The economics of being a writer in Canada just don’t add up. Out of that $32 book price, the author gets $3.20. “In Canada, a country of more than 30 million people, a novel is considered to have sold respectably if three thousand copies leave the shelf. You do the math: 3,000 x $3.20, minus 15 per cent, minus hundreds of dollars in expenses, minus your advance on these royalties, divided by four or five (depending on how many years the book took to write), equals, on a bad day, a fairly deep sense of futility.”
Blog
Chaucer Online – BM Puts Canterbury Tales Online
For the first time, the Britih Library has put the full 748-page text of the Canterbury Tales online. The book is believed to be the first book printed in England (in 1476). “The library’s copies of the first and second editions – so rare that no visitor is allowed to touch them – are now expected to be read electronically by up to a million people in the next six months.”
The Death Of Languages
There are only about 5000 languages left in the world. And the number is shrinking fast. “With the rise of international travel, world commerce, globalization and mass media, that number is declining rapidly. Of working languages still in everyday use, there are perhaps only 120. And more than half the world speaks one (or more) of only a dozen languages, including Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Russian – and, of course, English, the most pervasive of them all. Some linguists estimate nearly two billion people have at least a workaday knowledge of English, and that number is growing.”
Music Fans Beginning To Rebel Against Recording Companies
More and more music lovers are getting fed up with the recording industry’s tactics of protecting their business. Some are organizing a boycott of CD sales for the month of Decemeber. “Angry music fans see the recording industry’s tactics for dealing with declining CD sales as punishing the wrong people – music lovers.”
Collectors Snared On Tax Charges
“More than 100 wealthy buyers of art, jewelry and antiques have been forced to make good on unpaid sales taxes as part of a continuing investigation of New York’s art world that was sparked by last year’s arrest of Tyco International Ltd.’s former chief executive, L. Dennis Kozlowski.”
Susan Marshall Returns
Susan Marshall is back with one of the best pieces of her career, writes Tobi Tobias.
Threat Of Another Broadway Strike
Next Wednesday Actors’ Equity will stage a rally protesting the proliferation of non-union tours of Broadway shows. “It is a contentious issue that will be at the center of Equity’s upcoming negotiations with Broadway producers in the spring. Equity’s contract with the producers expires June 30. With memories of the musicians’ strike that shut down Broadway earlier this year still fresh, both sides are gearing up for what could be another ugly battle.”
Is Thinking Just A Series Of Inferences?
“It’s plausible that at least some kinds of thinking just are processes of drawing inferences. It’s the same for a lot of other things the mind does, such as learning, perceiving and planning. The picture that emerges is of the mind (or the brain if you prefer) as some kind of inferring machine; perhaps some kind of computing machine, since computations are themselves plausibly construed as chains of inference.”
Disney Hall’s First Night
“As spotlights raked the billowing exterior of architect Frank Gehry’s $274-million edifice, a glittering lineup of politicians, Hollywood players, captains of industry and cultural savants filed up a red-carpeted stairway and into the dramatically sculpted 2,265-seat hall, which has already drawn ecstatic reviews from architecture critics across the country.”
Disney: So How’d It Sound?
Mark Swed writes that Disney Hall is “everything and more than we might have hoped for. In this enchanted space, music can take on meaningful new excitement even in an age when many art forms are satisfied with oversaturated stimulation.”