Literary.Pundit

Novelists Ken Follett, J.K. Rowling, Nick Hornby, and John Grisham : Scribd and the Issue of Copyrights and the Uploading of Book Texts Online

2009-03-31T23:14:00.002+02:00

Scribd is becoming a force to be reckoned with on the Internet.

At ScribdBlog in their posting What ever happened to Fact Checking?, the Scribd Team goes one on one with the Times of London on copyright issues relating to Scribd, involving such famous novelists as J.K. Rowling, Ken Follett, Nick Hornby and John Grisham, who has the current Number 3 Bestseller on the New York Times list of hardcover fiction with his book, of all things, called The Associate, which Patrick Anderson of the The Washington Post calls "A DEVASTATING PORTRAIT OF THE BIG-TIME, BIG-BUCKS LEGAL WORLD."

We were gratified (but of course "legally shocked") at the Times of London article which incurred Scribd's wrath to learn that immensely popular and writingly gifted novelist Ken Follett's World without End (a New York Times No. 1 bestseller) had been uploaded to Scribd and had been viewed 500 times in five months.

We recently uploaded some of our own published works to Scribd. After only one month we have more than 500 views of two of our documents:

The Norse Pharaohs: Astronomical Decipherments re Tanum Hierakonpolis Nazca Sahara Near East DOC

The Origin of the Cult of Horus in Predynastic Egypt DOC

We are strongly considering entry into the publishing field with a novel of our own. Ken Follett and cohorts, look out, there is competition on the way!

Robert Frank classic The Americans published in a new version

2009-01-26T00:59:00.000+01:00

The Americans
in German, "Die Amerikaner"
and in Chinese "美国人".
I got this book for my birthday this past December.

If you are down about the American economy and the prospects for 2009 and beyond, don't be. Take a look at this book - and at this first link about that book - to see how greatly much of America has changed in the 50+ years since the mid-1950's. Obama's America in 2009 is a vastly different place than shown in the photographs in "The Americans".

As written by Philip Gefter at the New York Times (Art & Design section online):

"“The Americans,” [is] an intimate visual chronicle of common people in ordinary situations drawn from several trips he made through his adopted country in the mid-1950s."

The Americans, by Robert Frank, a classic photographic study of the United States in the 1950's, was first published May 15, 1958, by Robert Delpire in Paris, followed by an English edition in 1959 via Grove Press in New York, in which the original French language by Alain Bosquet about American history was replaced by an introduction and captions in English by Jack Kerouac.

As written at aloHAA:

"The end result [of Frank's photographic journey through the USA in the 1950's] was the 83 images in the book that no American publisher would touch. It took a Frenchman, Robert Delpire, to publish “Les Americains” in 1958. Progressive publisher Barney Rosset produced the first American edition under his Grove Press the following year. Frank revealed a harsh, sometimes divided America that was a lot different from the rah-rah ’50s dream of “Father Knows Best.” His out-of-the-box compositions paved the way for William Eggleston’s profound color images of America that have garnered unanimous applause in the Whitney’s “William Eggleston: Democratic Camera.” “No one has had a greater influence on photography in the last half-century than the Swiss-born Mr. Frank, though his reputation rests almost entirely on a single book published five decades ago,” writes Philip Gefter in the New York Times. "

The German publisher Steidl in Göttingen,
together with the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
in 2008 published a new version of the book in three languages:

English,
German (translation by Hans Wolf)
and Chinese (see e.g. 罗伯特·弗兰克的《美国人》 “The Americans” by Robert Frank).

Frank, 83 years old at the date of publication - a number which corresponds to the 83 tritone plates in the book, chosen out of 20,000 photographs - worked intensively himself on this new version of his now classic book, including for example using some negatives varying from previous editions.

The 13-character ISBN for the English version of the book is: 978-3-86521-584-0.
The 13-character ISBN for the German version of the book is: 978-3-86521-658-8.
The 13-character ISBN for the Chinese version of the book is: 978-3-86521-657-1.

This book is a "must have" for any library that includes materials on America.

For those of my friends in Nebraska, where I grew up, two of the plates in the book are from Nebraska, one of highway 30 between Ogallala and North Platte, and the other of Hested's department store in Lincoln. I've seen both, and, yes, that's exactly the way it looked.

The Case of the Harry Potter Lexicon : J.K. Rowling vs. the Cyclopians (Encyclopedians)

2008-03-13T15:37:00.004+01:00

The Harry Potter Lexicon is in the news, as J.K. Rowling battles the Cyclopians (encyclopedians).

RDR Books writes:

"HARRY POTTER LEXICON CASE UPDATE
New York Federal District Court Judge Robert Patterson has scheduled a trial for March 24, 25 and 26 in the matter of Warner Bros. Entertainment and J.K. Rowling v. RDR Books. The judge consolidated a previously scheduled injunction hearing with the trial. The plaintiffs want to block publication of librarian Steve Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon. Here is the RDR Books statement on the case:

In this action, a distinguished and tremendously successful novelist demands the suppression of a reference guide to her works. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, asserts that this reference guide infringes both her copyright in the seven Potter novels and her right to publish, at some unidentified point in the future, a reference guide of her own. In support of her position she appears to claim a monopoly on the right to publish literary reference guides, and other non-academic research, relating to her own fiction.

This is a right no court has ever recognized. It has little to recommend it. If accepted, it would dramatically extend the reach of copyright protection, and eliminate an entire genre of literary supplements: third party reference guides to fiction, which for centuries have helped readers better access, understand and enjoy literary works. By extension, it would threaten not just reference guides, but encyclopedias, glossaries, indexes, and other tools that provide useful information about copyrighted works. Ms. Rowling's intellectual property rights simply do not extend so far and, even if they did, she has not shown that the publication of this reference guide poses a sufficient threat of irreparable harm to justify an injunction. Her preliminary injunction motion should be denied.

Read RDR Books' Opposition Brief filed by our attorneys David Hammer, Lizbeth Hasse, Anthony Falzone, Julie Ahrens and Robert Handelsman. Also filed was expert witness testimony on the Harry Potter Lexicon by Professor Janet Sorenson of the English faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. Have a look at this exhibit, a thank you note from Scholastic Publication Potterologist and editor Cheryl Klein to Steve Vander Ark. All available background information on the Harry Potter Lexicon lawsuit is available here.

Media contacts for the Harry Potter Lexicon Case

One of the great intellectual property law cases of our time, a dramatic work with a platinum cast, has been underway for some time now in the trademark and copyright infringement action by Warner Bros. and J.K. Rowling against RDR Books, makers of an allegedly unauthorized Harry Potter Encyclopedia, who we here thus dub the Cyclopians.

Joe Nocera at the New York Times in A Tight Grip Can Choke Creativity wrote on February 9, 2008:

"On Friday, a lawyer named Anthony Falzone filed his side’s first big brief in the case of Warner Bros. Entertainment and J. K. Rowling v. RDR Books. Mr. Falzone is employed by Stanford Law School, where he heads up the Fair Use Project, which was founded several years ago by Lawrence Lessig, perhaps the law school’s best-known professor. Mr. Falzone and the other lawyers at the Fair Use Project are siding with the defendant, RDR Books, a small book publisher based in Muskegon, Mich. As you can see from the titans who have brought the suit, RDR Books needs all the legal firepower it can muster."

The Leaky Cauldron informs us that a trial date has now been set.

The Guardian writes on March 11, 2008:

"On one side: global-celebrity author JK Rowling. On the other: an amateur fan site devoted to the world's favourite boy wizard. At stake: the soul of Harry Potter."

We saw a vision of Hedwig bringing in the last issues of US Reports by mail the other day to deal with a case of mysterious first impression?
WHOO can be sure?

As The Guardian writes, all wizards of the legal powers convene:

"[O]n March 24 when a New York court considers the injunction that Rowling and Warner Brothers have taken out against a small, Michigan-based publisher, RDR Books, to prevent publication of the Harry Potter Lexicon, an A-Z guide to all things Hogwarts. It could also be a landmark case, because what is at stake is not just an author's right to control the publication of secondary works but also the right to publish in book form information that has been previously available on the web."

Keep your dragons at bay!

What does the law of superheros tell us about the rights of mere mortals?

Hat tip to CaryGEE.

Update with some links about the case found online:

From Stanford's Fair Use Project

Nice posting and lots of comments at Crooked Timber

P2PNet and P2PNet-again

The Online Harry Potter Lexicon of the Challenged Book

The J.K. Rowling Official Site praising the online website

RDR Books

Steve Vander Ark at the UrbanWire. As written at UrbanWire:

"Steve Vander Ark, 46, a librarian for a K-8 school in Michigan and the resident director for the Caledonia Community Players, and published compiler of an encyclopaedia of Star Trek the Next Generation, is renowned throughout the Harry Potter Fandom online for creating The Harry Potter Lexicon - the first, and only complete online encyclopaedic companion to the Harry Potter books. Started in the year 2000, The Harry Potter Lexicon contains every single fact, feature, character and detail from the books in a systematic catalogue, and was recently awarded the third prestigious Fan Site Award [by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling on her official site.] Steve is also an active speaker at Harry Potter-related academic symposiums held in America."

Read the rest here at UrbanWire.

Library Journal where Rowling says the book is a "Harry Potter rip-off"

Beattie's Book Blog

Science Fiction SFFaudio Blog Reviews Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Live in Concert by Douglas Adams

2008-01-30T21:51:00.000+01:00

The SFFaudio Blog has a review of

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Live in Concert by Douglas Adams

Take a look.

Off to the Stars of the Galaxy by Kaulinsium.

Spooner or Later : Um ... a New Book on Verbal Blunders by Erard

2007-08-23T16:27:00.000+02:00

Um ... er .... ah. Having trouble speaking or writing? Do you suffer from lips of the stung? Do you sometimes write there for their? You are not a loan. Life is a process of communication, beset with surprising linguistic obstacles.

Micheal Erard is "a journalist who writes mainly about language at the intersection of technology, policy, law, and science." He has a new book out Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean.

Erard talks about those slips of the tongue that befall most of us at tome sime or another. It is an instructive world of verbal blunders made famous in our own day by US President Bush's "Dubyaspeak", which led to Erard's Um.

But the problem of dubyaspeak is older than President Bush. Former US President Herbert Hoover was, for example, also famed indirectly by a spoonerism, a lexical flip by radio announcer Harry von Zell, who referred to Hoover once as Hoobert Heever (read this account as a general lesson in evidence).

In his review of Erard's book, Dennis Lythgoe at the Desert Morning News writes as follows about "Um" and "Dubyaspeak":

"Erard became interested in the subject of verbal blunders during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush’s malapropisms were referred to as “abnormal” in media reports. Erard thought critics were too hard on Bush, because he believes all of us commit verbal blunders.

He is convinced that making mistakes in speech is not a sign of a lack of intelligence. It is often caused by anxieties — people repeat words and restart sentences if they’re nervous. Or they may simply be accidental."

That may in part be confirmed at the blawg Yayarolly goes to law school, where "a 30-something's adventure in law school writes" in "Stick a fork in 1L, I'm done":

"Seriously. I'm tried. That's really the only way to describe what I am feeling right now. Not euphoric, not relieved, just tired. And a little concerned if my speech will ever be the same again... I've been spitting out spoonerisms over the last week like it's going out of style."

For more details about malopropisms , spoonerisms, and similar verbal blunders, see these reviews of Erard's book.

Finders Seekers : Dichotomy in Innovation

2007-06-21T14:14:00.000+02:00

Art and Literature
have something to do with innovation.

Are innovators "seekers"? or "finders" ?
and does it make a difference ?

We refer here to the website Arts of Innovation
and its sister Arts of Innovation blog
which are described as follows:

"The author
Colin Stewart, innovation columnist for the Orange County Register, runs this Web site and the associated Arts of Innovation blog. He can be reached by e-mail at cestewart (at) cox.net.

The researcher
ArtsOfInnovation.com and the Arts of Innovation blog elaborate on research into the careers of experimental and conceptual innovators by University of Chicago economist David Galenson."
[links added]

Galenson is the author of
Old Masters and Young Geniuses:
Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity

which has been reviewed by Malcolm Gladwell as follows in Age Before Beauty:

"There’s a really wonderful book that’s come out by a guy named David Galenson, who’s an economist at the University of Chicago... There’s something very interesting and important to be learned about the way our minds work by entertaining the notion that there are two very different styles of creativity, the Picasso and the Cézanne."

Definitely worth a read and we have blogrolled them at Literary Pundit and LawPundit.

See also Inside Innovation

Vanity Fair and the Images in Mirrors

2007-06-18T15:54:00.001+02:00

In Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray writes:*

"The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face." (p.8)

By the same token, society for its part rewards most highly those who mirror its own image:

"Vanity Fair -- Vanity Fair! Here was a man, who could not spell, and did not care to read -- who had the habits and the cunning of a boor : whose aim in life was pettifogging : who never had a taste, or emotion, or enjoyment, but what was sordid and foul : and yet he had rank, and honours, and power, somehow : and was a dignitary of the land, and a pillar of the state. He was high sheriff, and rode in a golden coach. Great ministers and statesmen courted him ; and in Vanity Fair he had a higher place than the most brilliant genius or spotless virtue." (p. 77, links added by LawPundit)

Not those who are "better" or "worse" are loved, but those who are mirrored faces of the beholder.

This mirror also determines how we view the rest of humanity and the groups within it.

Just a thought.

*From William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Penguin Popular Classics, 1994, first published in 1877

Short Book Review of Wordgloss

2007-01-22T23:40:00.000+01:00

The following is our book review of Jim O'Donnell's book, Wordgloss : A Cultural Lexicon , which we have reviewed at Amazon.co.uk:

"Was this the wish of the Demiurge? Boston to Washington DC is a conurbation! Cui bono?! Do we live in a lexical dystopia awaiting a thaumaturgic gloss revival? Who today knows that "pleonasms are tautologous and should be avoided"? Errata need not be repetitive - a verisimilitude!

Do you need this book? Do you know the words?

Author Jim O'Donnell (book Foreword by John Banville) writes in his preface that "the extraordinary expansion of modern knowledge and its fission into micro-specialties" has created "a niagara of words and concepts flowing from a wide range of disciplines that we have never explored."

The everyday result is that our increasingly sophisticated modern world of communications is confronted by the Hydra-headed cultural stumbling block of a classics-based "verbal universe" manifesting an erstwhile lexical heritage to which most readers no longer have any personal or educational connection.

Wordgloss is not a quintessential corrective panacea for this problem, but O'Donnell writes that "Wordgloss is full of the words and concepts you always meant to look up. It tells you where they came from and how they acquired the meaning or meanings they now have."

The book is written "associatively", which is "pedagogically" more effective than the "linear" scientific style of dictionaries.
Definitely a fun and educating vade-mecum read.
Fons et origo!"

Cosmology and Religion at Science a Go Go

2007-01-22T01:16:00.000+01:00

Science a Go Go (http://www.scienceagogo.com/) has a zippy website from down under devoted to "the latest science news, research tidbits and science discussion".

What caught my attention were their science book reviews. See:
Science a Go Go Book Reviews 2005
Science a Go Go Book Reviews 2006
for a good overview of what is going on in science,
through the medium of books.

Online book reviews, still fairly rare outside of e.g. Amazon,
or involving the payment of online fees for viewing, as at Antiquity magazine,
will surely play an increasingly greater role in science and literature,
and we were gratified to see Science a Go Go review our book Stars Stones and Scholars
on the same page as their review of Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory
by legal expert and Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward J. Larson (2006).

Tim Radford in an interview with Larson in the Guardian titled A Life in Writing: A Voyage to the Origin of Species, writes:

"Larson won the Pulitzer Prize for his Summer for the Gods, a book on the Scopes trial, in which American anti-evolutionists challenged science in the 1920s. He followed with Trial and Error, once again about the creation-evolution controversy. Right now, he is contemplating one book on the coming of telegraphy, another on Antarctica. Evolution's Workshop grew out of a preoccupation with the history of ideas, rather than of kings and presidents. In the course of looking at the progress of the great Darwinian idea, it seemed to him that the Galapagos were the Clapham Junction of biology: all sorts of people passed through.

"I believed that ideas in general are the most powerful thing in the world. An idea was more powerful than an army. In the western world it seemed to me that science was the criterion for truth," [Larson] says. "Darwin wrote his Origin of Species in 1859. At that time Queen Victoria was on the throne in England and James Buchanan was president of the United States. Now who has a greater impact on us today? How we think, how we live, who we are?" "

We agree.

Books Most Searched For in 2006

2007-01-15T02:55:00.000+01:00

Gee, a lot of surprises in this list at AbeBooks.com of the most searched for books in the year 2006:
AbeBooks: The Most Searched For Books in 2006

ISBN Numbers have 13 Characters Starting January 1, 2007

2007-01-12T13:54:00.000+01:00

Are You Ready for ISBN-13?
and the fact that:
"Beginning January 1, 2007, all books will be published with ISBN-13s."

Click this link to go the ISBN-13 Online Converter.

Not everyone needs this, but every reader of books should know about it, and most authors and readers out there probably are not yet aware of what is going on, so we alert to it here.

The reason for this posting is that a monumental change which affects the entire world of books on our planet started January 1, 2007 (actually, the sunrise period began in 2005). It is a change in ISBN numbers. ISBN numbers are the unique numbers given to books by publishers and used to order books wherever you order them as a user. The reason for this change was that ISBN was running out of numbers.

Take a look at the following numbers for our book Stars, Stones and Scholars where the ISBN-10 numbers (the ISBN-10's) have been converted by our publisher to ISBN-13 numbers (the ISBN-13's). These will be called ISBN-10s and ISBN-13s.

Stars Stones Scholars (softcover)
# ISBN-10: 1412013445
# ISBN-13: 978-1412013444

Stars Stones Scholars (hardcover)
# ISBN-10: 1412201357
# ISBN-13: 978-1412201353

ISBN-10 Numbers

Prior to January 1, 2007, ISBN numbers had 10 characters.
Those are the ISBN-10 numbers.

ISBN-13 Numbers

Beginning on January 1, 2007, ISBN numbers are 13 characters.
Those are the ISBN-13 numbers.

"Beginning January 1, 2007, all books will be published with ISBN-13s."

Important Links

Below are important links from ISBN for authors, retailers, publishers and everyone interested in books and the book trade:

"Are You Ready for ISBN-13?

An overview for publishers with the critical do's and don't and the recommended implementation timeline. Why is this transition taking place and how does it impact your copyright page, your book covers and your bar codes? Find out now.

Pubnet EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) 13-Digit Conversion News

If you receive EDI orders via Pubnet, be sure to learn more about changes needed to support EDI transactions.

BISG Resources on ISBN-13

The Book Industry Study Group, Inc. (BISG) ISBN-13 Task Force maintains this site as a source of authoritative information and recommended implementation guidelines for ISBN-13.

ISBN-13 Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)

Brochure from Bowker, the US ISBN Agency

Guidelines for the Implementation of 13-Digit ISBNs (PDF)

Information from the International ISBN Agency.

A BISAC Briefing on How to Manage the Transition (PDF)

Information from BISG on operations planning.

_________________
The readability score for this posting:
Gunning-Fog Index: 20
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 12
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease: 41

Father Christmas, Inklings, Goblins and Orcs

2006-12-27T21:50:00.000+01:00

Dear Readers,

Father Christmas!

What a wonderful holiday season, especially for J.R.R. Tolkien fans:

"It was the biggest bang in the world, and the most monstrous firework there ever has been. It turned the North Pole BLACK and shook all the stars out of place... The tap turning on the Aurora Borealis fireworks is still in the cellar of my old house. The North Polar Bear knew he must never, never touch it... Anyway he was nosing around the ruins this morning soon after breakfast (he hides things to eat there) and turned on all the Northern Lights for two years in one go."

Yes, the Sun really took a shot at us in December of 2006. It lit up the sky like the celebrations of fireworks that will be taking place on New Year's Eve.

We wish everyone a Happy New Year 2007.

In honor of the occasion, we have designed a "Secret Doodle" which contains several secrets.

1) What is the message of the "Secret Doodle"?

You should be able to ascertain this without too much difficulty as we have made it easy for you to get an Inkling. Be HAPPY. Did we not just post on Happiness? But you might have to take a NEW look. In a pinch this YEAR, you might even engage in a Gobelin count (at least in French).

2) Where do the symbols of the "Secret Doodle" come from?

Is this the writing of a prehistoric "rock art" culture of the type we discuss at some of our other websites? You may want to ask your local mainstream archaeologist or resident expert decipherer for clues to clues, which is their profession. Perhaps these symbols were used by the small, Lilliputian - previously nameless - hobbits (modernly baptized Homo floresiensis) that mainstream science recently claimed to have discovered in Indonesia? Alas, a pipedream species in an academic area of study where fantasy, fiction and myth unwillingly meet the hard hand of evidence. A story for J.K. Rowling?

Another way to find out why the Secret Doodle "rocks" is to consult your local linguist about rocs and orcs and arks, or as written about Noah's Ark and rocs in 1604 by Michael Drayton - who in his youth worked as a Page boy for which you have to have a Brain (well, nearly so) :

All feathered things yet ever knowne to men,

From the huge Rucke, unto the little Wren;

From Forrest, Fields, from Rivers and from Pons,

All that have webs, or cloven-footed ones;

To the Grand Arke, together friendly came,

Whose severall species were too long to name

Which may be why we've waited 'til this day
Floresiensis as a species to portray!

3) What other special "coding" does the message contain?
You might just try some Google search words for local color or Yahoo some other clues you have already been given to arrive at the doubled rainbow at the end of a pot of gold. What are words to the hues of nature?

Is there really any perceptible difference between a Yahoo and an Orc? and it is not far from Google to Goggle to Gobble to Goblin, now is it? But that is just a play on the alphabet.

We repeat, Happy New Year.

2007. Make this world a better place, if you can.

P.S. We will post the solution in the New Year to our LexiLine Newsletter.

The Native Land - John Baker, Donna Moore Added to our Rolls

2006-03-31T22:46:00.000+02:00

I have been neglecting this blog a bit recently, which I really should not be doing.

A reader recently brought my attention to John Baker's Blog and to Donna's Bookshelf. John Baker is a writer of fiction and Donna Moore has quite a readable interview with him at her BooksBaker page.

You can read sample material from one of Baker's novels here, where I selected the following citation:

"Now, of course, I know that we are not born in our native land and as long as we hang on to that quaint concept we remain in the mists of childhood. The process of maturing is the slow realization that we are born in the world, that we belong as much to the stars in the heavens as we do to the herbs and grasses that populate the limited space we are taught to call home.

Where we belong is not a place that gives rise to emotions like affection. On the contrary our birthplace is a vast and complicated structure that defies definition. It is an infinitude of contradictions, visible and invisible, tactile and intangible, neither friend nor foe. Finally it’s a prison and our task is to loosen its hold on us so that we can enjoy a few brief moments of freedom."

Tenebris on Blooks

2005-10-11T02:59:00.000+02:00

Tenebris posts on blooks, books "based on material and/or ideas first published in a blog". It's a whole new field. Take a look at that posting.

There is also a more recent posting at Tenebris with an announcement of the Lulu Blooker Prize, with judging to be chaired by Cory Doctorow, and more of interest....

Easter Island Script

2005-08-15T13:50:00.000+02:00

In his book, Rongorongo: The Easter Island Script, Steven Roger Fischer refers to me as being a Lithuanian, whereas, of course, as is clear from my name to anyone having even rudimentary language knowledge, my name is of Latvian origin. Besides I am an American. You can't say an American is an Irishman just because he carries an Irish name, nor can you call someone a Lithuanian based on your hunch that that is where his name came from.

This terrible and - as can be seen from the above example - inaccurate and poorly researched book, published by the Oxford University Press, which is no longer the publishing house it used to be, contributes next to nothing to the understanding of Easter Island script.

Fischer in fact has as good as no clue about the Easter Island Script.

In my book "An Astrological zodiac in the Script of Easter Island", I clearly show that Honolulu Tablet No. B.3622 is a type of zodiac of the stars.

Moreover, I am supported by
Michael H. Dietrich
in Asian and African Studies Vol. 8 [1998] 118-150)
who has written as follows:

"All signs are symbols of stars and planets, quaters, winds, the moon, the guiding stars etc. The new endeavour to analyse the rongorongo signs is based on the accessible astronomical knowledge of Micronesia and Polynesia. The body of rongorongo signs consists of tropical descriptions of single stars, planets, zodiacal signs and other constellations. What has been registered are particular nights and, on the smaller tablets, general data on astronomical itineraries. The all in all 12 000 rongorongo signs convey exclusively instructions for sidereal navigation within the Pacific."

For a more detailed treatment of this topic, see QuillPundit.
.

J.K.Rowling Official Site - Harry Potter and more

2005-08-06T01:09:00.000+02:00

Take a look at the official J.K.Rowling Official Site - Harry Potter and more. It is absolutely stunning and I am going to go back to it when I have more time.
.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

2005-07-08T19:43:00.000+02:00

The Woman in White, a superb novel by Wilkie Collins, Penguin Popular Classics, first published in 1868, p. 228, contains the following observation:

"Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them."
.

Chainfire

2005-02-26T15:00:00.000+01:00

Pretension of Competency has moved to its own domain and continues to turn out excellent postings on various subjects. This is what is written about Terry Goodkind's Chainfire:

...This is, I believe, the penultimate book in this series as the book ends on the very edge of what is referred to throughout the story as “the final battle.” For those of you unfamiliar with the book and it’s author, it is the ninth in the series that is considered to be one of the three primary current unfinished fantasy series’, along with Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time and George R.R. Martin’s [A Song of Fire and Ice]. This particular series has a very Ayn Randian feel to it in it’s very open discussions of human morality and political issues, which is understandable since Goodkind claims Rand as one of his biggest influences. Unlike The Wheel of Time, which I also am a big fan of (I have not had the chance to pick up Martin’s series), Goodkind has maintained the focus of his later books and produces a fantastic story in Chainfire....

Literary Terms and Definitions

2005-02-08T17:19:00.000+01:00

L. Kip Wheeler has a nice site on Literary Terms and Definitions. The webpage contains clickable alphabetical lists of literary terms and their definitions from A to Z.

The Da Vinci Code

2005-02-05T16:59:00.000+01:00

The immense popularity of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown goes once again to prove that the mass of men and women are children who are attracted by a good fairy tale well told.

We need here to clear up five main misconceptions about the Priory of Sion in that book:

1) The original Priory of Sion has existed since about 3000 BC;
2) The original Priory of Sion was not anti-Semitic, but was founded by the Jews;
3) The current Master of the Priory of Sion, the only one still in possession of all lost knowledge and parchments, just published a book called Stars Stones and Scholars, containing knowledge gleaned from the lost encrypted documents:
4) The original neolithic Priory of Sion has no other members, and all the rest who claim to be members are imposters;
5) The current Master of the Priory of Sion was designated by tradition to be the last Master of the original Priory of Sion. Past modern Masters in order of the passing of the torch were Lorenzo de Medici, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giordano Bruno, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Rabbi Naftali (ben Elchanan) Hertz, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, Napoleon I Bonaparte, Thomas Jefferson, Goethe, Abraham Lincoln, James Clerk Maxwell, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, John Maynard Keynes, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Pablo Picasso, and Ayn Rand. Only the present Master is in possession of that true list. The present Master is authorized by tradition and by the 5000-year old rules of the Order to now divulge all lost knowledge to save humanity from itself.

We hope therewith to have cleared up any misunderstandings created by the book.

Which all leads us to the conclusion that the best way to make money in publishing is to publish idle nonsense for the masses, whereas the surest road to literary poverty is to publish the truth. Here is what the Illuminati Quiz at Quizilla tells us (we knew it):

The Network:

You are the Voice of World Control.

Fnord.

Which Illuminati are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Bloggers and Journalists: Online Course on Literary Journalism

2005-02-05T15:50:00.000+01:00

As a graduate of Stanford Law School, we alumni are still kept busy by the regular outflow of communications from Stanford. A recent posting to alumni contains a link to the AllLearn (Oxford, Stanford, Yale) Online Course on Literary Journalism written by Stanford Lecturer Tom Barbash, the very successful non-fiction author of On Top of the World.

As written there:

"Tom Barbash is the author of the New York Times bestselling nonfiction book, On Top of the World, the story of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond firm that was massacred on September 11. He is also the author of the novel, The Last Good Chance, which was published in 2002, was awarded the California Book Award for best first work in fiction, and was a Publishers Weekly "Best Book of the Year." He currently teaches at Stanford, where he was Wallace Stegner Fellow, and at California College of the Arts. He was the recipient this year of a National Endowment of the Arts Grant in fiction."

Take a look at this course. It is a bit pricey if your bank account is low, but it may lead to your road to success.

Ayn Rand's 100th

2005-02-04T01:50:00.000+01:00

Edward Rothstein at the Feb. 2, 2005 New York Times celebrates Ayn Rand's 100th.

The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) were definitely among the most influential books we read in college days, so we are glad to hear that Rand's books are still selling about 150,000 copies a year.

Jared Diamond's Collapse - What Happened?

2005-01-26T11:11:00.000+01:00

The Seattle Weekly has a weekly page of book reviews called This Week's Reads

One of the books reviewed is
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

The reviewer, Rober Downey, notes that Diamond is also

the author of

The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
which Downey describes to have "examined human nature and society in the light of the latest anthropological studies of people as apes"

and
Guns, Germs and Steel:The Fates of Human Societies - winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize - which, writes Downey, "asked and—amazingly—plausibly answered the question: 'Why did the phenomenon we call civilization develop just where it did, and why didn't it develop elsewhere?' "

Although Downey is not happy with Diamond's Collapse as compared to his previous books (perhaps Diamond was influenced by the title in his writing), the message of the book is interesting in concentrating on environment as one of the leading causes for the collapse of societies over history.

Crossposted to the Ancient World Blog STONEHENGE.

The Ultimate Birthday Gift for Religious Awareness

2005-01-24T09:33:00.000+01:00

The Ultimate Birthday Gift - Stars Stones and Scholars

I have nothing against religion but I get tired of listening to religious babble from people who are not familiar with the history of their own beliefs.

Are you looking for a gift for adults who already have everything?

Give them the book Stars Stones and Scholars
available here and here
and jog the complacent noncritical brains of your family, friends, acquaintances and colleagues.

In a day when religious fanatics are making life on our planet much more difficult than it objectively should be, it might be useful to consider the fact that all modern religions are rooted in ancient hermetic belief ("as above, so below", or "As on Earth, So in Heaven").

Before the advent of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, men studied the stars, and this ancient stargazing gave mankind its first conceptions of natural law (so Bertrand Russell).

The idea that God is "in Heaven" and not elsewhere is rooted in the idea of our prehistoric forefathers that God's abode was in the (apparently) immovable part of the Center of Heaven. Contrary to God's modern abstract realm, in ancient days God had a specific celestial "home".

Where is that home now?

This and much more is found in this fascinating book of which I am proud to say that I am the author. Read Stars Stones and Scholars to understand YOUR religion better.

Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers - Worth a read....

2005-01-09T08:50:00.000+01:00

This tip in from a world traveling friend....

Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers looks like one of the ultimate travel books.

We look for this book to perhaps be filmed by the big boys.

Crossposted to LawPundit.