Laurabelle's Blog

Today I finally finished reading Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection by Colin Wilson and Damon Wilson. It's nearly 700 pages long and incredibly fascinating, even more so than I thought when I checked it out. Each section focuses on the development of certain techniques of crime detection, usually centered on a weapon [...]

I recently read Terry Pratchett's newest Discworld novel, Going Postal. The whole book was very good, but even if it wasn't, it all would have been worth it for one single line. An omniscope is one of the most powerful instruments known to magic, and therefore one of the most useless. It can see everything, [...]

Two months ago, I read Ella Minnow Pea and started this post. A couple of weeks after that, I started a great entry and then lost it because I closed the browser without remembering to save my draft. This entry will not be as good, but since it has lain on my desk for more [...]

Quoting from memory: Victor: I wanted you to meet my family. I wanted you to meet my crazy grandma and my bitchy sister. Judy: Why? Victor: 'Cause that's me. Good movie. Go check it out from your local library.

Yesterday evening Jeff and I went to a Cure concert. It was initially supposed to be two weekends ago (as part of the Curiosa Festival), but it got postponed because Robert Smith had to go back to London for a few days. I was actually pretty excited about the change, because new location was much [...]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the first photo ever taken with my lovely new Canon PowerShot A80. You know, it could be a lot worse, and I think it is due solely to the virtues of my camera that the photo as good as it is.

I can't decide whether I like Lisa Goldstein's Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon. I certainly don't dislike it, but it hasn't really grabbed me the way that some others have. Still, I can't stop thinking about it, turning it over in my mind. Goldstein's urban fantasy novel is set in Elizabethan England, with [...]

Last night Jeff and I watched Das Experiment, a German film about the Stanford Prison Experiment gone horribly wrong. (Okay, the SPE gone even more horribly wrong.) Twenty men volunteer to participate in a two-week simulated prison experiment. Eight of them are randomly selected to be guards; the remaining twelve are prisoners. At first it's [...]

I requested Muriel Spark's Memento Mori from KCLS because I wanted an audio book, and I thought it sounded like a potentially interesting mystery story. The catalog summary reads: A voice on the telephone warns, Remember, you must die. The recipient of the grim message is elderly Dame Lettie Colston, but soon ten of Lettie's [...]

This weekend was not terribly illustrious. The ASIS&T Pacific Northwest Chapter Annual Conference was on Friday and Saturday, but I only went to the Saturday morning sessions because I was too energy-less on Friday. I wouldn't even have gone on Saturday morning, I think, if I hadn't said I would volunteer. I'm glad I went, [...]