Just in case you missed the news a couple of weeks ago: Terry Pratchett received a knighthood in the Queen’s New Year honors list, for services to literature. Huzzah!
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(Cartoon, above, by Illiad at UserFriendly.org)
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Recently Neil Gaiman pointed to the UK Telegraph’s obituary of Colonel Michael Singleton, saying it was his (Gaiman’s) favorite example of the art of obits. The piece’s dry tone of understatement suits its subject perfectly — and I suspect they don’t make men like Michael Singleton any more, unfortunately.
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File this next item under “never too old to try something new” — at 93, SF writer Fredrik Pohl has started a blog. (found via BoingBoing.
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Who is she? Find out on 24 March!
And now a trivia test for you: who is the woman in this photo?
To find out, check my other blog (Plethaurus.com) on 24 March when I’ll fulfil my pledge with Suw Charman-Anderson and more than 1000 other bloggers by blogging about a woman who did something interesting with technology.
Suw has called this event Ada Lovelace Day, in honor of the poet Byron’s daughter who also happened to be a dab hand at programming computers with Charles Babbage.
Here’s Suw’s blurb about Ada Lovelace Day:
“Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.
“It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited to take part. All you need to do is sign up to this pledge and then publish your blog post any time on Tuesday 24th March 2009. If you’re going to be away that day, feel free to write your post in advance and set your blogging system to publish it that day.”
Suw has also blogged about her reasons for making this pledge and issuing this challenge to bloggers everywhere.
You can probably tell from the photo that my choice of subject is no longer working in technology. Between now and March I may well add another post or two about more recent role models.
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