“The longlists for the 2009 Orwell Prize for Political Writing were announced today, and for the first time the award includes a category for bloggers. Along with the traditional Book and Journalism submissions, this year the judges received entries in the form of YouTube videos and Twitter tweets. From eighty-three entrants for the Blog Prize [...]
Archive for February, 2009
Write On!: Blogs Now Eligible for Orwell Prize in Political Writing
Posted in Books, Current Events, Europe, Politics, World Wide Web, Writers & Writing on February 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Porn in the USA, or: Good Christian Fun
Posted in Politics, Popular Culture, Religion, Science & Technology, Sex & Gender, World Wide Web on February 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography. . . . “‘When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different,’ says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School. “However, there are some [...]
Ryanair’s Not So Friendly Skies: “Pay As You ‘Go’” Toilets at 30,000 Feet
Posted in Business, Europe, Foreign Travel on February 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Ryanair’s chief executive caused howls of protest today when he suggested that the airline may charge passengers £1 to use its toilets. “Michael O’Leary said that the carrier had been investigating fitting coin slots to the doors of aircraft toilets, similar to those installed at train stations. “‘One thing we have looked at in the [...]
Defining Moments (Obama) & Tall Tales (Jindal)
Posted in American History, Congress, Current Events, Economy, Obama, Politics on February 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
From TPM, evidence that the story told Tuesday night by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal during his GOP response to President Obama’s speech to Congress — “about how he backed a tough-talking sheriff’s efforts to rescue Katrina victims, government red-tape be damed [sic]” — was not true. The full text of Governor Jindal’s speech can be found [...]
DUMBO Dock Street Project Update – Brooklyn Borough President Says Yes . . . But
Posted in Architecture, Brooklyn, DUMBO, New York City, Urban Affairs on February 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“The Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, has jumped into a contentious debate over a proposed development near the Brooklyn Bridge, saying that he supports the project but would like to see it modified. “In a letter to the Department of City Planning, Mr. Markowitz wrote that he supported the proposed tower, called Dock Street Dumbo, which would include [...]
Lonelier Planet: Job Cuts, Pay Freezes at Travel Guide Publisher
Posted in Books, Business, Foreign Travel, U.S. Travel on February 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Lonely Planet has imposed a pay freeze with immediate effect after announcing that 50 jobs have been cut. . . . “The travel publisher, which employs 500 people worldwide has axed 10% of its staff. . . . [Acting CEO Stephen] Palmer said they had made some, ‘difficult decisions in response to the prolonged and deep economic [...]
Joseph O’Neill’s “Netherland” Wins Pen/Faulkner Fiction Award
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Brooklyn, Literature, New York City, Sports, U.S. Travel, Writers & Writing on February 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Joseph O’Neill’s novel ‘Netherland’ was named the winner of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation said on Wednesday. The honor for ‘Netherland,’ about a Dutch-born equities analyst, his British wife and their son, who live in New York during the Sept. 11 attack and its aftermath, is something of a comeback for Mr. O’Neill. [...]
What’s Wrong with this Picture?: Obama’s White House Watermelon Garden
Posted in Obama, Politics, Race on February 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
What’s up with California Republicans and all the Obama-watermelon references? Dean Grose, the white, Republican mayor of Los Alamitos, California, has apologized to a local black businesswoman, Keyanus Price, to whom he sent an email depicting the White House lawn planted with watermelons. The picture included the caption, “No Easter egg hunt this year.” (via The Huffington Post) And [...]
No Respect?: Why Can’t a Woman Write the Great American Novel?
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Literature, Race, Sex & Gender, Writers & Writing on February 25, 2009 | 2 Comments »
“Every few years, someone counts up the titles covered in the New York Times Book Review and the short fiction published in the New Yorker, as well as the bylines and literary works reviewed in such highbrow journals as Harper’s and the New York Review of Books, and observes that the male names outnumber the [...]
Brooklyn’s New Culinary Movement
Posted in Brooklyn, Business, DUMBO, Food & Wine, New York City, U.S. Travel on February 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“These days, with a kitchen and a bit of ambition, you can start to make a name for yourself in Brooklyn. The borough has become an incubator for a culinary-minded generation whose idea of fun is learning how to make something delicious and finding a way to sell it. “These Brooklynites, most in their 20s [...]
Resistance Movement: Indians Decry Auction of Gandhi’s Items
Posted in Antiques & Folk Art, Asia, Business, Collectors & Collecting, International Affairs, Politics on February 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Indians are expressing outrage over a New York auction that is set to sell some of the most personal belongings of India’s great independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi — the gaunt, bare-chested man whose ascetic life defied materialism. “The auction is a travesty for many Indians, for whom Gandhi is a godlike figure, and some [...]
The Sound of One Hand Reading: Jeff Bezos & Jon Stewart on the Kindle 2
Posted in Books, Business, Media & Advertising, Science & Technology, Television, Writers & Writing on February 24, 2009 | 1 Comment »
As an early user and fan of Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader, I’ve wanted for the longest time to post something about the device, but never more than now, now that the Kindle 2 has been released and reviewed in various forums. Finally, Jon Stewart to the rescue. From last night’s The Daily Show, here is Stewart’s discussion about the Kindle 2 [...]
Splendor in the Stacks: William Stout, San Francisco Bookman
Posted in Architecture, Books, Business, Collectors & Collecting on February 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
From today’s New York Times, Allison Arieff on San Francisco bookseller, collector and architectural book publisher William Stout and the old-fashioned pleasures of hunting in the stacks: “Stores like Stout’s (not to mention people like Stout!) are a rare breed these days: there are two floors bursting with over 200,000 books on everything from the sustainable houses of [...]
Google & the Future of Books: Settlement News Update
Posted in Books, Business, Science & Technology, World Wide Web, Writers & Writing on February 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Updating my January 31st post, Google & the Future of Books: I received the following email today from Nancy Dolan at Kinsella Media, LLC, regarding the Google Book Search settlement – “Thank you for your blog post about the Google Book Search settlement. The process of notifying authors and publishers about the settlement has begun. If [...]
Pot O’ Gold? or: Can Taxing Marijuana Save California’s Economy?
Posted in Business, Counter Culture, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Economy, Politics, Urban Affairs on February 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Could Cannabis sativa be a salvation for California’s fiscal misfortunes? Can the state get a better budget grip by taxing what some folks toke? “[Assemblyman Tom Ammiano] from San Francisco announced legislation Monday to do just that: make California the first state in the nation to tax and regulate recreational marijuana in the same manner as alcohol.” (via LA [...]
“The Eyes of Texas,” or: 43,000 Virtual Texas Deputies Patrolling the Rio Grande
Posted in American West, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Current Events, International Affairs, Politics, Science & Technology, The Americas on February 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“In a controversial program aimed at enhancing border security, Texas sheriffs have erected a series of surveillance cameras along the Rio Grande and connected them to the Internet. “Thousands of people are now virtual Border Patrol agents — and they’re on the lookout for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants. “Robert Fahrenkamp, a truck driver in [...]
Summer (of the Short Story) Comes Early
Posted in Books, Literature, Writers & Writing on February 23, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Ahead of their publication later this year of six new short story collections, Harper Perennial has kicked off promotion of its “2009: Summer of the Short Story” campaign by launching a new blog, Fifty-Two Stories. As reported by Publishers Weekly, the publishing house announced “that each week in 2009 it is posting a new short story. Some are [...]
That Cover Girl Face, or: The Hot-or-Not Author Syndrome
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Literature, Sex & Gender, Writers & Writing on February 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Writing in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Jacob Silverman denounces the “lazy and shallow tactic” of discussing an author’s looks in a book review. He recalls the often overheated commentary about Marisha Pessl‘s dust jacket photo in her 2006 debut novel, Special Topics In Calamity Physics, and takes Janet Maslin to task for her February 15th New York Times review [...]
Publish & Perish: On Publishing’s Demise
Posted in Books, Business, Economy, Writers & Writing on February 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Peter Olson, until recently the chairman and CEO of Random House, wrote in Publishers Weekly last month: ‘While 2008 ended on a disappointing and even discouraging note for many in the book industry, the outlook for the new year is even bleaker. One-time adjustments by retailers and underlying shifts in the structure of the book industry will [...]
What We Don’t Know Will Hurt Us: Frank Rich on America’s Culture of Denial
Posted in American History, Current Events, Economy, Obama, Politics on February 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“One of the most persistent cultural tics of the early 21st century is Americans’ reluctance to absorb, let alone prepare for, bad news. We are plugged into more information sources than anyone could have imagined even 15 years ago. The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly ‘changed everything,’ slapping us back to reality. Yet we are [...]
