1935: Penguin publishes the first paperback books of substance, bringing the likes of Ernest Hemingway, André Maurois and Agatha Christie to the masses.
As Britain emerged from the worst of its Great Depression, and the storms of World War II gathered, some of the finest literature in the world was being produced. But it was [...]
Posts Tagged ‘George Orwell’
Elton John “Animal Farm†Musical Composer?
July 25th, 2010 |
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Break out your dancing shoes, Theater Fans: Sir Elton John is working on bringing George Orwell’s classic novella Animal Farm to the West End stage in a new musical. The “Rocket Man” has teamed up with Lee Hall — the writer behind his stage hit Billy Elliot — to put together a new adaptation of Orwell [...]
Elton John working on ‘Animal Farm’ musical
July 24th, 2010 |
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Legendary singer Elton John is working on a new show based on George Orwell”s ‘Animal Farm’ alongside Lee Hall, who wrote the hit musical ‘Billy Elliot’. The Daily Mail reports Hall, who has won numerous awards for his book and lyrics for ‘Billy Elliot,’ believes the dystopian novella is perfectly suited for the stage. Orwell”s [...]
Schumpeter: Overstretched
May 20th, 2010 |
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Many people who kept their jobs are working too hard. What can companies do about it?
IN GEORGE ORWELL’S “Animal Farm” the mighty cart-horse, Boxer, inspires the other animals with his heroic cry of “I will work harder”. He gets up at the crack of dawn to do a couple of hours’ extra ploughing. He even refuses to take a day off when he splits his hoof. And his reward for all this effort? As soon as he collapses on the job he is carted off to the knacker’s yard to be turned into glue and bonemeal.
“Animal Farm” looks ever more like a parable about capitalism as well as socialism. Everybody knows about the scourge of unemployment. But unemployment is bringing another scourge in its wake—overwork. The Corporate Leadership Council, an American consultancy which surveys 1,100 companies every quarter, reports that the average “job footprint” (what a worker is expected to do) has increased by a third since the beginning of the recession. The Hay Group, a British consultancy which recently surveyed 1,000 people, says that two-thirds of workers report they are putting in unpaid overtime. The reward for all this effort is frozen pay and shrinking perks. The only difference between these overstretched workers and Boxer is that they can see the knacker’s van coming. …
Improve Your Writing With Word Limits
April 20th, 2010 |
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Here’s a scenario that might sound familiar: you are listening to a speech or presentation, or perhaps you are reading an article, an essay, or a report, and it becomes clear that the writer is using words without communicating. Some essays, articles, and books might be pleasant to read because the language is colorful, and a speaker might make pleasant, sincere-sounding noises. No doubt some of your my writing or speaking can be described this way. If you don’t think yours can, just wait. As you improve, you will expect more of yourself. One way to improve is to practice writing with word or character limits.
This matters in the idea-driven economy.  Consider George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.† Words mean something. Words are important. Orwell argues that language should be “an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.â€Â Much could be accomplished with better writing, and yet quantitative social scientists, for example, try to earn status by one-upping one another with technical and mathematical sophistication. Humanists try to out-jargon one another. Important ideas are obscured by the impenetrable clouds of unclarity.
What can you do about it?  Try writing with hard word limits. Give yourself a lower word limit than you might find comfortable. Allow yourself to write a rough draft that is as long as you want it to be. Then, when you’re editing, try to cut it down below the maximum word count. If you’re writing a 10,000 word article, try to cut it to 9,000 words. If you’re writing an 800-word op-ed, aim for 700 words. Trim an essay with a 1500 word limit to 1200 words.
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, your readers’ time is valuable. Second, it forces you to confront trade offs in every sentence. If you’re trying to trim a 1500 word essay into a 1200 word essay, you have to ask yourself at every juncture whether you can make the point with fewer words. You will be shocked at how much you can tighten your prose without losing anything. Indeed, tighter, punchier prose will improve the quality of your exposition.
An exercise might help. Consider that last sentence: “Indeed, tighter, punchier prose will improve the quality of your exposition.â€Â I wrote it on a plane from Omaha to Memphis while my brain was toast, and it shows.
Let’s improve it. First, drop “Indeed†because it adds nothing. “(I)mprove the quality of your exposition†is a long way of saying “make you write better.â€Â So let’s try some revisions:
“Tighter, punchier prose improves your writing.†(better)
“Tighter, punchier prose makes you write better.†(awkward and clunky—it sounds like a lesson plan for the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Who Want to Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too)
Perhaps this: “Punchy prose makes good writing.â€
There’s no objective right answer. You have to play around with it, but as the cliché says, easy writing makes for hard reading.
You might also want to experiment with character and syllable limits. Orwell said to avoid using big words. In the sentence we were critiquing above, “exposition†was a clunky, four-syllable way of saying “writing.â€Â Always use the easier word.
To write well requires dedicated effort. I don’t claim to have mastered it. Approach it like topiary. Or bonsai gardening. Or sculpture. Or painting. Or whatever. As a writer, you are a skilled artisan. Words are your medium, and you use hem to communicate information, evoke passions, and stir the consciences of your readers. Get to work. Change the world. And take heart: you’re always improving.
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Art Carden is Assistant Professor of Economics and Business at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee and an Adjunct Fellow with the Oakland, California-based Independent Institute and the Auburn, Alabama-based Ludwig von Mises Institute. His research papers are available on his SSRN Author Page and at ArtCarden.com. His commentaries appear regularly at Mises.org and Forbes.com, and he is a regular contributor to Division of Labour. His wife Shannon blogs about healthy eating for a young family at No More Nuggets. Their son Jacob is a source of constant joy, and they look forward to the birth of their daughter Taylor Grace in July.
Gandhi and The Dalai Lama Are Not Opposed to Guns
January 2nd, 2010 |
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I was raised to be against guns. My parents hated guns, and believed that they only lead to crime and to accidental shootings.Sure, I knew that the Constitution includes a right to bear arms, but I believed that it was no longer relevant and only appl…
Amazon Settles Kindle Suit, but Will Other Issues Follow?
October 3rd, 2009 |
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Amazon.com settled a lawsuit over its summer deletion of George Orwell’s books from its Kindle e-reader, and used the opportunity to publicly state its new policy with regard to the deletion of works from users’ devices. Despite tighter controls over what it can and cannot do, Amazon.com may be faced with legal action in the future over deletion issues, particularly as it integrates the Kindle service more fully with third-party developers and companies.
– Amazon.com settled a lawsuit leveled against it by a Michigan student and another plaintiff, who claimed that the online retailers deletion of George Orwells quot;1984 quot; from their Kindle e-readers was illegal. By settling for $150,000, a portion of which will be donated by the plaintiffs’ lawy…
Living Colour: A Lively Conversation
September 26th, 2009 |
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By: Dennis Cook
 Living Colour by Bill Bernstein |
Who says a jazz band can’t play dance music?
Who says a rock band can’t play funky?
Who says a funk band can’t play rock?
Oh yeah!
We’re gonna play some funk so loud
We’re gonna rock and roll around
Watch them dance, Watch them dance
Rock music is a strange sausage. Originally stuffed with blues structures, jazz energy and country compositional sensibilities, the casing continues to stretch in the wake of electric fusion, hip hop, glam and countless other ingredients. And while some revel in trying to simplify rock’s flavors there are those that savor its capacity for complexities and contradictions. Since their explosive emergence in 1988 up through their potent new album, The Chair in the Doorway (released September 15 on Megaforce), Living Colour has been a poster child for rock’s expansive nature. Their latest release presents their intrinsic diversity with an overhanging cohesiveness that suggests the band makes more sense today than ever. As continents and cultures creep ever closer, Living Colour’s disregard for borders and healthy engagement with the world as it is seems right on time.
Their first single, “Cult of Personality,” was so striking, so unique and so forceful that it knocked one on their heels. It seemed a defining sound that a band could milk for ages but not long afterward they offered something as playful and humorous as “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” as single. The sense that Living Colour – Vernon Reid (guitar), Corey Glover (vocals), Doug Wimbish (bass) and Will Calhoun – could do anything lies at their core. This is a band that has truly freed their minds enough to embrace music outside of expectations or posted restrictions. For those of us in the late ’80s who loved Bad Brains, Chic, Ornette Coleman, Pere Ubu and The Talking Heads with equal vigor, Living Colour’s arrival seemed a beacon for heavy duty diversity. And absolutely nothing has changed since the group reformed in 2003 after an eight year hiatus.
 Corey Glover by Greg Styer |
“We don’t live in a monolithic kind of world. We never did. We supposedly – at least they sold us the idea – live in a melting pot with all kinds of different people and things in it. Particularly for African-American and people of color, you’ve been told you’re living in somebody else’s world and you have to adapt. So, we’ve always tried to adapt our world into the world that exists, into the everyday world. So, we took from everything,” says Corey Glover. “I will listen to an Eric Dolphy record right before I listen to some Creedence. It’s all the same shit to me!”
This potentially sloppy, utterly enthusiastic embrace of wide ranging musics is what rock is all about. At its best, the genre welcomes all comers and sorts out the collisions as they occur.
“Absolutely! Some people will often look at [Living Colour] and say we’re a funk-metal band. Well, that’s very limiting in its scope. We’re more than people who just play funk and metal. If you listen to the work you’ll know that to be true. It’s not the rote idea of what rock ‘n’ roll was,” Glover observes. “Vernon and I are from Brooklyn, Crown Heights in particular, where there’s a big African-American population, a big Caribbean and Latino community, as well as Hasidic Jews. So, who’s NOT going to listen to ALL kinds of stuff coming out of people’s car radios?”
However, not everyone has their big ears and after having spent close to a decade on the sidelines, Living Colour, a band whose debut, Vivid, was a Top 10 album with four high charting singles, found that much of their audience had dissipated.
“We came back in 2003 and nobody paid attention,” says Vernon Reid, while acknowledging that the time out of the spotlight helped the revived group grow stronger creatively. “This is the point bands of our vintage make desperate attempts to regain their youth. They try to come back to what they did before or, God help us, try to become hip. I believe we sidestepped those pitfalls.”
The Chair In The Doorway is certainly their most striking outing since Vivid, and perhaps their most cohesive, together album to date, working together from end-to-end in overlapping sonics and themes. It’s the kind of record one can come back to in six months or a year and keep discovering new things as they unravel different passages.
 Vernon Reid by Greg Styer |
“I’m amazed at the way it turned out. Each record we’ve made has had its own circumstances, their own difficulties. I think I had the most fun making Vivid because we were riding a rush of adrenalin for even having come that far. To have gotten that far was pure gravy,” says Reid. “Now, with The Chair In The Doorway, we’re a band with history. We’ve been through a breakup. We’ve had an original member leave the group [bassist Muzz Skillings left in 1992]. We’ve had children; we’re all fathers – it’s a beautiful burden and you are dad forever whatever happens! We’ve gone through all the various emotional thingsÂ…well, I don’t want to get too grand. Nobody shot anybody or anything! Nobody slept with anybody else’s wife! There’s certain places we haven’t gone but we’ve had a pretty intense band experience, and to make this record was real work to realize it.”
“We had a plan. The name of the record came before everything else, so each piece had to fit into that idea. That was the rubric we needed to figure out if a song worked or not for the record,” says Glover, touching on the album’s subtle interconnectedness. “That’s what the title is supposed to be. Some of my conversations with Vernon going into this had a surreal or super-real quality to them. My idea with The Chair in the Doorway was really talking about the four of us [in Living Colour], and talking about how some things are obvious to some people and not obvious to others, on the inside and the outside.”
“The Chair In The Doorway is unique amongst our catalog because it’s the first record where we had the title of the album before we had any songs. During the initial recordings for Collideøscope (2003) we were putting ourselves through so much pressure, ill at ease having just come back together. In a way, 9/11 gave us something to make that record kind of about. The song ‘Flying’ is a direct result of 9/11. ‘A Question of When’ was written before 9/11 but became about 9/11,” continues Reid. “So, we had a break during recording Collideøscope and Corey and I went to see Spiderman 2. And there’s the usual bellyaching afterwards and Corey says, ‘You know, the chair is in the doorway.’ That’s one of the typical Yogi Berric type of things Corey will say. Then, later on we were in Paris doing press for Collideøscope, waiting for a photographer in this lovely courtyard, and I turned to Corey and said, ‘You know that thing you say about the chair being in the doorway? That’s the title of our next album.’”
 Doug Wimbish by Greg Styer |
“What I love about it is it’s the rarest of things, completely concrete – the chair is a physical thing – AND completely abstract. That’s what’s beautiful and terrible about language. That’s why political language is never to be trusted. George Orwell knew very well that language has many layers and levels. With music it’s often about who can come up with the phrase that pays,” laughs Reid. “The Chair In The Doorway spoke to me. There’s an obstruction. It’s an obvious obstruction. Who placed it there and who’s gonna get up and displace the obstruction? The chair is not supposed to be in the doorway. The chair’s supposed to be at a table or desk. The Chair In The Door is an unintended concept album. The title exerted this weird energy on the whole project. It’s so much about how we get in our own way and how something is so obviously in our way.”
A big part of the new release’s flavor is bassist Doug Wimbish, a veteran of industrial groove pioneers Tackhead, the revered On-U Sound label and former member of the Sugarhill Gang house band. His style is stealthy and lethal, a snake charmer with significant bite.
“Doug is really the catalyst for this new record. Without Doug Wimbish we wouldn’t have made the CD we did in Prague. It was Doug that codified all this music. He took all the grooves we did at sound checks and gigs and put them on a list for us to listen to and figure out what we were gonna do. Doug was the man in terms of how this record came to be what it is,” enthuses Glover. “There’s these gypsy bands that come out of the Czech Republic that takes bits of funk and rock and really mix stuff together. That’s how Doug really got involved in this scene and they introduced him to [Sono Studio in Prague, where The Chair in the Doorway was recorded]. These are people who appreciate music on all levels because this is a just-opening-up Eastern Bloc country that’s taking in everything. The guys who run the studio were a major catalyst for cool things on the new album.”
Continue reading for more on Living Colour…
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Race has been a pronounced issue for Living Colour since day one, but almost always coming from outside the band. Inside, these guys understand that rock is the child of multiple influences – some white, some black and some brown. The notion that black men playing rock is somehow unusual announces the ignorance of any critic speaking such nonsense. One would have to conveniently forget Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Buddy Guy, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix and countless others to utter such stupidity.
“Rock was an amalgam of so many things. It was mutt music to begin with. It was a little bit of gospel, a little bit of country music, a little bit of classical, a little bit of everything just thrown in there and all of a sudden here’s this new thing. That’s the only way innovation occurs. Something new is born of several different mothers and fathers,” says Glover. “The fact that we didn’t come directly from the blues, that a lot of it came from fusion jazz, maybe set people back a bit. Unfortunately, I read a lot of blogs, and the so-called metal blogs think we’re a metal band. We’re not a metal band. There’s aspects of metal music to it – we play HARD – but we’re in no way a metal band. There’s no particular category that suits us well. You couldn’t say we’re a jazz band or a complete rock band because we play elements of R&B. So, what are you going to say? We’re a band. Leave it at that.”
 Will Calhoun & Corey Gloverby Greg Styer |
Modern music culture has become very comfortable labeling things. It’s easier to market and sell that way, but music itself is fluid and hard to contain. It is, by nature, liquid stuff.
“It should be fluid! Do you listen to your iPod that way? You’re not going to go the ‘Rock’ category and just listen to rock songs. No, you hit play and whatever comes up you’re surprised and delighted by because it’s all the music that you love,” says Glover. “The other day I was listening to [69 Boyz'] ‘Tootsee Roll’ and then something real dark like the Swans came on afterwards and it worked!”
Realizing that he wasn’t alone in his struggles, in 1985 Vernon Reid co-founded the Black Rock Coalition, an organization formed in “reaction to the constrictions that the commercial music industry places on Black artists.” The Coalition continues to this day and Reid is suitably proud and excited about the current generation of artists of color reshaping rock and popular music.
“Now we have great bands like TV on the Radio, Santigold and Earl Greyhound on the scene. And there’s Afro-punk, which is kind of the snarky little brother to the Black Rock Coalition,” says Reid. “I’ll tell you what’s really got me jazzed right now. A really good friend of mine, William DuVall, is the new singer in Alice In Chains and I’m so happy for him. I had a solo record, This little room, that was going to be the follow-up to Mistaken Identity (1996) and William sings on two of the songs on that (unreleased) record. In a lot of ways, I think this is a good time for rock, and I think it’s going to become a better time for rock. When I look at say The Mars Volta, the complexion of what rock is has been fundamentally altered. And that’s a good thing.”
“One of the things I love about The Mars Volta is I don’t get it! I listen to it and it’s weird. It’s partly in Spanish but it’s prog. I love the fact that I didn’t already know where it was going,” continues Reid. “So much rock is a lifestyle, a factory produced thing. Led Zeppelin was still tied to the blues in a fundamental way, but the idea behind Led Zeppelin was still this experimental thing. You hear these bootlegs where they played ‘The Battle of Evermore’ for a half hour! There’s this whole notion that they were the beginning of cock rock – and in a way it is – but there’s so much more to it.”
 Will Calhoun by Bill Bernstein |
One characteristic that runs throughout Living Colour’s catalog is a pronounced love of interesting sounds. Beyond the stellar musicianship and compositional edge, their albums overflow with cool noises and interesting digressions. This passion extends to a breathless enthusiasm for old gear like Mellotrons.
“You’re singing my song right there! There’s something about an instrument, because of the nature of what it is, that lends an air of instant nostalgia to anything you do with it,” offers Reid. “Hearing the sound of strings that sound like they’re from an old movie instantly transports you. Psychedelia wouldn’t have been possible without the Mellotron. The sound of those Beatles records is justÂ…[Reid trails off into a sigh of pure delight].”
“We recorded The Chair In The Door in a very different way. With all the other records we’d been hitting the tunes and playing and playing them in front of people. With this record we did overdubs with live skeletons, and a lot of this record was broken down into parts and components, which in a sense is how things are done now. There’s parts of this record that are very live. You can tell that ‘Bless Those’ is just recorded live. There’s a lot of tunes that are very dense, and what I like about ‘Bless Those’ is it’s very stripped down, very rock ‘n’ roll band. We went 360-degrees with that tune, where one take was too bar-bandy, etc. At the end of the day it was right the first time,” says Reid. “Other pieces like ‘Behind The Sun’ were found digging through an archive of things we’d done. I heard it and said, ‘Oh, that’s that crazy tapping riff!’ We wound up getting into it and it evolved, like the whole project. I think album concept still has merit as an organizing principle. I think sequencing matters. I think having a body of songs that pertain to something – a real song cycle – matters. I think the fact that you can release a single song and not be tied to an album is cool, but people say the album is over or irrelevant and I don’t believe that. Further on the convergence of various technologies are going to take the notion of albums and the experiential objects therein and change them.”
“The [new album] was inspirational to me. When they heard me sing something new or in a different way it helped inspire us to do more stuff. I tried to get at things the best I could,” says Glover. “Technically, I’d been schooled constantly by the time we got the studio because I’d been touring with Jesus Christ Superstar [playing Judas Iscariot] for two years (2006-2008). So, my voice was ready to go when it was time to hit play because I haven’t stopped singing for two years! My vocal coach gave me a lot of good ideas if you want to keep doing this. You need to have a personal routine but also growth, because if there’s no growth it becomes boring and uninteresting. The singer is the emotional interpreter of the song. If he’s not able to tell you what the emotions are that the band is playing then it doesn’t make any sense. It’s just not worth doing if you don’t throw your personality into it. It’s the bravado or the angst or the melancholy of whoever is singing and those they’re singing with. And with an uncategorized band it’s going to be different every time.”
 Living Colour by Bill Bernstein |
Regardless of anything else they may do, Living Colour will likely always be best known for “Cult of Personality,” simply one of the great moments in late 20th century music. It’s a piece that will be knocking skulls together and making folks question the celebrity driven nature of modern culture long after all of us are resting ashily in our urns. The song has become so ubiquitous – Guitar Hero anyone? – it’s become part of the contemporary background noise through no fault of its own.
“What I really didn’t want to be were the people I was singing about [laughs]. At a certain point it kinda got that way, but that’s not what I was saying. There’s a certain thing that goes on. Just watch the Sonia Sotomayor hearings to see it,” says Glover. “What’s funny about it is it’s a phenomenon that occurs in every aspect of life. There’s an insurance salesman that every other insurance salesman talks about. What we were talking about is rock stars. And I’m not a rock star. Mick Jagger isn’t a rock star. Barack Obama IS a rock star! I’m not the one who can stop traffic. Michael Jackson is the biggest star in the worldÂ…next to Barack Obama [laughs].”
“I read a book a while back that said that what people do to their betters is raise them up, bring them down and then raise them up again. And it’s only after their death that they truly raise them up and the reality of their impact can be assessed. It’s what happened with Elvis. He was the biggest thing in the world, then they said he was kind of corny and then he died and he was the greatest thing in the world again,” comments Glover. “It’s going to happen to every person of any note everywhere in the world. It happened to Bill Clinton. It happened to Ed Koch. It happens to your local community board member, who once seemed so new and young and hip. Look at John Travolta’s career! That’s the way it works. That’s how [culture] manifests itself. You’re hot shit one minute and then you’re out. Like Frank Sinatra said, ‘That’s life’ [laughs].”
“As long as there’s a forum for social commentary – whether it comes from music or the arts or life itself – there’s always going to be a conversation to be had. There’s always going to be a conversation to what’s considered infantile or sophomoric. There’s going to be a real conversation about the world we live in. That’s what philosophy is, and that’s how these things come apart. That’s how we deal with our music,” says Glover. “This conversation is one we’re trying to have with our audience. Of course, some people would love to hear Living Colour do ‘Back In Black’ and we’d love to get out there and do that, too [laughs].”
Living Colour is on tour right now. Dates available here.
JamBase | Saturated
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Amazon Offers Refund for Deleted Copies of Orwell Novels
September 7th, 2009 |
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Big Brother apologizes as Amazon offers affected customers gift certificates or replacement copies of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four and Animal Farm , which were deleted without explanation earlier this summer.
–
A media furor erupted late
this summer when online retailer Amazon.com suddenly deleted digital copies of
the George Orwell classics “Nineteen Eighty-four” and “Animal Farm” from its
e-reader the Kindle. Now the company is offering customers affected by the
decision a $30 refund….
Lib Dems demand curbs on spying
August 10th, 2009 |
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The Lib Dems want tighter controls on surveillance powers for authorities including councils and the police.
More than 500,000 requests to access phone and e-mail records were made in 2008, a report by the Interception of Communications Commissioner showed.
The Lib Dems say only a magistrate should be able to approve a request for surveillance, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
The Home Office said the powers should be used only when "proportionate".
‘Beggars belief’
An average of about 1,500 surveillance requests were made every day in Britain last year, according to figures which have emerged from an annual report by commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy.
That is the annual equivalent to one in every 78 adults being targeted.
Although slightly down on 2007, the total number of requests last year was up by more than 40% on 2006.
It included 1,500 approved applications from local councils.
"The government forgets that George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, and not a blueprint"
Chris Huhne, Lib Dems
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said the figures "beggared belief".
"Many of these operations carried out by the police and security services are necessary, but the sheer numbers are daunting," he said.
"It cannot be a justified response to the problems we face in this country that the state is spying on half a million people a year.
"We have sleepwalked into a surveillance state, but without adequate safeguards. Having the Home Secretary in charge of authorisation is like asking the fox to guard the hen house.
"The government forgets that George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning and not a blueprint."
‘Collective security’
Ministers introduced Ripa to help tackle serious crimes including terrorism.
The act allows certain people within councils, police forces and other public bodies to ask for details of when e-mails were sent or phone calls made and to whom, although it does not give them access to their content.
Councils, in particular, have been criticised for using Ripa to investigate more trivial matters, such as dog fouling.
A Home Office spokesman said: "Of course it’s vital that we strike the right balance between individual privacy and collective security and that is why the Home Office is clear these powers should only be used when they are proportionate.
"To ensure the appropriate use of Ripa, the Home Office has recently completed a public consultation on revised codes of practice, and on all public authorities able to use certain techniques relating to Ripa, the ranks at which these techniques can be authorised and the purposes for which they can be used."
Have you been snooped on Send us your comments and experiences on this story by filling out the form below.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Kindle Owners Sue Amazon over Blocked Books
August 3rd, 2009 |
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Amazon has become the target of lawsuits over the company’s deletion of copies of George Orwell’s novel 1984.
– Two owners of Amazons e-reader, the Kindle, are suing the company for
breach of contract, intentional interference with their belongings and
violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Washington Consumer
Protection Act.
Antoine Bruguier of California
and teenage Michigan resident
…
Amazon Faces A Fight Over Its E-Books
July 27th, 2009 |
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Last week, Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, offered an apparently heartfelt and anguished mea culpa to customers whose digital editions of George Orwell’s “1984″ were remotely deleted from their Kindle reading devices.
…
Earliest Wodehouse satires found
July 25th, 2009 |
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Writings from 100 years ago emerge to cast new light on the author’s politics
The discovery of four satirical “playlets” by PG Wodehouse, seen by the public for the first time in 100 years this weekend, prove that the humorist – who is often viewed as apolitical – had a strong interest in public affairs from his youth.
Wodehouse is best known as the creator of the all-knowing Jeeves and his egregious boss, Bertie Wooster. However, the four sketches, written between 1904 and 1907 – and complete with lampooning songs – show he was closely engaged with British politics and happy to function somewhat as the Have I Got News For You of his day.
In a meeting room at Calders bookshop on London’s South Bank yesterday, Wodehouse fans from across Europe met to read the playlets for the first time with the man who found them, literary historian Paul Spiring.
Wodehouse, or “Plum” as he was known to friends, used the sketches to parody the debate of the time about tariff reform and proposed changes to tax law that split the Conservative government, and led to a Liberal landslide in 1906.
He wrote the sketches with his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson, known as “Bobbles”, and they were published in the Daily Express and Vanity Fair before disappearing into publisher archives. Hilary Bruce, chairman of the Wodehouse Society, is among those keen to see the works. “Lovers of literature, be they scholars or simply voracious readers, are always delighted when early or little known works are collected and republished,” she said.
“Scholars welcome comparison between early and later works. Wodehouse was just 22 when the first of these satires was published, and that makes them interesting to us now.”
In later life the author faced angry public accusations, including from writer AA Milne, that he had sympathised with the Nazi regime in Germany.
During a period of internment in what is now Poland, Wodehouse made a series of light-hearted broadcasts that were viewed by critics as treason. His supporters, including George Orwell, defended Wodehouse by saying he was naive and not interested in politics. It is now clear this was not the case. “People who enjoy Wodehouse like to think he was apolitical, but actually as a young man he was highly attuned to the political nuances of the day,” said Robert McCrum, author of the biography, Wodehouse: A Life
“He was conservative with a small ‘c’ – a supporter of Joseph Chamberlain and tariff reform. But he had started out as a journalist and was alert to controversy, and could always write to commission.”
While Wodehouse was politically aware, McCrum suggests that the writer would have been happy to deliver pieces to suit the political position of the owners of the Daily Express.
“He would turn his hand to anything that paid, and do it well. He was ambidextrous when it came to writing, and not snooty. But more than anything at that time, he liked writing funny poems and lyrics.”
Wodehouse’s father was in the civil service in India, but not wealthy enough to send his son to Oxford. As a result, the young Wodehouse worked in a bank after leaving school. He hated the work, and took up writing in his spare time, hoping to establish a career that would free him from a life in finance.
As one of the first modern “freelance” writers, Wodehouse went on to satirise politicians in the character of Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup and leader of the “Black Shorts”, who appears in several Jeeves stories.
The new playlets were discovered, one by one, during four years of research by Spiring, who is also an expert on the work of Arthur Conan Doyle. He came across the first Wodehouse sketch almost by chance. “They all followed from a successful set of poems he had written known as the Parrot Poems,” he said.
“They are quite powerful and show that he was very much a supporter of the Tariff Reform League and pro-Chamberlain. His writing has often given people the impression that he was above politics. But the songs show that he was quite astute.”
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Amazon CEO Bezos Apologizes for Orwell Deletion from Kindle
July 25th, 2009 |
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Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos issued a public apology for the deletion of two George Orwell novels, 1984 and Animal Farm, from the Kindle e-reader device. Although the novels were pulled over a copyright dispute, the specter of Big Brother-style interference was such that Bezos decided an apology was needed. Amazon is seeking to dominate the e-reader space with its Kindle, although it faces the prospect of competition from Plastic Logic and other companies.
– Amazon.com
CEO Jeff Bezos tendered an apology on his
site for last weeks deletion of two George Orwell e-books from users Kindle
devices.
Around July 16, Kindle users realized that copies of quot;Animal Farm quot;
and quot;1984 quot; had disappeared from their e-readers archived items
libra…
Johann Hari: Please, Dear Novelists – Get Real
July 24th, 2009 |
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The Slumdog Kill-ionaire is back, and he is reminding us how exhilarating fiction can be when novelists finally leave their seminar rooms and dive into…
Tainted history
July 24th, 2009 |
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By James Rodgers
BBC News
What is worrying Russia Why is the country convinced that it is the victim of a campaign to make it look bad
President Dmitry Medvedev recently announced the setting up of a commission to counter the falsification of history. He said this was becoming increasingly "severe, evil, and aggressive".
"This is absolute poppycock," says Robert Service, professor of Russian History at Oxford University. "History is all about argument. There is no absolute historical truth about anything big in history."
Mr Service dismisses the Russian leader’s suggestion that his country is facing some kind of academic aggression.
Instead, he sees a desire to dominate, worthy of the most repressive totalitarian regimes of fiction.
"President Medvedev, following in the path of his predecessor President [Vladimir] Putin, wants to control history," he says.
"And he wants to control history as a means of controlling the present. This is the classic George Orwell scenario."
‘Hysterical reaction’
Many Russians, though, agree with their president.
Natalia Narochnitskaya, a former deputy in the Russian parliament and now a member of the new Historical Truth Commission, says that she is surprised by what she terms the "almost hysterical reaction" in the West.
"In the Western media especially, there is a certain prejudice against Russia and Russian history," she says.
"They always feel that Russia since, you know, Ivan the Terrible, is a certain country which is off the European civilisation."
"In August there will be such a yelling about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, saying that that was the step that led to the Second World War"
Natalia Narochnitskaya, member of the Historical Truth Commission
Ask a few more questions, though, and these two apparently separate views begin to converge.
At least, they agree on what the key issue is – World War II. And here lies the clue as to the real reason for the establishment of the new commission.
This is what appears to anger today’s Russian historical establishment: accounts of Red Army crimes on the march to Berlin; assertions by the Baltic countries and others in Eastern Europe that Soviet forces came as occupiers as much as liberators; any suggestion that Stalin’s Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were anything but complete opposites and bitter enemies.
Here, perhaps, there is a clue as to the timing of the commission’s founding.
Next month sees the 70th anniversary of the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Hitler’s Germany, something Ms Narochnitskaya expects the West to make a lot of noise about.
"In August there will be such a yelling about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, saying that that was the step that led to the Second World War, and that Germany and the Soviet Union were two equal, disgusting, totalitarian monsters."
Nationalist sentiment
Why does this matter today Do these arguments have any great importance beyond the walls of universities In Russia, the answer is yes.
"So many people are speaking about strong, Orthodox Russia, military power… The commission is partly a response to this atmosphere"
Tamara Eidelman
Moscow history teacher
The country sees its victory over Hitler’s forces as the greatest moment of the 20th Century.
The war is sometimes discussed in the news media as if it were a recent event, not increasingly distant history.
Any attempt to tarnish the glory of that triumph is seen as a deliberate attempt to make Russia look bad.
Russia’s past haunts its present. Recognising that, the authorities want to rule the version of the past which dominates today.
Tamara Eidelman, who teaches history at a Moscow High School, feels surrounded by nationalist sentiment.
"So many people are speaking about strong, Orthodox Russia, military power," she says.
"It is something that is very strong in historical tradition and in popular opinion. This commission is partly a response to this atmosphere."
The creation of this commission seems to go to the heart of what troubles modern Russia.
The chaos which followed the collapse of communism left many Russians deeply distrustful of politics and officialdom.
President Medvedev has complained of the corruption and "legal nihilism" which plague his country.
Russia’s leaders today know that they need this shining, sacred, memory of victory to give their people something to believe in.
In the near future, it may even be backed up in law.
The Russian parliament is on its summer break at the moment, but legislation is being considered – legislation that would make it a criminal offence to "infringe on historical memory in relation to events which took place in the Second World War".
James Rodgers was formerly the BBC’s Moscow correspondent.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Amazon.com CEO apologizes for Orwell incident
July 24th, 2009 |
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos has apologized to Kindle customers for deleting pirated copies of George Orwell novels “1984″ and “Animal Farm” from their e-reader devices.
Kindle users were surprised last week to find that Orwell works they had purchased were removed from their readers and their money refunded.
Amazon said last [...]
Pirates’ treasure
July 22nd, 2009 |
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Newsnight’s Matt Prodger visits Sweden’s Peace and Love music festival in Borlange to investigate what it is about the Swedes that has put them at the heart of a raging debate about internet freedom.
For 24-hour party people a visit to the land of the midnight sun is a must. For one thing, the Swedes are serious when it comes to having fun – and at this time of year the sun never sets.
"The Pirate Party doesn’t want to be perceived as a bunch of computer hackers that just want to download the latest Angelina Jolie movie for free"
Katrine Kielos, Aftonbladet columnist
And so it is that I find myself at the Peace and Love festival in Borlänge long after bedtime, negotiating a sea of tents which stretches far into the blood-red glow of a night-long dusk .
I am here to try to find out what it is about Swedes that has put them at the heart of a raging debate about internet freedom.
It is estimated – but nobody really knows – that at least one in 10 Swedes swap music illegally via BitTorrent file-sharing websites like Sweden’s notorious Pirate Bay, and it is thought that in 2008, some 15m films were illegally downloaded here.
‘Sharing is caring’
Sitting in the shelter of a waist-high pile of beer crates I find my target demographic – a group of music-loving festival-goers.
Out of the five of them, three voted for the Pirate Party in this year’s European elections, helping to put a representative, Christian Engström, into the European Parliament.
Twenty-year-old Erik Lennermo explains why he voted for the Pirate Party.
"Civil rights. Everybody has a right of privacy for their own e-mails, SMS messages and phone calls. File-sharing is just a small bit of the whole cake."
His friend Daniel Gustavsson’s support for the Pirate Party is more straightforward: "I just care about the file-sharing," he says. "Sharing is caring."
Such views have propelled the country into what Swedish MP Camilla Lindberg describes as the biggest political debate for 20 years.
At its heart is a controversial law passed in parliament last year.
Known as the FRA Law, in honour of the Swedish electronic intelligence agency, equivalent to Britain’s GCHQ, it permits the monitoring of international phone calls, e-mail and internet traffic.
Some of the world’s most powerful computers will scan all cross-border e-traffic in real time for a quarter of a million trigger words and phrases that the security services believe warrant further investigation.
And it can be done without judicial oversight.
Anti-terror necessity
In the UK the Home Office recently put out to consultation proposals which would give GCHQ similar powers.
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told Newsnight the law is directed not at file-sharers, but terrorists:
"I think we struck a clear balance between integrity… and security," he said.
"Take for instance a bomb blowing up in Stockholm or London – a lot of the electorate would ask me ‘What did you do [to prevent it]‘
"For a long time we haven’t seen such things in Sweden, and then it’s very easy to say we don’t need (the FRA Law). But I have to take a long-term responsibility."
Popular support
But that argument does not wash with Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge, who advocates reforming copyright laws to allow free file-sharing, downloading, and the right to copy everything from the latest Hollywood blockbuster to patented pharmaceuticals.
"The thing is you can’t just monitor some internet traffic," he told me. "In order to find out what you want to see you need to see all of it. It’s not about swapping music as such. It’s about the Big Brother society that is being set up using the excuse of catching file-sharers.
"We know where this road ends, even though each step of the way can be justified, because so many societies have been down it before."
To make the point, activists deluged Swedish parliamentarians with copies of George Orwell’s totalitarian satire 1984 ahead of last year’s vote.
Yet among MPs in the ruling coalition, only Camilla Lindberg of the Liberal People’s Party voted against the wiretapping law.
"Two weeks before the vote last year we had big demonstrations, 10,000 people here," she says, pointing at the parliament building in Stockholm.
"Each MP got thousands of emails… suddenly I realised I’m not the only one against this. It’s people from the left and right, young and old feel the same thing."
But why Sweden Part of it is, of course, the country’s technological prowess.
While Finland has Nokia, Sweden gave us Ericsson. Swedes enjoy some of the highest – and fastest – rates of connectivity in the world, a development that has been spurred by necessity because of the country’s sparsely populated geography.
Cultural differences
And then there is Sweden’s liberal culture, part of which is the principle of Allemansratten.
"Allemansratten means everyone’s right. It’s an important part of Swedish culture and identity," Katrine Kielos, a columnist on Sweden’s best-selling daily tabloid Aftonbladet, explained to me.
"We are going to put the record industry out of business… we are very much looking forward to that"
Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge
"It means that the law of trespass is very weak in Sweden, so you have the right to access somebody’s property in a way that is not possible in other countries."
Ms Kielos’ tutorial in Allemansratten came as we stood together on the roof of Sweden’s historic parliament building.
This would be trespass pretty much anywhere else in the world. Here, the only restriction on my Stockholm rooftop tour is a safety harness.
"The Pirate Party doesn’t want to be perceived as a bunch of computer hackers that just want to download the latest Angelina Jolie movie for free," she said.
"So they’re trying to frame this issue in the way of Allemansratten because this is something that resonates a lot in Swedish culture."
Political kingmaker
According to political analyst Stig-Bjorn Ljunggren if, as expected, the Pirate Party wins seats in the Swedish parliament in elections next year, it could well find itself the kingmaker between the country’s two established political blocs.
"You have two blocks in parliament: one green and red, and one blue. And if a third party comes into parliament they could choose which one of these two parties will form a government.
"They (the Pirate Party) will sell the post of prime minister to the party that gives most to them," he said.
And the prime minister has not ruled out doing a deal with the party.
Some musicians and artists, like Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus, have spoken out against the Pirate Party, but few will go on the record because the debate is so explosive.
An exception is Alexandar Bard, a musician behind 100 Swedish top 40 hits, and latterly an academic specialising in the internet.
He says file-sharing is killing the Swedish music industry: "Six years ago Sweden was the third biggest producer of music in the world and last year we were only the ninth.
"So today in Sweden it’s impossible to get a recording contract because there are no record companies around to sign with. It means you can’t get paid for making music and you can’t get a budget to make music.
"File-sharing is not a big issue politically, it’s not like climate change or the environment. And the Pirate Party has turned it into a big issue to win votes."
But Pirate Party founder Mr Falkvinge is unrepentant.
"We are going to put the record industry out of business", he says. "And we are very much looking forward to that."
And like the Vikings of yore, the pirates’ philosophy has spread far and wide. Independent pirate parties have sprung up in dozens of countries across the world. It is now a global battle.
Watch Matt Prodger’s film in full on Newsnight on Wednesday 22 July 2009 at 10.30pm on BBC Two, then on the Newsnight website.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Marc Hershon: My Kindle Ate My Homework
July 18th, 2009 |
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Amazon slapped my sense of ownership and control across the face yesterday when I learned they reached right into the Kindles of anumber of customers and deleted — irony of ironies — copies of George Orwell’s 1984.
Michael Sigman: Language Patrol
July 13th, 2009 |
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The most risible language contortions this side of Dick Cheney’s tortured definitions of “torture” surround mavericky Sarah Palin, whose regular butchering of the English language rivals that of George W. Bush.