Plans2Reality

Old-Time Slang

This was created in 1811, as a compendium of then-current slang in England.....

Project Gutenberg's 1811 Dictionary in the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose

via www.gutenberg.org

Book Recommendation: The Fault In Our Stars

The Fault In Our Stars is a wonderful novel by John Green.

This is one of the very best novels I've ever read (and I have read more than a few). It's about a teenage girl who has cancer, but it is not the sort of story you'd expect. It's written in the first person, from her perspective, and provides a lot of insight into how sick people see the world, and the people, around them. The author has a lot of experience with this situation - other than that I will say no more, except READ THIS BOOK! 

The Uses of Pessimism

Most of "The Uses of Pessimism" is given over to a fine analysis of the fallacies from which excessive optimism springs.

Roger Scruton identifies seven such. He devotes a chapter to each, drawing out the dire effects of each fallacy on politics, economics, and culture.

His principal target is the "unscrupulous optimist" waging "war against reality." He draws a clear distinction between this fellow and the "scrupulous optimist," who carefully consults evidence, experience, and authority before leaping.

Scruton similarly contrasts "judicious pessimism," which knows the difference between a constraint and an obstacle, or a setback and a catastrophe, with the more "systematic pessimism" of the fiercer kind of Old Testament prophet.

More people should read this book.

Special Event with Famed Author Holly Payne

San Francisco-based author Holly Payne will appear at a special Holiday event at the Union City Library, this Saturday, 10 December, from 1 to 4 pm. 

Holly has won numerous awards, and her most recent novel, Kingdom of Simplicity, recently won the Writer's Digest Best Book award for 2011, as well as the 2010 Benjamin Franklin award for best new book.

Holly will sign books, talk about the writing process, and answer your questions. Don't miss this event!

Learn more about her latest book, Kingdom of Simplicity by clicking on the title.

Here's Holly herself:

How to Get a Job: Or, Hanging Out Your Shingle

This, from the New York Times:

REBECCA CHAPMAN, who has a master of arts in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, hit bottom professionally last summer when she could not even get a job that did not pay. Vying for an internship at a boutique literary agency in Manhattan, Ms. Chapman, 25, had gone on three separate interviews with three people on three different days. “They couldn’t even send me an e-mail telling me I didn’t get it,” she said. 

It’s a story familiar to anyone seeking to break into the New York publishing world. Willie Osterweil, 25, an aspiring novelist who graduated magna cum laude from Cornell in 2009, found himself sweeping Brooklyn movie theaters for $7.25 an hour. And the closest that Helena Fitzgerald, a recent Columbia graduate, got was an interview at a top magazine, during which the editor dismissed her literary career dreams, telling her, “C’mon, that’s not realistic.”

Well, boo-hoo.

Writing may well be the least capital-intensive career option out there. All you need is a decent second-hand PC - a few hundred dollars at most.

If you're a writer, you write. Period.

Wanna be an editor? Edit your friends' books, for a start. THere are lots of folks who will pay (poorly, but it's pay) to have their first-time books edited.

Want to be a critic? Start critiquing on Amazon. You _can_ build a pretty good rep there, and eventually get paid for it.

 

Anothe rplus for writing: of the ways to get rich, it's better than average. A diligent, if only moderately talented person can reasonably expect to make good money - maybe even millions - by cranking out formulaic best-sellers.

Don't want to do that? I refer the honoroble gentlewoman to my earlier remarks: boo-hoo.

Too Stupid to Live, Part Five

Speaking on the House floor, Rep. Jesse Jackson (D-Ill.) said Apple's popular tablet computer "is now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs. Borders is closing stores because, why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble?" the congressman asked. "Just buy an iPad and download your book, download your newspaper, download your magazine."

Jackson, the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, went on to cite a recent initiative at Chicago State University, which is in Jackson's congressional district, to give all incoming freshmen iPads for their studies.

"Well, what becomes of publishing companies then and publishing company jobs?" Jackson said. "What becomes of bookstores and librarians and all of the jobs associated with paper? Well, in the not too distant future, such jobs will simply not exist."

 

Works for me. It should reduce de-forestation, as we stop killing tons of trees for paper....

A Reading from "Kingdom of Simplicity"

By author Holly Payne. This is an excellent book, reviewed here before. I think any person from about high-school on would be captivated and intrigued by this coming-of-age tale. It has won several awards since its publication a year or so back.

The author reads from it, in an interview on KQED.

Holly Payne reads from Kingdom of Simplicity

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

Excellent book; highly, highly recommended.

Although I do worry that CEOs will read it and decide that they need to be arrogant micromanagers, then they'll be as successful as Steve Jobs was. Sorry guys, it doesn't work that way.

Berlin 1961 - A Book Recommendation

I've just finished reading a wonderful history book called 'Berlin 1961', by Frederick Kempe. If you thought you knew how the Berlin Wall came to be, you are probably a bit misguided. The Berlin Wall, and the crisis it provoked, was probably our closest brush with nuclear war - closer than the better-known Cuban missile crisis of a year later. In many ways, the Berlin crisis was a direct cause of the Cuban one. Kennedy mis-handled the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, then mis-handled his first summit with Khruschev in the summer of 1961, in Vienna. He then mis-handled Berlin, and probably condemned many people to thirty years of imprisonment.

It's hard for me to call this history, exactly. The Berlin crisis and the building of the Berlin Wall were among my first memories of news events and things of the wider world around me. I well remember seeing news pictures of desperate Germans climbing out of windows and such, trying to escape. More vividly, I remember visting the eastern sector, in 1986. The Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and other aspects of that time and place should be remembered. The world has no shortage of dictators; and it is only necessary for men of good will be be as naive and indecisive as Kennedy was for them to imprison their people for generations.

Kingdom of Simplicity Wins Writer's Digest Award

Kingdom of Simplicity, an excellent novel by Holly Payne, has won a major award - Writer's Digest Grand Prize. It triumphed over 2,280 other entries.

http://www.kingdomofsimplicity.com

I've reviewed it here before. It's about an Amish boy coming of age, and touches on tragedy, grief, and guilt. You need to read this book.

It's available on Amazon:

Kingdom of Simplicity

 

Now, to help bump up the hit count, I should talk about the stupid things Solyndra did, and the fraudulent things Solyndra may have done. Was there fraud at Solyndra? Stay tuned.