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Our newspaper issue, the San Francisco Panorama, is closer than ever, and you can now see a nine-page rundown of its eight sections and 150 contributors right here. We're continuing to post excerpts, too, including a new two-page spread on NASA's imminent satellite launch—you can see those here. For a subscription starting with our newspaper, or to preorder a copy, visit our store.
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God Says No by James Hannaham has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award!
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Fever Chart fans: Bill Cotter will be on This American Life this weekend. To find your station, go to www.thisamericanlife.org.
Buy Fever Chart here.
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We are pleased to announce the publication of Tamler Sommers's A Very Bad Wizard. The book is a collection of interviews that Sommers conducted with ten acclaimed researchers in the burgeoning field of moral psychology. Steven Pinker called it "a thought-provoking and entertaining tour of one of the frontiers of human knowledge—the roots of our moral sense." Buy your copy here, or at independent booksellers nationwide.
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McSweeney's is looking for publicity and circulation interns in San Francisco to help out in the office from November through January. Send an e-mail with your résumé to angela@mcsweeneys.net for more information.
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San Francisco: Join us Thursday, November 19 at the San Francisco Public Library for the launch of En las Sombras de Estados Undios, the Spanish edition of Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives. This event will be in Spanish, with simultaneous translation available. Space is limited. RSVP by November 17 to Diana Pérez at press@voiceofwitness.com. For more details, click here.
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McSweeney's is matching donations to the Public Press's investigation of Northern California's Bay Bridge retrofit, which is now $4.5 billion over budget. Their full report will appear in our newspaper issue; to support it, please click here.
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We're holding a Style Your Wild Thing Contest. Dress up your fur-covered edition of The Wild Things and send us a photograph of the result. Details here.
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THE POLICE BLOTTER
SHAKESPEARE.
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At approximately 8:30 p.m. Thursday, a short, boyish-looking man in a loincloth approached a teenage girl in the Athenian Grove neighborhood. The man drugged the girl and then ran into the woods. Under questioning, the girl admitted to running away from home with her boyfriend, from whom she became separated after contact with a series of forest sprites.
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At approximately 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, a Verona man ingested a fatal dose of arsenic inside his lover's family's mausoleum. He was later identified as Romeo Montague, 22. A second victim, later identified as Juliet Capulet, 17, also of Verona, was found dead next to him. Capulet sustained a self-inflicted stab wound and was pronounced dead at the scene of the crime. Wanted for questioning are a local apothecary and an obese Catholic friar.
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John Macduff, 32, of Fife County, decapitated his long-time acquaintance and political rival, William Macbeth, of Cawdor County, last Sunday at the latter man's home in Dunsinane. Police are looking into the perpetrator's claims that the assassination was the result of a series of murders committed by Macbeth and his once institutionalized and recently murdered wife, Emily.
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Officers responded to reports of a man shouting obscenities on the 1800 block of N. Cornwall. Upon arrival, they found an elderly man without clothes dancing in the rain. The man claimed to have been thrown out of his home by his three daughters. Officers released the suspect into the custody of a man known as "Tom O'Bedlam."
Patrolmen returned later to find the bodies of the old man and his three daughters. Further investigation relies on the testimony of Mr. O'Bedlam, who now goes by "Edgar."
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A local magician and nobleman, Prospero, 62, of Milan, is accused of enslaving both a native man and a wood fairy during his abandonment on a secluded island. Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, 28, were discovered after a ship carrying the man's brother wrecked near the island. Witnesses reported seeing Prospero physically and verbally abuse the native man. They also testified to having observed repeated threats of supernatural retribution to the fairy.
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Officers apprehended Iago, 28 of Venice Beach, after witnesses confirmed his connection to the recent murder-suicide of Othello and Desdemona. Othello, 29, also of Venice (formerly of Moorish Spain), asphyxiated his wife after having suspected her of marital infidelity. Later convinced of his error in the matter, Othello stabbed himself in the chest with a cooking implement.
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Officers affiliated with the Animal Control Unit responded to a distress call in Bohemia County. Upon arriving at the scene, they found an eviscerated human carcass. Dental records later identified the man as Antigonus, 33, of Sicilia County. Wanted for questioning is the victim's employer, King Leontes, 45, also of Sicilia, who witnesses say ordered the victim to abandon his newborn infant in woods known to be populated by homicidal bears.
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Officers responding to calls of an assault in process arrived to find the results of a quadruple murder-suicide. King Claudius, 46, of Elsinore, died of stab wounds to the chest with a piece of poisoned fencing equipment. Another Elsinore man, Laertes, 25, passed from similar wounds. The third victim, later identified as Gertrude of Denmark, 45, was mute and unresponsive at the scene. She was later pronounced dead of acute respiratory failure. The fourth victim, Prince Hamlet of Denmark, 22, appeared to have died of a self-inflicted wound from the same épée that killed victims one and two. Hamlet is also suspected in the recent deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (earlier attributed to a freak sailing accident) and in the recent stabbing of a Danish councilman.
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