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As some of you already know, I kinda have a geek love for space and astromony, so sometimes I veer off-topic on the blog.

Yesterday during one of my Hubble procrastination browsing stints, I found a picture that fits in quite nicely with my earlier blog post this week. Bubbles anyone? :-)

Actually this is quite interesting: SNR 0509 is the result of gas shocked by an expanding blast wave from a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years from Earth.

“The bubble-shaped shroud of gas is 23 light-years across and is expanding at more than 11 million miles per hour. [...] With an age of about 400 years as seen from Earth, the supernova might have been visible to southern hemisphere observers around the year 1600. However, there are no known records of a ‘new star’ in the direction of the LMC near that time.”

Okay, so we can’t take a road trip to go write in this particular bubble but you have to admit this is an amazing artifact in space.

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Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at the implications of the charges against Goldman Sachs. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

The Securities Exchange Commission has filed charges against Goldman Sachs as the Obama administration has taken up regulatory reform of the financial markets. The two events are not unrelated. They reveal the perception that the economy has turned the corner, and that the Obama administration is now ready to mean business, literally.

For a year now we have heard about the potential for a “double dip” in the economy. Fortunately, the conventional wisdom hasn’t materialized. Wall Street has a way of swinging between extremes, between the ridiculous hubris that created the housing bubble (or the dot com bubble) and the abject despondency whenever a bubble is burst. If only businesses and investors could find the Aristotelian mean between irrational exuberance and paranoid pessimism.

By most indices, the economy is on its way to recovery. The chances of a double dip on the economy are now so near zero that the Obama administration has switched mottos from “too big to fail” to “big enough to punish.” For the fact is there is a cosy relationship between government and business, and a correlation between the Dow Jones and Gallup. Obama could not afford to regulate the big banks while the economy was spiraling out of control, but he and Geithner appear to think that the coast is now clear to do so.

It would appear that the SEC parts company with unregulated capitalism at the 11,000 mark. Last Friday, federal regulators filed fraud charges against Goldman Sachs over its dealings in subprime mortgages, precipitating a 125-point drop in the Down Jones.  Consider the confidence of the SEC when these charges against Goldman Sachs occurred in the middle of the day on Friday (and not at the start or end), and also at a time when options were expiring for the month (so investors who took out earlier plays on Goldman were left unable to hedge).

Meanwhile, a war is brewing between the two political parties about financial regulation and a bill coming out from the Senate Banking Committee which would, among other things, give federal regulators the authority and a $50 billion fund to control and wind down too-big-to-fail banks at imminent risk of destabilizing the wider economy. Republicans are pushing back hard against what they call “bailout authority” but their real beef is not with bailouts, which Democrats say that the fund would prevent, but the bill’s provision to regulate financial derivatives: the instruments of mischief that led to last year’s recession. This is at the heart of the bill, so important that President Obama has issued a (rare) veto threat against any bill that does not regulate what Warren Buffet calls “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

Now that the market is stable enough to weather regulatory intrusion, Obama means business. With the health-care issue out of the way, regulating Wall Street has become Obama’s next top priority.

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Howdy doo. Well, I just got back from an exhausting wedding weekend. It was a lot of fun though, and I even managed to get a little artwork in on Friday night. Currently, I am just happy to be back in my little corner studio working on the next piece. Sadly, after the current piece, I have to take another break for the move to Beacon, NY on the 8th and 9th of July. Throw in the 4th of July weekend, and time gets tight especially with all of the packing to be done. But it should all be worth it to be able to easily head into New York City on a whim or on business.

Speaking of the business, here are the sketches for the Crisis editorial mentioned in the last post. The article is about sexism and the oppression of females in rap music. The art director wanted a "I am woman, hear me roar"-type of illustration. So I decided to explore that as well as other avenues.

Sketches:



I actually did five sketches, but two were pretty lame so I didn't even show them. The art director like the "fist-in-yo'-face" sketch so that was that. I personally like the "spitting fire" sketch but was happy to do either. Perhaps I'll do another finish off of the unused sketch if I feel so inclined.

The Final Art:

This was a fun job. I am actually using this as my next mailer around July 15th (after the move and getting situated). Hopefully, it will arouse some interest. Also thinking of working on some likenesses for the portfolio before the end of the summer in this style as well as continuing to push the linear-style with new pieces. A newly updated www.chris-whetzel.com should be up by this Friday to coincide with the mailer.

And thats that. Back to work :)

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You can download a podcast from Beowulf of me being interviewed about the film last week, almost immediately after I'd seen it all the way through for the first time.

Dave McKean says thank you, and he has now found his origami crabmaker. (And I say thank you too, to all the volunteers.)

Betsy O'Donovan

How cool! and for more (not me-related) pumpkins...


Hi Neil, I thought you might enjoy this. www.duarte.com/halloween


Duarte Design specializes in presentation graphics. (We did Al Gore's slides for An Inconvenient Truth.) See what our designers came up with this Hallowe'en.

I'm a new employee here, and my husband and I had a BLAST carving our first entry to the contest. Enjoy!

and then there are the costumes...



I really don't mind posting it at all. If someone wants to create a Picassa or Flikr or something place that people can upload pictures of them in costumes inspired by stuff I wrote, I'll happily put up a link to it here.

...


I wasn't going to, but I was impressed enough with Erin's FAQs (http://projecterin.com/faq.html) that I'm happy to put this up. Hope you get the clicks, and the medical treatment, and good luck.

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An urgent message from Dave McKean, who is making a low-budget film called LUNA right now:

I urgently need 2 white paper origami crabs to appear in a scene in Luna, like this one:
http://db.origami.com/displayphoto.asp?ModelID=2244
if anyone is willing to make them and send them to the UK straight away, I can pay a small fee to cover time (or a signed drawing or book?), give them a name check in the final credits, and give them a fedex account number for shipping.

Go to the FAQ page if you're an Origami whizz (and I know there are Origami whizzes out there, as I get given amazing things at signings) and drop me a line, and I'll put you straight in touch with Dave. Who will probably soon be drowning in Origami crabs.

Went in to Hair Police today and saw Wendy who turned the strange messy mop that my hair had turned into into a rather nice haircut. From there to Dreamhaven where I signed lots of stuff for Elizabeth and the www.neilgaiman.net site, including a half a ton of Absolute Sandman Volume 2s. As I drove home Roger Avary called to let me know that he's reopening his website after a couple of years without one -- http://www.avary.com/.

Then to Maddy's Parent Teacher conference. She's doing wonderfully at school, and got an impressive report card -- which, for the first time ever, she really had to work for, as she came to the UK for the Stardust premiere and having lost a week of schoolwork. (She's coming to LA with me for the Beowulf premiere, but is only missing one school day to do it.)

And then home. Opened the copy of Bust I'd picked up at DreamHaven (officially I get it for my assistant Lorraine, but I always read it first -- sort of like when I'd pick up a copy of Bunty for my sisters as a boy), and found myself staring at an unexpected advert for the Good Omens and Stardust scents from BPAL. Which reminded me that I had meant to congratulate the amazing Beth, who is the mind (and the nose) behind BPAL -- and a woman who has raised an enormous amount of money for the CBLDF this year -- on her wedding.

(And if you haven't looked at the CBLDF site recently -- http://www.cbldf.org/ -- Gordon Lee goes to trial on Monday. Finally. After three years, two completely different sets of "facts", and $80,000 in legal bills so far for something that should never have been a police matter in the first place... http://www.cbldf.org/articles/archives/000318.shtml for the story so far.)

Lots and lots and lots and lots of emails from people telling me that Marmite can be found all over America, normally beside the baking supplies (probably because of the word Yeast). I don't think I'm going to need Marmite again for another couple of years now, but than you all for the info.

I try reasonably hard to credit people who helped (see the very long list of names at the back of American Gods) but find it hard to find fault with the author in question. Authors are packrats. If you tell us an anecdote -- unless you preface it with "I am about to tell you an amusing and/or interesting anecdote. Should you at some future time use it in a book you will need to contact me to obtain my permission, or at least credit me by name. I shall now tell you the anecdote and then give you my contact details in a form in which you won't lose them," -- then it's fair game. I think our attitude -- I don't speak for all of us, but enough -- is that if your friend thought his anecdote would have made a good book, he should have written it himself.

I don't know the names of the people who took me down the sewers or into the disused tube tunnels when I was doing Neverwhere, but their anecdotes certainly made it into the book. I didn't give the name of the financially dodgy agent whose interesting approach to paying over royalties inspired the character and behaviour of Graham Coats in Anansi Boys either (probably a wise move, that). And, as you say, very often you know someone told you that Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria obtained a doctor's note to get out of being married, but who it was or when has melted down in the compost heap in the back of your mind to the brown sludge of memory. It's like remembering jokes, and who told them to you. The shape is now there in your mind, and you know the punch line is "Two coffees and a choc ice," but how it entered your head is a mystery.

(And it's worth pointing out your friend might be wrong. I get letters sometimes from people saying "You got this from me." And the people who send the letters believe it, but it's not the case. I find myself replying "Actually, I wrote this four years before you wrote your story," or "I understand you think I got this from something you said. Actually the entire story was in this newspaper on this date, and that was where I got it from.")

Having said all that, I'm also really sympathetic to your friend. Many years ago I was on a panel where I said "I'm going to write a book called X," and no-one laughed longer or louder than the bloke next to me on the panel who, eleven months later, brought out a book with the title I'd mentioned. I was in a conversation with another author who mentioned being stuck on a plot thing, and I said "Oh, that's an easy one," and made a suggestion, and suggested a title for the book for good measure, and he said "I owe you lunch for that one," but I scanned the acknowledgements in vain looking for a thank you when the book came out, and didn't get a lunch out of it either. And conversely I have fuzzy warm feelings for all those people who wrote books and actually did say thank you, and used their acknowledgments to acknowledge.

...

After a long day, i got "your" love letter that the new york times sent out. It was rather funny and made me laugh a lot.(was even funnier trying to explain to my roomate that it wasnt a real love letter)Did you have anything to do with the writting of those love letter? Or did the new york times write them without the help of the varies authors? Do you know if every one got the same letter? Just curious, thanks.

Yes, everyone got the same letter (it's the UK Times, by the way, not the New York one). And yes, I wrote it. (Really, it's a short story.) The day before me people got one from Margaret Atwood. Today, I think it's Leonard Cohen. I think you can still sign up for the last three... http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/commercial/article2623706.ece

...

Finally -- this gave me a warm and happy smile.... http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/when-the-wolves-come-out-of-the-walls-its-all-over/

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