File this under “don’t they have anything better to do?”

The Globe and Mail is conducting a poll which asks whether or not Dr. Henry Morgentaler should recieve the Order of Canada. The anti-choice are out clicking in force and the results are, so far, 87% against.

I know

there have been various controversies over Facebook, but after having a wonderful evening last weekend with an old high-school friend I hadn’t seen for decades, I could care less about all that. Security, piffle! I Facebook because it enabled me to get back in touch with a very dear friend. We talked, we laughed, we discovered, disconcertingly, that we remembered parallel universes but the old comfort with each other is still there for all that.

[And I know he's probably found this blog. Hi! Are your ears burning?]

Addendum (Feb 15/08): more persuasive anti-Facebook arguments.

Another reason to finish that doctorate, ladies:

In a recent study, Statistics Canada found that according to data in the 2001 Census, a female doctorate holder earned 77 cents for every dollar a male doctorate holder earned. Women earn 71 cents for every dollar earned by men in the general workforce. (Via Dale Kirby)

List of books read

• The Keep by Jennifer Egan. Really well done; a bit of a literary Rubick’s cube, with all that that implies. Recommended. (excerpt)
• Guardian by Joe Haldeman. Read it in one sitting in the bath — back problems; don’t ask — and it promptly fell apart. Engaging enough but inbred, in a U.S./SF of-a-certain-generation way, and the final section smacks of wish-fulfillment.
• Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley. A weird and wild ride. Dystopic near-future takes a sharp turn off the map. Recommended.
• Living Next to the God of Love by Justina Robson. Also falling apart from long bath time reads. Also a weird and wild ride. Where technology and consciousness meet. Recommended.

Okay, this is good too.

[Xmas card c.1895]

Who on earth thought of this? And why?

I can just imagine my own Miss Sally-the-Schnauzer with a gun: “There’s a chipmunk!” BLAM! “There’s the cat!!” BLAM! “There’s the hydro guy sneaking around back!!!” BLAM!

That little dog is looking pretty intent. And she’s smiling.

Damn straight.

Now this

just doesn’t happen very often: Verlyn Klinkenborg has written a piece for the New York Times that connects the eighteenth century with speculative fiction. See “When Doris Lessing Meets Lady Mary Wortley Montagu” (Dec. 8/07) for an interesting read about the ways in which we tend to position writers from the past, and how re-imagining them can offer new insights. The wry Montagu is particularly suitable for this somewhat whimsical treatment, while conversely being enough of a heavyweight to survive a comparison with Lessing.

[Xposted to The Long Eighteenth]

Oh, and

please sign this open letter to Premier Shawn Graham re. threats to higher education in New Brunwick. Signatories from outside the province, and the country, are particularly welcome.

Am I

the only person on Facebook who has “friends” whom she is not even sure she knows?

Therapeutic reading

Just finished two novels, mainly in the bathtub: The Edith Wharton Murders: A Nick Hoffman Mystery by Lev Raphael (Stonewall Inn, 1998), a slight novel most notable for its bitter, somehow bloodless, yet very funny send-up of the dusty grey corners of second-tier academe. Highly therapeutic, especially just now. I mean, things are bad, but at least I don’t have to share an office.

Yet.

The second one was the latest Ian Rankin novel, Exit Music, which chronicles the final ten days of John Rebus’ chequered career with the Edinburgh police. It was excellent; perhaps not as strong as the novel immediately preceding it, The Naming of the Dead, but satisfying all the same and clearly indicating, or at least leaving the door open to, Rebus’ further adventures. Rankin is too smart to paint himself into the same corner as Arthur Conan Doyle.