Terry Pratchett has early onset Alzheimers

AN EMBUGGERANCE
Folks,

I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.

We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet :o)

PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think - it’s too soon to tell. I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

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Buh-bye pr0n

The personal blog of San Francisco’s Violet Blue, a sex writer published in the San Francisco Chronicle and Valleywag’s sister site, has been removed from the Google index, along with several other adult sites. Tiny Nibbles, which runs a well-known annual list of the year’s sexiest geeks, does not show in Google’s search results, even if filters are turned off. Other sites affected include ErosBlog, a sex news site, and Comstock Films, which makes adult movies of real-life couples. The content’s all legal, and naughty, rather than degrading. Some word Violet wrote probably triggered a Google ban, inadvertently, but the search engine’s rules are opaque, as is the procedure for an appeal against deletion. You think there are other search engines, so that’s okay? There are no other search engines.

Personal pr0n, anyway. Bigger players such as Vivid, Adam and Eve, and other more corporate-ish sex sites are still available of course, but the personal sites? Not so much.

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No frogmarch for Rove

The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.

The key question the reporters have to ask the suddenly laconic Luskin is, “is there a sentence saying ‘provided Rove continues to cooperate’ in the letter?” As disappointed as I am that Rove isn’t going to spend a long time in an orange jumpsuit, I think it’s obvious that this is only true because he turned and said whatever he needed to say to keep his evilness out of jail.

Which means a frogmarch for Cheney is still a possibility.

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