Paris Daily Photo

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.

Time's Idea to Save Newspapers

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.

Recommended Reading

Inkdeath !

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?

Bicycle Vandals of Paris

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.

But 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.

Newsflash: Blogging Doesn't Pay

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.

Shipwrecks and brooches and cults, oh my!

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.

Amazon Break Through Novel Contest

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!

How Book Publishing Has Changed

"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.

Licensing Writers

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.

Reading up!

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.

Freelancing...it's the new black

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.

Own a 2000-year-old Celtic pin

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.

How many books did you read in 2008?

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.)

Red, Red Wine

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. "

Anti-Valentines Day Cards--get an early start!

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.

Follow up to Fiction V. Memoir

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?

Fiction V. Memoir--It's not rocket science!

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.

• Lipstadt=nonfiction.
• Uris' QB-VII=fiction.
• Rosenblat's story=fiction.

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.

Cool Job Alert

OK, my list of Cool Jobs includes:

• Jetting round the world to spot new hairstyle trends
• Finding archived video to match with current new stories for The Daily Show
• Coordinating Emmy Judging

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:

• A college degree
• 4 yrs + of professional experience
• Extreme attention to details, deadlines
• Organizational skills, upbeat attitude, ability to handle stress (yeah, yeah, yeah)
• Culturally savvy and sensitive (ummm, what's the baseline?)
• Willingness to travel for 3 months in summer to facilitate semi-final rounds...

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.

Recommended Reading for an End-of-the-Year Scare

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!

Bad News for [Print] Newspapers

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.

The Magazine Industry--About as stable as Chrysler, it seems

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 Necklace 4,000 Years Old

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.

Recommended Reading

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 extremes in Writing Today

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 has a story of mine in it. How drool: write a little essay, send it in, get included in a book and paid.

But I got paid! I have yet to figure out how to get paid for social networking my patootie off.

Using Digital Imaging to Help Archaeologists

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:

• They've currently rigged up cameras to make 100s of images of a 3000-year-old pottery fragment found in the Valley of Elah--where David and Goliath fought. This shard has five lines of text, which is the oldest Hebrew text ever found.
• MegaVision's CEO Ken Boydston designed an imaging system for Oxford University researchers to use when examining documents from ancient Egypt.
• In Washington DC, Boydston used the company's expertise to create a copy of the Waldseemueller Map (pictured) for the Library of Congress. The 1507 map is the oldest known that shows North America--in fact, it's the first map that names "America." Only one copy still exists of the approx. 1000 that were printed.

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.

Decline of the French Cafe

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.

Evil Advice: Kill Your Blog

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.)

Slave Ship Wreck Found-

The only known slaving vessel shipwreck was found near Turks and Caicos, in only 9 feet of water.

The Trouvadore sank in 1841--long after transporting slaves had been outlawed. The story of how the discoverers (Ships of Discovery out of Corpus Christi, Texas) followed a few sparse clues in an 1878 letter about "African dolls" (which turned out to be not African) to eventually locate the slave ship on the coast of East Caicos, is absolutely fascinating.

192 slaves were rescued; one female slave was shot dead by the crew. Those saved worked in salt ponds to pay for their rescue; their descendants may "make up a significant proportion of the 30,000 residents of the island country," according the Los Angeles Times story of Nov. 29, 2008.

This picture, btw, is from the NOAA Ocean Explorer website (NOAA--National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and shows the keel from the starboard side, with a studded sheet of copper in the foreground.

But wait! There's More!

The same team from Ships of Discovery also located US ship Chippewa, a War of 1812 veteran that was then used to find and stop slavers. The Chippewa sank in 1816 in the same area.

Here's the Los Angeles Times story. Times of the Islands, a Turks and Caicos magazine, published an in-depth piece in 2007. Better still, here is a website devoted to the shipwreck, which was originally found in 2004. There's also a pdf available, put together with several articles from the African Diaspora Archaeology Network. Lastly, here's another site that focuses on the PBS documentary that was done a couple of years ago about finding the Trouvadore.

Ancient Chariot of Thrace

Bulgarian (did you know that ancient Thrace was in Bulgaria?) archaeologist Veselin Ignatov found a 4-wheeled chariot last week, in an 1800-year-old grave. That's recent, as chariots go. Here's a link to the story on Discovery.com (where this picture originally appears).

Ignatov has found chariots before; here's a link to a 2007 story in Archaeology Magazine.

On last week's find, the bronze plating (over wood) shows mythological creatures. Horse skeletons were found nearby; which has become usual in Thracian chariot burials. Another chariot was found in August, and apparently there are around ten thousand burial mounds across Bulgaria that could have held such treasures, once . Looters have struck at many of them, though--maybe up to 90%.

I like reading about this because I've written about chariots for the upcoming Encyclopedia of the History of Invention and Technology, coming out from Facts on File Books. One of those lovely multi-volume sets that won't be published until I'm old and gray. . . which could be next year, to be honest.

But I learned from researching that article that the oldest chariots have been found east of the Ural Mountains at Sintashta-Petrovka, and date to 2000 B.C. Also, didja know that each pair of spokes, forming a V in the wheel, are made from one piece of wood?

The Myth of the Turkey Pardon

The inner fussbudget in me is steaming.

Our president announced that in pardoning a turkey, he was continuing a tradition that started with Truman. NO! IX-Nay, BS! The only tradition that started with Truman is that a certain national poultry organization began delivering birds to the White House. Truman jokingly pardoned one bird, one year. Maybe. But he didn't pardon one the next, or the next, or the next. Ergo, no tradition.

And neither did Ike.

Nor did JFK, LBJ, or Nixon ever pardon a turkey. Ford pardoned Nixon, but that--thankfully--did not start a tradition. Carter and Reagan didn't pardon turkeys. None of our other presidents pardoned a turkey . . . until. . . drumroll. . .

George H. W. Bush. Yup, that is the truth. What short memories we have. The first Bush established the tradition.

BTW, I've made it past 35,000 words but the odds of me writing an additional 15,000 in the next 56 and a half hours are slim. However, the majority of the 35,000 words I have written of my new novel (for NaNoWriMo) are fabulous. "Nugget" makes a few appearances. So does "shot" and "stomped." "Ague" is in there at least once. Lots of "the's" . Huzzah.

Can't Write a Novel and Chew Gum at the Same Time...

What, blog? I'm writing a novel, dang it! I can't blog!

My apologies for letting this slide. I really did sign up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I take my commitment to produce a 50,000 word first draft most seriously. In spite of pre-election day gadabouting, poll-working, and decompression, I have 12,605 words written. Yay, me!

But it leaves no time for blogging, sadly. So sorry.

Real Friends Click Your Google Ads!

Here's a funny from the Sunday (November 2) paper--the strip is called Between Friends, by Sandra Bell Lundy. You can access it online too--just go to the right date:

Ice Man will Not be Listed on Ancestry.com

How disappointing. DNA tests for Oetzi the Ice Man indicate that he has no living descendants. In fact, he was probably infertile. Scratch him off your list of Potential Illustrious Ancestors.

Oetzi was found in a glacier in the Italian Alps in 1991, after spending 5300 years there. With an arrowhead in his back, the speculation is that he died in a fight--or maybe he just looked like dinner to some other 5300 year old predator.

How on earth could scientists guess that Oetzi was infertile? According to this story on BBC, they've studied his mitochondrial DNA, and a couple of areas on the ol' helix could maybe sorta mean poor Oetzi shot blanks. Actually, that part was reported a couple of years ago--here's a link to News in Science. where this picture was featured.

Let that be a lesson to anyone who'd like to preserve their dignity after death. Rot. Don't die on a glacier. Just rot.

Sarkozy Voodoo

Time for a story of France! This comes from Expatica.

Noble leader President Sarkozy failed in his attempt to stop K&B Editions, the maker of a Sarkozy voodoo doll, from distributing the product. His reasoning was that he owned exclusive rights to his own image. Right, run for president and retain rights to your own image and all the privacy you desire. Not!

The case was dismissed, but the worst part is that when Sarkozy filed the suit--his 6th since becoming president (who else did he sue? Mask-makers? stand-up comedians?)--the sales of the voodoo doll went up precipitously! In fact, the doll, which comes with a set of pins, is the #1 seller on Amazon.fr! 20,000 have been sold--he might as well have hawked them on Oprah!

The sayings on the doll, btw, are little bits of "wit and wisdom" mouthed by Sarkozy himself. Cost is 13 euros--could not discover whether bits of Sarkozy's hair or nail clippings are included.

Forgetting Emily Post

Laura Claridge has written a bio of Emily Post. Reviews are available at Slate, Newsweek, and a bunch of other places, but it's the Newsweek piece that caught my eye. After three years of working on Emily Post, we learn:

[Claridge] was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer. For a while she lost her memory, including her awareness of who Emily Post was and why she had been writing about her

I have spent four and half years on a book. I can't imagine staring at the pages and wondering who this character is, and why my bookshelves are filled with information on her times. Could there be a worse nightmare for an author? Writer's block takes on a whole new meaning, huh?

The good news is that Claridge recovered completely from cancer, regained her memory, and finished the book.

NaNoWriMo to Start

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month...November, and this is the 10th year that ambitious, self-motivated, and either jobless-and/or-mindlessly rich dilettantes and fools will chain themselves to their laptops and try to whip out a 50,000 word draft in thirty days.

Check it all out here. There's still time to register, and if you're lucky enough to be in a citified region with a nice group leader, you may even be invited to a kick-off party toward the end of October.

What do you get? A first draft in thirty days, one to occupy you for the rest of the year. If you don't know how incredibly rare and valuable that is, you ain't no writer yet!

Bad News for Freelancers' Magazine Markets

Not that I expect to ever write for Entertainment Weekly, Teen Vogue, or National Geographic for Kids...I take that back, I would like to write for that last one. But according to MediaPost's Media Daily News, I probably won't get that chance. Due to plunging circulation, MediaPost writes that these three and several other magazines may fold in the next few months, due to declining sales and ad revenues.

Other mags at risk: Kiplinger's Personal Finance (newstand sales down 19.6%), SmartMoney (down 20%), Mens Vogue (down 17.9%), Nickelodeon (ad pages down 30.2%!), Sports Illustrated for Kids (ads down 24.8%).

All bad. And all those places that I joked I'd go work for if things got bad--places that served food and coffee? They're closing too. The one good thing is that we're all in this together.

Wicked Absinthe

Thanks to a short piece in Wired (last August) I learn that we in the US get better absinthe than the poor connoisseurs of France. Here's a link to a longer Wired 2005 feature--the August piece was a short follow-up. And if you thirst for more, check out the Wormwood Society, from whom I purloined this lovely pictures.

According to the August blurb , the US has been very slow to permit the sale of absinthe. Only four brands are allowed: Lucid, Kubler, Green Moon, and St. George Absinthe Verte. The maker of one, Ted Breaux, says of absinthe in Europe: "80 to 90 percent is industrial junk."

Ouch. We were thrilled, five years ago, to find we could buy small bottles of absinthe in France and bring them home as gifts. We got the absinthe spoons, the whole bit. (you are supposed to put a sugar cube on the delicately-slotted spoon, set that over the glass, and pour the absinthe over it into the glass.)

The liquor has such a mystique about it--if you've ever read Hemingway, you want to taste absinthe. After WWI, only Spain continued to sell it--absinthe was considered to dangerous and maddening to be marketed in most other countries. It's made from wormwood. Sounds gothic.

Now scientists say absinthe got a bad rap, so it's legal again. Will it ever be mundane? Doubt it.

Atlatl Competition

The 8th annual Blackwater Draw Atlatl Throw is this Saturday (Oct. 18). Man, I'd like to see this become an Olympic event.

Blackwater Draw is off State Hwy 467 in New Mexico--here's more information. Just in case.

And...woo-hoo!...there's actually a World Atlatl Organization. Who knew?

I am not making fun. I think atlatl is the coolest word in the lexicon (it's actually an Aztec, or Nahuatl word), besides being a bit of the oldest technology on earth. An atlatl is a gizmo for launching a spear with just a little more oompf than your arm alone can muster.

This picture is of Roy Madden using an atlatl, from the Altlatl page of Flight-Toys. When he whips his wrist forward, the spear flies out of the 16-inch (looks like) atlatl.

Update to the Witch World Estate

The Tennessee Court of Appeals has rendered a decision on Andre Norton's copyrights and royalties. In brief, when Ms Norton died in 2005, her last caregiver and a fan battled over rights to her books (see previous post for more details). The decision is that the caregiver controls copyrights on all books published in Andre Norton's lifetime, and the fan gets royalties for books published since she died. New link here.

Here's a website dedicated to Andre Norton that has statements from the caregiver about the lawsuit.

Owners Manual--Recommended Reading

Six simple rules for reading Owners Manuals, like: If the product needs a manual longer than one page, the designer failed. Plus some hilarious illustrations and sidebars. Where? In Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine, online here. (That's the cover image at right) (the article is by James Lileks).

My favorite part so far: the sidebar on "Best Manual Cautions Ever"

"Use the dishwasher only for its intended function. If, for example, you are a coyote chasing a road runner, and you have strapped the dishwasher to your body intending to ski downhill on the mounds of suds it produces, you have voided your warranty..."

Graphic Bio of J. Edgar Hoover

This is one of those moments when I feel like my grandmother, shaking my head and muttering, "What will they think of next?"

Graphic biographies. Their time has come.

Not talking about bios with graphic violence, but about the graphic novel. Publishers Weekly has reviewed Rick Geary's 112-page graphic bio of J. Edgar Hoover on its blog "THE BEAT", which is all about comics. I guess I just never thought of J. Edgar Hoover's life as lending itself to comics or graphic novels . . . nor of a psychological bio (according to reviews) that is largely presented in pictures.

The Biographer's Craft points out that " Of course, Geary is not the first to come out with a graphic biography. Capstone Press has a whole line of them. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux has published graphic biographies on Malcolm X and Ronald Reagan, both by Andrew Helfer (with different illustrators). On the whole, however, these works have been intended for young audiences. "

This cover image is from Amazon, and you can see a large version here. I wonder if artistic renderings are subject to the same laws and nonfiction text would be? Just musing here, but the idea that a picture might misrepresent something--could the illustrator be sued, as a writer might be?