Here they are, all out this year, with links to Amazon (if I do this right):
And just for good measure, the April 2009 edition of Boys' Life contains a profile I authored--about two scouts who won awards from the American Museum of Natural History.
Yay me...I wrote AND got paid!
"Money is like dieting," says Money senior writer Donna Rosato. "You're shocked at how much you're eating when you start to keep a food diary, but it's not that hard to cut back once you are aware of it."
That comes out of an article on Mediabistro.com called "Follow the money"; if you're a member you can follow the link. Of course, the article is about how the economy is hitting freelancers and the people who pay them...or don't pay them, as occasionally happens.
Write everything down, and cut out the unnecessary parts. Just like joining WeightWatchers for your wallet. No dang fun.
I suppose it's good advice, but my personal preference inclines toward Hello Dolly: "Money (pardon the expression) is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around, encouraging young things to grow." or, "If you have to live hand-to-mouth, you'd better be ambidextrous."
To get back to the Mediabistro article, it carps about credit cards and paying down balances--the usual stuff. Here's some useful advice: Over the last six months, what three things were worth the money? Keep doing 'em. What three things felt like a waste? Stop. Yes, that I can accept.
Other items: drop the gym membership, re-examine your withholding or estimated tax structure, consider an FSA, and bring your lunch, instead of going out.
I have a better idea. Enjoy yourself, and move in with your kids when you run out of money. Really, they'll thank you for it one day.
Now I'll find out if my daughter ever reads this blog!
Hook 'em. It's not just for Longhorns anymore.
It's the advice writers hear at every conference, seminar, webinar, class, panel discussion, and club meeting. Hook 'em with the first paragraph, the first line. One of my how-to books says that "Jack Bickham, author of several dozen novels...claims you've got to hook the reader in the first twenty-five words." There's even a book available on Amazon called Hooking the Reader : Opening Lines that Sell
Here are some samples of this ubiquitous advice:
Jennifer Jensen (in an article titled "Write Compelling Opening Lines") gives some great examples of opening lines, like:
There's also this gem, from Earl Emmerson's Fat Tuesday: "I was trapped in a house with a lawyer, a bare-breasted woman and a dead man. The rattlesnake in the paper bag only complicated matters."
Yes, those do compel me to read on. But is that the right tactic in every book?
I'm not saying that advice is all wrong. I guess my quibble is not with the advice, in fact, but in the rapacious manner that we writers, hungry for publication, suck it in. We think we must have dead bodies or life-or-death decisions in that first paragraph. But seriously, is that what a reader is looking for?
Glance at the opening lines of your favorite books. Do they conform to this idea of hooking the reader through shock and awe techniques? Chances are, they don't.
Maybe humor is the way to go.
I can picture a future writing seminar in which teachers mock the book opening that begins in the middle of a car chase, or where shots are fired, bombs blow up, or a man screams "I'm leaving you!!"--all as being so, well, early twenty-first century.
Great site. Did everyone know about this BUT me?
Well, since no one reads this po' li'l blog, I won't bother to keep it to myself.
Indeed.com is a job-hunting site that allows me to put in a key word, then break down the results by pay level, location, part/full/contract/temp assignments, and even by type of writing.
Indeed.com must troll other sites constantly, because their jobs are from all over--Monster, freelance sites, writing sites, private companies, etc. Well, wonderful. Free sites that want to do all the work for me? I can live with that.
This book was soooo much fun, especially after a bunch of nonfiction. (Why is most nonfiction written by PhD's so dull?)
Anyway, great characters, great settings and history. Puts you right there in an Anne Rice sorta way, only the people are far more individual and differentiated. Full of surprises.
Do you ever lie about the books you read?
I fudge. If I get more than a third of the way through I say I've read it. I've read the first half of The Horse of Pride three times but never finished it.
Well, readers in Britain lie a lot! This article about a survey in The Guardian says that 61%...SIXTY-ONE PER CENT!...admit to claiming that they've read a book when they haven't even cracked it open!
I'm too chicken to be that blatant. I hate getting caught in a lie more than I hate looking dumb. But I'm not a Brit.
However---11% of those folks in the survey said they'd written a book. They'd finished a manuscript, but not gotten it published. Wonder if they're telling the truth?
The paper published a list the books folks are most likely to lie about, and 1984 
Some of the others on the list surprised me: The Selfish Gene
The Week Magazine asks, Is Writing for the Rich?
Good question. The answer according to The Week's Executive Editor Francis Wilkinson, is, yeah, more or less.
Although the world is full of more opportunities than ever for writers of every ilk (it costs nothing to start up a blog like this), few of those opportunities come with paychecks. As Wilkinson sums up: "movie stars, business executives, even accomplished authors all write for free these days. Why should some kid nobody’s ever heard of get paid?"
Ouch. We all know that, but why does it hurt so bad to see it in print?
Anyway, it's an interesting editorial, especially if you have friends or children who might want to become writers. Make them read this, and have them take dancing lessons. That way, they'll have a skill to fall back on, as my mother used to put it.
Here's the irony: You can read the editorial for free, online.
I don't subscribe to The Week anymore, even though it's my favorite publication. Why bother? By reading it for free, I help create the situation that keeps me from getting decent pay!
Enabling. It's what for dinner.
I actually know something about this topic, having written the entry on "Chariots" in the Encyclopedia of the History of Invention and Technology (coming late summer from Facts on File Books). I researched the earliest known instance of chariots: burials in Sintashta-Petrovka, east of the Ural Mountains--which sits in northern Kazakhstan.
What was in those burials? Racing chariots! Built to hold only one man. Those date back to 2000 BC, and it was thought that horses were domesticated about that time too, or just a couple of centuries earlier. (Earlier, heavier carts had wheels that were solid, not spoked. They were pulled by oxen, usually.)
But as these two articles, one from the Los Angeles Times and one from Radio Free Europe describe, new evidence has been found--in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world--didn't know that. The picture above, btw, is of a man riding in Icic, Kazakhstan.
Anyway, archaeologists figure that the Botai culture of northern Kazakhstan domesticated horses around 3500 BC. The evidence? Horse milk residue in pottery, horse manure used as roofing material in pit houses, horse skulls with bit-wear-marks on their teeth. Oh, and 90% of the bones in the garbage piles belonged to horses, and the leg bones were more slender than wild horses' would be, suggesting they were being bred for speed.
And--hate to say it, but if those bones are ending up in the garbage, maybe bred for food as well?
The research is published in this month's issue of the academic journal, Science.
How fortuitous! The excavations in Stratford, east London--trenches and the like, necessary to construct the Olympic Park sports complex for the 2012 games--have turned up all sorts of nifty stuff. The rendering at right shows what the park parts of the Park will look like in future. For what it looked like six months ago, see below.
This Daily Mail article has pictures of a 19th century boat, a 4th century AD Roman coin, four Iron Age skeletons, and a 4,000 year old flint axe. The remains of a Bronze Age hut, likewise 4,000 years old, and lots of pottery were also found. The Discover Project website has more, including pictures of 1941 gun emplacements that were uncovered.
Confused? This press release from the Olympic Authority something-or-other gives the background of the site over the last 5,000 years. The place was the site of :a marsh/wetland for a coupla thousand years, then an Iron Age village, a Roman road, a channel dug by King Alfred to divert the river and thus divert marauding Vikings, a bridge crossing, a mill built or operated by the Knights Templar, a calico, porcelain, and eventually a petrol factory, then a sewer, and finally a Yardley cosmetics, soap, and lavender factory. Talk about multi-use facilities!
Since the construction requires that over 140 trenches be dug, I guess they were bound to find something. This is all pretty cool and I hope we hear more about it soon.
Why is bad news so addictive?
I can pass on the story about the little girl who raised a thousand dollars for Recording for the Blind (hint hint) but the headline that screams "Chapter 11" draws me in every time.
So here is today's dose of gloom and doom, even though I swear I will think only happy thoughts for the rest of the afternoon: Reader's Digest has hired a bankruptcy expert and is considering ... yeah, Chapter 11.
The New York Post says that "the company faced a potential restructuring over the next 18 months as revenue and profit slump." Barron's has a story on RDA too.
Blagojevich.
Six figure deal for book.
Blagojevich, who isn't worth the trouble it takes to figure out how to spell his name. A potty-mouthed liar who tried to sell the Senate seat of the new president. Six figures--for what?
To tell us one is born every minute?
Neolithic art and fungus are not good bedfellows. Or wallfellows.
The black fungus that is creeping across the 17,000-year-old murals of animals and hunters in the cave of Lascaux, France, causes great concern. So the Lascaux Caves International Scientific Committee and other international experts met in Paris for two days to discuss solutions.
Apparently a fungicide was applied (I prefer the words "smeared" or "glopped" but scientists like to use more clinical terms) a year ago, in January of 2008. No one but scientists have been allowed to visit Lascaux since 1963 (tourists actually visit a replica cave), so the cause is a bit puzzling.
An air-conditioning system installed in 2001 seems to have kicked off the first mold. More details about that and the fungal progression are available in this News24.com article.
In this AP story from WTOP.com, the Committee chief, Marc Gaulthier, blames global warning for raising the temperature inside the cave, which interferes with the air circulation and allows the fungus to grow. A couple of solutions are floated in this story, too, which other news pieces lacked.
Not that I get royalties or anything, but the first two books in a series of eight have been published. I contributed to them, and (nice surprise) I'm even listed as a contributor.
So--presenting the FYI books, edited and compiled by Ken Leiker. For now, you can only get them at Barnes and Noble online. (Don't know why Amazon is dragging its feet.)
In spite of the titles, the 150 questions in each book covers all sorts of topics. The animal kingdom, food and drink, sports, science--weird (bodily functions) and otherwise (space, meteorology, all that stuff), health, traditions, history, etc. Here are some sample questions:
Those are my topics, btw, along with Typhoid Mary, castrati singers, the ancient Maya, mistletoe, red skies, and femme druids. I can vouch for the accuracy of the information !
I'll blog again--with links--when they get on Amazon.
Parisdailyphoto.com. Oh, what a lovely and easy-to-read blog! I'm adding it to my favorites over on the right as well. Each and every day, a new photo taken in Paris. Some are whimsical (fashion faux-pas, for example) and others show well-known monuments.
I'll add my own--this picture of the statue of St. Rita in the church of St-Germain-des-Pres. I took this in 2004 and assume that supplicants are still writing their prayers all over lovely Rita with their Bics, in spite of the paper thoughtfully provided on a nearby pillar.
St-Germain-des-Pres exists today (after about 1500 years) mainly due to Victor Hugo. It was badly damaged during the Revolution, turned into a gunpowder factory, and many felt it should be demolished. But Hugo had a passion for Paris' old churches and rallied people to rebuild and preserve it. Read more about the history of St-Germain-des-Pres here.
I like it--charge per click, a la Itunes.
"Under a micropayment system, a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for for an article or a dime fer that day's full edition. . . I suspect most [consumers] would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough."
The light bulb has flashed on but has not been implemented yet, so you can read Time Magazine's piece "How to Save Your Newspaper" online for free. And if you google the title, you'll get to see what all the bloggers are saying about the idea. But who cares about bloggers?
Walter Isaacson (the author) does. He is kind enough to include us in his idea: "magazines and blogs, games and apps, TV newscasts and amateur videos, porn pictures and policy monographs, the reports of citizen journalists, recipes of great cooks and songs of garage bands." Go, us!
The next article in the Feb. 16 2009 US edition of Time covers the new generation of readers that will be competing with Kindle in 2009-10: Plastic Logic, Pixel Qi, and Adobe AIR. Something on which to spend our tax refunds, oh joy.
I would love to have a Kindle, but the price of books for the device--given that there's no printing involved--still seems exorbitant. I'd rather go to the library.
As for the others, the Plastic Logic won't really be available until 2011 and the AIR's screen is to small for me. The Pixel Qi looks very promising but is not out yet. It all depends on how expensive the books and magazines will be.
The third book of the series starts out slow...about 200 pages of slow. Hang in there, it gets better--it always does. And if you're reading the third book then you made it through Inkheart and Inkspell, so how could you NOT read this?
I loved the Inkheart movie, btw, but since they tied up all lose ends so neatly at the end, I'm not holding my breath waiting for the sequel. Too bad. And while I love Helen Mirren, whose bright idea was it that she'd make a good Elinor (who is supposed to be fat) and should go charging around on a unicorn?
The rentable bikes of Paris get press coverage in every large city, because every large city wonders of fleets of bikes would work for them. Reduce air pollution and traffic? Yeah! But there are drawbacks.
A lot of cities (Los Angeles included) are simply not bike friendly. Here where cars rule, vicious violence against bike riders happen frequently. Things like deliberately causing accidents, slamming bike riders with hands or bottles, or spilling drinks on them. I wouldn't say it's common, but if you ride daily, it will happen.
Why? My guess is because you don't need to pass an IQ test or be sober to ride in the passenger seat of a car, from whence much of the violence occurs.
B
ut in Paris, 42 million rides have been taken on the bikes--the velibs--provided by the city, in just 18 months of operation. Slide your credit card and go. Yay! Go green!
Sadly, half the original 15,000 velibs have been stolen or destroyed, and 1500 a day need repairs.
New bikes cost over $500, so the city is rethinking the system. Replacing all 20,000 bikes would cost $20 million, and at the rate they are being destroyed, that's about $10 million every three years. All per this BBC article, February 2009. And here's a YouTube video link called Velib Freeride.
And the vandals of Los Angeles, to whom storefronts and freeway signs are nothing more than fresh canvas for taggers, are probably thinking, "Eighteen months? Hell, we could destroy those bikes in eighteen days!"
The New York Times points out that their own proposed bike program has been put on hold.
Yeah, like you didn't know. But as David Lyons wrote in a Newsweek column ("Time to Hang up the Pajamas," Feb 7, 2009): "that day more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I'd ever had—and through Google's AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks."
Ouch! Lyons' site is The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, btw--no small potatoes. And "that day" was the day his identity was revealed.
He also quotes eMarketer analyst Paul Verna as saying, "People have not figured out a clear way to monetize some of these vehicles." (Hey, Ma! I'm a vehicle!), adding that the real issue is "the lack of a clear business model that can generate substantial revenues."
Bloggers with business models doesn't compute.
I blog for fun. I did the Adsense stuff but quickly realized that my monthly emails report no revenue. In that sense, they're not even worth the five seconds it takes to open and read them. I still blog. And you're reading it, though I don't expect you're paying anything to do so.
For the record, I know of one person who claims to support a family of four on blogging, and she's about the conduct an online class through The Renegade Writer. A class on blogging, of course, and on how to make money at it. Here's the link to the class, and I may poke you there.
Huzzah! The HMS Victory has been found! The flagship of the British Royal Navy sank Oct. 4, 1744 in choppy seas. Here's how the Independent puts it:
Laden with four tons of Portuguese gold, the pride of the British navy – and direct predecessor to Admiral Nelson's vessel of the same name – sank with all 1,150 of its crew. Only the shattered remains of its top-mast were found on a Guernsey beach as evidence of its terrible fate.
Until now. Odyssey Marine of Florida found the 100-gun HMS Victory ("the mightiest vessel of the 18th century") and its gold, estimated at 700 million pounds' worth in today's currency. (no wonder it went down. 100 bronze cannons and more than 100,000 gold coins [per the BBC]? That was one hefty ship!) A great deal of controversy surrounds Odyssey's intention to salvage the treasure, as reported here in The Independent.
But I'll see your 265-year-old shipwreck with a Saxon burial in Sussex--and raise you another Saxon grave! So there!
A couple of bright members of the Eastbourne District Metal Detecting Club were doing what metal detecting enthusiasts do when they stumbled across a pair of highly impressive 6th century Saxon graves. Spear, shield, male skeleton and bronze bowl, silver belt buckle, gilded brooches, and female skeleton. The two discoverers, Bob White and Cliff Smith, did NOT ransack the site, but called authorities so that the site could be properly excavated. Yay! Here's the BBC story.
Finally, a 4th century pagan cult mosaic was unearthed about 13 feet under a Catholic Church. 140 square feet of naked, carousing Romans! Read about that one here.
It's time, it's time! If you're an unpublished novelist with a finished product on your hands, you can enter Amazon's Break Through Novel Contest! Grand Prize is a $25,000 advance and a contract with Penguin Books.
Go here, between Feb 2 and Feb 8. Sooner is better, because the contest closes once 10,000 novels have been entered. You will need a dynamite pitch of under 300 words (the first cut is made on the basis of that pitch, so it better be good!) and a completed novel. You'll need other stuff too (the first 5,000 words, a little bio) but those are the main things.
Go!
"None of this is good or bad; it just is." That's how Time Magazine wraps up its review of the book publishing industry in 2009. Coming a few days after an author-with-thirty-books-under-his-belt told me that the publishing industry is in deep doodie for exactly the same reasons this article cites, I'm paying attention.
The piece by Lev Grossman focuses on authors who published their own books and ended up on the bestseller lists. Why? Because the big publishers are working from a business plan so outdated that it's become dysfunctional. Grossman calls it a financial coelacanth, which I had to look up. (It's pronounced SEE-le-kanth, and it refers to an extinct species of fish.)
Since nothing but the biggest sellers are returning profits, no agent or publisher wants to take a risk on an unknown. I like this part: "In theory, publishers are gatekeepers: they filter literature so that only the best writing gets into print. But Genova and Bary and Suarez [Lisa Genova, who wrote Still Alice, Brunonia Barry of The Lace Reader and Daniel Suarez, author of Daemon--all self-published originally and now best-sellers] got filtered out initially, which suggests . . . not only a technological revolution but also a quiet cultural one--an audience rising up to claim its right to act as a tastemaker."
The article points out innovations that are cropping up: Paperless books, like the Kindle, cell-phone novels, fan fiction, episodic blogs. Some of it scares me; some makes me hopeful. I do not know where all of this leaves the writer who is trying to make a living, but it's clear (duh) that the industry is in flux and no one really knows what will work once the dust settles.
In some cities, you have to get a license to sell your writing. I find this twisted and intrusive, but all things are relative. A friend who works for a city does not see it my way; she thinks that cities have a legitimate right to tax businesses--those taxes go to maintain the safety and ambiance of the neighborhood in which I write, after all!
We're still speaking, even though I called her code-enforcement personnel something akin to Nazi thugs.
In one Southern California city where my friend once worked--a very poor, poor city with little revenue--all city employees would write down the names and phone numbers of any company vehicles they saw parked within city limits. Someone in the office would then look up the business and--no matter where it was located--send them a ticket for doing business in the city without a license!
A most extreme example that made the local papers: a medical supply company was delivering a wheelchair to a home bound resident. They got fined, even though they'd never sold to a person in the city and probably never would again. (I believe this is where my "Nazi thug" comment came into play and threatened a thirty-year friendship.)
So check your city codes, if you're the paranoid type. And don't ignore any notices you might get from the city! In Los Angeles, a writer earning under $300,000 a year (IOW, anyone who hasn't won an Oscar for a screenplay) is exempt, but they can still be fined--for not filing their exemption in a timely manner. It's crazy. LAMC Section 21.03.
Glad I don't live in that city.
For the first time since 1982, adults are reading more. In 1982, about 67% of adults indulged in "literary reading" and a slow slide in that rate has had academics and critics moaning for ... um ... 26 years (reading's up, math still sucks).
Literary reading, btw, means novels, short stories, plays and poems, according to the National Eendowment for the Arts, who produced the survey. The millions of people who read non-fiction are left out, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Aren't those non-fiction books usually thicker and don't they often require far more concentration than, say, Twilight? But I quibble. Back to the survey.
The rate bottomed out at 47% in 2002, but came back up to 50% in 2008. The biggest jump was among 18-to-24-year-olds. Next highest increase: those over 75. But the survey found reading up across ethnic and gender lines. Yippee!
The whole report is here in pdf format. The press release from the NEA, here.
The Los Angeles Times book editor, David Ulin, suggests that celebrating a rise in literacy when no one could really prove there had been a drop (remember all those nonfiction bestsellers) was a bit unrealistic, and that the study seemed "more self-congratulatory than persuasive." He also points out that reading rates, although up over all, still vary greatly by ethnicity and educational level. I'd like to read more about some of his suggestions and recommend this column to anyone who's thought about what reading means.
One third of the respondents to a poll by The Daily Beast are either working two jobs, or are full-on freelancers. That's a lot. And half of those job-jugglers made the switch within the last six months, according to this article. That's fast.
The polls' results are here, in pdf format. It shows that of the 500 internet interview respondents, 22% considered themselves freelancers. Of the 500, 23% held more than one job.
Pay didn't vary too much between the freelancers and the 78% who worked for a company. 15% of both earned over $100,000 per year. 33% of freelancers and 37% of company employees earned less than $40,000.
My favorite question: Regardless of what you do now, would you prefer to work for yourself or for a company? 55% answered "For myself." Yes, it is sweet.
Tina Brown wrote a related piece, "The Gig Economy," in which she said the poll explained why it takes ten minutes to answer the question, "So what are you up to these days?"
Must be why my acquaintances have stopped asking me that. OTOH, I don't ask them how their job is going unless I'm prepared to listed to 20 minutes of venting about the stupidity of their customers/coworkers/clients. I guess it evens out in the end.
Seriously. For $35, this can be yours.
Check it out at Gaukler Wares. Really.
And you don't even have to dig it up. Well, ok, if you want to bury it in your backyard and get the camera out and pretend you dug it up, go ahead.
Or you could buy Gaukler's reproduction of a Celtic brooch for $45. 
Am I the only one who finds it weird that an ancient treasure costs less than a modern reproduction? If women can be divided into those who wear jewelry and those who would rather look at it in a display case, I'm in the latter category.
I don't know if anyone vets Gaukler's non-custom, really old stuff as authentic, but I imagine it's for real. After all, numismatic sites sell Armorican coins for under $100, so clearly not every treasure is winding up in museums.
Besides the custom, modern work (which is lovely and very reasonably priced), you can get artefacts of the ancient world--Rus, Viking, Medieval Europe, Byzantine, Roman, Iron Age, Chinese--it's all there.
I read 38.
I won't bore you with the list. Some were kid's books, like Inkheart and Inkspell by Cornelia Funke, but that doesn't mean they were short. In fact, the shortest book was probably The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Thank you to Frances Dinkelspiel and her blog Ghost Word for this topic! She read 35 books, and 
had one of her own published: Towers of Gold, about early Los Angeles history. Here is Frances' interview with a woman (Sarah Weinman) who read 462...yup, four hundred and sixty-two...books in 2008. I suspect there's a portrait of Weinman in her attic--a portrait with bleeding eyes.
38 suits me fine. So there.
(well, one I'm still working on: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
No, I did not buy it just to be trendy. I've actually had it for 3 or 4 years, because I'm a Lincolnophile, but am just now getting around to reading it. For the record, it's entertaining and very kind to Mary Lincoln.)
The French Paradox is common knowledge now, right? The French (who do get fat, btw) eat a high-cholesterol, high-saturated fat diet, yet suffer less from heart disease than Americans. We've all heard that red wine may be the reason.
A UCLA study breaks it down and even shows that red wine may fight Alzheimer's disease and certain tumors. Polyphenols, which occur naturally in red wine and "block the formation of proteins that build the toxic plaques thought to destroy brain cells, and further, ...they reduce the toxicity of existing plaques, thus reducing cognitive deterioration."
I'll drink to that! The study used polyphenol from grapeseed--how dull. Sticks in your teeth. I'll choose a nice Cab over grapeseed any day.
For the record, tea, nuts, berries, and cocoa also contain polyphenols. No one can prove that the polyphenols in Beaujolais are more beneficial than those found in peanuts. . . but do you want to risk your heart's health? After all, do peanut munchers at ballparks and dark bars where you drop the shells on the floor incur fewer incidents of heart disease than the French? I think not.
As for my crack about the French getting fat, I suppose I'd better back that up. Here's New York Times article from 2006 about the childhood obesity problem, which sounds a lot like the US' childhood obesity problem, with the same culprits identified: soda and snack machines at school, etc. The article also mentions that French women have less and less time to cook, and families have less and less time to eat together or linger in cafe's (which are in decline--see this post), and in short, the whole idealized French way of enjoying food is crumbling before a new paradigm of time-pressed workers grabbing high-calorie meals from fast food restaurants.
ABC News ran a piece about this in August 2008, which said, "An estimated six million French are obese, and 14 million overweight. France has an overall population of about 60 million. "
Andrew Shaffer, the wacky gentleman (I mean that in the nicest way) who combined photos of Charles Darwin with Santa Claus to create a line of Christmas greeting cards for atheists, is ready for Valentine's Day too. (read about Shaffer on Expatica, then visit his site at OrderofStNick.com.)
Some of the cards for February 14th feature Nietzsche and come in Sweet or Anti Valentines. I personally like Anti #3, with a portrait of a rather young Nietzsche and the quote, "A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love." You can browse them here.
Another of Shaffer's popular items is the Depressing Times cards, for Christmas, Valentines, and all occasions. They feature great black & white pictures from the 30s, with captions like "I made you a Valentine, but I had to burn it in a trashcan to stay warm."
If the Depression doesn't float you boat (can't imagine why it wouldn't), there are sour Valentines--ones that tell a person you're breaking up with them, or cheating, or crossing genders...but my favorite is this Gothic little number at right, with no caption. Who needs words?
None of this has aught to do with archaeology or France or writing, although I suppose it does take gall to send some of these cards out. I mean, your sister might stage an intervention or something. But they are so amusing.
A link to David Hauslib's Jossip blog, specifically to an entry titled "A Brief History of Modern Lying Authors."
He covers the top four frauds of the last ten years--three phony memoirs, and one journalist faking his stories. But the field is sooooo rich! One could, were one so inclined, fill a blog with tales of bogus memoirs, fraudulent war stories that made it into print, faked quotes to bolster research--and don't even get me started on plagiarism!
Is there no honor among writers?
Once again, an author has been outed as fabricating his memoir just as it goes to press. Herman Rosenblat's ANGEL AT THE FENCE: The True Story of a Love That Survived, it turns out, ain't none of that--not true, no one at the fence, and it hasn't survived--at least, not as a book. Rosenblat even has to return his $50,000 advance!
Seems that the touching tale of a girl who through apples over the fence of a concentration camp, and years later met the grown man she had helped save from starvation, and married him, sigh, oh sigh, was a complete fabrication. Rosenblat is a concentration camp survivor--no one doubts that--and sadly, because he lied, all that he has to say that may be of value is now doubted.
The movie is still a go. Since when has Hollywood ever cared whether a story is historically accurate? Seriously, different rules do apply, and the producers say they were planning to fictionalize it anyway. (IOW, the fiction they paid for was not fiction enough for them.)
Here's the New Republic expose of Rosenblat's book, the Times UK shorter online story, the Snopes version (which quotes the book extensively), and some interesting comments on Deborah Lipstadt's website. I include Prof. Lipstadt because she is the author and historian who stood up to David Irving and other Holocaust deniers. She calls ANGEL AT THE FENCE "not exactly a shining example of verisimilitude." Hee hee.
Deborah Lipstadt's book (History on Trial) reminded me of a real-life QB-VII--the Leon Uris novel about a trial over the Holocaust.
Fiction means it's a novelized, emotion-packed, well-paced drama that didn't really happen. Why do we all have such trouble with that concept? Has TV and movies spoiled us for finding drama in the mundane, real events of life?
One other point--the New Republic piece (by Gabriel Sherman) points out that Rosenblat's faux love story appeared in Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul. Now that just sucks. If we can't trust the Chicken Soup books, what can we trust?
Mr. Rosenblat, you lived through the Holocaust. You have horrifying and--no doubt--amazing tales to share, if your wish was to be heard. Why on earth did you have to piss away your reputation and honor by lying?
The book's website has been erased, thank you for visiting.
OK, my list of Cool Jobs includes:
Yup, that's it. Mediabistro is running an ad for a Director of Emmy Judging, a position that comes with a 401K, medical, and dental benefits. The website address (if you're not allowed in Mediabistro) is http://www.iemmys.tv/.
I assumed that the coordinator of Emmy judges (which includes approving all the nominations for categorical appropriateness) would not be advertised like other . . . well, mundane jobs. Careers, fortunes, and cultural iconography hang in the balance here! The qualifications in a nutshell are:
Nothing about vetting character or honesty. Quite truthfully, I'd have a hard time finding someone who didn't fulfill those those qualifications, unless they'd become addicted to drugs before getting their AA. Here's the final word:
"An interest in the business side of television and international affairs are helpful. The ability to speak a second language is preferred, but not required."
So the candidate is expected to approve all entries in all categories for appropriateness, and an interest in the business side of television would be . . . helpful. Helpful? When I read that in a job ad, the implication is that it's not required. And why an interest in international affairs? Will the candidate be negotiating with Putin?
That might explain the preference for a second language.
Just discovered TomDispatch.com, thanks to an editorial in the Los Angeles Times by Tom Engelhardt, the author of TomDispatch. The greatest gift I could give anyone (besides a link to Youtube's Sock Puppet carols) is that.
The Times article is about how publishers are struggling these days. Yeah, it's depressing so maybe wait till after Christmas to read it. Even though the layoffs are smaller--not in the thousands of employees let go, but in the dozens--they hit home for anyone who hopes to be published some day.
Engelhardt makes a really interesting point about how the book has not been turned into an ad, and how miraculous that is. What other industry or item--especially one that relies on filling up pages with print--remains impervious to carrying ads? Not by choice, perhaps, but because no one has really figured out how to make it work.
That same Op-Ed piece on on TomDispatch, btw, in an expanded version titled "The Axe, the Book, and the Ad," which sounds like a Grimm Brothers tale.
Many other topics are covered in the blog: political, corporate crime, investigative reporting. Laugh at me; I never knew this place existed and it's great!
The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News announced Tuesday that they plan to reduce home delivery to just Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Arizona’s East Valley Tribune (out of Mesa) will switch from a daily to a four-day-a-week paper next month. All per CNN and many other sources.
And we all know the Christian Science Monitor will halt its daily print edition in spring, right? The alternative these papers faced was to cut more staff, which means less news.
The writing’s on the wall…rather, on the screen. Without ad revenue, and with drops in circulations, increasing printing and transport costs, with the old business model isn’t practical.
James Rainey wrote a column on this in the Los Angeles Times. He speaks of how many readers cannot start the day without their morning paper—a feeling I share. But I remember a time when working stiffs felt they couldn’t survive without their afternoon paper—that was when they had the time to read it, and the news was fresher. But does any daily come out in the afternoon anymore? We all adjusted.
Rainy quotes reporters in Detroit, who talk about their investigative journalism and how vital it is. If newspapers can’t make money, how can they practice their craft? He also gives the opinion of Alan Mutter, former reporter and UC Berkeley prof who teaches graduate journalism students “how news continues in an age of ‘disruptive technology’.”
That phrase is wonderful. Disruptive technology—not on a personal level (like a cell phone ringing during a conversation) but culturally. Our technology is not just evolving and improving, it’s disrupting patterns and traditions that have shaped our lives for generations.
Mutter says “The Internet will NEVER replace the newspaper.” Sic. Why? “I can easily take my newspaper with me and read it anyplace. Reading a printed newspaper will be around forever.”
He’s the expert, but IMHO that’s wishful thinking. I can envision an expanded Kindle that can be taken anywhere and a subscription that automatically downloads and updates a daily, printed newspaper—but printed onscreen. And I would enjoy that; I won’t miss the smudge marks on my fingertips. Really. I just hope they come up with an affordable version of that before my Los Angeles Times stops delivery.
Myrna Blyth (seen here with Meryl Streep) blogs on WowOWow about her industry. Blyth has been Senior Editor of Family Circle, Editor in Chief at Ladies Home Journal, and founded More. Her words carry serious weight.
While Blyth quotes Anna Wintour of Vogue (picture Streep in Devil Wears Prada) saying, "I think we’ve been in difficult times before and we’ve come out of them and I’m sure that we will again,” the overall reading for mags is Not Good. It is Blyth's opinion that the industry "is in a meltdown. Ad pages have cratered...shut down...fired...laid off."
It's bad, but not terminal. Blyth points out that the lavish spending at high end publishers will be trimmed, and the survivors will emerge healthier.
My guess is, they won't be paying $2.00 a word to freelancers.
Amber is not found in England, apparently. The nearest place amber could come from is the Baltic. Hence,the discovery of a 4,000-year-old amber necklace in NW England amazes the archaeologists. Read about in here in Science Daily, or right from the source at Manchester University, one of the sponsors of the dig.
That's where this picture comes from.
I wondered how the necklace was dated--was it from the cist, or grave, that they found it in? But according to this Naked Scientists discussion, amber can be radio-carbon dated. And according to the World of Amber, the tints may tell what type of trees the amber formed in. A reddish tint might indicate a deciduous tree (cherry or plum) while a pine tree makes lighter amber. However, the Dragonfly Amber site claims that the trees of the Baltic area that made amber were similar to pines and spruces.
All amber may darken to brown after long exposure to air. Since this necklace was found in a stone-lined grave, I'm not sure if that applies. Was it buried under dirt or exposed to air? And does the radio-carbon dating reveal when the necklace was crafted, or just when the amber formed (probably millions of years ago)?
Anyway, I learned that amber can be distinguished from glass by rubbing it--real amber grows warm when rubbed; glass does not. A plastic imitation of amber contains camphor, and when rubbed it will give off that odor. So next time I look at a collection of amber jewelry that looks too much like bakelite to be real (because some pieces do!) I know how to test it.
Michael Ware is one of my favorite correspondents. Maybe it's the accent or the ruggedly broken nose; maybe it's the fact that you're never sure if he's going to reach across the camera from Iraq and slap the nice, cozy, anchorperson. Anyway, here's an excellent interview with him in the January 2009 Men's Journal. A quote:
"Ware’s detractors have painted him as a drunk, a rage-aholic, a partisan. They claim he heckled John McCain at a press conference and accuse him of being a terrorist stooge for airing enemy footage of U.S. troops being gunned down — anything to mark him as, at best, too rough to be trusted or, at worst, outright unhinged.
Who wouldn't want to read about that guy? He's got some war stories that I wouldn't want to know first-hand.
This picture is from the blog All Things CNN which is about the last time I'll check there--I've got nausea from the way that site scrolls. Oh, well, probably my bad.
Two things, at opposite ends of the technology continuum, occupy me today.
The first is this article in the New York times Magazine, about the state of media and the place of writers.
"...we have to change. We have to develop content that Metamorphoses in sync with new ways of experiencing it, disseminating it and monetizing it."
Huh?
So much of what author Virginia Heffernan says goes over my head that I feel like an ostrich with my head in the sand. Hopefully, someone will call me when people are ready to switch from Twitter and Hulu to The Next Big Thing. That way, I'll be in on the ground floor and will understand where I fit.
The second item is Victorian in comparison. The new Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Resolution: 101 Stories...Great Ideas for Your Mind, Body, and ...Wallet
But I got paid! I have yet to figure out how to get paid for social networking my patootie off.
A Goleta, California company named MegaVision--which was founded in 1983 and produced one of the first digital cameras in the 80s (the camera weighed 300 pounds!)--is now a mover in the archaeological world. They've developed a form of high-resolution photography with different light filters (it sounds so simple) that can bring out details in ancient artifacts and manuscripts.
That's not their real business, of course. They actually sell digital camera backs and imaging equipment, and their website says nothing about archaeology. BUT:
This came from an article on MegaVision is from the Los Angeles Times, and I sincerely hope that someone keeps our only decent newspaper (way more than decent, quite frankly, in spite of all the cutbacks in recent years) publishing through the bankruptcy chaos.
A related story tells how another imaging system provider (Cambridge Research & Instrumentation) is helping to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls with their filtering and enhancing equipment--in this case, finding hidden text on the scrolls. The relation? The same scientist (Dr. Gregory Bearman of JPL and Snapshot Spectra) went after these companies to develop special technologies for both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the pottery shard. Cool.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 600,000 bars and cafes in France. In 1960, there were 200,000 cafes in Paris alone. Today, there are less than 41,500 nationwide, and two more close every day.
Proprietors report business down by 20 to 30 percent. Daniel Perrey, the owner of a bar in Crimolois near Dijon, refers to the cafe as a "public living room," an image I really like and which other columnists have picked up
Bernard Picolet, the owner of the Paris cafe Aux Amis du Beaujolais, started by his family in 1921, says, “The way of life has changed . . . The French are no longer eating and drinking like the French. They are eating and drinking like the Anglo-Saxons . . . They eat less and spend less time at it.”
The reasons? Many. As the New York Times wrote: Not only are the French spending less, and drinking less . . .but on Jan. 1 of this year, . . . France extended its smoking ban to bars, cafes and restaurants. To this, add modern life. Cell phones, less downtime. The lure of trendier clubs. And, of course, "C'est l'economie, stupide!"
Is it overly romantic to lament this? I'll compare it to newspapers--an industry that also came into its own during the 19th century and reigned in its field through most of the 20th. Like the cafes, new technologies and lifestyles started to lure customers away over the last twenty years. During the last decade, young people especially view both cafes and printed newspapers as an old-fashioned product which will someday become downright anachronistic.
Viewed that way, I suppose all things run their course and are eventually replaced. Will a few historic and high-priced cafes survive for the tourists, so that we can sit and pretend that Hemingway or Picasso is scribbling at the next table?
For more info, check out this November 08 piece in the New York Times or the same piece in the International Herald Tribune, a 2001 story from CNN, or this 2007 Eursoc article about both the cafes of Paris and the pubs of London, also in decline.
No!
"Kill Your Blog" is the advice from Paul Boutin in the November Wired Magazine, which is already old but I'm just getting around to reading it (I was busy in November, beginning the novel which will earn me a Pulitzer.)
Wired has not seen fit to put this 600-word piece online, but if you want some fun, google "Kill Your Blog" and Paul Boutin. 4,580 sites! This guy has seriously pissed off a buncha people--and, coup-de-grace--he is a blogger. Or he was. And here's what he says of writing for Wired: whatever they want. I’m just a churl who cain’t say no.
In the article, Boutin says that a blogger's time is better invested "expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter." He points out the the top blogs are professional: things like Huffington Post.
Flickr & Twitter, the trendy new hangouts, stress short to the point of silliness. Reminds me of flash fiction, where the point is tell a story in 50-200 words. This can be done and done well; it can even be intriguing, but it quickly degenerates into an exercise an awful lot like working a puzzle. It's amusement.
I'm not dumping my blog for Flickr. I went and got a history degree because I got sick of trying to keep up with technology's twists and turns a long time ago, learning a new operating system every 18 months from the ground up. I figured history would be stable (it's not, but it's a lot more fun than technology.)
