“I’m not sure if it can absolutely change things, but literature can certainly become a stay against the tyranny of pessimism and misery. Misery and pessimism stand in opposition to value. And we all need to feel valuable. This is where stories come in.”
Tag: 06.12.12
Clear Channel Becomes First Radio Company To Pay Performers For Music
“The agreement marks the first time that a broadcast radio network will pay performers when their music plays on its airwaves, but the deal also has implications for Internet radio.”
What Gets Reviewd (Not – For The Most Part – Writers Of Color)
“We looked at 742 books reviewed, across all genres. Of those 742, 655 were written by Caucasian authors (1 transgender writer, 437 men, and 217 women). Thirty-one were written by Africans or African Americans (21 men, 10 women), 9 were written by Hispanic authors (8 men, 1 woman), 33 by Asian, Asian-American or South Asian writers (19 men, 14 women), 8 by Middle Eastern writers (5 men, 3 women) and 6 were books written by writers whose racial background we were simply unable to identify.”
The E-Book Revolution Is About More Than Trading Paper For Pixels
“The transition from print to digital is likely to entail much more than a mere change of medium — it has the potential to profoundly alter the very process of knowledge production.”
Sticker Shock: How Much Amazon Charges Authors To Deliver One E-Book
“Andrew Hyde wrote and self-published a great-looking travel book and put it up for sale on Amazon … but he got some sticker-shock when he found out that Amazon was charging very high ‘delivery fees’ for his books, even when the buyers were buying from WiFi.” The fee: “$2.58 per download + 30% of whatever you sell” – a markup Hyde calculates to be roughly 129,000%.”
Does Reading Really Help Set Women Free? (Depends On What They Read)
“This is not a particularly revolutionary thesis, of course; reading is often seen as quintessentially empowering and freeing. But is it?” Well, it beats illiteracy, obviously. Yet, for one example, “Harlequin romances, Gothic romances, and soap operas addressed women’s anxieties and concerns – not in the interest of freedom, but rather in the interest of reconciling them to their lot in patriarchy.”
War Is Inevitable – It’s The Way Humans Evolved
Biologist E. O. Wilson: “Our bloody nature, it can now be argued in the context of modern biology, is ingrained because group-versus-group competition was a principal driving force that made us what we are. … Any excuse for a real war will do, so long as it is seen as necessary to protect the tribe. The remembrance of past horrors has no effect.”
No, War Is Not Inevitable – It’s A Cultural Development, Not An Evolved Trait
Science writer John Horgan: “Many chimpanzee communities – and all known communities of bonobos, apes that are just as closely related to humans as chimps – have never been seen engaging in intertroop raids. Even more important, the first solid evidence of lethal group violence among our ancestors dates back not millions, hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, but only 13,000 years.”
Bunheads Gets The Stilettos Wrong, But Everything Else So Right
“At that moment … my affection for Bunheads, the dance-themed dramedy that debuted Monday night, became cautious infatuation. Shall I list its seductions? The sour tempers! The insider dance jokes! The caustic comebacks! (Gaudily dressed hooker to a dejected Simms: ‘Who died?’ Simms: ‘Your fashion sense.’)”
L.A. Movie Palaces, Now Artist Lofts (Well, Apartments, Anyway)
“For actors in L.A. who aren’t content to just work in the theater, living in one may soon be an option. The 12 movie theaters – some call them palaces – that line the South Broadway downtown thoroughfare long ago fell into disrepair, but they may be making a comeback” – as combination black-box theatres, commercial spaces, and artist/actor homes.