Tuesday, July 28, 2015

AUSTRALIA: biggest Island and greatest place for story-telling


Just because my story of Cold River is about horrors of absurd communism doesn’t mean I always identify myself with other forms of barbarism such as ruthless capitalism.

Humpback whales make a comeback in Australian waters as numbers rebound

At least 8M humans may have lived and farmed the Amazon basin Daily Mail 
From 'Robinson Crusoe' to 'Swallows and Amazons', what is it about scraps of land surrounded by sea that makes them such compelling settings for storytellers? Author Julia Bell, whose new novel is inspired by 'The Wicker Man', explores some island adventures 

Why writers treasure islands: Isolated, remote, defended - they're great places for story-telling 

Remember that country pub that was willing to name anything inside the business after you and MEdia Dragon in exchange for help with its renovations


Antrim-The-Unprotected-Life-2-690
“I no longer regret writing, or the life I have made along the way. I’ve learned too much and come too far, and I am in pursuit of an art form. It took a long time, and a lot of work, to get to this point, and I will never find an end to it. I have a problem that can keep me busy for the rest of my life. I have something to look forward to.”
The New Yorker

“The going gets tough. Then tougher. Now, with the essays just out, an illustrated children’s book forthcoming with a respected Ontario publisher, and a curriculum vitae a juror once described as being ‘as long as [her] arm,’ I’m facing poverty unlike anything I’ve known since the 1980s, when I lived with my little family in a low-income duplex.” LitHub 

Contrary to the myth that authors work best in lonely isolation, the truth is that editors or close advisers have often quietly shaped great books. The 20th century brought the rise of the professional, interventionist editor. The Telegraph (UK) 

“We took it upon ourselves to search the world for authors who have been called ‘the Chekhov’ of their country or, more endearingly in Cynthia Ozick’s characterization of Alice Munro, ‘our Chekhov.’ Chekhovs from Ireland, Canada, India, China, Mexico, The United States, Greece, Israel, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Japan have made the list so far, but we, as readers, are in perpetual search of the next Chekhov of X …” Literary Hub as Jozef Imrich is Chekhov of Australia ...
“As is true of many American readers who encountered Chekhov first in college, my experience with his stories was both abrupt and brief, and came too early. … Chekhov seems to me a writer for adults, his work becoming useful and also beautiful by attracting attention to mature feelings, to complicated human responses and small issues of moral choice within large, overarching dilemmas.” Literary Hub 

An eight-year-old boy emerged from a medically induced coma with a remarkable story of visiting heaven and meeting a wide variety of people, including a literary agent who encouraged him to sell his story to a major publisher. Seems legit.

When it comes to criticism, Kingsley Amis said it best: “If you can’t annoy somebody with what you write, there’s little point in writing.” That spirit is in far too  short supply...

Joseph Mitchells journalism didn’t stand out. Then he met the anthropologist Franz Boas. Mitchell’s reporting absorbed the ethnographic insights of social science...

A medieval man in modern times, Léon Bloy kept a vow of poverty and suffering, cheered the sinking of the Titanic, and wrote of suicide ... suicide and other isms

How to speak American: Steal words, invent new ones, turn nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns. Smush words together

Whole Foods Exploits Prison Labor for Your Goodies, While Ripping You Off Counterpunch

San Francisco techies hiring Wiccan witch to protect computers from viruses Business Insider.  

A Ukrainian blogger looking into publically disclosed financial documents about President Petro Poroshenko's Roshen candy factory in the city of Lipetsk Russia has calculated that the president's company paid nearly 100 million rubles (the equivalent to about $1.75 million US) in taxes into the Russian budget in 2014.
Looking at the Lipetsk Confectionary Factory's official data, published on the website of AK&M, responsible for the release of public information in the Russian securities market, Ukrainian blogger Oleksiy Romanov found that as of June 30, 2015, the company's shares are 99.9319 percent owned by LLC 'Central European Confectionary Company, located in Kiev. Ukraine's Register of Legal Entities reveals that this company's major stakeholders are the closed investment fund Prime Assets Capital and closed investment fund KonditerInvest, with the final beneficiary (i.e. owner of the LLC) listed as none other than Poroshenko, Petro Alexeyevich. "I have heard this name somewhere. Have you?" Romanov joked.

Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian The end of capitalism has begun


Disclosures

The tiny islands where Canada and America are at war