What happened to Woody Allen? The picture on the left (credited to Steve Granitz/WireImage) was given to a computer, where a software program used a mathematical formula to alter the face into a theoretically more attractive version, on the right, while maintaining an “unmistakable similarity” to the original.

What do you think? Is the guy somehow improved? There are more photographs of men and women at The New York Times, adding fuel to the debate around the complex and sometimes disturbing questions about how we perceive beauty and a beauty ideal.

The thieves were voracious, filching flat-screen televisions and computer games, purloining iPods and DVDs, even making off with a box of liquor and a set of car rims in a burglary two weeks ago at an apartment three young people shared here (White Plains). Luckily, they also took two laptop computers.
One of the laptops was a Macintosh belonging to Kait Duplaga, who works at the Apple store in the Westchester mall and thus knows how to use all its bells and whistles. While the police were coming up dry, Ms. Duplaga exploited the latest software applications installed on her laptop to track down the culprits and even get their photographs.

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In recent weeks I’ve been getting several comments that go like this:

I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you….

and I’ve set up a huge cyber dustbin which collects them as they arrive, shreds them, and turns them into virtual compost.

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In the Guardian, Lucy McDonald spends an evening in London’s Dana Cafe.

Most science cafes are loosely affiliated through an international umbrella organisation called Café Scientifique, which was founded in Leeds in 1998 and inspired by the French Café Philosophique movement. There are now more than 30 across the country.
In a rare reversal of cultural exchange, it is one trend that Britain has exported to America, which is now home to 60 cafes. There are a further 120 worldwide.

Sheryl Crow’s music is the sound of soccer mom nation. It’s not just the kind of music your mother would like, it’s the kind of music your mother would make (and maybe does at the local weekly coffee house in the church basement): midtempo rock, sing-along choruses, strummed acoustic guitar (the very sound of which is enough to inspire a conditioned revulsion response in many Americans [and Europeans] below the age of 18), and, on Crow’s latest album, explicitly political lyrics.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, with its themes of possibility and aspiration, speaks to a new generation of immigrants from China and elsewhere.
Sara Rimer in the NY Times reports on teachers who say students can see themselves in Gatsby.
Many are inspired by the green light at the end of the dock, which for Jay Gatsby, the self-made millionaire from North Dakota, symbolizes the upper-class woman he longs for. “Green color always represents hope,” says Jinzhao Wang, 14, who immigrated from China two years ago .
“My green light?” said Jinzhao, who has been studying “Gatsby” in her sophomore English class at the Boston Latin School. “My green light is Harvard.”

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Nick Fraser in The Observer writes about the rediscovery of the dark genius, Richard Yates.

My characters all rush around trying to do their best, trying to live well within their known and unknown limitations, Yates explains. Doing what they can’t help doing, ultimately and inevitably failing because they can’t help being the people they are.

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THE prototypical computer whiz of popular imagination — pasty, geeky, male — has failed to live up to his reputation.
According to Stephenie Rosenbloom at The New York Times, research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

I think… skip the bio if your life is entirely boring and devoid of events, but add it otherwise. And preferably add it with more details than the “John doe is a farmer from wherever who lives with her husband and five cats in a two-story house, and likes to write fiction in her spare time.” which is usually added on the last page of some books.

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Q: How much time, if any, do you spend on the web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?

Jenny Diski: Acres of time, wasted, wasted. I play poker (and lose), I play ludo and mah jong. I check out MetaFilter. I buy frocks. Anything. It’s a kind of hell. I sometimes think I might go back to typewriting. But you can’t get the ribbons.

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I don’t get language. I know a lot of words though I’m always a little wary of dropping most of the big ones into conversation not out of any lack of confidence but because they don’t belong in conversational English. Take a word like borborygmia for example (the sound of wind moving through your digestive tract), it’s a lovely word but what’s the point in using it if you have to explain it?

from Jim Murdoch‘s archive

And The Guardian makes an offer – We would love to hear about the book that first opened your eyes to the women’s movement. Whether it was one you found hugely inspiring, or an anti-feminist book that riled you into action, please write to women@guardian.co.uk, and we will publish a selection of your stories in the coming weeks.

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Websites that authors should avoid . . .

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I went to see the film, Michael Clayton. George Clooney is always worth watching. But this time around he was overshadowed by a wonderful performance from Tom Wilkinson. The movie itself was fluff.

Thanks to Ann Marie for this one.

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I’ve been exploring the site, Read Print, which offers a free online library of classic texts. There are thousands of volumes to choose from. Similar to Bartleby, I suppose, but seems easier to use. You can search within the texts, too.

Thanks to Jennifer for this one.

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This World Clock, sent to me by Geoff Gritten, is an interesting piece of kit.

Last year I asked several bloggers a series of five questions and published their answers on this blog during the period I wasn’t here to make my own contributions. As I read through their replies a new question began to form for me, but this time the question was singular and would be addressed, not to bloggers, but to those involved in the craft of writing.

The question was this: What phases are involved in the creation of a text?

Over the past weeks I have been asking this question of a cross-section of writers. Some famous names. Others little-known. And still others, unknown outside of quite specialist circles.

The response to the question has been mixed. Most writers did respond in some way or other, though there were a few who didn’t bother to reply, usually, I suspect because they didn’t have the time, or because they were frightened of the question or regarded it as an imposition. These were a tiny minority.

Others responded immediately, seeming to drop whatever it was they were doing and going over to their computers to begin tapping out an answer. In the same vein, still others begged time to think or consider the question and the kind of answer they would like to formulate.

The answers, as might have been expected, are as varied as the individuals who have produced them. Some totally engaged, others distant, even wary, though all with their own special interest.

I’m going away now, for a little over a month, and the answers to the question will be posted here during that period. I’m sure you’ll find them as fascinating as I do.

It’s a long post, but, fuelled with rage, it passes quickly and is a wonderful example of how to relate traumatic events with no other aids but writing materials and passion.