I suspected we’d be seeing distribution of the Tales at some point because, let’s be honest, there’s demand for more from the Harry Potter universe. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if a new series started out within that continuum, because she did such a wonderful job creating a believable world.

So, I wasn’t too surprised when I saw that Amazon announced today that the Tales of Beedle the Bard will be available on December 4th, 2008. Tales, if you remember, was a hand-crafted book written and illustrated by J.K. Rowling in her own hand, it seems. Only a handful of copies were made and sold at auction or given to friends. They look spectacular. The books contain the fairy tales described in the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

There are two editions available for pre-order. There’s a standard edition, that contains the five fairy tales, reproductions of the illustrations in the hand-crafted originals, and commentary by Dumbledore. There’s also a collector’s edition, which comes in a fancy package and has additional illustrations and a cover very similar to the one on the original run (inlaid metal, replica gems, etc.).

I think I might have to get one for myself… (would make a nice Christmas gift, hint hint).

So, I whined about iTunes not having Season 2 of The Wire and 5 days later, it was available. I complained about the price of the DVDs being outrageous at $59.99, suggesting to friends that I’d pay up to $40. What do I see at Best Buy yesterday? All seasons of The Wire on DVD for $39.99. Amazon made the same price reduction.

So, I’m going to flex the awesome power of FatMixx once again. Amazon folks, I would’ve bought a Kindle if you just had either True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society or He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know available on the Kindle.

Seriously, 2 books. Small publishers. Come on now.

You can check out the celebrities that own the Kindle over at Coolspotters.

I’ve found the perfect baby shower present. I’m trying to decide if pairing it with this would be too obnoxious. Just need to be careful and make sure the baby doesn’t grow up to be a construction worker.

I’ve been reading too much non-fiction lately, so in an effort to add some fiction to my list, I picked up a couple of new books this week. One twist, all of them are graphic novels. First up is the first volume of Y: The Last Man, a series by Brian K. Vaughan. Vaughan worked for a while for DC and Marvel, but most recently he joined the writing staff for Lost. Yes, another Shah/Hojnicki obsession, but I promise you, a healthy one. Honestly, I didn’t know this when I picked up the book. I was intrigued by another Vaughan title, Pride of Baghdad, which follows four lions who escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. It’s based on a real episode, but the idea of using the lions to explore the concept of liberation sounded pretty interesting. More on that book later.

Y is set in a world where an unknown pathogen or agent wipes out all the male mammals in the world. All the males except for two, actually: our protagonist and his pet monkey. Somehow, he becomes the last human Y chromosome in the world.

The first volume runs through the opening of the story. We meet what look to be the major characters in the series, all women except for Yorick, the last man on earth. The men all die at once, suddenly leaving chaos and turmoil behind. Imagine what it might be like if suddenly every man in the world disappeared. Imagine the knowledge lost, even at a practical level. So many professions are still dominated by men. How many women know how to run the garbage collection system? Heck, my office would be down to maybe 10% or less of the staff remaining, especially among the technical staff. In the U.S., women account for about 45% of the workforce, which isn’t that bad. I suspect you might get a different breakdown by industry.

Vaughan’s imagination creates an interesting world. The Secretary of Agriculture becomes President (Nancy Pelosi would be the first female president if this happened today), gangs of women band together as Amazons, and the Washington Monument becomes an impromptu shrine to the dead men of the country. Don’t know what it is about dystopian futures, but between this and Transmetropolitan, clearly something is getting my attention. This one seems to be a bit more optimistic than Transmet (well, except for the whole all-the-men-are-dead thing). Both series are also published by Vertigo.

So far, I’m curious about what happens next. Best thing a first volume can do, I guess, so I’ll be picking up the next few.

The March of Folly looks like an interesting book. From Richard Clarke’s article in TNR’s “Iraq: What Next?” issue:

Still, President Bush insists on staying in Iraq, and it is easy to understand why. In The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman documented repeated instances when leaders persisted in disastrous policies well after they knew that success was no longer an available outcome. They did so because the personal consequences of admitting failure would be very high. So they postponed the disastrous end to their policy adventures, hoping for a deus ex machina or to eventually shift the blame. There is no need to do that now. Everyone already knows who is to blame. It is time to stop the adventure, lower our sights, and focus on America’s core interests. And that means withdrawal of major combat units.

People really haven’t changed much over the years, and our leaders are, after all, people. Seems like it might be an interesting read. You can read more in the comments over at the Washington Monthly post where I found the links to the TNR article.

Last week, I heard an interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation talking about a new graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Commission Report. At first, I thought that this was an odd idea. Why would anyone want the 9/11 Report as a graphic novel? Are you ready for the words BLAMM! to be shown next to an image of a burning Pentagon? As I listened to the authors explain their motivation, I was convinced that this might be a unique way of communicating the 585 page 9/11 Commission Final Report.

It didn’t hurt that these authors were excellent comic writers and artists in their own right. Sid Jacobson created Richie Rich and was the editor-in-chief at Harvey Comics. Ernie Colón worked at Harvey, Marvel and DC Comics and oversaw “production of the Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, … and The Flash.” Both sounded very serious about why they were doing this and what this project meant to them.

I also began to see this as a piece of art that, while completely based on fact and striving to be true to the Final Report, offered a new way to view the tragic events of that day. Even before the authors brought it up, I remembered the power of reading Maus for the first time. I wrote then that a graphic novel about the Holocaust seemed “wrong” at first blush, but after reading it, I really appreciated having and reading Maus.

This graphic adaption also rises to the occasion. There are fold out timelines of all four planes. There are actually two timelines, one focusing on the events on board the aircraft and the other focusing on when each agency knew about the various events. While you can read much of this in the Executive Summary, this representation makes it easy to understand how the events fit together.

It’s these thousand word pictures that allow a reader to choose whether they want to skim the text or to dive into the details and the touches in the panels. The artwork is beautiful and rich in detail. The writing is clear, simple, and expertly crafted to capture the essential points of each section of the Final Report. Ultimately, it is a serious testament to both the quality and potential of this medium as well as the convictions and vision of the authors. I’m sure they got some incredulous looks when they proposed this project, but the final product says they made the right choice.

I was googling something else and ran across this New Yorker review of The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport. The book looks interesting. From the review:

In “The Wages of Wins” (Stanford; $29.95), the economists David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, and Stacey L. Brook set out to solve the Iverson problem. Weighing the relative value of fouls, rebounds, shots taken, turnovers, and the like, they’ve created an algorithm that, they argue, comes closer than any previous statistical measure to capturing the true value of a basketball player. The algorithm yields what they call a Win Score, because it expresses a player’s worth as the number of wins that his contributions bring to his team. According to their analysis, Iverson’s finest season was in 2004-05, when he was worth ten wins, which made him the thirty-sixth-best player in the league. In the season in which he won the Most Valuable Player award, he was the ninety-first-best player in the league. In his worst season (2003-04), he was the two-hundred-and-twenty-seventh-best player in the league. On average, for his career, he has ranked a hundred and sixteenth. In some years, Iverson has not even been the best player on his own team. Looking at the findings that Berri, Schmidt, and Brook present is enough to make one wonder what exactly basketball experts—coaches, managers, sportswriters—know about basketball.

I wish I had taken statistics in college and some higher level economics. The mathematical tools that one gets in those classes would be really valuable when building fantasy tools for lay people, not just for professional sports teams or settling bar bets.

I wonder how you can measure the effectiveness of this algorithm, though. At least sabermetrics has proponents involved in Major League Baseball teams, so we can see the efficacy of those strategies at actually building teams. I’m curious about what teams, if any, in the NBA or other professional leagues will start taking a more rigorous mathematical approach to measuring talent. There’s risk obviously if it doesn’t work.

Kareem’s girlfriend (dude, are you two ever going to get married?) recently started her very own food blog called, appropriately, Geneve’s Kitchen. If the photos don’t make you hungry, the recipes and ideas will.

I love the use of photos on her site, by the way. There’s a professional quality to them, and it just makes the whole look of the blog a lot better. Good luck, Geneve and great work so far.

And, a random note… I found Kareem’s post about her blog on Technorati, of all things, as I clicked through the “food” tag on the restaurant review below. Kind of random, and a demonstration of why I always try to tag my posts. Never know what you’ll find.

PS. Those of you who just read and don’t write at a blog, set one up! It’s such a good way to keep in touch and share things you’re passionate about. If you do it for yourself, and not for the audience, it’ll be worth it. If you’re always writing around a particular topic and a decent writer, you might even be able to build a significant audience.

Sarah over at RMTJ suggested New York Hack as one of her favorite blogs. I read through it for a while, longer than expected, and it is really pretty damn funny. The WaPo did a story on her a few months back, which gives a lot more background into Melissa Plaut, the cabbie, and her road to being a good writer driving a cab. It reminds me a bit of True Porn Clerk Stories, also hilarious. I still can’t listen to Aqua’s Happy Boys and Girls without thinking of that blog (you’ll have to read it to get it).