Square Pegs

Before we begin, may we suggest that schools need to spend more time teaching today’s youth “attribution”? It is clearly no longer the province of journalists and scholars. While there are many forms of attribution, at the the very least, the original source of material should be noted when material is quoted. We understand that this requires a bit of work and some understanding of technology (for example, here, when we quote from other sources, we set off the quoted material and provide a link back to the original piece). A recent article of ours (on another site) was slashdotted […]

Always trust your iPod. Ours has been heavy on the Big Star all weekend (“Radio City” if you must know). As we live life in random, we figured it was a sign. Alex Chilton is alive and well, though no longer in Memphis: Chilton, who hadn’t been heard from since shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck, told Easley he stayed in his home the entire time and water had gotten up to his porch. Chilton said he had food and water but was most concerned during the week about roving gangs. (via the very helpful Tod Goldberg; and, yeah, we stole

Pardon us if we muddle our history a bit (we’ve barely made a dent in our coffee), but one of the hallmarks of the Dark Ages was that a small elite determined what information should be possessed by the masses and then dispersed said information with no regard to human ability to think and analyze. While we’ve come a long way, there continue to be pockets of people who feel their knowledge should be the only knowledge, and they are trying to push this agenda — yes, agenda — through increasing challenges to libraries. Just as we believe parents should

Booksquare has not been in a good mood this week (ask our neighbors, though, in our defense, if you weren’t shouting, you weren’t paying attention), and when we’re unhappy, you’re unhappy. So why not spend some time dissecting mail we received this week? We thought you’d feel that way. Episode One — Meet The Clueless In this episode, we receive an interview request. For your reading pleasure, we have reproduced it — almost exactly as received. We trust you’ll figure out what has been changed to protect the innocent: My name is [Person You’ve Never Heard Of]. I write erotica

As was inevitable, we have reached the nexus of book and podcast (and we don’t mean LitPods). Of course the podcast technology is ideal for delivering audio books — it’s doing just great with other type of audio delivery (the video seems a bit stalled, but we’re sure that’s just a blip on the technology meter; and, yeah, we know). The real story is that we, the world, have yet another potentially copyright violating technology to wring our hands over. Whatever will we do? How can we stop the madness? Can innovation just take a nap until the traditional processes

We see that many bloggers and others are urging donations of time, money, and goods to various relief organizations. And we strongly encourage those who can give to do so. But there’s another great need in this nation — not just the Gulf Coast region — and that is for blood. Not only does the need for donated blood rise in disaster areas, but the need across the United States has not abated either, and there is less blood entering the system right now. And almost everyone can give blood. Giving blood is easy. Sure, it takes a little time

Don’t get us wrong — we understand obsession. There is something. . .time sucking about worrying a matter to death. It’s almost as if the entire human psyche was constructed to use obsession to avoid reality. It sure beats paying the bills. For absolute proof of our theory, one needs look no further than the annual “Who was Shakespeare. Really.” round of articles. Just in time for the back to school crowd, scholars worry their pretty little heads about the man behind the plays and sonnets and whatnot. After all, the person who they think did the work couldn’t have

We are off to an unconscionably early morning meeting and, while we’d prefer to hang out with our blog, have no time. Let us just say the husband has started wielding an iron and asking questions about how it works. Like we’d know. Thus we leave you with an article to ponder. There will be an essay test later. Curiously unsatisfied with the idea that being a successful novelist requires the ability to write books that a consistently large number of people are prepared to buy, jaded scribblers search instead for an explanation that will permit them to retreat with

Yeah, we’re in a picture sort of mood this morning. We should be back to normal soon. Doonesbury, Monday, August 29

Have you been spammed by Bookman Marketing LLC? If not, it’s only a matter of time. The proprieter, one Brien Jones, apparently spends his days harvesting email addresses (based on our admittedly limited research, he trolls various websites; today’s spam was addressed to an address that has nothing to do with writing, via a website completely unrelated to writing and/or publishing). Mr. Jones seems to think he can help you! He can’t. He’s obviously clueless, not to mention irritating, not only because he’s indiscriminate in his spamming but because he believes Bookman Marketing is the only company in the publishing