Sep 6, 2020
The difference is sales to strangers. Vanity publishing means printing and ordering books. After giving a few copies to friends and family, the undistributed books sit on a pallet in the garage. Indie publishing means getting a book into a distribution channel, like Amazon, where it can be bought by anyone. Sales to strangers is the key difference.
In the U.K., at least in the non-fiction and specialty markets, an author is often required to fund publication in part. It’s pay to play. So there at least, the distinction between paying for publication and being paid for publication breaks down. There is a lot of blurring at the edges of these definitions. Is a bookstore owner who publishes his friends (and himself) a self-publisher? What about City Lights Books?
Sep 4, 2020
No one anticipated that a wealthy Saudi who took up our invitation to throw the Russians out of Afghanistan would turn against us and cross oceans to wage war in New York. After 2001, the drug war became an afterthought; like the empty Venetian courtrooms after Napoleon put an end to the thousand-year Venetian republic, the new fourth courthouse would be mostly unused.
Sep 3, 2020
Marguerite Duras, author, film director, Resistance fighter grew up speaking Vietnamese. Though she wrote many works in French, she never wrote in Vietnamese.
Discuss.
Sep 2, 2020
Always sound advice.
Sep 2, 2020
For typesetting.
Sep 2, 2020
(From David Stockman)
“Finally, there’s this. When over 460,000 motorcyclists descended upon Sturgis, South Dakota in the Black Hills for the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally, it was the largest event in the entire country this year – without masks or sacred social distancing protocols.
Yet no epidemic of coronavirus was ignited by this mother of all mass gatherings, contrary to media predictions. As one astute analyst observed,
‘So where is the monumental imprint on the country? There are zero deaths reported, and I have only seen one hospitalization alleged to be associated with Sturgis attendance. The epidemic generated by the rally was so powerful that they evidently had to conduct mass testing to discover a “CASEdemic” of over 100 cases – and all those tested in one city were asymptomatic at the time of testing.
If Sturgis in South Dakota broke every rule of the COVID-19 cult with success, then Peru is the polar opposite. The country used heavy-handed law enforcement to force one of the longest and most draconian shutdowns. In mid-March, President Martín Vizcarra ordered all cars off the road and an 8 p.m. curfew, and residents were only allowed to leave their homes even during the day for food or medical care. Mask-wearing was 100% mandated everywhere. This was imposed for 15 weeks. In other words, everything the media and leftist politicians have asked for.
The result? Peru has now surpassed Belgium as the country with the most deaths per capita in the world. At 871 COVID-19 deaths per 1 million people, Peru has 4.6 times the number of deaths per capita of South Dakota, which had no lockdown or mask mandate.‘”
Sep 2, 2020
Low-Level but Persistent Spread
Like Cuba, Bahrain is an island. Like Cuba, Bahrain has closed off its airport to visitors. Unlike Cuba, Bahrain has an artificial land bridge to Saudi Arabia, but traffic has been and remains exit only. Both countries have low levels of infection. In Havana, the authorities have ordered a modified lockdown because of the “low-level but persistent” spread of the Sickness. This is exactly the situation in Bahrain. A low-level but persistent spread keeps the number of cases hovering around 3000.
A lockdown is one way to stop the spread.
Sep 2, 2020
But the blood was continuing to ooze from Kemmler’s small finger wound. His heart still had to be beating. The physicians around the limp figure recoiled as one yelled in horror, “Great God! He is alive!” Another ordered, “Turn on the current.” “See, he breathes,” gasped a third. When Dr. Southwick and the others whirled around at these cries, they saw that Kemmler’s body was still limp, but his chest was heaving up and down. He seemed to be struggling for breath, and foam was seeping horribly from his masked mouth hole. “For God’s sake, kill him and have it over!” screamed one witness. The Associated Press reporter fainted on the wood floor, and several men carried him to a bench, where they fanned him. Durston had turned chalk white. He fumbled and reattached the scalp electrode. As the current flowed anew and Kemmler again went horribly rigid, “an awful odor began to permeate the death chamber.” Kemmler’s hair and skin were being visibly singed. A blue flame played briefly behind his neck. His clothes caught fire, but one of the doctors quickly extinguished them. “The stench,” reported the Times, “was unbearable.” After several minutes, the current was turned off, and as purple spots mottled Kemmler’s hands, arms, and neck, the doctors again declared him dead. The room reeked of burned meat and feces. The nauseated witnesses signed the death warrant for Warden Durston and then trailed out into the stone corridors, silent, shaken, several sick, the Erie County sheriff so distraught that tears trickled down his face. Three hours later, when the doctors had sufficiently recovered to perform an autopsy, they found that rigor mortis had stiffened Kemmler into a permanent sitting position. Examination of the body showed scorch marks wherever the electrodes and buckles touched the body. Kemmler had been “roasted” as well as a piece of overdone meat. Once the autopsy was complete and numerous organs removed, Kemmler’s baked corpse was taken and buried at night in the prison courtyard with great quantities of quicklime to dissolve all ultimate traces.
From Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
Aug 29, 2020
End of story = Capítulo cerrado.
Spanish, obviously.
Aug 25, 2020
A beignet is just a small ojaldra.
Discuss.