(Tried posting a comment once before, but that wacky error message stopped me.)

This is one of my favorite SF novels and when I learned that it was out of copyright and available for "Gutenbergization", I sacrificed a paperback and scanned it.

The version at Manybooks is taken from the PG proofing site, so there still might be errors in the text. It should go up at PG soon.

My thanks to my friend Winchell Chung for doing a nice scan of the classic cover art as well.

Dave Barry had a column once about how the porch to his house in Florida was ruined after a hurricane. His two dogs always left the house through the door of the porch.

After the hurricane the porch was gone, but the door's frame was still there. The dogs **still** exited via the door frame.

I recall several years ago this started with plastic model kits and scale model railroad cars and engines. LockMart was shaking down a lot of the model makers, especially the small shops.

There may have even been a DMCA claim against one of the scale model railroad companies, but I'm not as sure on that.

I find these laws annoying as...what about smoking while driving? Drinking coffee, water, soda, etc., while driving? Eating while driving? Putting on makeup while driving? Heck, getting dressed while driving (and I saw that once)?

"Fredkieshe, have you sent an email to each one of those publishers, just to help them understand that their customers don't want DMR?"

I have spoken to Fictionwise (the Pendergrast Brothers) who now own eReader.

I've shown them the cold hard numbers...how much I spent at Baen Books vs. Fictionwise and eReader over the same period of time. Purchases at Baen keep going up...purchases at the other two sites went to zero some years ago and have stayed there.

Response? None yet. It is possible that they would be happy to drop DRM schemes (certainly, a lot of the Mobipocket format stuff they carry doesn't have any DRM on it) but they are constrained by the publishers.

I heard from Rumor Control that 2008 is the year publishers drop DRM. Let's see if it is true.

Now if only they would start dropping DRM from eBooks. Are you listening Amazon? Fictionwise? eReader (now part of Fictionwise)? Mobipocket (now part of Amazon)?

"This is probably the first time in my life that I'm on the President's side."

A sure sign of the end times.

But seriously...what's wrong with his interpretation? Isn't one of the points of art that it is open to interpretation? You read Moby Dick. Some see it a narrative of whaling, others a re-interpretation of man's relationship with man (or whatever).

I have a painting on my wall from my grandmother. I have no clue if it is a reproduction or an original, and I don't care. It depicts a night scene in the bay of some Turkish or far eastern city. When I was growing up it was the home of the Arbian Nights, for me. Whether that is true or not, why should anybody care. It's my interpretation.

Honestly, this whole thing is as bad as CNBC's insistence on whether or not the Fed was going to cut rates because they claimed to be able to interpret Alan Greenspan's attitude from the way he carried his briefcase (from the handle or under his arm).

The Old Man of the Mountain is no more...

http://gonewengland.about.com/cs/nhhistory/l/bloldmanofmtn.htm

At one point they were talking about making a new one to replace it, don't know what the status of that is.

You folks covered this very same subject, down to the Silverberg article, in 2005...

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/11/pulp-sf-magazines-ro.html

There truly is nothing new under the sun, I guess!

"Scavengers in Space" was one of my favorite Nourse books growing up. It'll be interesting to see where it came from!

TheSpaceReview takes a look at Hoagland's latest efforts.

http://thespacereview.com/article/1022/1

And I second the recommendation for "What We Really Do Here at NASA"! The truth is in there! That and the recent revelations at NASAWatch about a stargate found at NASA...

Did you guys even look up Hoagland's name before pimping that book? If anybody has been perpetuating a fraud, it has been him. My God, it's full of B.S...

A long time ago there was a travelling exhibit on the special effects (matte paintings, mostly) from the films of Hitchcock. They had stills from Spellbound, including that cut sequence you mentioned. Other nifty pieces were the matte paintings from "North by Northwest" and "The Birds". Not Dali, but interesting stuff!

I once had a chance to buy a sketch for a Dali painting. But I was a poor college student then, dang it!

See Scalzi's site. Burt is out as chairman of the copyrights committee.

Huh! Seek and I shall find!

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7052524

There's a fair bit of mention about a version of "The Fall of the House of Usher" that Glass worked on. See here and elsewhere:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe_and_music

Once on A&E I saw (on Halloween, of course) a biographical documentary on Edgar Allen Poe. It had interviews with Glass, music by Glass and even a couple of short films (Cask of Amontillado) with music by Glass. Wish I could get that!

Chemistry sets were getting wimpy long before 9/11. Halloween Jack is correct about the liability issue. And it's spread to other science sets. Oh for the good old days when you could order sets from places like Sears allowing one to dissect frogs and the like! I bought my daughter a microscope last year and the slides were plastic. Plastic, for all love!