Category: GENERAL
Tor.com: Watch the Skies
Go on over to Tor.com and sign up for their newsletter–as a reward for doing so, you’ll get some free ebooks. The first is Brandon "Finishing the Wheel of Time" Sanderson’s The Mistborn. And next up is supposed to be John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War.
I got the first book via email the other day. It looks like it’s just the typesetting file converted to a PDF, so it’s not an ideal ebook–I wouldn’t want to try to read this on a hand-held device, but I guess I can’t really complain since it’s free. I do wonder, though, how much effort it would have taken to convert the text to a hand-held-friendly format.
links for 2008-02-16
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John Bodkin Adams (January 21, 1899 – July 4, 1983) was an Irish-born British general practitioner and suspected serial killer.[1] More than 160 of his patients died under suspicious circumstances.[1] He was tried and acquitted for the murder of one pat
(In)famous Teetotalers
I was just googling the word "teetotaler" because I was curious about its origin, and since I am one, I figured I should know where the term came from. Wikipedia says:
One anecdote attributes the origin of the word to a meeting of the Preston Temperance Society in 1832 or 1833. This society was founded by Joseph Livesey, who was to become a leader of the temperance movement and the author of The Pledge: "We agree to abstain from all liquors of an intoxicating quality whether ale, porter, wine or ardent spirits, except as medicine." The story attributes the word to Dicky Turner, a member of the society, who had a stammer, and in a speech said that nothing would do but "tee-tee-total abstinence".
A more likely explanation is that teetotal is simply a repetition of the ‘T’ in total (T-total). It is said that as early as 1827 in some Temperance Societies signing a ‘T’ after one’s name signified one’s pledge for total abstinence.
So I thought, hrm, okay, then scrolled down to see what else was in the entry. Included was a link to a list of famous teetotalers, so I clicked over to see who they listed. Before doing so, I was thinking, "Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if John or John Quincy Adams was a teetotaler?" Well, turns out there was a famous–or perhaps I should say infamous (and I don’t mean that in the Three Amigos sense)–John Adams who was a teetotaler: John Bodkin Adams, who was apparently a British suspected serial killer. Creepy. Team JA loses a point there.
Update: I emailed word of this discovery to my Facebook Doppelganger, and he pointed out that Bodkin died on the 4th of July–the same day that President John Adams died. Hrm. Guess I should dread each passing Independence Day, since that’s apparently when John Adamses die.
links for 2008-02-14
A not-so unexpected error has occurred
Grr, MySpace! I mean, thanks for the Featured Books plug, but gods, man–I almost never try to post a blog over there, and when I do I keep getting unexpected errors!
links for 2008-02-13
links for 2008-02-12
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Scalzi doles out a wealth–get it *wealth*?–of information for writers about managing writing income.