Sucks. Munch did paint multiple versions of his most famous image "The Scream."
Still — the bastards.

Link: In Re:: Scream, Madonna destroyed by art theives.

Article: Aftenposten Norway, Norwegian news in English.

Cool sounding Enclyclopedia-creation game created by this guy: The 20′ By 20′ Room: Lexicon: an RPG.

See Boing Boing now on the topic of Steve Johnson’s new book: Everything Bad is Good for You

But he’s probably busy. Until His Holiness accepts my invation to join gmail, (an idea given to me by a coworker) he can still be reached at
benedictxvi@vatican.va.

Honestly, I think that TV is a lot better than people are willing to admit. On the whole, I think TV is better than film right now.  And I think the best of television is better than the average stream of series books. I think that the best TV series don’t quite come up the the quality of the best novels written, of course. I’ll take Dickens of David Milch, for example — (but I’d put the Sopranos above The Godfather films– blasphemy!)  I really learn a lot about story from watching television. I appreciate the work that goes into creating solutions to devilish production problems, for example. (An actor quits, say, or a story arc turns out to be a dead end). Since TV series, unlike novels (but not unlike Victorian serials — current crime and fantasy novel series books) are put before the public before the entire work is complete, watching a show progress (or decline) is like watching a long work being drafted. In a novel, if we write ourselves into a corner, we can back up, revise, etc, but in a modern TV you’re stuck and have to get inventive.
They didn’t used to do this. Remember in the original Star Trek when Kirk stole the cloaking device from the Romulans? How infuriating that they never used it in subsequent episodes!
An audience today would never stand for that big a plot hole. I’m told that in one of the later series they DID come up with an explanation — that the Federation signed a treaty agreeing not to develope or use the technology.

There’s some things only a book can do right (thank god!) But I’m no longer in the camp of "TV and movies are death to the prose writer."
I think a serious artist (blech! — make that "sincere craftsperson) can and should take influence from the other forms that make up the zeitgeist. If a painter uses comics, or advertising as an influence, they are considered a great deconstructionist, but if a writer were to admit being influence by TV they’d be facing a stern nose-down-looking-upon, or something.
Honestly, when I watched Deadwood for the first time I thought — holy shit! I gotta raise my game! I think the common idea of novels in competition with other medium is that novels are declining because TV and games are easier — flashier, sexier, more violent. All of that is true, but it’s a cop-out. Deadwood and others never ever condescend to the audience. I’ve seen the first series 3 times and found new things each time.
There is zero exposition, but the reader/viewer is only lost to the extent that we are all lost most of the time. (Actually not quite that lost). It’s interesting (exp C. Doctorow) that  new SF  is very accessible to a mainstream audience. The standard SF story uses the standard tropes and minimizes exposition that way. The SF that today seems to reach an audience (think of Doctorow’s fiction on Salon, or Gibson’s SF novel that is mainstream in name only merely because it employs no extrapolation) seeks out our shared experiences and uses them as the tropes.

Related to the last post, and Steven Johnson’s new book Everything Bad is Good for You, it does seem the throughout recorded history each new story-delivery system is considered inferior, or at least cruder, less-tasteful, more insured to case harm — especially to that enternally vunerable construct called Ournation’syouth, than the preceeding. The "devolution" seems to run like this:
Poetry >(is-greater-than) Theater>Prose>Cinema>Radio>Comics>Television>Gaming.
The more forms added to the end of the chain, retroactively elevate the earlier forms. Once a medium is a few links up the chain it earns the right to be judged by it’s best example — not its worst. Of course, as time goes on, an older medium has more and more good examples from which to choose from. (Exp: Video games are bad, look at GTA, it is sadistic.  Not: Theater is  bad, look at Titus Andronicus, it is sadistic.)
UPDATE: See Steven Johnson’s hilarious reversal of this path: LINK

is a quote from Steven Johnson’s NYT article Magazine > Watching TV Makes You Smarter. Years ago I read a short blurb in a paper about a new study done by the military that showed IQ’s were rising. This was attributed to video games and the workout they give cognition. I filed that away, and now that meme has broken out into full-blown idea. Like it, or hate it — believe it, or think it’s bullshit — anyway I find it fascinating. The  NYTimes  article  (and another in the May  WIRED –"Dome Improvement" pg 100 — not online yet)  are adapted from  from this book which will be available next month now.(Order: Everything Bad is Good for You) The Times article has some good simple graphs the contrast the lack of complexity in an episode of "Starskey & Hutch" vs. "The Sopranos."
There is also an illuminating discussion of how much confusion a contemporary story-audience will tolerate — how much exposition do you really need. The television drama model would indicate that
it is very very much less than is often thought — but try to convince some sf editors of that. 
The message here for storytellers is (and that’s my main interest in the subject) trust the story, trust the audience, and complicate, complicate, complicate.

UPDATE 4:45pm See also Boing Boing

BBC – Press Office – BBC to podcast more programmes.

podcasting

Hookah bars in Seattle. seattlepi.com Buzzworthy: Passing the pipe.

Hookah

He’s the eccentric (some say unstable) entrepreneur and the owner of the Mavericks. He’s also on the progressive side in the information access debates. The most interesting blog by a business person that I’ve seen. Chuck D, Brian Eno, we have all the cool people. Follow the link: Mark Cuban.