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Four Hundred Words for Six Hundred Dollars

The announcement arrived through LJExpress on a Friday in late July, dressed in the language of service. Media Source, the company that owns Library Journal, School Library Journal, The Horn Book, and the Junior Library Guild, had opened a storefront called Open Shelf Reviews, aimed at independent authors and small presses, and the copy asked me to hold two ideas at once: the reviews would be paid for by the authors under review, and a wall would keep those purchased reviews away from the magazines whose names give the wall its worth. The company described the operation as “a clearly identified paid service,” with its own editor, reviewer pool, and website, all kept apart from the editorial processes that made Library Journal matter to librarians for a century and a half.

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‘c’: More Than Just Fast as We Unpack the Universe’s Master Constant

Let’s dive into the universe’s ultimate speed limit: the speed of light. It’s a concept so fundamental that it underpins much of modern physics, yet so mind-bogglingly fast that, as you say, human intuition struggles to truly grasp it. We call it ‘c’, and its value in a vacuum is precisely 299,792,458 meters per second. That’s not just an estimate; since 1983, the meter has been precisely defined as the distance that light travels in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. So, light’s speed isn’t just something we measure; it’s a foundational pillar of our measurement system.

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Deirdre of the Sorrows Redacted: Ten Sentence Story #120

In 1910, germinal Author, Playwright and Poet, John Millington Synge — published “Deirdre of the Sorrows” — his last, and most underrated, work.

Synge died before he could finish the play, so his friend, and mentor, William Butler Yeats, helped complete the play with the assistance of Synge’s betrothed, Molly Allgood.

Deirdre of the Sorrows is steeped in Irish mythology and the story of Deirdre and Conchobar — and in this Boles Blogs redaction, I have taken the three-act play and reduced the entire plot into seven sentences in which the word “stars” appears eight times in the play — in order to show how a master Playwright can use a single word to lash together the entire structure of a play with a single meme; and notice how “stars” is used as a common touchstone only by Deirdre and Naisi throughout the entire play, except at the end, when Lavarcham alone invokes their sacred word to resurrect, and codify, the Deirdre and Naisi covenant.

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Vox Mobile Catalog Review

I was toodling around the iTunes App store this morning, and when I did a search for “guitar amps,” I discovered the “Vox Mobile Catalog” for my iPhone and I was hooked the moment after the free download.

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Ten Sixty-Three

Does a Blue Moon sing The Blues?

Always inside sunshine.

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Flickering in Starlight

I miss the old days of watching stars flicker under lingering stars in the open and unprotected midst of a drive-in movie theatre.

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Marlee Matlin Dancing Deaf with the Stars

Marlee Matlin — a gorgeous and talented 43-year-old Deaf actress and Academy Award winner — made her debut last night on Dancing with the Stars, but few people realize the magnitude and the magnificence of her accomplishment.

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