Introduction
Troubled Times for Work
Closing
Back To Top
Introduction
Today's editorial isn't based on any one article so much as it is on experience and general reading.
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Troubled Times for Work
Those currently in their 20s are media darlings, in their own strange way. No, we aren't all starring in a hip new TV show or sporting roles as extras in an upcoming movie of tremendous importance. Instead, we're bucking the trend that's been accepted and unquestioned practice in the Western world for centuries.
Many of us who have taken the road of education to get where we are are not quite where we expected ourselves to be. We're living with our parents and/or working a job that doesn't require our university or college-acquired knowledge possibly to pay off debt incurred by that education. If you're in your 20s, chances are, at least one of those is true for you - possibly even all three are.
Reading through articles found on my own and passed onto me by friends and family, it seems that society as a whole is quite disturbed by this. Post-secondary-educated youth living with their parents into their late 20s? Humanities majors and masters serving coffee and waiting tables? Massive debt holding the youth back? The second question may not be anything new, but it's still mentioned consistently enough.
Yet, as direly scarce as fitting employment may be and as impossible as the prospects of following the old "high-school --> post-secondary --> work" life model appear, this doesn't necessarily mean that society is in crisis. Rather, it's in the middle of an opportunity.
As difficult as it can be to stride through debt, go back to living with your parents, or to work a job that you could've been hired for fresh out of high school, the old life model's being disrupted gives those of us in these situations the chance to do something different. It gives us all a chance to step back and to really ask what we want to do with ourselves and what we need to do in order to get there.
The economy is still stabilizing, and the job market is as rocky as ever. But passion is as important as ever, and it's something that can be started anywhere, even if you're not working in the safe and secure 9-5 style job that the old life model dictates. It's strange, and it can be frightening, but we've gone off model and it's for the better.
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Closing
Check back here on Friday for a journey amidst ribald jokes looking for gems in Your Highness.
And, in the meantime, be sure to check out my video game writing here.
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Showing posts with label Wednesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wednesday. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Plagiarism
Introduction
The Article Summed Up
Plagiarism: A Personal History
Root Causes
Plagiarism: A Crime Against Language
Closing
Back To Top
Introduction
Perusing the day's Globe and Mail, I came across two stories that would work rather well as editorial fodder.
The first was an interview with Robin Pollock, A Torontonian currently at the Scrabble Championships in Florida. This one gave a good sense of what it took to be a champion (or just serious) Scrabble player, and would have been praised as a sign of the status of the wordsmiths among us: Not a story grand enough for the front page, but at least news-section worthy.
Delving deeper into the paper, however, I found an article that struck much deeper than anything about a board game could. I found an article in the Arts section about Fareed Zakaria and the controversy swirling around him because of the discovery of his plagiarism.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
The article begins by relating how a blogger discovered that a large part of his recent article on gun control for Time magazine was poached from an earlier piece written by Jill Lepore and published in The New Yorker. It then goes on to show how Zakaria apologized to some of those he wronged, has been put on suspension for a month by CNN and The Washington Post, and how, despite everything swirling around him, he seems to be feeling less guilty than expected.
After relating this instance of a professional plagiarising another's work, Houpt moves onto other cases of professionals plagiarizing before finishing with the hypothesis that journalists (and writers) are spreading themselves so thin that plagiarism is to be expected. Houpt cites Zakaria's own hectic schedule over the past few months in his defense and also notes how many major journalists don't always write everything that's attributed to them.
Back To Top
Plagiarism: A Personal History
All of this gives me, a young up-and-coming writer, pause - especially because of my academic background. Through all six years of my university studies plagiarism was constantly watched for, checked for, double-checked for, and avoided. All necessary citations were made as accurately as possible, and all sources that were used were included in bibliographies at the ends of papers.
Perhaps this extreme prudence came from being constantly warned about plagiarism in opening classes, in course outlines, and through email notifications. Or perhaps it came from being accused twice before.
Once it happened in elementary school where, being a little lazy and full of A's, a large section of a resource was poached to speed a project up. Then, once more I was accused in high school where the advanced argument and style of an essay made a teacher wary, though all evidence - and most importantly, the truth - were on my side.
Of course, in the former case, being guilty, I lost marks, but in the latter case I received an ever-after unthinkable 100% (on an English paper, no less).
Whatever the case in my own history, if journalists are spreading themselves thin and basically backing themselves into corners where they have no choice but to plagiarize to keep things running smoothly, then a few things might be to blame. There are the personal things - greed, audience pressure, the feeling/desire to just do more - and the matter of writers' pay.
Back To Top
Root Causes
The first of these issues can be dealt with easily enough on paper. Though restraint is much more difficult to put into true practice. Simply put, though, if you're a writer and seem to be trapped in a position where you have no choice but to plagiarize to meet deadlines or to keep a blog afloat, then just ask if anything can be ended. After Zakaria's month-long suspension is over his plagiarism will probably be largely forgotten by most of the public, but this isn't something that every writer will be able to weather.
The other issue is more systemic, and less personal, but still a major concern. Anyone can write, but to write things that show up in newspapers, that show up on reputable websites, or in magazines or books, writers need training.
To become a journalist you need to know how to write, but you also need to know about things like the impact that story can have on those involved or readers in general; you need to know about how best to approach topics and subjects; and you need to know about the ethics related to the profession. It's no different with fiction, or with poetry. And those with all this training (or awareness/skill) should be properly paid.
To write for yourself is one thing, but to write for other people - in most cases, people you don't even know, and may never know - is completely different. You need to know how to write so that you can interest people, you need to know how to convey emotion by showing it to a reader rather than telling him/her about it. And you need to be able to put words together in such a way that people can enjoy reading what you write for potentially long stretches.
Back To Top
Plagiarism: A Crime Against Language
Setting aside all personal and industry issues, the fact that plagiarism exists makes little sense.
English is a puny language in comparison to many others (Greek and Latin come to mind - after all, on the dance floor an Ancient Roman could just say crisa rather than "shake it!").
Yet, it's the magic of language to take a finite set of things and put them into a near infinite set of connections and orders, even to get across the same meaning. Some people call a writer's own way of putting words together to get across a meaning that another writer has already conveyed "style." Maybe that's part of the problem.
Outside of fiction and poetry, writing can sometimes drone. There are some journalists with unique voices, but more often than not the sort of thing that you'll read in a major magazine is hardly distinguishable from anything else in the same publication. By and large non-fiction writers, fiction writers, and poets have more unique voices than your standard reporter or news writer.
In part, this monotony in journalism comes from newspapers and news shows and magazines requiring a standardized tone - often authoritative - and it can be hard to maintain that tone if everyone is writing in their own unique style. The internet has helped to give people a platform to show off their own voices in their writing, but one of the trade-offs so far is the loss of that authoritative tone in a lot of what's posted online.
Back To Top
Closing
Check back here tomorrow for another Annotated Links, and don't miss Friday's delve for the deserving in Squirm.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
Plagiarism: A Personal History
Root Causes
Plagiarism: A Crime Against Language
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
Perusing the day's Globe and Mail, I came across two stories that would work rather well as editorial fodder.
The first was an interview with Robin Pollock, A Torontonian currently at the Scrabble Championships in Florida. This one gave a good sense of what it took to be a champion (or just serious) Scrabble player, and would have been praised as a sign of the status of the wordsmiths among us: Not a story grand enough for the front page, but at least news-section worthy.
Delving deeper into the paper, however, I found an article that struck much deeper than anything about a board game could. I found an article in the Arts section about Fareed Zakaria and the controversy swirling around him because of the discovery of his plagiarism.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
The article begins by relating how a blogger discovered that a large part of his recent article on gun control for Time magazine was poached from an earlier piece written by Jill Lepore and published in The New Yorker. It then goes on to show how Zakaria apologized to some of those he wronged, has been put on suspension for a month by CNN and The Washington Post, and how, despite everything swirling around him, he seems to be feeling less guilty than expected.
After relating this instance of a professional plagiarising another's work, Houpt moves onto other cases of professionals plagiarizing before finishing with the hypothesis that journalists (and writers) are spreading themselves so thin that plagiarism is to be expected. Houpt cites Zakaria's own hectic schedule over the past few months in his defense and also notes how many major journalists don't always write everything that's attributed to them.
Back To Top
Plagiarism: A Personal History
All of this gives me, a young up-and-coming writer, pause - especially because of my academic background. Through all six years of my university studies plagiarism was constantly watched for, checked for, double-checked for, and avoided. All necessary citations were made as accurately as possible, and all sources that were used were included in bibliographies at the ends of papers.
Perhaps this extreme prudence came from being constantly warned about plagiarism in opening classes, in course outlines, and through email notifications. Or perhaps it came from being accused twice before.
Once it happened in elementary school where, being a little lazy and full of A's, a large section of a resource was poached to speed a project up. Then, once more I was accused in high school where the advanced argument and style of an essay made a teacher wary, though all evidence - and most importantly, the truth - were on my side.
Of course, in the former case, being guilty, I lost marks, but in the latter case I received an ever-after unthinkable 100% (on an English paper, no less).
Whatever the case in my own history, if journalists are spreading themselves thin and basically backing themselves into corners where they have no choice but to plagiarize to keep things running smoothly, then a few things might be to blame. There are the personal things - greed, audience pressure, the feeling/desire to just do more - and the matter of writers' pay.
Back To Top
Root Causes
The first of these issues can be dealt with easily enough on paper. Though restraint is much more difficult to put into true practice. Simply put, though, if you're a writer and seem to be trapped in a position where you have no choice but to plagiarize to meet deadlines or to keep a blog afloat, then just ask if anything can be ended. After Zakaria's month-long suspension is over his plagiarism will probably be largely forgotten by most of the public, but this isn't something that every writer will be able to weather.
The other issue is more systemic, and less personal, but still a major concern. Anyone can write, but to write things that show up in newspapers, that show up on reputable websites, or in magazines or books, writers need training.
To become a journalist you need to know how to write, but you also need to know about things like the impact that story can have on those involved or readers in general; you need to know about how best to approach topics and subjects; and you need to know about the ethics related to the profession. It's no different with fiction, or with poetry. And those with all this training (or awareness/skill) should be properly paid.
To write for yourself is one thing, but to write for other people - in most cases, people you don't even know, and may never know - is completely different. You need to know how to write so that you can interest people, you need to know how to convey emotion by showing it to a reader rather than telling him/her about it. And you need to be able to put words together in such a way that people can enjoy reading what you write for potentially long stretches.
Back To Top
Plagiarism: A Crime Against Language
Setting aside all personal and industry issues, the fact that plagiarism exists makes little sense.
English is a puny language in comparison to many others (Greek and Latin come to mind - after all, on the dance floor an Ancient Roman could just say crisa rather than "shake it!").
Yet, it's the magic of language to take a finite set of things and put them into a near infinite set of connections and orders, even to get across the same meaning. Some people call a writer's own way of putting words together to get across a meaning that another writer has already conveyed "style." Maybe that's part of the problem.
Outside of fiction and poetry, writing can sometimes drone. There are some journalists with unique voices, but more often than not the sort of thing that you'll read in a major magazine is hardly distinguishable from anything else in the same publication. By and large non-fiction writers, fiction writers, and poets have more unique voices than your standard reporter or news writer.
In part, this monotony in journalism comes from newspapers and news shows and magazines requiring a standardized tone - often authoritative - and it can be hard to maintain that tone if everyone is writing in their own unique style. The internet has helped to give people a platform to show off their own voices in their writing, but one of the trade-offs so far is the loss of that authoritative tone in a lot of what's posted online.
Back To Top
Closing
Check back here tomorrow for another Annotated Links, and don't miss Friday's delve for the deserving in Squirm.
Back To Top
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Book Covers or Ebook Reviews?
Introduction
The Article Summed Up
Covers, Reviews, Impressions
Undercutting and Supporting
Closing
Back To Top
Introduction
Although hardcopy books might seem to be disappearing from the lives of many as more and more people get ereaders, the old saying "don't judge a book by its cover" still has some currency. Yet, as books make the transition from paper to screen, their covers could become a thing of the past.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
An article from NPR Books came to my attention through a Google Alert of mine.
The article posits that, in the past, books could sell based on their covers alone, while now ebooks aren't bought because of covers, but because word of them gets around or people read reviews.
However, Chip Kidd, an associate art director with Alfred A. Knopf, has no fear for the future of book covers. Kidd's theory is that hardcover books, the focus of his work, have always been luxury items, and that they will endure as such in spite of publishing's ongoing transition into the digital world.
Included with the article is a short recording that summarizes and expands upon it.
Back To Top
Covers, Reviews, Impressions
As much as reviews or mentions by friends might help to make books attractive to online readers, covers can really make or break a book.
Even if you've seen a book a few times, a really powerful cover can grab your attention with every pass. And as much as a review can help you to make an informed decision about a book, a book that's bought because of a review is a book bought based on reason rather than instinct. A book's cover can evoke a more visceral response, which can lead to stronger feelings both during and after reading it.
In fact, buying a book based on it's cover (along with a quick peek inside, perhaps) can make the experience of reading that book more enjoyable.
Instead of knowing what to expect from a writer's style, a book's story, or it's characters as you might after reading a review, peeking at a book's cover and blurb gives you a more nebulous impression of a book. The difference is like that between the impression a person whom you're meeting for the first time but have heard about before and the impression that someone completely new to you leaves.
Maybe you don't remember the book's title after an initial encounter, just as you might not remember a person's name, but if a cover and a peek at the text leave any impression at all you've just formed something that reading that book (once you get around to that) can cause to grow and change with more fluidity than a first impression from a review or word of mouth.
Now, the same could be argued about word of mouth or a review. These things also leave you with a first impression of a book comparable to that which you're left with after meeting someone for the first time. But the major difference is that in this situation your first impression isn't really your own. Instead, it's pre-formed based on what you've been told or read.
Back To Top
Undercutting and Supporting
Of course, it could be argued that this talk of varying extents of first impressions (first and second hand) and the effects that they have on your perceptions of a book is just splitting hairs. This is a valid argument, though, and now my English degrees might be showing through, having first impressions that are entirely your own - and therefore based on a cover rather than a review or word of mouth - will lead to a richer personal experience of the book.
But perhaps the extra personal element that covers bring to books, just as their durability, is something that makes hard-copy, hard-cover books luxury items.
In a world that's constantly socializing the individualized experience of seeing an entrancing cover and knowing you must buy that book might just become another selling point for books that are read off of paper rather than a screen.
Back To Top
Closing
Tomorrow's Annotated Links will carry today's literary focus forward, while Friday's search for the salvageable in Alien Apocalypse may take a different turn. Be sure to check back here to find out!
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
Covers, Reviews, Impressions
Undercutting and Supporting
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
Although hardcopy books might seem to be disappearing from the lives of many as more and more people get ereaders, the old saying "don't judge a book by its cover" still has some currency. Yet, as books make the transition from paper to screen, their covers could become a thing of the past.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
An article from NPR Books came to my attention through a Google Alert of mine.
The article posits that, in the past, books could sell based on their covers alone, while now ebooks aren't bought because of covers, but because word of them gets around or people read reviews.
However, Chip Kidd, an associate art director with Alfred A. Knopf, has no fear for the future of book covers. Kidd's theory is that hardcover books, the focus of his work, have always been luxury items, and that they will endure as such in spite of publishing's ongoing transition into the digital world.
Included with the article is a short recording that summarizes and expands upon it.
Back To Top
Covers, Reviews, Impressions
As much as reviews or mentions by friends might help to make books attractive to online readers, covers can really make or break a book.
Even if you've seen a book a few times, a really powerful cover can grab your attention with every pass. And as much as a review can help you to make an informed decision about a book, a book that's bought because of a review is a book bought based on reason rather than instinct. A book's cover can evoke a more visceral response, which can lead to stronger feelings both during and after reading it.
In fact, buying a book based on it's cover (along with a quick peek inside, perhaps) can make the experience of reading that book more enjoyable.
Instead of knowing what to expect from a writer's style, a book's story, or it's characters as you might after reading a review, peeking at a book's cover and blurb gives you a more nebulous impression of a book. The difference is like that between the impression a person whom you're meeting for the first time but have heard about before and the impression that someone completely new to you leaves.
Maybe you don't remember the book's title after an initial encounter, just as you might not remember a person's name, but if a cover and a peek at the text leave any impression at all you've just formed something that reading that book (once you get around to that) can cause to grow and change with more fluidity than a first impression from a review or word of mouth.
Now, the same could be argued about word of mouth or a review. These things also leave you with a first impression of a book comparable to that which you're left with after meeting someone for the first time. But the major difference is that in this situation your first impression isn't really your own. Instead, it's pre-formed based on what you've been told or read.
Back To Top
Undercutting and Supporting
Of course, it could be argued that this talk of varying extents of first impressions (first and second hand) and the effects that they have on your perceptions of a book is just splitting hairs. This is a valid argument, though, and now my English degrees might be showing through, having first impressions that are entirely your own - and therefore based on a cover rather than a review or word of mouth - will lead to a richer personal experience of the book.
But perhaps the extra personal element that covers bring to books, just as their durability, is something that makes hard-copy, hard-cover books luxury items.
In a world that's constantly socializing the individualized experience of seeing an entrancing cover and knowing you must buy that book might just become another selling point for books that are read off of paper rather than a screen.
Back To Top
Closing
Tomorrow's Annotated Links will carry today's literary focus forward, while Friday's search for the salvageable in Alien Apocalypse may take a different turn. Be sure to check back here to find out!
Back To Top
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Fantastic Fantasy and the Grit of Popularity
Introduction
The Article Summed Up
Fantasy and Cynicism...Hand in Hand?
The More Names, the More Things
Closing
Back To Top
Introduction
The subject of today's editorial comes from the website Fantasy Faction - a site that hosts articles, interviews, reviews, forums, and a podcast that are all about the fantasy genre.
This article by Douglas Smith caught my eye because it attempts to explain the current trend away from "classic" tales of black-and-white good versus evil in modern popular fantasy. The article also grabbed my attention because it speaks to the variety that can be found in the fantasy genre.
These elements aren't just interesting, but are also quite relevant to me since I'm in the midst of writing my own fantasy universe into existence.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
In his article Douglas Smith notes the growing popularity and presence of gritty, realistic fantasy and tries to explain it.
Quite deftly Smith looks at the trends in entertainment more generally, and concludes that what we watch and read to relax as a whole has become grittier as the world around us has changed into something a bit grittier, too.
Gone are the days of massively popular soap operas and police procedurals, and now things are more about characters so real we might bump into them on the street and involve plots so intricate that it's as easy to become entangled as it is to become immersed.
Smith concludes with the statements that writers of gritty fantasy are reinvigorating the genre, that it's cool to read fantasy again, and that this might just be "a second 'Golden Age' for fantasy."
Back To Top
Fantasy and Cynicism...Hand in Hand?
As far as its explanation of why gritty fantasy is now popular goes, this is a great article.
The world certainly has changed, and, as those of older generations have said from time immemorial, it may actually be worse off (in some ways). Technological advances aside, events like "9/11" have made people more readily dubious of others and paranoid enough that fear could now be considered a small animal living in most people's heads as much as a human emotion.
Older stories that follow a straightforward plot and shimmering, clean-cut characters are definitely no longer enough to put this animal to sleep for a time so that the human host can truly enjoy an escape.
Instead, worlds and characters need more depth. In fact, this might be an analogue to the extra cynicism in a lot of people's worldviews. Just as more scrutiny and attention is paid to the real world and goings-on therein, so too in entertainment are characters and plots under more and more scrutiny.
The best way to meet that scrutiny, so far, has been to present things that are more layered and more like the world that can be seen all around. Instead of escaping into worlds that contrast the real one, the increasing popularity of gritty fantasy suggests that people are more willing to escape into worlds that are like their own.
Back To Top
The More Names, the More Things
Another factor to consider when looking the rise in gritty fantasy is the ever-increasing drive to categorize literature and entertainment. Particularly, the urge to separate the "adult" literature from the "children's" literature.
Both fantasy and science fiction have always been perceived as children's literature.
They aren't set in the real, contemporary world.
They aren't written by those who aspire to write capital-L literature.
But at the same time, there have always been adults who enjoy fantasy and science fiction more than other forms of not-true stories. These adults would read Frank L. Baum, they would flip through Asimov, they would delve into the world of the Harry Potter series.
At times these stories, labelled as being for "children," would be adapted into re-tellings or versions that were more "grown-up," and at other times they would be distributed with darker, more "adult" covers. Anything to appeal more directly to those who were outside of the original key age demographic but nonetheless liked what they read for whatever reason.
Enter gritty, realistic fantasy.
Just like that, there's now a fantasy sub-genre for adults, those who'd been generally perceived as "too old" for stories about magic, heroes and villains, Good and Evil. And where there is a supply to fill a hitherto unfulfilled demand that supply will soon prove insufficient.
After all, give something a new, more specific name, and those previously too shy to admit to liking that something under it's old, general name (let's say fantasy) will come out and help push demand even further.
Back To Top
Closing
Don't miss tomorrow's Annotated Links (#13), and keep an eye out on Friday for the first part of All-Request August, featuring a search for the superb in Plan 9 From Outer Space!
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
Fantasy and Cynicism...Hand in Hand?
The More Names, the More Things
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
The subject of today's editorial comes from the website Fantasy Faction - a site that hosts articles, interviews, reviews, forums, and a podcast that are all about the fantasy genre.
This article by Douglas Smith caught my eye because it attempts to explain the current trend away from "classic" tales of black-and-white good versus evil in modern popular fantasy. The article also grabbed my attention because it speaks to the variety that can be found in the fantasy genre.
These elements aren't just interesting, but are also quite relevant to me since I'm in the midst of writing my own fantasy universe into existence.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
In his article Douglas Smith notes the growing popularity and presence of gritty, realistic fantasy and tries to explain it.
Quite deftly Smith looks at the trends in entertainment more generally, and concludes that what we watch and read to relax as a whole has become grittier as the world around us has changed into something a bit grittier, too.
Gone are the days of massively popular soap operas and police procedurals, and now things are more about characters so real we might bump into them on the street and involve plots so intricate that it's as easy to become entangled as it is to become immersed.
Smith concludes with the statements that writers of gritty fantasy are reinvigorating the genre, that it's cool to read fantasy again, and that this might just be "a second 'Golden Age' for fantasy."
Back To Top
Fantasy and Cynicism...Hand in Hand?
As far as its explanation of why gritty fantasy is now popular goes, this is a great article.
The world certainly has changed, and, as those of older generations have said from time immemorial, it may actually be worse off (in some ways). Technological advances aside, events like "9/11" have made people more readily dubious of others and paranoid enough that fear could now be considered a small animal living in most people's heads as much as a human emotion.
Older stories that follow a straightforward plot and shimmering, clean-cut characters are definitely no longer enough to put this animal to sleep for a time so that the human host can truly enjoy an escape.
Instead, worlds and characters need more depth. In fact, this might be an analogue to the extra cynicism in a lot of people's worldviews. Just as more scrutiny and attention is paid to the real world and goings-on therein, so too in entertainment are characters and plots under more and more scrutiny.
The best way to meet that scrutiny, so far, has been to present things that are more layered and more like the world that can be seen all around. Instead of escaping into worlds that contrast the real one, the increasing popularity of gritty fantasy suggests that people are more willing to escape into worlds that are like their own.
Back To Top
The More Names, the More Things
Another factor to consider when looking the rise in gritty fantasy is the ever-increasing drive to categorize literature and entertainment. Particularly, the urge to separate the "adult" literature from the "children's" literature.
Both fantasy and science fiction have always been perceived as children's literature.
They aren't set in the real, contemporary world.
They aren't written by those who aspire to write capital-L literature.
But at the same time, there have always been adults who enjoy fantasy and science fiction more than other forms of not-true stories. These adults would read Frank L. Baum, they would flip through Asimov, they would delve into the world of the Harry Potter series.
At times these stories, labelled as being for "children," would be adapted into re-tellings or versions that were more "grown-up," and at other times they would be distributed with darker, more "adult" covers. Anything to appeal more directly to those who were outside of the original key age demographic but nonetheless liked what they read for whatever reason.
Enter gritty, realistic fantasy.
Just like that, there's now a fantasy sub-genre for adults, those who'd been generally perceived as "too old" for stories about magic, heroes and villains, Good and Evil. And where there is a supply to fill a hitherto unfulfilled demand that supply will soon prove insufficient.
After all, give something a new, more specific name, and those previously too shy to admit to liking that something under it's old, general name (let's say fantasy) will come out and help push demand even further.
Back To Top
Closing
Don't miss tomorrow's Annotated Links (#13), and keep an eye out on Friday for the first part of All-Request August, featuring a search for the superb in Plan 9 From Outer Space!
Back To Top
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] The E-Book Shades and the English Classics
Introduction
The Article Summed Up
A Classical Fixation?
Fan-Fiction and a Possible Future
Closing
Back To Top
Introduction
Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels are exploding all over the internet. Though some might be too shy to buy it from brick and mortar stores, they will soon be able to use convincing cover stories when buying other racy reads.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
In today's Globe and Mail, Russell Smith reports on Total E-Bound's announced e-book series of re-vamped literary classics.
These re-releases aren't abridged versions, or copies re-written with androids, zombies, or werewolves (that's all been done, after all), but instead will have "graphic sex scenes" added to them. Rightfully so, this series of e-books will be called "Clandestine Classics." According to Total E-Bound, the series was planned before Fifty Shades came out.
Smith ultimately regards the re-release of classics with addition prurient bits as positive as it potentially brings new readers to the English classics.
Back To Top
A Classical Fixation?
Smith definitely has a valid point in his closing paragraph. Total E-Bound's altered classics do have the potential to draw new readers to the established classics of English literature. But is that really a good thing?
Some might say that the English classics are horribly under-read nowadays, and as a result the Western world's literacy and taste are slowly slipping. Genre fiction is eroding what was once a great literary tradition.
But what the apparent manipulability of English classics suggests is that they're anything but un-read.
Back around 2009 and 2010 we saw nineteenth century novels re-written with horror and science fiction elements added to them. Now, sex is being explicitly added to them, and they'll be read anew.
At its heart, the desire to see the classics read and thus to add things to them to entice new readers seems like a sound strategy. But, it also seems like sugar is being added to medicine. English classics are considered classical because they speak to various aspects of human nature in a rather direct way, and shed light on much of the foundation of Western society. Yet, there's no end to new books that do the same, both those considered genre fiction, and those considered regular fiction.
And that's where the focus needs to be. Nineteenth century classics are a fine literary cornerstone, but that cornerstone has plenty of sound material built on top of it as well. Why not look up?
Back To Top
Fan-Fiction and a Possible Future
Although Smith only mentions it briefly, fan-fiction, a form that often involves the "a gleeful uncapping of [established] texts’ repressed fountains of desire" merits expansion.
Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan-fiction. Many young writers cut their teeth writing fan-fiction under an alias or anonymously. Projects like Total E-Bound's "Clandestine Classics" are definitely a variety of fan-fiction.
Yet, they're obviously something more - most people on fanfiction.net aren't getting paid for their efforts, after all.
And so, the question that we need to ask is: To what extent does the success of Fifty Shades of Grey and the existence of a project like "Clandestine Classics" validate fan-fiction?
Ultimately, though industry-validated fan-fiction might see success and may open for more in the future, the track that some publishers seem to be on now seems dangerous. Re-hashing classics by adding what is essentially fan-fiction portions seems to be a perilous few steps away from going the way of Hollywood and making a senseless number of sequels and re-makes rather than focusing on original ideas.
Though, at the same time, were the mainstream to become more predictable, all of the vibrancy and life that's to be found in genre fiction would get more and more exposure.
Back To Top
Closing
Don't miss tomorrow's Annotated Links #11, or Friday's Nicolas Cage Month finale featuring Seeking Justice! Watch this blog!
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
A Classical Fixation?
Fan-Fiction and a Possible Future
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
Fifty Shades of Grey and its sequels are exploding all over the internet. Though some might be too shy to buy it from brick and mortar stores, they will soon be able to use convincing cover stories when buying other racy reads.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
In today's Globe and Mail, Russell Smith reports on Total E-Bound's announced e-book series of re-vamped literary classics.
These re-releases aren't abridged versions, or copies re-written with androids, zombies, or werewolves (that's all been done, after all), but instead will have "graphic sex scenes" added to them. Rightfully so, this series of e-books will be called "Clandestine Classics." According to Total E-Bound, the series was planned before Fifty Shades came out.
Smith ultimately regards the re-release of classics with addition prurient bits as positive as it potentially brings new readers to the English classics.
Back To Top
A Classical Fixation?
Smith definitely has a valid point in his closing paragraph. Total E-Bound's altered classics do have the potential to draw new readers to the established classics of English literature. But is that really a good thing?
Some might say that the English classics are horribly under-read nowadays, and as a result the Western world's literacy and taste are slowly slipping. Genre fiction is eroding what was once a great literary tradition.
But what the apparent manipulability of English classics suggests is that they're anything but un-read.
Back around 2009 and 2010 we saw nineteenth century novels re-written with horror and science fiction elements added to them. Now, sex is being explicitly added to them, and they'll be read anew.
At its heart, the desire to see the classics read and thus to add things to them to entice new readers seems like a sound strategy. But, it also seems like sugar is being added to medicine. English classics are considered classical because they speak to various aspects of human nature in a rather direct way, and shed light on much of the foundation of Western society. Yet, there's no end to new books that do the same, both those considered genre fiction, and those considered regular fiction.
And that's where the focus needs to be. Nineteenth century classics are a fine literary cornerstone, but that cornerstone has plenty of sound material built on top of it as well. Why not look up?
Back To Top
Fan-Fiction and a Possible Future
Although Smith only mentions it briefly, fan-fiction, a form that often involves the "a gleeful uncapping of [established] texts’ repressed fountains of desire" merits expansion.
Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan-fiction. Many young writers cut their teeth writing fan-fiction under an alias or anonymously. Projects like Total E-Bound's "Clandestine Classics" are definitely a variety of fan-fiction.
Yet, they're obviously something more - most people on fanfiction.net aren't getting paid for their efforts, after all.
And so, the question that we need to ask is: To what extent does the success of Fifty Shades of Grey and the existence of a project like "Clandestine Classics" validate fan-fiction?
Ultimately, though industry-validated fan-fiction might see success and may open for more in the future, the track that some publishers seem to be on now seems dangerous. Re-hashing classics by adding what is essentially fan-fiction portions seems to be a perilous few steps away from going the way of Hollywood and making a senseless number of sequels and re-makes rather than focusing on original ideas.
Though, at the same time, were the mainstream to become more predictable, all of the vibrancy and life that's to be found in genre fiction would get more and more exposure.
Back To Top
Closing
Don't miss tomorrow's Annotated Links #11, or Friday's Nicolas Cage Month finale featuring Seeking Justice! Watch this blog!
Back To Top
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] A Well Placed Documentary Makes Science Fiction Science Fact
Introduction
The Article Summed Up
Not New, But Great
Publishing's Next Stage and Mainstream Acknowledgement
Closing
Back To Top
Introduction
This past Sunday, the Discovery Channel aired a documentary that has stirred up controversy. The program in question is called "Mermaids: The Body Found," a work of science fiction in the form of a documentary.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
The article (from The Christian Post) gives an overview of the controversy and sums it up by stating that the documentary's description and creators said that it is "based on some real life events." Whether or not this is a case of misdirection is not made clear.
Making things even more provocative, the article ends with some statements from the Discovery Channel that present logical arguments for the possibility of mermaids existing.
Back To Top
Not New, But Great
The controversy here isn't so much about whether or not mermaids are real, but about media literacy. And, much more specifically, about the power of the claim that things are "based on some real life events" (or "based on a true story" or "based on real events," whichever variation you might encounter).
This intertitle has become so overused that it's almost meaningless. Anything can be "based on a true story." In fact, any story that is in any way metaphorical (such as science fiction and fantasy stories) is "based on" reality, otherwise its metaphor is useless. The same can be said for comic book stories like Batman - society is faltering because good people do nothing, and then those good people stand up (only in an extreme way that goes beyond what most people would do).
Moreover, it's human nature to relate things to what we know, and most of us know some sort of "real life."
This connection might not seem like a strong argument against specifying that certain things are 'based on reality,' but just as people are apt to read things into various stories, so too are stories apt to feed these readings. Stories that don't have some relation to "real life" often don't make sense and often don't become very popular.
To take a risk and go out on a limb, stories that are successful speak to people's basic desires. Many stories that are coming out now are complicating these desires and the road to their fulfilment.
Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, or Geroge R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series are good examples of these desires being complicated. Yet, even they still come down to basic desires like wanting to be the hero, personal growth, or safety.
Back To Top
Publishing's Next Stage and Mainstream Acknowledgement
In terms of the documentary form itself, especially regarding the "Mermaids: The Body Found" documentary featured in today's article, it is an especially powerful tool for science fiction and fantasy.
These genres are so continuously popular because people are always looking for more than what they have.
As humans we're always trying to reach beyond our grasp. Putting this desire for more into a form that purports to give straight facts says to people, "hey, you know that thing that you really want to be real? Well, it is, and here are the facts."
That we're so willing to believe is also a great sign of our open-mindedness. Some might say that this willingness to believe is something that people need to guard against when it comes to the stuff of fantasy like mermaids and supernatural cures, but open minds are as necessary for advancement as they are for distraction.
Back To Top
Closing
Don't miss my look at 2011's Trespass for part three of Nicolas Cage month, and be sure to catch tomorrow's Annotated Links!
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
Not New, But Great
Publishing's Next Stage and Mainstream Acknowledgement
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
This past Sunday, the Discovery Channel aired a documentary that has stirred up controversy. The program in question is called "Mermaids: The Body Found," a work of science fiction in the form of a documentary.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
The article (from The Christian Post) gives an overview of the controversy and sums it up by stating that the documentary's description and creators said that it is "based on some real life events." Whether or not this is a case of misdirection is not made clear.
Making things even more provocative, the article ends with some statements from the Discovery Channel that present logical arguments for the possibility of mermaids existing.
Back To Top
Not New, But Great
The controversy here isn't so much about whether or not mermaids are real, but about media literacy. And, much more specifically, about the power of the claim that things are "based on some real life events" (or "based on a true story" or "based on real events," whichever variation you might encounter).
This intertitle has become so overused that it's almost meaningless. Anything can be "based on a true story." In fact, any story that is in any way metaphorical (such as science fiction and fantasy stories) is "based on" reality, otherwise its metaphor is useless. The same can be said for comic book stories like Batman - society is faltering because good people do nothing, and then those good people stand up (only in an extreme way that goes beyond what most people would do).
Moreover, it's human nature to relate things to what we know, and most of us know some sort of "real life."
This connection might not seem like a strong argument against specifying that certain things are 'based on reality,' but just as people are apt to read things into various stories, so too are stories apt to feed these readings. Stories that don't have some relation to "real life" often don't make sense and often don't become very popular.
To take a risk and go out on a limb, stories that are successful speak to people's basic desires. Many stories that are coming out now are complicating these desires and the road to their fulfilment.
Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, or Geroge R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series are good examples of these desires being complicated. Yet, even they still come down to basic desires like wanting to be the hero, personal growth, or safety.
Back To Top
Publishing's Next Stage and Mainstream Acknowledgement
In terms of the documentary form itself, especially regarding the "Mermaids: The Body Found" documentary featured in today's article, it is an especially powerful tool for science fiction and fantasy.
These genres are so continuously popular because people are always looking for more than what they have.
As humans we're always trying to reach beyond our grasp. Putting this desire for more into a form that purports to give straight facts says to people, "hey, you know that thing that you really want to be real? Well, it is, and here are the facts."
That we're so willing to believe is also a great sign of our open-mindedness. Some might say that this willingness to believe is something that people need to guard against when it comes to the stuff of fantasy like mermaids and supernatural cures, but open minds are as necessary for advancement as they are for distraction.
Back To Top
Closing
Don't miss my look at 2011's Trespass for part three of Nicolas Cage month, and be sure to catch tomorrow's Annotated Links!
Back To Top
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Crowdsourcing + Crowdfunding = Novel?
Introduction
The Article Summed Up
A Novel Form of Community?
A Return to Crowd-Sourcing Stories
Closing
Back To Top
Introduction
While getting through the newspaper backlog resulting from a five day absence, I stumbled upon an article on the front page of the Arts section of Tuesday's Globe and Mail.
Immediately, the headline "Please write his book" caught my eye, and I knew that it had to be the subject of this week's editorial (beating out an article from Monday's paper about the usefulness of drones for Arctic "surveillance and sovereignty").
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
Daniel Perlmutter, a filmmaker and writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is not only crowdfunding his first novel, but he's crowdsourcing it as well.
However, instead of offering incentives like copies of the book, or special objects related to its creation, he's instead offering different elements of the novel itself. For 1000$, in fact, a backer can tell Perlmutter how the book ends.
Despite the hodgepodge of responses that this approach is likely to generate, Perlmutter has said "no matter what the project ends up being, it's going to be comedic in nature, just because of the very process."
Back To Top
A Novel Form of Community?
First and foremost Perlmutter definitely deserves notoriety. Undoubtedly many people have tried to crowdfund their writing in the past (possibly even offering similar incentives), but that it's happening (again?) is great news.
A video game is something that can provide great entertainment and can tell excellent stories.
A piece of music or an album is something that can create a great atmosphere or provoke deep thoughts.
A piece of art or a graphic novel can plunge the depths of human experience and present what was found at its nadir in an easily digestible form that may just be as deep as the experience itself.
All of these media are represented on sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but books seem like hard sells on these sorts of platforms.
If something goes wrong with a piece of art, music, or digital entertainment, there are options. Art can be hung and forgotten, or accumulate value. Music can be passively enjoyed or remixed into something else. Video games that fail to deliver can be lampooned or re-made into something else.
But if a book fails to deliver, the disappointment can be palpable.
But that's where Perlmutter's project shines.
The success of so many crowdfunding projects hasn't come entirely from the promise of what was ultimately to be delivered, but because they pulled on the heartstrings of a community (thereby loosening its purse strings).
And that's exactly what Perlmutter's project does - it turns the creation of a novel from something solitary into something communal. Again, something done before, but with the power of the internet, the reach and grasp of such a project are greatly increased.
Back To Top
A Return to Crowd-Sourcing Stories
Truly fascinating about Perlmutter's novel-to-be, though, is that crowdsourcing a work of fiction might just be the oldest way of making works of fiction.
Oral traditions, though often passed from generation to generation with the utmost care, would definitely have been subjected to additions or subtractions based on what the group performed for wanted (the original perhaps privately retained by the singer or maybe kept in a more occult tradition). And adjusting material to the desires of an audience is something that every successful artist does.
Thus, Perlmutter's project, and any others like it, are strange examples of some of the oldest reasons for crowdsourcing stories being brought into the internet age.
There might not be a campfire, and there may not be anyone in the audience who could lop off a head for a line that goes amiss, but the project definitely speaks to the human desire for community and for stories.
Back To Top
Closing
Tomorrow, another set of annotated links will be posted, and on Friday watch for the search for the good in The Season of the Witch, part two of Nicolas Cage month.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
A Novel Form of Community?
A Return to Crowd-Sourcing Stories
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
While getting through the newspaper backlog resulting from a five day absence, I stumbled upon an article on the front page of the Arts section of Tuesday's Globe and Mail.
Immediately, the headline "Please write his book" caught my eye, and I knew that it had to be the subject of this week's editorial (beating out an article from Monday's paper about the usefulness of drones for Arctic "surveillance and sovereignty").
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
Daniel Perlmutter, a filmmaker and writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is not only crowdfunding his first novel, but he's crowdsourcing it as well.
However, instead of offering incentives like copies of the book, or special objects related to its creation, he's instead offering different elements of the novel itself. For 1000$, in fact, a backer can tell Perlmutter how the book ends.
Despite the hodgepodge of responses that this approach is likely to generate, Perlmutter has said "no matter what the project ends up being, it's going to be comedic in nature, just because of the very process."
Back To Top
A Novel Form of Community?
First and foremost Perlmutter definitely deserves notoriety. Undoubtedly many people have tried to crowdfund their writing in the past (possibly even offering similar incentives), but that it's happening (again?) is great news.
A video game is something that can provide great entertainment and can tell excellent stories.
A piece of music or an album is something that can create a great atmosphere or provoke deep thoughts.
A piece of art or a graphic novel can plunge the depths of human experience and present what was found at its nadir in an easily digestible form that may just be as deep as the experience itself.
All of these media are represented on sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but books seem like hard sells on these sorts of platforms.
If something goes wrong with a piece of art, music, or digital entertainment, there are options. Art can be hung and forgotten, or accumulate value. Music can be passively enjoyed or remixed into something else. Video games that fail to deliver can be lampooned or re-made into something else.
But if a book fails to deliver, the disappointment can be palpable.
But that's where Perlmutter's project shines.
The success of so many crowdfunding projects hasn't come entirely from the promise of what was ultimately to be delivered, but because they pulled on the heartstrings of a community (thereby loosening its purse strings).
And that's exactly what Perlmutter's project does - it turns the creation of a novel from something solitary into something communal. Again, something done before, but with the power of the internet, the reach and grasp of such a project are greatly increased.
Back To Top
A Return to Crowd-Sourcing Stories
Truly fascinating about Perlmutter's novel-to-be, though, is that crowdsourcing a work of fiction might just be the oldest way of making works of fiction.
Oral traditions, though often passed from generation to generation with the utmost care, would definitely have been subjected to additions or subtractions based on what the group performed for wanted (the original perhaps privately retained by the singer or maybe kept in a more occult tradition). And adjusting material to the desires of an audience is something that every successful artist does.
Thus, Perlmutter's project, and any others like it, are strange examples of some of the oldest reasons for crowdsourcing stories being brought into the internet age.
There might not be a campfire, and there may not be anyone in the audience who could lop off a head for a line that goes amiss, but the project definitely speaks to the human desire for community and for stories.
Back To Top
Closing
Tomorrow, another set of annotated links will be posted, and on Friday watch for the search for the good in The Season of the Witch, part two of Nicolas Cage month.
Back To Top
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Books with Amazing Argentinian Fading Ink
Introduction
The Article Summed Up
The Power of Mystical Emptiness
New Bounds for an old Medium
Closing
Back To Top
Introduction
Last week's editorial was all about the mainstream acknowledgement of ebooks and indie authors.
This week, we take two steps back from the fore of technology and then one toward it.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
According to Tecca over at Y! Tech (a division of Yahoo News), an Argentine publishing house called Eterna Cadencia is creating books that will not outlast their authors or readers.
It’s not that these books are poorly constructed - quite the opposite in fact.
Using a new ink technology, developed by the ad agency Draftfcb, the Argentine publisher is going to be printing books with short-lived ink. Apparently, these books will fade into illegibility two months after they’ve been opened and exposed to light and air.
However, the publisher isn’t going to be doing this with all of their books, only with collections of new authors’ work. A move that might just help to give them the captive audience that all new writers need.
Back To Top
The Power of Mystical Emptiness
Although the article closes with a point about the fading ink gimmick only working if people can be convinced to buy “books that'll end up as fancy bound paper within just a couple of months[,]” this might also be the gimmick’s greatest strength.
Many people are reluctant to write in books that they cherish or thoroughly enjoy reading. And rightly so, there’s something special about a book - an inanimate object populated with ink splotches shaped into an old alphabet - that can make you feel or think things that you might otherwise not feel or think.
But what if that book went blank?
Would the book still hold the significance that it did for you while the story was still within? And, if it did, mightn’t that inspire some people to try their hand at writing using their since faded book?
The cost of these fading books, assuming that they’ll be priced at just a little bit more than a standard paperback or hardcover, might be a barrier to their success. But, if Moleskine notebooks can be sold for an exorbitant price based on a link to Ernest Hemmingway, Oscar Wilde, and Vincent Van Gogh, then why wouldn’t these eventually blank books have the same level of mystique?
In a way, they might even have more because they will have actually held what a revered and enjoyed author wrote rather than just having been used by him or her when he or she was alive.
Printing books with fading ink might not be a practice that will catch on for the classics, but it definitely could lead to some interesting stuff down the line for new authors.
Back To Top
New Bounds for an old Medium
Perhaps this gimmick will become something more than a response to ebooks and will lead to a cross between the two, possibly leading to something like the journey book from Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series.
Or, getting more specific, maybe the idea of disappearing ink will seep into the digital world and lead to some kind of technology that lets fans write directly to the author via their faded out tomes.
That gimmicks are needed, or at least believed to be needed, to sell paper and ink books might be one of the death knells sounded over the coffin of traditional publishing, but bringing the book into the digital age like this, without any computerization to speak of, is quite a feat, and points to better things ahead for traditional paper and ink publishing.
The question shouldn’t be will people buy books that will essentially become fancy notebooks in two months time, but rather: What will the use of this disappearing ink lead to?
Back To Top
Closing
Be sure to check back here on Friday for the search for the good in Deadfall, part one of Nicolas Cage month. Plus, don't miss tomorrow's annotated links!
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
The Power of Mystical Emptiness
New Bounds for an old Medium
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
Last week's editorial was all about the mainstream acknowledgement of ebooks and indie authors.
This week, we take two steps back from the fore of technology and then one toward it.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
According to Tecca over at Y! Tech (a division of Yahoo News), an Argentine publishing house called Eterna Cadencia is creating books that will not outlast their authors or readers.
It’s not that these books are poorly constructed - quite the opposite in fact.
Using a new ink technology, developed by the ad agency Draftfcb, the Argentine publisher is going to be printing books with short-lived ink. Apparently, these books will fade into illegibility two months after they’ve been opened and exposed to light and air.
However, the publisher isn’t going to be doing this with all of their books, only with collections of new authors’ work. A move that might just help to give them the captive audience that all new writers need.
Back To Top
The Power of Mystical Emptiness
Although the article closes with a point about the fading ink gimmick only working if people can be convinced to buy “books that'll end up as fancy bound paper within just a couple of months[,]” this might also be the gimmick’s greatest strength.
Many people are reluctant to write in books that they cherish or thoroughly enjoy reading. And rightly so, there’s something special about a book - an inanimate object populated with ink splotches shaped into an old alphabet - that can make you feel or think things that you might otherwise not feel or think.
But what if that book went blank?
Would the book still hold the significance that it did for you while the story was still within? And, if it did, mightn’t that inspire some people to try their hand at writing using their since faded book?
The cost of these fading books, assuming that they’ll be priced at just a little bit more than a standard paperback or hardcover, might be a barrier to their success. But, if Moleskine notebooks can be sold for an exorbitant price based on a link to Ernest Hemmingway, Oscar Wilde, and Vincent Van Gogh, then why wouldn’t these eventually blank books have the same level of mystique?
In a way, they might even have more because they will have actually held what a revered and enjoyed author wrote rather than just having been used by him or her when he or she was alive.
Printing books with fading ink might not be a practice that will catch on for the classics, but it definitely could lead to some interesting stuff down the line for new authors.
Back To Top
New Bounds for an old Medium
Perhaps this gimmick will become something more than a response to ebooks and will lead to a cross between the two, possibly leading to something like the journey book from Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series.
Or, getting more specific, maybe the idea of disappearing ink will seep into the digital world and lead to some kind of technology that lets fans write directly to the author via their faded out tomes.
That gimmicks are needed, or at least believed to be needed, to sell paper and ink books might be one of the death knells sounded over the coffin of traditional publishing, but bringing the book into the digital age like this, without any computerization to speak of, is quite a feat, and points to better things ahead for traditional paper and ink publishing.
The question shouldn’t be will people buy books that will essentially become fancy notebooks in two months time, but rather: What will the use of this disappearing ink lead to?
Back To Top
Closing
Be sure to check back here on Friday for the search for the good in Deadfall, part one of Nicolas Cage month. Plus, don't miss tomorrow's annotated links!
Back To Top
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Ebooks: Easing Working as a Writer
Introduction
The Article Summed Up
Not New, But Great
Publishing's Next Stage and Mainstream Acknowledgement
Closing
Back To Top
Introduction
On the front page of the Globe and Mail Arts section of Wednesday 27 June 2012, is an article about a 14,000 word ebook and what it means for journalism, as well as for writers more generally.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
The article delves into the story behind Paula Todd's ebook about Karla Homolka, Finding Karla. Todd discovered that Homolka has been living in Guadeloupe with three young children, and wanted to get the story out more quickly than the standard months-long magazine publishing schedule permits.
So, she published her story as an ebook with Amazon. It's been in the top 10 list of Kindle Singles since its release on Thursday. Combine that ranking with the price tag of $3, and Todd must be seeing some tidy returns on her three-week, NaNoWriMo-like efforts
Simon Houpt, the article's writer, then goes on to explain and illustrate that this means that writers can take back some of the power - and the profits - that they formerly had to relinquish to publishers. Specifically, he notes that ebooks have helped writers to fight for the electronic rights to their works.
Back To Top
Not New, But Great
This is great news.
Not because it's anything especially new, but because this information's being printed in a high profile newspaper suggests that indie authors can expect to get a little bit more cred in the publishing industry. This is definitely a good thing, since those who take the ebook route are generally painted with a very broad brush previously dipped in a wide, deep pot of scorn by more than a few in the mainstream publishing industry.
Though there are some who might validly argue that along with the market for ebooks, a market for ebook editors needs to be established.
Back To Top
Publishing's Next Stage and Mainstream Acknowledgement
One article is not going to change that entirely, but the acknowledgement of indie authors' successes does suggest that traditional media and those representing it are starting to take ebooks seriously.
Does this mean that indie authors might not be able to add that adjective to their title soon? Likely not.
The printing press made it possible to create multiple copies of a book relatively quickly and cheaply. This meant that more people could put their ideas and stories to paper - hence the propagation of pamphlets and broadsheets and books from the 16th century onwards. But using a press is a process that requires time, special training, and specialized equipment.
E-publishing requires nothing so hard to get and efficiently operate as a printing press. It just requires a computer capable of word processing and connecting to the internet. More and more people are able to say that they have this equipment, and so there are more and more e-books being published on a daily basis.
So many are these e-authors, in fact, that the ebook industry might just be impossible to regulate in the same way as the traditional sort of publishing is with its queries and editors and budget considerations.
So, the "indie" label isn't going anywhere. But just as the case has been with indie musicians going mainstream, the growing recognition of ebooks as a serious alternative source for longer pieces of writing means that it may just get easier for indie authors to go mainstream.
Back To Top
Closing
Check back here on Friday for a hunt for the good in Wrath of the Titans, and tomorrow for another edition of Annotated Links.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
Not New, But Great
Publishing's Next Stage and Mainstream Acknowledgement
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
On the front page of the Globe and Mail Arts section of Wednesday 27 June 2012, is an article about a 14,000 word ebook and what it means for journalism, as well as for writers more generally.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
The article delves into the story behind Paula Todd's ebook about Karla Homolka, Finding Karla. Todd discovered that Homolka has been living in Guadeloupe with three young children, and wanted to get the story out more quickly than the standard months-long magazine publishing schedule permits.
So, she published her story as an ebook with Amazon. It's been in the top 10 list of Kindle Singles since its release on Thursday. Combine that ranking with the price tag of $3, and Todd must be seeing some tidy returns on her three-week, NaNoWriMo-like efforts
Simon Houpt, the article's writer, then goes on to explain and illustrate that this means that writers can take back some of the power - and the profits - that they formerly had to relinquish to publishers. Specifically, he notes that ebooks have helped writers to fight for the electronic rights to their works.
Back To Top
Not New, But Great
This is great news.
Not because it's anything especially new, but because this information's being printed in a high profile newspaper suggests that indie authors can expect to get a little bit more cred in the publishing industry. This is definitely a good thing, since those who take the ebook route are generally painted with a very broad brush previously dipped in a wide, deep pot of scorn by more than a few in the mainstream publishing industry.
Though there are some who might validly argue that along with the market for ebooks, a market for ebook editors needs to be established.
Back To Top
Publishing's Next Stage and Mainstream Acknowledgement
One article is not going to change that entirely, but the acknowledgement of indie authors' successes does suggest that traditional media and those representing it are starting to take ebooks seriously.
Does this mean that indie authors might not be able to add that adjective to their title soon? Likely not.
The printing press made it possible to create multiple copies of a book relatively quickly and cheaply. This meant that more people could put their ideas and stories to paper - hence the propagation of pamphlets and broadsheets and books from the 16th century onwards. But using a press is a process that requires time, special training, and specialized equipment.
E-publishing requires nothing so hard to get and efficiently operate as a printing press. It just requires a computer capable of word processing and connecting to the internet. More and more people are able to say that they have this equipment, and so there are more and more e-books being published on a daily basis.
So many are these e-authors, in fact, that the ebook industry might just be impossible to regulate in the same way as the traditional sort of publishing is with its queries and editors and budget considerations.
So, the "indie" label isn't going anywhere. But just as the case has been with indie musicians going mainstream, the growing recognition of ebooks as a serious alternative source for longer pieces of writing means that it may just get easier for indie authors to go mainstream.
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Closing
Check back here on Friday for a hunt for the good in Wrath of the Titans, and tomorrow for another edition of Annotated Links.
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Wednesday, June 20, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Internet Superpower Google Alarmed by Growing Number of Removal Requests
Introduction
The Article Summed Up
A Brief Reminiscence, and how Things are Now
The Words of House Google
Search Engines: Naturally Democratic?
Closing
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Introduction
In the Globe and Mail of 20 June 2012, tucked into the right-hand side of page A3 was an article about Google. Specifically, about how Google has released its transparency report for the first half of 2012 and found an "alarming" trend.
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The Article Summed Up
According to the transparency report the number of requests from governments has increased by a quarter from last year (when Google began to notice censorship struggles). According to the 2012 report, 12,000 items were requested to be removed. These items ranged from videos to blog posts, most of which were political in nature.
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A Brief Reminiscence, and how Things are Now
This article indirectly presents an interesting state of affairs.
I can still remember when "Google" was a new thing, and how I was the one who turned a few of my friends onto it. Yet now the company has so much control over the internet. Such power might make some people nervous, but of all the internet-based properties search engines might make the most benign internet overlords.
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Search Engines: Naturally Democratic?
Search engines exist to help people find content. Content mills are in full swing despite many objections from writers, readers, and almost everyone else. People are always creating more and more blogs. Videos, photos, and music are all being constantly uploaded to said blogs, or to countless other websites.
It's in a search engine's best interest to help make sure that people can create a wide variety of content, and to help keep freedom of speech in tact as much as possible.
If content was completely curtailed and all political, or contentious, or controversial things were blocked from search engines they would lose a lot of their current influence. People would find ways to access content that didn't involve search engines, either going back to sharing content exclusively via direct links, or coming across some other means of spreading around what they had to say. And with these other ways of sharing and finding content, the heart of search engines' power, their search algorithms, would lose more and more importance.
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The Words of House Google
At the same time, it's hard to dispute Google's dominance among search engines (although it's quite a bit behind almost everyone else on the social network front - it seems Google+ is still a mystery to many).
Monopolies are never good, and there are alternatives (e.g.: Microsoft's Bing, GoodSearch, and Yahoo!), but a company with "Don't be evil," as its unofficial motto is bound to live by those words, right?
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Closing
Check back here on Friday for a hunt for the good in The Last Airbender.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
A Brief Reminiscence, and how Things are Now
The Words of House Google
Search Engines: Naturally Democratic?
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
In the Globe and Mail of 20 June 2012, tucked into the right-hand side of page A3 was an article about Google. Specifically, about how Google has released its transparency report for the first half of 2012 and found an "alarming" trend.
Back To Top
The Article Summed Up
According to the transparency report the number of requests from governments has increased by a quarter from last year (when Google began to notice censorship struggles). According to the 2012 report, 12,000 items were requested to be removed. These items ranged from videos to blog posts, most of which were political in nature.
Back To Top
A Brief Reminiscence, and how Things are Now
This article indirectly presents an interesting state of affairs.
I can still remember when "Google" was a new thing, and how I was the one who turned a few of my friends onto it. Yet now the company has so much control over the internet. Such power might make some people nervous, but of all the internet-based properties search engines might make the most benign internet overlords.
Back To Top
Search Engines: Naturally Democratic?
Search engines exist to help people find content. Content mills are in full swing despite many objections from writers, readers, and almost everyone else. People are always creating more and more blogs. Videos, photos, and music are all being constantly uploaded to said blogs, or to countless other websites.
It's in a search engine's best interest to help make sure that people can create a wide variety of content, and to help keep freedom of speech in tact as much as possible.
If content was completely curtailed and all political, or contentious, or controversial things were blocked from search engines they would lose a lot of their current influence. People would find ways to access content that didn't involve search engines, either going back to sharing content exclusively via direct links, or coming across some other means of spreading around what they had to say. And with these other ways of sharing and finding content, the heart of search engines' power, their search algorithms, would lose more and more importance.
Back To Top
The Words of House Google
At the same time, it's hard to dispute Google's dominance among search engines (although it's quite a bit behind almost everyone else on the social network front - it seems Google+ is still a mystery to many).
Monopolies are never good, and there are alternatives (e.g.: Microsoft's Bing, GoodSearch, and Yahoo!), but a company with "Don't be evil," as its unofficial motto is bound to live by those words, right?
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Closing
Check back here on Friday for a hunt for the good in The Last Airbender.
Back To Top
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Music Online: Product for Sale or Product of Passion?
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Introduction
The Article Summed Up
Pay vs. Passion
The Mass May Emphasize The Few
Closing
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Introduction
The internet is an amazing place. A place where people can find everything that they’re looking for or would care to look for. It’s a great place for business, and it lets musicians and artists and writers reach out to audiences well beyond the population of their immediate surroundings.
And getting things out to more eyes - especially when you pursue something in the arts - is essential. Having someone with the right connections see and enjoy what you create could lead to your being discovered, or at least to your picking up an important gig or job.
But an article in the Globe and Mail from Tuesday 12 June 2012 raises a counterpoint to this sort of optimism about the arts on the internet.
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The Article Summed Up
The article, ("A leg up for artists or a step back for the biz?" by Guy Dixon), is about the digital music provider TuneCore. It’s a service that hosts musicians' works for a flat fee and lets them sell these works without any commission being taken from sales.
So, instead of losing 30% of every sale as is the case with iTunes, musicians pay the $9.99 or $49.99 annual fee to host their song or album and then bank whatever profit comes their way.
Admittedly this sounds like a sweet system. Make more than your fee and production costs and you can see actual profit from your music. The site also provides a songwriting copyright registration service that can help artists see international royalties come in if their works are used in the right contexts for $49.99.
Plus, according to TuneCore’s Jeff Price, about 1000 artists made over $1000 in one month around February. As far as income from art goes, that’s nothing to sneeze at.
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Pay vs. Passion
Yet, the point that the article’s author raises, alongside Pete Townshend, is that services like TuneCore may get musicians paid, but they don’t guarantee that they’re “heard.” That is, it turns music from an artistic pursuit into something more monetarily driven, it takes out the creative feedback that bands might receive from a record label’s Artists and Repertoire (A&R) department or from listeners themselves.
And, Townshend notes, it’s this feedback that artistic people want. They want to know that what they’re doing is appreciated, and not just picked up on a whim and never really given a thorough listen.
That music becomes more commercial when it’s easier for people to get their music out there and sold without all of the barriers presented by record labels. After all, their taking their percentages and ownership of copyrights (neither of which TuneCore takes) is problematic.
If people are making music to make money rather than making music to make music, turning it into a way to live rather than a way of life, then there’s a risk run that the experience will be cheapened.
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The Mass May Emphasize The Few
However, the mass number of artists that services like TuneCorp enable won’t really affect music as an art form.
There will always be a mass of popular bands and musicians that appeal to a wide audience, but then there will always be those acts or artists that are iconic. The David Bowies, the They Might Be Giants, the Björks that really only sound better for all of their mediocre competitors.
After all, the more noise there is, the more harmonious and wonderful true music becomes. And the more musicians there are promoting and creating music, the more points of reference there will be to show just how great great musicians can be, making the medium much more accessible and more appealing to more people.
In fact, as more and more people successfully make music in capitalist terms, more and more people will be able to appreciate it since more people will be able to “get into it.”
The result of this nigh-on-utopic spread of musical appreciation is that more and more people will be able to find something that really appeals to them as individuals and as communities, strengthening the identities and confidence of all.
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Closing
Check back here on Friday for a search for the good in the Ralph Bakshi flop, Cool World.
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Wednesday, June 6, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Abortion: Politics of, and Reasons to be Pro-Choice
 |
Quick Warning
Introduction
Summary
Reason One
Reason Two
Reason Three
Afterword
Closing
Quick Warning
A quick warning - parts of this entry may be more graphic than you're comfortable with. If the discussion of abortion, especially when sarcasm and analogy are involved, makes you squirm, then you may just want to skip this one.
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Introduction
It’s heartening to know that abortion is a sheerly political thing among Conservatives at the party level. At least, that’s what this article from today’s Globe and Mail suggests.
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Summary
The article explains that a lone Tory has put forth a motion to redefine when human life begins, and that the Prime Minister’s Office has tried to keep this motion from getting support. The official line is that a vote for what is essentially an anti-abortion motion is a vote against Mr. Harper’s wishes, but senior party members have also said that it is a vote against Mr. Harper himself.
So what could be triggering party member Stephen Woodworth’s desire to re-open the abortion debate in Canada? Some sort of high morality founded on invented dogma? Nope. Not explicitly so.
Apparently, this MP knows that his re-election in 2014 depends on anti-abortion supporters. And he wants to make it clear to them that he really is the man they voted for.
This story ran on page A4 of the print edition, so isn’t big news (rightly so, since Toronto is still reeling from Saturday night’s Eaton Center shooting). But it is good to hear that Canada’s legalized abortion will not be coming under federal scrutiny any time soon.
So why am I, a Catholic of many years, thankful that the debate will lie dormant for now? For three reasons.
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Reason One
I agree with the current Canadian law that states that a fetus becomes a human person after it has exited its mother’s birth canal.
I agree with this law because it makes concrete sense. Yes, the different stages of development have been mapped out and know that such a vital thing as the heartbeat starts at 6 weeks, can begin to hear at 18 weeks, and can potentially respond to your voice at 25 weeks. But if you put a seed in the ground and peek in on its progress as it sprouts into a tree, once the seed breaks open, but the sprout still has to get through to the earth's surface, can what's come out be declared a sapling or a tree?
Until a fetus has left its mother it is a part of her, just like any organ is a living part of any other human being. It’s not a pleasant analogy because babies are so cute and full of potential, but could a tumor be declared a human being if it grew its own working heart or lungs or mind?
(The tree and tumor analogies may be crude, but defining "human life" is a sticky thing to do with some degree of objectivity.)
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Reason Two
Fetuses are very much a part of their mothers up until the point when they’re born or brought into the world. Because of this, if you remove the mother, then the fetus would not be able to survive. A baby couldn’t be expected to survive if left alone either, but the key difference is that a baby is no longer hooked into the human female’s automatic feeding system after it’s born. The cord is cut, and it becomes it’s own separate entity.
Whether you consider a fetus a part of a woman’s body or not, it is living inside of a woman’s body and that woman should be able to decide what she wants to do with it. And that’s not playing god, it's simply altering the body, something people do all the time in ways both obvious and not.
Further, abortion is not a recent invention. Though where surgery or one sort or another is the norm today, in earlier times it was much more common for a woman to abort a fetus through one of several folk methods like fasting, hard labor, taking diuretics, or getting an enema (check Wikipedia for a full list).
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Reason Three
Making abortion illegal would do more harm than good.
If abortion is made illegal that won’t stop people from getting them - even though making drugs, extortion, and rape illegal certainly has stopped people from getting and doing them.
But what’s truly dangerous about making abortion illegal is that it would force those who seek them out to go underground, and methods hidden in the darker parts of society are not going to be as clean and safe as those practiced in well-lit clinics.
Though, considering the economy’s current state, maybe abortion should be made illegal - it might give the wire coat hanger industry a boost.
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Afterword
This editorial also appeared in today’s Globe and Mail, and it nicely sums up what Catholics really should consider when it comes to real world issues like abortion and the LGBTQ presence in schools.
“Gay, straight, CatholicBack To Top
Re Catholic Schools Fear Fallout From Bill 13 (June 5): In 2008, Georgetown became the first Catholic university to open an LGBTQ resource centre. As a Georgetown student, a Canadian and a Catholic, this meant the world to me and my friends, several of whom are gay and practising Catholics. Why did the Washington university open the centre? Because the violence that emerges from ignorance and intolerance violates Catholic teachings. Because love, respect and growth are cornerstones of Jesuit teaching. Because we are men and women for others.
After donating $1-million for LGBTQ programming at Georgetown, former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue explained: “The Center is inspired by Catholic and Jesuit principles of respect for the dignity of all and education of the whole person …” It is upsetting that Ontario’s Catholic school boards are unwilling to act on the core values of Catholicism: tolerance, non-judgment and love.
Kelsey Spitz, Toronto”
Closing
Check back here Friday for a hunt for the good in the newly released thriller Gone.
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Wednesday, May 23, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Elon Musk, Space Travel, and the Promise of the Future
Introduction
Interpretation
Individuals and Exploration
Playing at an Alternate History
Closing
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Introduction
There was an article of note in the Globe and Mail today. Something strange and wonderful. Not that the Globe and Mail having a good article is strange (though it is wonderful) but the content of the article is both of these.
The article is a brief piece that’s straight to the point about it’s headline: “Billionaire businessman cheers a new era of spaceflight.” It’s all about Elon Musk's ship, the Falcon 9, and its launch towards the International Space Station with nonessential supplies.
Marcia Dunn, the article’s author, notes that this flight marked “the first time a commercial spacecraft has been sent to the [International Space Station].”
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Interpretation
That an individual has managed to get a capsule launched into space is either a sign of progress in space exploration, a time when individuals can go into the vast unknown above on their own initiatives or with their own goals in mind, or it's a sign that there are finally people who just have too much money.
In either case, the fact that people can now do what only governments could before is an incredible fact.
And whether it leads to the Federation familiar to Star Trek fans, or to something more dystopian like a lone eccentric billionaire sending fiendishly irradiated spiders into space in capsules rigged with special sunbeam catchers that aggravate the arachnids, forcing them to somehow fully populate their capsules so that he can then threaten the earth with a terrible rain of falling, deadly spiders ('so thick as to blot out clouds and sun,' the eccentric billionaire might declare as his sinister grin appears on every earthly screen) unless his demands are met, is something that will mostly be left to fate.
Mostly.
But what can really be taken away from this article is that all of the talk of things like mining asteroids or sending teams to the moon (maybe Newt Gingrich’s moon colony is closer than any of us can fathom) or Mars have just become one step closer to being turned from science fiction into science fact.
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Individuals and Exploration
Individuals can be dangerous when leading expeditions, either intentionally (think Cortés, and his drive to conquer the Central American interior) or unintentionally (Columbus’ unwittingly bringing European diseases over to the Americas), but at the least they're untrammeled by the slow machinations of large bureaucracies.
Regulations are good, and things like environmental impact definitely need to be considered when launching rockets into space (Cid's launch in Final Fantasy 7 is a light version of what an unregulated launch *could* look like), but too many regulations can weigh down the human spirit and its curiosity.
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Playing at an Alternate History
If Columbus or Cortés had to appear before a court of overseers and assure them that the environmental, social, and physical damage caused by their expeditions would be minimized or non-existent, then the Americas would likely not be the Americas. From a social standpoint, that might have been a much better option from the perspective of all of the First Nations peoples of the Americas who were displaced, destroyed, or disbanded by the Europeans, but from that friction so much was learned.
If there was such a group of overseers in 15th and 16th century Europe, and they turned down the major European explorers’ proposals to sail beyond the sea, would things like cars or planes or computers or the internet have been developed?
Maybe, but the world in which they were would be one very different from ours. And in this brave new world, anyone able to afford his own space capsule would have invariably been someone with a mind twisted by generations of knowing only a strict class system. Someone with the kind of mind that would probably use that fortune to launch metal clouds containing a doom rain of radioactive spiders into orbit rather than a capsule full of supplies to a place in the heavens where once-disparate nations meet and work together to advance human knowledge.
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Closing
Check back here Friday for a hunt for the good in the 2011 adaptation of The Three Musketeers.
Back To Top
Interpretation
Individuals and Exploration
Playing at an Alternate History
Closing
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
There was an article of note in the Globe and Mail today. Something strange and wonderful. Not that the Globe and Mail having a good article is strange (though it is wonderful) but the content of the article is both of these.
The article is a brief piece that’s straight to the point about it’s headline: “Billionaire businessman cheers a new era of spaceflight.” It’s all about Elon Musk's ship, the Falcon 9, and its launch towards the International Space Station with nonessential supplies.
Marcia Dunn, the article’s author, notes that this flight marked “the first time a commercial spacecraft has been sent to the [International Space Station].”
Back To Top
Interpretation
That an individual has managed to get a capsule launched into space is either a sign of progress in space exploration, a time when individuals can go into the vast unknown above on their own initiatives or with their own goals in mind, or it's a sign that there are finally people who just have too much money.
In either case, the fact that people can now do what only governments could before is an incredible fact.
And whether it leads to the Federation familiar to Star Trek fans, or to something more dystopian like a lone eccentric billionaire sending fiendishly irradiated spiders into space in capsules rigged with special sunbeam catchers that aggravate the arachnids, forcing them to somehow fully populate their capsules so that he can then threaten the earth with a terrible rain of falling, deadly spiders ('so thick as to blot out clouds and sun,' the eccentric billionaire might declare as his sinister grin appears on every earthly screen) unless his demands are met, is something that will mostly be left to fate.
Mostly.
But what can really be taken away from this article is that all of the talk of things like mining asteroids or sending teams to the moon (maybe Newt Gingrich’s moon colony is closer than any of us can fathom) or Mars have just become one step closer to being turned from science fiction into science fact.
Back To Top
Individuals and Exploration
Individuals can be dangerous when leading expeditions, either intentionally (think Cortés, and his drive to conquer the Central American interior) or unintentionally (Columbus’ unwittingly bringing European diseases over to the Americas), but at the least they're untrammeled by the slow machinations of large bureaucracies.
Regulations are good, and things like environmental impact definitely need to be considered when launching rockets into space (Cid's launch in Final Fantasy 7 is a light version of what an unregulated launch *could* look like), but too many regulations can weigh down the human spirit and its curiosity.
Back To Top
Playing at an Alternate History
If Columbus or Cortés had to appear before a court of overseers and assure them that the environmental, social, and physical damage caused by their expeditions would be minimized or non-existent, then the Americas would likely not be the Americas. From a social standpoint, that might have been a much better option from the perspective of all of the First Nations peoples of the Americas who were displaced, destroyed, or disbanded by the Europeans, but from that friction so much was learned.
If there was such a group of overseers in 15th and 16th century Europe, and they turned down the major European explorers’ proposals to sail beyond the sea, would things like cars or planes or computers or the internet have been developed?
Maybe, but the world in which they were would be one very different from ours. And in this brave new world, anyone able to afford his own space capsule would have invariably been someone with a mind twisted by generations of knowing only a strict class system. Someone with the kind of mind that would probably use that fortune to launch metal clouds containing a doom rain of radioactive spiders into orbit rather than a capsule full of supplies to a place in the heavens where once-disparate nations meet and work together to advance human knowledge.
Back To Top
Closing
Check back here Friday for a hunt for the good in the 2011 adaptation of The Three Musketeers.
Back To Top
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Classic Korean Films for Free on YouTube
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This isn't as new as many of the things that have been posted here on Wednesdays in the past, but it's too big to keep quiet on. Thanks to WebProNews for getting this story in front of me.
The Korean Film Archive (KOFA) did something truly amazing on 10 May 2012. Taking full advantage of the internet’s communication and distribution capabilities, and in partnership with YouTube, KOFA released 70 classic Korean films on YouTube. These movies are available in their full versions with subtitles provided by Google and are an varied display of the world of Korean film. And, they're available for free.
Along with Japan, Korea is among those nations that are the most eager to promote their culture abroad, a trend among most financially strong Asian countries that might just be interested in the soft power approach to international relationships.
Putting this large piece of their film history out on the internet for all the world to enjoy is definitely a master stroke in Korea’s cultural export game. All 70 films are available on KoreanFilmArchive's channel.
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Wednesday, May 9, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] Wild Things Are Beyond Genre Classifications
Introduction
If Genre’s a Guide, Keep Reading Your Map
What’s Behind the Words
Closing
References
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Introduction
In memory of the late Maurice Sendak, today's entry is all about the arbitrariness of genre. Sendak's own take on the matter is nicely encapsulated in an exchange he had with Stephen Colbert during Colbert's interview segment "Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1" on 24 January of 2012:
With age comes wisdom, and Sendak nailed it when he gave this brief explanation of how what he wrote was classified.
But if genre is something that “somebody says” it is, where does that leave the writer?
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If Genre’s a Guide, Keep Reading Your Map
As a mysterious writer decipherable only as "CH Tung" points out, genre can help to guide a writer by giving a sense of direction or purpose.2 This is true, and a good point to be made about the classification of writing, but it seems to be saying something different from Sendak’s quick explanation.
Like a painter who decides to paint a landscape rather than a portrait, a writer who decides to write a novel rather than a short story helps to give him/herself direction, but beyond that the definition of “genre” ceases to be useful in literature - especially in today’s mixed literary scene.
After all, are the books in the Harry Potter series children’s books, young adult books, or can they be said to hold an ageless appeal?
The magical elements in the series mark it quite clearly as fantasy, but each one also contains a central enigma or mystery that is usually solved by each book’s end - so are they also mystery stories?
And taken as a whole, the series very obviously shows at least some growth of its central characters, so could an omnibus edition also be considered a bildungsroman?
This is the application of genre to take issue with, that which tries to pin a work to a narrow field of interest or audience.
It's also good to be wary of the academic sense that the term only extends so far as the essential kinds of writing (poetry, prose, drama), and yet can also be used to refer to fantasy, science fiction, and mystery all lumped together as one, like some kind of literary equivalent of the word “cancer” meaning both a constellation with a celebrated and storied past, and a terrible disease living off of and destroying its host.
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What’s Behind the Words
At the heart of the issue of classification, and maybe what Sendak was poking at with his assessment of what being someone who 'writes for children' meant with Colbert1 and elsewhere,3 could be the idea that classification to such a degree isn’t what writers do, but is instead what readers - or sellers - of books do to make sense of all the literature found in the world. Writers merely write, and though they might call their works one thing, those generations that come after them may call them another.
Given things like Pottermore and the Harry Potter theme park being built in Japan, in fifty years maybe that series will be classified as a work of trans-media/revenue-seeding fiction.
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Closing
Check back here Friday for a hunt for the good in the Knightley and Farrell flick London Boulevard.
Back To Top
References
Be sure to check out the wikipedia article on Maurice Sendak for an overview of all of his works (as writer, illustrator, and both).
1. Colbert, Stephen. Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1. 24 January 2012 -from- Oldenburg, Ann "Stephen Colbert talks politics, sex with Maurice Sendak." USA TODAY 25 January 2011.
2. CH Tung. “The Value of Genre Classification.” 1986.
3. Barber, John. “The Globe's interview with author Sendak: Portrait of a cranky old man.” Globe and Mail 24 September 2011.
Back To Top
If Genre’s a Guide, Keep Reading Your Map
What’s Behind the Words
Closing
References
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
In memory of the late Maurice Sendak, today's entry is all about the arbitrariness of genre. Sendak's own take on the matter is nicely encapsulated in an exchange he had with Stephen Colbert during Colbert's interview segment "Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1" on 24 January of 2012:
“Colbert: Why write for children?
Sendak: I don’t write for children.
Colbert: You don’t?
Sendak: No. I write. And somebody says, that’s for children.”1
With age comes wisdom, and Sendak nailed it when he gave this brief explanation of how what he wrote was classified.
But if genre is something that “somebody says” it is, where does that leave the writer?
Back To Top
If Genre’s a Guide, Keep Reading Your Map
As a mysterious writer decipherable only as "CH Tung" points out, genre can help to guide a writer by giving a sense of direction or purpose.2 This is true, and a good point to be made about the classification of writing, but it seems to be saying something different from Sendak’s quick explanation.
Like a painter who decides to paint a landscape rather than a portrait, a writer who decides to write a novel rather than a short story helps to give him/herself direction, but beyond that the definition of “genre” ceases to be useful in literature - especially in today’s mixed literary scene.
After all, are the books in the Harry Potter series children’s books, young adult books, or can they be said to hold an ageless appeal?
The magical elements in the series mark it quite clearly as fantasy, but each one also contains a central enigma or mystery that is usually solved by each book’s end - so are they also mystery stories?
And taken as a whole, the series very obviously shows at least some growth of its central characters, so could an omnibus edition also be considered a bildungsroman?
This is the application of genre to take issue with, that which tries to pin a work to a narrow field of interest or audience.
It's also good to be wary of the academic sense that the term only extends so far as the essential kinds of writing (poetry, prose, drama), and yet can also be used to refer to fantasy, science fiction, and mystery all lumped together as one, like some kind of literary equivalent of the word “cancer” meaning both a constellation with a celebrated and storied past, and a terrible disease living off of and destroying its host.
Back To Top
What’s Behind the Words
At the heart of the issue of classification, and maybe what Sendak was poking at with his assessment of what being someone who 'writes for children' meant with Colbert1 and elsewhere,3 could be the idea that classification to such a degree isn’t what writers do, but is instead what readers - or sellers - of books do to make sense of all the literature found in the world. Writers merely write, and though they might call their works one thing, those generations that come after them may call them another.
Given things like Pottermore and the Harry Potter theme park being built in Japan, in fifty years maybe that series will be classified as a work of trans-media/revenue-seeding fiction.
Back To Top
Closing
Check back here Friday for a hunt for the good in the Knightley and Farrell flick London Boulevard.
Back To Top
References
Be sure to check out the wikipedia article on Maurice Sendak for an overview of all of his works (as writer, illustrator, and both).
1. Colbert, Stephen. Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1. 24 January 2012 -from- Oldenburg, Ann "Stephen Colbert talks politics, sex with Maurice Sendak." USA TODAY 25 January 2011.
2. CH Tung. “The Value of Genre Classification.” 1986.
3. Barber, John. “The Globe's interview with author Sendak: Portrait of a cranky old man.” Globe and Mail 24 September 2011.
Back To Top
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] A "Rebel" Gay-Straight Alliance in the Waterloo Catholic District School Board
Introduction
Interesting Local Developments
Over-Great Expectations
Closing
References
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Introduction
The matter of "sexual minority youth" in Catholic schools came to the fore again recently.
This time, removed from the national coverage afforded the matter in Toronto schools, there seems to be at least some hope in the Kitchener region as this article in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record by Liz Monteiro implies.
One of the key players in this situation, Anthony Piscitelli, is undoubtedly right that it's a divisive issue that would do more harm than good for the students as camaraderie amongst teachers would certainly take a hit if they were forced to take a side.2
Nonetheless the presence of students with a variety of sexual orientations within Catholic schools is still an important issue that needs to be addressed.
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Interesting Local Developments
What's most interesting here is the simple fact that Catholic groups around the Kitchener-Waterloo region don't seem to have any problem with it.
A consultant for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board from the Congregation of the Resurrection (an Institute of Consecrated Life for men), Rev. Fred Scinto, said that students shouldn't have to live in fear of being persecuted because of their sexual orientation - he even went so far as to quote St. Augustine, saying "We are a church of saints and sinners but Christ is still within it."3
In fact, this issue is particularly newsworthy because it's already playing out a little bit differently than it did in the province's capital. For the Kitchener-Waterloo region already has a school that has a group that is essentially the same as the oh-so-feared gay-straight-alliances. This school is St. Mary's High School and it sounds like the group there has done nothing but good for all of the students involved.
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Over-Great Expectations
So why are gay-straight alliances still such a big deal elsewhere? It seems like there's very little justification for it outside of some kind of ungrounded fear that these alliances are going to serve as homosexual hook-up groups, at least that can be inferred from the emphasis that these articles put on the Church's message of chastity for adolescents.
I think that Luisa D'Amato hits the nail on the head when she writes:
The issue here is a weird paradox in Catholic teaching that allows for all sorts of people to be accepted by the Church but that denies that at least a part of every person's identity - what makes them a complete person - is sexual.
As D'Amato goes on to point out, the denial of this aspect of people as part of accepting them "hasn’t worked out so well for the priesthood and, it is increasingly clear, presents nothing more than a delusional fantasy in the real lives of real people."4
Real lives aren't so neatly compartmentalized. Nor can real people easily section themselves off. Trying to do both just makes for a hardened mass of knots that even Alexander the Great couldn't cut through.
Hopefully, the example set by St. Mary's will be seen by other schools and by other boards, and support groups for students of any "sexual minority" will spring up in other Catholic schools.1
At least then, as a new teacher, there'd be one less thing to disagree on with the majority of Catholic schools.
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Closing
Check back with this blog on Friday for a hunt for the good in Johnny English Reborn.
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References
1. Monteiro, Liz. "Kitchener Catholic high school already has a gay-support group." TheRecord.com 2 May 2012.
2. Simone, Rose. "Fear of ‘divisive’ discussion ends gay-straight alliance group motion." TheRecord.com 29 April 2012.
3. Monteiro, Liz. "Schools have duty to provide safe environment, former student tells board." TheRecord.com 30 April 2012.
4. D'Amato, Luisa. "D’Amato: Piscitelli has it right — the Catholic school board should listen." TheRecord.com 2 May 2012.
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Interesting Local Developments
Over-Great Expectations
Closing
References
 |
Back To Top
Introduction
The matter of "sexual minority youth" in Catholic schools came to the fore again recently.
This time, removed from the national coverage afforded the matter in Toronto schools, there seems to be at least some hope in the Kitchener region as this article in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record by Liz Monteiro implies.
One of the key players in this situation, Anthony Piscitelli, is undoubtedly right that it's a divisive issue that would do more harm than good for the students as camaraderie amongst teachers would certainly take a hit if they were forced to take a side.2
Nonetheless the presence of students with a variety of sexual orientations within Catholic schools is still an important issue that needs to be addressed.
Back To Top
Interesting Local Developments
What's most interesting here is the simple fact that Catholic groups around the Kitchener-Waterloo region don't seem to have any problem with it.
A consultant for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board from the Congregation of the Resurrection (an Institute of Consecrated Life for men), Rev. Fred Scinto, said that students shouldn't have to live in fear of being persecuted because of their sexual orientation - he even went so far as to quote St. Augustine, saying "We are a church of saints and sinners but Christ is still within it."3
In fact, this issue is particularly newsworthy because it's already playing out a little bit differently than it did in the province's capital. For the Kitchener-Waterloo region already has a school that has a group that is essentially the same as the oh-so-feared gay-straight-alliances. This school is St. Mary's High School and it sounds like the group there has done nothing but good for all of the students involved.
Back To Top
Over-Great Expectations
So why are gay-straight alliances still such a big deal elsewhere? It seems like there's very little justification for it outside of some kind of ungrounded fear that these alliances are going to serve as homosexual hook-up groups, at least that can be inferred from the emphasis that these articles put on the Church's message of chastity for adolescents.
I think that Luisa D'Amato hits the nail on the head when she writes:
"The central problem here is the medieval logic of Catholic thought, slammed into modern North American culture with its deep concern for human rights. According to Church teachings, every person must be loved, gay people included, but not their sexual acts, which the Church teaches are sinful and morally disordered, both because they occur outside Church-sanctioned marriage and because children cannot be born from them."4
The issue here is a weird paradox in Catholic teaching that allows for all sorts of people to be accepted by the Church but that denies that at least a part of every person's identity - what makes them a complete person - is sexual.
As D'Amato goes on to point out, the denial of this aspect of people as part of accepting them "hasn’t worked out so well for the priesthood and, it is increasingly clear, presents nothing more than a delusional fantasy in the real lives of real people."4
Real lives aren't so neatly compartmentalized. Nor can real people easily section themselves off. Trying to do both just makes for a hardened mass of knots that even Alexander the Great couldn't cut through.
Hopefully, the example set by St. Mary's will be seen by other schools and by other boards, and support groups for students of any "sexual minority" will spring up in other Catholic schools.1
At least then, as a new teacher, there'd be one less thing to disagree on with the majority of Catholic schools.
Back To Top
Closing
Check back with this blog on Friday for a hunt for the good in Johnny English Reborn.
Back To Top
References
1. Monteiro, Liz. "Kitchener Catholic high school already has a gay-support group." TheRecord.com 2 May 2012.
2. Simone, Rose. "Fear of ‘divisive’ discussion ends gay-straight alliance group motion." TheRecord.com 29 April 2012.
3. Monteiro, Liz. "Schools have duty to provide safe environment, former student tells board." TheRecord.com 30 April 2012.
4. D'Amato, Luisa. "D’Amato: Piscitelli has it right — the Catholic school board should listen." TheRecord.com 2 May 2012.
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
[Wōdnes-dæg] (Korean) Robots on the Rise
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Introduction
Robots in the Workforce
Robots in South Korea
Closing
References
Introduction
According to an article in the Korea IT Times South Korea is really pushing to become a major player in the field of robotics.
And why not? More and more robots are entering the workforce in various ways: "lights-out" factories that can operate for up to thirty days without any human intervention (and so the lights and air conditioning are turned off); surgeons operating on patients hundreds or thousands of miles away via robotic arms; teacher and health care robots; as cleaners and cooks.1
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Robots in the Workforce
The transition into a much more robotic society seems inevitable. Granted, the article is from April 2011, but Rodney Brooks - a professor emeritus at MIT - robots will make the American economy more efficient and competitive.2 He bases these point on the facts that robot labor can be quicker, and a robotic manufacturing base on American soil will cut out the cost of bringing in goods from China and elsewhere.2
Plus, increasing the presence of robots in manufacturing might make the overseas production of Apple, and Sony products much more ethically palatable to those who care about such things. A fact that Foxconn seems well aware of, since they plan to employ 1 million robots by 2014.3
However, though Brooks and Bill Gates have said that the robot revolution is happening in a way similar to the computer revolution (slow and specialized, marching towards quick and ubiquitous), Brooks said in 2011 that the robots of the near future will have an eight year old's social skills, a six year old's dexterity, a four year old's language skills and a two year old's object recognition2 - not exactly as dexterous or quick witted as a T-1000 or a Bending Unit 22.
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Robots in South Korea
Still, the ambition and drive of countries like South Korea when it comes to robotics makes it seem like advanced robots are not so far off.
After all, Korean society's "pali-pali" mentality is indeed evident in plans to spend 322 million US dollars between 2012 and 2016 to turn the city of Daegu into a "robot city and hub to the nation’s robot industry."1 Perhaps, in some way, this push for robotics is meant to complement the global spread of its culture.
As wind turbines crop up in more and more places, and with robots apparently well on the way to becoming everyday fixtures, one question that comes to mind: Does this mean we're going to be getting flying cars soon?
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Closing
Check back here on Friday for the hunt for the good in The Darkest Hour
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References
1. Ji-Hye, Shin. "KIRIA Robotics - The Future is Here." Korea IT Times 24 April 2012.
2. Young, Grace. "Are Workforce Robots the Next Big Thing? Rodney Brooks Gives a Definite Yes." MIT Entrepreneurship Review 12 April 2011.
3. Schroeder, Stan. "Foxconn To Replace Some of Its Workforce With 1 Million Robots." Mashable Business 1 August 2011.
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