Sorry I haven’t updated in a week, but this has been a crazy week of schoolwork, including two late nights out, one for a math conference and another for Back-to-School Night. I actually enjoy the latter, mostly because I have such good students whose parents are very supportive and they’re usually fun to meet. But it was a late night!

I am always interested in the annual Nobel Prizes, which increasingly show the committees’ personal agenda overwhelms any attempts at objectivity in their selections. While I totally agree with Al Gore’s campaign for governments and private citizens to do something about global warming, I am not convinced that his activities fall under the purview of “peace”. And while it is nice to see a writer who dabbles in science fiction honored by the mainstream literati, I wonder if Doris Lessing won the Literature Prize for her talent or her feminism. American Joyce Carol Oates would have been a better choice, and she dips into genre (fantasy, horror and mystery) as much as any major literary writer.

Currently listening: The Best of 1980-1990, by U2. While they are not the second coming of the Beatles, as many critics would have you believe, they are one of the better rock bands of the past 25 years, and this cd (especially the two-cd version which includes all the B-sides) has a good sampling of their very best material.

Currently reading: I have not had much time for reading the past few weeks, but this weekend I plan to start a Poul Anderson novel, possible Satan’s World. He is one of the all-time finest sf writers, combining serious culture-building with strong plotting and characterization. It is a shame that most of his major books are currently out-of-print.