Possibly the best news I’ve read all year: a new study has uncovered (a) that the H5N1 avian flu can’t easily penetrate the human upper respiratory tract, and (b) precisely why.  So yes, bird flu could still mutate into a human-to-human form and kill a whole bunch of us, but scientists are getting a handle on what mutations to look for and how the damn thing works.  And in the meantime, just keep your alveoli covered, and you should be fine.*

The bad news: the environment may not be about to kill us, but we certainly seem to be about to kill it.  Global warming is going to be worse than we thought.  So don’t go buying any coastal real estate.  By the time our great-grandkids are hyperblogging (or whatever the hell), goodbye London, goodbye New York, goodbye many of the world’s greatest cities.  If you live in Miami, you have a few decades, but let’s just say I wouldn’t go betting on the Dolphins to win the 2105 Super Bowl.

*The word “Alveoli,” incidentally, plays a big part in one bit of the upcoming book.  So everything connects.

In NYC for a few days, meeting with agent, editor, publishing and publicity people, etc.  Exciting.  Trying to see friends where I can, but most of the time here was accounted for before I got on the plane, so if you’re in NY and you didn’t hear from me, my apologies.

Have not been sleeping enough and have been waking up exhausted, so this week I’m reposting a pic from the SD wild animal park, where three pudus have just been awakened and chased from their enclosure at the crack of 10 am by a keeper who startled them into budging by dragging a rake on the ground.  “Rise and shine, kids!” she said cheerfully.  “Time to be pudus outside.”

So out they all came, tumbling over her feet, a little confused and bleary-eyed and stumbling around.

Most mornings I could use a keeper with a rake myself.

60 Minutes last night.  Bush muzzling scientists when the science contradicts his worldview. (The link also leads to the video if you missed it.  Worth a look.)

Not much different from the handling of pre-war intelligence, incidentally.

On a related note, good thoughts to the folks in Queensland who just got Katrinaed.  I don’t know anybody there myself, but we’ve got enough Aussie readers that somebody might have family.  My best wishes to you.

I live in a neighborhood with lots of Iranian immigrants,
so I’ve developed a mental habit of assigning anything that
seems odd to my Ohio-kid eyes to some custom I don’t yet fully
understand.

This is how it’s possible to be an elevator with two
people carrying goldfish in plastic bags, and simply think to yourself,
amused and curious, “oh — must be something for New Year’s.”

Yep.  First day of spring.  As I understand it, this is sort of like American New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving rolled into one.  Lots of family and food and hope for the coming year.

So, since I
know of at least a few people originally from Iran who visit this site: eid-eh shoma mubarak, wa sad saal be in saalha.  I hope you
party like it’s 1385.

Busy times in puduland.  A few plugs:

Scott Bateman, a terrific cartoonist friend, has a new magazine/chapbook/buncha damn words called Unruly.  I just got it in the mail, and it’s a dark riot.  I’ve chipped in a bit, and you’ll also find stuff from Scott, Paul Scheer, and a bunch of other wicked fun folks.

Proud to be a Liberal, a new collection from Ig Publishing, features rabble-rousing essays from Eric Altermann, Will Durst, Ted Rall, Tom Tomorrow, Matt Iglesias, and a bunch of others.  I’m in there somewhere, too.

I just wrote a forward to Revelations, a collection of the six-issue series from Dark Horse Comics.  It’s a pretty cool book, so it was easy to praise.

Incidentally, the long-threatened original comic series now has an artist attached whom I really like.  So that’s finally about to go forward. 

Also, the book I’ve been working on has passed the copyediting stage and will be published in the fall.  More on that coming.  Way more.  The first blurbs are in, and I’m happy to say that so far, it appears not to suck much.

Finally — and I am not making this up — I have been asked by professors at Harvard and Cornell to contribute the “Historiography: African American” entry in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of African Thought, to be published by Routledge in 2008.

How this happened I have no idea.  I assume it is a case of mistaken identity, but they contacted me through this very website.  This is fabulous.  I don’t even know what “historiography” means.  How they came to think I am African — much less whether I can be accused of “thought” — I have no idea.  I will have to find a way to break the news to Harvard and Cornell.

Oh, and Tom Tomorrow’s new book (there he is again) is on the right.  I still guest-blog over at TMW,
and I was a huge fan for years before I was lucky enough to become a
friend and then (I still think this is cool as hell) the voice of
Sparky the penguin.  Book is good.  You will enjoy.

Plug-O-Rama concluded.