patrick, who has allowed himself to be judge and executioner in the past, suddenly has to follow "the book" and the law because he can't judge.

One odd coincidence (of the type I wasn't buying in the book) is that I was going through my digital photos of family trips and I had a bunch of photos of the exact area where much of the story took place (though from a distance). So I've added some of those here- Charlestown naval yard, Bunker Hill monument, and what used to be a legitimate part of Southie (I think), before warehouses were razed and the new convention center was built. It all looks so harmless it the mid-day, summer sunlight. Who'd have thought ...

© James K. Bashkin, 2007

Pictures by James K. Bashkin, some rights reserved, used by the photographer:

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A Carnival of Bookworms: books that keep you up at night

The October carnival of bookworms just came out today- it highlights blogs on books, readers and writers and has a Halloween-related theme: books that keep you up at night. Thanks to Kirsten for hosting this traveling carnival. Kirsten says:

I'm so thrilled by the range of titles represented in the reviews submitted for this carnival. There are classics like Dracula, Beowulf, and Northanger Abbey. There are books that I consider new classics like Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrel, The Historian, and The Handmaid's Tale. I'm excited that there are children's and young adult books represented in this carnival and really enjoyed reading both the author interview and the book excerpt. My to-read list has definitely grown and I hope yours will too! So, without further ado, here are Thrills and Chills: Spooky Books That Keep You Up at Night:

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Please Read About the Environment Today

On blog action day, Oct 15, 2007, I encourage you to read about the environment. More than that, I encourage you to read articles that you do not agree with, or think you do not agree with. Challenge yourself to think from a fresh perspective, don't just inhabit familiar and safe territory. Only by understanding all sides of the discussion, at least at some level, can we make informed choices.

Science isn't a religion (at least in the normal sense), and if ideas can't hold up to scrutiny, they should be rejected. Of course, some contradictory arguments sound very convincing, but force of rhetoric is irrelevant to scientific argument in the long run, so let's not get trapped by rhetoric in the short term.

Express yourself by taking the multiple choice poll on the right, where you can give multiple answers (if you can see it- mine keeps becoming a comic book ad). Please see more on discussion, disagreement and trustworthiness of sources at my sister blogs: Chemistry for a sustainable world and my world headlines blog http://www.bloglines.com/blog/chemrat. Thanks! Jim

© James K. Bashkin, 2007

Technorati Tags:blog action day, october 15 2007, science and society, policy, trust, whom to believe, science, environment, dissent, argument, discussion, news, poll, climate change, challenge assumptions,
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