So a couple of weeks ago, A Slave to the Dogs tagged me as a “thinking blogger.” Well, flattery I enjoy, and it took some time to think up five bloggers who make me ‘think.’ I read a lot of blogs, and I put a lot of thought into this list - it’s harder than you might, um, think! This was a very difficult meme - two came to mind immediately, the others required a lot of, um, thinking.

Baltimore Crime

I remember when I first really became aware of this blog, which chronicles, as the name might suggest, crime in Baltimore. It won “Best Blog” from the City Paper, and I remember thinking, “A crime digest won Best Blog? Are you kidding me?” But there’s a reason the blog won, and why I read it every day (or almost every day, anyway).

Right Thinking From The Left Coast

I think I found Lee’s blog after Andrew Sullivan linked to it. Agree or disagree with this liberal and Republican hating libertarian — and let me tell you, he’s not afraid to pull his punches — he’ll make you think. It’s impossible not to read any of his posts and either be thrilled in agreement or pissed with angry.

Searching For Oz

Becky doesn’t hit you over the head with stuff … she just sort of slides it under the door and you find yourself thinking about stuff when you’re not expecting it.

The-F-Word.Org

Three, however - words, that is: Food. Fat. Feminism. Rachel’s got a lot of strong opinions on a lot of subjects, the only thing that make this blog more interesting might be if she would drop that other f-word here or there.

Up The Hudson With Gun & Camera

It’s hard not to think on this blog when Al keeps asking questions at the end. And they’re not like “do you have your toilet paper under or over the roll?” Those would be easy.

The rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the origin of this award, and
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Before you read this post, I want you to ponder this inquiry: who is the most influential, best known, and most prolific writer of the English language?

Last week, I had to turn in the rough draft of my paper for my Tuesday night “Tradition and Form” class. We had an option to write a literary analysis comparing several of the short stories we’d read, or we could write our own short story. This is sort of like the choice between eating a kidney or a cheeseburger — given the choice, I know what I like, and given the choice, I prefer to play to my strengths, and while I know I can write a literary analysis as well as anyone else in the class, I decided to write a short story.

I knew I was going to have to turn the short story in several weeks in advance, but I really didn’t do any work on it until the day it was due. Arrived at campus 7:30am that day and wrote my ass off. I even skipped my 11am ItCM class, and by the time T&F began at 3:30 that afternoon, the story had been spell-checked, 1.5 spaced, and printed. I have this little green stapler I carry in my backpack and I stapled the ten sheets together just as Dr. A walked into the room.

At the end of class came an unwelcome announcement - we’d have another week to work on the assignment before handing in our rough draft. I didn’t say anything, and took advantage of the opportunity to hand mine in anyway, but it bothered me: why bother having a due-date if you’re just going to extend it? I mean, look, I know I was wrong to procrastinate that long before starting the assignment (although I work much better on such assignments with a deadline), but when I skip a class to get something done, it’d be nice if it was actually worth it.

So skip forward a week to last night. Everyone turned in their stories, and the second half of the class was dedicated to discussing these rough drafts. Dr. A read sections of each story - last night, due to time limitations, we only had the opportunity to discuss four of the stories - a difficult job being able only to comment on the parts read to us by Dr. A. It’s like a bastardized version of a writing class, but from what little information we got we, as a class, were able to offer some limited advice.

Dr. A discussed my story first, probably because I’d turned it in so early. Y’know what, for all my earlier griping, I take it back - ever turn in a rough draft and get told you don’t need to turn in a final? Well, part of that is probably because I usually just write a final draft, which is what I did in this case. Anyway, I’m still going to make some final edits, but it’s nice to know I’ve got a hurdle done for this class.

And aren’t you happy to know I haven’t even started talking about the point of this post? Hah.

So, during the break, I wind up outside of Linthicum Hall talking with a couple of guys from the class. One of ‘em mentions Hot Fuzz, said it was great, I told him that I was going to see it that night and I did and it was great.

Anyway, the other guy spoke up - TV is crap, movies are crap, books are where it’s at. He made a very persuasive argument, and of course, as a fan of books and reading, I found myself sympathetic to his points … but not convinced. A big point of his argument was that movies and television are written purely for entertainment purposes, whereas works of literature “explore the human experience.” Sure, books force a person to imagine and picture and people get more out of them than perhaps they do with television shows …

… but what are television and movies if not a high-tech theater productions?

And who is known as the greatest writer of the English language of all time?

William Shakespeare.

And he wrote to put money in his pocket. He wrote to entertain, because if he entertained, he’d make money. And despite all that, it’s impossible not to read his works and catch a glimpse of something greater.

And it’s thus hard to reach the conclusion that television or movies don’t have that same literary possibility. I certainly don’t mean to suggest that some crap B movie can have as much literary value as, say, Richard II, but some television, some very very small percentage of television shows, and of movies, can indeed be insightful and great and yes, entertaining too, even if maybe they do over-rely on moving images and moving musical scores.

Also: happy belated birth-and-death day, Billy Shakespeare.

When people ask me if I believe in life up there, y’know, among the stars, I think to the film Contact, and a line from David Morse. I paraphrase here, “If there isn’t other life, up there, it’d be an awful waste of space.” So I got a little excited about a BBC News article I read last night:

Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface.

Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile.

They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life.

“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this ’super-Earth’ lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” explained Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the result.

How very very very cool.