Thursday Roundup

The BBC News reports that MIT Media Lab visionary Nicholas Negroponte unveiled prototypes of a low(er)-cost, robust $100 laptop at the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia. The neon-green handcranked machines consume far less energy than traditional computers, and Negroponte hopes that they will help to close the technology gap and enable peer-to-peer learning among young people, especially in poorer parts of the world. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan championed the machines as "an expression of global solidarity." BBC News adds that "Although the laptops will initially be available to government only.... MIT is in talks with commercial manufacturers to make it available on the open market. To take part in the initiative, governments have to commit to buying a million machines for around $100 each." MIT aims to start with 6 countries, and 6 months later hopes to open up the market to as many governments as possible.

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William T. Vollmann, the American literary world's leading daredevil, beat out several other highly regarded authors, including acclaimed writer E. L. Doctorow and metaphorist-par-excellent Mary Gaitskill, to receive this year's National Book Award for fiction for his novel Europe Central. (I haven't read a Vollmann novel in about ten years, so I can't comment on it either way.) Last year's fiction nominees brooked considerable critical and publishing industry scorn for not being big enough names (or top sellers), so Vollmann is an interesting choice; his notoriety is probably greater than his booksales, but he is a serious and very talented writer. Sentimental favorite Joan Didion received the award for non-fiction, for her widely praised (worshiped?) memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, while heavily belauded poet W. S. Merwin (who received the Pulitzer Prize back in the early 1970s) was given, er, bestowed the prize for poetry. (His stepson, the amiable author Jonathan Burnham Schwartz, my one of my freshman dormmates, accepted the prize for him.) Jean Birdsall received the children's literature prize for The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits and a Very Interesting Boy. Poet, publisher, bookseller, and literary anchor Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who cofounded the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco in the 1950s, and whose A Coney Island of the Mind (New Directions, endless reprints) is one of the best-selling poetry books of all time, received the first Literarian award for outstanding service to the American literature community. (An excellent choice, in my opinion.) The medal for distinguished contributions to literature went to octogenarian Norman Mailer, who was introduced by none other than Toni Morrison (who needs no introduction). The New York Times's A. O. (Tony) Scott wrote up a tight, sometimes snappish critique of the National Book Awards, and all awards for that matter, "Medal Fatigue," when they were originally announced.

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Africa has its first elected female leader in Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who defeated former soccer star George Weah to become Liberia's new president last week. The 67-year-old, Harvard-educated former minister in the government of deposed and exiled dictator Charles Taylor won 59.4 percent of the vote, with a very strong showing among Liberia's female majority. She cannot take office, however, until the country's National Elections Committtee (NEC) certifies the ballots from across the country. Weah and his supporters have alleged massive vote fraud, though UN vote inspectors remarked immediately after the election that the voting process appeared to have gone fairly smoothly and without major irregularities. Nevertheless, the Weah bloc is currently holding peaceful public demonstrations, which could grow violent if there isn't sufficient transparency. Liberia, settled by enslaved and free Black Americans in 1822, gained its independence in 1847. Yet the country of 3 million people has been riven by internal conflicts between the Americo-Liberian élites and the indigenous Africans for much of its history, and has been functioning in a crippled state since Samuel Doe overthrew the Americo-Liberian-led government of William Tolbert, Jr. in 1980. In 1989, an eight year civil war began (1989-1996), in which Doe was ousted (and killed) in 1990. In 1997, Taylor's disastrous rule led to yet another civil war (1999-2003). Chairman Gyude Bryant has served as chief of state since Taylor fled to Nigeria in August 2003, and if the NEC clears the vote, Johnson-Sirleaf, who lost the 1997 election to Taylor, will become the first freely elected leader in years.

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Yahoo! News announced today that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting that the rates of HIV/AIDS infection (seroconversion) have been decreasing among Black Americans about 5 percent every year since 2001, though Blacks are still 8 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV than Whites. According to CDC researchers, "the falling rate among blacks seems to be tied to overlapping drops in diagnoses among injection drug users and heterosexuals." About 69 percent of the heterosexuals diagnosed with HIV during this period were Black. For men who have sex with men, diagnoses remained fairly stable from 2001 to 2003, but "climbed 8 percent between 2003 and 2004." CDC officials claimed that this was true for men of all races, though they were unable to explain the increases. For the first time, New York data were included in the study of 33 states, and the Empire State accounted for about 20 percent of the diagnoses. Other large states, including California and Illinois, however, were not included.

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From the Bowery Poetry Club website, on Monday, November 21, 2005, author-genius and Temple University professor Samuel R. Delany will conduct a one-day workshop in their Study Abroad on the Bowery Series:

• 4:00-6:00pm Study Abroad on the Bowery: Visiting Professor Samuel R. Delaney $10/$5 student/Free SAB St. Marks Workshop Samuel R. Delany is the winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards and one of science fiction's most celebrated authors. Born and raised in New York City, Delany began writing in the early 1960s. His 1966 novel Babel-17 established his reputation, and over the next decade he became famous for his provocative futuristic explorations of race and sexual identity in the novels Nova (1969), Dhalgren (1975) and Triton (1976). His other works include the Neveryòn series of novels (1979-87) and the novel Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984). He has also written frankly about his life as an African-American homosexual, and his non-fiction books include The Motion of Light and Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-65 (1988) and Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (Sexual Culture) (1999).

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I'm far less interested in fashion than I once was, and hardly get to museums as much as I like, but I am looking forward to catching the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute's "Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Barrel Apfel Collection." The exhibit, which is the buzz of the New York fashion world, showcases the 84-year-old Apfel's marvelously distinctive, personal, peacock aesthetic, featuring among other things "an [purple-and-pink striped] Ungaro rabbit coat with [maroon-and-pink polka dot] velour pants" that led one high school student, Alan Futman, taking in the show to describe her with approval as "pretty out there." The longtime businesswoman and bohemian decries the narrow style of today's socialites, who take their cues from the major designers, and avows her love of individualist, Paterian icons, whose likes are certainly rare nowadays. As the photo above at right (Chester Higgins, NYT) shows, his apprisal sounds dead on. And Ralph Lauren (Mr. Pseudo-prep himself!) and others, according to the Times's review, are taking notes, with pseudo-Apfelian shows and styles to follow. That capitalist commodity machine just churns on and on.

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Noah's Arc: Finally, a pretty good episode last night, the best so far. All the actors were in sync, the writing was much tighter, there was lots of romance (and gorgeous men), and even the final uproarious moment was believable--and funny (involving Alex and Trey, of course). Wilson Cruz was a great addition. Keep it up!