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Saturday, March 05, 2016

Eternal Optimist: Not Guilty No Way

“A woman, thinking she had swallowed a pin with her bread, was screaming in agony as though she had an unbearable pain in her throat, where she thought she felt it stuck; but because externally there was neither swelling nor alteration, a smart man, judging that it was only a fancy and notion derived from some bit of bread that had scratched her when it went down, made her vomit, and, on the sly, tossed a crooked pin into what she threw up. The woman, thinking she had thrown it up, felt herself suddenly relieved of her pain.”
~Bathroom quote re power of imagination


New research by Danielle Li and colleagues finds that computers make better hiring decisions than managers when filling simpler jobs
Man vs. Machine: Which Makes Better Hires?




“Only Patricia Highsmith could phrase a novel of life-changing love in the language of Jack the Ripper.”
Los Angeles Times 


   All the stories I would like to write persecute me when I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, the little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, ‘Sir, write me, I am beautiful’. Umberto Eco quotes 10 best name of the rose


Senate Standing Committees on Economics, Feb 2016. The committee found that inexperienced investors were persuaded to invest in risky property investments at great personal cost.  Scrutiny of Financial Advice: Part I – Land banking: a ticking time bomb
 
In his long battle against vagueness in defining crimes, Justice Antonin Scalia was a true hero of liberty and the rule of law. Harvey Silverglate discusses that here

New Alzheimer’s treatment fully restores memory function ScienceAlert


It is not just sadness, happiness can break your heart too

Books Cold rivers and books Provide The Best Oscars Fodder, The Numbers Say 



“When a book has been terrifically popular, when people love the story and the characters, there’s almost a public demand that it be turned into a movie. The studio can be confident that the film will make money, and it may even turn out to be a really remarkable film.”  Lithub 


Chloe N. Clark writes about magical reveals in fiction. As she explains it, “authors, like magicians, need to know when the best moment to pull back the curtain is.” Pair with this Millions essay on using lightand a full palette of color to paint fiction.




James Parker: “I draw it up the side of the Boston Public Library. I draw it through the middle of Stephen King’s wallet. I draw it right between the frontal lobes of every writer who ever lived.”
Rivka Galchen: “Maybe Commercial Fiction is really great, or maybe it’s great the way a Dorito is great, but Commercial Fiction is in some way consonant with the market. … If, though, we didn’t have the term Literary to protect books of value that ¬aren’t brilliant as commerce, then we would have Melville’s Omoo and Typeebut not Moby-Dick.” New York Times Book Review



“Imagination or Hope isn’t stupid.”

The Guardian (UK) 


“For all the wrenching changes in trade publishing in the past decades, I know that my colleagues and 
I pretty much go about the thing in a fashion very similar to the way the editors I watched and learned from were doing it in the ’70s, and they were doing in a fashion very similar to the editors they learned from. Sometimes I think we’re like blacksmiths or bespoke cobblers — how many ways are there, really, to shoe a horse or a human?” The Millions
George Orwell died alone. But in his last days he was visited by friends, some dating back to his days at Eton. Many had ties to the CIA

Pink teacups, crumbling frescoes, and a brown typewriter. What can one learn from a journey to James Baldwin’s house in Saint-Paul de Vence? A great deal, it turns out Optimism Story About Writers 

Which continent is your favorite story set in? The team at Books on the Wall has created an infographic called Where in the World Should You Read Next?The piece features references to beloved works by Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, and David Foster Wallace. We’ve embedded the image below for you to explore further—what do you think? 
Czech (sic) out these links to view infographics on “The World’s Most Translated Books,” “The Lifecycle of a Book in Translation,” and “The Most Popular Books of All Time.” Click here to download a free digital copies of Frankenstein,Les Misérables, and A Tale of Two Cities. (via Electric Lit)

Allens, Feb 2016. A recent decision of the English High Court may pave the way for the use of 'predictive coding' in large scale discovery and regulatory investigations in Australia
 


In Penelope Fitzgerald’s words, Stevie Smith comes off like a charmingly but not altogether harmlessly eccentric character in one of Fitzgerald’s novels, perhaps a teacher in At Freddie’s: “Eccentricity can go very well with sincerity, and, in Stevie’s case, with shrewdness. She calculated the effect of her collection of queer hats and sticks, her face ‘pale as sand’, pale as her white stockings, and also, I think, of her apparent obsession with death.” By the way, TNR is sold 

Ashok Rao has an excellent post on this question, and it is not obvious that a ban is in order.  Here are a few parts of his multi-faceted argument: There is an information tradeoff. Imagine if criminals transacted only in $10,000 notes. It would be reasonably easy for intelligence agencies to sneak a traceable note to probe criminal networks. This would be close to impossible with a $20 note (not the least because this is a high velocity note used by normal people). Citing the high use of $100 among criminals doesn’t mean much. Of course criminals use the lightest / most compact / highest denomination currency at their disposal. Therefore suggestions along the lines of “n% of criminal activity is transacted in $100 bills” mean little because if we got rid of the $100 and managed to avoid the problems noted in point (1) it would be the case that “n% of criminal activity is transacted in $20 bills” $100 Notes