My personal favourite is the man sentenced to death who, as an act of mercy, is allowed to choose how he would like to die and (of course) chooses old age.
Can British Publishing Become More Diverse For Good?
Some authors and publishers are wary. “We have seen it all before. … A few people are championed and then people lose interest because they think the issue has been addressed. And then it all reverts back to the way it was before.”
‘Everyone Is Scared’ In Hong Kong’s Book Industry Since Those Publishers And Booksellers Were Disappeared
“Bookshops have closed. Publishers have left. Authors have stopped writing. Books have been pulped. Printers are refusing political works. Translators have grown weary of being associated with certain topics. Readers have stopped buying. And the whole industry is wondering if hard-hitting books on Chinese politics still have a future in the former British colony.”
This baffles Matthew Carter, a type designer whose work spans everything from metal type’s last stand to digital’s first, and whose dozens of typefaces, like Verdana and Georgia, are viewed daily by a billion-odd people. “I have no idea why people don’t use proper quotes. They are always [included] in the font,” Carter says.
This lack of quote sophistication is odd, because the web’s design origins owe a lot to choices Steve Jobs made at Apple and later at his second computer firm, Next. Jobs’s attachment to type famously stems from a calligraphy class taken at Reed College, and he ensured that the first Mac had a mix of bespoke and classic typefaces that included curly quotes and all the other punctuation a designer could want. At Next, he went further, and the web’s father, Tim Berners-Lee,built the first browser and server on a Next.
Meet Actor and the new (Cannon Jim) Whild Walker .... “I’m more about motivating someone to leave their house and walk than being a drill sergeant shouting at them,” McCarthy told The Guardian. “I try to listen more than talk.”
And it’s all working. McCarthy has gone on hundreds of walks with multiple repeat clients since starting the biz last spring, and he’s working on expanding internationally. McCarthy went so far as to trademark the job title and hire additional walkers. He also recently created the International Motivational Walking Association, a forum to share and discuss best practices and techniques. People Walker: those new service sector jobs
The power of “yuck!” and “ew!”. Disgust, which comes from our evolutionary fear of germs, goes a surprisingly long way toward explaining our manners, morals, and religion Germs
The Antiques Business Is Shrinking, And Dealers Try To Adapt
Many of the well-known storefronts in New York and London have moved or closed, and some estimates say that the entire industry has shrunk by half. (Sotheby’s income in the category has shrunk by more than 80% since 2007.)
‘Seinfeld’ Writers Reveal The Shocking Truth: They Did Not Make Festivus Up – It Was Real
Dan O’Keefe explains how his father invented it as a family holiday 50 years ago, and how it got into aSeinfeld script. (O’Keefe really, really hoped it would get cut.) The real-life Festivus didn’t have a set date or season or the Feats of Strength, but there was an aluminum pole and there was most definitely Airing of Grievances.
Words of wisdom over the years from Dr. Thomas Sowell"Law and Romeo and Juliet: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito served as chief judge in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's wrongful death mock trial of Romeo and Juliet in Washington, DC." C-SPAN has posted the video online at this link
Can British Publishing Become More Diverse For Good?
Some authors and publishers are wary. “We have seen it all before. … A few people are championed and then people lose interest because they think the issue has been addressed. And then it all reverts back to the way it was before.”
Jack Townsend, Q. How Many IRS Special Agents Brandishing Guns Does It Take to Execute a Tax Crimes Search Warrant? A. 73
Kristine Tidgren, Future of “Farmer Fair Practices Rules” Uncertain, Even as Unveiled (Ag Docket)
The Year In Pictures 2016 – A selection of the year’s most riveting photographs
Chat is the New Browser Medium. Talking his book, but it may be a good book to talk
Was Bach a bully? He was a teenage thug, drawing a dagger in an altercation with a bassoonist. Then there are the hints of anti-Semitism... Fighter Bach
‘THE BEACH AT NIGHT’ BY ELENA FERRANTE (REVIEW)
Leading Antiquities Dealer Arrested, Charged For Selling Looted Items
“The dealer, Nancy Wiener, has sold illicit Asian objects to Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses, according to the criminal complaint filed in Manhattan Criminal Court. The case is likely to revive questions about the auction house’s due diligence procedures before they sell antiquities.”
Meet The Writers Who Have Sold Not Just Millions Of Books, But Hundreds Of Millions
There are best-selling authors, and then there are mega-best-selling authors — writers who have sold 100 million copies or more. Writers like Ken Follett, Nora Roberts,James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer. And there may be more of them now than ever
Why Scorsese’s ‘Silence’ Is So Different From Most ‘Faith-Based’ Films
“‘Faith-based film’ is the label typically used to describe movies with an agenda: Some, like 2016’sRisen, exist to proselytize, while others, like 2014’s God’s Not Dead, seek to make a narrow argument about politics or culture. For some audiences, this kind of work may be satisfying, and that’s fine. But ultimately, movies in this genre usually aren’t designed to complicate or challenge people’s worldviews; they’re not created to deepen people’s understanding of themselves and the world. Silence, by contrast, treats faith not as a simple point to be made, but as a heart-wrenching puzzle.”
Haskell spends more of his chapter on painting than on anything else but let’s get to literature. He says, it has “not produced men who are the equals of Streeton, Heysen or Gruner”. Interesting. I might be wrong but I’d say that now Miles Franklin, Katharine Susannah Prichard, and Eleanor Dark are at least as well-known as those three artists. Anyhow, here is his impression: Those who could write the great Australian novels, who are neither apathetic nor complacent and who correspond in some way to our Bloomsbury, are unfortunately too busy talking to accomplish more than a poem, a pamphlet or a short story. They are dissatisfied, they hate the squatter, despise the ‘dinkum Aussie’ and are well to the left of his traditional labour. Their thoughts are in Spain or Russia. They have both imagination and compassion, but there is more of bitterness in their make-up… They concentrate on the ideal of some vague revolution just as the masses concentrate on sport.
The truth is, that in New York there is room enough for Everybody, whereas in London, huge as it is, there is not sufficient room for Anybody.
The short story can’t wither and, living, can’t be tied to a plan. It is only when the short story is written to a rigid plan, or done as an imitation, that it dies. It dies when it is pinned down, but not elsewhere. It is the million drops of water that are the looking-glasses of all our lives.