If Independent Film is good.....
Why are Self-Published books bad?
(According to Critics Who Count...)
I have my own views...but you first.
Dr Howard Martin, 71, is accused of murdering Frank Moss, 59, Stanley Weldon, 69, and Harry Gittins, 74, by giving them overdoses of morphine.
If you think there's an instance where Christmas is being suppressed in your town, school or workplace, send me a note and I'll look into it
The miracle: In 1941, Wonder Bread participated in a government-supported move to enrich white bread with vitamins and minerals. Known as the “quiet miracle,” bread enrichment brought essential nutrients to people who previously could not afford nutritious foods.
It reminds me of Pavel Chichikov's two-sentence formula to sum up all of human history (oft-quoted by Mark Shea):
1. What could it hurt?
2. How was I supposed to know?
The mall planned for the World Trade Center site will include a Barneys, DKNY, Gap, Express, Charles David, H2O, and Starbucks, according to renderings released yesterday by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
But there's a catch - none of the retailers included in the images has committed to renting space at the site, where shopping is scheduled to begin in 2010.
[snip]
Asked why the retailers were pictured in the plans without having agreed to open stores at the site, a spokesman for the Port Authority, Steven Coleman, said the images were examples of "artistic license."
He said he was not sure if the retailers knew they were pictured in the Port Authority's renderings. "That's not to say they won't open stores there," he said.
None of the retailers contacted by The New York Sun would say whether they plan to open outlets at ground zero. Many were unaware they had been included in renderings of the project.
Iraqi police have arrested four men in connection with the kidnapping of the Guardian journalist Rory Carroll in Baghdad. The police are looking for a further four suspects.
Carroll, 33, who has been on assignment in Iraq for nine months, was freed on Thursday night after being held for 36 hours. He is due to fly back to his family's home in Dublin tomorrow.
The Iraqi police have seldom been proactive in hostage situations. But diplomats praised them for following a trail that started with the head of the family who Carroll interviewed in Sadr City. The trail led to a group of men who visited the home during the interview.
Carroll was released unharmed after intensive diplomatic negotiations behind the scenes. The Irish foreign minister, Dermot Ahern, disclosed today that his government had been helped by the British, French and Italian governments. Although Carroll is an Irish citizen, the Irish government, which opposed the war, has no diplomatic presence in Baghdad.
Mr Ahern also thanked the Iranian government for its help. He confirmed that no ransom had been paid and said he had no knowledge of any prisoner swaps.
Filing to read later when I have more time:
London mayor, U.S. diplomats swap road rage Related previous post: Americans refusing to pay English taxes (modern variation)
Key oxygen source found in rocks on moon
Protestant groups put their faith in advertising
Williams defends Anacostia site for ballpark (eminent domain case)
Executive order sought on prayers (military chaplains)
Now we face the prospect of Hurricane Wilma. Earlier today, it set a record for the lowest barometric pressure for an Atlantic hurricane and, as of 2:00PM, its sustained winds were measured at 165 mph, with gusts to 200 mph. As it enters the Gulf of Mexico, it will almost certainly weaken due to cooler water and wind shear from an approaching cold front (if you live here long enough, you become something of an expert on these matters!).
No one knows how much Wilma will weaken, nor does anyone have a very good idea as to exactly where she will make landfall (expected late Saturday or early Sunday) in Florida. The “cone of uncertainty” is unusally large. For these reasons, I still don’t know whether we will be evacuating.
Until we evacuate (if we have to), I plan to live-blog Wilma’s approach. If we don’t evacuate, I’ll continue to live-blog until our electricity goes out, which it almost certainly will. For the vicarious thrill-seekers among you (I count myself in that category), this should prove to be entertaining. Adrenalin is a wonderful thing.
A late season hurricane severely intensifies the evacuation problem. The population of our part of Florida swells after Columbus Day, as the “Snowbirds” migrate south for the winter. There are a lot more cars on the local highways than there were even two weeks ago.
By last evening, all service stations between Ft. Myers and Naples were out of regular gas. Today they are out of gas, period. Sometime before 3 PM today, our local supermarket was completely out of bottled water and bread. As old hands at this stuff, we stocked up ahead of time.
What a story. History is filled with amazing tales like this.
And yet, how many of our kids recoil at the word “history,” telling us how “boring” it all is.
Here’s what that tells me — not enough teachers are using the right strategies to bring history to life for kids. They too often find it to be rote and irrelevant to their lives. But it doesn’t have to be, and it shouldn’t be.
The Guardian's Iraq correspondent, Rory Carroll, was last night missing after being kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad. Carroll, 33, an experienced foreign correspondent, had been conducting an interview in the city with a victim of Saddam Hussein's regime. He had been preparing an article for today's paper on the opening of the former dictator's trial yesterday.
Carroll, who was accompanied by two drivers and a translator, was confronted by the gunmen as he left the house where he had been carrying out the interview. He and one of the drivers were bundled into cars. The driver was released about 20 minutes later.
Carroll has been in Iraq since January. He volunteered for the assignment and his coverage has been critical of the US-led coalition. Before Iraq, he had been the paper's correspondent in Africa, based in Johannesburg, since 2002. In the previous three years he had been based in Rome, where he covered the aftermath of the Kosovo war.
The score, which contains multiple deletions and corrections, was found by librarian Heather Carbo at the Palmer Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
Ms Carbo was conducting an inventory of the seminary's archives when she came across the manuscript in a basement cabinet.
Manuscripts by Mozart were discovered at the seminary in 1990.
President Dr Wallace Charles Smith said: "At the time, we called it 'the Mozart miracle'. It seems appropriate that this time we are thankful for the 'Beethoven blessing'."
Ms [Lleuwen] Steffan, from Sling, near Tregarth, Bangor, first became interested in hymns after finding a hymn book in her grandmother's attic.
"I knew the words off by heart because I used to sing them like a Polly parrot, but I had never thought what they actually meant," she said.
"There was a feeling that something big was happening, there was a revolution behind these hymns.
"The message is ageless, no matter if you believe in a religion or not.
"You can't fail to be touched by the strength of feeling in the words, and understand that the people who wrote them experienced something real," she added.
And so the question has come up - which is better for the markets, open-trading pits or electronic trading? She looks at the pros and cons of each.TURBULENT times hit oil markets when hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew destruction into America's Gulf coast and slashed refinery capacity by at least 18 per cent. The price of crude soared beyond $70 a barrel.
But while our attention has been grabbed by these dramatic events, other changes that could affect oil market trading have been gathering apace.In April, London's International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) finally closed down its open-pit trading floor after 25 years of activity.
[snip]
But just when we thought that open-pit trading was being jettisoned as a colourful anachronism, the ebullient Americans have arrived in town in the form of NYMEX Europe, which launched its first open-outcry oil market in London last month...
NEW YORK--Nothing could have been less unexpected than the news that Harold Pinter had won the Nobel Prize for literature. The only surprise was that he deserved it--which probably wasn't why he got it.
Teachout goes on to say, at the bottom of his piece:
What he said.All this notwithstanding, it's clear that the Nobels are frequently given for purposes less aesthetic than political, though more often it's the peace prize with which the Nobel committee gets stuck on stupid. (Two words: Yasser Arafat.) And so I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of the reasons why Harold Pinter was deemed especially worthy of this year's literature prize was because his political views were so closely in sync with those of the rest of Old Europe's chattering classes.
Maybe I'm wrong. I wish I were. But by now it doesn't much matter. A prize that has been indiscriminately bestowed upon V.S. Naipaul and Dario Fo, after all, can no longer be taken very seriously, no matter who gets it after that.
To many astute readers, the novel seems more like propaganda for the permissive society than a work of art. It is a deeply flawed novel, both stylistically and morally, but the sixties should not be given the last word on its meaning and significance. On the Road is a surprisingly melancholy book, and its originality renders every subsequent expression of youthful angst derivative and cheap. It is not an advertisement for the sixties version of personal freedom, but a warning against it.
Winnemucca was the first Native American woman known to secure a copyright and to publish in the English language. Her book, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, is an autobiographical account of her people during their first forty years of contact with explorers and settlers.
On this day in 1939 a German submarine sank HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The death toll of over 800 was a significant setback to the war effort. Read about Scotland's shipwrecks at heritage.scotsman.com.
FROM OUR EDITORS
A huge map hangs from a Pentagon wall that divides the planet into five area military commands. Veteran Atlantic Monthly correspondent Robert D. Kaplan decided that the only way to explore such a map, "to know it intimately," was on foot. With unprecedented access, he traveled alongside America's elite fighting forces to far-flung regions of the world, including Mongolia, Columbia, Yemen, West Africa, and Iraq. With vivid reportage, he describes not only conventional military missions and patrols in volatile areas but also humanitarian activities. First-rate journalism; first-class insights.
Megan Sherar, the sister of Biblio.com's CEO, Brendan Sherar, boarded a plane bound for Peace Corps Service in rural Bolivia over two years ago. Biblio.com was in the midst of preparing to launch a then new site for used, rare, and out-of-print books.
Little did we realize that 18 months later, over a distance of 3000 miles, and 7000 feet in elevation, our divergent paths would rejoin.
In April of 2003, a group of citizens of the community of Morado K'asa in Bolivia approached Megan with the idea of constructing a library for their community of 200 plus families. This group was headed up by JUSIBA ("Joventud sin Barreras" - "Youth Without Barriers"), an active local youth organization, and was backed by the leaders of the community.
At the same time, back in the U.S., after a more than a year in business, Biblio had achieved solid financial stability. Keeping with our corporate goals and missions, we were in the process of choosing a set of charities and non-profits which we could benefit by leveraging our success as a company. (We choose these by a companywide process of nomination and voting).
It was at this fortuitous moment that Megan presented her idea to us, and asked if Biblio could help finance the construction of a library for her community...
As controversial as the Iraq war has become around the world, it is easy to lose sight of the extraordinarily good news that has emerged from that country and battleground. The first was the downfall of one of the world's most heinous dictatorships. Saddam Hussein killed his people, bullied his small neighbours and threatened his large ones. The other is the widespread and enthusiastic way in which Iraqis have grasped democratic choice. This weekend, they will once again go to the polls to make the decisions that will decide their country's fate. When Iraqis vote _ or abstain _ tomorrow on a constitution hammered out in a remarkably short time, they will be doing something none of their Arab neighbours do. Several major Sunni organisations still were debating this week whether to vote or boycott. By contrast, about 5,000 members of major Islamist student groups in Egypt held protests to demand a free vote, on anything. The arguments and debates over the proposed Iraq constitution during the past several weeks have been passionate, opinionated and peaceful...
April 4, 2005 · This I Believe is an exciting national project that invites you to write about the core beliefs that guide your daily life. NPR will air these personal statements from listeners each Monday on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. By inviting Americans from all walks of life to participate, series producers Dan Gediman and Jay Allison hope to create a picture of the American spirit in all its rich complexity.
This I Believe is based on a 1950s radio program of the same name, hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. In creating This I Believe, Murrow said the program sought "to point to the common meeting grounds of beliefs, which is the essence of brotherhood and the floor of our civilization."...
If you have any romance left in your heart for Castro, read Against All Hope or Waiting for Snow in Havana. The former is chilling and deserved to be read to honor the courage of its author and his prison mates. The latter is a magical book about growing up that also tells of what Castro was really about as almost an afterthought. It is one of the finest books I have read in the last ten years.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (BP)--Memphis has become the 197th U.S. city to embrace a Community Marriage Policy.
More than 175 faith and community leaders at Shelby County’s Second Annual Healthy Marriage Summit affirmed their commitment to equip “individuals, couples and families for healthy, successful relationships,” as stated in the Mid-South Community Marriage Policy.
The goal of the policy is to reduce both the rate of divorce and the number of children born out of wedlock in Shelby County by 20 percent by 2010...
Help to reestablish hurricane-devastated librariesMore
Community institutions have been devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. At least 12 libraries in Louisiana and Mississippi were completely destroyed, along with the thousands of books in their collections. You can help to restock those shelves. As the United States rebuilds the Gulf Coast region, Alibris is proud to be working alongside the Texas Library Association (TLA). TLA has established a book donation program to accept contributions on behalf of affected libraries. Donated books will be stored until the affected libraries have found alternate facilities and are in a position to receive and process book deliveries. You can assist devastated libraries by purchasing books from this wishlist today. Your books will ship direct to TLA's donated storage facility in Austin, where they will wait until the affected libraries can put books on their shelves and open their doors. Donate a book today!
[...]Full commentary
The two immediate questions are: will this coalition be stable and coherent? And can Frau Merkel push through any of the changes urgently needed to reform Germany’s economy? Smiling wanly, she insisted yesterday that the economy would be her main focus and the new coalition stood for “new policies”. Already, however, she has conceded too much....
[...]
Given these contradictions, the prospects of a stable coalition are slim. It may run without fatal conflict for a few months, as the SPD will want to demonstrate maturity and responsibility and show that the coalition is merely continuing reforms already begun by Herr Schröder. But when real change is contemplated, the SDP will be tempted back to populist politics and Cabinet wrangling will begin. Each side will then want to go to the voters to increase its power. Only the deluded can see a long period of political stability.
Frau Merkel has little time, therefore, to establish herself...
...Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, asked some of the nation's foremost constitutional law scholars to imagine how they might have written Roe. The results are compiled in "What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said: America's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Most Controversial Decision."...
Mossa, a Jesuit steering toward ordination in 2008, hosts the You Duped Me Lord blog. I keep meaning to ask him about that blog name...
Update: He left an explanation in the comments, which I'm bumping up here:
Check out Jeremiah 20 in the New American Bible translation. That's where the name comes from. I love it because expresses the frustrating and wonderful truth about vocation that it never is quite what you imagined it would be, because God knows that if he told you what was going to happen, you probably wouldn't have done it. We have to grow into our vocations, and sometimes we might get a little angry at God in the process! But read on in that chapter and you'll see that Jeremiah has been inescapably captured by God in spite of everything. I can relate.
Peace,
Mark
Full columnI find myself lately not passionately supporting or opposing any particular nominee. But I'd give a great deal to see Supreme Court justices term-limited. They should be picked not for life but for a specific term of specific length, and then be released back into the community. This would involve amending the Constitution. Why not? We'd amend it to ban flag-burning, even though a fool burning a flag can't possibly harm our country. But a Kelo decision and a court unrebuked for it can really tear the fabric of a nation.
MoreYahoo is one of a number of organizations supporting the Open Content Alliance, which plans to set up an online archive of existing digital collections of books and films, as well as to add new works to the archive...
Adobe Systems and Hewlett-Packard will supply software. Books will be provided by the University of Toronto and O'Reilly Media, and films by the Prelinger Archives and the United Kingdom's National Archives. Yahoo will index that content and fund the digitization of a collection of American literature selected by the University of California, according to an announcement posted to Yahoo's official blog on Sunday by Brewster Kahle.[snip]
Some of the works will be released under one or other of the Creative Commons licenses, which allow artistic works to be distributed or reused under certain conditions. In this way, third parties could transform some of the classic books in the digital library into audio books, or reprint them and offer them for sale, without additional permission, Kahle wrote.
