And thanks to

* A few posts ago I linked to Benjamin Kunkel's problematic article on contemporary dystopias: "Dystopia and the End of Politics." Since then, Nick Matamas has posted a clever and more satisfying response: "Kunkel Sore Or, The Outsider and Bothers."
* The University of San Diego's LTW 124 course, "Science Fiction (Literatures of the World)," which covers texts by Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin among others, is available for a limited time as a free podcast download. Read more here.
"Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer."
- Plutarch, Moralia