I had a bitter sweet dream (nightmarish dream) of all those May Marches under communist Czechoslovakia as a child and teenager ... And these days I face the strange Chinese culture in the Antipodean share market and almost at every newsagency on the corners of harder and harder to recognise Sydney
Google has been digitizing millions of books from major research libraries. What does this mean for the future of the book? Robert Darnton wonders... How can we navigate through the information landscape that is only beginning to come into view? Google & the Future of Books
You love Poe or you don’t, but, either way, Poe doesn’t love you. A writer who was more condescending to his adoring readers would be hard to find …
This is the scene right before the credits where the guy pushes the button and it blows up How do you measure success? Word of mouth? Online buzz? Or actual sales of books?
Where in the world is Matt Drudge? What Should I Cover in the Social Media Insider?
I am a big fan of tapping into social media, doing this user-generated thing, and maybe even crowdsourcing here and there.
Yeah, that's living on the edge. So please, comment here, Tweet me at @dberkowitz, find me on Facebook, reach out on LinkedIn, or send an old fashioned email to dberkowitz @ 360i . com. Thanks in advance. Email this • Save to del.icio.us • Digg This! • Share on Facebook • outside.in: geotag this story • Discuss on Newsvine • Stumble It!
• Vehix is using social media (Twitter & YouTube) to help people become better parallel parkers. ; [His website looks like it always did, but in his personal life, Matt Drudge is behaving more and more like the reclusive Howard Hughes Underground Man; When Shakespeare died he left neither books nor letters nor notes. This strikes Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens as more than a little odd Justice Stevens Renders an Opinion on Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays ]
• · Are bloggers attention-seekers?; Until recently, no one had ever heard of Jill Price. Her friends and family knew her memory was remarkable, but nobody in the blogging community did … Jill Price’s memory is extraordinary, to be sure, but it is not about just anything. It is about anything having to do with her: The book is wrong. Price is right after all! Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget; Rich, artistic, brilliant, oversexed (or undersexed), neurotic, and ultimately tragic.” Yeah, it’s that brooding Wittgenstein family again. An Author's Favorite Wittgenstein
• · Liberty is a form of order, not a license for anarchy and self-indulgence. We should cease to mock the things that mattered to our parents Forgiveness and Irony; Refrigeration changed our attitude toward food by removing the site of production from the sight of consumers. Thus did our idea of “freshness” emerge Is it fresh? Vodka is an important tool
• · · Virtually all warnings can be viewed as premature, since the date of a warned-against event may be uncertain. Consider warnings against the housing bubble. Why the Economic Crisis Was Not Anticipated Soil Sickness of Sydney; Most overrated woman writer? Gertrude Stein, says Elaine Showalter: a sanctified “sister,” perhaps, but still unreadable. Most underrated Media Dragon?. The Literary Tradition of Women ; In 1797, Thomas Cadell made perhaps the greatest mistake in publishing history. One Rev. George Austen had sent him a novel by his daughter AUSTENMANIA
• · · · ANDREW SULLIVAN: THINKING. OUT. LOUD. DAILY MEDIA DRAGON Just as Montaigne pioneered the modern essay form, Andrew Sullivan’s pithy, personal style is creating the modern blog.; We’ve burned our bridges - Goebbels said in 1943. We will either go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or the greatest criminals Life and Death in the Third Reich
• · · · · The Elements of Style: for fifty years we’ve been fed this toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity that is not even grounded by a proper grasp of grammar 1958-2009 - Over 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice; It was the young Benjamin Disraeli who coined the word millionaire in 1827 for the burgeoning class that had created the Industrial Revolution … How to handle class: whoever you meet, your dress and your bearing must convey the message, “I am freer and less terrified than you are A new status anxiety is infecting affluent hipdom
• · · · · · Our genes are not just selfish. We also care about loyalty, respect, tradition, and religion. Our evolved moral emotions are about our families, our friends, and our groups End of Cold River; The little white lie that grew. Judge Marcus Einfeld got a speeding ticket, told a fib, and, as Clive James explains, dug himself in deeper The little white lie that grew ; A review cannot convey how deeply unpleasant the experience of reading The Kindly Ones is. This is one of the most repugnant books I have ever read Night and Cog