m. c. de marco

I’m back on the list of honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest this quarter, along with at least one other Odyssey grad, Dave Hendrickson.

Durin’s Days are coming soon, many thanks to Alan Eliasen and Frink. This entry is just a note on the interpretation of “autumn” in the definition of Durin’s Day and of the dwarves’ New Year in general. To recap, in The Hobbit, the dwarves’ New Year’s Day is said to fall on the last new moon of autumn, where autumn is unfortunately not defined.

Someone mentioned melancholy on a mailing list, meaning by it nothing distinct from depression, but my ear picked it up and I wondered whether melancholy was still a legitimate affliction. (The answer appears to be no, it’s been replaced by melancholic depression.)

Michael Burstein kindly provides endorsements and information about tomorrow’s election in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Besides the vampires, I loved the use of obscure neurological conditions (such as the titular one) in Peter Watt’s Blindsight. One that stuck with me especially was Cotard’s syndrome, in which one of the female characters believes that she is, in fact, dead. Understandably, she has a hard time convincing the other characters of this fact since, aside from her change in affect, she is very much alive.

I keep remembering, googling, and recommending this story, but I don’t seem to have ever blogged the link. So, for the record, “I don’t know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility” by Sam Hughes is a great story about simulism.

Via Language Log: the World Atlas of Language Structures from the Max Planck Digital Library is now freely available online, with Google Maps integration. For example, here’s a map of the velar nasal (?) in Europe. Note the dot for England; that’s the ng in sing.