World of the Written Word

The time-honored sport of "show-boating"

2012-02-04T10:59:00.000+13:00

It dates all the way back to the wedding-cake-like paddle-steamers that plied America's rivers

It's called "show-boating" -- putting on a show for spectators on shore.

And that, it seems conclusive now, was exactly what the captain of the ill-fated cruise ship Costa Concordia was doing -- he was show-boating, to the detriment of both his ship and his career.

Additionally, it seems there might have been a contest between ships and captains involved.

I don't know if he is going to find it a comfort, but this kind of sport has been a tradition since steamships first began, as attested by a racy news item in the Otago Daily Times (28 February 1884), which provides a couple of paragraphs of light entertainment in my next book.

On 26 February 1884, the Union Steamship Company crack steamer Wairarapa steamed into Port Chalmers (port of Dunedin, New Zealand) with her port quarter badly dented, and her poop deck awry, creating a storm of gossip.

Apparently the steamer had left Melbourne with all her lights blazing, belting along at top speed. Steamship captains were a flamboyant lot, and Captain Chatfield was no exception, but he was not just “show-boating” for the edification of watchers on shore. According to what a passenger related to the press, the local steamship Adelaide was coming close behind, travelling at such a headlong speed that “flames fully six feet high” billowed from her smoke-stack. Chatfield hung back so that the Adelaide could catch up, and then the two steamers pelted down the harbour past Williamstown, “coaling up at a great rate” — as the passenger phrased it. In a word, they were racing.

“It was fully known on board that a race was intended,” he said. Everyone was most animated, “holloaing and making all sorts of noises,” and bets were being placed. Then the race came to a sudden end, as the captain of the Adelaide altered course, steering straight at the port quarter of the Wairarapa. Apparently, he meant “to jockey the Wairarapa out of her running” by forcing her toward the starboard side of the channel, but unfortunately, there was a miscalculation, and the Adelaide ran right into the rear end of the New Zealand steamship, “making a most dreadful noise as she blew off her superfluous steam.”

The crash was terrific. For a moment or two the steamers were so closely locked together that one athletic (or terrified) passenger jumped from one ship to the other. Then a sudden fog had come down. Losing sight of each other, the two steamers had come to a stop, and had sent boats across the water, asking if everything was all right.Neither ship, as it turned out, was badly damaged. Though her beauty was marred, the Wairarapa was still perfectly seaworthy, as her speedy passage from Melbourne to New Zealand had demonstrated.

There was an inquiry, held at the Dunedin Custom House, but it ended inconclusively, as none of the passagers had been willing to testify against such a popular man as Captain Chatfield. And anyway, as the Otago Daily Times remarked, there was nothing in the law about steamboat racing, and so the board could do nothing about it.

I somehow doubt that the Costa Concordia trial will come to such a happy conclusion ...

A Day for Readers at Book Expo America

2012-02-04T08:22:00.002+13:00

A brilliant idea

Not set in stone, but hopefully it will come off

From Publishers Lunch

BEA Looks To Open Show To Public For A Day in 2013

After years of resisting suggestions to incorporate the reading public into Book Expo America, fair organizers "are looking at 2013 to shift" the show to straddle the weekend, running from Thursday through Saturday, with that third day open to public. The Saturday consumer focus would be "built around author events, but [will] also allow them onto the show floor to look behind the curtain, see what new works from their favorite writers will be coming out like ComicCon does." BEA show director Steve Rosato argues in a blog post that maintaining a third day of regular exhibits outside of the regular work week, by itself still controversial among exhibitors, "will also give a day of exhibits on the weekend that small but vocal portion of librarians and booksellers miss."

Facebook to go public

2012-01-30T08:37:00.000+13:00

Any spare cash to invest?

Facebook will begin the process of becoming a publicly-listed company this week, valuing the social networking site at between $75bn (£48bn) and $100bn, reports suggest.

The company plans to file papers with the US financial watchdog on Wednesday, according to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The flotation later this year would raise about $10bn, they reported.

This would be one of the biggest share sales seen on Wall Street.

It would dwarf the $1.9bn raised by Google when it went public in 2004.

It would still, however, be some way short of the $20bn raised by carmaker General Motors in November 2010.

ISLAND OF THE LOST

2012-01-28T15:17:00.000+13:00

It's in production

Or, at least, at South Pacific Pix they tell me that the script is being written ...

Yes, I am talking about Island of the Lost, the castaway story that has brought me a lot of fans.

Today I received one of those neat letters, this one from Queensland, Australia.

Hi Joan,

I am writing to tell you how much I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Island of the lost"

It was inspiring and I couldn't put it down. I was so enthralled by the imagery and the language you employed so seamlessly, that I was able to conjure up in my minds eye, the most vivid of images. Have you ever thought about having this masterpiece made into a motion picture? Couldn't you just imagine someone like Peter Jackson directing such an offering? With todays wonderful technology, it is possible to create almost any scene imaginable and I can imagine that your telling of this amazing story would be treated with great respect. Nothing needs to be changed and I think it is capable of being turned into a cinematic masterpiece.

Just had to say that, and would help in any way possible to make it happen.

Fantstic stuff Joan, and I would love to see this story told on the big screen.

Nick Gane

Thanks, Nick, and many thanks for the permission to publish your great letter on my blog

2011 Fantastic Year for Self-Published Freethy

2012-01-28T08:47:00.000+13:00

One million titles sold in just one year

As usual, I had a scan through the NYT bestsellers list (print and eBooks) looking for self-published successes on the level of Chan and Hocking, but found only two, today. One was Darcie Chan's Mill River Recluse, which I am pleased to see still doing so well. The other was a new name to me.

Barbara Freethy

A writer who has published with Simon & Schuster (she is still on their website) and other major houses, she has taken her backlist titles after reversion of rights, and published them herself, with dramatic success.

Unlike most independently published authors, who kick off sales by asking just $0.99, Freethy priced her books between $2.99 and $5.99. Nonetheless, they sold extremely well, to the tune of 1,000,000 in just one year.

Over the past twelve months, eight of Freethy's seventeen self-published titles have hit the New York Times and/or USA Today Bestseller List.

In a word, she made gold in books that had been taking up space in her closet. Having a following already would have helped a lot, but still it is amazing.

According to Theresa Horner, VP Content B&N Digital Products, "Barbara Freethy's self-publishing success proves that digitizing books can boost readership and breathe new life into older titles. Her backlist titles through PubIt!, Barnes & Noble's fast and free digital self-publishing platform, have consistently landed her at the top of the BN.com eBook list. We're thrilled for Barbara and we look forward to helping her sell the next million!"

She is traditionally published, too, currently being with Pocket. However, Freethy is planning to self-publish e-book originals in the future. "I am excited about the opportunity to not only make all of my books available again, but also to publish new works more frequently, allowing me to better respond to the demands of my readers."

Freethy's books are sold through online retailers Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Apple, Sony and Kobo. They are also distributed through Smashwords and Overdrive to libraries and other online retailers.

You can read about her on her WEBSITE

Dolly Parton turned down Elvis

2012-01-26T10:25:00.000+13:00

And justifiably so

He just wanted her publishing rights.

Country icon Dolly Parton refused to let Elvis Presley record her hit song I Will Always Love You because she didn't want to give up the publishing rights to the track.

The 9 to 5 singer reveals The King was a big fan of her 1970s tune and was set to head into the studio to lay down his vocals when his formidable manager, 'Colonel' Tom Parker, demanded Parton surrender her entitlement to the single's royalties.

But Parton tells US journalist Anderson Cooper she knew the financial sacrifice was too much just to have one of her tracks covered by Presley.

"Elvis was gonna record that song, he had it ready and 'Colonel' Tom Parker says, 'We have to have the publishing, or we won't record anything.' I said, 'I can't do that!' He wanted half the publishing (rights)! ...It wasn't Elvis' fault, it was Colonel Parker."

Parton admits she "cried about it" after rejecting the deal, but she struck gold in 1992 when Whitney Houston's version of the track topped charts around the world.

"Then when Whitney did it, I got all the money for the publishing and for the writing and I bought a lot of cheap wigs... with that!"

Haunted by her own book

2012-01-24T08:30:00.001+13:00

Some books haunt the reader. Others haunt the writer. The Handmaid's Tale has done both.

It has never been out of print. It has been made into a film, and adapted for opera. For some, it has become a synonym for the repression of women. It has been admired and reviled. And it's a book that haunts the writer.

Using the diary she kept at the time, Margaret Atwood reflects on the extraordinary effect The Handmaid's Tale has had on the world and herself.

It's a strange and yes, a haunting story. Read it in The Guardian.

Words they wish they'd never said

2012-01-21T08:39:00.001+13:00

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."

-- Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."

- - Admiral William Leahy , US Atomic Bomb Project

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."

-- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"Computers in the future may weigh more than 1.5 tons."

-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."

--The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what is it good for?"

-- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

-- Bill Gates, 1981

This 'telephone'has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us"

-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible"

-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper"

--Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make"

-- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out,"

-- Decca Recording Co. Rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible"

-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this"

- - Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy"

-- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."

- - Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University , 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value"

-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre , France

"Everything that can be invented has been invented,"

-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

"The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required."

-- Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University

"I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by itself."

-- the head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the inventor to found Xerox.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."

-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse , 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon"

-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

"Who the hell would want to read a book about a bunch of crazy Swedes on a raft?"

-- editor, turning down The Kon Tiki Expedition

Simon's Cat and Kitten Chaos

2012-01-19T16:43:00.000+13:00

Simon's Cat has a new book

It's called Kitten Chaos

Can you imagine the self-absorbed feline having kitten-competition in the home?

Well, it happened, and it has been turned into a book, to follow a rash of great new Simon's Cat cartoons on YouTube.

And the book had its launch in a cinema

The great event took place at the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square, London. Special invitations were sent out to competition winners from the Simon's Cat website, as well as winners from the Daily Mirror newspaper.

Predictably, the entertainment was firstclass, with a "Double Trouble" cartoon shown on the big screem, and lots of input from the cartoonist (and cat owner) himself.

And naturally, a video of the book launch was produced. You can view it HERE

Downton Abbey controversy heats up

2012-01-19T15:58:00.000+13:00

"Why have Americans fallen for a show that serves up snobbery by the bucketful?"

So demands historian Simon Schama in Newsweek's Daily Beast

"Yes, I know it’s perfect in its way," he writes. "Nothing beats British television drama for servicing the instincts of cultural necrophilia. So the series is fabulously frocked, and acted, and overacted, and hyper-overacted by all the Usual Suspects in keeping with their allotted roles. There’s Carson, the beetle-browed butler. (My favorite in the endless parade of butlerian clichés was Rabbits, the butler in H. G. Wells’s hymn of hate to the lordly house, Tono-Bungay.) Maggie Smith does her tungsten-corseted, eye-rolling, nostril-curling, glottal-gurgle as only she can—half Lady Bracknell, half Queen Mary (the unfailingly erect consort of King George V). Julian Fellowes has gotten this stuff down pat since writing Gosford Park, though all the main plot lines were anticipated a long time ago by Upstairs, Downstairs."

Well, you get the drift by now. But for some marvellously passionate, well crafted prose, read the rest HERE.

In the past, Julian Fellowes has neglected the golden rule of writers -- never, ever respond to an unfavorable review -- and snapped right back.

Responding to people who accused the show of using anachronistic language and etiquette, he declared, "The real problem is with people who are insecure socially, and they think to show how smart they are by picking holes in the programme to promote their own poshness and to show that their knowledge is greater than your knowledge."

Oh my. One can only wait for his reaction to this latest scathing commentary.

He should relax. Let's face it, for all its shortcomings, its lack of originality, and its stereotyped themes, Downton Abbey is incredibly addictive.

Another interactive cookbook

2012-01-19T15:36:00.001+13:00

It seems just yesterday that the Kung Fu Panda 2 Cookbook came out

Now there is another.

CEO Gili Abramovich (pictured) is bubbling over with the news.

"I wanted to share with you a link to our newest cookbook which is officially being launched today for the iPad – the Hello Kitty Cookbook," he wrote.

And of course there is a video. It's at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBOIStbOQIA

From the press release:

The world most celebrated and beloved kitty, Hello Kitty, brings her delightful charm and culinary ideas straight into the kitchen on the iPad with the new Hello Kitty Digital Cookbook for children. This app is the 2nd digital cookbook released by Castle Builders as part of its unique lineup of digital books for children.

Gili says the next step is interactive eBooks for adults. As a life-long booklover, this has given me a great deal to mull over, and friends have also contributed their thoughts and doubts on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/#!/druettjo). I can envisage the magic of having videos and sound effects attached to travel books, for instance. But, somehow, the thought of reading a novel on iPad or iPhone doesn't seem natural. What would be the advantages?

I suspect that before the year is out we will be getting interactive prospectuses from all kinds of forward-looking business people.

Now, there's a scary thought. Interactive advertising!

Sea charts

2012-01-19T10:36:00.002+13:00

Beauty versus Accuracy

When I was searching for images for Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator, I got great pleasure from the many beautiful old charts I found. The map reproduced above was particularly intriguing, because it provided an excellent illustration of how little the old Pacific explorers knew, compared to Polynesian ocean lore.

Engraved by Pieter Goos for his book De zee-atlas ofte water-wereld (Amsterdam, 1667), this "sea-chart" has to be viewed sideways, with California invisibly off to the bottom right, and what little was known of Tasmania ("Van Diemen's Land") and New Zealand hovering about to the top left. Otherwise, the ocean is almost empty -- not Tahiti, no Samoa, no Tonga, no Fiji -- and yet it was drawn for the use of seagoing folk, such as captains, sailing masters, and trading agents, who intended to venture into this unknown region.

Pieter Goos was the son of Abraham Goos, an Amsterdam bookseller who specialized in maps and charts. As well as carrying on his father's business, Pieter produced pilot guides for mariners. His Zee-atlas was a bestseller, going through many editions.

No one, however, kept count of the number of travelers it sent to a watery grave.

I was reminded of this when the captain of the unfortunate Costa Concordia reckoned his ship hit an uncharted rock.

Is such a thing possible today? Maritime historian Bill Bunting contributed a useful and entertaining comment that demonstrates that even relatively recently all charts were not equal:

Forty-plus years ago I was the mate of a sailing vessel engaged on a world voyage (he says). Previous owners had outfitted her chart locker with British, German, and US charts for many Pacific island areas. The British charts were aesthetically the most beautiful, as elaborately engraved as old bank notes, and imparting more than a whiff of empire, except that, with no colors, it was often not easy to figure out where the water ended and the land began. Lines of soundings were likely to be attributed to the HMS PINAFORE or whatever a hundred or more years ago, although presumably these were better than nothing.

The German charts were by far the most detailed, especially regarding features of the land, except that it appeared that many of the island hills and valleys were boilerplate added to fill in spaces which if left blank might suggest less than complete and thorough knowledge.

The US charts were the most utilitarian, and did not hesitate to display ignorance when appropriate. With an obvious color scheme differentiating land from water, they were the easiest to use and thus the charts of choice, even though they projected all the romance of a gas station road map.

John Burnside wins TS Eliot poetry prize

2012-01-18T12:08:00.000+13:00

John Burnside has been named the winner of the £15,000 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry for his collection Black Cat Bone.

This year's prize has proved controversial, with two poets withdrawing because of its sponsorship by an investment company.

Burnside, 56, who chose to read a poem instead of make a speech, told the BBC he was "stunned" to have been chosen.

He said he had never considered withdrawing over the sponsorship issue.

It is Burnside's second prestigious poetry prize in under six months. The Scottish writer won the £10,000 Forward Prize for the same collection in October.

Read the full BBC story by Tim Masters

Has the earth moved?

2012-01-18T09:50:00.000+13:00

Earth scientists studying the after-effects of last year’s Japan earthquake, registering a 10 on the Richter scale, have discovered that the shifting continental plates have tilted the earth a little further on its axis. The result is a tiny, but measurable, alteration in time, distance and position in space.

According to New Zealand website SunLive, the news that the earth has moved didn’t surprise Tauranga resident Minnie Driver, who claims that her recent accident on Cameron Road was a direct result of her sat-nav being suddenly inaccurate.

“It’s been fine for ages, but since the earthquake it keeps telling me to turn about 25 metres before I get to the junction I want. True, I’ve met some interesting people, and surprised a few who were sweeping their drives, but this is clearly a new problem. I’ve spoken to makers Tom Tom, but they have investigated and blame lunchtime drinking. That’s scandalous, and probably only partly true.”

Other supposedly incompetent drivers have now come forward, and been joined by numerous other GPS users including trampers & boaties, many of whom have been hopelessly lost and branded as ‘stupid’ by emergency service staff.

They claim that GPS systems haven’t accounted for the shift in Earth’s position.

The captain of the Costa Concordia has claimed that the rock wasn’t on his chart.

Will he now tell the world that the ‘earth moved’ for him?

It must be the holiday atmosphere.

Winnie the Pooh and Doc treated badly

2012-01-17T18:34:00.000+13:00

Reprinted children's classics lacking in integrity

Parragon embarrassed

A publishing firm is investigating how mistakes, including a drawing of Doc from the seven dwarfs without his glasses, were printed in a series of Disney books.

Linda Weeks, of Maidstone, Kent, found 70 errors when she read the Parragon-published series to her daughter.

The librarian said Winnie the Pooh also contained American terms that English author AA Milne would not have written. Eeyore, for instance, had "gotten all spruced up for spring."

The Bath-based publisher said it was disappointed that errors had been made.

But the publishing firm said some terms had been used to enable the "widest possible audience" to enjoy the stories.

Ms Weeks, who is a research librarian, said the books which contained the errors included Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, Finding Nemo, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Winnie the Pooh.

In Snow White, the text referred to an illustration of Doc, one of the seven dwarfs, but the character had been drawn without his glasses.

"That's not Doc, is it? Doc should have glasses on," she said

Read the whole story on BBC

Children's books of the future?

2012-01-17T11:02:00.002+13:00

It's a book for kids

And it's different

It's an eBook -- but that's not what is different

It's also a cookbook -- but that is not what makes it different, either.

It's an eCookbook for Kids that's absolutely packed with apps.

But still that's not the difference.

The difference is that it's linked to a highly publicized film.

Somehow, I thought the ultimate eBook would be a dazzling production involving exotic travel, exotic animals, or classic art. Never did I expect that it would be an eCookbook for children that not only entices them to turn cooking into a family experience, but encourages them to read.

And it didn't ever cross my mind that it would be designed to accompany the release of a motion picture.

Creators of children's programs for TV and cinema are always keen to find ways to extend their marketing -- content that will make extra money out of creative licensing. That's why bookstores go in for potentially profitable sidelines, such a stationery decorated with the latest cartoon characters, "Hello Kitty" and "Angry Birds" being a couple of the latest. And that's why giant animation firms like DreamWorks are always on the lookout for innovative ideas that lead to yet more exposure for their films.

That's what led DreamWorks to a 16-strong team of creative programmers in Israel, called Castle-Builders, which has provided just what they are looking for -- an interactive cookbook, to accompany the release of Kung Fu Panda 2. And, if they were looking for innovation, that's exactly what they got. (I particularly like the truly imaginative trick of shaking the tablet to get a random recipe.)

This is definitely not a children's book the way I know it. In fact, it is so far away from traditional children's print books that it's a different form of literature entirely.

So, how did it come about?

It began back in 2006, when 25-year-old Gili Abramovich, armed with a MBA degree from Israel's Colman College School of Business, and expertise in software development gained during his stint of military service, founded Castle-Builders. This was a time when touch screen interactivity was science fiction territory, well before iPad, iPhone and Android, and yet Abramovich had dreams that he was determined to turn into reality.

"Ever since I can remember I used to have ideas that I wanted to explore," he says. "I used to write them in a notebook; the digital book was simply the first I picked up and did something about. I felt that there was a trend and I just followed my instincts. That brought me to the unique position we are in today - having our product highly interactive and compatible with the iPad, Android, Nook, PC and the Mac."

Interviewed via the miracle of the internet, his enthusiasm is almost palpable. "As a kid, when reading a book, I was always waiting for the photo to come up every 4 pages," he confides. "That was why I thought that kids would love having an image on every single page - and since images simply do not cut it any more, I felt that every page should offer videos and animations. I wanted to create a whole world around every story, one that pulls the child into the story and keeps him mesmerized."

He calls it "a backdoor" way of getting children reading.

Perhaps he should call it a "kitchen door" way, because it gets them cooking, too.

Photoshopping unrealistically beautiful bodies

2012-01-16T13:42:00.000+13:00

Ever suffer from a surfeit of Beautiful People?

Common sense should tell you that those gorgeous blokes and girls splashed over billboards and magazines are not nearly so pretty in reality.

Let's face it, it has always happened. Cleopatra bathed in ass's milk, and arrived attired in fetchingly flattering costumes. In the early days of cinema, actors and actresses beginning to show their years were photographed through cheesecloth. Makeup artists were deft at covering up blemishes.

Photoshopping has taken this art to a whole new level, and there is scientific evidence out there that proves that it is bad for the health of many people. While most merely wince when a glimpse in the mirror compares unfavorably with the cover of the latest mag, there are some who become so driven by a bad self-image that they develop life-threatening dietary problems, or embark on risky surgery.

Now, two American computer scientists, Prof. Eric Kee and his grad student, Hany Farid, have developed a program that could be used to alert readers to the amount of photoshopping involved in pictures -- rather like the lists of ingredients and their calorific content that are printed on food packages.

Their paper, A Perceptual Metric for Photo Retouching, begins with this abstract:

In recent years, advertisers and magazine editors have been widely criticized for taking digital photo retouching to an extreme. Impossibly thin, tall, and wrinkle- and blemish-free models are routinely splashed onto billboards, advertisements, and magazine covers.

The ubiquity of these unrealistic and highly idealized images has been linked to eating disorders and body image dissatisfaction in men, women, and children. In response, several countries have considered legislating the labeling of retouched photos.

We describe a quantitative and perceptually meaningful metric of photo retouching. Photographs are rated on the degree to which they have been digitally altered by explicitly modeling and estimating geometric and photometric changes. This metric correlates well with perceptual judgments of photo retouching and can be used to objectively judge by how much a retouched photo has strayed from reality.

You can download the entire article and supporting material HERE.

Warning: it's not easy reading. And the advertisers and magazine publishers who have been offered the free use of the system are predictably unimpressed.

In meantime, comfort yourself with the bracing thought that those glamorous faces and slinky bodies are the products of a computer program, not of nature.

PS. If you like the photoshopping illustrated above, you can see more examples HERE

Publishers Weekly bestsellers January 2012

2012-01-16T08:48:00.000+13:00

Intriguingly . . .

While the fiction list is replete with the same tired old names, several of the "collaborators" in the bestseller fiction industry have at last been given space on the title page.

Hardcover Fiction

1. "Private: #1 Suspect" by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro (Little, Brown,$27.99) -

2. "Love in a Nutshell" by Janet Evanovich & Dorien Kelly (St. Martin's, $27.99) -

3. "Death Comes to Pemberley" by P.D. James (Knopf, $25.95) 2

4. "77 Shadow Street" by Dean Koontz (Bantam, $28) 1

5. "11/22/63" by Stephen King (Scribner, $35) 3

6. "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, $27.95) 10

7. "Locked On" by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney (Putnam, $28.95) 4

8. "The Litigators" by John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95) 6

9. "The Best of Me" by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central, $25.99) 7

10. "Kill Alex Cross" by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $28.99) 5

Hardcover nonfiction

1. "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, $35) 1

2. "American Sniper" by Chris Kyle, with Scott McEwen & Jim DeFelice (Morrow, $26.99) -
3. "Real Marriage" by Mark & Grace Driscoll (Thomas Nelson, $22.99) -
4. "Killing Lincoln" by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard (Holt, $28) 2
5. "Taking People with You" by David Novak (Portfolio, $25.95) -
6. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30) 7
7. "The 17 Day Diet" by Dr. Mike Moreno (Free Press, $25) 4

8. "The Dash Diet Action Plan" by Marla Heller (Grand Central, $22.99) -

9. "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, $27) 3

10. "Catherine the Great" by Robert K. Massie (Random House, $35) 10

It will also be interesting to see when Publishers Weekly updates its list to include digital books. This year? Next year? Never?

Symantec sued for making false claims

2012-01-15T08:39:00.000+13:00

Talk about stirring the pot!

A group of Indian hackers has offered support to an American man, James Gross, who has filed a lawsuit against Symantec Corp.

A spokesman for the group, which is known as "Lords of Dharmaraja," released more than 13,000 files that were part of the product's source code from a 2006 version of Norton Utilities, a software program at the heart of the legal dispute.

"Pass it on to forensics and win the lawsuit," YamaTough said via Twitter.

The proposed class-action lawsuit claims that Symantec seeks to convince consumers to buy Norton Utilities and PC Tools software programs by scaring them with misleading information about the health of their computers. Symantec has said those claims are without merit.

It was not immediately clear how the source code might help the case. And one of the attorneys working with plaintiff James Gross said that he did not welcome assistance from the Indian hackers.

Read the full story

The Reader-Written Novel

2012-01-14T08:48:00.001+13:00

"Crowd-sourced" novel in the Sydney Morning Herald

It was the neatest idea of the Christmas season.

The Sydney Morning Herald invited its readers to contribute to the creation of a new art form, a "crowd-sourced" novel featuring a mysterious necklace, which was to be published over the next three weeks.

The first chapter was published on Boxing Day (December 26) in the newspaper's Summer Herald section, on smh.com.au and on the Herald's tablet app.

Readers were invited to read that chapter and then write the next one, submitting it within two days.

One contribution was selected and published as the next chapter (on the tablet app and online only, but still, what a great idea). The editor -- Michael Duffy -- envisaged a novel nine chapters in length, which would appear as an evolving serial for three weeks, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

There were rules. Each chapter had to be set in a different suburb, be strongly described, and be between 1500 and 2000 words. The only necessary linking element was the necklace introduced in the first chapter. Each subsequent chapter had to explain how the necklace got to be in a new suburb -- given or sold, stolen or inherited, perhaps. The chapters could move back and forth in time.

And lo, the public responded. The final chapter has just been published, and it's a humdinger, starring Cate Blanchett, no less.

You can read the completed novel HERE Just click each chapter in order.

The first typewritten manuscript

2012-01-13T09:09:00.000+13:00

Who produced the first typewritten manuscript?

Mark Twain, it seems, with his story "Life on the Mississippi"

And can you blame him? "Mississippi" is a lot easier to type than to write.

Joking aside, there is an interesting discussion developing on the internet, starting with milestones in publishing (such as the first typewritten manuscript), and focusing on word processors.

So, who was the first to produce a manuscript on a word processor?

No one knows, according to a fascinating article in the NYT by Jennifer Schuessler. But there are plenty of guesses, mostly involving science fiction writers -- which is only logical, when you think about it. Frank Herbert could well have been the first to submit a book on floppy disks, but in the absence of the disks themselves, let alone the data on them, it is impossible to prove.

(For that matter, it could have been yours truly. In 1990 I produced She Was a Sister Sailor on a Brother rather like the one pictured above, and sent it to the publisher -- Mystic Seaport -- on floppy disks, which were a lot cheaper to mail than a typewritten manuscript. They had to borrow an identical machine to read the confounded things.)

In her NYT story, Jennifer Schuessler tells us about Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, a university professor who is hot on the trail of the first word processor-produced manuscript, according to a recent lecture at the New York Public Library, saucily titled "Stephen King's Wang." (A Wang was King's first word processor.) Mr. Kirschenbaum also collects old word processors, and has a novel method of cleaning mother boards -- by putting them through the rinse cycle of the dishwasher!

According to Ms. Schuessler, the lecture was drawn from Mr. Kirschenbaum’s book Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing, which Harvard University Press is set to publish in 2013, or as soon as he can finish tapping it out on his iBuyPower 64-bit laptop.

Captain Underpants goes digital

2012-01-13T08:23:00.000+13:00

At last, after six long years ...

NEW YORK (AP) — The author of "Captain Underpants" is joining the digital age and bringing back his million-selling series after a six-year hiatus.

Scholastic Inc. announced Thursday that e-editions of two graphic novels by Dav Pilkey, "The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby" and "Super Diaper Baby 2," will come out at the end of January. The releases will include deleted scenes and material about the making of the books, spinoffs of the "Captain Underpants" stories.

The proliferation of iPads, Nooks, Kindle Fires and other color devices have made publishers and authors increasingly willing to put illustrated works in electronic format.

Scholastic also announced that two new "Captain Underpants" books are arriving, the first since 2006 and continuing the adventures of schoolmates George Beard and Harold Hutchins and the principal they turn into an underdressed superhero.

eBooks with added content

2012-01-09T08:13:00.000+13:00

Tablet vs. Simple Touch

I've been having a fascinating conversation with eNovelist Shayne Parkinson about reading books on tablets, which offer all those enticing (and very distracting) apps.

She loves her tablet, she says, and when she reads, she just reads (more self-control than I have, I strongly suspect). When she is not reading, she can use her tablet for a multitude of extras -- writing notes to herself, checking e-mail, updating a grocery shopping list, or just as a plain old phone.

Now I find on bookcatcher.com that a publishing company has held a survey of readers asking if they would be prepared to pay more, just to be able to read a book on a gadget that offers all those extras listed by Shayne. The company is Cathedral Rock Publishing. It's a small survey, but surprisingly positive. And yes, eBook readers strongly support gadgets with additionals, such as audio and video, and are willing to pay more to get what they want.

Word for the Weekend: Menhaden

2012-01-09T07:54:00.000+13:00

Menhaden

It's a fish, a very small American fish. Also known as moss bunker, bunker, and pogy, it has been harvested for fertilizer since time immemorial.

Indeed, the name comes from the Algonquin word munnawhat, which means fertilizer.

Despite someone having fun in the food section of the Wikipedia entry, it is not generally considered to be edible, though it was once experimentally canned as "Ocean Trout." Instead, it is harvested by the million for fertilizer and fish meal -- and the Omega fish oil that you swallow in capsule form for your health. It's greatest importance, however, is its place in the food chain. Like krill for giant whales, it is a necessary part of the diet of larger species. Removing menhaden from the sea is another step in the wrecking of our planet.

This message is explored in a very well-reviewed book about this little fish, called The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America, by H. Bruce Franklin. It is worth hunting up the entry on Amazon, if only just to read the extremely well-written review by Mark McDonough.

In fact, whales played a surprisingly important part in the history of menhaden. As the great whales were "fished" out, reducing huge catches of menhaden as an alternative for lubricant oil became quite an industry, and schooners called "moss bunkers" became quite a common sight on the eastern coasts of America. As there was no refrigeration, the menhaden were just allowed to rot, so the moss bunkers could be smelled quite a long time before they came into sight. Working on them could not have been fun.

From maritime historian Bill Bunting:

There is a tale of a certain 3-masted schooner which loaded a cargo of "fish scrap" -- putrified processed pogy, pogy being an oily industrial fish once unsuccessfully canned as "Ocean Trout" -- at Promised Land, on Eastern Long Island, for Norfolk, where the maggoty scrap was to became a component of fertilizer. Initially the stench was all but overpowering to the schooner's people, but evidently the human olfactory system is designed to shut down in self-defense when confronted with an extreme situation, and by the time port was made the stench did not seem all that bad. But this proved to be an illusion when the captain, wife, and daughter boarded a street car only to have the other occupants depart post haste.

Rejected Names

2012-01-07T08:11:00.001+13:00

The whaling wives of New England would be amazed

List of rejected babies' names released in New Zealand

There are some very odd names around these days, but no odder than they were back in the nineteenth century in whaling New England. Undoubtedly because of the stern Old Testament background of many of the prominent families, names like Elijah, Uriah, Obed and Gideon abounded, while girls called Asenath and Azubah were common (though Mary was hugely popular, as was Sarah).

Well, those whaling mothers would have blinked at the list of names that were not allowed to be used in New Zealand, rejected because (a) the name is considered "undesiarable in the public interest" (b) it may cause offence (c) is too long -- meaning more than 100 characters (d) is an official title.

The most popular rejected name was Justice (or any spelling of the word)

Next came "Royal" and "Prince."

Well, good heavens above -- those names also feature heavily in lists of whaling crews and captains, a prominent fellow being Captain Prince Sherman, who was popular in all the ports where he landed. A relative of his, another Prince Sherman, did not have quite such a wonderful reputation. In fact, he jumped ship, and settled in New Zealand.

Then there was Royal Sherman. And that comes from looking at just one family. (There was a Zoeth Sherman, too.)

And how about all the babies who named after the ship! The first "Chelsea," in fact, was little Chelsea Smith, born on board the New London sealer/whaler Chelsea, in appalling weather in appalling seas in the sub-Antarctic south.

And guess where Helen Herschel Sherman was born. No, it's not a ship; it's a place.

Top ten rejected names:

Justice
Princess
King
Prince
Royal
Duke
Bishop
Major
J
Lucifer

Well, I can think of quite a few little boys who could very aptly be called Lucifer ....

First Digital Book Conference for 2012

2012-01-07T07:45:00.000+13:00

On Behalf of Publishers Lunch

Living In A Digital Book World

The first big digital conference of the year is just weeks away and, as the headlines confirm, there will be plenty to discuss and learn about.

The show opens with a CEO's view of the future from View of the Future Redux:

John Ingram, Dominique Raccah at Sourcebooks. John Donatich at Yale University Press, and Ellen Archer at Hyperion (preview her thoughts here: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/hyperion-ceo-ellen-archer-book-publishing-business-model-is-broken/) and closes at the now-traditional look at what we expect to happen within the next year with

Evan Schnittman at Bloomsbury; Mark Allin at Wiley; Clare Peeters at Perseus; and Mike Shatzkin.

In between you'll hear individual presentations from the major etailers--Russ Grandinetti at Amazon; Theresa Horner at BN; Michael Tamblyn at Kobo--and the first conference presentation from new Bookish ceo Carolyn Marks.

There's futurist and author David Houle, and Oren Teicher from the ABA and booksellers from Politics and Prose and RJ Julia on The Bookstore Renaissance and new bookselling business model experiments underway. For original research, there will be new presentations from James Mcquivey at Forrester; Kelly Gallagher at Bowker PubTrack; Giovanni Bonfanti at A.T. Kearney; and Jack McKeown and Tom Thompson at Verso.

Plus five vertical tracks offer experts from throughout the publishing industry and beyond on technology, marketing, social media, ebook basics, the changing role of agents, global markets, illustrated books, libraries and more.

DBW has grown into a three-day extravaganza--beginning with our own Publishers Launch Conference going deep into the fast-growing digital children's market now that color devices have taken hold.

Best of all, since we are co-presenters of DBW, Publishers Lunch readers can still take advantage of a big discount on tickets--the best available price on the market. Use our code PUBLUNCH12 and you will save $470 off the full conference ticket price.

Enroll for Monday's Children's Publishing Goes Digital at the same time and you'll save another $135 on the bundle.

There's always a big wave of registrations in January, and the show is headed towards a complete sellout, so click through now if you plan to join us.

Children's Goes Digital program

http://www.digitalbookworldconference.com/ehome/24240/childrenspublishing/?&

Full DBW program

http://www.digitalbookworldconference.com/ehome/24240/36095/?&

https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ereg/newreg.php?eventid=24240&

UK bestsellers

2012-01-06T08:11:00.000+13:00

Good lord, the Brits are as mad on cookbooks as New Zealanders

Bestselling books in the UK as of this moment ...

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever Kinney, Jeff

The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz Avey & Broomby

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (tie-in) Larsson, Stieg

Jamie's Great Britain Oliver, Jamie

Moshi Monsters: Official Annual 2012

Tick Tock Patterson and Ledwidge

The Fifth Witness Connelly, Michael

The Simpsons Annual -

Au Revoir Liverpool Lee, Maureen

Home Cooking Made Easy Pascale, Lorraine

Dare to Dream One Direction

River Cottage Veg Every Day! Fearnley-Whittingstall, H

Don't Blink Patterson and Roughan

Club Penguin: Official Annual -

Octonauts Annual:2012

Sanctus Toyne, Simon

A Father's Revenge Neale, Kitty

The World of Downton Abbey Fellowes, Jessica

Virals Reichs, Kathy

The Girl Who Played with Fire Larsson, Stieg

Nook tablet outsells Simple Touch

2012-01-06T07:57:00.004+13:00

From Publishers Lunch

Barnes & Noble Reduces Expectations On Shortfall In Simple Touch Sales

It's already another fascinating year for Barnes & Noble, which surprised Wall Street with a number of post-holiday announcements. The success of their Nook Tablet, "which has exceeded expectations," came at some cost to their less expensive eInk device, "with a shortfall in the expected sales of NOOK Simple Touch." They say "the company over-anticipated the growth in consumer demand for single purpose black-and-white reading devices this holiday." Primarily as a result of that Simple Touch shortfall, BN reduced their guidance to investors, projecting fiscal year sales of between $7.0 billion and $7.2 billion, EBITDA of $150 to $180 million, and a loss per share of between $1.40 to $1.10 a share.

I personally find this depressing, as it means that people want gadgets with distracting apps, which in my candid opinion is no way to read a book. Most serious readers I know don't even want to be interrupted by an oldfashioned phone.

The good news is that B&N holiday print book sales rose by 4%. Overall, however, it doesn't look good for traditional publishing on paper. Print sales tracked by Nielsen Bookscan declined over 9% in 2011.

Trade paperback sales declined 6 percent. Hardcover sales were 7 percent lower. Mass market sales declined the most, down 24 percent.

Adult nonfiction declined only 3%, while adult fiction dropped 18%, reflecting the continuing growth of ebooks. Juvenile books declined 5% overall.

Death of documents?

2012-01-05T19:30:00.003+13:00

iPad used as ID

I always make a point of scanning my passport before heading overseas, and keeping a copy on my laptop. The same applies to any paper visas.

This isn't just because of the risk of theft or loss. When China was first opened to Western tourists, we were in a group heading for the Tibetan border. At the Canton Trade Fair, a man who was with our small party borrowed all our paper visa documents for photocopying on one of the display machines. He gave us all a second copy, and sent a couple to officials back home. The rest of us thought he was being paranoid, but the copies turned out to be very useful indeed, when the originals were mislaid by the courier.

Anyway, a Canadian man has benefited from the same kind of precaution.

Before Christmas, he arrived at the US border to find he'd forgotten his passport. Yet he managed to cross the border into the US using a copy that he had scanned on to his iPad.

Martin Reisch, from Montreal, said he told the official that he was heading to Vermont to deliver Christmas presents.

"I thought I'd at least give it a try," Mr Reisch said, the Associated Press reports.

"He took the iPad into the little border hut. He was in there a good five, six minutes. It seemed like an eternity. When he came back, he took a good long pause before wishing me a Merry Christmas."

Mr Reisch, who successfully managed to re-enter Canada later the same day, has said he will not forget his passport in the future.

I should add that he did have his driver's licence, so he did have one "real" document to help authenticate the electronic one.

Cookbook heroine Annabel Langbein to star in NZ Book Month

2012-01-05T19:23:00.000+13:00

Creative New Zealand has made community grant funding available to hold at least 50 book/author events throughout the country, a key part of NZ Book Month’s community outreach.

Annabel Langbein (pictured right) is the new celebrity reading role model who joins noted film maker Sir Peter Jackson as one of the two named so far.

Bestselling cookbook author Annabel says she is delighted to be part of NZ Book Month. “The more time I spend promoting my books overseas the more I realise that the books we produce here in New Zealand are the equal of those from anywhere else on the planet.

"It's important to take this time to celebrate the richness they bring to our world,” she believes.

Booksellers New Zealand’s Project Manager Megan Dunn was delighted the popular Annabel will be a face of NZ Book Month. “Annabel’s involvement will highlight the diversity of New Zealand book genres,” she believes.

Debut authors dominate Costa

2012-01-05T19:17:00.000+13:00

LONDON (Reuters) - Three of the five 2011 Costa Book Award categories were won by debut authors Tuesday, while Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes lost out to Andrew Miller for the best novel honor.

Poet and first-time biographer Matthew Hollis scooped the Costa biography award for "Now All Roads Leads to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas" about the war poet who died in action during World War One.

Christie Watson, a children's nurse, was named 2011 debut novelist for "Tiny Sunbirds Far Away" about a Nigerian family forced to leave a comfortable urban life for poverty in the countryside.

And Moira Young won the children's book category for her first novel "Blood Red Road" set in a lawless future land where Saba sets out to find her missing twin brother.

In the novel category, Andrew Miller won with his sixth novel "Pure," beating Barnes whose "The Sense of an Ending" was the Booker Prize winner in October.

And poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy picked up the poetry prize with her latest collection "The Bees."

The winner of each category receives a cheque for 5,000 pounds ($7,800). The overall winner, who earns a further 30,000 pounds, is announced on January 24

The James Patterson Industry

2012-01-05T19:11:00.003+13:00

The sales machine that is James Patterson continues in the e-book era.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Hachette Book Group announced Wednesday that e-book sales for the prolific novelist now top 5 million, with 2 million coming in just the past seven months.

Patterson hit the 1 million mark for e-books in July 2010, making him among the first authors to reach that milestone. Patterson also is thriving on paper. Hachette noted that hardcover and paperback sales for his work in 2011 topped 4.7 million copies, as tracked by Nielsen BookScan, which compiles around 75 percent of the non e-book market.

Patterson publishes several books a year and his best-sellers, many of them written with others, including "Kill Alex Cross" and "Now You See Her."

And he truly is a machine. Not only does he have a clutch of hard-working collaborators he manages with an all-seeing eye, resulting in the production of several bestsellers a year, but he totally dominates the publishing department of Little-Brown that is dedicated to putting out and pushing the results of their combined efforts.

It would be possible to say that he has changed the face of publishing as much as Amazon.

For an interesting view of the way he operates, READ THIS

Casemate acquires Oxbow

2012-01-04T18:31:00.000+13:00

Casemate Publishers has acquired the U.K. –based Oxbow Books Ltd.

It's a deal that also includes Oxbow’s The David Brown Book Company headquartered in Oakville, Ct.

The acquisition will broaden Casemate’s list beyond military history as it adds Oxbow—a leading U.K. publisher and distributor in the fields of academic archaeology and ancient and medieval history—as well as David Brown, an importer and reseller of books in the academic disciplines of archaeology, ancient history, philosophy, theology and other related fields.

According to Casemate, going forward, each unit of the new group will retain its brand and position in the market, and there will be a “pooling” of resources in the production of books and in sales and marketing. Oxbow proprietary titles and those of Oxbow’s and David Brown Book Company’s distribution clients will also gain access to Casemate’s e-book program.

Casemate president David Farnsworth said the acquisition gives Casemate the chance “to build a new kind of specialist publishing and distribution company,” that is positioned to take advantage of the different selling options that are now available ranging from "e-books to mail-order, from selling at conferences and society meetings to selling to large chain store retailers and everything in between. By marketing to and selling in both the trade and the academic market, both constituent companies will benefit from access to and the expertise in each other’s traditional markets leading to growth for both.”

publishersweekly.com

Readers of my blog

2012-01-04T09:56:00.002+13:00

New Year's Day arrived

A time for going on a diet, making resolutions, and having a look at who reads the blog

It was interesting. About 80,000 individual readers, and for the first time ever, I had a look to see where they live.

Two thirds of my readers are in the United States of America. (I'm amazed. And flattered.)

New Zealand, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom tie for second place. (Slovenia? Good lord!)

Then Germany.

Then Australia, France, and Canada.

And a Happy New Year to you all!

eBook sales rocket in the UK

2012-01-04T08:46:00.000+13:00

A 'blockbuster' Christmas for e-book sales

03.01.12 | Charlotte Williams

Hachette has reported a "blockbuster Christmas for e-books", selling more than 100,000 e-books in the UK on Christmas Day, and "many more" in international markets.

The figure echoes that of HarperCollins, which reported selling more than 100,000 e-books in the UK as well as international territories such as Australia and New Zealand.

Hachette UK group head of digital George Walkley said sales leapt by more than 400% on Christmas Day, compared to Christmas Eve, with sales "remaining very strong" throughout the festive period. He described December overall as a "very good month" for e-books.

Over 100,000 HarperCollins UK e-books were downloaded on Christmas Day, the publisher has announced.

HarperCollins said the figure, which covers UK and international territories including Australia and New Zealand, but not the US, was a record high and an increase of over 600% on the daily average title download during the previous month.

The most popular titles downloaded were George R R Martin's Game of Thrones, Confessions of a GP by Dr Benjamin Daniels and Twelve Days of Christmas by romantic comedy novelist Trisha Ashley. Sanctus by Simon Toyne and Midnight by Josephine Cox were also among the strong sellers.

From the Bookseller.com

Killer flu and a tricky censorship problem

2012-01-04T08:25:00.000+13:00

THE journals Science and Nature are mulling whether to publish details of a man-made mutant killer flu virus that has sparked concerns of mass deaths if it is released.

A US government's science advisory committee urged that key details be withheld so that people seeking to do harm to the public would not be able to replicate the virus which could cause millions of deaths.

The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) reviewed two scientific papers relating to the findings and recommended that the journals considering them "make changes in the manuscripts".

"Due to the importance of the findings to the public health and research communities, the NSABB recommended that the general conclusions highlighting the novel outcome be published, but that the manuscripts not include the methodological and other details that could enable replication of the experiments by those who would seek to do harm."
The virus in question is an H5N1 avian influenza strain that was genetically altered in a Dutch lab so it can pass easily between ferrets.

That means it is likely contagious among humans for the first time, and could trigger a lethal pandemic if it emerged in nature or were set loose by terrorists, experts have said.

"Editors at the journal Science are taking very seriously a request by the NSABB to publish only an abbreviated version of a research report related to a strain of H5N1 avian influenza virus," Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts said.

"At the same time, however, Science has concerns about withholding potentially important public health information from responsible influenza researchers."

Scientists could benefit from knowing about the virus because it could help speed new treatments to combat this and other related lethal forms of influenza, Mr Alberts said.

"Many scientists within the influenza community have a bona fide need to know the details of this research in order to protect the public, especially if they currently are working with related strains of the virus," he wrote.

"Science editors will be evaluating how best to proceed," he said, asking for more clarification on how the government would make the information available to "all those responsible scientists who request it".

Nature editor-in-chief, Philip Campbell, said he was considering one of the two papers for publication and was in "active consultation" with the authors.

"We have noted the unprecedented NSABB recommendations that would restrict public access to data and methods and recognise the motivation behind them," he said.

"It is essential for public health that the full details of any scientific analysis of flu viruses be available to researchers. We are discussing with interested parties how, within the scenario recommended by NSABB, appropriate access to the scientific methods and data could be enabled."

Read the full commentary in PERTHNOW

Lord Byron was a dieter

2012-01-04T08:08:00.000+13:00

Lord Byron: The celebrity diet icon

Another new year and another host of celebrity dieters, but it's not a modern phenomenon. Lord Byron was one of first diet icons and helped kick off the public's obsession with how celebrities lose weight, says historian Louise Foxcroft.

There has never been any shortage of celebrities who have followed diets, endorsed them or tried to sell us one of their own devising, even back as far as the 1800s.

The "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" Lord Byron was thought of as the embodiment of the ethereal poet, but he actually had a "morbid propensity to fatten". Like today's celebrities, he worked hard to maintain his figure.

At Cambridge University, his horror of being fat led to a shockingly strict diet, partly to get thin and partly to keep his mind sharp. Existing on biscuits and soda water or potatoes drenched in vinegar, he wore woolly layers to sweat off the pounds and measured himself obsessively. Then he binged on huge meals, finishing off with a necessarily large dose of magnesia.

From the BBC News Magazine
Read the rest of this fascinating story HERE

Louise Foxcroft is the author of Calories and Corsets

Rupert Murdoch tweets

2012-01-03T07:57:00.000+13:00

News Corp's Rupert Murdoch joins Twitter social network

Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter at the end of a year in which he closed the tabloid News of The World

Twitter has added media mogul Rupert Murdoch to its ranks.

Within three days his @rupertmurdoch account attracted over 45,000 followers.

But reaction to the 80-year-old chairman and chief executive of News Corporation's Twitter presence has been mixed.

In a tweet Rupert Murdoch noted: "I'm getting killed for fooling around here and friends frightened what I may really say."

Among those sending jovial reminders of current controversies, former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott tweeted, "Welcome to Twitter...@rupertmurdoch. I've left you a Happy New Year message on my voicemail!"

The comment referred to the phone-hacking scandal which had resulted in the closure of the News of The World.

Read the full story

Google getting a makeover

2012-01-03T07:52:00.000+13:00

Google search home page revamp promotes other services

Google's pull-down menus should help highlight the firm's non-core search services to users

Google is rolling out one of its biggest home page changes to date.

The revamp strips its front page of the black bar that currently runs horizontally along its top, and replaces it with a grey logo.

When clicked or highlighted, it reveals seven alternative services to the site's search page with an option to reveal a further eight.

Analysts said the move was designed to promote more of the firm's businesses without cluttering its webpage.

The new look, which was first announced last year, is only being offered to a limited number of users at the moment.

A spokesman for Google said that the roll-out is designed to improve the user experience.

"Constant revision and improvement is part of our overarching philosophy," he said.

(It also justifies a lot of very highly paid jobs)

Read the full story

Hackers going extra-terrestrial

2012-01-02T08:05:00.002+13:00

Hackers plan space satellites to combat censorship

By David Meyer Technology reporter

50 years after Russia's first piloted mission, hackers plan to send their own people beyond orbit

Computer hackers plan to take the internet beyond the reach of censors by putting their own communication satellites into orbit.

The scheme was outlined at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

The project's organisers said the Hackerspace Global Grid will also involve developing a grid of ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites.

Longer term they hope to help put an amateur astronaut on the moon.

Hobbyists have already put a few small satellites into orbit - usually only for brief periods of time - but tracking the devices has proved difficult for low-budget projects.

The hacker activist Nick Farr first put out calls for people to contribute to the project in August. He said that the increasing threat of internet censorship had motivated the project.

"The first goal is an uncensorable internet in space. Let's take the internet out of the control of terrestrial entities," Mr Farr said.

My own stupefied reaction is that there must be a fortune to be made out of hacking. Obviously, money is not a stumbling block ...

Read the full story

Contemporary Authors

2012-01-01T21:20:00.001+13:00

Contemporary Authors updated to include Tupaia

Tupaia: Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator tells the previously untold story of the Tahitian high priest, Tupaia, who accompanied Captain James Cook ... More fundamentally, the narrative tells the story of cultural contact, with its attendant suspicions and fears ...

He functioned as Cook's pilot, helping to navigate the ship to his home island of Raiatea and other islands that had not yet been found by European explorers. When the Endeavour drew near to New Zealand, Tupaia helped him chart the coastline and, more importantly, served as a diplomat with the warlike Maori ...

Tupaia met with universal admiration from reviewers and critics.

John Dunmore, writing for the New Zealand Listener, mentioned the book's "meticulous research" and called the book "comprehensive, highly readable and attractively produced."

A reviewer for the Bookie Monster Web site called the book an "enthralling history" as well as an "entertaining and illuminating read."

Rick Spilman, writing on The Old Salt Blog, characterized the book as a "fascinating tale, well told."

In a review in Booklist, Gilbert Taylor concluded that the book is an "astute portrait" that "vitally contributes to annals of exploration and cultural contact," while Elizabeth Salt, reviewing the book for Library Journal, concluded that Tupaia "beautifully captures the essence of Tupaia's world and brings it alive for readers."

Contemporary Authors New Revision(CANR) is a reference series that provides information on approximately 100,000 writers in a wide range of media, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, and screenwriting. CANR is published by Thomson Gale, a leading provider in meeting the world’s information and education needs. For more information regarding the series, please visit www.gale.com.

Selection from the updated entry on Joan Druett reproduced by permission.

Excerpt of "Games of Thrones" sequel published

2011-12-30T20:46:00.000+13:00

"Game of Thrones" author George R. R. Martin just released a previously unpublished sample chapter from the upcoming sixth installment, "The Winds of Winter," on his Website.

You can read it HERE

At 6,100 words in length, the excerpt is substantial.

Martin also said another "Winds of Winter" sample chapter will be included in the paperback edition of "A Dance with Dragons," which is due in July. "A Dance With Dragons" was released in July 2011, 15 years after the first volume -- "A Game of Thrones" -- came out.

In an interview published in October, Martin said he had written 100 pages of "Winds," which will be published by Bantam Books. A release date has not been set for that book or its successor, "A Dream of Spring," which Martin plans to be the final installment in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series.

Google and Facebook beat Yahoo

2011-12-30T20:32:00.000+13:00

Google and Facebook top 2011's most visited sites in US

Yahoo could face problems if more young people turn away from web-based email

Google was the most popular website with US users in 2011 but Facebook was not far behind, according to market researchers.

Nielsen suggests more than 153 million visitors clicked onto Google branded pages each month, as Facebook attracted close to 138 million visitors.

Yahoo came third with about 130 million visitors each month.

But analysts warned Yahoo's tally might be at risk if young people continued to turn away from web-based email.

The study is based on data collected between January and October and included visits from home and work computers. It involved a sample from a global panel of 200,000 people.

Read the full story

Poet Jo Shapcott wins

2011-12-30T20:28:00.000+13:00

From the BBC

Jo Shapcott wins Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry

Jo Shapcott has won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, its judges saluting the "calm but sparkling Englishness" of her award-winning verse.

Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, chair of the judging panel, said the medal was "the true crowning of her career".

Shapcott won the Costa Book of the Year award in January for Of Mutability, a collection of poems partly inspired by her battle against breast cancer.

George V inaugurated the Gold Medal for Poetry in 1933.

Previous recipients include WH Auden, John Betjeman, Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes.

Duffy said Shapcott's work combined "accessibility with a deeply cerebral engagement with all the facets of being human".

Read the full story

The Spelling Checker

2011-12-30T10:49:00.000+13:00

Well, it is the silly season ...

Eye halve a spelling chequer

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my pea sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when I rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore a veiling checker's Hour
spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flair,
Their are no fault's with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a ware.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word's fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw's are knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays,
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting too pleas.

-- Sauce Unknown

Another poet backs away from TS Eliot Prize

2011-12-29T08:46:00.007+13:00

From the BBC

Kinsella said the sponsors are at the 'pointy end of capitalism'

John Kinsella has become the second poet to withdraw from the TS Eliot Prize in protest over its sponsorship by investment firm, Aurum Funds, which apparently specializes in hedge funds.

The Australian, who was shortlisted for his collection Armour, said he was withdrawing on "ethical" grounds.

Prize organisers The Poetry Book Society made the deal after losing its public funding earlier this year.

Alice Oswald withdrew from the shortlist on Tuesday saying she felt "uncomfortable" with the sponsorship.

In a statement, Kinsella said he was grateful to his fellow poet "for bringing the sponsorship of the TS Eliot Prize to my attention".

"I regret that I must do this at a particularly difficult time for the Poetry Book Society (PBS), but the business of Aurum does not sit with my personal politics and ethics.

"I am grateful to everyone at the PBS for all they have done to promote my work and that of poetry in general."

My own comment: While I greatly admire ethical stands, I wonder what T.S. Eliot -- who worked in the finance industry -- would have thought about it.

Read the full story

The Mousetrap, 60 years old, and once adults-only

2011-12-29T08:25:00.003+13:00

The Mousetrap: Agatha Christie’s adult masterpiece

About to enter its sixtieth anniversary year, "The Mousetrap" is steeped in gentility. Yet it has a darker side, Christie's biographer, Laura Thompson, told The Telegraph.

When The Mousetrap premiered in Nottingham in October 1952, one month prior to its opening at the Ambassador’s Theatre, its author, Agatha Christie, took a modest view of its prospects. Despite the presence in the cast of Richard Attenborough, still the biggest name ever to feature in The Mousetrap, Christie believed that her play would run in the West End for about eight months.

So she would, undoubtedly, have been amazed by the fact that The Mousetrap is now sailing grandly into its 60th year, having transferred to the (admittedly tiny) St Martin’s Theatre in 1974. At the same time, she would have stood up to those who believe that the play now exists in a state of indefinite coma and should be put out of its misery.

The play that became a legend started life as a 30-minute piece for radio. In 1947 the BBC had the idea of presenting Queen Mary with a special broadcast for her 80th birthday. In staunchly middle-brow style, the Queen requested a new play by Agatha Christie.

The result was originally called Three Blind Mice (the stage title, that of the play-within-a-play in Hamlet, was the inspired idea of Christie’s son-in-law). Christie was always fascinated by nursery rhymes, by their lurking folkloric hint of the macabre: she herself, after all, wrote what might be called fairy tales for adults. So although her play was a classic thriller, its smooth surface concealed something deep and dark. Indeed that jolly joke The Mousetrap is underpinned by no less a theme than the catastrophic effects of childhood neglect.

The imponderable fate of unwanted children, a question that is taken to an extreme in The Mousetrap, always nagged away at Christie. Almost certainly this was because her own mother, the person whom she loved more than any other, was given away to an aunt at the age of nine and suffered a lifelong sense of rejection.

Nobody now thinks of The Mousetrap in terms of this central theme. Nevertheless for the first 10 years the play was billed as “for adults only”, and in truth its subject matter – interred though it is within the country-house murder genre – is extremely powerful.

This is typical of Agatha Christie. She is dismissed with tedious regularity as a mere purveyor of “animated algebra”, yet what really lies at the heart of her work is a clear-eyed understanding of the human condition, especially its baser side. She had no desire to parade that knowledge – her style is deceptively concrete – but it is there, all the time, guiding the geometry of her plots.

Even in The Mousetrap.

'The Mousetrap’ is at St Martin’s Theatre (0844 499 1515).
'Agatha Christie: An English Mystery’ by Laura Thompson (Headline, £8.99)

Read the full story

Keri Hulme tells her story

2011-12-28T18:44:00.001+13:00

The lagoon, the bluff -- the story of us all

There’s a bluff at the south end of this place. It looms. It’s iconic. It just is.

A glacier pushed it out here, plus ten thousand years ago, and every year since, it has been eroded, nibbled by the sea round its toes, enduring landslides and waterfalls from the top. But it endures. It has variant bush on it, but it doesn’t seem to like gorse or truly foreign stuff on it. And there are some very precious rare wee plants it shelters (won’t even tell you where they are).

It is called Te Kohuamaru.

There have been mutilations of its name, and I willingly acknowledge that earlier people could’ve meant something different (if, indeed, they called it that) but for me, it is Te Kohu a Maru – Maru’s Mist. (Maru is that extremely interesting character, of whom we all need to learn more about.)

A lot of mornings, you look to the bluff, and there is this mist – makes sense: it is quite high –
but sometimes, when there is a full moon, there is also a mist webbing, clinging, all round the bluff.

Not anywhere else.

There is a photograph, of a couple of late Victorian gents, hats on, sticks in hand, halted by the bluff –
I don’t have it to hand immediately – a lot of my library has gone over the hill – but I even seen it on teatowels … nobody likes images on teatowels but – I am hoping – these ones were for framing –

South end of Ōkarito is the Bluff – and the north end is that wonderfully changeful edgy great water mass – ta-ra! The Lagoon! Biggest salt-water lagoon on the West Coast. Home to kōtuku! O, actually not: kōtuku breed up an arm of the Waitangi-taona, frequently feed here in the Ōkarito lagoon (and areas at the 3-mile and 7-mile) and there is always one over-wintering here – but that’s it –
between those pou, I have lived for nearly forty years …

So: now I have to leave Big O.

I neither have money or resources to continue to live in a remote area.

And the place has changed so much! So dramatically!

We have people who fly in, planes, helicopters, to their very ugly mcmansions.
About o, so few times a year, baby –

This used to be called the *settlement* of Ōkarito. It has been a sort of village. When I came here, v. early 1970s, and won a Crown Land Ballot, it was with the expectation
I would contribute to the place.

There were nine people living here then – a family of six (who left within two years) an alcoholic who whittled himself off, after a year, and me.

So, I did. I built my home, loved the place and the birds, and the other people who came and – truly, deeply enjoyed the fishing/baiting myself! And knowing one of my great-great-grandmothers came from this area, felt thoroughly at home.

Little by little a lot has been eroded: most of the places (can’t call them homes) have been holiday places, in an area where very few people take holidays. So the people who fly in doubtless have their contacts and their local enjoyments – BUT

Local people must live in a local place. Must caretake that place. Must caretake each other.
What happens to a place, when – as it is happening now – many of the people are exiting? And the original commitment to conservation/preservation of the truly original inhabitants (Ōkarito brown kiwi? Our rather especial mudfish? Our fernbirds? Our tui with their own lingo?) and the truly loving people of this place – go – away?

Because I can no longer afford to live in Big O – because in the Aotearoa I live in now – living in a truly especial place is made impossible because of local body rate demands (which have absolutely NO effective returns to me in the most part) and because the general tenor of this place has changed to being a nasty mcmansion village – I’ll exit very soon.

And I’ll look to the bluff – see the two people I love in their beautifully, sensitively refurbished and newly rebuilt home – and think, Yeah, the – place still attracts the people –

AND – THIS COMING YEAR

I am sure a person will want to buy – whatever my home is, whatever my place is –

Then again: the bluff was actually the site of at least two rūnaka.

When Kāi Tahu moved south, several high ranking people came to Ōkarito to learn stuff.

They learned it on the bluff.

One of my long-ago neighbours built up there.

While he was digging foundations, he dug a small nasty mere, and hei.

When I heard he was keeping both, I suggested he didn’t.

When I heard that he’d chainsawed into his breastbone, accidentally, I strongly suggested he give them to the Hokitika museum.

They reside there now. He died years ago.

I’d really urge all of us – who come to the Coast – to visit the Hokitika Museum. Look at those wee relics from the bluff.

And then – same place – go visit the Hokitika Whitebait Exhibition – beautifully curated, and the First Time In The World There Has been A Whitebait Exhibition. You’ll see me there – and maybe many of your olds

catch you next time, this side or that side of the hill –

Reproduced from Te Karaka with the kind permission of Keri Hulme

Robert Scott's farewell letter to be auctioned

2011-12-28T09:12:00.000+13:00

They made a pledge to "die like gentlemen"

Farewell Letter by Explorer Robert Falcon Scott to be Auctioned at Bonhams

By Monami Thakur

A goodbye letter, which Royal Navy officer and explorer Robert Falcon Scott wrote when he realized that he would not be able to survive his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, will be sold at Bonhams.

The letter was found in November 1912 on his body and was written to Sir Edgar Speyer, American-born financier and philanthropist.

In the letter, Scott expressed concerns for his family and the family of his companions. He wrote that they "must go...but we have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen - I regret only for the women we leave behind.

If this diary is found, it will show how we stuck by our dying companions and fought this thing out to the end."

He further wrote that they very nearly "came through and it's a pity to have missed it but lately I have felt that we have overshot our mark - no-one is to blame and I hope no attempt will be made to suggest that we lacked support."

Read the full story

Turner may have applied overheard science to his paintings

2011-12-28T08:34:00.000+13:00

From the BBC

Artist Turner 'eavesdropped for ideas'

Biographer James Hamilton says Turner used Sir William Herschel's discoveries about the sun in Festival of the Opening of the Vintage at Macon

Artist JMW Turner's work may have been influenced by scientific theories that he overheard, new research suggests.

While the painter was in the Royal Academy, he was in the adjacent rooms to where scientists of the Royal Society held regular meetings.

Turner biographer James Hamilton says the thin walls would have allowed the artist to overhear their discoveries.

He believes one of Turner's works makes use of Sir William Herschel's theories about the sun.

In an essay written in new book Turner and the Elements, Mr Hamilton looks at the artist's treatment of the natural world.

He writes that as Turner was in close proximity to the scientists at London's Somerset House, now occupied by the Courtauld Galleries, "cross fertilisation" would naturally have occurred.

Mr Hamilton also notes that two years after Sir William Hershel lectured the scientists on the "ridges, nodules and corrugations" he had observed in the surface of the sun in 1801, Turner was also creating the effect within a painting.

In the 1803 painting The Festival of the Opening of the Vintage at Macon, the artist appears to have painted the sun in the way Sir William had described it.

The biographer adds that Turner was fascinated by science and was also friends with mathematician Mary Somerville and scientist Michael Faraday, who helped him test the durability of his pigments.

The new book comes ahead of the upcoming Turner and the Elements exhibition which will open on 28 January 2012 at Turner Contemporary in Margate, Kent.

Man sued for keeping company twitter followers

2011-12-28T08:26:00.000+13:00

Good lord, I had no idea that tweeting could be so valuable

From the BBC

A man is being sued for keeping Twitter followers that he attracted while working for a US mobile news website.

Noah Kravitz tweeted for Phonedog as @Phonedog_Noah, but later changed his username when he left the company - taking 17,000 followers with him.

The company is now seeking damages of $2.50 (£1.60) per user, per month - a total of $370,000.
Mr Kravitz said his former employer had given him permission to continue using the account after he left.

He told the New York Times that Phonedog had allowed him to make the account personal as long as he agreed to "tweet on their behalf from time to time".

The 17,000 followers, which have since risen to 22,000, had been built up by Mr Kravitz during his four years at the company where he worked as a blogger.

However, eight months later the company filed a lawsuit claiming that the account's followers were a customer list, and that it had invested "substantial" resources into building it.

Booker Prize-winner flees paradise turned "McMansion"

2011-12-27T08:16:00.002+13:00

From the Greymouth Star

Author Keri Hulme exits Okarito

By Laura Mills

Booker Prize-winning author Keri Hulme is leaving her remote Okarito home of almost 40 years, saying it has become a “nasty mcmansion village”.

Her novel The Bone People won the international Booker award in 1985.

Okarito, a former goldmining village on the coast near Franz Josef Glacier, has been her home since the early 1970s, when she won a Crown land ballot and built her own home in a unique octagonal design.

Writing in the Ngai Tahu magazine Te Karaka, the reclusive author said only a handful of people lived at Okarito when she arrived — a family of six, who left within two years, and “an alcoholic”.

She said she was leaving because she could no longer afford to live there, while also firing broadsides at the changing nature of the place.

“We have people who fly in, planes, helicopters, to their very ugly mcmansions,” she wrote.

“Little by little a lot has been eroded: most of the places (can’t call them homes) have been holiday places, in an area where very few people take holidays.”

Local body rates demands made living there impossible, she said.

She still “loved the place and the birds” but the truly loving people of the place had gone away.

With thanks to Simon Nathan for pointing out this story.

Pen still works after 25 years in woman's stomach

2011-12-24T09:11:00.001+13:00

This must be the oddest written word item of the year

And I'd love to know what brand of pen ...

A 76-year-old British woman recently had a pen removed from her stomach, and doctors were amazed to discover that after 25 years of gestation the pen still works.

The British Medical Journal Case Reports chronicled the medical case of the woman (not identified), who was sent to a GI specialist after various symptoms, including weight loss.

When doctors scanned the woman's intestinal tract, they discovered, "A linear foreign body in the stomach."

After the discovery, the woman said she remembered accidentally swallowing a black felt-tip pen, more than a quarter century ago.

While the pen was corroded after two decades of exposure to stomach acid, it still contained usable ink and could be used for writing.

The woman, it seems, was probing a spot on her tonsils with a pen, slipped, fell, and swallowed it. When she told her GP husband, he thought she was making it up.

As the writer of the report, Dr. Oliver Richard Waters, observed, "Occasionally it may be worth believing the patient's account however unlikely it may be."

Personally, I would NOT suggest swallowing a pen as an alternative to dieting.

Bestsellers from Publishers Weekly

2011-12-24T08:58:00.000+13:00

The names are so familiar ....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stephen King's "11/22/63" held on to the top spot of the Publishers Weekly best-sellers list on Thursday for the second week.

The list is compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.

Hardcover Fiction Last Week

1. "11/22/63" by Stephen King (Scribner, $35) 1
2. "Locked On" by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney (Putnam, $28.95) -
3. "The Litigators" by John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95) 3
4. "Kill Alex Cross" by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $28.99) 5
5. "Death Comes to Pemberley" by P.D. James (Knopf, $25.95) 4

6. "The Best of Me" by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central, $25.99) 8

7. "Red Mist" by Patricia Cornwell Putnam, $27.95 2

8. "Explosive Eighteen" by Janet Evanovich (Bantam, $28) 7

9. "The Drop" by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $27.99) 6

10. "V Is for Vengeance" by Sue Grafton (Putnam, $27.95) 9

Hardcover nonfiction

1. "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, $35) 1

2. "Killing Lincoln" by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard (Holt, $28) 2

3. "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, $27) 3
4. "Go the F**k to Sleep" by Adam Mansbach, illus. by Ricardo Cortés (Akashic, $14.95) 4
5. "Jack Kennedy" by Chris Matthews (Simon & Schuster, $27.50) 6
6. "Nearing Home" by Billy Graham (Thomas Nelson, $19.99) 14
7. "Being George Washington" by Glenn Beck (Threshold, $26) 5

8. "Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible" by Paula Deen with Melissa Clark (Simon & Schuster, $29.99) 15

9. "Guinness World Records 2012" (Guinness World Records, $28.95) 7

10. "Through My Eyes" by Tim Tebow with Nathan Whitaker (Harper, $26.99) 10

(Editing by Patricia Reaney)

eBook sales figures still falling

2011-12-24T08:48:00.000+13:00

From Publishers Lunch

eBook Sales Dip Further in October

The AAP announced their tabulation of sales for October from reporting publishers. In the closely-watched ebook sales category--where the AAP's monthly number is the only standing statistic we have to go on, the now 20 reporting publishers recorded sales of $72.8 million, down from $80.3 million in August. (Rizzoli is now among those contributing data.) It's the lowest monthly ebook total recorded since April, and lower as an absolute comparison since the matching results that month came from just 14 publishers.

Seasonably sizable shipments of print books and flat month-to-month ebook sales trends left digital books in fourth place, trailing hardcover and trade paperback adult sales as well as hardcover children's books. eBooks comprised just 12.6 percent of all recorded trade sales. (As a reminder, the AAP counts religious sales as trade; Publishers Lunch does not in calculating percentages, in part because their "religious" category includes both print and ebook sales.)

There was a decline in book sales overall, unfortunately -- by is much as $62 million.

The monthly trade sales total for October of $577.6 million was down almost 10 percent from $639.5 million a year ago.

25 Worst Passwords of 2011

2011-12-22T12:01:00.000+13:00

Is your password in the silliest list?

Internet security firm SplashData created the rankings of the 25 most idiotic passwords based on millions of stolen passwords posted online by hackers. Here is the complete list:

1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football

In England, names of popular football teams (arsenal, liverpool) are also highly vulnerable.

SplashData CEO Morgan Slain urges businesses and consumers using any password on the list to change them immediately.

“Hackers can easily break into many accounts just by repeatedly trying common passwords,” Slain says. “Even though people are encouraged to select secure, strong passwords, many people continue to choose weak, easy-to-guess ones, placing themselves at risk from fraud and identity theft.”

Tips:

Short words should be separated with symbols, eg. let##me%in/? is a whole sight stronger than letmein. Underscoring the spaces works, too.

Avoid using info that is readily available, such as your address, your birthdate, or your social security number.

Make your passwords at least 8 characters long, mixing upper and lower case, and adding symbols if the site allows it

Don't use the same password for multiple sites. H'm, that's a hard one for me ... However, there are password manager apps to help you remember what password works for which site, and SplashData (of course) has one available.

Nielson's list of 2011 bestsellers

2011-12-22T08:44:00.000+13:00

Nielsen Ranks 2011's Top Bestsellers

Nielsen Bookscan published top ten bestseller lists across a number of disciplines, including print fiction, print non-fiction, and print children's/YA (Bookscan, of course, still does not measure ebook sales, and accounts for somewhere in the vicinity of 75 percent of print sales, excluding Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, and other outlets.) Please note the lists do not include sales figures, and that they track data from January 3 through December 11. (A Nielsen spokesperson told us that complete year-end sales data will be available after January 4.) These lists also reflect Nielsen BookScan's practice of listing bestsellers by individual editions/ISBNs, rather than combining sales across multiple versions of the same work.

Adult Nonfiction

1. HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, by Todd Burpo (Thomas Nelson, trade paper)*
2. STEVE JOBS, by Walter Isaacson (S&S, hardcover)
3. UNBROKEN, by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, hardcover)*
4. KILLING LINCOLN, by Bill O'Reilly (Holt, hardcover)
5. STRENGTHS FINDER 2.0, by Tom Rath (Gallup Press, hardcover)*
6. A STOLEN LIFE, by Jaycee Dugard (S&S, hardcover)
7. BOSSYPANTS, by Tina Fey (Reagan Arthur Books, hardcover)
8. THE 17 DAY DIET, by Mike Moreno (Free Press, hardcover)
9. THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, by Rebecca Skloot (Broadway, trade paperback)*
10. IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS, by Erik Larson (Crown, hardcover)

Adult Fiction

1. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett (Berkley, trade paperback)
2. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett (Berkley, trade paperback movie tie-in edition)
3. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, by Sara Gruen (Algonquin, trade paperback)*
4. CUTTING FOR STONE, by Abraham Verghese (Vintage, trade paperback)*
5. A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, by George R.R. Martin (Bantam, hardcover)
6. THE CONFESSION, by John Grisham (Dell, mass market paperback)
7. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Stieg Larsson (Vintage, trade paperback)*
8. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, hardcover)*
9. THE LITIGATORS, by John Grisham (Doubleday, hardcover)
10. ROOM, by Emma Donoghue (Back Bay Books, trade paperback)

Children's/YA

1. THE HUNGER GAMES, by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, trade paperback)*
2. CABIN FEVER, by Jeff Kinney (Amulet, hardcover)
3. CATCHING FIRE, by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, hardcover)*
4. INHERITANCE, by Christopher Paolini (Knopf Children's, hardcover)
5. MOCKINGJAY, by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, hardcover)*
6. THE SUN OF NEPTUNE, by Rick Riordan (Hyperion, hardcover)
7. THE THRONE OF FIRE, by Rick Riordan (Hyperion, hardcover)
8. THE UGLY TRUTH, by Jeff Kinney (Amulet, hardcover)*
9. THE WIMPY KID DO-IT-YOURSELF BOOK, by Jeff Kinney (Amulet, hardcover)
10. ELF ON THE SHELF, by Carol Aebersold (Cca & B, hardcover)*

*These editions were first published prior to 2010

The reason for waves

2011-12-21T08:34:00.000+13:00

It's a good day when one learns a new word (or term)

This amazing photo was taken by someone in Alabama. It shows tsunami-like (or dinosaur-like) clouds marching over the horizon.

The photo, along with a lot of others, was sent to a weather station, as lots of people were very curious to know how it happened.

Well, according to Live Science, it is the Kelvin-Helmholtz effect.

In both the sea and the sky, Kelvin-Helmholtz waves form when a fast-moving layer glides over a slower, denser layer, dragging its surface and breaking it up.

That's why ocean waves break.

Good heavens, I've been watching waves all my life, and never knew that. And I have used a new term twice, a definite plus.

A Gratifying Year for Random House

2011-12-21T08:22:00.000+13:00

Mega-publisher doing well despite the economy

From Publishers Lunch

Random House CEO Dohle Highlights "Another Successful Year" For the Company

Year-end letter time continues with Random House ceo Markus Dohle's missive to staff, in which he highlights "another successful year" for the company at a time of "enduring change and challenges for our industry." He points to a culture and organization that's more "collaborative, team-oriented, flexible, efficient, and agile" and allows Random House staffers to implement strategies more effectively. "In short, we aren’t reacting to change, we are driving it."

Dohle called Random House's continuing success "all the more impressive in light of the prevailing weak economy." He highlighted "hundreds" of bestsellers in the US, UK, Germany, and Spain including Christopher Paolini's INHERITANCE, George R.R. Martin's SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series, Laura Hillenbrand's UNBROKEN, Kate McCann's MADELEINE, and Spanish and German-language editions of Walter Isaacson's STEVE JOBS. But Dohle also drew attention to debut fiction, "at an all-time high for Random House worldwide" as well as contributions from "every corner" of the company.

(I particularly like that "every corner" of the company -- it was Random House New Zealand who published a beautifully designed full-color edition of Tupaia this year.)

"Random House is and will always be an editorially driven company, and now our authors are enjoying additional readership and revenue from our diverse and expanding digital reach and know-how," Dohle said. "From direct-to-digital publishing and app development to direct-to-consumer marketing and social-networking promotions, we are continuing to take every advantage of the shift to digital and the explosive boom in digital-device reading."

Next year, Dohle said, Random House will strive to do more for authors, retailers, and readers, be it "added services and an enhanced portfolio of offerings for our authors; increased support through ever-greater supply-chain efficiencies across all channels of distribution for retailers, particularly physical booksellers" and for readers, "closer connections with their favorite authors, and easier discovery of their page-turning stories––wherever they are, whatever format and platform they choose."

More on the burning library in Cairo

2011-12-20T13:03:00.000+13:00

From the Egypt Independent

In the wake of the fire that destroyed much of the manuscript collection at the Institut d'Egypte on Saturday, scores of pro-democracy protesters have told of their efforts to salvage books and other rare documents from the smoking ruins.

Protesters began salvage operations later on Saturday, as fighting continued around them, removing books and manuscripts from the building and arranging them on the pavement outside. They made contact with officials at the Ministry of Culture, who arranged to collect the works and remove to the safety of the Dar al-Kutub building on the Corniche.

The first to enter the building and save documents did so while the fire was still raging. Several were shot at and pelted with rocks as they tried to rescue the books.

Thousands of rare books burned

2011-12-20T10:09:00.000+13:00

Volunteers, ranging from academic experts to appalled citizens, have spent the past two days trying to salvage what's left of some 192,000 books, journals and writings, casualties of Egypt's latest bout of violence.

Institute d'Egypte, a research center set up by Napoleon Bonaparte during France's invasion in the late 18th century, caught fire during clashes between protesters and Egypt's military over the weekend. It was home to a treasure trove of writings, most notably the handwritten 24-volume Description de l'Egypte, which began during the 1798-1801 French occupation.

Read the full appalling story HERE

Finding new writing talent

2011-12-20T09:20:00.000+13:00

For those aspiring novelists who are interested in competitions

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Amazon.com, along with Penguin Group (USA) and CreateSpace, announced the fifth annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) on December 6, 2011. ABNA brings talented authors, reviewers, and publishing experts together to find and develop new voices in fiction.

If you're a writer with an unpublished or previously self-published novel waiting to be discovered, visit CreateSpace to sign up for regular Contest updates. The entry period for manuscripts begins January 23, 2012 and runs through February 5, 2012. See the Contest Official Rules for more information on how to enter.

Downton Abbey, Mrs Miniver, and hissy fits

2011-12-19T16:30:00.000+13:00

Revisiting the Competition for Best Rose

We watched the 1942 movie Mrs Miniver last night.
It's the famous WW2 movie that so moved President Roosevelt that he reportedly had leaflets printed with the final speech by the vicar with its "We will fight on the beaches etc." kind of message, and had them dropped over Europe.

It is a clever piece of work, definitely propaganda, with also with definite charm, particularly when the year of its first screening is remembered. Though it was filmed somewhere in North America, there is an English "feel" about it, complete with haughty dowager who rules the riverside village with a feudal hand ... and Greer Garson (who got an Oscar for her role) is peerless. The scene in the air raid shelter is particularly well done (watch the cat gradually get more nervous as the whistles and bangs of bombs get closer; fine acting, that).

Anyway, we were intrigued to see a whole scene from the hit TV series Downton Abbey played out before our very eyes. Mr. Ballard, humble rose-grower and station master (Henry Travers) wants to win the Beldon Cup for his beautiful red rose. The Cup, however, belongs by feudal right to Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty; and yes, they do give her title in the credits), who wins it every year. Mrs. Miniver, however, persuades Lady B. to weaken -- by sheer body language, apparently. "You have that look in your eye," the grand dame complains, and lo, the prize is awarded to the station master, who goes all faint and overcome.

Remind you of an episode in series one of Downton Abbey?

We certainly blinked at the coincidence -- to the extent that we were almost reciting the lines before Mrs. Miniver and Lady Beldon.

Of course we weren't the first to notice the striking coincidence. As far back as October 2010, Christina Jarvis from Essex wrote to the Daily Telegraph say she had been "slack-jawed" as she watched "the flower-show contretemps" in the latest episode of Downton Abbey, saying "precisely the same situation appeared in the film Mrs Miniver", which she had seen the previous week.

Well, people can be inspired by all kinds of books and films, often unconsciously (though the striking similarity of the rose competition scenario is stretching the word "unconsciously" a bit), and many of the situations in Downton Abbey go all the way back to Addison et al.

What is really amusing is to find out that the creator of Downton Abbey has a really, really thin skin. Julian Fellows has won all kinds of awards and has done extraordinarily well, so one would expect him to be quite airy about it, when challenged. Instead, as the Telegraph reported on an incredulous note, when he was asked about the apparent similarities, "Fellowes accused this newspaper of being part of a left-wing conspiracy." There is "a permanent negative slant" in the press, he snarled.

What a shame the term "hissy fit" is too modern for him to use in a script.

More gossip: Richard Ney, who plays Greer Garson's son in the movie, was only 11 years older than she. They fell in love, and married (disastrously) the following year. When he left her, such was her popularity that his Hollywood career was ruined. But never mind, he became a very rich financial trader.

"Joan Druett enjoys being all at sea"

2011-12-18T15:57:00.000+13:00

From the Northern Courier, community newspaper of Porirua, on the northern outskirts of Wellington -- a largely Polynesian city, with wonderful warmth and spirit. I was delighted to be interviewed by Colin Patterson, an amiable fellow who interviewed Ron some time ago.

If you can't read the above, you can download the paper HERE

The story is on page thirteen.

Aesop proved right about crows

2011-12-18T15:35:00.004+13:00

WHO WAS AESOP?

A Greek slave who lived more than 2500 years ago, Aesop has gone down in history because of the fables -- or stories with a moral -- that he told. Many writers, including Aristotle, are known to have referred to both Aesop and his stories, but over the centuries since then they have become popular reading for children.

Some of his best-known fables include The Tortoise and the Hare and The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Well, we all know those ones. The tortoise proves to the hare that dogged persistence wins, and the boy who cried wolf proved that telling the same lie too often can rebound on the teller (politicians and financial hucksters, take note)

In the fable of The Crow and the Pitcher, a thirsty crow learns to raise the water level in a pitcher by dropping in stones. The tale concludes with the proverb: ''Necessity is the mother of invention.''

Well, a recent experiment in New Zealand has proved that crows really are that intelligent.

In a re-creation of the fable, Auckland University psychology researchers Dr Gavin Hunt, Professor Russell Gray and Dr Alex Taylor presented wild New Caledonian crows with a tall half-filled tube of water, which had a small piece of meat floating on the surface.

When given a collection of stones, each of the four birds – Pepe, Caesar, Mimic and Laura – quickly learned to drop them into the tube to raise the water level, allowing them to fish out the food.

They were even more clever than that, however. When given a selection of small and large stones, the crows picked out the large stones, which displaced more water at once and brought the food within reach more quickly.

"[The] crows showed an immediate preference for large, rather than small stones, with two crows actually discarding small stones the first time they picked them up and before they had observed their effect on the water level," the researchers wrote.

Read more and see a video of the bright birds HERE

Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair writer, is dead

2011-12-17T08:47:00.000+13:00

Chrstopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair writer, dies at 62
Christopher Hitchens, a sharp-witted provocateur who used his formidable learning, biting wit and muscular prose style to skewer what he considered high-placed hypocrites, craven lackeys of the right and left, “Islamic fascists” and religious faith of any kind, has died at age 62. He had cancer of the esophagus.

Vanity Fair, the magazine for which Mr. Hitchens worked, confirmed his death.
Mr. Hitchens, an English-born writer who had lived in Washington since 1982, was a tireless master of the persuasive essay, which he wrote with an indefatigable energy and venomous glee. He often wrote about the masters of English literature, but he was better known for his lifelong engagement with politics, with subtly nuanced views that did not fit comfortably with the conventional right or left.

Read more

Kissing poets' graves

2011-12-17T08:40:00.000+13:00

Today, the inimitable Jacqueline Church Simonds, Small Press World blogger, posts an intriguingly Wilde item of gossip.

People are kissing Oscar Wilde's grave. Goodness knows why (because the grave -- pictured -- is really rather intimidating), but they are.

Here is the background, from another intriguing site, devoted to poets' graves

Whilst in Reading Gaol Wilde received an ear injury which was not properly treated. Late in 1900 he developed further infections which led to meningitis, and his subsequent death at the age of 46.

He died penniless and alone in a Paris hotel.

On his deathbed he converted to Catholicism. By becoming a catholic he enacted one of his well known witticisms: The Church of England is the best to live in, but the Catholic Church is the best to die in.

He is also reputed to have said, on being presented with an expensive medical bill, ' I suppose that I will have to die beyond my means'.

(Well, I love those quotes, but if he died alone, who was there to write them down?)

He was originally buried in the Bagneaux Cemetery but his remains were moved to Père Lachaise - the French National Cemetery - on July 19, 1909. However, the famous tomb, sculpted by Jacob Epstein was not added until 1914. It is now visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors each year - many of whom are gay men who come to pay their respects. The tomb is covered in lipstick kisses.

The ashes of Robert Ross (a former lover) are also buried in the tomb.

Comment from me: This indicates that the kissing marks were made by gay men (wearing lipstick?), but google images show a lot of young women kissing the tomb, too.

People are also writing little messages. I asked JCS what she would write, once she was in Paris with an old lipstick. A quote from the man himself, of course! Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

I then wondered what poet's grave I would kiss, in the unlikely eventuality that I got the irresistible urge. Accordingly, I had a quick skim through the list of poets (dead poets, of course) on the poets' grave site. I guess, at a push, it would have to be John Masefield.

He is buried in Westminster Abbey (the last poet to get there), so the surroundings would be great.

And which tombstone, dear reader, would you choose to kiss?

New Wellington millionaire is a blogger

2011-12-16T09:41:00.000+13:00

His name is Richard MacManus
And he has just sold his blog on readwriteweb.com

The unassuming Wellington blogger says he has not had a chance to celebrate the sale of his technology website ReadWriteWeb to United States digital publishing firm Say Media for what is believed to be US$5 million (NZ$6.7 million), but reckons a new Volkswagen might be in order. "Mine is over 10 years old."

ReadWriteWeb, which is majority-owned by Mr MacManus, attracts 2.75 million unique visitors and 5 million page views a month, and is consistently named among the world's most popular blogs.

Its writers, most of whom are based in the US, cover innovation from new products to trends in social media. It has a mostly US audience but is edited from his home in Petone.

Read the full story by Hamish Coleman-Webb here

Children's publishing goes digital

2011-12-16T08:23:00.000+13:00

Just last week Amazon increased the publishing world's attention to digital children's books with their agreement to acquire Marshall Cavendish's trade children's list, as color reading tablets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo are exponentially expanding the audience for children's ebooks.

With amazing speed Publishers Lunch responded to this new challenge to publishers. The next Publishers Launch Conference is a full-day show, Children's Publishing Goes Digital, that kicks off Digital Book World week in January.

The event runs Monday, January 23, when those attending can check out the dozens of companies in the DBW exhibit hall and stick around for the Publishing Innovation Awards and DBW opening ceremonies reception. There is a packed schedule of nine different sessions.

Full program

Scott Bainbridge, Cold Case Investigator

2011-12-15T09:23:00.000+13:00

Scott Bainbridge, writer about unsolved murders and missing people

I was delighted to see in Craig Sisterson's great column Crime Watch (link to the right) that in the upcoming Hamilton Crime Festival, Hamilton's own Scott Bainbridge will be giving a presentation.

Scott is one of New Zealand’s foremost investigative and true crime authors. A self-employed journalist and investigator, he lives and works in Hamilton and has a close association to members of the New Zealand police.

He is regarded as the New Zealand expert on missing persons and is often asked to comment on cases by the media.

"There are murderers out ther who have gotten away with their crimes," he has famously said. "Any renewed publicity causes them stress. My aim is to keep these cases alive."

His first two books Without Trace and Still Missing led to several cold cases being re-opened and inspired the acclaimed TVNZ series The Missing. In his third book Shot in the Dark, Bainbridge accessed old murder files to examine unsolved New Zealand murders of the 1920s and 30s, dispelling decade-old myths and uncovering hidden truths.

One of the cases he has investigated as part of his research for his books was that of Sara Niethe, whose cold case was recently in the news after police arrested a man for her murder. Another is the Jefferie Hill cold case of a Tokoroa boy who disappeared in 1968, which led to a formal re-investigation. Even where mysteries remain unsolved, his books give insider information into the background of all involved, the searches, suspicions, police theories, photos and other evidence -- which may (who knows?) trigger memories and lead to a successful conclusion.

His presentation is guaranteed to be fascinating. I had the privilege of meeting Scott and his lovely wife, Puna, at his goodmate Alastair's house last month in Hamilton, and was impressed not just with what he has accomplished, but his obvious emotional involvement with the cold cases he investigates.

I asked him if he found solving these ancient crimes and missing persons cases satisfying.

Yes indeed, he said with a smile.

He was kind enough to give me a copy of his latest book, Shot in the Dark, and I look forward to reading it, once I have managed to pry it out of my husband's hands.
You can watch an interview with Scott here

TIME names "The Protester" the 2011 Person of the Year

2011-12-15T08:28:00.000+13:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) - From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movement, "The Protester" was named Time magazine's 2011 Person of the Year on Wednesday.

Time defines the Person of the Year as someone who, for better or for worse, influences the events of the year.

"Is there a global tipping point for frustration? Everywhere, it seems, people said they'd had enough," Time Editor Rick Stengel said in a statement.

"They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change," he said.

On almost every continent, 2011 has seen an almost unprecedented rise in both peaceful and sometimes violent unrest and dissent.

Protesters in a lengthening list of countries including Israel, India, Chile, China, Britain, Spain and now the United States all increasingly link their actions explicitly to the popular revolutions that have shaken up the Middle East.

Seal pup finds comfy sofa

2011-12-14T09:09:00.000+13:00

Seal pup's antics featured in Wellington's Dominion Post

I can't resist posting this. Maybe little or nothing to do with the written word, but it's definitely cute.

Annette Swoffer of Tauranga got the shock of her life when a seal pup popped in through her cat door, socialized with her cats in the kitchen, and then made itself at home on her sofa.

"I thought I was hallucinating," she said, so she called a friend to come and look.

"I said to him, what's that, and he said, a seal, so I knew I wasn't having a stroke."

It looked so beautiful that she wanted to give it a pat, "but I knew you aren't supposed to touch wild animals," so she phoned the SPCA. The SPCA, in its turn, called the Department of Conservation, where they were on seal alert, because someone had already reported a pup ambling along the street.

Annette Swoffer was right not to touch the cutie, because seals have a nasty bite, and human hands look like fish. Any New Zealander who happns to see a seal or other wild animal in similarly strange circumstances should call the DOC hotline 0800 DOC HOT.

Happy birthday Nostradamus

2011-12-14T08:29:00.000+13:00

Creator of much debated prophesies was born today -- or maybe next week

The man we know now as Nostradamus was born on either the 14th or the 21st of December, 1503, in St. Remy de Provence, in the south of France.

All his life, he was haunted by plague (though he actually died of gout).

First, he had to leave the University of Avignon, because of an outbreak of the terrible disease. So instead of studying grammar and logic, he roamed the countryside collecting herbs, and researching herbal remedies.

In 1529, after practising as an apothecary, he entered the University of Montpellier to study for a medical degree. Then someone found that -- shock, horror! -- he had been engaged in the menial work of dispensing herbs, and he was expelled. So he went back to fighting sporadic outbreaks of plague, losing his first wife and two children to the disease, and inventing a "rose pill" that was supposed to prevent it.

About 1550, after an advantageous marriage to a rich woman, he moved from herbs to the occult, changing his name from Nostredame to Nostradamus, and publishing yearly almanacs. Altogether, these contained 6,338 prophesies (more or less), which became so famous that prominent people began to pay him to make predictions. (He accepted the jobs -- on the condition that his clients supplied their own astrological charts!)

He then set to the task of rewriting his prophesies into 1,000 quatrains, divided into "centuries." These were published as The Prophesies in three instalments, starting 1555.

One of his most successful predictions was of his own death. On the evening of 1 July 1566 he told his secretary "You will not find me alive at sunrise," and lo, it was so.

Another was of the Great Fire of London in 1666.

The blood of the just will be demanded of London
Burnt by the fire in 66

(Century 2, Quatrain 66)

Portsmouth paper archives describe secret departure of Edward VIII

2011-12-14T07:50:00.000+13:00

Touching details of the flight of an exiled king revealed

By Dominic Blake, for the BBC

It happened 75 years ago, when Edward VIII abdicated the British throne, leaving the making of history to his brother, the shy, inarticulate Duke of York.

The archives of Portsmouth's Evening News newspaper reveal the details of how the former king slipped silently away from Britain.

One eye-witness, George Hale, 36, told the paper how he was asked for directions to the navy base by one of the drivers.

The paper describes him as "the last civilian in England to be spoken to by the ex-king Edward VIII" as a voice in the back of the car thanked him.

The cars swept up to Unicorn Gate, the entrance to the navy base, with blinds drawn and headlights blazing shortly after midnight.

The paper records: "The ex-King was sad and pensive. Indeed he looked deeply moved. He scarcely spoke a word as he went up the gangway of the destroyer."

Downton Abbey actor joins Booker judges

2011-12-14T07:39:00.000+13:00

Downton Abbey actor Dan Stevens joins Man Booker judges

Read the full story at BBC

Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens (who is also editor-at-large for the online literary magazine The Junket) will join the judging panel of the 2012 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

For once the whole of New Zealand (a country utterly hooked on Downton Abbey) will find a Booker judge a familiar face. Best known to audiences as Matthew Crawley in the hit ITV1 drama, Stevens studied English at Cambridge and was a member of the Footlights drama club.

Academic and critic Dinah Birch, historian Amanda Foreman and writer Bharat Tandon will also join the panel chaired by Sir Peter Stothard.

The prize longlist is announced in July with the winner unveiled in October

A female surgeon in the days of sail

2011-12-13T20:38:00.001+13:00

Surgeon's Mate, by Linda Collison

Book Two of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series

Patrick (aka Patricia) MacPherson has survived the horrific siege of Havana, and narrowly escaped death from yellow fever.

Now it is October, 1762, and Dr. MacPherson, surgeon's mate and female in disguise, is back on the frigate Richmond.

Those who have read Star-Crossed will know Patricia's history. The bastard daughter of a high-born plantation owner in Barbados, she stowed away to get to the island and claim her inheritance, and was saved from starvation and seasickness by a handsome young seaman, Brian Dalton. Somehow, she managed to get to the plantation, but only to find her father dead, and nothing to inherit. Desperate and penniless, she married a ship's surgeon, and was too quickly widowed, leaving her at her wits' end, again. Dressing as a man, and passing off as a surgeon's mate on the frigate Richmond (where Brian is a gunner) seemed the logical way out of her dilemma. Then came the siege of Havana. And thus the first book came to a nail-biting conclusion.

Now, Patricia is back on the Richmond, and all goes well until the horrible moment when her true sex is uncovered. What is she to do? Marry Brian, and become a gunner's wife, one of the unrecorded females who lived on His Majesty's ships at the time? The choice is taken away from her. Called onto a smuggling craft to try to save the captain's wife, she is spirited away, and forced to live on her wits again, while she carries on with her deception of being male.

Linda Collison knows her ships and her sails. She knows what it is like to haul on a line, and lean on the spokes of the helm. She has also done her homework, and has deduced an astounding amount about the life of a woman in the lower decks of an eighteenth century man-of-war. Anyone reading this book will learn more than he or she could possibly imagine.

I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Patricia's adventures on board the little smuggling craft. Not only was there a very good contrast between life on a small vessel and existence on the multi-layered decks of a frigate, but the feeling of "family" that Collison described is very evocative indeed.

With Fireship Press, Linda Collison has found a publisher with the enthusiasm she deserves. I look forward immensely to the next in the Patricia MacPherson series.

Worth buying for the pictures

2011-12-13T08:18:00.001+13:00

Photo Essay of the school ship Passat

Uwe Hansen and Dirk Poppinga are the "authors" of 100 Jahre Viermastbark Passat: Leben und Lehrnen an Bord. Ein Bilddokumentation der Reisen 1956 und 1957.

The word "authors" is in quotation marks because this lovely but slim (85 pp.) book is more photo than text. It is published by the Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum and offers a photographic account of the role that the 'Passat' played as a school ship. You’ll find a brief (German-only!) description here:

With thanks to Olaf Janzen, one of the founding editors of The Northern Mariner.

Writing to Santa from a lighthouse

2011-12-12T08:32:00.000+13:00

Children of lighthouse-keepers had a unique Christmas conundrum

"How do I know that Santa will get my letter?"

A heartwarming story from old British Columbia

Pen Brown – Santa Claus on the British Columbia Light Stations

by Lynn Salmon 2011

When you are a child living at a remote light station on the coast of British Columbia, a major concern near Christmas time could be "How will Santa Claus know where to find me?" Pen Brown, filled this role for many years, assuming this unique responsibility in 1978 when George Thomas, the original light station Santa Claus, retired.

The annual event was a volunteer effort with contributions of presents and goodies supplied by coast guard staff and participating light station families. Light houses received periodic visits from a supply vessel and during a week–long supply trip in December; Pen Brown would travel with the ship as it visited each light, accompanying the crew on their rounds. Those stations with children would get a special visit from Santa – an eagerly anticipated event by the thirty or more children who once lived on the different lights with their families. Presents were ordered, wrapped and loaded onto the supply vessel for Christmas delivery and when necessary, Pen would travel to the light station via helicopter. Initially a Santa suit was rented each year from the T. Eaton store in Victoria but one year two women living at the Estevan Point Light sewed up a custom suit for him to wear.

Read the rest.

Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Scheme

2011-12-10T16:36:00.001+13:00

Are you missing out on royalties because people borrow your books instead of buying them?

In New Zealand, there is a scheme that recognizes this, formally known as the Public Lending Right, but usually referred to by its old name, the Authors' Fund.

The Fund provides for authors to receive annual payments in recognition of the fact that their books are available for use in New Zealand libraries. Authors resident in New Zealand can register with the Fund if they are eligible to receive royalties for their books and if more than 50 copies are held in New Zealand libraries. Payment is based on the number of copies held by libraries.

When New Zealand established the scheme in 1973, it was the first English-speaking country in the world to do so. Recently, the plan was fine-tuned. Now, the annual Parliamentary budget allots a sum of money (currently $2 million, or so I believe), which is divided by the number of eligible titles. The more eligible books there are, the less each one is allotted. This year the book rate was $2.871.

Registered authors get a check just in time for Christmas. Some look forward to it immensely. Even though the check is not by any means large, it is a major part of their earnings from writing. In fact, they may depend on it to get through this expensive time of the year.

Obviously, the more books you have in libraries, the more money you get. This year, an interesting list of authors receiving the highest payments from the PLR is included in the accompanying newsletter -- Pamela Allen, Gavin Bishop, Kevin Boon, Ken Catran, Joy Cowley, Andrew Crowe, Lynley Dodd, Maurice Gee, David Hill, Margaret Mahy (in alphabetical order).

And the answer comes clear -- to get the most books possible into libraries, write books for children and young adults. Some of those names are bestsellers overseas as well as here: the authors are famous children's authors and illustrators. There are very few on that list who don't write expressly for children.

I always knew I was writing in the wrong genre! (Mind you, quitting maritime history would be like cutting off my right hand.)

It should be added that not all New Zealand authors register for the scheme. As we all know, romance, particularly of the Harlequin/Mills & Boon variety, is a mainstay of libraries. There are at least forty New Zealand romance writers, some of them massively successful -- I know of one who at the last count had 20 million books in print. Local libraries have packed shelves of these books. These romance writers would dominate the PLR list so completely that I consider it altruistic that they generally choose not to register.

"Titanic Sank This Morning"

2011-12-10T08:36:00.000+13:00

The first official announcement of the sinking of the Titanic is to go on sale.

A series of telegrams from Bruce Ismay, the head of the ship's owners White Star Line, have emerged from a private collection and are set to be auctioned.

The eight Marconi messages are expected to sell for £100,000.

Liner boss Ismay sent the first telegram to the shipping company's New York headquarters after he was rescued by the ship Carpathia following the 1912 disaster.

It reached the US office at 1pm on April 15 - nearly 11 hours after the Titanic sunk with the loss of 1,517 lives.

Read more:

Amazon's "Price Check" sucker-punches stores within their own walls

2011-12-08T09:18:00.000+13:00

Want to make sure you're not paying more than you need for a book?

In the old days, in Singapore and other traditional Chinese shopping heavens, all the stores that sold a certain item (such as gold) were lined up alongside each other, in a quaint custom that benefited the price-comparing customer. This, presumably, worked because the level of service and the goods offered were the same in every shop.

That, most surely, does not apply to bookstores, where a devoted customer is happy to pay a little extra because of the range available, and the wise and interested assistance from the staff.

Now, Amazon has a plan to sabotage that happy situation. According to Rachelle Dragani on E-Commerce Times, Amazon has a plan to pluck customers right out of retail stores using Price Check.

It's an app on a smartphone that allows users to scan a book in an actual bricks and mortar store -- maybe the neighborhood store where the staff might be friends -- and compare the price on amazon.com to that on the sticker in front of your eyes. For a limited time, if you buy the book from Amazon instead, they will give you a discount.

Behemoth Amazon moves into children's books

2011-12-08T08:57:00.000+13:00

It has been remarked in publishing circles that modern children's literature seems largely immune from digitisation.

Amazon has taken note.

Amazon announced Tuesday afternoon that it has a deal to acquire Marshall Cavendish Children's Book's US trade publishing list, comprising more than 450 children's books. This means that they will acquire multi-award-winners and NYT children's bestsellers, such as the brilliantly illustrated Basho and the Fox.

Does this mean that these books will be digitised? You bet.

"We look forward to working with these respected authors and illustrators," runs the statement. "We will continue to publish these books in their handsome print editions and we think customers will love reading these books — most of them never available before digitally — with their families, using the brilliant color touchscreen on the Kindle Fire."

Well, it is good news that they will publish these books traditionally, too.

It must be noted that Marshall Cavendish already has a digital arm, though most of the titles are not available as eBooks. Whether Amazon will take the outstanding digital rights over is not stated, as the terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is certainly a given.

According to Publishers Lunch, Amazon will publish the acquired titles "under an imprint of Amazon's New York publishing unit" under Larry Kirshbaum, who is now described as publisher of Amazon Publishing, East Coast Group, vaulting the company into the children's book market. Signaling larger intentions, the company says in the announcement "the acquisition creates the foundation for Amazon Publishing to further expand into picture books, chapter books and YA novels."

The deal allows Marshall Cavendish to focus on the K-12 textbook and assessment books business in the United States, expanding its school publishing business globally, and it certainly means that the door to Amazon is still open.

“We’re excited to acquire the Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books titles and expand our publishing business in this area,” said vp Amazon Publishing Jeff Belle in a statement. "We believe the children's book market segment presents a unique opportunity to innovate in both print and digital formats. And since many of these titles are not readily available as eBooks, we see a chance to connect a terrific group of authors and illustrators with more readers. We also see the potential for similar deals across other categories in the future."

Amazon to have its own book

2011-12-07T09:39:00.000+13:00

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon.com, the country's largest online bookseller, will itself be the subject of a book coming out in 2013.

Bloomberg Businessweek writer Brad Stone has signed with Little, Brown and Company for a work on "the spectacular rise" of Amazon.com. The book will be released in May 2013 and is currently untitled, Little, Brown announced Tuesday.

Stone's book is not authorized by Amazon, but Little, Brown executive editor John Parsley said in a statement that Stone would draw upon his "unprecedented access and 14 years covering tech companies."
Parsley says Stone, who's a former technology reporter for The New York Times, will provide a "fly-on-the-wall narrative

New Zealand Author December 2011

2011-12-07T09:28:00.000+13:00

The latest issue is a cracker

I arrived back from a rather damp trip up the Kapiti Coast to find the latest issue of New Zealand Author, which I devoured at once.

This new, swish version of the old newsletter goes from strength to strength under the able editorship of Adrian Blackburn, overseen by Maggie Tarver, CEO of the NZ Society of Authors (our version of PEN).

There is much that is of interest to American readers. First, there is a report of the annual gathering of International PEN, written by our representative, Nelson Wattie. He has intriguing comments on participation from mainland China, who, it seems, sat uncomfortably in the same room as representatives from Taiwan, Tibet, and the Uyghur region. "Asked about the imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiabo they asked disdainfully, 'Who is that?'" But at least they were there, as Wattie observes.

Particularly useful for authors who retain foreign rights to their books is "Frankfurt Dreaming" by Richard Webster, who has successfully promoted and sold language rights at the Frankfurt Bookfair since 1968. He has sold over 500 foreign language rights to his own books, seeing them translated into 29 languages -- and he gives invaluable tips about how to do it yourself. He tells you how to get there, where to look for lodging, what you will find at the Fair, and how to approach publishers. He even tells you how to prepare your "elevator speech," the quickfire blurb that makes the most of the very short time you have a publisher's attention. And it tells you what to do after the Fair is over. A must-read for anyone going to the Fair, I imagine -- and that includes agents and publishers' representatives.

A story discussing eBooks vs. traditional publishing was of course of interest to me. I find the topic eternally intriguing. This is a conversation between the editor and Martin Taylor of Digital Strategies.

Columnist David Hill describes a charming incident from his residency at the University of Iowa, involving Kim Sa-In of South Korea. "Sa-In was poet, critic, academic, and one of the world's Top Ten Delightful Guys."

Former Penguin publishing head Geoff Walker has invaluable tips on selling non-fiction, with some fascinating observations from inside the publisher's office. While he talks from the New Zealand perspective, his hints would be useful to any non-fiction writer, anywhere.

To ask about subscribing to this very useful journal ($45NZ for six issues per year), contact office@nzauthors.org.nz

Stout Research Centre, castaways, and the CLL/NZSA grant

2011-12-04T14:38:00.000+13:00

How time flies when you are working hard and having fun

Early this year, I applied for a Copyright Licensing Limited/New Zealand Society of Authors grant, which would give me two months in the cherished collegial atmosphere of the Stout Research Centre at Victoria University. To my surprise and pleasure, I won the award, and commenced my short tenure in the first week of October.
And lo, I cleared up my desk on Friday. The two months was over.

I applied for the grant to finish going through the fifty years of despatches from United States consuls in New Zealand, 1838-1888, which I printed off during various years at the Stout Centre, commencing with my John David Stout Fellowship year in 2001. This research had already led to a book (In the Wake of Madness, published by Algonquin in the USA and HarperCollins in New Zealand), and several papers, including "Salem Traders in New Zealand", which was published in the Journal of New Zealand Studies. However, that had only taken me up to 1855, so a great deal that promised to be interesting beckoned.

It was a pleasurable time, too. The Centre is ably and lovingly run by Lydia Wevers, the Director, and Louise Grenside, the administrator. The welcome was all one could wish for. The wonderful collegial atmosphere never fails to surprise me. The SRC is a perfect environment for research and writing.

I began by going through the printed despatches from 1855 onward, and found three very promising topics.

IThe first is the story of a Connecticut schooner that arrived in Lyttelton in December 1883 with only the captain and the steward on board. With just one man at the helm, and the other to work the ropes, they had sailed the large vessel through one of the most terrifying seas in the world. They had headed north through the southern ocean from Campbell Island, where the captain had lost both his boats, with their crews, twelve men in all. The two boats had gone about the coast, looking for seals, and never returned. After waiting three days in Perseverance Harbour, and searching for another 24 hours, he had given them up, and made the desperate two-handed voyage to New Zealand.

Back in the icy waters of the sub-Antarctic, six men were struggling desperately for survival, against gigantic odds. Without food, and without water, they labored for days at their oars, buoyed by their only hope -- that if they managed to reach the island, the schooner would be waiting for them there. They pictured how delighted the captain would be to see them return.

Instead, he was in Lyttelton, lauded by all for his amazing feat of seamanship. However, James Drummond Macpherson, the President of the Christchurch Chamber of Commerce, thought the captain had given up too early, and commenced a campaign to persuade William Rolleston (who was standing in for Harry Atkinson, the Premier) to send a government steamer on a search-and-rescue mission.

Newspaper reports of the time gave me a detailed picture of his lobbying and the outcome, and the consular despatches continued the story of the public outcry and political fall-out after the six men were discovered cowering, ill and starving, in a castaway hut.

It's a fitting sequel to my other castaway story, Island of the Lost. And it is a testament to the ideal writing environment that the Stout Research Centre provides that to date I have written 60,000 words of this new book, and the end of the first good draft is in sight.

More about it later ...

Beaglehole Library and Nobel Prizes

2011-12-04T09:50:00.001+13:00

Beaglehole Library shifts to 4th floor of Victoria University Library

On Thursday I had the privilege of attending the opening of the new Beaglehole Library. For its collection of books on early New Zealand history, it is one of the best research libraries in the world, in my humble opinion, and it is fitting that it should be in the same city as the amazing Alexander Turnbull Library, which has an astounding collection of manuscripts and images.

I have spent many happy hours at the Beaglehole over the years, and was perfectly accustomed to heading down to floor 1 -- the orlop deck, as it were, of the library building. Now the research library is on the fourth floor, sharing great views over the city and harbor, though the focus is inwards, of course.

Well, there were lively speeches, and Tim Beaglehole cut the ribbon, and then I joined a quick tour of the back rooms, usually forbidden territory. Absolutely fascinating.

What intrigued me most of all was a display of Alan MacDiarmid memorabilia, including his baby booties (truly!), his typewriter, and his Nobel Prize certificate. It was the first Nobel Prize I had ever seen, a very grand affair, with cursive calligraphy (hand done) on the righthand side, and an original work of art on the left.

Alan Macdiarmid (1927-2007, pictured on the left) was a Kiwi who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000, jointly with Hideki Shirakawa and Alan Heeger (center and right, respectively), their accomplishment being the discovery that plastics can be made electrically conductive.

The artist, Nils G. Stenqvist, created the other two certificates, too. You can view them on the Nobel Prize website.

Plaudits for Tupaia

2011-12-03T11:14:00.003+13:00

Best books

First, Tupaia is included in the Listener list of The 100 Top Reads of 2011.

It's in the History category.

Tupaia: the Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator:

Tupaia was the go-between who played a major role in placating Tahitians when the first English ship reached the island, and later proved an invaluable asset as James Cook's endeavour sailed to New Zealand and Australia. He deserved a full biography, and thanks to Druett's meticulous research he now has one that is comprehensive and highly readable.

The Listener did not include the wonderful jacket image in the spread, but never mind, the latest Te Papa newsletter features it in its link to Te Papa store:

TE PAPA STORE

READ MORE

<><><><><> <><><><><>

The New Zealand Coast Calendar 2012
$19.99

The Wedding Dress: 300 Years of Bridal Fashions
$85

Tupaia: Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator $55

The Margaret Mahy Treasury
$45

And at the same time a review came in from Doryanthes, A Periodic Southern Sydney Journal of Art, Heritage, and Natural History

Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator

We tend to forget that English was probably not the first non-indigenous language to be spoken on the shores of Kurnell in April 1770. Aboard the Endeavour was a Ra’iatean nobleman and priest named Tupaia. He had served James Cook well as a navigator, interpreter and cultural intermediary from Tahiti to New Zealand. Cook hoped that he might again serve him well as an interpreter at Kurnell. Unfortunately the Tahitian-Ra’iatean branch of the great Polynesian group of languages was no use among the Dharawal-speaking Gweagal.

Tupaia has recently become the subject of a beautifully written biography by New Zealander Joan Druett. It is the product of a great deal of patient historical research, using sources dating back to the visit of Samuel Wallis to Tahiti in June 1767. It is also enriched by a wealth of contextual post-contact ethnographic scholarship. I can thoroughly recommend it. Furthermore, it is a must for our local studies collection.

Edward Dyker (author of Natures' Argonaut, the definitive biography of Solander)

And, the New Zealand historian's newsletter 'Phanzine' has listed favourite titles for Christmas. Margaret Pointer recommends Tupaia. She says 'Wellington writer Joan Druett provides a different insight into Cook's first great voyage by focusing on Tupaia and the relationship between the European explorers and the Polynesians they took on board.'

e-Book sales figures fall

2011-12-03T08:59:00.000+13:00

What is one to make of the latest trends?

Back in May 2011, Julie Brosnan wrote in her New York Times, "There is a Wild West quality to the book business these days."

She was talking about her experiences at BookExpo, the annual publishing trade show in Manhattan.

"E-Books have exploded," she said. For some new releases they were surpassing print sales. "The struggle for many brick-and-mortar bookstores has deepened as their customers began downloading books onto their e-Readers from home, rather than heading to stores."

I can attest to this personally. The friend for whom I always buy books as presents now has a Kindle. What the hell am I going to give her for Christmas?

The impressive figures for eBooks encompass romance, thrillers, and mysteries. They have not yet, thank God, penetrated the children's book market.

And a bit of confusing data has arrived. According to Publishers Lunch, the American Association of Publishers has just announced that sales of eBooks has gone DOWN. Last August (2010), the figure was $88.8 million. This August, the figure was $80.3 million. E-Book sales are currently just 15.6% of all recorded trade sales.

How to account for it? We must remember that while here in New Zealand the universities are oases of quiet and peace, the summer vacation having commenced, in the northern hemisphere millions of students are busily buying textbooks.

Significantly, perhaps, two university presses, Stanford and University of Nebraska, have been added to the AAP database.

Upheaval at the New York Public Library

2011-12-02T18:10:00.001+13:00

Construction ahead of collections?

One of my favorite libraries for research looks horribly endangered, according to this story in The Nation.

In July 2010, Hilde Hoogenboom, a professor of Russian literature at Arizona State University, sent an impassioned missive to Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, to protest the closure of the NYPL¹s Slavic and Baltic division. It "was one of the best places to work in the world," she wrote.

Indeed, in the universe of Russian studies, the Slavic division was legendary. "I recall [it] as an agreeably dim sort of place, with a faintly reverential, almost cathedral-like ambience," George Kennan said in 1987.

Among its 750,000 items are the first book printed in Moscow, the "Anonymous" Gospels; a first edition of Tolstoy¹s War and Peace; and John Reed¹s collection of broadsides and posters from the Russian Revolution.

Trotsky and Nabokov toiled in the division¹s reading room. Václav Havel and Mikhail Gorbachev made visits of tribute.

Eleven weeks after Hilde Hoogenboom's letter was sent, a senior NYPL official replied on LeClerc¹s behalf: "If I may put this matter into its sadly grim financial context, in the last two fiscal years our budget has been reduced by $20 million and our workforce by 300 positions. While we recognized and prized the special cultural and scholarly resource that was the Slavic Reading Room, we simply could no longer afford to operate it."

(It reminds me of the letter I received from Yale when I applied for a minor research grant -- they had lost an uncounted fortune -- in the Madoff scam, I gathered -- and couldn't afford anything like that any more.)

The New York Public Library, which comprises four research libraries and eighty-seven branch libraries, has seen other cutbacks as well. Since 2008 its workforce has been reduced by 27 percent. In a recent newsletter to library supporters, the institution reported that its acquisitions budget for books, CDs and DVDs had been slashed by 26 percent.

And this is the Believe It or Not moment.

Despite these austerity measures, NYPL executives are pushing ahead with a gargantuan renovation of the Forty-second Street library, the crown jewel of the system. The details of the Central Library Plan (CLP) are closely guarded, but it has already sparked criticism among staff members, who worry that the makeover would not only weaken one of the world¹s great libraries but mar the architectural integrity of the landmark building on Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, renamed the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in 2008, following the Wall Street billionaire¹s gift of $100 million.

Mr. S.A.S. is obviously no Andrew Carnegie. Can't he have given the money for the preservation of collections, instead of wanting his name plastered all over the iconic building?

I see that (a) he was in the Skull and Bones Society with GWB
(b) he was head of Lehman Brothers

Say no more.

Eavesdropping made easy ...

2011-12-02T08:04:00.000+13:00

In view of the News of the World scandal, this is not exactly a surprise

A burgeoning global trade in eavesdropping technology produced largely by U.S. and other Western companies -- and minimally regulated by the U.S. government -- has allowed sophisticated surveillance tools to end up in the hands of repressive regimes in Syria, Iran and elsewhere.

(Not to mention feral journalists.)

Company sales brochures, provided to The Washington Post by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, show that few forms of electronic communication are beyond the reach of the buyers of these powerful products. The industry faces little scrutiny by the U.S. and other governments, and countries banned from buying surveillance products from U.S. companies can obtain them through intermediaries.

Read more

The Magna Carta and the Constitution

2011-12-01T20:54:00.000+13:00

How could a historic document signed by an English king in 1215 be important to America?

Well, okay, the Magna Carta is a founding document in the story of human rights and liberties -- in America as well as England. But that was in the Middle Ages! Surely it didn't have a direct influence on the wording of the Constitution?

If you have a look at the Declaration of Rights in the Maryland Constitution of 1776, however, clause 21 rings a definite echo.

It reads:

"That no freeman ought to be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, liberties, or privileges, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner destroyed, or deprived of his life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land."

Environmentally conscious printer wins award

2011-12-01T20:28:00.000+13:00

Soar Printing wins ‘Medium business’ award at Sustainable 60

Historic Auckland company Soar Printing won the ‘Medium business’ category at the prestigious Sustainable 60 Awards in Auckland last night, adding to a growing list of accolades for its dedication to corporate responsibility.

The family owned company was a finalist in three of the five categories –Environment, Strategy and governance, and Workplace – and won the award for companies with 21-100 employees.

The award came on the same day Soar Printing was notified by Landcare Research it has met the criteria to become the first New Zealand printer which can offer carboNZeroCertTM certified carbon-neutral printed products and services.

Soar Printing has been going for 90 years, set up in 1920 by Fred Soar on his return from World War I. He started from the basement of the Onehunga Orphan's Hall in Church St, Onehunga.

Soar's son Harry took over the business in the 1960s and had his own ambitions. When he finished work, he would have dinner with the family and then go into the Herald to work the night shift setting the headlines for the paper until just after midnight. He was saving to buy new offset printing technology from Germany.

Fred Soar, Managing Director and grand-son of the company founder, says the Sustainable 60 award reflect a five-year journey towards environmental best practise.

“There is huge pride in our team that our vision of being New Zealand’s most sustainable printer is coming to fruition. Sustainable values are fully entrenched in the company’s strategic focus and management structure.”

Read more

Children's Books Judges Announced

2011-12-01T08:16:00.000+13:00

New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards 2012 Judges Announcement

Independent education and publishing consultant, Gillian Candler will convene this year’s New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards judging panel.

The former secondary school teacher, editor and chief executive of state-owned education publishing company, Learning Media says she is looking forward to a long, enjoyable summer of reading great kiwi books.

“I’m a passionate believer that good books change lives. It is therefore an honour and a pleasure to convene this year’s New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards judging panel.
”I’ll be on the lookout for books that capture my imagination; books that entice and teach, books with characters that draw me in and leave me wanting more.”

Two other children’s literature experts join Ms Candler on the judging panel: school curriculum advisor, librarian and bookseller Annemarie Florian and award-winning writer and illustrator Bob Kerr.

Together they will read more than 130 books in the search for the best of this country’s children’s books - across all age groups - published in 2011.

They will be choosing finalists, and ultimately winners across five categories: picture book, non-fiction, junior fiction, young adult fiction and best first book.

Each Category Award winner receives $7,500. The winner of the New Zealand Post Children’s Book of the Year Award takes home an additional $7,500. The winner of the Best First Book Award and the Children’s Choice Award receive prize money of $2,000 each.

New Zealand Post sponsors the book awards
New Zealand Post is proud to be principle sponsor of the New Zealand Book Awards and the Children’s Book Awards. New Zealand Post is committed to promoting and assisting literacy in our communities and supporting excellence in literature. Working closely with Booksellers NZ, New Zealand Post and other dedicated segments of the community actively encourage New Zealanders to read and enjoy books.

The New Zealand Post Book Awards 2012 are also funded by Creative New Zealand. The Awards are overseen by the New Zealand Post Book Awards Governance Group, administered by Booksellers NZ and supported by the New Zealand Society of Authors and Book Tokens (NZ) Ltd.

NZ Post Book Awards Judges Announced

2011-12-01T08:12:00.000+13:00

From The Bookseller

Last Year’s Supreme Book Award Winner is This Year’s Top Judge

30 Nov 2011

Last year Chris Bourke took home the country’s top literary honour – the New Zealand Post Book of the Year Award – for his work Blue Smoke: the Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964. This year he heads up the judging panel for the same award.
A respected writer, reviewer, music historian and radio producer, Chris is well known as a former long-time producer for Radio New Zealand National’s Saturday Morning programme and as a staff writer and arts and books editor for print publications including The Listener.

Mr Bourke says he has just cleared several book shelves to make space for the entries in the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards, and his first impression is: “never mind the width, feel the quality.

“New Zealand’s book creation industry is in full flight, with debutantes taking on seasoned authors, the self-published challenging the extravagantly produced. The year has seen fiction and poetry collections from many of our leading writers, and non-fiction seems to have recovered its strength with a plethora of well-researched, elegantly written and designed books in the general and illustrated categories.

“Ahead lie six months of demanding but exhilarating reading, about New Zealand in all its diversity.”

Joining Chris Bourke on the judging panel are: multi-award winning poet, writer, critic and journalist David Eggleton, writer, publisher, book designer and typesetter Mary Egan, poet, reviewer, writer and anthologist Paula Green, writer and Maori and Pacific literature specialist Reina Whaitiri (Kai Tahu).

Judges are selected for the broad range of skills they bring to the judging process ensuring there is a diversity of writing styles and reading preferences. The judging panel as a whole represents the wealth of diversity and depth in New Zealand writing and publishing.

They will read more than 160 submitted books published in 2011 before selecting the finalists and, ultimately the winners, including the holder of the much-sought-after the New Zealand Post Book of the Year trophy.

There will be four judging categories this year comprising Poetry, Fiction, Illustrated Non-fiction and General Non-fiction. There will be 16 finalist books in total (three finalists each in the Fiction and Poetry categories and five each in the Illustrated Non-Fiction and General Non-Fiction categories).
The overall New Zealand Post Book of the Year Award winner receives $15,000. Winners of the four Category Awards will each receive $10,000, the Māori Language Award $10,000, Readers’ Choice Award $5,000, and the winners of the three New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) Best First Book Awards $2,500 each.

Your eReader and that mysterious Android

2011-12-01T08:04:00.000+13:00

Want to convert your Kindle or your Nook?

Like most other tablets that aren't the iPad, Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet (and Barnes & Noble's Nook Color) is powered by Android, Google's open-source operating system. Because the programming code to Android is available for free on the Internet, companies like Amazon and Barnes and Noble can use it to make smartphones and tablets without needing to ask permission.

E-readers like the Nook Color and Kindle Fire only run Android "under the hood," so to speak. Everything on top was made by either Barnes & Noble or Amazon, and was designed to make it easy for you to read and buy books and videos.

Now, some clever people are producing ways of turning your eReader into a bells-and-whistles smart pad. The CyanogenMod team has taken the open-source Android programming code and made a custom version of Android, which can be used as an aftermarket upgrade for smartphones and tablets in the same way that PCs and Macs can be upgraded with Ubuntu. And people on the XDA-Developers message board are experimenting with ways to bring CyanogenMod to the Kindle Fire, while the Nook Color already has well-established ways to turn it into a full Android tablet.

But do you want to do it? Personally, I can't imagine why anyone would want to surf the internet or receive and send email while reading a book. And, there are all kinds of technical drawbacks, it seems.

If you convert your Nook Color, you won't be able to bring it into a Barnes and Noble store for free browsing and in-store specials ... unless you put Android on the microSD card, and keep your Nook Color's built-in software in the internal memory. (The Kindle Fire doesn't have this option.)

And you won't get any tech support from Kindle or B&N if your tinkering goes wrong. It's just as if you opened up your computer and then regretted what you had done.

It's definitely something for techies. Not, in my opinion, Real Readers.

But you can read more of Jared Spurbeck's technical meditations here

Climate change and the cost of living in the deep waters of the ocean

2011-11-30T09:49:00.000+13:00

Are deep-sea organisms more sensitive to environmental change than those in shallow waters?

Learn more at a seminar to be presented by Jim Barry, MBARI

That is, if you can make it to Wellington, New Zealand
Tuesday, 6 December 2011 at 10.30am
Main conference room
NIWA, Greta Point
For further information contact Claire Guy, ext 7491 (claire.guy@niwa.co.nz)

Facebook settles privacy violations

2011-11-30T07:56:00.000+13:00

Facebook has settled a privacy complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission.

According to a Tuesday release, the FTC said Facebook has agreed to get consumers' approval before it changes the way it shares their data.

Additionally, the massive social networking engine will have to get period audits of its privacy practices for the next 20 years.

The announcement comes as Facebook reportedly is preparing an initial public offering in the second quarter of next year. Privacy scrutiny by federal enforcement officials has weighed on the company's business prospects, analysts say, and the settlement will clear the way for the projected $100 billion public offering.

Wow. Is that kind of money still around?

Full story

A story of hijacking and amazing courage

2011-11-29T11:39:00.000+13:00

Award for Exceptional Bravery at Sea

I can't resist posting this, because it is such an inspirational story. Indeed, it would make a terrific book -- and maybe inspire an exciting novel.

Captain Seog Hae-gyun of the Republic of Korea, Master of the chemical tanker Samho Jewelry, has been presented with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Award for Exceptional Bravery at Sea 2011, for his decisive, brave and courageous actions to protect his ship and crew during a vicious pirate attack in the Indian Ocean, which left him with serious and long-lasting injuries.

Captain Seog, accompanied by his wife, was handed the award by IMO Secretary-General Efthimios E. Mitropoulos, during a ceremony held on 21 November 2011 at IMO Headquarters in London. When the Samho Jewelry was boarded by pirates, in January 2011, the crew took cover in the designated citadel but the pirates broke in, detaining them on the bridge.

Over two days, Captain Seog steered the ship on a zig-zag course, so that the pirates would not realize that the vessel was actually heading away from, instead of towards, Somali waters. He contaminated the fuel so the engines would not work normally, pretended the steering gear was malfunctioning and slowed the ship's speed from 14 knots to six, to keep her out of Somali waters for as long as possible, thus maximizing the potential for units of the Republic of Korea Navy to attempt a rescue. However, the pirates became suspicious that some of Captain Seog's actions were intended to outwit them and they brutally assaulted him, causing serious fractures to his legs and shoulders.

While all this was happening, the pirates ordered him to communicate information about the incident to his shipping company in English, via satellite. Captain Seog surreptitiously inserted information in Korean about the true situation - information that proved vital for the Navy of his country to plan, and execute, a rescue operation. On 21 January, as the sun came up, the Republic of Korea Navy destroyer Choi Young launched a rescue operation, which they named "Dawn of the Gulf of Aden". By 06.30 on that day, the attack team had gained full control of the bridge. During this time, Captain Seog, despite his injuries, managed to send out an urgent message via VHF, warning the boarding party that there were three pirates at the steering wheel.

Read the rest of this amazing story

Hunting notice

2011-11-27T09:43:00.000+13:00

Discovered on an abandoned hut

It's amazing what you find in the Kiwi Wilderness. Last weekend we enjoyed a wonderful trek through a corner of Alastair's hunting lodge in mountainous Kawhia, on the west coast of the North Island. It isn't the first time we have "admired" this abandoned hut, and wondered about its past -- it has remnants of cooking gear, planks that formed a platform for a mouldering mattress, odd bits of tramping stuff, and (believe it or not) a sun umbrella. The owner, whoever he was, had a sense of humor. Scroll down to follow our voyage of discovery ...

Dead Sea Scrolls mystery may be solved

2011-11-26T22:18:00.001+13:00

Plain unadorned linen may provide vital clues

Nearly 200 textiles have been discovered in caves on the West Bank, at Qumran, which may solve the mystery of the creators of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It appears that they may have been written by a sectarian group called the Essenes.

The authorship of the scrolls has been a matter of debate ever since their accidental discovery by a shepherd. That mystery, along with the puzzle of how they got to Qumran, may become clearer with the discovery of these fabrics.

All the textiles were made of linen, rather than wool, which was the preferred textile used in ancient Israel. Also they lack decoration, some actually being bleached white, even though fabrics from the period often have vivid colours. Altogether, researchers say these finds suggest that the Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect, "penned" some of the scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between the years 1947 and 1956. They are the oldest Biblical writings known, and include material -- such as hymns, rules, and prophesies -- that are not found in the Bible. They are mostly written in Hebrew, but some are in Aramaic.

One, known as the "Copper Scroll," lists 64 hiding places where worldly treasure such as gold, and spiritual treasure -- more manuscripts -- could be found.