Casually full of verve

JK Rowling's first book after the Harry Potter series, Casual Vacancy, seems to be getting rather poor reviews. I think it may be all the new adults expecting the author they grew up with to remain stuck in the School of Magic.

As someone who found the Harry Potter books rather juvenile (of course! consider their audience), her new book was an eyeopener. JK Rowling can write! And make trenchant observations. The Casual Vacancy somehow rises past its rather humdrum plot to become a story of what life is like in the 21st century.  It brings to mind the great English novels -- the Victorian ones, with their large casts, careful plots, observations about the fine distinctions of class and Dickensian morals. Except that it has been updated for modern Britain. But you will recognize America in there too. All rich countries these days are alike.

Highly recommended.  It is high literature that manages to point at the injustice of modern life while always remaining a very entertaining read.

Interesting geography

Would you buy airline tickets from this travel agency?

If their map is to be believed: buy tickets to London, and they'll send you to a spot in the ocean a wee bit off Cape Town.

Limits are counterproductive

I am going to be teaching a course on spatial programming next semester and was dawdling around the internet looking for books on the topic. I found a book by Esri Press that looked very promising and decided to see if there was some sort of educational discount on it.

There was. In fact, they would send me the book for free if I told them the course number that I was evaluating it for.

I went to type in the details on the web form and found a statement that free samples were "limited to three books once every 4 months."  What would you do in that situation? Me? I went through the catalog and found two more books that would be kinda useful. One was a prerequisite for my course and the other would be advanced topics for it.

This is, of course, the same reason why putting up a speed limit sign can be counterproductive. Instead of taking it as a maximum speed, many drivers will treat it as a suggestion of what speed they ought to be
driving.  Esri, I am sure, will be giving away far fewer books if they took out that limit on the number of books (or at least informed piggies of the limit only if they tried to order more than three).

Schizophrenic weather

The weather forecast for today evening:

Until 7pm, we're going to have spring-time severe weather. Huge hail balls in Western Oklahoma (not so much in Norman).

Then, a cold front moves in.  By midnight, we should be enjoying freezing rain and sleet.

Fun, eh?