Just started “Pearls Are A Nuisance,” the next story in Raymond Chandler‘s The Simple Art of Murder anthology.  It is quite different from anything I have read by him.  For example, the protagonist is engaged (!) and the action is almost cartoonishly comical.  I am intrigued to see how it turns out.

In the writing world, I read Mark Vun Kannon‘s explanation of why he changed the title of his book (and why you might also want to), and BookEnds Jessica‘s very helpful description of the various edits that occur after a book has been picked up.  Oh, and it looks like when have yet another fraud scandal in literature, this one involving a bizarre series of sentence pilferings.

The science news seems dominated by follow-ups to stories about the asteroid fly-by and failed Russian Mars probe, but there was this neat piece on mollusc camoflage explaining how deep sea squids and octopuses switch from being red to transparent based on which direction a threat approaches.  Why?  Read the story!

Also, I found this picture online of an otter holding a baby otter (a pup?) and decided it needed LOL-ifying.  Resistance is futile.