Things, Also More Things

Thing Number One: Chinua Achebe, author of the generally considered masterpiece, Things Fall Part, stops by Harvard and proceeds to be wise and funny and name drop Queen Elizabeth II.

Thing Number Two: Proof that, however awesome you thought Nathan Fillion was, you underestimated. He took part in an all-star read-a-thon celebrating the release of Andrew Porter's The Theory of Light and Matter.

Thing Number Three: Jonathan Lethem reads from Whitman and The Fortress of Solitude, then does some Q&A. All part of his being the inaugural speaker for the Walt Whitman series at St. Francis College.

Thing Number Four: Somewhat depressing quotes from high schoolers discussing the non-literatureness of graphic novels.

Thing Number Last: Over at the New Scientist they've got an article on the old: is science fiction dying/dead/evolved into a bird from it's previous dinosaur incarnation question. It's a tiresome question, true, one equivalent to asking if romance is dead, but the article includes good stuff about the nature of science and fiction in the past two centuries, and it puts the question itself in perspective by bringing up Lord Kelvin's bold, if somewhat ill-considered, statement in 1900 that, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."