Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
The category, Spleen, is for posts that make us angry.
More than 500 authors from around the globe have signed a petition demanding the creation of an international bill of digital rights. This is a response to the revelations of whistleblower, Edward Snowden, about the extent to which US and UK intelligence organizations engage in online surveillance.
I feel like a Ferengi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, you know, one of those aliens who can only measure value in terms of profit.
Following Jaron Lanier’s advice, I’ve taken a summer sabbatical from social media. His advice comes from his latest book, Who Owns The Future? I’m pleased to report that, as promised in his book, the curtailing of my social media habits has not resulted in any nasty consequences.
It’s the same old capitalist story. A small startup crowd-sources its content. Behemoth gobbles it up with a hefty payout to the owners of the startup … and nothing to the content creators.
In his 2011 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffett offered some wisdom on gold as an investment option. For some reason, that little section of his letter (which you can download here as a pdf document – see page 18) has gained renewed interest in the media.
Yesterday, I tweeted: “BBC reports a woman was ”gang-raped” in India. What, pray tell, do the quotation marks mean?” I was responding to a BBC headline concerning a Swedish tourist whose husband was beaten and tied, then forced to watch as a group of men raped her.
While wandering through the purgatory that is suburbia, I noticed a sign for a contracting company with the name: Actual Plumbing Ltd. I neither endorse nor disapprove of the contractor, and I assume they don’t mind free advertising on my blog. I think it’s an interesting name. What makes plumbing actual plumbing?
Every day I walk past the Ontario Fire Fighter Memorial on the northeast corner of College & University. I’m grateful for the service these people perform. I’m also astonished at the sacrifice they make in performing that service.
I reread pieces long after the fact. At the time of their writing, they seemed persuasive; they could have moved people to see the world as I do. But now they seem clunky. I want to cut the facets of a diamond with my prose, but my only tool is a sledgehammer.
Today I heard someone refer to Remembrance Day as an expression of civic religion. If so, it’s a religion without the benefit of theologians. In our more conventional expressions of religion, theologians help in the task of interpreting religious expression, of giving it meaning and depth and context. Remembrance Day has none of that.
Since the rise of Amazon, the Kindle, ibooks, the iPad, etc., it’s hardly news that the publishing industry is struggling to cope with radical change. The latest, and perhaps most ludicrous, is an antitrust suit brought by the U.S. Justice Department against Apple & the Big 6 U.S. publishers alleging that their agency model is, in fact, price fixing.
I wanted to write a protest songthen realized how, all alongI’d been beating time with my pulse. My cardboard sign was turned to mushin the rain, and the slogan, gone in the rushof feet pounding it into the mud.\ My chant was the choked hello I gaveto the Mumbai caller who said I’d savea lot…
This is a poetic response to some passages I read in The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness, a memoir by Karen Armstrong.
I bookended 2011 with two large novels. In January, I read Witz, by Joshua Cohen, a sprawling brilliant novel which I would set on my shelf beside the likes of Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest. In December, I read 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, also a sprawling novel which at least one critic has likened to War and Peace and Infinite Jest.
Have you heard the news? Publishers Weekly reports that a Japanese insurance company purchased Toronto-based ebook seller, Kobo, for $315 million dollars.