Friday link laziness

Posted by Ed

In need of some quick articles to read? Try these:

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• Warren Burger and Harry Blackmun first met in kindergarten, became close friends, and were known as "the Minnesota twins" when they served on the Supreme Court together. Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times describes how their high court service ended their friendship.
  
• How do you make a Marxist turn over in his grave? Turn him into a pop culture icon! The Christian Science Monitor looks at at "Che chic." (via ArtsJournal)
  
• Now that Iraq is free for archaeological research, will we need to rewrite the story of Middle Eastern archaeology? (via ArtsJournal)
  
• Who was the greatest person in Welsh history? According to a new online poll, Aneurin Bevan (the Labor politician widely seen as the father of the National Health Service) narrowly beats out the 14th-century rebel Owain Glyndwr for that honor. (Other candidates included Richard Burton, Dylan Thomas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, David Lloyd George, Robert Owen, and lots of people I've never heard of.) (Via HNN)
  
• The last several entries at The Decembrist are all quite good. (They discuss David Brooks's New York Times column, the differences between John Kerry and John Edwards, and an alternate career path for Donald Rumsfeld.) The Decembrist is probably my favorite blog; if you don't know it, check it out.
  
• What does a historical novel set in 1930s Leningrad have to do with the struggle against apartheid? The Guardian discusses this question.
  
• How do you figure out the shape of the universe?
  
• Diana Wynne Jones really likes Christopher Paolini's novel, Eragon. (She likes it despite all the cliches; I think Tim Burke is more convincing in criticizing the book's derivative nature, though perhaps I should reserve judgment until I've read the book.)
  
• The Guardian reviews John Brewer's book on the Martha Ray case (you know, the book I discussed back here.)
  
• In The Globe and Mail, Karen Armstrong hails Martin Marty's new biography of Martin Luther as a classic.
  

It seems that the works of C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman aren't the only children's fantasy novels headed for the silver screen: New Line Cinema (the makers of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings) are planning to film the newest book by the German writer Cornelia Funke, Inkheart. (For a Guardian review of the book by Diana Wynne-Jones, click here; my own comments can be found at my old blog.) Funke is Germany's most popular writer after J.K. Rowling, and is best known for her novels The Thief Lord and Inkheart, which tells the story of a man whose voice is so lively that he can bring the characters in books (literally) to life when he reads out loud.

Posted by Ed at March 5, 2004 12:48 PM